Hi everyone,

Everyone talks about having fixes and erratas here and there, especially for weaker ships. I haven't seen pilot skill being tossed around as a modifiable attribute much, and neither have I seen numbers-dependent upgrades either. I wondered if these are viable design spaces for the team to go into, and have described a potential scenario below.

Take for example the humble X-wing. If you imagine a fairly ludicrous scenario where you have a group of rookies, except that all of them have ps10, they suddenly become quite an interesting squad. While maybe not as extreme as this, the premise is effectively this, we have no real synergies between ships simulating their effectiveness as a team short of simply focusing fire on an opponent and stripping their tokens.

Now this is very difficult to balance I'm sure, but imagine a scenario where a title or upgrade, of cost undetermined, can be applied to all of your ships, and the power of that upgrade stacks. We already see a weaker version of this in play with Attani mindlink. The effectiveness of these kinds of upgrades are determined by how many ships you have with that title on the board. If, for example, such a thing existed as, say, "Maroon Squadron: for each other ship with this title, increase pilot skill by 1", and cost a non-zero amount, could this kind of thing be costed appropriately?

I understand that it unduly rewards swarms, so it may well be that squadrons must remain ship specific for their effects. The key point is that in theory a team should still do pretty well against an ace, but the point is to buff ships that don't have access to multiple actions, which in turn prevents abuse of things like PTL on ships that have no business being that agile. In turn as you destroy the ships in a squadron they become less and less effective, not through loss of any kind of special abilities, but simply that their opponent now becomes able to predict their actions as they fall below the pilot skill of their 5s, 6s and 7s.

Horrible idea? Some room for merit? Interested in your thoughts. A space where an x-wing is versatile for the situation because it simply has pilot skill much higher than an opponent, useful for tokens, but has no way to capitalise on it via arc-dodging is an interesting scenario to think about.

Condition cards could provide a mechanism with which to do something like this.

I like the idea of squadrons, but I want to avoid the debacle of following the disaster of 40k formations.

I like the idea of squadrons, but I want to avoid the debacle of following the disaster of 40k formations.

The thing is, the better 40k formations/alternate force charts are very characterful, and provide ways to do an army which fits a narrative theme impossible in a normal army (like the Death Korps Cavalry Company).

The worse ones take stuff which is already borderline overpowered and hand them (in some cases) hundreds of points of free toys (I'm looking at you, War Convocation).

In X-wing, there is no 'force organisation', only the limit on points.

I'd always be in favour of something which encourages you to take ships in groupings they should appear in (XYZ squadron pilots together with the named unique who is the canonical squadron leader, for example), but I'd not want to do so at the expense of someone's competitive options - that is, making it infeasible to take them in anything other than those squadrons. Therefore there needs to be a downside - which is also possible if the 'formation' is less flexible in how it's constructed rather than simply being a bolt-on-to-whoever-you-like card like attani mindlink.

Take TIE fighters for an example.

There are currently three "squadrons" represented in the range of TIE fighter pilots available:

• Academy Pilot/Wampa/Scourge ('Generic' Navy squadron)
• Obsidian Squadron Pilot/Night Beast/Winged Gundark/Howlrunner (Obsidian Squadron from Bespin)
• Black Squadron Pilot/Chaser/Backstabber/Dark Curse/Mauler Mithel (Black Squadron from Yavin - technically could include Vader)

When you actually see TIE swarms on the board, they rarely conform to any of these archetypes - generally being Howlrunner and Black Squadron Pilots (with Crack Shot), or Howlrunner, Black Squadron Pilots and Academy Pilots.

You can make a 100 point 'characterful' squad with each, but it tends to be worse than the hybrid.

• Youngster (Rage), Academy Pilot x 7
• Howlrunner (Adaptability), Night Beast, Winged Gundark, Obsidian Squadron Pilot x 4
• Darth Vader (TIE/x1, Advanced Targeting Computer, Veteran Instincts, Engine Upgrade), Mauler Mithel (Snap Shot), Backstabber, Dark Curse, Chaser

None of these squads are "bad", but they're clearly not as good as they could be.

The "Obsidian Squadron" squad is the most obviously behind-the-curve one; Obsidian Squadron Pilots pay a point each (so 4 across the squad) for a largely useless increase in PS from 1 to 3, and Winged Gundark's pilot ability is pretty awful. Night Beast isn't bad - once Swarm Leader comes out, the ability to get a free focus (or more accurately to generate an evade and still have a focus token yourself) is rather nice.

Some sort of "Squadron Title Card" that provides a benefit would give you a means to give multiple, related ships a 'leg up' - and would allow you to do so in a way that current 'fix' mechanics wouldn't.

• It is independent of what slots the recipient ship has (the primary problem with Obsidian Squadron Pilot is that it has no EPT - indeed no non-modification/title upgrade slots of any kind, so you're extremely limited in what you could pin a fix to )
• If it specifies individual pilots, you avoid the 'Biggs Dilemma' where any meaningful boost intended for the generic T-65 or TIE/x1 elevates the one pilot who does see regular, valuable use to the point of ridiculousness.

In the case of TIE fighters, if there was a 'squadron card' for each of the above groupings, for example, Obsidians instantly get a minor boost in that only they get access to Howlrunner and their squadron benefit.

You're essentially choosing between the combination of Howlrunner's ability and Crack Shot (by taking a 'normal' Crackswarm), or Howlrunner's ability and whatever's printed on the "Obsidian Squadron" card.

Meaning that you're probably looking for an ability which (a) is more or less equivalent to Crack Shot in power, and (b) makes Winged Gundark an appealing choice (meaning something which either triggers off criticals, or which makes it easier to attack at range 1).

At which point you can almost start to see ideas for what the card's ability might be....