Nah, man the situation you described your self shows that you would rather blame the dice then the player. The Leader pilot should of been focused fired. Yes those natural rolled probably did help, but I'm also guessing that it was against only a few or one ship at a time. Any ship in this game can be focused down with a small amount of skill.

Palpatine is 29 points, I don't see what is the big fuss about it. It's almost 2 TIE fighters with crack shot. If you are telling me that giving up 29 points to be able to modify ONE die roll per turn is overpowered then I really want some of what you are smoking.

Palpatine is 29 points, I don't see what is the big fuss about it. It's almost 2 TIE fighters with crack shot. If you are telling me that giving up 29 points to be able to modify ONE die roll per turn is overpowered then I really want some of what you are smoking.

Everybody dismisses that poor, neglected shuttle.

Right up until they realise it's about to throw 4 dice backed by TL & Palpatine and they spent their Focus token defending against Soontir. Then they start to give the poor thing a little bit of respect.

Palp is only as good as aces. And anti-ace tech is on the rise.

I'm actually surprised we're not seeing people put it to better use but maybe that's because it's hard to tangle with that and Uboats.

After some preliminary testing, a Palpatine Shuttle is a great escort for a pair of Delta TIE/Ds or X7s.

If you think this game is 60% dice, you blame your dice for your poor skill too much.

Even though I don't rely on my dice, I do recognize that the game isn't quite 50/50 skill/luck. Yes, maneuver helps win games, but ultimately damage relies on the dice - how many evades, how many hits, etcetera. I can only imagine the frustration my opponents felt during the last tournament when Zeta Leader (in 6 games) took a total of 7 damage, was only destroyed once, and rolled 3 natural evades 6 times - twice against maxed hits.

You've got that exactly backwards. Dice can help win games, but maneuvers do the heavy lifting. I can count on one hand the number of times I've seen dice be the deciding factor in a game. You can always trace a loss back to a missed opportunity or mistake made at some point.

For sure. I certainly had my frustrations with the dice at Regionals Saturday; my second round opponent 4 separate times rolling 4 natural hits with his HLC after being blocked or taking a non-TL/F action, my third round opponent rolling perfect evades against every torpedo and shot my Jumpmasters fired, and so on... But, in that second round, I made a tactical error by firing on his YV-666 in the opening exchange instead of IG-88B who ended up taking me out despite me doing 6 feedback array damage to him over the course of the rest of the game, when he only had an evade token and both my Jumpmasters were in Torpedo range and had him in arc. And in the second, I could have killed his N'dru before he fired through Feedback Array(everyone had one) damage if I'd stopped and thought for a second, and instead ate 8 Glitterstimed/Guidance Chipped Cluster Missile dice on one of my Jumpmasters.

A lot of that is down to not having enough practice with the list to think through all of my options in every situation. I flew 2 Jumps + Torkil without the FAs at a seasonal kit tournament two weeks ago, and this past Saturday were my first games running it with the addition of Feedback Array. Would not making those mistakes have changed the outcome of those games? It's hard to say, but those two points in each game stand out as the moments where there wasn't really a path of return for me, despite my best efforts. That the dice may have been a bit unkind as well is just a compounding factor on my own flying mistakes and lack of practice with my list.

If Palpatine is so awful why not just bring some ordinance and burn that shuttle down first? Doesn't it make sense to destroy the support ship first?

Then the aces will shoot you down from behind before you get a chance. Palpatine is good, but it's not nerf good.

I also think it's great that he provides variety. Yes, he's in almost all Imperial lists, but there's 10 Aces that can be interchanged with him. It's not like the JM15K lists that change 1 or 2 upgrades here and there and mirror matches everywhere or 4 TLT's.

If Palpatine is so awful why not just bring some ordinance and burn that shuttle down first? Doesn't it make sense to destroy the support ship first?

Yeah, in that situation, Palp is the bait. The shuttle is actually surprisingly hard to burn down in the way you describe (10 health backed by 1 evade die, with at least one guaranteed evade from Palp), and you're allowing the aces to chew you up from the flank. There is nothing good about that situation.

The main strength of Palp is that his usage is reactive. You have all of the information you need after every dice roll during the attack phase. You'll know how many ships have you in arc, how many dice they'll be rolling, and how many tokens you have. You'll be able to see the results of your roll and will know whether you need to use him (especially on defense), and will have a good idea as to whether he'll be helpful on offense.

That said, I don't think a nerf is needed. You just need a single crit with Boba Fett crew.

The thing with Palpatine is that he just works so well with Imps, as they are a very agility oriented faction with many of its best aces having access to autothrusters. He wouldn't have as big of an impact on rebels or scum. It's just the combination of available imperial aces and a cheap, beefy ship to put him on. Doesn't hurt that the lambda throws 3 red dice. If there was a card for rebels or scum with the same ability and price, it wouldn't work as well for them.

That said, I think he's slightly under costed. I'm not even mad, though, as he enables the use of the most fun ships in the game for competitive play.

If Palpatine is so awful why not just bring some ordinance and burn that shuttle down first? Doesn't it make sense to destroy the support ship first?

Exactly if palp was so overpowered people would prioritize him first especially since he rests upon the least defensive ship in the entire imperial fleet. However he is almost never the best target to kill first. He is the epitomy of support ship.

I never understood why hes so insanely good. Not for his price that is. One die result changed to any result per round for 8pts and really prevents the ship hes on from doing anything other than toting him around so hes even more expensive.

Aside from making Wampa get his ability off every round he attacks, i just dont see how he can be such a gamechanger every game.

On paper, sure, it doesn't sound great. But in practice, oh boy. It really, really adds up. I wasn't sold on him until the first tournament I saw streamed after his release.

In regards to the first part, I disagree. On paper, Palpatine crew is routinely worth ~20 points just by himself. The problem is not theory vs. reality, but rather understanding the theory. It's a case where most people's intuition is wrong, unless they were already experienced Aces players. I had to sit down and run the numbers myself before it was obvious that he's really cost effective when paired with aces.

For example:

Palpatine is 29 points, I don't see what is the big fuss about it. It's almost 2 TIE fighters with crack shot. If you are telling me that giving up 29 points to be able to modify ONE die roll per turn is overpowered then I really want some of what you are smoking.

1) By questioning their judgment for flying Palp Aces, I think you just managed to insult a very large number of high level players, whose sole goal is to fly the most overpowered stuff that exists in order to give them the maximum possible chance at winning.

2) You're making the claim that OGP+Palpatine is basically inferior to Black+Crackshot plus Wampa, or 2x Black+Crackshot -1 point towards init bid. If that was indeed the case, then we would always be seeing either of the latter instead of Palpatine in high level competitive play. We're not. That should be a very large clue that your reasoning is missing something.

3) Look at some real game tape, write down exactly what Palp does, and then try to assign a value to that. For example, lets say that over the course of a game Palpatine saves Fel from 1 damage, saves Inquisitor from 2 damage, and pushes a crit through on an enemy ship, killing it before it can fire. That's a fairly average use of Palp in any given game, and is easily worth about 20 points.

To a certain extent, I'd say that Palp is at least 75% responsible for Imp Aces being a competitive threat. Sure the Aces are hot to start with, but Palp let's them survive enough to win. Without Palp, I would totally think that Aces would go away again too.

I disagree; triple aces is absolutely a threat in itself - rather than investing extra points to shore up your two aces, you just bring a third. The higher variance is balanced out a tiny bit by the fact that all three of your ships are (hopefully) perfectly potent endgame threats; but over a longer series of games I suspect we're back to the original issue where you'll lose That One Game for shoddy dice - and if that's at worlds instead of a practice round, you could be in real trouble.

We keep getting Imperial aces that have tier 1 jousting efficiency, higher even than the previous tier 1 generic jousters. As the number of these tier 1 pilots increases you should see more viable squad permutations that don't include Palpatine.

Edit:

If Palpatine is so awful why not just bring some ordinance and burn that shuttle down first? Doesn't it make sense to destroy the support ship first?

Exactly if palp was so overpowered people would prioritize him first especially since he rests upon the least defensive ship in the entire imperial fleet. However he is almost never the best target to kill first. He is the epitomy of support ship.

Being a support ship/crew, and being overpowered are not mutually exclusive. Nor does it necessarily follow that even if Palp is overpowered the best tactical choice is to kill him first.

If Palpatine is so awful why not just bring some ordinance and burn that shuttle down first? Doesn't it make sense to destroy the support ship first?

Exactly if palp was so overpowered people would prioritize him first especially since he rests upon the least defensive ship in the entire imperial fleet. However he is almost never the best target to kill first. He is the epitomy of support ship.

Palpatine is overpowered.

People don't target the shuttle first because they want to kill off the aces. If you go after the shuttle your opponent will just pound you in the ass with his aces and you'll have to deal with end game Fel, which is almost as broken as Fel backed by Palpatine.

There is really no good straight forward way to tackle Palp Aces with most lists. Not every list has weaponized stress, automatic damage like Autoblaster weapons or Feedback, or can just drop the Shuttle in 2-3 shots like U-Boats can.

U-Boats can be played around. Asteroid placement, rule of 11, bumping, etc. Palp Aces can't really be played against with play style, you kind of just need hard counters for the fight not to be an uphill battle.

I fly Brobots and i for one do not think palp aces is broken nor do i think it is unbeatable.(I have beaten it quite a few times).

​Aces take skill to fly effectivly and at the end of the day beating it comes down to your own skill lv and proper target priority.

Simple advice if your shooting at Fel 1st your doing it wrong your end game should always come down to chasing Fel.

Kill the non Fel ace first then shuttle then Fel.

If not a Fel variant like say Whisper Inquisitor Or Wampa, Omega, Inquisitor. Kill the Inquisitor first.

I never understood why hes so insanely good. Not for his price that is. One die result changed to any result per round for 8pts and really prevents the ship hes on from doing anything other than toting him around so hes even more expensive.

Aside from making Wampa get his ability off every round he attacks, i just dont see how he can be such a gamechanger every game.

On paper, sure, it doesn't sound great. But in practice, oh boy. It really, really adds up. I wasn't sold on him until the first tournament I saw streamed after his release.

In regards to the first part, I disagree. On paper, Palpatine crew is routinely worth ~20 points just by himself.

I've asked this before, but do you have numbers for other comparative upgrades to see where Palpatine himself fits?

There's no doubt that Palpatine+Aces is very efficient, but how does Palpatine compare to FCS on IG88s with HLC or PTL Dash w/Kyle and HLC? I mention those off the top of my head because they are consistently changing or adding a hit (or more) a turn (or giving Dash a defensive option when he wouldn't have one).

Top lists are going to consistently make use of these kinds of efficiencies and saying Palpatine is consistently worth 20 points on his own is very interesting and sounds overpowered, but without perspective it's hard to tell how it compares with other effective combinations.

Simple advice if your shooting at Fel 1st your doing it wrong your end game should always come down to chasing Fel.

Kill the non Fel ace first then shuttle then Fel.

This sort of illustrates the problem, no? If you told most Fel players that the best strategy was leaving him for last, I think they'd be glad to take that bet.

Boba Fett call. You can't have your Palpy back.

Simple advice if your shooting at Fel 1st your doing it wrong your end game should always come down to chasing Fel.

Kill the non Fel ace first then shuttle then Fel.

This sort of illustrates the problem, no? If you told most Fel players that the best strategy was leaving him for last, I think they'd be glad to take that bet.

Either you go for the shuttle first and the aces pound you in the ass, or you go after the aces first, probably end up doing nothing, and then have the aces AND the shuttle pound you in the ass.

I run Feedback Array on my Agressors. Last Soontir I faced I did 3 damage to him, all with Feedback. Brobots and Jumpmasters have the tools to deal with Palp Aces, but most other squads don't have the specific tools necessary to take them out without it being a struggle.

If Palpatine is so awful why not just bring some ordinance and burn that shuttle down first? Doesn't it make sense to destroy the support ship first?

Yeah, in that situation, Palp is the bait. The shuttle is actually surprisingly hard to burn down in the way you describe (10 health backed by 1 evade die, with at least one guaranteed evade from Palp), and you're allowing the aces to chew you up from the flank. There is nothing good about that situation.

The main strength of Palp is that his usage is reactive. You have all of the information you need after every dice roll during the attack phase. You'll know how many ships have you in arc, how many dice they'll be rolling, and how many tokens you have. You'll be able to see the results of your roll and will know whether you need to use him (especially on defense), and will have a good idea as to whether he'll be helpful on offense.

That said, I don't think a nerf is needed. You just need a single crit with Boba Fett crew.

In addition, most of the time you're not going to be in range to engage the Shuttle during the first few rounds of combat. It's usually round 3 before the shuttle has moved at all, unless it decides it needs to move quickly across the board horizontally (or if the Shuttle player has decided that they want the Shuttle to slam into your face because they think they'll win the trade they force).

In regards to the first part, I disagree. On paper, Palpatine crew is routinely worth ~20 points just by himself.

I've asked this before, but do you have numbers for other comparative upgrades to see where Palpatine himself fits?

I do. With other upgrade combinations like:

• IG88B+HLC+FCS+AT
• Dash + Outrider + HLC + PtL + EU + Kyle/Kannan
• C-3P0 on a YT-1300
• Fel + PtL + AT + SD
• Inquisitor + PtL + v1 + AT
• Whisper + VI + ACD + FCS
• .... many more.

The upgrades all fall into the classical jousting model, where the effects directly translates into a quantifiable value for that one ship. I don't like looking at a singular upgrade in isolation in these cases, but rather looking at the resulting ship as an entire package. A ship is overpowered when it falls well outside the usual cost efficiency curve for its capabilities, relative to the other best ships in the game. In essence this means that if you pay "X" points for the ship, and you get more than "X" points worth of value out of it relative to the other best ships in the game, then that ship is undercosted. The Inquisitor is a really obvious example when you run his numbers, because his cost efficiency is ~100% before considering his pilot skill or repositioning capability.

As additional reference points, 58 Dash's efficiency is in the low 70%'s, so he really NEEDS to use his turret and boost/barrel roll to earn his points back. If he gets out-aced then he's basically a complete point dump. Likewise, IG88B+HLC+FCS+AT has an efficiency in the low/mid 90%s, so he's good when he can get arc on ships (particular hard-to-hit targets), but if he moves 2nd then he's a waste of points. If you move 2nd, then Crackshot/glitterstim can still sometimes brute force its way to victory instead. This combo has an absolutely ludicrous single-round jousting value while on CrackDrugs, and if you get it early then the effect can snowball for the rest of the game. On the other hand, if you don't do enough damage, you risk get left aiming your arcs the wrong way and only a mediocre cost efficiency.

Palpatine is different because he doesn't directly affect an individual ship's jousting value. So you are spending 8 points, and getting "X" points of value back, where "X" is typically in the 20 point range. For a more holistic approach that is more compatible with the above approach , you can view it as spending 29 points to get a shuttle + palp crew, which is worth ~20 points for Palp, and another 16-19 points for the naked shuttle. So 29 points of cost gets you about 36-39 points of value, on average, making Palp undercosted by at least 6 points. The numbers change depending on the data analytics from match replays, but in general Palp is still easily the most undercosted upgrade in the game in absolute terms. C-3P0 crew has roughly the same ratio (he's worth about twice what he costs), but since Palp costs more and is worth roughly double his value, his net "extra value above his cost" contribution is much higher: around 7-10 points for Palp vs about 2-5 for C-3P0.

If Palpatine is so awful why not just bring some ordinance and burn that shuttle down first? Doesn't it make sense to destroy the support ship first?

Yeah, in that situation, Palp is the bait. The shuttle is actually surprisingly hard to burn down in the way you describe (10 health backed by 1 evade die, with at least one guaranteed evade from Palp), and you're allowing the aces to chew you up from the flank. There is nothing good about that situation.

The main strength of Palp is that his usage is reactive. You have all of the information you need after every dice roll during the attack phase. You'll know how many ships have you in arc, how many dice they'll be rolling, and how many tokens you have. You'll be able to see the results of your roll and will know whether you need to use him (especially on defense), and will have a good idea as to whether he'll be helpful on offense.

That said, I don't think a nerf is needed. You just need a single crit with Boba Fett crew.

I've played many games vs Palp Aces and I have yet to see a player spend Palp on a shuttle evade outside of life and death desperation. All my best games vs Palp Aces have been when I've gone after Palp and killed him first. It can be **** near impossible to kill those Aces when 3 blanks and a focus become: AT evade, Palp evade, spend focus, spend evade, for four evades. I will cover my Palp killer or try to block the Aces. It doesn't take long to melt down that shuttle, especially with some ordnance. My best game vs Aces my A-Wing with Prockets melted the shuttle in three turns. Every game vs Palp Aces I've lost I haven't killed Palp first and regretted it.

@MJ, thanks for the numbers. That makes some sense.

I hinted at this earlier, but there are actually quite a few anti-ace cards out there, but they don't seem to be played in the current meta. I'm curious to know why people think that is. Is it because they aren't effective against a wide range of lists or because the play-style they engender is very different from what is typically played or what people like to play? I think it's probably a bit of both.

Palp aces is easy to fight. You kill palp first.

You can do it in one turn if properly equipped. I beat the Atlanta regional winner's palp aces in the final round of Swiss with a rebel ordnance list.

You say you want the game to play like the movies?

What's more like the movies then the insanely hard, seemingly hopeless fight against the evil Emperor whose very goal is to oppress you.

That's just rebel (scum) propaganda. The movies are really about a terrorist cell who uses starfighters (planes) to blow up the most powerful military installation in the galaxy (United states). For some reason in 1978 they saw the terrorists as the heroes. Now, not so much.

You say you want the game to play like the movies?

What's more like the movies then the insanely hard, seemingly hopeless fight against the evil Emperor whose very goal is to oppress you.

That's just rebel (scum) propaganda. The movies are really about a terrorist cell who uses starfighters (planes) to blow up the most powerful military installation in the galaxy (United states). For some reason in 1978 they saw the terrorists as the heroes. Now, not so much.

Terrorists attack civilian populations. You know, like blowing up an entire planet of civilians.

"Fear will keep the local systems, in line. Fear of this battlestation" - A terrorist.

3) Look at some real game tape, write down exactly what Palp does, and then try to assign a value to that.

When you go through old recipes--and I mean really old, Renaissance and earlier--you find some things that are quite unintentionally funny from a modern perspective. For instance, the Roman chef Apicius has a recipe for roasted ostrich, which is actually quite simple as long as you have a slaughtered and dressed ostrich close to hand.

I don't know why that springs to mind.

Do you model those extra hit points that weren't taken away due to Palpatine as an increase or decrease in hull? How do you model the difference between pushing through a Loose Stabilizer and doing the same with a Damaged Sensor Array? How do you account, when reviewing game tape, for the fact that some people believe devoutly that you should go for Palpatine first--and more particularly, for the outsized effect that has on the game in the hands of a smart player?

And once you've done that, suppose the quantitative work provides one effect estimate, and qualitative methods provide a substantially different one (which we can infer here from the fact that Palpatine was published at his current cost). How do you resolve the conflict? My usual answer would be to go to a third source and triangulate, but here that's not really feasible. And I don't have a good alternative answer.