The great thing about the FAQ effecting the changes is that FFG can simply reverse or amend as they see fit.

Would not be surprised that, after Euros and Worlds, Palp goes back to normal but with a range 1 - 3 limiter. Manaroo changes to 1 - 2, Zuckuss goes back to normal and the X7 card removes "action" and changes it back to assign.

9 minutes ago, Viktus106 said:

The great thing about the FAQ effecting the changes is that FFG can simply reverse or amend as they see fit.

Would not be surprised that, after Euros and Worlds, Palp goes back to normal but with a range 1 - 3 limiter. Manaroo changes to 1 - 2, Zuckuss goes back to normal and the X7 card removes "action" and changes it back to assign.

Oh goodness I hope not. Changing a card is bad enough, but changing a changed card? Not a good habit to get in, bad for stability

7 minutes ago, Ken at Sunrise said:

Oh goodness I hope not. Changing a card is bad enough, but changing a changed card? Not a good habit to get in, bad for stability

FFG has done it before with the damage decks, so it´s an option.

I don´t mind the other changes but Palpatine errata was a huge mistake.

25 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Two to three uses per game, 29 points minimum, basically a global c3po now.

The picture is rather clear to me mate, but hey, might take you 6 months of meta analyses to come to the same conclusion when you notice that you have not seen him in his Palp shuttle at all anymore.

Good think is that RAC has room even for overpriced double crew options ;-)

Palp's guesswork is very different from C-3PO. Beyond being able to affect other ships it also works reliably on most Agility stats than C-3PO and attacks for that matter. Even focused, if you feel you really need it on agility three it only "fails" a quarter of the time. It's just way, way more reliable than 3PO.

43 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

The picture is rather clear to me mate, but hey, might take you 6 months of meta analyses to come to the same conclusion when you notice that you have not seen him in his Palp shuttle at all anymore.

Or, on the contrary, perhaps it is you the one who will discover that, within a few months, Papl is still used by the imperial meta...

11 hours ago, MalusCalibur said:

I'm curious as to what on earth you are supposed to mean by that, other than an indication that you havn't properly read what I wrote.

bom·bas·tic

• high-sounding but with little meaning; inflated.

Your post was the one I felt had the worst doom and gloom response that was also rather verbose. Your initial post was how all the changes were terrible and utterly not needed. You dismissed any complaints about the cards in question. You said anyone who didn't like it was a whinger. I did read your entire post a couple of time and feel yours was the best example of overreaction.

You asked for proof of how these were OP? Why is it that there are so few tournament lists from the Empire that doesn't have Palpatine or an /x7 Defender in it that places in the top half of tournaments? If it wasn't more powerful than all the rest of the options, why would they be taken so often?

I know you think I was belittling of tournament players, but your own comments about those that approve of the changes are worse than anything I said.

I don't think there is much point in discussing it further as I feel we are on opposite ends of the spectrum with little room to change the other person's mind. I am comfortable with living this discussion here. Good day, sir.

10 hours ago, WingedSpider said:

Manaroo went from best support ship in the game to pretty awkward.

Though she's still a Jumpmaster 5000, so she can't be that bad.

Exactly. In the mass that is "balanced", you can't complain about ships sticking out of the bottom (X-Wing, Kihraxz) but be OK with ships sticking out the top (pre-nerf Manroo.)

If it is obviously the "best", it isn't in balance. If she can't be that bad, then she's in a good spot.

4 hours ago, MalusCalibur said:

I have been flying Defenders since I started playing at the very beginning of Wave 5 (it is one of the few ships I consider myself to be highly knowledgeable about) so please do not speak to me as if I 'jumped on the bandwagon' the same way many others did - I think I have made it quite clear that that is not the case.

Whatever the exact worth of the title, you have to remember that the Defender was considered far overpriced beforehand, and said title still comes with the opportunity cost of two upgrade slots as well as the restrictions on activating it. Given that Twin Ion Engine MkII now seems mandatory (to give Defenders a hope in hell at coping with stress control), that's a further cost (both the point and the opportunity cost of the mod slot) that eats into the discount of the title and removes an option from /x7 builds, leaving only the Elite slot (if they have one). As I've said before, it leaves me wondering if the title is now worth the cost of the chassis, and it certainly seems that the 'fringe' pilots will lose their viability.

Mk2 engine will definitely be more important if you're running into a lot of people flying stress control. If your local meta doens't see that, it's still not really needed. Een then, as AlexW said, it's a good upgrade regardless, and I've almost never seen any defenders running other modifications regardless. Even if they didn't hvae mk2.

3 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Two to three uses per game, 29 points minimum, basically a global c3po now.

The picture is rather clear to me mate, but hey, might take you 6 months of meta analyses to come to the same conclusion when you notice that you have not seen him in his Palp shuttle at all anymore.

Good think is that RAC has room even for overpriced double crew options ;-)

If you only get to use palpatine 2-3 times per game, you're doing it wrong. I wouldn't be surprised if the palp shuttle drops out of the meta, but if it does, it will be at least partly the same situation as the post-nerf whisper. She pretty much disappeared over night with the cloaking change due to people overreacting, only to come back later and, shockingly, still actually be good.

3 hours ago, Viktus106 said:

The great thing about the FAQ effecting the changes is that FFG can simply reverse or amend as they see fit.

Would not be surprised that, after Euros and Worlds, Palp goes back to normal but with a range 1 - 3 limiter. Manaroo changes to 1 - 2, Zuckuss goes back to normal and the X7 card removes "action" and changes it back to assign.

Not gonna happen. When have they changed a card and just reversed it later? These changes are here to stay. You might as well get used to it.

I can't see them undoing the Palp change as he's still actually pretty good.

I CAN see them reversing the Cluster Mines errata.

1 minute ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I can't see them undoing the Palp change as he's still actually pretty good.

I CAN see them reversing the Cluster Mines errata.

Why would you want them to put cluster mines back into garbage town?

58 minutes ago, AlexW said:

My points were simply about the X7 change, along with a couple of other players I know well who have played defenders since release and really wasn't about me assuming you had jumped on the bandwagon. I apologize, but I'm not sure where you got that. I only noted those experiences because our reaction was very different even though we've been playing defenders a a similar amount of time to you and also share the experience of of trying to make them work as well when they were the least efficient ships in the game.

That's fair - I suppose I have got used to being defensive and read too much into the tone of that. I apologise for assuming the worst here.

1 hour ago, AlexW said:

I understand your point about opportunity cost, but I think that's more of a factor as to how two titles were implemented (I think Vessery has a large impact on the "limits" of those changes, but that's another topic entirely). It went from one of the least efficient ships to the most efficient ship in the game as the X7 regardless of losing the flexibility of those slots.

That's something I'm getting at in my own posts - that the difference between the pre-FAQ and pre-Veterans Defenders is so small in mechanical terms (2pts and an evade) yet so vast in gameplay terms (phenomenal ship versus ship that never sees serious use) that any change, however small, risks going back too far the other way: in other words, that range is insufficiently granular to allow for the severity of the change that has happened.

3 hours ago, AlexW said:

I don't necessarily agree with this but understand it may be more specific to the meta. For example, I have run it in my last 10 games but have only used it for one maneuver with the exception of a game against Rebel Captive (and frankly I could have made different choices there if I hadn't had Mk2 to stress another ship). Even if the meta changes where it feels like a must-include it is a very good card for one point and, while I --again-- understand the idea of the opportunity cost, I rarely see people playing defenders running a mod slot at all unless it is the Mk2.

While it's true that Defenders commonly use the MKII Engine anyway (I certainly do myself), it would be better to not be all but forced to: there are plenty of ways to deal stress (Ventress, Stressbot variants, Tactician, etc) and now that Manaroo has been taken behind the shed, stress control will likely make something of a return (since Mindlink lists will now be more vulnerable to it). Before the MkII's existed, it was miserable for Defenders to get stressed because it all but shut them down, so in an environment with more of those effects present, it becomes non-optional to take them else you risk a 35-40pt ship becoming practically useless. At the moment there isn't a lot of competition for that slot (though a Hull Upgrade is always nice), but it is locked out from ever utilising any new ones that get released: and it is always better to have the option to take something else rather than have an auto-include.

I was always under the impression that the presence (rather than only the potential) of the evade was factored into the discount offered by /x7 (since on points alone, -2 is not enough from the pre-Veterans version). Making it so much less secure (by taking it away from both collisions and stress) reduces its value considerably (while also doubling up on existing weaknesses), and thus calls into question if the new /x7 is enough over the original pre-Veterans version for the points spent.

3 hours ago, AlexW said:

All I can say about this is that the games that, in my previous post, I (along with one of the other players I eluded to) actually was talking about having played post nerf have been exclusively with those "fringe" pilots. Maybe that will change, but the X7 did originally take the defender from having been rarely seen in any form to having every single pilot as a viable option and seeing play (except the Onyx, but that wasn't because it wasn't viable -- it was just in a weird spot). That was great for defender pilots, but it wasn't because the x7 was a "balanced" card.

I myself have played almost exclusively with Rexler (and occasional Delta or Glaive Squadrons), as the ubiquitous nature of both Vessery and Ryad (as clearly the strongest two pilots) puts me off using either of them very much for the same reason I've never flown Soontir Fel. With such a reduction in efficiency, it seems likely that Vessery and Ryad will still see use (as the optimal choices), but the other pilots will fail to meet the efficiency demands of the current game and lose any real viability. Ships with only 1-2 viable pilot choices are unfortunately a recurring theme in X-Wing, but I would have hoped that such a significant upheaval of the rules would at least be precise enough to avoid creating the same situation again with the Defender.

4 hours ago, AlexW said:

I hope that you continue to fly them because I think the x7 nerf was good both for imperial ships (one of the most common refrains I heard over the past year was, "Why not just take a defender instead of x?") and the game/meta as a whole, but that they will still be an excellent, and more rewarding, ship to fly.

I absolutely will continue to fly them (it remains my favourite ship), but it has shaken my confidence in the ability of any of the pilots (other than the obvious two) to keep up with the game as it stands, which consequently calls my current tournament list into question.

Although ordnance is a cute idea it undermines the balance of where the red/green dice were pitched until now. I like having odd ships and build that ring Ordnance to the table in a competitive way but when you can build an entire list using it then that list is going to be very difficult to balance against everything else.

Either big alpha strikes like the Triple Jumps or mass bombing runs that ignore green dice, neither of them lead to a great play experience.

4 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

Two to three uses per game, 29 points minimum, basically a global c3po now.

The picture is rather clear to me mate, but hey, might take you 6 months of meta analyses to come to the same conclusion when you notice that you have not seen him in his Palp shuttle at all anymore.

Good think is that RAC has room even for overpriced double crew options ;-)

Again, another opinion and not data driven information.

Palpatine is clearly worse than before, we can run the #s on that to get a clear understanding. Palpatine will still be used every round.

The game play changes we will see are:

1) He will be useless a % of the time (when you natural roll the # of desired dice results)

2) He will not always be used at the perfect time.

Probably the largest "calculatable statistics based value" he loses is the % of rolling the desired result naturally and not being able to use Palp on another roll. If you consider naturally rolling 3 evades on 3 dice (no focus) is a 5.3% chance, this isnt too much waste. With focus it is 24.4% chance. That would mean on 3 green dice with focus, Palpatine is wasted 24.4% of the time, assuming that there are still more dice rolls that round where Palpatine could have been better spent (under fire from multiple ships, shooting ships yourself).

Considering people have calculated the "actual value per match" of Old Palpatine to be well above 8 pts (15+ or so from memory), this nerf might actually make him more appropriately costed. A 24% value decrease from 15 pts makes it 11.4 pts of value. Still above 8 pts cost.

As for upcoming tournament data, let's not forget the band-wagon nerf usage decrease that seems to happen. We will see reaction based drops, then "player testing" based drops, and a decrease in tournament results. Of course! Since this upgrade has been so dominant for so long, this was the point. Gotta let other ships and upgrades have the lime-light too.

However, if you think this upgrade won't win anything again, I'd argue against that for sure. People will even praise players 6 months from now for winning with upgrades deemed "trash due to nerf" with comments like "he must have flown really well to make that nerfed Palp X7s list win a whole event." Same for Manaroo and the other changes.

1 minute ago, phild0 said:

Again, another opinion and not data driven information.

Palpatine is clearly worse than before, we can run the #s on that to get a clear understanding. Palpatine will still be used every round.

The game play changes we will see are:

1) He will be useless a % of the time (when you natural roll the # of desired dice results)

2) He will not always be used at the perfect time.

The only "calculatable statistics based value" he loses is the % of rolling the desired result naturally and not being able to use Palp on another roll. If you consider naturally rolling 3 evades on 3 dice (no focus) is a 5.3% chance, this isnt too much waste. With focus it is 24.4% chance. That would mean on 3 green dice with focus, Palpatine is wasted 24.4% of the time, assuming that there are still more dice rolls that round where Palpatine could have been better spent (under fire from multiple ships, shooting ships yourself).]

Minor point to that, he could still be wasted even if you don't roll, for instance, 3 evades on 3 dice. Say your opponent only has 2 hits/crits and you're rolling 3 dice. You only have 2 health, so you call palp on evade to ensure you don't blank out and die, then roll 2 natural evades. You still get to palp the third die to an evade, but palp was wasted anyway since you got the results you needed without him. So there's probably a higher chance of wasting him than just the odds of naturally rolling ALL the reusults you call where he can't change anything. That said, I do still agree that he'll be good, if more limited than before.

My recommendation to all is to try flying these nerfed lists against a list it clearly beat pre-nerf, and see if you still beat it, if it was a closer match, or if you clearly lose now.

Except Dengaroo. Well, you could still try against lists Dengaroo could clearly beat before (Rebel jank, etc.). Just dont expect to beat like x7s (not that Dengaroo could regularly beat those before).

7 minutes ago, VanderLegion said:

Minor point to that, he could still be wasted even if you don't roll, for instance, 3 evades on 3 dice. Say your opponent only has 2 hits/crits and you're rolling 3 dice. You only have 2 health, so you call palp on evade to ensure you don't blank out and die, then roll 2 natural evades. You still get to palp the third die to an evade, but palp was wasted anyway since you got the results you needed without him. So there's probably a higher chance of wasting him than just the odds of naturally rolling ALL the reusults you call where he can't change anything. That said, I do still agree that he'll be good, if more limited than before.

Ahh good point.

You do use it to evade less than 3 hits sometimes

You also dont get to save him anymore when the ship you are trying to save doesnt roll the necessary # of evades minus Palp convert to survive. You'd have to make the decision to "test the odds and use palp" or "accept death and save palp for another dice roll if there is one".

Private Nemo:
I have a few post faq games, all with imperial vs imperial (In my house we are people of goodwill), trying multiple things.
And actually, I haven't find any imperial ship better than the x7 defender. The gap with the other contendants are narrower now, but, without any combo in mind, if i have thirtyfew points a x7 Defender is still the optimal value, good defense, good offense, fast...
Defenders D are now a thing, the bombers are good, inquisitor, omega leader, a pair of crackshot ties, upsilon... all do fine in a competitive enviroment, even whisper, soontir or Vader can still hold his land if they are well flown. But none of the above, nor anything I could find is obviously better than a X7 Defender, even after the faq.

I doesn't play enought with SF or strikers to be shure. And I'm not find myself as a top player to be sure. But if post nerf, the defenders are gonna dissapear from the competitive imperial meta, really, I don't how what is gonna replace them.

7 minutes ago, phild0 said:

You also dont get to save him anymore when the ship you are trying to save doesnt roll the necessary # of evades minus Palp convert to survive. You'd have to make the decision to "test the odds and use palp" or "accept death and save palp for another dice roll if there is one".

And in my case, I'd inevitably guess wrong. If I decide to palp it, I'll probably roll too few and die anyway (or naturally roll enough to survive without palp), and if I decide not to palp, I'll roll exactly 1 less evade than I need. Kind of like anytime I choose to Target Lock I roll a bunch of eyeballs, and when I focus I roll a bunch of blanks...

13 minutes ago, VanderLegion said:

Minor point to that, he could still be wasted even if you don't roll, for instance, 3 evades on 3 dice. Say your opponent only has 2 hits/crits and you're rolling 3 dice. You only have 2 health, so you call palp on evade to ensure you don't blank out and die, then roll 2 natural evades. You still get to palp the third die to an evade, but palp was wasted anyway since you got the results you needed without him. So there's probably a higher chance of wasting him than just the odds of naturally rolling ALL the reusults you call where he can't change anything. That said, I do still agree that he'll be good, if more limited than before.

True, but you see what they rolled so if they didn't get max hits you can factor that into your decision to use Palp or not.

7 minutes ago, Draconis Hegemonia said:

Private Nemo:
I have a few post faq games, all with imperial vs imperial (In my house we are people of goodwill), trying multiple things.
And actually, I haven't find any imperial ship better than the x7 defender. The gap with the other contendants are narrower now, but, without any combo in mind, if i have thirtyfew points a x7 Defender is still the optimal value, good defense, good offense, fast...
Defenders D are now a thing, the bombers are good, inquisitor, omega leader, a pair of crackshot ties, upsilon... all do fine in a competitive enviroment, even whisper, soontir or Vader can still hold his land if they are well flown. But none of the above, nor anything I could find is obviously better than a X7 Defender, even after the faq.

I doesn't play enought with SF or strikers to be shure. And I'm not find myself as a top player to be sure. But if post nerf, the defenders are gonna dissapear from the competitive imperial meta, really, I don't how what is gonna replace them.

Yeah I think /x7 Defenders are still probably the best Imp ship.

Just got an email from Frank Brooks telling me how to rule M9-G8 and Snapshot... Better late than never?

10 minutes ago, VanderLegion said:

Minor point to that, he could still be wasted even if you don't roll, for instance, 3 evades on 3 dice. Say your opponent only has 2 hits/crits and you're rolling 3 dice. You only have 2 health, so you call palp on evade to ensure you don't blank out and die, then roll 2 natural evades. You still get to palp the third die to an evade, but palp was wasted anyway since you got the results you needed without him. So there's probably a higher chance of wasting him than just the odds of naturally rolling ALL the reusults you call where he can't change anything. That said, I do still agree that he'll be good, if more limited than before.

This is true. It will actually be quite interesting to do some math on when to use him now, as you still know quite a bit of information and its largely a question of how likely he is to matter. The important consideration is the opportunity cost in situations like this. How valuable is the ship that you consider a guaranteed save at the cost of potentially wasting the result? More importantly what other attacks are queued up to potentially use him on? There are a lot of board state considerations that I appreciate now. I am glad they didn't add a range restriction to him. He's the one card I'm happy to see have an unlimited range.

On a totally different note, while I don't think this is a change they SHOULD make, I'd probably like Evade tokens better if they were implemented this way. I've never liked the way they currently are just temporary shield tokens. It would be interesting if you declared them before rolling dice to make them a little different, but its the kind of change you'd really need to make during a full rules revamp because it would have a lot of random impacts across the game. I just think it would make them more interesting than they are now.

30 minutes ago, MalusCalibur said:

That's something I'm getting at in my own posts - that the difference between the pre-FAQ and pre-Veterans Defenders is so small in mechanical terms (2pts and an evade) yet so vast in gameplay terms (phenomenal ship versus ship that never sees serious use) that any change, however small, risks going back too far the other way: in other words, that range is insufficiently granular to allow for the severity of the change that has happened.

First, I definitely appreciate the more measured response and discussion! As for the above quote, I think that we differ on what "small in mechanical terms" means. I think that changing either the point value of a ship by two or giving it an evade on roughly half of it's movement options is significant, giving them both was a hyper-buff. For example, I think of the comparison between this and IA -- IA was the equivalent of doing one of these things.

36 minutes ago, MalusCalibur said:

. Before the MkII's existed, it was miserable for Defenders to get stressed because it all but shut them down, so in an environment with more of those effects present, it becomes non-optional to take them else you risk a 35-40pt ship becoming practically useless. At the moment there isn't a lot of competition for that slot (though a Hull Upgrade is always nice), but it is locked out from ever utilising any new ones that get released: and it is always better to have the option to take something else rather than have an auto-include.

Options are absolutely better, but I think that -- especially in terms of the current meta -- that's hard to have, regardless of what ship we are talking about. Autothrusters are simply a must on some ships. I think the defenders still have more options for example, than an X-Wing. Back to my IA example, Vectored Thrusters would be a great option for an X-wing, but they released it after IA, and IA is so good that you cannot take VTs over them. Don't get me wrong, I think that more options are great, but they are hard to design, especially because I think this is more determined by the meta than anything else.

40 minutes ago, MalusCalibur said:

I was always under the impression that the presence (rather than only the potential) of the evade was factored into the discount offered by /x7 (since on points alone, -2 is not enough from the pre-Veterans version). Making it so much less secure (by taking it away from both collisions and stress) reduces its value considerably (while also doubling up on existing weaknesses), and thus calls into question if the new /x7 is enough over the original pre-Veterans version for the points spent.

I think it depends on how much less that evade token is able to be taken when it is useful (ship gets shot at and needs to spend it or deters a shot that goes against a less important ship). I use the word "useful" here because it was already assigned when it isn't spent or playing a roll. It certainly lessens the effectiveness of Swarm Leader and Juke builds that give it more utility.

I guess the thing we will have to see is whether that percentage of use of the token hits that threshhold to make the ship playable. My hunch is that you'll still get the token 75%-80% (conservatively speaking) of the time you normally would have anyway, though there will be matchups that shut it down much better than in the past. We'll see -- I'm playing in an upcoming tournament this weekend and we'll see if it makes a dent at all in Defenders, but most of my playgroup thinks they are the least affected of the nerfs.

Like hurling free evade tokens around is a 'small mechanical change'! Evades are serious business.

43 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

True, but you see what they rolled so if they didn't get max hits you can factor that into your decision to use Palp or not.

Well yes. That's why I pointed out a situation where they rolled less than max hits, where you need less than max evades, but could still die if you don't roll enough