well, I just lost the quasi dissertation here, so unfortunately this is going to be an in-eloquent series of bullet points

still, it's a long one

sorry

In this thread, I'll be dealing with the problem of traditional jousters (stuff like the classic X-wing and B-wing etc.) have with finding a foothold in the "arcdodger V super jouster" meta, what can be done about it and what FFG is doing about it

I. The Problem: Jousters V Arc-dodgers

Majorjuggler has (sort of) recently claimed that high pilot skill aces (especially the inquisitor) are more jousting efficient than jousters

the fact that arc-dodgers are more maneuverable and yet can be made to be far more durable and efficient than jousters makes jousters pretty superfluous.

This is a problem you don't need to know math to observe. Ever arranged your jousters meticulously to set up shots on far more maneuverable enemies only to have your shots bounce off RNGesus' uncaring plastic facade? ******* sucks, doesn't it?

II. The Problem (in game terms): Defense Mechanics in X-wing (health & agility/evade results)

Imo, it lies in the relationship between the relative durability of jousters v arc-dodgers (generally more health for points spent, aka 9 hull out of 3 tie fighters v 3 hull for one soontir)

The thing with health is that it makes certain ships (especially the B-wing) seem far more defensively capable than they actually are. Defense rolls can effectively give you the equivalent stopping power of infinite shields, provided you can manipulate them enough (otherwise you just get tie fighters, and those buggers pop all the time)

Example: take Soontir and a B-wing at range 3; both are staring down 3 hit results

Soontir is actually very likely to not take any damage from that one shot

The B-wing is guaranteed to take at least one, and is probably taking all 3 if not using his focus defensively

There are two ways to look at this. way 1: soontir takes less damage than a B-wing at range 3. 2: assuming this goes on, it's actually very possible for Soontir to never die . The B-wing, however, WILL (guaranteed)

note: that while bad green dice happen (A LOT), there are two other factors to consider

• red dice are more reliable than green, but your "typical jouster"s 3 dice + focus is generally not as reliable as stacked defenses (green dice + focus + evade + thrusters + palpatine)

• the hypothetical scenario is assuming soontir gets shot at in the first place. Arc-dodgers are generally good about not getting shot, so it's a bit disheartening to see them being good at taking shots as well.

III. The current solution; another problem (Crackswarm and Jm5ks)

there are two major jouster archtypes doing very well competitively: Crackswarms (Tie Fighters) and triple scouts

unlike your typical 3-dice + focus jouster, the Crackswarm has incredibly reliable offensive damage output. They get focus + howlrunner re-rolls + crackshot to smash through evades.

the JM5k is also incredibly offensively reliable, farting out highly modified 4 dice attacks

these two lists are capable of generating attacks that punch through aces, should they get aces in arc

the problem here is that, while they can murder aces, they'll absolutely pulp your health reliant jousters with far greater ease . Ever see a B-wing try to take on even non-crack swarms, even at range 3? **** ain't pretty.

IV. Deriving a Solution (making defense dice matter less and health matter more)

As stated before, jousters generally have more health per points spent than aces (9 hull of tie fighters v 3 hull of soontir)

This fact can be used to make upgrades that damage arc-dodgers more effectively than jousters (unlike crackswarm and the jm5k, which damages arc-dodgers effectively and utterly ruin traditional jousters).

if you can cut through green dice manipulation and straight to hull (without resorting to a boatload of red dice), you will be more effective against aces than jousters

bonus points if you can ignore or reverse the pilot skill advantage (which we'll be getting to)

Some such upgrades already exist:

1. Autoblaster Turrets generally do less damage to health reliant jousters than primary weapons do (HWKs notwithstanding, but don't put ABTs on them you horrible person)

ABTs cut right through defense dice and all defense dice related tech (Evade tokens, emperor; thrusters...which can still trigger but which will accomplish absolutely nothing)

ABTs can murder jousters, especially little tie fighters, but the opposing player is losing far fewer points per turn than they would if you shred a soontir

2. Feedback Array works to emphasize health by encouraging high-health users and lower-heath targets.

You can fry 40 points of whisper to death with your bumpmaster; good luck with two x-wings or something

positioning may be challenging against flighty arc-dodgers, but a dedicated blocker such as an intelligent agent Bumpmaster will have far less of a problem. Int agent reverse the pilot skill advantage, giving the lower PS the opportunity for guaranteed blocks (and zaps!) on the higher PS

3. Bombs

all bombs cut right through green dice (though two of them require dice-rolling and are, imo, best avoided)

detonate on overlap; ACTION: bombs are made to be dropped on high value targets, since they only affect one ship anyway (clusters notwithstanding, but they suck so **** em. These bombs are one of very few upgrades that work more effectively on lower PS pilots, who can roll up and drop the bomb before the higher PS enemy has even activated

drop-on-reveal bombs do not ignore the pilot skill advantage (far easier to avoid if you go after the ship that drops the bomb) but they're still much more devastating against aces than they are against higher health targets. It's actually worth bombing your own guys if you can nab an ace by doing so

drop on reveal bombs also don't have to be actually be used to be effective. The threat of guaranteed damage going through an expensive, squishy ace is enough to influence your opponent's movements; potentially to your advantage

V. The curious case of Quickdraw, the anti-ace

"wait a cotton-picking minute, Fickle. This ******* is PS 9, isn't he an arcdodger?"

not exactly. The Tie/sf (and Tie/FO, even if Omega L shows up in "palp ace" style lists) is not an arc-dodger as much as they are glorified Tie Fighters (exactly as it says on the tin! Tie/+something)

Quickdraw, even moreso than Omega Leader, is about as far removed from an arc-dodging ace as you can get. While Omega Leader can stack green dice modifications via Comm Relay, focus, palpatine and his ability (which makes life real difficult for anyone trying to kill him) Quickdraw cannot. Not only does he have no evade and a pilot ability that does nothing for his defense, he has 1 fewer agility! Dude's flying a T-70 in first order colors! (well, it rolls instead of boosts etc.)

to make matters more interesting, Quickdraw's ability encourages you to build for suicidal offense. It is in this ability that we find our anti-arcdodger tech

By using Electronic Baffle (sly move releasing him the wave after the jumpmaster expac, ffg ), Quickdraw can apparently attack before the combat phase and during his activation

It is therefore possible to fire before other PS 9 (or higher) pilots have even activated, making him arguably more effective against higher pilot skill and, not arguably, bypassing A LOT of their green dice modifications (assuming he has initiative to trigger baffle before the enemy has activated)

VI. Wait, what about "the other problem" (Crackswarms and Jm5ks still exist, fickle!)

the two current "super jousters" (perhaps soon to be joined by the x7 defender) make the implementation of anti-dodger, more jouster-friendly upgrades more difficult. Because they're jousters themselves, they'll care less about the anti-ace upgrades and they'll continue to steam roll through their peers.

so here, we have to look for an overlap between anti-arcdodger upgrades and upgrades that can tango with these guys

if this overlap is not found, we'll just end up back where we started with anti-ace tech such as TLT + tactician/r3-a2 getting steamrolled by torpedoes

v Crackswarm:

imo, the Crackswarm is a scary archetype but it's far less of a match-up skew than the JM5k

this is because, while Ties have more health per point than aces, they're still 3/4 health ships!

there is one potentially anti-ace upgrade that loves to chew through these guys even more, and those are the drop-on-reveal bombs. You can decimate Tie Fighter formations with well placed seismics, and you can ruin their jousting prospects with well placed thermals. To make matters worse for them, they're lower PS and can only barrel-roll making it far more difficult to avoid the area of effect explosives

If the scouts cease to be such a difficult barrier for competitive entry, I don't think the Crackswarm will pose much of a problem ito gatekeeping lists from the competitive circuit unless they already couldn't hang against aces

Hell, even something relatively simple such as Sabine (k4, stims and MOAR STIMS) [42; 45 with Shadowcaster title] is going to annoy the crap out of them, due to the additional evades (focus result + stims) she generates against their high volume of low dice attacks.

v Jumpmasters:

the real problem in this regard, the torpedo scout Jumpmaster is a scary bugger that mulches its way through other jousters via combination of incredible alpha strike potential and a piddly turret that aces can ignore, but B-wings really can't

so...what do? bombs do affect jumpies, but unlike Ties they can sustain A LOT of the damage across their combined 27 health and they tend to mince some of the more effective carriers (namely Miranda)

Currently, the non-arc-dodger meta solution to Jumpmasters is...Crackswarm (this **** is cyclical, I tell ya!). Simply put, the jumpmaster is a "jouster" in that it relies on its primary firing arc (most of the time) and that it relies on health rather than damage mitigation for defenses. A crackswarm, therefore, can annihilate one in short order before it fires

This capability isn't unique to Crackswarm, as all you really need is a PS > 4 and a LOT of dice. The problem is that, in order to find Crackswarm levels of damage elsewhere, you're looking at ordnance. Outside of Jm5ks...well, TL requirements on low PS tend to not play well v aces (and not leave a lot of points over for anti-ace tech)

The only thing I can think of that combines anti-ace fire with incredible damage output is our new friend, Quickdraw. Yeah, Quickdraw can potentially fire before PS 9+ aces activate, but what that also means is he can attack twice per round (as long as he has shields to lose, ofc)

With Rage, we're looking at 6 total dice with re-rolls (+1 focus); 8 dice if you can set up the range 1. The guy's a one-man mini-swarm with that kind of damage output! Sure, he won't solo a JM5k but he's cheaper than/on par with your average torpscout (31 with rage baffle; 32 with Tie/mk2 added), leaving plenty of room for the rest of your list to finish dealing out the cards. Quickdraw is a TON of damage for a very economical price, making him a good buy even if you just end up trading him for a torpedo scout.

still, he's all I think think of at this juncture apart from very well deployed Lancer-class debris clouds

this is why FFG's promised "hard counter" is going to be essential in determining the future of jousters

VII. Dice modification removal, a silver bullet?

Someone on the forums had a very interesting idea for an upgrade that would essentially allow you to remove a token from your ship in order to remove a token from an enemy ship (basically a lesser, selfless version of Palob)

though billed as a simple counter to the JM5k's deadeye (no focus for you!), it also helps just about every jouster that could carry this hypothetical upgrade

the premise is simple: jousters that rely on health instead of damage mitigation get FAR less use out of defensive modifiers than an arc-dodging ace. But what if you can target the arc-dodger's defense dice modifiers? Doesn't the gap between their defensive capabilities get much more narrow?

Being able to strip modifiers would also improve the defense of low agility ships, compensating for the nonexistant influence of green dice by instead screwing with the enemy's offense (even if they aren't Deadeye scouts)

as an example, take a hypothetical upgrade text

Jouster-Jitsu

At the start of the combat phase, you may choose an enemy ship (within targeting restrictions). If you have a focus, you may (pay a cost) to choose one of that ship's focus or evade tokens and discard it.

“At the start of the combat phase” is needed to combat the higher PS advantage arc-dodgers have over jousters

The requirement of a focus token is something any ship can fufill, but also something that can be blocked by lower PS (and less likely to be blocked when flown on lower PS ships)

The rest is tricky to implement

For one, if the targeting restrictions are too lax (such as, say, not arc-locked) you're going to find it abused by fat PWTs instead of jousters. If they're too strict (arc and range restricted), you'll have trouble ever getting it to trigger on arc-dodgers. In arc and range 1-3 seems a fair compromise

If the the cost is the removal of your own dice modifications (I.e, pay a focus to remove a focus from the enemy), you're going to be left with unmodified dice and a card that's FAR more effective on as cheap a ship as possible. A Red Veteran T-70 that pays a focus is 26+ points of unmodified attack, while a Black Squadron Tie Fighter accomplishes the same task, reduces the squad's overall offense to a far lesser degree, AND still has Howlrunner to compensate anyway.

In gameplay terms, the simplest way to avoid this scenario is to make the cost self-damage (ala Vader or baffle) that makes it less attractive to have on cheaper, more spammable ships. Alternatively, it can be restricted to an upgrade-type not found on those cheap ships with generally sparse upgrade bars

When all the kinks are ironed out, I believe an upgrade that rewards players for flying jousters by allowing them to remove at least some of the several layers of defensive tech arc-dodgers have (and the offensive tech “super jousters” have) would allow them to see far more and far more effective play

In Closing: What to Look Forward To/Ask for TL;DR

Arc-dodgers use defense dice manipulation and damage mitigation to soak far more damage than higher health ships, making them (in combination with higher ps) MORE efficient jousters than the dang jousters

"Super jousters" (crackswarm; Jm5k torpboats) can beat arc-dodger defensive tech with uber-offense dice power, which just so happens to murder jousters much more easily than it does arc-dodgers

In order to hurt Arc-dodgers without screwing over jousters harder, you need to hit through defense dice manipulation without just drowning it in red dice (+/- crackshots).

To accomplish this:

• Set, guaranteed damage that bypasses dice hurts lower health aces much more than jousters (who have more health per points spent)

• Ways to remove/check/counter stacked dice modification would help jousters against both arc-dodgers and Jm5k torpedo boats

• It also obviously helps to be able to ignore the pilot skill advantage as much as possible. The most direct way to ignore the advantage is through upgrades/abilities that trigger while a lower PS ship activates , allowing them to hit arc-dodgers before they're gotten a chance to arc-dodge or token tank. Abilities that trigger at the start of the combat phase will also help

thanks for the time, gents

or just block the pricks, either or

Bravo Fickle, awesome writeup, and i totally agree!

There are these mechanics that bypass the uber-defense, in the game.

Bombs and mines, Stress mechanics, blocking, Wampa and the like all work, but the ships being able to use these are currently sadly completely smashed by J5Ks, because as you say, if they can hit a Soontir or Whisper through every defensive mechanic, they will just obliterate any other ship that is less capable defensively! Stressbot ships and Wampas just die to 4-hit torps so easily.

Other things taht keep these lists down are their unreliability (Bombs and mines are difficult to hit), and blocking is more difficult to do than evade the block.

Stress lists are just impractical against U-Boats and Crack-Swarms because they have no way of outdamaging them even while they load them with stress.

Currently we sadly don't Have Rock-Scissor-Paper, since Paper is not playable and has gone on vacation

Ordnance is better than you dismiss it to be. I've literally never lost to jump masters with my rebel ordnance build. Made the cut in Atlanta.

In fact, the only 2 losses I have are against a Crackswarm and a weird Poe/Jake/Kyle list, who was the first person to realize "oh if I kill Blount it's all over"

I said ordnance murders jumps like a crackswarm would

problem is aces when you're managing low pilot skill target-locks on top of already fan-angling with firing arcs

Try 3 Y-Wings with Dorsal Turret and title. Add Wes with BB-8. If you lucky,you will kill 1 Jumpmaster on first attack round.

Try 3 Y-Wings with Dorsal Turret and title. Add Wes with BB-8. If you lucky, you will kill 1 Jumpmaster on first attack round.

welp, there goes any chance of it working for me

I said ordnance murders jumps like a crackswarm would

problem is aces when you're managing low pilot skill target-locks on top of already fan-angling with firing arcs

LRS will help, hopefully.

I said ordnance murders jumps like a crackswarm would

problem is aces when you're managing low pilot skill target-locks on top of already fan-angling with firing arcs

LRS will help, hopefully.

fingers crossed!

I'm convinced, without much proof, that K-wings will give the right player a powerful too against both burst-jousters and Aces. The SLAM is super powerful, allowing both arc dodging and blocking to deny actions. They can drop bombs to bypass defenses, and they can equip Autoblaster Turrets. They also have enough HP to weather some fire.

Every time I make a list to make use of this stuff, I end up some points short, but I think it's possible.

depends on the K

tried ordnance, it really doesn't work too well (too expensive and stiff and horrible against sustained damage)

for blocking, a SLAM Warden does emulate an A-wing fairly well but the **** thing's pricey and outputs next to no damage against higher health ships, and it's at serious risk of getting mauled by proton torps (as per usual) since it's actually a good target (33 points for A-SLAM, extras, conners, sabine)

you could put Sabine on another ship (namely TLT miranda with seismics), but then the list is lacking damage against scouts.

did play Miranda (sabine,seismic seismic, TLT) Warden (autoblaster turret, conner, a-slam, extras) and biggs (r4-d6, integrated) and it did astoundingly against Crackswarm, brobots and it just consistently tears through poor palp aces

my god is the torpscout match-up just horrendous, though

I said ordnance murders jumps like a crackswarm would

problem is aces when you're managing low pilot skill target-locks on top of already fan-angling with firing arcs

LRS will help, hopefully.

Y-wings have no missile upgrade, so no long range sensors for them

Excellent write up, and well worth the time to read. Thanks.

Your point on unavoidable damage dealing has me theorizing.

At the risk of proposing an upgrade that's designed to "fix" one card only (Autoblaster Turret), and drawing inspiration from Adaptability and Agent Kallus, how does this work:

Focal Compensator

Modification

During the set-up phase, you may choose to ignore

the printed range restriction on an equipped

turret weapon upgrade card and designate

its effective range to be either Range 1 only,

Range 2 only, or Range 3 only for the rest of

the game.

Cost (?)

Maybe you could even give it the benefit of "you may change one blank result to an eyeball" for a suitable cost.

Basically makes Autoblaster Turret the new bane of the arc-dodger, since a pair of them can make it virtually impossible for Soontir to both keep his guns trained on you and avoid both R3 donuts. Heck, you could even fly a pair of ABTs in close formation and let one be R2 and the other R3.

I suggest the added benefit of changing a blank to a focus so that Ion Turret gets a little boost too.

I said ordnance murders jumps like a crackswarm would

problem is aces when you're managing low pilot skill target-locks on top of already fan-angling with firing arcs

LRS will help, hopefully.

Y-wings have no missile upgrade, so no long range sensors for them

That's what TLT is for!

What the heck , no TLDR? I'll comment tomorrow when I have a few hours to read this!

I saw it at the end, it was just sooo far down

I think a good way may be a squadron effect that would allow generic jousters to get a bonus.

I think a good way may be a squadron effect that would allow generic jousters to get a bonus.

But Torpedo Scouts ARE generic.

Fickle, what are your thoughts on the Fang? Seems to me that it may be an interesting hybrid; a ship with the capability of arc-dodging but with just enough (dice-independent) benefit to being in arc that it doesn't need to waste too many actions on repositioning.

Fickle, what are your thoughts on the Fang? Seems to me that it may be an interesting hybrid; a ship with the capability of arc-dodging but with just enough (dice-independent) benefit to being in arc that it doesn't need to waste too many actions on repositioning.

crackshot caddie, so it's basically got super jouster potential if the price is right (and PS 1 blocking), or PS 9 Fenn which'll just be an arc-dodger

it's got no guaranteed damage (holding out for the ARC-170's Seismic Torpedoes, but I spy dice results in the card and am leery as all hell), no opposing mod removal and no PS ignoring ability

won't be breaking any molds soon, imo

I really would have liked to try my 5Ks out against Contracted Scouts and the Crackswarm at Yavin, sadly never got the chance.

Only losses came against Omega Leader and the damned Inquisitor. I clearly need to get better at taking those bad boys out.

I have to say, I agree with the "token removal being critical. On almost all of my jouster lists I have a slow flying veteran instincts Janson, and how well he flys makes or breaks me. If you can get a ship into his and 1 or 2 other jousters' arcs, and he fires first, the enemy loses valuable ordnance or damage mitigation. This makes it REMARKABLY easier for the jousters of the squad to punch right through. Yeah they have green dice, but not as stacked, as long as my offense is stacked a little better I have it. This might be too much to ask, but what if this is what R3 can do? It further limits just how much other ships can exploit what such an ability offers, and is reminiscent of R3-A2.

I really would have liked to try my 5Ks out against Contracted Scouts and the Crackswarm at Yavin, sadly never got the chance.

Only losses came against Omega Leader and the damned Inquisitor. I clearly need to get better at taking those bad boys out.

you thinking of replacing one with a PS 1 fang?

blocking aces is sorta difficult, depending on the player, but if you're rolling up against other jousters (Especially fat ass scouts) a nippy little low PS bugger with boost could be just what the scummy doctor ordered

I have to say, I agree with the "token removal being critical. On almost all of my jouster lists I have a slow flying veteran instincts Janson, and how well he flys makes or breaks me. If you can get a ship into his and 1 or 2 other jousters' arcs, and he fires first, the enemy loses valuable ordnance or damage mitigation. This makes it REMARKABLY easier for the jousters of the squad to punch right through. Yeah they have green dice, but not as stacked, as long as my offense is stacked a little better I have it. This might be too much to ask, but what if this is what R3 can do? It further limits just how much other ships can exploit what such an ability offers, and is reminiscent of R3-A2.

sadly, I doubt it

the ARC_170 pack has a little unexplained evade token and it's not on the action bar and VTs only have text to add B-roll to the action bar (nothing else), so it's either r3 or Tail Gunner that's responsible for it

not sure how a Tail Gunner would make you more evasive, so process of elimination

now the unique bugger in Heroes of the Resistance...well, we have absolutely ZERO clue. The dang droid doesn't even make a real appearance in any SW related material, to the point that wookiepedia only cites him as a droid that served in the resistance

but if I had to put money on any card emulating Wes Jenson, the best I could say would be one of the epts in Heroes of the Resistance. We got Trick... and Snap...S(hot). FFG puts a space between it's X Shots (i.e Crack Shot) so it isn't Trick Shot. It's probably Trickster

sounds like the perfect name for something that'd cheat the enemy out of defensive modifiers

and that's about as baseless a speculation as anyone could make

I'm actually very (perhaps wrongly) hopefuly that Heroes may provide the tech I envisioned in this thread.

In addition to baseless "trickster" speculation, we get baseless "Snapshot" (i.e a quickly fired shot; something that could potentially fire before combat ala Quickdraw!) speculation

AND

"Snap..." whatever his/her name is, the PS 6 T-70 with an ability that includes the keyword "touching", which is almost always great news v aces

(and probably "after...[executing a ]...4 speed [maneuver]...touching...", with room in the text to make it a "3 or 4 speed maneuver" because I'll be damned if it don't work with T-rolls),

I really would have liked to try my 5Ks out against Contracted Scouts and the Crackswarm at Yavin, sadly never got the chance.

Only losses came against Omega Leader and the damned Inquisitor. I clearly need to get better at taking those bad boys out.

you thinking of replacing one with a PS 1 fang?

blocking aces is sorta difficult, depending on the player, but if you're rolling up against other jousters (Especially fat ass scouts) a nippy little low PS bugger with boost could be just what the scummy doctor ordered

I have to say, I agree with the "token removal being critical. On almost all of my jouster lists I have a slow flying veteran instincts Janson, and how well he flys makes or breaks me. If you can get a ship into his and 1 or 2 other jousters' arcs, and he fires first, the enemy loses valuable ordnance or damage mitigation. This makes it REMARKABLY easier for the jousters of the squad to punch right through. Yeah they have green dice, but not as stacked, as long as my offense is stacked a little better I have it. This might be too much to ask, but what if this is what R3 can do? It further limits just how much other ships can exploit what such an ability offers, and is reminiscent of R3-A2.

sadly, I doubt it

the ARC_170 pack has a little unexplained evade token and it's not on the action bar and VTs only have text to add B-roll to the action bar (nothing else), so it's either r3 or Tail Gunner that's responsible for it

not sure how a Tail Gunner would make you more evasive, so process of elimination

now the unique bugger in Heroes of the Resistance...well, we have absolutely ZERO clue. The dang droid doesn't even make a real appearance in any SW related material, to the point that wookiepedia only cites him as a droid that served in the resistance

but if I had to put money on any card emulating Wes Jenson, the best I could say would be one of the epts in Heroes of the Resistance. We got Trick... and Snap...S(hot). FFG puts a space between it's X Shots (i.e Crack Shot) so it isn't Trick Shot. It's probably Trickster

sounds like the perfect name for something that'd cheat the enemy out of defensive modifiers

and that's about as baseless a speculation as anyone could make

I'm actually very (perhaps wrongly) hopefuly that Heroes may provide the tech I envisioned in this thread.

In addition to baseless "trickster" speculation, we get baseless "Snapshot" (i.e a quickly fired shot; something that could potentially fire before combat ala Quickdraw!) speculation

AND

"Snap..." whatever his/her name is, the PS 6 T-70 with an ability that includes the keyword "touching", which is almost always great news v aces

(and probably "after...[executing a ]...4 speed [maneuver]...touching...", with room in the text to make it a "3 or 4 speed maneuver" because I'll be damned if it don't work with T-rolls),

Actually there is one other card that could do it. Vector thrusters or whatever. That could give the evade. I doubt it, but you never know.