Not a fix and outside competitive gaming, of course. Some weeks ago I read in this forum about this idea. Give Epic Ships actions to a limited number of non tier ships. So yesterday we played a scenario writen by one fellow player focused on the first operational deployment of "Mk IV" Punishers with Reinforce Action.

We are starting to experiment with two "heavy" variants of this ship. "Mk III" simply eliminates Boost action and includes Reinforce. No cost title. "MK IV", an improved version, is a 2 pts title that adds Reinforce to standard Actions.

Playing with face down ordnance cards (a simple variant that adds a lot of interest to ordnance carriers) there were 2 Mk IV Punishers on the table. PS 4 pilots with EM, Plasma Torps, Cluster Misiles and Seismic Charges, plus EW warfare system ang GC. 39 pts each, aprox. Not cheap ships but quite capable.

In a 500 pts Epic environment they were supported by Tactical Coordinators, in a Gozanti and a Raider. The idea was to asign one to each Epic ship to boost the Punisher's hitting capacity. Reinforce when facing enemy threats and receiving TLs from the mother ship.

The experiment worked Ok, not perfect but quite interesting. Circa 80 pts invested in two ordnance carriers... Both bombers survived long enought to launch 3 salvoes each, only one bomb. Reinforce Action is not a superb panacea. You need external aid to gain TLs. No focus in the whole game. But it was crucial to survive and launch their toys. Plasma Torps hit hard vs Agi 1 high shield ships.

Perhaps it is a little too good when facing Red 2 A wings or Z 95s, but only 2 Rebel ships were on the table and only once one A wing fired on a Reinforced Punisher. Range 2, one focused eye...no evade...biiiiiing shoot deflected.

If you play Epic in a friendly and casual way try once the "MK III" variant. No cost title, no Boost, add Reinforce. Pair it with a ship that can transfer a TL or give a free TL action. Perhaps one if you play at 300 pts.

Not a top tier to win the day...but yes a capable ship that can survive long enought to perform some cinematic attack runs

Sorry, conexion error while posting and duplicated.

The thing about reinforce for huge ships is while it may be persistent it only covers half the ship. As for evade it is discarded after the first use. But the inherent thing is that they have a work around on both of them. Reinforce would not work on large or small based ships because it will cover the entire ship for the entire turn. You might as well just use reinforce for every action which would be bad for the gameplay.

Part of the Wave 4-6 meta was that there were very defensive tanky ship builds that just wouldn't die as they had a hard 2 damage mitigation. The damage mitigation was so heavy and so certain (not based upon green dice) with upgrades like C-3PO and Autothrusters that you needed something as powerful as TLTs to crack them.

Point is defense tokens need to have a workaround either by position or by consumption. You can't have a permanent evade on a ship even if it is one of the weaker ones like the Scyk (before the eratta).

So, o a 9 h/s ship without the evade action against a 3 attack ship your looking at, at least 3 turns to burn it down if you roll all blanks and they roll all hits constantly. When you add the number of time in the 3 turns the green die may save you from 1 damage it becomes 4 turns of shooting if the attacker rolls all hits constantly. If you add in a constant evade result to that you are looking at 5 or more turns if the attacker always rolls all hits.

While I agree the lethality of the ships has become a thing, I don't think reinforce is the answer because for 2 points on a non unique card you have just gained a much much better 3po that you can put on multiple ships.

It is not about the lethality of incoming shoots. It is about improving "below the curve" generic ships. Agi 1 Bombers than can shoot 4-6 salvoes of ordnance are simpmy not viable. And remember this is not about max. the power for your money, simply to enhance their survival capacity with no elaborate combos.

Playing with face down ordnance cards (a simple variant that adds a lot of interest to ordnance carriers) there were 2 Mk IV Punishers on the table. PS 4 pilots with EM, Plasma Torps, Cluster Missiles and Seismic Charges, plus EW warfare system and GC. 39 pts each, aprox. Not cheap ships but quite capable.

Not related to the idea itself, but I think that the amount of ordnance on those poor punishers is way too much. I personally don't like investing in more than 2 munitions and not even as a matter of survivability or cost, the game generally doesn't last long enough to use all of them regardless of how things go for the Punisher itself.

Reinforce Action is not a superb panacea. You need external aid to gain TLs. No focus in the whole game. But it was crucial to survive and launch their toys.

You could probably make up for the lack of action economy by taking the Fire Control System instead of Sensor Jammer and maybe throw on Autothrusters for more defense dice modification (1 for Reinforce and 1 for Autothrusters = 2 evades). You can make up for the loss of Guidance Chips by replacing the two ranged munitions with either Concussion Missiles/Proton Torpedoes or Advanced Proton Torpedoes (already have a lock from Fire Control System, so focus and 3 hits are guaranteed).

That said, I'm not sure I like the idea of Reinforce on the Punisher, for reasons similar to what Marinealver touched on. There are counter-play options to bypass the guaranteed damage mitigation (stress control, TLTs, things that apply tractor-beam tokens, bombs, etc.) but most of them are from list building rather than tactical.

If your group is ok with testing things, try running the Reinforced Deflector card on them and see how that works. Were it not large ship only, I think it would be a great help for both Punishers and B-wings too.

I like this idea. It's simple, adds no new rules, and makes Punishers more viable. It has precedence with Kylo's Shuttle gaining the Epic coordinate action. But I suspect this is in part what Lightened Frame was intended to do. The problem with LF is the competition with Chips and LRS for the mod spot on a Punisher. Would LF+Mk III or Mk IV (and no chips/LRS) be broken on the Punisher?

And as for no counter-play to reinforce, it still has an action cost.

Thanks for not only sharing the idea, but sharing your experience putting the idea on the table.

Great idea and theory testing..,,plus, I'll give props to anyone who can incert "superb panacea" in a thread; like!

Reinforce should be fine in terms of balance, because with EM and two different ordnance upgrades, the Punisher is really expensive.

It might seem too strong because noone thinks about arc dodgers anymore, but the reinforce punisher might bring them back.

I think it is a very interesting idea, especially given the upsilon precedent. Epic ship actions are fair game now.

One thing I would make sure to do, if you use this in the future (or submit it to the CCL), is make it mutually exclusive with the lightweight frame mod, which is also really efficient on punishers.

As I said before, simply one idea to experiment a little. The idea is far from building the best combo, simply to enhance the ship's endurance. I like that fat Agi 1 ships that receive shoots like sitting ducks. A good game experience, this fat guys are really brutal minis. But they need some love.

Could be fun if it was arc-locked.

Vulnerable to arc-dodgers and flankers, but able to face-tank hostile fire... especially in Epic, when Huge ships tend to spam quantity over quality? Yes, please.

I had been thinking about this exact same house rule, and I'm glad that early tests show promise. I am concerned about making the ship too resistant to low-damage attacks. Making a card that behaves similar to reinforced deflectors might be a good compromise. Something like:

Reinforced Frame - If you take 2 (or 3?) or more damage from an attack, reduce the damage dealt by 1.

That way small hits (say from lots of smaller ships shooting) will still get through, but heavier hits will be reduced. You could make it require an action to enable and call it something else, if necessary.

Or, make the ability arc-locked, as Reiver suggested, or even allow you to choose which arc on the fly. Perhaps when you place the reinforce token on your ship, you place it on ship chit. If you place the token on the arc, then attacks that are coming from in your arc have their damage reduced. If you place the token outside the arc, it's for non-arc attacks. Something to think about.

Reinforced Frame... Your idea is better than ours. Thanks a lot. Good contributions, gentlemen

Thematically, how would you justify a reinforce action?

I really like this, but especially at the lower point value games where you don't have epic ships feeding you TLs. As has been said, Reinforce is really good, so making it a hard choice with the other actions makes for an interesting gameplay mechanic.

Thematically, how would you justify a reinforce action?

Ship Big.

Thematically, how would you justify a reinforce action?

Ship Big.

Reinforce is angling the deflectors or closing the blast doors to reduce the damage caused by a hit. However it fits huge ships because why one side might be reinforced the other side is just exposed. That doesn't work in a single seat TIE heavy bomber.

Thematically, how would you justify a reinforce action?

Ship Big.

Reinforce is angling the deflectors or closing the blast doors to reduce the damage caused by a hit. However it fits huge ships because why one side might be reinforced the other side is just exposed. That doesn't work in a single seat TIE heavy bomber.

*shrug* canonically even x-wings can angle their deflectors to certain directions. I don't see why a giant heavy bomber couldn't do some sort of power redirection shenanigans instead of using any of its other systems for that round (i.e. by taking up its action step).

But then, I don't massively care about the fluff in this context, if the mechanics are balanced.

I've long thought that Reinforce might be the way to make low-agi non-regen small base ships actually work again, like the B Wing, the Punisher, the G1A, etc.

I had been thinking about this exact same house rule, and I'm glad that early tests show promise. I am concerned about making the ship too resistant to low-damage attacks. Making a card that behaves similar to reinforced deflectors might be a good compromise. Something like:

Reinforced Frame - If you take 2 (or 3?) or more damage from an attack, reduce the damage dealt by 1.

That way small hits (say from lots of smaller ships shooting) will still get through, but heavier hits will be reduced. You could make it require an action to enable and call it something else, if necessary.

Or, make the ability arc-locked, as Reiver suggested, or even allow you to choose which arc on the fly. Perhaps when you place the reinforce token on your ship, you place it on ship chit. If you place the token on the arc, then attacks that are coming from in your arc have their damage reduced. If you place the token outside the arc, it's for non-arc attacks. Something to think about.

Reinforced Frame isn't a bad idea, the problem is it doesn't help at all against things like Twin Laser Turrets - and they absolutely shred Punishers

I think Arc-Locking the reinforce action is a much better idea

Yes, but that would also render Punishers immune to TLT's altogether as long as you picked your arc correctly. It's pretty feast or famine.

What about the compromise of canceling dice rather than removing damage? Something like: When defending, you may cancel one of the attacker's attack dice if there are 2 or more <hit/crit> results." That way if a TLT attack has 2 hits, you can reduce that to 1 hit and still have a chance to evade it with your green die... better than 50% chance if you have a focus.

Another way to word it that might work even better would be to make it similar to Lightened Frame: "When defending, if the attacker would 3 or more attack dice, they must roll 1 less die." This would improve survivability against TLT's, ordnance, and 3+-strength shots without making it impossible for A-Wings and Tie Fighters to even dent them.

if the Reinforce is arc locked it should be a passive ability, not an action. Thats a pretty lousy action for an ordnance boat.

Call it a Deflector Array or something rather than Reinforce.

if the Reinforce is arc locked it should be a passive ability, not an action. Thats a pretty lousy action for an ordnance boat.

Call it a Deflector Array or something rather than Reinforce.

It's a pretty excellent action for an ordinance boat that is chasing a squadron of TLTs.

Don't forget that the Imperials have lots of ways to hand target locks and focus tokens to their troops, these days... you could well end up with re-enforced Punishers being the king of the joust, and all but dependent on being arc-dodged to be efficiently murdered.

Uh, TLTs wouldnt really be phased that much by reinforce.

Reinforce mandates them to hit you at least twice out of the 3 dice to do any damage, since you only have 1 agility. It adds an evade the exact way an evade token does, it doesnt negate damage.

It helps, but not much. Considering you are sacrificing your TLock or Boost to use it, and while Tlock issue can be mitigated via FCS the Boost cant be regained, and its a slow ship.