Hey everyone,

I new to the mindlink craze, I thought I was on a winning list a little while ago with Fenn, Manaroo and Teroch, only to see it was at worlds and not unique to my brain. My question is to the mindlinkers out there, how have you found mindlink with stress builds coming back with the likes of Asajj, Braylen and a few others. Is it worth worrying about or just a small number that are harder to fly against but still shouldn't be an issue.

Cheers in advance

Arch.

I, personally, find stress lists inconvenient, but I don't feel they destroy my mindlink build. At least one of my ships should be able to clear stress and take a focus token so that everyone is focused. This is nice because typically only one of the ships will get piled in stress, so the others can easily do a single green maneuver and take actions again.

If, however, the stress build could pile multiple stress on each ship in one turn, that could be disastrous. But then, I think that would hamper most builds, not just mindlink builds.

The problem with facing stressors isn't losing actions but getting ships with forward-facing arcs turned around.

I played Guri, Palob, and Manaroo, all with mindlink, in a small tournament and loved the list until I came up against stressmule, ghost, and Jake. Palob and Manaroo weren't so bad off, but I never did get Guri facing the right way. If your opponent can target any of your ships then they will all be stressed every round and unable to k-turn. Yeah, you can turn around eventually by doing 1-turns, but that takes too long.

I would try an all turret list if I were going to run mindlink again.

Mindlink stress without a green turn is the problem. Scyks have a hard time too.

If you know you're not going to be able to clear the stress in time to turn around, though, a couple hard 1s only takes one more turn than a k-turn, but far fewer than a bunch of green banks.

The awesome part of mindlink lists is that you can adapt to stress. With the Fangs even especially well because they are ships who could take PTL too and have all the right greens. The next great thing about mindlink is that one ship doing the green keeps the focus on all ships and having focus on all ships means that manaroo can still transfer another focus which gives one ship two focus for a solid defense. It opens up the dial as well for movies which do not remove stress.

As stress gets not transferred via mindlink when you already have stress it is fine to not immediately clear the stress, it cost you one action sure, but you still get potentially 2 focus and a target lock … same ideas like when you do a red maneuver to get a good shot or move out of the way and still have full mods.

Still the likes of Braylen Stramm and stresshogs are still super annoying, especially if they bring the double stress, but they at least don't break your ship completely like they do against PTL ships.

I have not found it to be much of a problem. As long as one ship gets an action you will still have above average efficiency because of Manaroo. If you don't use Manaroo when you play mindlink then I don't know what to tell you because she is the staple of every ML list I have ever played.

Mindlink is GOOD vs stress, not bad. Even if your ships get stressed they get a focus token from somebody else.

If your list has decent greens then you actually perform better against stress than most non-Mindlink lists.

If you've got a pilot or upgrade in the build that can generate or acquire focus tokens with out actions (like Palob or Guri), that definitely helps as well

I think mindlink is OP for its price of only 1 point...

Originally I thought stress would be great against the mindlink chain, but it actually is NOT, because you can not double stress through mindlink.

And that's excatly what should have been the weakness in my oppinion... the possibility that all your ships might get stressed and stay stressed.

The way this card works now, you only need one ship to take a green maneuver, to get a free focus for everyone the next round. Extremely powerful!

I think mindlink is OP for its price of only 1 point...

Originally I thought stress would be great against the mindlink chain, but it actually is NOT, because you can not double stress through mindlink.

And that's excatly what should have been the weakness in my oppinion... the possibility that all your ships might get stressed and stay stressed.

The way this card works now, you only need one ship to take a green maneuver, to get a free focus for everyone the next round. Extremely powerful!

It's NOT only one point though. It's one point per ship.

And yeah, stress isn't a huge problem IME - you can do white moves just fine as long as one ship can do a green and focus.

THe real issue is Assaj with Latts crew. That's PUNISHING.

I think mindlink is OP for its price of only 1 point...

Originally I thought stress would be great against the mindlink chain, but it actually is NOT, because you can not double stress through mindlink.

And that's excatly what should have been the weakness in my oppinion... the possibility that all your ships might get stressed and stay stressed.

The way this card works now, you only need one ship to take a green maneuver, to get a free focus for everyone the next round. Extremely powerful!

It's NOT only one point though. It's one point per ship.

And yeah, stress isn't a huge problem IME - you can do white moves just fine as long as one ship can do a green and focus.

THe real issue is Assaj with Latts crew. That's PUNISHING.

Just leave her for last. Kill everything else and then destroy her or simply get her to half HP and win on points.

I think mindlink is OP for its price of only 1 point...

It's NOT only one point though. It's one point per ship.

It's not only 1 pts per ship, it's also cost of alternatives. In Mindlink list you have to live with EPT slots occupied. Lots of EPT shenanigans are not available.

Stress is not game breaker for Attanni, but is inconvenient for sure. Attanni lists are known for limited red moves. Stressed Attanni list never do any red moves. On the other hand they are almost never tokenless. Certain Attanni lists are more stress-proof than others (Mindlink turrets ie).

Cheers for all the discussion everyone, it has been most helpful. A lot of things I hadn't considered as I have never given it a go!!!

Cheers again.

I think mindlink is OP for its price of only 1 point...

It's NOT only one point though. It's one point per ship.

It's not only 1 pts per ship, it's also cost of alternatives. In Mindlink list you have to live with EPT slots occupied. Lots of EPT shenanigans are not available.

Stress is not game breaker for Attanni, but is inconvenient for sure. Attanni lists are known for limited red moves. Stressed Attanni list never do any red moves. On the other hand they are almost never tokenless. Certain Attanni lists are more stress-proof than others (Mindlink turrets ie).

That's true. If your opponent is playing a Mindlink list, he'll stick to white and greens most of the time.

That's not so difficult though, because a lot of Scum Ships have got extraordinary good dials.

Stress limiting ship maneuverability continues to be very powerful regardless of assigned focus

It isnt a hard counter like it is to ptl, but the only thing that truly doesmt give a **** is dengaroos dengar

Stress limiting ship maneuverability continues to be very powerful regardless of assigned focus

It isnt a hard counter like it is to ptl, but the only thing that truly doesmt give a **** is dengaroos dengar

Party Bus and Tycho doesn't give a s..... as well. Only first one is popular right now tho.

Och, and Hera Syndulla (crew) VCX-100!

Well considering red maneuver penalties are not as brutal as they used to be I don't find it as punishing as it could have been. I mean you could have made an entire list that was built around flying your opponents ships off the table. (Force them to do a red and give them stress before then pick their dial to K-turn and off). The 2 straight white also seems more natural, pilot is confused and does not know what to do the ship continues to coast but that doesn't relieve the pilot's stress.

Stress limiting ship maneuverability continues to be very powerful regardless of assigned focus

It isnt a hard counter like it is to ptl, but the only thing that truly doesmt give a **** is dengaroos dengar

Party Bus and Tycho doesn't give a s..... as well. Only first one is popular right now tho.

Och, and Hera Syndulla (crew) VCX-100!

just removing focus is very powerful; they care

except tycho but he's weak

I have been reluctant to use ML in the current meta as well, but I have found that because ML only passes tokens to those who do not already have them, it really is not THAT bad.

First, it influences target priority. The Shadowcaster is the hardest target here, with the Y wing and ARC can burn quickly under focus fire, and both of the latter are kinda slow.

Secondly, one green manuver will push focus back through the squad. You should have enough to choose from between the Scyk, Fang, and JM5K to find one who can do that. The starviper and Kdhejsnebrjdksnjd do not have as many options.

Also don't forget that the points and EPT opportunity cost devoted to mindlink become worthless once only one ship remains. I don't think that that makes it unplayable, but it's something to keep in mind. I think this same problem hurts IG-88 crew, which would be very tempting on some single-crew-slot ships otherwise, but practically has to be used on a YV or a ship that is designed to die first.