Hi everyone. I was pondering the other day about some of the daisy-chaining you see of crew members for neat effects and listening to the most recent rebels episode in the background. Is a game mechanic viable to simulate the effect of Fulcrum agents relaying important info to the Rebellion.

Specifically something like this: Fulcrum Agent (Rebel only) 'At the start of the 'Place forces' step, you may choose 1 enemy (crew) upgrade, ignore faction restriction and use this card as a duplicate'

points cost (3,4? points)

• This is mechanic similar to Faceless manipulator in hearthstone, for those familiar to the game
  
• Is a hard equalizer to very powerful crew cards, such as gunner, palpatine, zuckuss etc.. It should NOT wipe these cards out of the meta entirely, but make games against them closer. Importantly, it makes games against lists without these kinds of shenanigans harder because of the loss of 4 pts and a crew slot.
  
• you may have poor choices to pick from or none at all, so overcosted against lists which omit these kinds of cards entirely, so it's a bit of a gamble.
  

takes up a valuable crew slot. (or since technically its communications from a rebel infiltrator, maybe it should be... systems? not sure.)

Curious to see if this kind of mechanic is of interest to people.

Would never be made for the simple reason that the enemy doesn't have to run crew.

• Is a hard equalizer to very powerful crew cards, such as gunner, palpatine, zuckuss etc.. It should NOT wipe these cards out of the meta entirely, but make games against them closer. Importantly, it makes games against lists without these kinds of shenanigans harder because of the loss of 4 pts and a crew slot.
• you may have poor choices to pick from or none at all, so overcosted against lists which omit these kinds of cards entirely, so it's a bit of a gamble.

-Bossk only has 1 AGI so he could really care less.

-Dengar likes Zuckuss because of his double-tap potential using Zuckuss for both attacks, but many other ships can't double tap at all.

I mean, TLTs love the thought of Zuckuss for both attacks, but what good does it do when, against a Zuckuss list, both shots are pretty likely to hit anyways? They're best served using Zuckuss against x7s, but of course that cannot happen currently or even with this card you propose.

Opposing Palpatine may work quite well, though.

The problem is Rebels really have a lot of great crew to choose from, and I think the opportunity cost of possibly not being able to leverage a crew slot is what really holds this back.

The pricing is spot on, IF you had assurance that it could be used for SOMEthing instead of nothing.

It would work well if you did not restrict it to enemy crew only. At the requirement of you having another crew-carrying ship, the benefit could be excellent in any game. That said, the cost may need adjusting upwards if you go with that suggestion (or perhaps if you choose a friendly crew, it must be non-unique).

Would never be made for the simple reason that the enemy doesn't have to run crew.

Yea, that's pretty much the penalty you'd have to pay for the card. It's a gamble.

• Is a hard equalizer to very powerful crew cards, such as gunner, palpatine, zuckuss etc.. It should NOT wipe these cards out of the meta entirely, but make games against them closer. Importantly, it makes games against lists without these kinds of shenanigans harder because of the loss of 4 pts and a crew slot.
• you may have poor choices to pick from or none at all, so overcosted against lists which omit these kinds of cards entirely, so it's a bit of a gamble.

Zuckuss carriers are generally less susceptible to Zuckuss shenanigans than many other ships. It doesn't work well to equalize that card in particular, because...

-Bossk only has 1 AGI so he could really care less.

-Dengar likes Zuckuss because of his double-tap potential using Zuckuss for both attacks, but many other ships can't double tap at all.

I mean, TLTs love the thought of Zuckuss for both attacks, but what good does it do when, against a Zuckuss list, both shots are pretty likely to hit anyways? They're best served using Zuckuss against x7s, but of course that cannot happen currently or even with this card you propose.

Opposing Palpatine may work quite well, though.

The problem is Rebels really have a lot of great crew to choose from, and I think the opportunity cost of possibly not being able to leverage a crew slot is what really holds this back.

The pricing is spot on, IF you had assurance that it could be used for SOMEthing instead of nothing.

It would work well if you did not restrict it to enemy crew only. At the requirement of you having another crew-carrying ship, the benefit could be excellent in any game. That said, the cost may need adjusting upwards if you go with that suggestion (or perhaps if you choose a friendly crew, it must be non-unique).

I was thinking of the first turn glitterstim/countermeasures that dengar pulls off, a zuckuss-like ability on that first turn could be really damaging, but point taken. I think against any card with a lower point cost it'd be an overcosted drain on your squad points.

I think you're right though about rebels having too many crew, maybe the simple solution is to make it a factionless card itself, "Infiltration agent" or something to that effect, which opens up mirror matches a bit, the card text would have to specify you can't copy a card you already have (e.g. two palps would be ridiculous).

If you made it a modification instead, "Live feed from fulcrum" etc. that really makes it a tough one to incorporate and would see use on support ships I'm sure as aces just couldn't give up the mode slot.

If it existed as a 4pt modification, heck yea I'd put that on a HWK.

I like the idea of a generic "Fulcrum Agent" crew for Rebels, but maybe as a powered up Intel Agent or Saboteur. Cloning an opponent's card is interesting, but difficult to balance.

Maybe I just don't hate Palpatine enough (or at all) but letting the rebels use him for half the cost and half the crew slots seems insane to me. You also are basically just automatically making an card which is impossible to balance because it makes every crew released past or future available to the rebel faction.

Maybe I just don't hate Palpatine enough (or at all) but letting the rebels use him for half the cost and half the crew slots seems insane to me. You also are basically just automatically making an card which is impossible to balance because it makes every crew released past or future available to the rebel faction.

I think the points costing on this is the difficult thing. Because I actually kinda like Palpatine, it's a nice mimic of battle meditation. And yes, against an opponent with Palp you'd pick up the abilities on the cheap, but against many many other lists you'd have an average effect or nothing at all. The suggestion of being able to duplicate a friendly crew might work, and then bumping the points up to compensate.

Yea, that's pretty much the penalty you'd have to pay for the card. It's a gamble.

And against FFG's design philosophy: only pilot skill modifiers have a chance of being worthless.

Countercards (Predator/Dengar and Autothrusters come to mind) always seem to have a small effect against everything then a stronger effect against what they counter. FFG designs cards that are stronger against certain ships but never ones that are useless against others.

Yea, that's pretty much the penalty you'd have to pay for the card. It's a gamble.

And against FFG's design philosophy: only pilot skill modifiers have a chance of being worthless.

Countercards (Predator/Dengar and Autothrusters come to mind) always seem to have a small effect against everything then a stronger effect against what they counter. FFG designs cards that are stronger against certain ships but never ones that are useless against others.

I guess, but cards like Determination are all or nothing. Again, the solution to this may be to let you copy the effect of a friendly card as well, but in this case the cost of this card would need to be greater or equal to the cost of similar cards that could be taken, so you couldn't spam it for cheap gunners, for example.

Yea, that's pretty much the penalty you'd have to pay for the card. It's a gamble.

And against FFG's design philosophy: only pilot skill modifiers have a chance of being worthless.

Countercards (Predator/Dengar and Autothrusters come to mind) always seem to have a small effect against everything then a stronger effect against what they counter. FFG designs cards that are stronger against certain ships but never ones that are useless against others.

I guess, but cards like Determination are all or nothing. Again, the solution to this may be to let you copy the effect of a friendly card as well, but in this case the cost of this card would need to be greater or equal to the cost of similar cards that could be taken, so you couldn't spam it for cheap gunners, for example.

Determination always has the possibility to trigger regardless of the enemy list. The enemy can't run a list without a damage deck.

Determination always has the possibility to trigger regardless of the enemy list. The enemy can't run a list without a damage deck.

fair nuff!

mechanic on one's own cards then is required to fit this philosophy sounds like!

Rather than mirroring a friendly (which adds another layer to a concept that is already very hard to balance) maybe make it a dual card? Mimic on one side or flip at the start of the game to Ahsoka and get some sort of enhanced intel agent or focus token assignor.

I could certainly be wrong but I think this card wouldn't be too OP since it depends on the enemies squad build- something you have only limited ability to plan around.

I think the only way it would work fairly, and points cost could drop down to maybe even one, is if it is a single use thing. So you pop it and get the effect for one turn and then it's done.

It would be classic case of bad game design. Do not ever create cards that are utterly worthless against many lists while being ridiculously overpowered against others. In short term it will produce a series of wildly imbalanced games, where the player who uses the said card either has a very easy or a very hard match up, with relatively few balanced ones. In the long term it will drastically decrease the variety in the game by pushing certain upgrades or even entire lists completely out of the meta. It's just... bad.

Yea, that's pretty much the penalty you'd have to pay for the card. It's a gamble.

And against FFG's design philosophy: only pilot skill modifiers have a chance of being worthless.

Countercards (Predator/Dengar and Autothrusters come to mind) always seem to have a small effect against everything then a stronger effect against what they counter. FFG designs cards that are stronger against certain ships but never ones that are useless against others.

I guess, but cards like Determination are all or nothing. Again, the solution to this may be to let you copy the effect of a friendly card as well, but in this case the cost of this card would need to be greater or equal to the cost of similar cards that could be taken, so you couldn't spam it for cheap gunners, for example.

Determination always has the possibility to trigger regardless of the enemy list. The enemy can't run a list without a damage deck.

Boba Fett crew can enter a game useless.

Edit: I don't like the card idea in the OP, but I don't think the "design philosophy" you speak of actually exists.

There are definitely cards that you can equip that cannot end up being used in game. Boba was already mentioned. They just don't end up seeing much play. There's no real 'design element' argument to be made there.

As to whether or not its good design...

I quite like the concept, although you could control it a bit more. The flip card idea is one way. It could also copy instead any one crew card of the opponent's choice. Therefore, it they're playing Palp, its on them to run another crew too to protect that investment. Its important, imo, to make sure your opponent has a way to plan around whatever you're bringing if they're clever enough, which is part of why Palp's a bad game design.

I think the balance is in the point cost. Make the rebel crew card 0 or one point, but you cannot "clone" an opponent's crew greater than the "space you have avaliable under 100 points. For example: i have clone card and a 98-point list. I could not clone K4 Security Droid at 3 points, no room, but i could clone Zuckuss.

This puts the risk in how much on an initiative bid you build in a list trolling for clones. If your opponent brings a tie swarm, well too bad. Leave 8 points on the table in a ghost list looking for Palpatine, you have better expect to find him a lot. With palp, you might even require an additional open crew slot.