We are starting to see a resurgence of quad TLTs now that U-boats got the nerf bat. I personally feel that multiple TLT lists are the best way to make this great game boring and frustrating. With that in mind I had a thought of a card that would help.

Jamming Pulse. Torpedo 1 or 2 points

At the start of the combat phase you may discard this card to assign a jamming token to your ship.

Jamming token- A ship with this token may not be the target of secondary weapons while outside of the attackers firing arc at range 2-3. Remove this token during the cleanup phase when unused focus and evade tokens are removed.

Make a missile version as well. It would work with Extra Munitions to get 2 uses. It would help buy time against multiple TLT lists so you can take down a couple of the Y-wings. The TLTs would have the option of trying to keep things in arc and negate the effect.

I know this really seems like something that should be an illicit but I think every faction should have access to it if it were made.

I read a suggestion elsewhere that turrets should drop a die when out of arc, but that seems very sledgehammer/nut. Even at secondary turrets only, it seems a bit of a violent nerf (two dice ICT? Single die Autoblaster?). Most of the suggestions have been similarly hard to chew, and I can't say I'm too enamoured with spending points on ordnance to delay being hit under very conditional circumstances by a round. It involves a whole new card, which requires a whole new expansion, and a fair chunk of ships that need it, don't even have ordnance slots.

Personally, I think the most elegant solution is simply to apply a defensive range bonus. It doesn't have an effect on any other turret, can be done via an errata rather than a series of points spent in upgrades, and isn't going to confine the TLT to the junk drawer outright.

Autothrusters.

With no disrespect intended we have already seen the TLT boogie man. They are actually pretty easy to deal with. That range 1 croissant (as my good friend ObiWonka likes to call it) is pretty easy to abuse due to the carriers of TLT being a generally low pilot skill.

With your idea of a jamming beam i think the effect is a bit too powerful. One version i have been toying with for some custom cards just makes you roll 1 fewer attack dice.

Autothrusters.

With no disrespect intended we have already seen the TLT boogie man. They are actually pretty easy to deal with. That range 1 croissant (as my good friend ObiWonka likes to call it) is pretty easy to abuse due to the carriers of TLT being a generally low pilot skill.

With your idea of a jamming beam i think the effect is a bit too powerful. One version i have been toying with for some custom cards just makes you roll 1 fewer attack dice.

I was thinking the of this for low agility slower ships. Autothursters are great against TLTs but the vast majority of ships don't have boost so they can't equip them. Almost every ship in the game has some kind of ordinance slot that goes unused 75% of the time.

I'm interested to find out why you think this is overpowered? It only lasts 1 turn and can be countered by simply having arc on your intended target. A good player with a 4 TLT Y list could make sure they always have a target for most of their turrets. It would just mean they can't mindlessly fly around in a big circle shooting at stuff.

In fairness, the big TLT problem is more ships that can't actually take AT. It does do serious work vs TLT, but there's surely some kind of balance yet to be struck between it, and ships that don't have native boost to support AT.

A defensive range bonus isn't going to stop a Decimator or Ghost from sucking up two damage at R3, but it might give 1Agi ships a fighting chance on approach, and ships without boost a shot at surviving multiple volleys.

I just can't see anything that involves a new upgrade card or spending further points/wasting slots solving it better than a simple wording change.

I would be open to any new ideas on the subject. TLT spam is kind of my pet peeve and not because I think it is broken and OP. I just hate to play against it and would NEVER play it myself. I would rather not play a game than play against Thug life because it is just not an enjoyable experience. I am lucky that pretty much all the local players feel the same way.

TLTs are +1 point. There they now cost the same as an HLC.

TLTs are +1 point. There they now cost the same as an HLC.

Doesn't really accomplish much. Thug Life loses the droids but still murders anything under 2 agility. Sadly that would only really help ships with boost but they don't need help because they have Autos.

Maybe double unique so you can only have 2 in a list?

Game design 101: do not create upgrades that are only good versus one particular type of opponent, while being virtually useless against everything else. These tend to create a very frustrating experience to one side or the other. If the opponent picks the kind of list that gets countered by the said upgrade, they get frustrated because their entire list was rendered ineffective by a relatively cheap upgrade and there's almost nothing they can do about it. On the other hand, if the opponent does not choose the countered list, the player who took the upgrade is at a disadvantage because he has invested several points in upgrades that are dead weight. That is unless the upgrade really is so cheap it doesn't matter much, but that means the countered list will be completely wiped out from the meta, which again is a terrible example of game design.

Anyway, I have no idea what made you think multiple TLTs are a problem right now. Looking at the top cut of major tournaments, I see very little of that. Meta right now is dominated by scum mindlink lists and various flavors of defenders. Mass TLTs show up here and there but are hardly dominant.

TLTs are +1 point. There they now cost the same as an HLC.

Doesn't really accomplish much. Thug Life loses the droids but still murders anything under 2 agility. Sadly that would only really help ships with boost but they don't need help because they have Autos.

Maybe double unique so you can only have 2 in a list?

Well if it loses some of the droids I think that is a significant effect. You will have fast thugs and basic thugs. There will be a target priority and some asymmetry in opposing the list. It is not just facing 4 clones of the same ship where there is no inherent weakness.

Also mindlink is another option for increasing the point cost by 1 since it has become a commonly splashed card.

TLTs are +1 point. There they now cost the same as an HLC.

Doesn't really accomplish much. Thug Life loses the droids but still murders anything under 2 agility. Sadly that would only really help ships with boost but they don't need help because they have Autos.

Maybe double unique so you can only have 2 in a list?

Its not thug life. Thug life is 4 Ion/5 ABT Warthogs.

Spam of TLTs is not an issue, the list isn't viable right now as it melts to Attani lists just as fast as it did to U-Boats.

Personally, the best tech I've found for countering them is fire... and kerosene. Lots and lots of kerosene....

Some anti-TLT list ideas:

Punish them!

Punisher with AT and collision detector X 3

Palp shuttle

Bring those debris clouds!

Gives you 2 points for a bid or shenanigans like baffles on the shuttle and/or tractor beam to disrupt their formation and take away that measly one agility.

Autoceptors X 5, they lose the PS battle but they won't really need to shoot first if those TLTs just keep missing. Also don't be afraid to bump into those slow pokes, if you miss the bump you are gonna be in range one anyway, and most likely range of any other TLTs.

Light Scyks, the new scum swarm. Add Serrisu for defensive rerolls on each TLT shot, upgrade to TPVs and add elusiveness to mess with their shots(you got almost the same greens as Aggressors!), or juke to do the same without stress if you plan on spamming evade. You could even add a heavy TB Scyk if you want to make those range one primaries really hurt.

MindLink Mangler Scyks (upgrade one to HLC) only gives you 4, but a lot of token stacking.

4 Fearless Concorde dawn aces with titles would require a lot of fancy flying but you could avoid the TLTs altogether and probably avoid the range one primary to hit them with 5 red dice.

3 imp sprays, one with slave one title and LRS and one point for a TB or cheap crew could possibly chew through a TLT list, the large bases can get into range one of multiple TLTs if flown properly.

Rookies with Protons and chimps (or plasmas and IA R2s) could deliver harsh alpha strikes and hammer away with 4 dice in the croissant.

Really just get creative with what's already in your collection. Building lists against TLTs isn't hard, building a list that works against TLTs AND other meta lists is the challange.

Also, as for Attani vs TLT, that really depends on the Attanni list IMO. Sure Fenn is pretty good against 1-2 standard TLT shots, so if flown well he doesn't have many problems against the standard 4 thugs. The third ships that isn't Manny generally tends to be somewhat weak to TLT actually (with the exception of Terry or IGC). Asajj or Boba, while still very winnable, really don't want to face TLT because it is much harder to keep a range 1 and a range 1-2 ability active against them and you don't have Autothrusters, so that's not really ideal even though you do end up with double focus + evade against them. Granted, Asajj or Boba with Fenn will win the damage race against a TLT list 80% of the time through just sheer health + token stacks, but I certainly don't think TLTs are a list that just melts to Mindlink. I mean, Fenn's green dice are pretty fickle and a few bad rolls can really **** him, even with Autothrusters and tokens that will inevitably get burnt through. Then there is Miranda's TLT, which protectorates don't like very much, since she can boost it to 4 dice and generally have the mods to make damage stick on that shot. This isn't as much of a problem for Fenn, since he can boost into range 1 of Miranda and she certainly won't have shields to spend when that happens. Terry should be pretty vulnerable to Mirandas TLT though, since she can dodge him with relative ease and there isn't much he can do aside from pray to the dice gods that she doesn't roll well. The last bit is mostly theoretical though I must confess, as I've not played 2 fangs + Manny against Miranda.

I think Jammers is great, it's a one time use. If it's too good then make is a mod (opportunity cost also replaces autothrusters at auto-include) or make it cost more.

TLT's en masse are really not a problem any more, so I fail to see why anything specifically targeting them is needed.

Quite aside from anything else, the fact that 4 TLT's are so utterly boring for both the opponent and the player flying it has practically rendered it extinct anyway.

But, if you are really struggling against them, the counter is relatively simple - get into Range 1, don't let them focus fire, and take one out as quickly as possible, because each one that goes down represents a huge drop in firepower.

I ran 2x tlt y-wings and came up against tie-d ion defenders... Well that went poorly.

I think there are more counters for TLT's then there used to be.. maybe let the meta shake out some more.

I ran 2x tlt y-wings and came up against tie-d ion defenders... Well that went poorly.

I think there are more counters for TLT's then there used to be.. maybe let the meta shake out some more.

Building on that basis, Tractors.... you throw that Y-Wing on a rock and you get damage, he loses his 1 agl and he's not shooting... I know people like that cannon shot for an HLC or Mangler but if you've dumped him on a rock with 0 AGL and the rest of your list is only 2 dice primary, you're still looking fairly good.

I ran 2x tlt y-wings and came up against tie-d ion defenders... Well that went poorly.

I think there are more counters for TLT's then there used to be.. maybe let the meta shake out some more.

I do agree with this. TLT are a great counter for Defenders too (other than Ion-D!). If you weaken TLTs then what happens to the rest of the meta?

The TLT problem is more with their existence holding back many low agility ships. I'm not saying it's the sole reason B-wings and Punishers aren't in the meta, but it's a contributing factor to the defensive-led nature of the meta since their release. Suddenly 2Agi without AT isn't considered average, but outright bad. 3Agi with token stacking is the new survivability norm. TLT doesn't dent that, but many ships that can would lose horribly to TLT.

I'm not even talking about swarm TLT here. I'm talking about 2 in a list, or a Ghost double-tapping one. It's become a gateway in list building for a hell of a lot of ships, as much as a token stacked defender has.

I dislike playing against quad tlt as much as anyone else. To be fair though, when there are only 1 or 2 in the list it feels decently balanced to play against. I feel like there may be less diversity of lists to play if it were nerfed or removed. As much as quad tlt is a pain to play against if they didn't exist would that change the metagame much? It isn't like it is dominating the top 16. It isn't even really a gatekeeper. Would b- wings and other low agillity ships be able to withstand the hyper aggresion of the current top tables? A lot of questions I don't have answers for. If Tlt had just been range 1-2 like every other turret secondary, would this even be a discussion?

Hmmm. TLTs are problem? Maybe if you allow deadeye to work on large and small ships, we would see not as many TLT lists?

The TLT problem is more with their existence holding back many low agility ships. I'm not saying it's the sole reason B-wings and Punishers aren't in the meta, but it's a contributing factor to the defensive-led nature of the meta since their release. Suddenly 2Agi without AT isn't considered average, but outright bad. 3Agi with token stacking is the new survivability norm. TLT doesn't dent that, but many ships that can would lose horribly to TLT.

I'm not even talking about swarm TLT here. I'm talking about 2 in a list, or a Ghost double-tapping one. It's become a gateway in list building for a hell of a lot of ships, as much as a token stacked defender has.

Completely disagree. While the TLT might have been a factor in the wane of the B-Wing, the fact that the turret has receded somewhat but B-Wings havn't really resurfaced suggests the problem is not soley there. Arguably it's in the general increase of firepower, with more and more ships able to put significant damage on a B-Wing in a single round.

As for defence against TLT's, 3 AGI really is not much more safe then 2 or even 1 - not even tokened Defenders will withstand it indefinitely, trust me - but it does give you an unknown factor of how long you'll live. The lower your agility, the less likely you'll ever dodge a TLT shot, and so can measure your lifespan out if you are shot every turn and plan for that, which in a weird way can turn out to be an advantage over the uncertainty of green dice. Autothrusters are a different story, though, since they will be triggering on each shot as opposed to tokens which are one-use, and so are the perfect defence against them.

Which ships do you believe TLT's are keeping out of the game right now, other than B-Wings? I think the general decline in mass TLT use (because a) it's not as effective as it used to be, and b) it is boring as all hell) has already opened up the game to ships considered vulnerable to them, since when it is only one or two shots a turn, it's perfectly manageable and killable, albreit reliable. The ARC-170 is my absolute go-to example here, because at the moment it is one of the best ships Rebels have, yet at 1 AGI one would assume it 'gated' out by TLT's from your example, but it certainly isn't (Norra is everywhere).

I believe TLT's have settled into their place in the game - a pricey but very reliable turret with some very noticeable and exploitable weaknesses, and so while 1 or 2 of them in a list will likely always be a solid choice, I sincerely doubt they will ever return as the sole weapon of a list, and really it was only that that 'gated out' certain ships the way you describe.

I think TLTs are a pretty fair deal. They cost a lot at 6 squadpoints and only really do a maximum of 2 damage per round.

That being said, there aren't any easy ways to write a TLT counter into the game anyway. The best way I can think of doing it is to have a card like this:

Bulky Armor Plating

Modification

Whenever you are defending against an attack,

the attacker rolls 1 additional dice.

If an attack hits you, you suffer 1 fewer damage.

Cost 3

TLT aren't a big deal. Just having the doughnut hole is a huge liability already. Auto thrusters wreck them. Yes only certain ship can take auto thrusters but only certain ships can take TLT also. That's true of almost every upgrade in the game other than most of the mods, which is a very small number of cards.

Sensor jammer is also a TLT wrecker, even more so than Auto thrusters.