1 hour ago, Rmcarrier1 said:

I could be wrong though!

Sure! 😜

To be honest, that only makes sense if they try to mirror the factions.

As best I'd bet they both get some kind of escort and some kind of bomber. Of course they could get the other stuff but they could choose new keywords to spice up the squadron options. Also, to speed up the competitive play for these factions I'd add strategic and intel as the other two "must" keywords for the starter squadron options.

Bomber is the most basic idea for a squadron. Also the lack of this option would put that faction in disadvantage. However they could solve this removing the keywords but increasing the dice pool. Who knows.

Escort is live for aces. Not a must but an option that's there and useful.

Intel is just too powerful. Denying it is a low blow.

Strategic, even not being meta is needed or it means that the faction would have the worst objective interaction in the game.

Other keywords may be strong but to me (and I can't explain exactly why) the lack of any of these four would feel unfair.

But I'd love to see the new factions win without any of these to be proof wrong and also enjoy diversity.

I wouldn't say that they're gonna be x wings advanced, bombers, lambdas, vcx, hwk and jumpmasters, they could mix keywords and roles as they please to make things interesting.

I hope that the LAAT and the droid gunship will introduce some kind of "boarding" as in the CW we see boarding very frequently, often using the ships in question.

Maybe with Assault keyword?...

Maybe something completely new?

Anyway I'd like to see them boarding ships instead of them being some kind of bombers, fighter bombers fighters which they are clearly not.

2 hours ago, sasska said:

I hope that the LAAT and the droid gunship will introduce some kind of "boarding" as in the CW we see boarding very frequently, often using the ships in question.

Maybe with Assault keyword?...

Maybe something completely new?

Anyway I'd like to see them boarding ships instead of them being some kind of bombers, fighter bombers fighters which they are clearly not.

That's easy with upgrade cards. I don't see that being an inbuilt mechanic on the ships.

If they want to represent some kind of ships that naturally fit on that role, generic titles may be the way to go, if they don't want to mess with upgrade setups that may unbalance the game due to "unintended" interactions.

5 hours ago, sasska said:

I hope that the LAAT and the droid gunship will introduce some kind of "boarding" as in the CW we see boarding very frequently, often using the ships in question.

Maybe with Assault keyword?...

Maybe something completely new?

Anyway I'd like to see them boarding ships instead of them being some kind of bombers, fighter bombers fighters which they are clearly not.

Agreed.

Perhaps each boarding ‘action’ could reduce a shield or remove an attack dice or something similar. The gunship in question could do this instead of an attack.

This could of course be in addition to the current boarding troopers cards.

Also be nice to see some further expansion of the boarding functions. Perhaps with some faction-specific cards eg: Death Troopers for the Empire.

2 hours ago, ovinomanc3r said:

That's easy with upgrade cards. I don't see that being an inbuilt mechanic on the ships.

If they want to represent some kind of ships that naturally fit on that role, generic titles may be the way to go, if they don't want to mess with upgrade setups that may unbalance the game due to "unintended" interactions.

13 minutes ago, ISD Avenger said:

Agreed.

Perhaps each boarding ‘action’ could reduce a shield or remove an attack dice or something similar. The gunship in question could do this instead of an attack.

This could of course be in addition to the current boarding troopers cards.

Also be nice to see some further expansion of the boarding functions. Perhaps with some faction-specific cards eg: Death Troopers for the Empire.

I think we might see a new upgrade or two that takes up two slots like BT and BE.

3 hours ago, ovinomanc3r said:

That's easy with upgrade cards. I don't see that being an inbuilt mechanic on the ships.

If they want to represent some kind of ships that naturally fit on that role, generic titles may be the way to go, if they don't want to mess with upgrade setups that may unbalance the game due to "unintended" interactions.

True but sasska was talking about the laat and the droid gunship which would be squadrons not ships.

2 hours ago, lunitic501 said:

True but sasska was talking about the laat and the droid gunship which would be squadrons not ships.

Lol, my knowledge of SW lore is quite limited. I read ship I think on ships.

11 hours ago, sasska said:

I hope that the LAAT and the droid gunship will introduce some kind of "boarding" as in the CW we see boarding very frequently, often using the ships in question.

Maybe with Assault keyword?...

Maybe something completely new?

Anyway I'd like to see them boarding ships instead of them being some kind of bombers, fighter bombers fighters which they are clearly not.

A title that allows you to use your boarding team at distance 1 of these squadrons instead of at close range of the ship. Maybe restrict them that they can't move this turn and can't be engaged Would be interesting.

10 hours ago, Rimsen said:

A title that allows you to use your boarding team at distance 1 of these squadrons instead of at close range of the ship. Maybe restrict them that they can't move this turn and can't be engaged Would be interesting.

That sounds very interesting! Maybe not a specific title, but the boarding team upgrade card itself (not Boarding Troopers, but the boarding team type of cards in general) . I imagine that case, it'd faction locked.

Lose one command dial, if you have no dials, you can’t activate the ship.

LAAT / Droid Gunship keyword:

Crew: After deploying, you may move one upgrade card with (boarding unit icons) onto this squadron.

That would be all you need. Or raid.

7 minutes ago, Ling27 said:

Crew: After deploying, you may move one upgrade card with (boarding unit icons) onto this squadron.

That would only work for unique squadrons, otherwise you could have more than one squadron and no way of knowing which you'd moved it to.

Squadron cards (at the moment) aren't designed for one-use effects or similar. Perhaps you could have a keyword where a squadron could "destroy itself" to carry out an effect (maybe even something like Reserve Hangar Deck), but then things are getting a bit complicated.

Or maybe something like Rapid Launch Bays but in reverse would work; a keyword that let you place a squadron next to an enemy ship card to indicate it is being boarded, with a mechanism for putting the squadron back in play (or removing it) at a later point. Except then we've just reinvented Raid.

7 hours ago, Ling27 said:

LAAT / Droid Gunship keyword:

Crew: After deploying, you may move one upgrade card with (boarding unit icons) onto this squadron.

That would be all you need. Or raid.

What is an upgrade card with boarding unit icons?

Is Rex a boarding unit?

30 minutes ago, ovinomanc3r said:

What is an upgrade card with boarding unit icons?

Is Rex a boarding unit?

The boarding engineers and troopers cards have a Weapons Team and Offensive Retrofit icons on them. So those ones, the wording would have to be "Has (weapons team icon) and (offensive retrofit icon)" I guess. Making it limited to the boarding units (all rebel and imperial ones use that combo of upgrades.)

7 hours ago, Grumbleduke said:

That would only work for unique squadrons, otherwise you could have more than one squadron and no way of knowing which you'd moved it to.

Squadron cards (at the moment) aren't designed for one-use effects or similar. Perhaps you could have a keyword where a squadron could "destroy itself" to carry out an effect (maybe even something like Reserve Hangar Deck), but then things are getting a bit complicated.

Or maybe something like Rapid Launch Bays but in reverse would work; a keyword that let you place a squadron next to an enemy ship card to indicate it is being boarded, with a mechanism for putting the squadron back in play (or removing it) at a later point. Except then we've just reinvented Raid.

Isnt that what unit identification items are for? You just put a identification item on the squadron's base, and the upgrade card on the squadrons card.

53 minutes ago, Ling27 said:

The boarding engineers and troopers cards have a Weapons Team and Offensive Retrofit icons on them. So those ones, the wording would have to be "Has (weapons team icon) and (offensive retrofit icon)" I guess. Making it limited to the boarding units (all rebel and imperial ones use that combo of upgrades.)

Even when the wording is different, it's hard to me to not read Rex as some kind of boarding effect.

Besides the regular squadro problem, how YOU intend to discard squadron dials or tokens if you're a squadron?

If you want squadrons with boarding capabilities you have assault. If you want other effects the easiest way is to create new keywords for those effects and that's it. Let's say you want to reflect a wide number of boarding-like options for just one squadrons. You may use the same mini and as many squadron card version as you wish just as we have for ships. We actually already have two versions of the same two squadrons (Slave I and the Falcon) and the unique regular squadrons. Just don't make them unique and done.

3 hours ago, Ling27 said:

Isnt that what unit identification items are for? You just put a identification item on the squadron's base, and the upgrade card on the squadrons card.

Generic squadrons share a single card, there is no differentiation unless you overhaul the base rules.

3 hours ago, Ling27 said:

Isnt that what unit identification items are for? You just put a identification item on the squadron's base, and the upgrade card on the squadrons card.

Identification items for squadrons don't come with numbers. Just black and white version for two different players. It's not like it can't be done though but it may still be problematic.

20 hours ago, ovinomanc3r said:

If you want squadrons with boarding capabilities you have assault.

Actually, I wouldn't mind Assault becoming a real thing, along with raid. On some sort of cheap generics, so it'll be usable.

I'm experimenting with Kanaan, and he is quite good IMO if the enemy fleet doesn't have squads. I use him in a Sato fleet, and I kinda like his position in the fleet. Not particularly strong, but he has a disruptive potential. Raid tokens are pretty annoying.

Will the next article be posted the same day as the Armada in-flight? If it's not I think it will get posted the following Tuesday.

So, how are things? Any new stuff to talk about?

3 minutes ago, CaribbeanNinja said:

So, how are things? Any new stuff to talk about?

I got a new hat!

I'll likely post updated things when I'm literally not dying of something more immediate than entropy.

1 hour ago, CaribbeanNinja said:

So, how are things? Any new stuff to talk about?

New ships, upgrades and updated/errata cards. Plus standard card size for everything.

2 hours ago, geek19 said:

I got a new hat!

Do you yell with that hat on?