1 minute ago, Boris_the_Dwarf said:

One thing that is clear from this round of nerfs, no card is safe. No ship is safe. It's a proverbial vote of no confidence in the design team, as even when they make things better they just have to turn around and make them worse. It definitely makes me skeptic about buying packs to build awesome fleets if it's just going to be a culture of fear in which we can't ever feel confident that we can enjoy the products we own.

exactly, do you feel confident to go by a C-ROC when it comes out knowing that within months some of it's best cards could be nerfed.

I feel like biggs might have needed something also to give the rebels more of a design space but FFG did good, so cheerio.

28 minutes ago, MalusCalibur said:

I can't help but feel that these changes are a response to a vocal minority of complaints, since they seem so laser-guided to the things that so often get whinged and moaned about (mostly baselessly), and not one of them feels right.

Or maybe they're in response to upcoming ships and upgrades that they've likely been playtesting for months now and which playtesters noted would play hell with the changed cards as they previously were.

9 minutes ago, MalusCalibur said:

I can't help but feel that these changes are a response to a vocal minority of complaints, since they seem so laser-guided to the things that so often get whinged and moaned about (mostly baselessly), and not one of them feels right.

The Palpatine change is madness - forcing the player to make the call beforehand makes for a card that is not worth 8pts and two crew slots any longer, and baffles me since Palpatine is a much rarer sight at top tables than he used to be and certainly doesn't feel an overbearing presence on the meta at the moment.

/x7 has been hit too hard - making it cancellable by collisions, I understand (though I don't agree), but making it an action as well takes it too far. There were already a fairly strict set of conditions on that evade (have to go fast enough, lose out on two upgrade slots) on a still very expensive ship, and it was still just a token which is already vulnerable to so many other things. My worry now is that, with efficiency as cut-throat as it is and how little there is between the current Defender and the pre-Veterans joke of a ship, it might be veering closer to be being back there.

Manaroo really didn't need a range limit - her weakness is an almost total lack of contribution in firepower for the 30-odd points spent on her (it's a rare list that gives her the title) - but giving her one so strict again strikes me as overdoing it.

Zuckuss, a card that has only ever been problematic in one build (that being Dengar/Manaroo) goes over to being probably not worth taking on any ship at all besides the C-ROC, since it's unlikely to compete with the other Scum crews for such a situational effect. Adding a cap to how much stress you could have before using it, fine (though again, I argue that it isn't needed), but once again, the solution goes too far.

Meanwhile the most common meta-list at the moment, Mindlink Ventress/Fenn/*insert third ship here* remains untouched, as it can (and does) function perfectly well without Manaroo, and arguably better since it's not dependant on her.

With how awkward, overly punishing, and coincidentally specific all of these changes are, I fear they are more a result of kneejerk sledgehammering than careful consideration of balance and the overall game state, and genuinely don't think they improve anything since Mindlink will remain at the top whereas common counters are severely hampered.

The Palp change will curtail his usage some but good Palp players will still probably do well. They just won't have those amazingly frustrating saves when they put their ships in a bad spot and their dice crap out.

The X7 change is fine. It still leaves Defender's tanky as hell but now they need to worry about stress and blocking a bit more. It comes from an upgrade that makes the ship its on cheaper. Hopefully this change makes the TIE/D a more attractive option than it has been when looking to include a Defender in a squad.

Manaroo needed a range limit. I don't think she needed to be limited to range 1 though. I think 2 would have gotten the desired effect while still leaving her a strong choice.

The change to Zuckuss was perfect. He was way better than a 1 point crew should have been and there were a few different ways to use him on ships that didn't care much about stacking stress. Of all the nerfs, I think that this one was the most elegant. It's still relatively easy to use Zuckuss to cause 1 evade to get rerolled against every attack you make. That makes a ship's damage output a bit more consistently higher. You are however still able to bring out the hammer with Zuckuss when something absolutely needs to get nuked. To me, that makes Zuckuss a much more interesting card than it is when he's equipped to a ship that can just apply the rule "reroll all your evade results, if you've got a focus token reroll all of your focus results as well".

That "Mindlink Ventress/Fenn/*insert third ship here*" list to which you refer has almost entirely had Manaroo as the third ship. I think the archetype was more along the lines of "Mindlink Manaroo/Fenn/*insert third ship here*". Manaroo is what pushed those lists up over the top. Without her those squads are just efficient and flexible. It's the second (or third) focus token from Manaroo that made the other ships as tanky as they were while still having decent damage output. People will probably still win with Mindlink squads but they won't be as dominant as they were. I don't think the goal of any of these nerfs was to beat a squad to extinction (ok, maybe Dangaroo) or even keep them off the top tables. All of these nerfs make the squads that relied on these cards more open to counter play and that's a good thing in my book.

These changes will ripple off each other and hard to see how it all plays out. My initial read is that stress-dealing got better, as that hits /x7 and is no longer being so widely undermined by Manaroo-powered Mindlink/Dengaroo squads.

Ryad is still ok but a stressed Vessery is in bad times now.

The most obvious worst excesses of defensive token/buff stacking is hit and that helps dogfighters return.

I still think they have a problem with how far they buffed Ordnance. That's kind of the last piece keeping small fighters out of the meta as they're a little vulnerable to just being swatted away by Bossk/Miranda. TLT worries me slightly.

10 minutes ago, Boris_the_Dwarf said:

One thing that is clear from this round of nerfs, no card is safe. No ship is safe.

Good, nor should they be.

Every release is tested far more rigorously by the playerbase after it's out than will ever be possible before. Having the will to respond effectively to design mistakes should give all X-Wing players confidence in the strength of the game to overcome design hiccups.

29 minutes ago, MalusCalibur said:

I can't help but feel that these changes are a response to a vocal minority of complaints, since they seem so laser-guided to the things that so often get whinged and moaned about (mostly baselessly), and not one of them feels right.

The Palpatine change is madness - forcing the player to make the call beforehand makes for a card that is not worth 8pts and two crew slots any longer, and baffles me since Palpatine is a much rarer sight at top tables than he used to be and certainly doesn't feel an overbearing presence on the meta at the moment.

/x7 has been hit too hard - making it cancellable by collisions, I understand (though I don't agree), but making it an action as well takes it too far. There were already a fairly strict set of conditions on that evade (have to go fast enough, lose out on two upgrade slots) on a still very expensive ship, and it was still just a token which is already vulnerable to so many other things. My worry now is that, with efficiency as cut-throat as it is and how little there is between the current Defender and the pre-Veterans joke of a ship, it might be veering closer to be being back there.

Manaroo really didn't need a range limit - her weakness is an almost total lack of contribution in firepower for the 30-odd points spent on her (it's a rare list that gives her the title) - but giving her one so strict again strikes me as overdoing it.

Zuckuss, a card that has only ever been problematic in one build (that being Dengar/Manaroo) goes over to being probably not worth taking on any ship at all besides the C-ROC, since it's unlikely to compete with the other Scum crews for such a situational effect. Adding a cap to how much stress you could have before using it, fine (though again, I argue that it isn't needed), but once again, the solution goes too far.

Meanwhile the most common meta-list at the moment, Mindlink Ventress/Fenn/*insert third ship here* remains untouched, as it can (and does) function perfectly well without Manaroo, and arguably better since it's not dependant on her.

With how awkward, overly punishing, and coincidentally specific all of these changes are, I fear they are more a result of kneejerk sledgehammering than careful consideration of balance and the overall game state, and genuinely don't think they improve anything since Mindlink will remain at the top whereas common counters are severely hampered.

I disagree. All of these changes seem intended to reign in power creep, which effects not just the current metagame, but every release going forward. I suspect not having to worry about interactions with the nerfed cards played as much if not more of a role in these decisions than the tournament metagame.

Per Major Juggler's comments, Palpatine was frequently doing 16 points of work on the shuttle- If it hadn't been such a poor chassis, he would have been even more insane! Indeed, I think we already saw one of the side effects of this- Would Tie Shuttles with Hux have been a problem? I highly doubt it. But because they needed to keep Palpatine from getting a more efficient platform, the Tie Shuttle had to have additional qualifiers. This also means they can experiment more with future Imperial Aces, with less fear that Palpatine will push them over the edge.

The Delta Squadron Pilot would have been competitive on release at 27 points. Paying 1 point (and two seldom used slots) for a conditional free not-action was nuts. Frankly, I highly doubt this nerf has pushed the defender below the old baseline. But still, lowering the x7 Defender's potential even a little bit means new jousters won't have to outshine the old classics quite as much to be competitive with Defenders.

Manaroo had enabled one incredibly powerful build already, and was playing an important role in another. Restricting her means the Development team doesn't have to worry as much about creating Dengaroo 2.0 everytime they release a new scum ship.

Zuckuss is the one we have the least information about, since Juggler focused on Dengaroo as a whole before he stopped discussing Mathwing on the forums. Still, Zuckuss was clearly doing a lot of work, and meant that every future Scum ship with a crew slot had to be carefully examined to ensure Zuckuss didn't push it over the edge.

As for the two elephants in the room that were left untouched... Attani Mindlink had only recently made its way into the competitive spotlight, so the development team can't have had much time to playtest adjustments. Manaroo's role in the early parattani builds also likely made them hesitant to make adjustments before seeing how this current batch of changes play out. And as for TLT... Short of increasing the point value by one or two (and they seem reluctant to change point costs still), I'm not sure how they could have changed the card without a lot of conditions that probably wouldn't have fit on the card if they ever reprinted it. TLT also plays a role in limiting the influence of Fat Turrets (TLT is what actually chased them away, not Autothrusters), so changing it could have a domino effect. Besides, it only recently made a comeback, so I doubt it was on the developer's radar. Finally, the turret upgrade slot isn't exactly common- As long as they don't release new ships with a turret upgrade slot, TLT doesn't have a significant impact on future releases.

1 minute ago, Darth evil said:

exactly, do you feel confident to go by a C-ROC when it comes out knowing that within months some of it's best cards could be nerfed.

I think this FAQ suggests that the development team isn't entirely comfortable with huge ships being bought solely for one power card, actually.

manaroo nerf does really affect the way paratanni works... manaroo generally wants to send her tokens to Fenn, but Fenn is rarely ever in range 1 of manaroo... she could probably just send her tokens to asajj, but then Fenn (with only one focus+ his action) is much less intimidating

2 minutes ago, Boris_the_Dwarf said:

One thing that is clear from this round of nerfs, no card is safe. No ship is safe. It's a proverbial vote of no confidence in the design team, as even when they make things better they just have to turn around and make them worse. It definitely makes me skeptical about buying packs to build awesome fleets if it's just going to be a culture of fear in which we can't ever feel confident that we can enjoy the products we own.

I guess that's one way to look at it. Personally I'm not feeling the anxiety.

I bought my Raider because I love the Tie Advanced. I preordered 2 Tie S/Fs despite reading how it was going to be DOA, because I thought it looked sweet. I own 2 Tie Phantoms. I have 2 Defenders. I bought 2 Tie Strikers even though their 4 hull behind 2 greens is a joke in a TLT and Fenn Rau world. I bought a Punisher after borrowing a friend's and playing Redline and Deathrain a bunch. I have 2 Starvipers, and am looking to at least pick up a third model, not because I'm addicted to Autothrusters but because I think the Starviper is a joy to play with. I've had a blast with all the ships I own.

Things change - cards are nerfed directly, or as a casualty to other new cards and releases. But the truth is, at no point have I felt that I can't enjoy my spaceships. Today, my Palp is worse. My x/7s are worse. So what? I like Tie/D just as much anyways. I'm going to keep building awesome fleets regardless. I'm going to buy the next Imperial release with confidence, because I know I'll be able to have fun with whatever's in that packaging.

It's all sunshine and rainbows from my perspective. My only fear is that someday I'll run out of rebels to shoot down

1 hour ago, TitaniumChopstick said:

Exactly. Thank you.

Don't buy and netlist broken stuff then complain that they were nerfed for being broken. FFG didn't waste your money, you did, on a fruitless journey to be the best at a game where you push plastic space ships around a table.

This also brings many more ships into the meta, always a good thing

11 minutes ago, Razgriz25thinf said:

Don't buy and netlist broken stuff then complain that they were nerfed for being broken. FFG didn't waste your money, you did, on a fruitless journey to be the best at a game where you push plastic space ships around a table.

I honestly couldnt care less how powerful the ships that I buy are, however it would be nice if they had some resale value should I ever decide to leave the game. Before these nerfs, you could sell a Palp on ebay for $80, now he is probably $5-10. I really dont appreciate your attitude though. It seems like a fruitless (and unnecessary) attempt at bashing a random stranger on the internet.

Next up: Buffs for Starviper, Khaisdnfksnvds, Punisher, Firespray.
All fixes are to that ship only.
Firespray (missile AND cannon slot) - Custom refit: unique: 0pts, Reduce the squad building cost of your most expensive upgrade by 3 points.
Starviper (torpedo slot) - 0pts, At the start of the round, you may recover one shield (up to your shield value).
Kihrajnqlekc - (no idea)
Punisher (title) - You may ignore all instructions to discard secondary weapons.
HWK more titles.

More options for the Syck. More pilots.

I'll buy your Palp for $10 right here right now. Deal?

1 minute ago, TitaniumChopstick said:

I honestly couldnt care less how powerful the ships that I buy are, however it would be nice if they had some resale value should I ever decide to leave the game.

The resale value of the card is directly related to the demand for it, which is driven by its perceived value. You're saying you don't care about how powerful a card is, but what you're complaining about is directly tied to the card's power. Kind of a contradiction there.

9 minutes ago, TitaniumChopstick said:

I honestly couldnt care less how powerful the ships that I buy are, however it would be nice if they had some resale value should I ever decide to leave the game. Before these nerfs, you could sell a Palp on ebay for $80, now he is probably $5-10. I really dont appreciate your attitude though. It seems like a fruitless (and unnecessary) attempt at bashing a random stranger on the internet.

So you're complaining less about the nerf's effect on the game, and more about the nerf's effect on your ability to wring as much money out of your toy space ships and pieces of cardboard when you decide to leave the game in an indeterminate amount of time? Who's to say that in 12 months time there won't be three other Emperor Palpatine analogues that will be more in demand or more expensive on eBay than current Palpatine?

9 minutes ago, TitaniumChopstick said:

I honestly couldnt care less how powerful the ships that I buy are, however it would be nice if they had some resale value should I ever decide to leave the game. Before these nerfs, you could sell a Palp on ebay for $80, now he is probably $5-10. I really dont appreciate your attitude though. It seems like a fruitless (and unnecessary) attempt at bashing a random stranger on the internet.

FFG doesn't market X-Wing minis and cards as collectible items that are supposed to have any secondary market value after you open them, you may be confusing X-Wing with Magic cards and FFG with Wizards of the Coast. I'm glad that FFG is more committed to keeping the game fun and fresh than they are in preserving the wallets of people that want to sell out.

2 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

For skilled players, it's simply not a very big change. It does take Palpatine from the very tip-top of "balanced" to toward the bottom of "balanced." (And that will have a significant effect in high-level tourney play.) But the change still falls in the band of "balanced," and that's a fairly narrow band. It's not a very big change.

Conversely for skilled players Palp wasn't a big problem. Which is why Palp lists aren't as prevalent as they once were.

8 points and 2 crew slots is a steep price for the gimmick mechanic they've saddled this card with.

40 minutes ago, General Veers said:

manaroo nerf does really affect the way paratanni works... manaroo generally wants to send her tokens to Fenn, but Fenn is rarely ever in range 1 of manaroo... she could probably just send her tokens to asajj, but then Fenn (with only one focus+ his action) is much less intimidating

Also, Manaroo cannot ditch target locks so easily, making the list more vulnerable to ordnance.

1 hour ago, Blail Blerg said:

Big dislike and disagree: That means if you take 2 or 3 defenders, you put a 1 point tax on each. That's basically like saying the Delta is now 29 points. The tie defender really did need a strong buff. With all of this and if stress is a thing in the meta, defenders are paying a huge tax.

Let's call @MajorJuggler, is it possible to get a calculation for the current value of x7? Especially against something like the nerfed Paratanni, which still works moderately well.

It may be a day or two before I get to it. I'll run the approximate* jousting numbers as a function of how often the x7 title triggers. My original numbers used a 75%** trigger rate as a baseline, and I only reported this one data point. I'll just plot the whole curve now. Analytical playtesting is still required to determine how often the x7 title triggered before and after the change.

* usual caveats apply: wave 5 firing galley, etc.

** on cell phone, this number is off the top of my head, might be something else

26 minutes ago, GrogEgrog said:

Conversely for skilled players Palp wasn't a big problem. Which is why Palp lists aren't as prevalent as they once were.

Did you miss where I have observed that I am repeatedly on record as saying that Palpatine, IMO, didn't need to be nerfed?

But, as nerfs go, this one is much more minor than people are making it out to be.

5 hours ago, Innese said:

Its... an odd feeling to see such a 'big' FAQ and then realize none of your 3 go-to lists are affected at all.

1. 2-HWK Y-wing

2. Z-95, Y-Wing, Quad

3. Mindlink Scyk

Same here.

1. Dash, Norra

2. Dash, Miranda

3. Rey, Miranda/Norra

42 minutes ago, Squark said:

The resale value of the card is directly related to the demand for it, which is driven by its perceived value. You're saying you don't care about how powerful a card is, but what you're complaining about is directly tied to the card's power. Kind of a contradiction there.

It's almost like he doesn't understand supply & demand, market-driven economics....

As a Defender lover (nearly sexual lover) I think is a good nerf.

The X7 is still a very very strong ship, just a little more dificult to flight well. And this is good.

The breach in efficiently between X7 and D are now tighter than ever.

The meta will change, and I think that with even more variability now. Greats times to play x wing!

Does anyone remember how good the wave 7 meta was? Once quad TLT was cracked, it was one of the best metas to date. Go check the top cut at worlds from that year if you don't believe me. Outside of rebel regen, things were pretty much gold. These changes effectively take the game back to that point by pulling back the staple pieces that created the meta monsters we have seen recently.

While I do wish something was done about mindlink, TLT and regen (last two were pretty much a pipe dream), as long as mindlink doesn't crush everything in its path (which absolutely could happen), I have a feeling this will be one of the best states of the game to date.

The Manaroo and Zuckuss nerfs are rough, I'll admit. I personally don't think the Zuckuss nerf was necessary (they got rid of Dengaroo, and party buses have ways of being handled), and while I was big on nerfing Manaroo, I never imagined a range 1 restriction. All that said, I don't think the nerfs make the cards unusable. Just a lot more niche, which honestly is what every card should be. Let's not forget that Zuckuss is ONE POINT and Manaroo is still sitting in the Jumpmaster which can reasonably be believed to be a point or two cheaper than it should be for its chassis alone.

The x7 and Palpatine nerfs seem perfectly fair and appropriate, and I'm getting really confused why so many players think these cards are suddenly unusable. Both promote better flying and take away the "I'll just do this without thinking because I can" factor. No more sitting on Palp until your roll tells you that you 100% need him. Now you have to use your brain and decide when he needs to be used the most. No more doing thoughtless speed 3-5 maneuvers with your Defenders because you are guaranteed your action no matter what. The nerfs just take off the training wheels for these two cards. They are only SLIGHTLY less effective if you are a smart enough player to use them well, and in the case of x7, it now has a way to be turned off so if it continues to be oppressive, stress can do something against them to keep them in check.