5 Stars for thread title.

A soft, wet fart for the content.

Said what I came here to say (more or less). Great thread title; lousy negative content.

Also: seriously FFG the h*

Hate on Fickle as much as you want, but unless anyone is willing to do the research and find instances in the past when he was consistently wrong or way off with his pre-release analysis, his thoughts should be welcomed as much as anyone's.

I, for one, appreciate someone who is willing to stick their neck out and call out things the way they see it. It seems to have worked for him in the past. I'm not gonna say he was the first to piece the puzzle together, but he definitely was one of the first users championing the idea of Deadeye, R4 Agro, Torp boats.

Don't expect to change his thoughts on anything though. Once he feels a certain way about something, it's tough to move him on it. But that's pretty much every human being.

Ok, maybe the abilities of the ARC-170 are crap, maybe not.

But man, at least, it's a beautiful ship. And beauty is an ability that lacks most of the ships since Wave IV.

So I will buy two of this pretty dragonflies.

I don't get why people want to conflate Shara with the entire ship

Shara's ability is crap, the others are at least okay (Though for Braylen it's because he could just not have had one at all) and Norra's can be built to be pretty downright impressive

Thane's is just good, raw action efficiency

I don't get why people want to conflate Shara with the entire ship

Shara's ability is crap, the others are at least okay (Though for Braylen it's because he could just not have had one at all) and Norra's can be built to be pretty downright impressive

Thane's is just good, raw action efficiency

Fickle, I get the action efficiency with Thane, but is his ability really worth taking him even at his base 26 points? Besides running him with Biggs, why not just attack him with his lowly 1 agility and low PS preventing him from ever triggering his ability? We havent seen the dial yet, but it has alot of red at speed 3 and higher based on the wave 9 preview for it so I cant see him as a flanker nor do I see him being able to be in the advantageous position of being out of an attackers firing arc but in his forcing his opponent to shoot another ship for his ability to kick in. I guess besides regen Biggs what rebel builds does Thane fit into to make good use of his ability? Sell me on Thane!

I don't get why people want to conflate Shara with the entire ship

Shara's ability is crap, the others are at least okay (Though for Braylen it's because he could just not have had one at all) and Norra's can be built to be pretty downright impressive

Thane's is just good, raw action efficiency

Fickle, I get the action efficiency with Thane, but is his ability really worth taking him even at his base 26 points? Besides running him with Biggs, why not just attack him with his lowly 1 agility and low PS preventing him from ever triggering his ability? We havent seen the dial yet, but it has alot of red at speed 3 and higher based on the wave 9 preview for it so I cant see him as a flanker nor do I see him being able to be in the advantageous position of being out of an attackers firing arc but in his forcing his opponent to shoot another ship for his ability to kick in. I guess besides regen Biggs what rebel builds does Thane fit into to make good use of his ability? Sell me on Thane!

Well, think about it. If you've got someone like Poe or someone in the list that's far more important than Thane, would you rather shoot the ship with 9 HP to prevent it from getting actions, letting Poe go without damage until late game, or would you shoot at Poe and let Thane absolutely body you with modifiers out the wazzo when he gets to attack?

IMO, it's sort of better than Biggs, because your opponent has a choice, and no matter what that choice is bad. That, and Thane having 9 HP and so many upgrade slots makes him easier to protect than Biggs. Unlike with Biggs, which holds a gun to your opponents head and makes them shoot at him, Thane allows you to point two guns at your opponent and lets them decide which trigger they want you to pull.

Why not just attack Thane?

Hey, attacking Thane just nets you a nine health Biggs. Can't complain

Run him with regenerators and other late game that punishes your opponent for not focusing them first

Or run him with Biggs...and late game!

It's like having TWO BIGGS

Fair enough points guys. I see the damage sponge aspect of Thane, I am still not completely sold on a 1 agility ship lasting all that long to give the other friendly ships an advantage even with say C3PO and a regen astromech. However, I have been wrong before about pilot abilities effectiveness in the past and im sure I will be wrong about some in the future so I shall give old Thane a try when wave 9 comes out.

I don't think I'd load Thane with too much damage mitigation

The two big upgrades (if any) I see on him are r7 and tail gunner

R7s just nice for mindgames, discouraging enemy offense as cheaply and effectively as possible

Tail gunner is because stress from kturn will shut off his ability do you might want to cover your mates with the rear arc instead. Tail gunner will make those shots count, hopefully

Seismic Torps would be the third if I had any **** clue what they did

Personally, I'd keep him as cheap as possible. He's a deterrent and a spare set of Biggs, not do much an imposing late game force

Nice writeup Fickle,

Got to say, I love the model. FFG seem to have outdone themselves (or just continued to be awesome)

But yeah, my interest for the ship have cooled a bit after this revieal. Point costs seem a bit high, and no ept? I though the whole point of the "only" unquies were that the ship would be so awesome that you would instantly spam the the lowest. The triple jumpmaster threat would never have been a problem had there been no generic.

In short: no named pilot, unless ability crazy good, should be without ept.

Now just hoping for a decent dial on the ship. This ship could be fun if it has a 1 turn (not red), then you could spin that rear arc, always missed doing that with my firespray.

Nice writeup Fickle,

Got to say, I love the model. FFG seem to have outdone themselves (or just continued to be awesome)

But yeah, my interest for the ship have cooled a bit after this revieal. Point costs seem a bit high, and no ept? I though the whole point of the "only" unquies were that the ship would be so awesome that you would instantly spam the the lowest. The triple jumpmaster threat would never have been a problem had there been no generic.

In short: no named pilot, unless ability crazy good, should be without ept.

Now just hoping for a decent dial on the ship. This ship could be fun if it has a 1 turn (not red), then you could spin that rear arc, always missed doing that with my firespray.

It doesnt. It's a Y-Wing dial, except the 1 and 2 speed banks are green.

Nice review, Fickle.

It always happens that cards with a lot of conditionals, requirements, and limitations (except when they are well-known ship-fixers) end up in the card binder, while their more straightforward peers are the ones that you see everywhere.

I don't think we will see many of ARC-170s around. You could build them up to fill up different roles; but in my opinion a B-Wing, Y-Wing, or K-Wing would perform whichever of those roles better and for fewer points.

The ship has a rear firing arc, but both Y-Wing and K-Wing have turrets. It can have crew and droids, but a B-Wing can also equip crew, has barrel roll, and can have systems, that are mostly better than rebel droids.

You can potentially load this ship up with all kind of goodies, but it will blow up as fast as a naked B-Wing does.

Also, as a content expansion itself to the general game, it's not so great.

As usual, it's a "large" $20 small base ship (like K-Wing, StarViper, MistHunter) that comes with several copies of new cards, meant to introduce new exciting gameplay. The Starviper brought 2 Autothrusters among other things. The K-Wing brought the Conner net and 2 TLT. The MistHunter brought the Tractor Beam and 2 Baffles.

This one brings 2 copies each of the Vectored Thrusters, that sincerely is nothing revolutionary, and the R3 astromech, that is probably one of the most neutered cards in the whole game.

For 2-3 points, you usually get a free action or token, usually behind some minor condition or inconvenience (like Fire control system, Push the limit, Rage, etc).

In the case of R3 you have an entire catalog of conditionals and limitations "once per round", "when attacking", "primary weapon only", "you must roll an eye result", "cancel the eye result". That on top of the 2 point cost for only getting a token.

I mean, perhaps there are particular situations or builds that could benefit from that, but I cannot see why this card could become so much looked after that 2 copies were needed.

Nice writeup Fickle,

Got to say, I love the model. FFG seem to have outdone themselves (or just continued to be awesome)

But yeah, my interest for the ship have cooled a bit after this revieal. Point costs seem a bit high, and no ept? I though the whole point of the "only" unquies were that the ship would be so awesome that you would instantly spam the the lowest. The triple jumpmaster threat would never have been a problem had there been no generic.

In short: no named pilot, unless ability crazy good, should be without ept.

Now just hoping for a decent dial on the ship. This ship could be fun if it has a 1 turn (not red), then you could spin that rear arc, always missed doing that with my firespray.

It doesnt. It's a Y-Wing dial, except the 1 and 2 speed banks are green.

Has it been revealed? I know from the total amount of greens we can guess it has a block of green at the bottom with 1-2 banks and straights. But does that rule out one turns? They said it is pretty manouverable at slow speeds, so it would be an interesting touch.

No. For that matter we don't know if there's a K-turn yet - which Stramm may like a lot if there is.

Thane..... It's a balancing act, I guess, over making the free action threatening enough to worry people, and making his arc cheap enough to remain expendable.

Shara as a support craft - as noted, she's not that great because you can't double down on target locking one guy. She can fly wing for a pair of missile bombers, though. The "poor man's fire control" astromech (R5-K6?) might be nice, but as noted you can't rely on it working. Still, it's probably better than weapons engineer, because you lock the same dude. I'm wondering if pairing her up with Dutch and R5-K6 and a potential third bomber-type would work well?

I wouldn't call it a review, exactly...

The article shows a k turn, but then again we all know how reliable the articles are.

Nice writeup Fickle,

Got to say, I love the model. FFG seem to have outdone themselves (or just continued to be awesome)

But yeah, my interest for the ship have cooled a bit after this revieal. Point costs seem a bit high, and no ept? I though the whole point of the "only" unquies were that the ship would be so awesome that you would instantly spam the the lowest. The triple jumpmaster threat would never have been a problem had there been no generic.

In short: no named pilot, unless ability crazy good, should be without ept.

Now just hoping for a decent dial on the ship. This ship could be fun if it has a 1 turn (not red), then you could spin that rear arc, always missed doing that with my firespray.

It doesnt. It's a Y-Wing dial, except the 1 and 2 speed banks are green.

You do not know that! The dial have not yet been spoiled!

We only know that there will be a total of 6 green manouvers and that the ship like to move slowly. So I GUESS that there will be no green/white 5 straight, but other that that any prediction is futile!

I wouldn't call it a review, exactly...

Hah, yet better that the FFG-preview!, considering the FFG writer first attempted to use PTL to drop a bomb, LOL...

Fickle: plays a dice game

Also fickle: bemoans that, by their very nature, dice aren't gauranteed.

Maybe play a different game dude.

seems to me there are plenty of upgrades in this game that don't roll dice in order to either work or do jack diddly

almost like too much random crap isn't a good idea, maybe

almost as if there were, oh I don't know, actual strategy and decision making in a game that wasn't only about dice?

balance in all things

otherwise, there's always Yahtzee

I wouldn't call it a review, exactly...

Hah, yet better that the FFG-preview!, considering the FFG writer first attempted to use PTL to drop a bomb, LOL...

Nah, he dropped two bombs in a turn while using slam >_>

Well the Jumpmaster is a terrible example, as that ship is a design nightmare, but I'll concede PS 4 to you.

Dig around and you'll find high PS generics and aces without access to elite skills.

Rebels:

Gray Squadron: PS4 generic, no elite

Horton Salm: PS8 ace, no elite

Empire:

Shadow Squadron: PS5 generic, no elite

Backstabber, Dark Curse, Kir Kanos: PS6 aces, no elite