Consider the OPs example:Ello Asty.

Assuming you want to run Ello, what astromech would you put on it (you want one at the very least for IA)?

R2-D2 and R5-P9 are bad choices, so what droid would be better than R3 on Ello?

BB-8?

I have run a few squads proxying R3, and so far I am not finding him terrible, at all. He encourages agressive play, despite his potential reduction on damage (focus to evade instead of focus to hit), making it advantageous to line up shots even when you can't mod them. Best case, you score damage through the enemy's green dice, hastening their demise. Probable case: you occasionally fire wildly at them in inaccurate jousts, but snags an evade (thematically, this comes from throwing the TIE pilots off with wildly aggressive maneuvers). And, yes, occasionally, you'll get nothing for your trouble.

He fits well on mid to high PS pilots, or on low PS pilots led by a Swarm Tactics high PS group leader. He probably has limited usability in tournaments, owing to the drive for hyper-efficient use of points in that environment. In casual games where theme trumps efficiency (hence, you don't see every list composed of the best aces available), R3 can work. In an arena like Aturi Cluster, where MOST of your enemies are PS 1-2, R3 can be very efficient, AND find a home on lower PS pilots.

Again, I find it worth noting that not every component of X-wing has to fit in the narrow world of tournament gaming. Otherwise, lots of ships would simply be thrown in storage or trash bins, after being purchased for nothing more than a card or two. Very few people would have use for more than one X-wing, typically flying only Poe for T-70s or Biggs for T-65s, with occasional Red Veterans or something. Scum players would pretty much stick to Jumpmasters, Aggressors and Y-wings, if TLTs make a comeback. If we widen our consideration of play styles, some lackluster upgrades find a place other than serving as bookmarks.

Again, this is based on experimentation with R3, primarily in the Aturi Cluster campaign, where occasionally we find a higher priority in survival than in killing every TIE on the table. Hell, even with full mods on a shot, the TIEs can still evade every hit, as I've seen happen often, so if sacrificing potential (not guaranteed) damage means I can have a fairly good chance at assigning an evade token to a ship, I think that can pay off.

TL;DR- R3 has a place in casual play, especially in scenarios which prioritize Rebel survival over kills.

There are lots of piltos and upgrades that are TRASH.

There was that one guy who was talkinga bout taking his old wave1 list with Winged Gundark (and Howl and 5 APs) and beat a wave8 list.

We should all follow his example: Start winning major tournaments by placing Winged Gundark into our lists. He only costs 3 more from an AP. And you can get Winged Gundark and an AP for an Ace or Palpatine.

Yeah.

Winged Gundark. Tell me you want to play him.

There are lots of piltos and upgrades that are TRASH.

There was that one guy who was talkinga bout taking his old wave1 list with Winged Gundark (and Howl and 5 APs) and beat a wave8 list.

We should all follow his example: Start winning major tournaments by placing Winged Gundark into our lists. He only costs 3 more from an AP. And you can get Winged Gundark and an AP for an Ace or Palpatine.

Yeah.

Winged Gundark. Tell me you want to play him.

Uh, what's wrong with Winged Gundark?

Never mind.

Some pilots and upgrades are trash for most players, but some people will come up with uses for them, and I find it more interesting to look at possible benefits to be obtained than to complain about "******" upgrades.

See, here's my thing- I play for fun, and I like to USE what I've collected. So, when I set up to play X-wing, my first thought isn't "what list has the best chance of winning, today?" I think more in terms of "which toys haven't I played with lately, and what can I do with them?" Some of those neglected toys will get blasted apart, like my last effort at playing Scyks, and others will dominate, like my IG-88 plus 2 Y-wings I put out, simply because I hadn't used the Aggressor for a while. In the course of these experiments, I find stuff that works, or stuff that doesn't. In the process, those I play against get the benefit of playing against something different from time to time, which opposes a stagnant meta, and no one list or player holds a dominant position. In my experience, this makes the game more fun and more appealing.

But, for those who simply want to keep complaining, I guess that's what the Internet is for.

I understand the desire to want to make obscure things work, and I personally do it too (Mt favorite ship is the meta powerhouse...the Kwing.. )

But at the same time, you have to be somewhat realistic about things

For example, the ARC and Tie/sf seem very underwhelming in the current competitive meta but both simply offer vastly different play styles than anything we've had before

For that, they're more than worth trying to put to use

This crap is just an evade tied to more conditions and pitfalls than a satanic pact

House rule in an EPT for hortan, then take R3, Juke, and TLT.

Its perfect, add in vectored thrusters or engine upgrade for manuverability.

Consider the OPs example:Ello Asty.

Assuming you want to run Ello, what astromech would you put on it (you want one at the very least for IA)?

R2-D2 and R5-P9 are bad choices, so what droid would be better than R3 on Ello?

BB-8?

BB-8 works as poorly as R2-D2. Ello wants to do the white Troll as often as possible (that's why you take him, right?), not do greens.

I use Ello with r2 and PTL. Opening up your available green options to shed stress is fantastic.

I really can't think of a pilot I'd take r3 on over another option, except maybe Nora in the ARC...maybe.

I think it's a pretty terrible astro mech all things considered, and does almost nothing for the generic and low PS unique pilots that could have really used a cheap, useful astro.

If it had been designed to not be pilot skill dependent it could have been really useful. This final condition is what really did it in for me, and something I don't think is quite sinking in for those who think it's somehow a good card.

At 1 point I might consider it as a cheap option on occasion. Just like r2 f2, r7 t1, etc... It's an intriguing option for an astro priced a point too high to be taken seriously. Although r7 t1 might actually work better on an ARC.

To summarize the downsides:

1) R3 is only effective on high-PS pilots because the lower the PS, the less likely the Evade will mitigate any damage.

2) It's competing with R2-D2, BB-8, and R5-P9 - all of which are far more reliable defensive mechanisms. Better to barrel roll out of an arc than maybe get an Evade, or regen shields across multiple turns.

3) It requires the pilot to

a) have an enemy in arc

b) have taken a shot at that enemy

c) with a primary weapon, and then

d) rolled at least one eyeball that the pilot

e) did not have the Focus token to turn into a hit, or chose not to.

That's 5 requirements for use, one of which is entirely RNG-dependent, and one of which means you're TRYING to do less damage!

And the upside:

1) It's action-independent, so you don't need to spend actions, aren't limited to greens, and can pull red maneuvers and still have a chance at getting an evade.

So, 3 downsides to 1 upside? Uh. And that requirement list for use is HUGE.

Even the R7 Astromech is less complicated because all it requires is a target lock on the attacking ship. No in arc requirement, nothing else, and you can potentially cancel multiple hits, not just the one from an Evade token - and how many people use R7?

On top of that, there are more than a few things that blow right past an Evade token. Homing Missiles are getting mighty popular.

And Juke. Juke is what saves R3?

Uhh... How many of you guys actually use Juke? I mean, like consistently, on anything but Omega Leader where the "Turn to eyeball" is a guaranteed non-Evade? On low-PS pilots, Juke often means choosing between suffering damage and MAYBE getting damage through; on high-PS ships, Juke usually results in a discarded focus token which might not be the worst result, but is far from a great thing.

I don't see Juke being helpful.

On Rank S-F, R3 Astromech has to be Rank C. It's highly circumstantial, relies on RNG, and is just...

It's bad guys. Seriously. It's fun to think of ways to use the worst things to trump the sheep who only follow what's popular, but holy hell is it an awful card.

I was running this list a while ago, with decent success:

34 Sabine w/ Juke, TLT, Jan, Hull.

33 (66) RSV w/ Juke, TA, Comms, IA.

Now I can pretty much run the exact same list, with TAs swapped out for the R3s on the RSVs. It will allow them to spend their evade on defence more often, and ensure comms is still useful even if Sabine dies:

34 Sabine w/ Juke, TLT, Jan, Hull.

33 (66) RSV w/ Juke, R3, Comms, IA.

Should be interesting to try. Not sure if R3s will be as good as the targeting astros though.

R3 is growing on me... a bit. I still don't think it's much good, but what it is is a card that gives an evade as a participation prize for poor shots... which include a focus result. If it allowed you to cancel any die, or even just blanks as well, maybe it would be too good in FFGs eyes, but I would be really interested in it at that point. In its current state, I think it could be fine at 1 point.

Juke ? I like it on my a-wings : juke+crack shot has turned out to be really effective for me.

So there's only one thing that makes the R3 astromech design make any sense at all. Possibly a new T-70 pilot from HotR will synergize really well with R3. Just like Tarn Mison having great synergy with R7 astromech.

The weird thing about astromechs as a design space for me is that FFG seems afraid to make them good.

I mean, yes, valid fear, but there are (currently) 25 cards with with Astromech slots, and of those only maybe 6 are decently ranked (Generic Y-Wing Stresshog, Corran, Biggs, Wedge, Wes, Poe). With that limited availability and the low rank of ships that have Astromech slots, good Astromechs would be a good thing.

I mean, hell, would it even have been broken if there were no such thing as Salvaged Astromechs and Scum/Rebels shared Astros? You could retcon faction specific cards such as R2-D2 to be "Rebel Only."

Juke ? I like it on my a-wings : juke+crack shot has turned out to be really effective for me.

Don't hate the idea, but which ones does it make really effective? Tycho's welded to Rage and PTL, the 5 Greens with Adaptability, AT, CS are just brutal as a team. Arvel might be nice with it and he's got low enough PS to block aces and use his boost to hit slower-moving ships.

Yes, but one gives a re-roll and one gives an Evade token. Bigger difference to me.

not quite correct

one gives you re-rolls on one blank result per roll made while active

the other might give you an evade token at the cost of a focus result at a time during which you couldn't usefully spend the evade anyway (re: v people shooting before you)

Well....the other means using a TL to improve your attack, but gives a 33% that it will also definitely increase your defense. The bit about "at a time during which you couldn't usually spend the evade anyway" is purely based on the PS value and completely subjective. Put it on a PS 8 or 9 pilot and you are doing great.

Not sure where this 33% comes from. It's 58% odds of rolling at least one eyeball on 3 dice. ~80% if using Target Lock. If I'm more concerned about getting shot, I keep the Focus for defence anyway. Simple.

I've used it, and when it works, it makes X-Wings pretty **** tough.

When it goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong.

The weird thing about astromechs as a design space for me is that FFG seems afraid to make them good.

I mean, yes, valid fear, but there are (currently) 25 cards with with Astromech slots, and of those only maybe 6 are decently ranked (Generic Y-Wing Stresshog, Corran, Biggs, Wedge, Wes, Poe). With that limited availability and the low rank of ships that have Astromech slots, good Astromechs would be a good thing.

I mean, hell, would it even have been broken if there were no such thing as Salvaged Astromechs and Scum/Rebels shared Astros? You could retcon faction specific cards such as R2-D2 to be "Rebel Only."

Juke ? I like it on my a-wings : juke+crack shot has turned out to be really effective for me.

Don't hate the idea, but which ones does it make really effective? Tycho's welded to Rage and PTL, the 5 Greens with Adaptability, AT, CS are just brutal as a team. Arvel might be nice with it and he's got low enough PS to block aces and use his boost to hit slower-moving ships.

Yes, they do not fit in an A swarm because of their cost, but I really like 2 of those supporting a bigger threat, like the Outrider. People tend to forget them, then wish they didn't.

Yes, but one gives a re-roll and one gives an Evade token. Bigger difference to me.

not quite correct

one gives you re-rolls on one blank result per roll made while active

the other might give you an evade token at the cost of a focus result at a time during which you couldn't usefully spend the evade anyway (re: v people shooting before you)

Well....the other means using a TL to improve your attack, but gives a 33% that it will also definitely increase your defense. The bit about "at a time during which you couldn't usually spend the evade anyway" is purely based on the PS value and completely subjective. Put it on a PS 8 or 9 pilot and you are doing great.

Not sure where this 33% comes from. It's 58% odds of rolling at least one eyeball on 3 dice. ~80% if using Target Lock. If I'm more concerned about getting shot, I keep the Focus for defence anyway. Simple.

I've used it, and when it works, it makes X-Wings pretty **** tough.

When it goes wrong, it goes horribly wrong.

That's very simple: you reroll your first focus. It's the very basis of my analysis, that you're not fishing for focus tokens, you're basically avoiding them.

It's 33% chance of you getting at least one focus symbol after rerolling.

Consider the OPs example:Ello Asty.

Assuming you want to run Ello, what astromech would you put on it (you want one at the very least for IA)?

R2-D2 and R5-P9 are bad choices, so what droid would be better than R3 on Ello?

BB-8?

BB-8 works as poorly as R2-D2. Ello wants to do the white Troll as often as possible (that's why you take him, right?), not do greens.

I don't know which is better, but I enjoy bb-8 on ello with ptl, very maneuverable and can still hit that white t-roll whenever you want to. Not only does r3 seem weak for the cost, but as someone that only plays casually it doesn't seem like a lot of fun to run neither. R2-d2 is effective, r5-p9 is effective, bb-8 is fun and effective. I'm happy playing anything that is fun, and I'm always excited when they release things that are effective because I believe an expanded tournament scene helps the game continue grow which is good for those of us that care nothing about tournaments also. I'd like to see more "playable" astromechs, when I say playable I mean effective and/or fun for their cost. R3 doesn't appear to be that, seems like it could've been done better. Doesn't seem like anyone is being negative in pointing that out.

I know it's not tournament play, but I ran a couple of R3's last night for game night. We ended up playing a 4 person furball with 20 asteroids/debris field on the table. I went with:

Luke w/ Adaptability, IA, and R3

2 x Red Squadrons w/ IA and R3

Rookie with IA and R2

I know it's not your standard game and it's not tournament, but then again, I'm not talking about those areas when I talk about things being worth it. I knew that there were a lot of enemy ships that were lower PS than the Red Squadrons, so I new I was pretty safe.

My main idea was to use TL all the time and re-roll all my red dice that weren't hits. If I got an eyeball after that, I would use it as an Evade. There were a few times when it literally saved Luke's bacon from the fire. There was one time when I knew I needed the Evade when firing at R1 of a Lambda and didn't re-roll and grabbed the eyeball for defense. That was pretty nice to have, actually. There were some times when I was actually disappointed that I had all hits! There were a couple of times when I got the Evade after the re-roll, but it didn't matter at all.

The Red Squadrons had it work once or twice in their favor, but I ended up getting Ionized and having the enemy Y-wings circle me and keep doing it. I wasn't able to get shots and get the Evade at that point. I knew of the danger and even had an Evade one time, but when 3 green dice blank out on you, it can't save you from the 2 hits. There were a couple of turns that if my green dice had even just rolled 1 Evade, that I could've completely gotten away with it and buzzed past the Y-wings.

I will say that I did play overall more aggressive with always doing the TL and I did find myself really blasting through with a lot of damage each turn. So, I feel like it rewards aggressive playstyle at times, but you can't rely on it.

My opponents ended up trying to get out of my firing arc as they didn't want me to get that free Evade! It was pretty funny in that regard.

R3's main problem is its PS dependency: it's absolutely useless if you get out PSed. Randomly gaining evade tokens for two points wouldn't be bad otherwise.

I could see it with Swarm Tactics or Roark but otherwise it's a risky buy before the game even starts.

And now I'm off to build a Roark R3 squad.

Consider the OPs example:Ello Asty.

Assuming you want to run Ello, what astromech would you put on it (you want one at the very least for IA)?

R2-D2 and R5-P9 are bad choices, so what droid would be better than R3 on Ello?

BB-8?

Or R2 astromech. Or any 1 point astromech just to enable IA. Or... no astromech at all, which is always an option. No astromech at all would probably be better than spending 2 points on R3.

House rule in an EPT for hortan, then take R3, Juke, and TLT.

Its perfect, add in vectored thrusters or engine upgrade for manuverability.

Doesn't work unless you're using BTL, at which point you have to get a focus on your 2-die primary in order to get the evade in order to activate Juke. If any of that fails you've blown 4 points and 2 slots to no benefit at all. And it's STILL based on a houserule.

R3 just has too many restrictions to be worth spending the points on. If it were cheaper (0 points would be fine) it would be worth taking just as a slot-filler that you might at some point manage to satisfy the restrictions of. At 1 point it would join the stable of 'take it to activate IA' droids, and probably not come too high up in that stable even, R2 is still going to be much more reliably useful.

At 2 points you ought to be able to spend those 2 points better elsewhere in your list.

This is what people seem to be missing, it's not '2 points here or another astromech' it's '2 points here or Autothrusters on my other T70, or an autoblaster on my Ghost, or... etc'.

R3 Astro/Gunner on an ARC might have a slight argument, but I doubt it, because of how **** expensive gunner is on a ship with 1 agility.

R3's main problem is its PS dependency: it's absolutely useless if you get out PSed. Randomly gaining evade tokens for two points wouldn't be bad otherwise.

I can agree with that. I sent Luke after two enemy HWKs and didn't realize that one was Torkil Mux! Having Luke at PS 0 was horrible. I had to fly him out of there ASAP.

The weird thing about astromechs as a design space for me is that FFG seems afraid to make them good.

I mean, yes, valid fear, but there are (currently) 25 cards with with Astromech slots, and of those only maybe 6 are decently ranked (Generic Y-Wing Stresshog, Corran, Biggs, Wedge, Wes, Poe). With that limited availability and the low rank of ships that have Astromech slots, good Astromechs would be a good thing.

I mean, hell, would it even have been broken if there were no such thing as Salvaged Astromechs and Scum/Rebels shared Astros? You could retcon faction specific cards such as R2-D2 to be "Rebel Only."

Juke ? I like it on my a-wings : juke+crack shot has turned out to be really effective for me.

Don't hate the idea, but which ones does it make really effective? Tycho's welded to Rage and PTL, the 5 Greens with Adaptability, AT, CS are just brutal as a team. Arvel might be nice with it and he's got low enough PS to block aces and use his boost to hit slower-moving ships.

I just want to echo that aside from R2-D2, FFG seems to been afraid to make effective Astromechs.

R3's main problem is its PS dependency: it's absolutely useless if you get out PSed. Randomly gaining evade tokens for two points wouldn't be bad otherwise.

I can agree with that. I sent Luke after two enemy HWKs and didn't realize that one was Torkil Mux! Having Luke at PS 0 was horrible. I had to fly him out of there ASAP.

This is probably one of the biggest problems with R3, since, as a generic Astromech who should plug into generic pilots with no problem, he needs to be on a high PS pilot in order to make sacrificing a focus result on the attack dice worth an evade token. That token is worthless if you can't spend it or hold on to it for later.

If you take R3 on a low PS pilot, you essentially have a dead upgrade that you wasted two points on. (Unless you have IA and use the mech to block a direct hit etc.)