I think that there are a few cards in the game which are not balanced. Whether they are too cheap for their impact in the game. Or too costly, and are not worth it compared to other cards.

For instance, I think that is so much better than that I never take leading shots.
Here's why...
So when using leading shots you get to reroll dice, the only dice worth re-rolling are either Red or Black for when they miss (and its very rare to use leading shots to reroll black, as not many ships can equip leading shots and have black dice in their armament, or can't equip Ordnance experts.)
So rerolling red dice is good, but you have to spend one dice, so it means to break even to have to ATLEAST roll whatever the symbol was on the blue dice (of which you discarded) to have the same result as before.
Where as with SW 7's you are guaranteed damage depending how how many blue dice you roll (three blue dice = three damage)
Also it means that if you roll targeters on your Red and Blue dice, you can just use the targeters on Red and use the targeters on the blue dice for damage. Therefore giving you a choice on how to use you're dice. Giving the player more options on how to use thier dice, and guarantee's aswell.

Where as with Leading shots, you can reroll the dice and its still up to chance on what results you get. For instance, say you roll three hits on three blue dice, and three blank's on three red dice (pretty unlucky I know but still). And you need at-least one targeters to destroy the enemy vessel. You could spend one of the blue dice, and reroll those three red's and still not roll any targeters.

For a measly one point more I think that SW 7 are just so much better than leading shots. It removes alot of the chance in rolling the dice, and anything in the game which gives you absolute certainties are a godsend in a random game.
Either SW 7 should be more expensive in points, or Leading shots should be cheaper. To make them more viable choices.
Say if SW 7 were 6-8 points, then the value in leading shots is that they are cheaper upgrade so you can afford other things, only having a one point difference is almost negligible when it comes to value for the card.
Ideally you want EVERY card to be a viable choice, due to tactics, or the configuration of a ship. But in this instance I think that leading shots is never worth it compared to SW 7's.

What do you guys think? Does anyone have any cards which they never pick because of being too expensive compared to other cards? Or not worth the investment in points?

I think the meta says the exact opposite , with Leading Shots being near-universally preferred to SW-7 (except in specific blue-heavy builds).

Simply put, being able to re-roll red and black dice massively increases your expected damage output. You need to have a very large blue pool before SW-7 is worth it.

For me, Leading Shots is more worth it for one reason: Red Dice.

Side arcs of an Ackbar HMC80 disagree with you. Enjoy rolling 5 blank or accuracy reds and 3 blues. I've done it and it is the WORST. Leading Shots is an autoinclude on that ship.

So the only reason I can see is that if your ship has alot more red dice than blue. Say a
Then that makes sense to reroll the red dice, otherwise its not worth it (in my opinion). I would take guarantee's any day over the POSSIBLE chance of scoring higher, or getting that targetter that you need.

I actually prefer LS over SW-7 on every large ship I take. LS works best with large batteries, and it let's me increase my damage or fish for Acc. I also like to gamble, so I'd prefer rerolling reds to potentially get a double or crit, instead of taking the +1 from blue dice.

In regards to unbalanced upgrades, the older titles tend to be more expensive than they should be, like Redemption or Dominator. Tarkin and Madine are too expensive for their utility as well. I can take Comms Net for 25 points or a Nav Team for 4 and get the same effect, and take another commander.

I'd be willing to say some of the ships are quite bland as well. Nebs tend to always be Yavaris, because Nebs suck. It's like they were a prototype model that didn't get fixed before the game was released. The strongest arc is the narrowest and the weakest is the largest?? Where is the logic in that, where every other ship has their strongest arc, in regards to battery and (mostly) shields, as the largest arc.

Vics got a big buff in wave 5, but I still feel like something is missing to make them a staple in the current meta. Running 1 feels awkward because it is slow and can get separated, but running 2 pigeon holes your fleet into a slow rolling front arc fleet. JJ and Tua help in this regard, but taking them forces your fleet in a certain direction, where as the counter part, the AF, can ideally be added to any fleet and work well.

Lets talk about you and me!

Agreed with your last point. Cr90b's make so much sense carrying sw7s. Beyond that pretty much every ship has a high red count with the blues except the interdictor

Maybe its the way I look at things, or perhaps you are really unlucky when rolling dice?
Take the for instance
I would rather take SW7's, knowing that it will do four damage guaranteed. And have the option of using the Red targetters as targetters and the blue dice as pure damage.
Sure rerolls are good, but you have to -1 to your roll to reroll your dice. I mean, how bad are you rolling? 2-3 blanks on red? That's pretty unlucky.

So...

• There are circumstances where LS is clearly better than SW-7 (e.g. MC80AC, ISD, Ackbar'd anything)
• There are circumstances where SW-7 is clearly better than LS (e.g. CR90B, suppression Interdictor)
• And there are circumstances where it's a wash, or neither is a worthwhile addition (VSD, Raider)

What did we actually learn today? Perhaps something about hasty conclusions and overgeneralization?

Leading shots works on anti squadron. If your ship has 2 blue anti sqadron it increases the average damage from 1 to 1.125 for what it's worth. To compare, toryn increases by about 0.25 for 7 points but on several ships.

Thanks to Sniperbon for posting this.

Many of us may disagree with the conclusions drawn in the OP. But these are the kinds of discussion I like to see on the forums.

There are a few builds I prefer SW-7 on (ISD with H9, CR90B). But when there are a lot of red dice, Leading Shots is a good bet.

Yeah, SW7s are pretty legit on mostly-blue ships like the Suppressor Interdictor (although you can definitely make a good argument for Ion Cannon Batteries) and the CR90B. Otherwise big ships prefer their Leading Shots for the reasons already given above. I have a hard time imagining an ISD-II build that prefers SW7s over Leading Shots and is more competitive that way (and it would likely be relying on Avenger shenanigans quite likely).

...which is basically what Armada does with its upgrades. Upgrades tend to be preferable for different kinds of ships in different kinds of fleets. You could get a lot more mileage out of a thread discussing generally awful upgrades (Point Defense Reroute, ahoy!) than a thread about one upgrade outclassing another because some ships are going to prefer one over the other, even if it's more niche.

Unless you had Ackbar, I would be really surprised to see leading shots on a ship. Again its just me. I prefer guaranteed results over random chance.

Vader might prefer SW-7s to Leading Shots with his ISDs, but frankly even in those cases I am leaning towards Ion Cannon Batteries over SW7s.

Leading Shots also valuable on Defiance or in Sato fleets where you can add a blue at long range to trigger re-rolls of your red dice. Just throwing this in as I don't see it mentioned yet.

2 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

Yeah, SW7s are pretty legit on mostly-blue ships like the Suppressor Interdictor (although you can definitely make a good argument for Ion Cannon Batteries) and the CR90B. Otherwise big ships prefer their Leading Shots for the reasons already given above. I have a hard time imagining an ISD-II build that prefers SW7s over Leading Shots and is more competitive that way (and it would likely be relying on Avenger shenanigans quite likely).

...which is basically what Armada does with its upgrades. Upgrades tend to be preferable for different kinds of ships in different kinds of fleets. You could get a lot more mileage out of a thread discussing generally awful upgrades (Point Defense Reroute, ahoy!) than a thread about one upgrade outclassing another because some ships are going to prefer one over the other, even if it's more niche.

Yeah there are certainly some absolutely awful upgrade cards which are not worth their points an should be re-worked *cough Point defense reroute cough*

2 minutes ago, Sniperbon said:

Unless you had Ackbar, I would be really surprised to see leading shots on a ship. Again its just me. I prefer guaranteed results over random chance.

Which is totally fair. I think there are some definite cases for using SW7s. Mon Karren for example mostly doesn't need accuracy results and makes good use of SW7s.

For myself, nothing beats dice modification. Re-rolls are great and Leading Shots is one of the more reliable methods of getting them. It also works other ways. I have used it to fish for crits or accuracys when I have enough damage, but need one of those results instead.

I love my SW7's on ISD2's when paired with xi7.. xi7 means you NEVER acc a redirect, so any more than 1 or 2 at most acc become wasted. If your opponent is using ECM all acc are wasted (beyond exaushting ECM) in many cases.

Point defense.... Way over costed

Cluster bombs would be good if they had put it on the correct slot, but they really wanted to make it work with the mc30 and the game suffered because of it.

APT not being an exhaust I think was a miss. If not exhaust it needed to be 6.

Ion turbines being the same cost as RR is inconsistent with previous pricing structure. I actually agree with it though.

2 minutes ago, Sniperbon said:

Unless you had Ackbar, I would be really surprised to see leading shots on a ship. Again its just me. I prefer guaranteed results over random chance.

Risk aversion is a very legitimate position. But X guaranteed damage is only better than Y average damage if X ~ Y. For Y >> X, then in the long run you'll be better off taking risks.

SW-7 increases your average damage output by +0.25 per blue die.

LS increases your average damage output by a much more complicated value, but with reasonable assumptions you come to +0.31 per red die, +0.25 per black die, and +0.25 per blue die, minus 0.75 from the discarded blue die.

So, roughly speaking, LS becomes noticeably better when (red+black+blue) > (blue + 3), i.e. when rolling three or more red+black dice, regardless of the amount of blue dice.

...which aligns very precisely with what the experience and empirical evidence posted by various people above would suggest.

38 minutes ago, Sniperbon said:

I think that there are a few cards in the game which are not balanced. Whether they are too cheap for their impact in the game. Or too costly, and are not worth it compared to other cards.

For instance, I think that is so much better than that I never take leading shots.
Here's why...
So when using leading shots you get to reroll dice, the only dice worth re-rolling are either Red or Black for when they miss (and its very rare to use leading shots to reroll black, as not many ships can equip leading shots and have black dice in their armament, or can't equip Ordnance experts.)
So rerolling red dice is good, but you have to spend one dice, so it means to break even to have to ATLEAST roll whatever the symbol was on the blue dice (of which you discarded) to have the same result as before.
Where as with SW 7's you are guaranteed damage depending how how many blue dice you roll (three blue dice = three damage)
Also it means that if you roll targeters on your Red and Blue dice, you can just use the targeters on Red and use the targeters on the blue dice for damage. Therefore giving you a choice on how to use you're dice. Giving the player more options on how to use thier dice, and guarantee's aswell.

Where as with Leading shots, you can reroll the dice and its still up to chance on what results you get. For instance, say you roll three hits on three blue dice, and three blank's on three red dice (pretty unlucky I know but still). And you need at-least one targeters to destroy the enemy vessel. You could spend one of the blue dice, and reroll those three red's and still not roll any targeters.

For a measly one point more I think that SW 7 are just so much better than leading shots. It removes alot of the chance in rolling the dice, and anything in the game which gives you absolute certainties are a godsend in a random game.
Either SW 7 should be more expensive in points, or Leading shots should be cheaper. To make them more viable choices.
Say if SW 7 were 6-8 points, then the value in leading shots is that they are cheaper upgrade so you can afford other things, only having a one point difference is almost negligible when it comes to value for the card.
Ideally you want EVERY card to be a viable choice, due to tactics, or the configuration of a ship. But in this instance I think that leading shots is never worth it compared to SW 7's.

What do you guys think? Does anyone have any cards which they never pick because of being too expensive compared to other cards? Or not worth the investment in points?

I'm with you 100% on SW-7s. I'm not a gambler. I take a sure thing over a high payout every day. I'd rather be working for a paycheck than waiting to win the lottery.

I run my Avenger ISD II with Screed, Needa, Gunnery teams, ECMs, SW-7s, TRCs, and Avenger. The way I see it is on my worst roll, I guarantee 7 damage. Consistent. When you know your minimum, your average roll, and your peak, you take the guess work out of shooting, makes planning that much easier. My PulseTap fleet is FEARED at my store... I've been known to TKO fleets round 3.

Everyone gets dollar signs in their eyes when they see leading shots and lots of reds to reroll, and so many times I've seen it backfire. Too many people undervalue a sure thing. SW-7s is the underrated champ of this game. Especially with some of the cool stuff sato lets you do now.

Star cruiser with Sato and sw7 with CF is a garuenteed 7 damage everytime

16 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

"I run my Avenger ISD II with Screed, Needa, Gunnery teams, ECMs, SW-7s, TRCs, and Avenger."

Haha that is pretty evil. Might have to try that out myself

15 minutes ago, Sniperbon said:

Haha that is pretty evil. Might have to try that out myself

I've made many versions of this fleet. If I'm running a fleet with an ISD II, it's gonna look like this. I've done everything from run Vic IIs to OP to Raiders to OP all the way to a huge cluster of bombers to force them to sped tokens early.... No matter how I build with this ISD, it always turns out mean.

That said, it takes practice, smart deployment is essential, knowing when to go aggressive or hold back and be defensive is important. Activation order, especially with Avenger, is an obvious must.

Give it a try some time, lot's of fun.

What I ran Friday:


Before the match^


Mid way through round one I remembered to take pictures^ lol



End of round 2^


End of round 4^ where my opponent conceded

3 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Mid way through round one I remembered to take pictures^ lol

I take it you moved the Gozantis and then took pictures? Because that MC30 looks like it deployed too close to the side otherwise...

Nice to see dual ISDs working.