FFG don't design their waves in a vacuum. They build them with one eye on the tournament results happening around them, i.e. the tournament results that were happening 2 or 3 waves (12-18 months) before the actual release of the wave. This is evident when you look at the cards that come with things - all the anti-ace tech in wave 9, for example, seemed to be in response to the Palp Aces dominance of earlier waves.

If wave 11 was being designed in the context of wave 8, 9 and Imperial Veterans: In other words, lists like Dengaroo, Commonwealth Defenders, the Party Bus etc. (but before the current paratanni dominance). Most or all of which have just been nerfed. And more to the point, the testing and conceptualising of the latest round of nerfs most likely took place in the last few months, and the way FFG have described their processes in the past suggests that the wave 11 design was probably finalised before these nerfs were decided upon.

Given all that, and the (frankly natural and understandable) tendency for FFG to want to design something that can hang with the top tournament lists, are we going to see a wave of ships built to counter lists that have already been effectively declared too powerful? What will ships built to take on pre-Nerf Dengaroo or Defenders do to the more traditional lists that I think a lot of us are hoping will be able to come back out post FAQ?

Alternately, I might be getting nervous over nothing. The most recent ships we have from FFG seem not to have pushed the power curve up too much. Shadowcasters are certainly tough, and the potential for problems certainly seems to exist with the upsilon (4 dice primary and an EPT is very potent). But ships like the ARC, U Wing, TIE Striker, TIE S/F and Sabine's TIE haven't been overpowered by any stretch of the imagination - could it be that power creep has peaked? I'm not sure, but I'm nervous about wave 11.

The errata affected cards that were often mandatory requirements for many types of builds. I think the bold actions of the last two FAQs are a sign that they want to keep things balanced, and the last wave shows that design restraint in regards to how they priced ships.

I'm very excited about this because all the new, fun abilities they're making are clearly being considered far more carefully than what we saw in the Jumpmaster expansion. Variety is on the horizon, and I'm glad.

*Bump*

The PS5 Wookiee Gunship pilot is close to pre Nerf Palp with a range restriction, and combined with Selflessness is probably going to make Biggs a meta warping monster.

Anyone expecting the Scurrg to be middling at this point?

I mean, with Reinforce - you could definitely say it seems like the Auzituck is built to be able to eat Alpha Strikes. It has a lot of HP and gets an automatic -1 on each hit that slaps that front half (and actually past the front half - if you are in the arc at all you count for reinforce) and is cheap enough to run like 4 generics. But since it can't turn around, ships with great efficiency like x7 who can turn around and BR forever can still get in it's bad spots and chew it up pretty quick. So I'd say it seems like FFG is building a more balanced system and giving factions more diverse toolkits, access to ships which do things they didn't necessarily have but obviously the game keeps changing while indev. The idea of imperials with turrets might not be very impressive now, but give them their version of a Y-Wing to fill out a list and who knows. Lt Kestal definitely seems like she's an ace-hunter, chewing on ships which stack in defensive dice mods.

I personally don't buy the biggs panic, nobody has consensus on how much of a problem it is and in general panic attacks of the forum don't usually take off like expected. I'd wager the prevalence of tanky options in the Auzituck is actually FFG attempting to chip reliance on biggs. If you only need a biggs effect once, why spend 25+ points instead of 1?

Middling makes the H-6 sound weak - I don't think it will be. I think the fact that FFG needs to account for it being a ship which has a rebel and then mostly scum pilots will probably have made them play a little tighter on the balance since they have two factions to consider instead of one. I'm hoping it'll open up the bombing game a little more, and it looks like it'll give Scum their heavy bomber ship which probably won't make waves immediately because I don't hear scum crying out for their K-Wing or Punisher frame a lot. But it should still have it's uses.

I just remember when the U-Wing was dead on arrival. I think FFG has learned from the whole U-boat fiasco. If anything, this new wave is underpowered.

Really some soft nerf to turrets (make them mobile arcs set at conclusion of the combat phase but still be considered firing out of arc... or a universal rule that you can't modify dice out of arc) is all that's needed to balance out many of the problems. Arcs just need to matter a bit again.

Miranda, Protectorates, and JM5Ks are undercosted... but we have to live with those.

So other than an EPT or upgrade that punishes large ships and a great Assault Gunboat expansion the only thing I see X-Wing needing is a couple title cards to reward Endor and earlier craft for formation flying.

1 hour ago, Lobokai said:

Really some soft nerf to turrets (make them mobile arcs set at conclusion of the combat phase but still be considered firing out of arc... or a universal rule that you can't modify dice out of arc) is all that's needed to balance out many of the problems. Arcs just need to matter a bit again.

Miranda, Protectorates, and JM5Ks are undercosted... but we have to live with those.

So other than an EPT or upgrade that punishes large ships and a great Assault Gunboat expansion the only thing I see X-Wing needing is a couple title cards to reward Endor and earlier craft for formation flying.

This! ^

EDIT: what if there was a hard rule that all ships defending outside of arc got +1 defense dice?

2 minutes ago, Odanan said:

what if there was a hard rule that all ships defending outside of arc got +1 defense dice?

That'd work too. Personally my (by far) preference is a "not quite mobile arc" system, but that requires material addons... so unlikely to happen.

@Lobokai How do you figure Miranda is undercosted? The Jumpmaster compared to ships with similar stats is about 5 points too cheap. The Protectorate is 2-3 points too cheap compared to a TIE Interceptor. Miranda doesn't really have equivalents because the Punisher is a bad joke and the Scurrg is still in the same box as Schroedinger's cat.

Consider this before asking for Miranda to cost more: points fortress. Raising Miranda's cost could actually make her better for a late-game MoV advantage.

Well that is the thing about Waves, often times when it is released there are a lot of upgrades that are meta from two waves prior. In wave 5 there was Ruthlessness which was an anti-swarm meta, but the Phantom already taken out Swarms. Agent Kallus which came out with the Gozanti. which was to counter the two ship Wave 4 and 5 meta, But Gozanti came out after TLTs in Wave 8 so again the meta from two waves past.

Basically meta corrections via Waves don't come out until 2 waves later. I don't think Wave 11 will correct the meta, but Wave 12 is going to be crazy if 11 hasn't already punched their own way in.

1 hour ago, jmswood said:

@Lobokai How do you figure Miranda is undercosted? The Jumpmaster compared to ships with similar stats is about 5 points too cheap. The Protectorate is 2-3 points too cheap compared to a TIE Interceptor. Miranda doesn't really have equivalents because the Punisher is a bad joke and the Scurrg is still in the same box as Schroedinger's cat.

Consider this before asking for Miranda to cost more: points fortress. Raising Miranda's cost could actually make her better for a late-game MoV advantage.

Miranda Doni (29) - K-Wing

Norra Wexley (29) - ARC-170
Ten Numb (31) - B-Wing
Zuckuss (28) - G-1A Starfighter
Tel Trevura (30) - JumpMaster 5000
Cassian Andor (27) - U-Wing
Captain Kagi (27) - Lambda-Class Shuttle

these are ships of similar pilot skill, stats, cost.

Only one has built in, low low opportunity cost healing. Only one can slam (an imperial thing, nevertheless). Only one can mount a TLT.

But just like the best of them, she gets torps, missiles, crew, and bombs. It's crazy that she is within a point or 2 of all of them.

She's easily as good as Trevura, and as you say, JM5Ks are 5 points undercosted. I agree. Since she's better than Tel and he's 30 and 5 points to low, that makes her correctly priced at 36 (okay, that's high, but still)?

And points fortress is a crazy argument in this case. OL? Maybe, but to defend a drastically undercosted price to avoid points banking doesn't apply at 30 some points out of 100.

6 hours ago, MacchuWA said:

*Bump*

The PS5 Wookiee Gunship pilot is close to pre Nerf Palp with a range restriction, and combined with Selflessness is probably going to make Biggs a meta warping monster.

Anyone expecting the Scurrg to be middling at this point?

I think people are overrating Selflessness and its affect on Biggs. It's a good card, sure, but it's a unique upgrade that's discarded after use. You're only saving him from one attack, after all. The bigger buff is probably its impact on ordnance, since you can use Selflessness to absorb a missile attack that would have otherwise ignored Biggs.

Similarly, there have been ways to add Evade results to Biggs before this. Kyle Katarn with TLT and Jan Ors is the same price as a Lowhhrick with Commandos (which I'm assuming you're including if you're using his Reinforce action), and hasn't exactly torn up the meta.

3 hours ago, Lobokai said:

Really some soft nerf to turrets (make them mobile arcs set at conclusion of the combat phase but still be considered firing out of arc... or a universal rule that you can't modify dice out of arc) is all that's needed to balance out many of the problems. Arcs just need to matter a bit again.

Miranda, Protectorates, and JM5Ks are undercosted... but we have to live with those .

So other than an EPT or upgrade that punishes large ships and a great Assault Gunboat expansion the only thing I see X-Wing needing is a couple title cards to reward Endor and earlier craft for formation flying.

I think FFG is working on dealing a bit better with this ; at least as far as Jumps, Sabine and Biggs are concerned....we've heard rumblings from on high, shhhhhhhhhhh.

59 minutes ago, Lobokai said:

Miranda Doni (29) - K-Wing

Norra Wexley (29) - ARC-170
Ten Numb (31) - B-Wing
Zuckuss (28) - G-1A Starfighter
Tel Trevura (30) - JumpMaster 5000
Cassian Andor (27) - U-Wing
Captain Kagi (27) - Lambda-Class Shuttle

these are ships of similar pilot skill, stats, cost.

Only one has built in, low low opportunity cost healing. Only one can slam (an imperial thing, nevertheless). Only one can mount a TLT.

But just like the best of them, she gets torps, missiles, crew, and bombs. It's crazy that she is within a point or 2 of all of them.

She's easily as good as Trevura, and as you say, JM5Ks are 5 points undercosted. I agree. Since she's better than Tel and he's 30 and 5 points to low, that makes her correctly priced at 36 (okay, that's high, but still)?

And points fortress is a crazy argument in this case. OL? Maybe, but to defend a drastically undercosted price to avoid points banking doesn't apply at 30 some points out of 100.

A couple of the listed pilots are unfortunate victims of a complete lack of consistency in assigning point costs to pilots. All of them are on ships that are too different from a K-wing to make an imperical comparison.

No other ship can be compared to a K-wing in every measurable category. Pilot abilities are a weak basis for comparison because there is no way to consistently appraise the value of something without numerical components. A pilot ability with regen is inherently valuable, but Miranda's ability is also completely unique. The most comparable pilot abilities are those that add attack dice, but Miranda is clearly superior to all of them.

Miranda is a bargain at 29 points. Adding 1-2 points, she is still playable with most of her popular builds. Adding 3-5 points those builds become too expensive. With any points increase to Miranda, a player would be forced to make more cost-benefit analysis, and that is healthy for the game.

I'm not saying Miranda could not or should not cost more. I'm merely pointing out that there is no way to accurately compare her to other ships because the K-wing is a unique platform and Miranda has a unique ability.

On the subject of Jumpmasters, the entire lineup is too cheap. The closest comparison is the YT-2400. Same base size , similar stat line, same action bar. The Jumpmaster dial and upgrade bar are each measurably better than the YT-2400. At each pilot skill level, the Jumpmaster is at least 5 points cheaper than the YT-2400. Equivalent ships, with zero equity in cost.

5 minutes ago, jmswood said:

I'm merely pointing out that there is no way to accurately compare her to other ships because the K-wing is a unique platform and Miranda has a unique ability.

No arguments here. But I find her uniqueness mostly repugnant... however I get that she was pre mouse and the canon rules changed