6 minutes ago, a1bert said:It's great that you don't need to play a mission to determine the winner. Just looking at the deployment cards is enough. Bring in BT-1 and you win automatically.
Yeah... the little guy's almost a ranged Vader for 1/3 the cost.
I think BT-1 is a cool character, and I'm excited to play him as the Empire, but I wish the more iconic characters had gotten this much love.
I'm a little bummed that my current Return to Hoth Campaign is almost over. Bt1 with the Armored Onslaught deck would have been a blast (at least as the Imps).
55 minutes ago, Rikalonius said:What, with a rainbow of attack dice, all 4, every attack, and then 3 attacks with single dice to minimum 3 squares, and pretty much guaranteed pierce 2, for six points? Nahhh, there is no power creep in IA. THIS is the REAL legitimate cost, not all those other releases. He says, muster as much snark as possible.
Ehhhh, let's wait and see, no? People said the same thing when Bossk was spoiled, and while he's a top-tier unit he's not game-breaking. People also same thing about the Grand Inquisitor when his card was spoiled and he's barely even played.
I think the main thing is his cost. Only 6 points is a bit surprising; I think the only reason he will probably be okay is that his surges aren't great. Pierce 2 is going to be basically +1 damage in a lot of cases, and I think he's going to roll a lot of unused surges.
14 minutes ago, ManateeX said:Ehhhh, let's wait and see, no? People said the same thing when Bossk was spoiled, and while he's a top-tier unit he's not game-breaking. People also same thing about the Grand Inquisitor when his card was spoiled and he's barely even played.
You make a good point about the Iquisitor. Still, if you compare BT-1 to Bossk, I think BT-1 comes out ahead for 2 points less.
Edited by Rikalonius30 minutes ago, Rikalonius said:You make a good point about the Iquisitor. Still, if you compare BT-1 to Bossk, I think BT-1 comes out ahead for 2 points less.
I think he's slightly better than Bossk because I think his bit better damage is more desirable than Bossk's bit better defense, but I think Bossk could stand to be a point cheaper too.
The biggest issue with BT as far as I can see, comes from his mid level Health, and limited defence capabilities.
really, BT is a walking cannon (literally a mobile missile launcher), and yes, he can dole out the hurt, when those hits come in...
Compare against something like an Elite Stormtrooper at roughly similar costs, 3 models of 5 Health each vs 1 model of 10 Health; BT will destroy one per turn, they will destroy the droid before the last Trooper falls.
I like the droids, don't get me wrong, Calling them overpowered is a bit much.
you are comparing a 6 cost figure to a 9 cost group; not quite equal footing. it is best to compare him to regular stormtroopers who are the same price point. I still think it is a fair comparison as you have 9 health to 10 health, possible 3 attacks vs possible three attacks, the stormtroopers will get rerolls probably. and, it WILL take 3 attacks to kill the stormtroopers, where bt-1 can go down in 2 attacks in the current "meta". he is an interesting figure no doubt, but I will wait to see him in game to call him OP.
3 hours ago, MadFuhrer said:you are comparing a 6 cost figure to a 9 cost group; not quite equal footing. it is best to compare him to regular stormtroopers who are the same price point. I still think it is a fair comparison as you have 9 health to 10 health, possible 3 attacks vs possible three attacks, the stormtroopers will get rerolls probably. and, it WILL take 3 attacks to kill the stormtroopers, where bt-1 can go down in 2 attacks in the current "meta". he is an interesting figure no doubt, but I will wait to see him in game to call him OP.
laugh!!! I thought he was 10points... head mess moment where I thought his health was also the cost... don't mind me!!
I suppose in theory, (back peddling here) IF BT was 10 points, he would be not that extreme. So I guess I am right... yeah, I'll stop now...
At the risk (near-certainty? ; ) of sounding condescending, every single wave since the Bantha, the sky has been falling. This figure is broken, that figure is so undercosted it will break the game, the other figure is so obviously overpowered for its cost that FFG must have their heads up their butts. The sky has been falling for:
Bantha
Bossk
Murne
eWing Guards
Blaise
Obi-Wan
Inquisitor
Luke / Rangers / Terro / Dewbacks / Jabba / eGammoreans / eWeequays / Shyla / basicallyeverythingthatcameoutintheJabba'sRealmwave
Aaaaaaaaaaaand now BT.
Every. Single. Wave.
And it's always the same story: "Compare this with Vader or Han or Dengar! POWER CREEP!"
The sky is not falling. It's not power creep. BT is not overpowered. He's just actually good for his cost, unlike the vast majority of figures released before the Bantha wave.
Edited by IndyPendantBT has better mobility and twice the health of an rEngineer, but he does significantly less damage and worse accuracy. If people weren't willing to put the 8 damage vs. a black rEngineer on the field I don't see why a 5.8 damage BT for the same cost is going to break anything. He's certainly good enough to be played, but he's definitely not good enough to have to be played.
14 hours ago, Stompburger said:I think the main thing is his cost. Only 6 points is a bit surprising; I think the only reason he will probably be okay is that his surges aren't great. Pierce 2 is going to be basically +1 damage in a lot of cases, and I think he's going to roll a lot of unused surges.
That's a good point, and I think that if you combine this with the accuracy discussion from earlier we end up with something else that's negative about BT - his regular attack has a lot of variance. Sure you're rolling four dice, but your accuracy can end up anywhere between 3 and 10 and without good surges your damage roll can end up anywhere between 1 (with pierce 2) and 9. Yeah, it's going to be a wicked-awesome moment when you roll huge damage, add in some hunter command cards and bring down a rancor or a Jedi Luke. But it's going to be a lot less fun when you completely whiff on your range 4 attack. Or when you close to range three to make sure you hit only to roll almost no damage, now leaving yourself exposed to get wrecked by the rest of his army.
7 hours ago, IndyPendant said:And it's always the same story: "Compare this with Vader or Han or Dengar! POWER CREEP!"
The sky is not falling. It's not power creep. BT is not overpowered. He's just actually good for his cost, unlike the vast majority of figures released before the Bantha wave.
This, this, a thousand times this! There was an interview with one of the original designers of IA who said they didn't really get a chance to playtest Skirmish enough to know that Vader et al. were overcosted. With these new figures and the new IG-88 Skirmish Attachment card, we see what the current design group are working towards: making Skirmish a more viable and dynamic product. I feel that comparing the old IA Skirmish to the new one is really unfair.
With the right attachment, you can make Vader worth 18 points. As a hobby I've been working on changes for overcosted cards (admittedly some not so good); giving Vader more per-round action economy is the best solution I've found. The key is finding the right balance, so that opponents playing against Vader can utilize more strategies other than "crap crap here comes Vader keep firing until he's dead".
Edited by cnemmick1 hour ago, ManateeX said:That's a good point, and I think that if you combine this with the accuracy discussion from earlier we end up with something else that's negative about BT - his regular attack has a lot of variance. Sure you're rolling four dice, but your accuracy can end up anywhere between 3 and 10 and without good surges your damage roll can end up anywhere between 1 (with pierce 2) and 9. Yeah, it's going to be a wicked-awesome moment when you roll huge damage, add in some hunter command cards and bring down a rancor or a Jedi Luke. But it's going to be a lot less fun when you completely whiff on your range 4 attack. Or when you close to range three to make sure you hit only to roll almost no damage, now leaving yourself exposed to get wrecked by the rest of his army.
Yeah, I think in skirmish he'll work well with rerolls and droid/heavy weapon command cards, but he'll probably need those to be truly effective. Edit: Plus in Skirmish, it's often a big advantage to be in 3 places at once, so he isn't always as good as regular stormtroopers.
And in campaign, he'll only really be a problem for the first few missions (probably a great Nemeses pick!), until half the heroes can 2-shot him. He's a single, small figure, and that leaves you vulnerable to a lot of hero abilities...
Edited by Stompburger9 hours ago, IndyPendant said:At the risk (near-certainty? ; ) of sounding condescending, every single wave since the Bantha, the sky has been falling. This figure is broken, that figure is so undercosted it will break the game, the other figure is so obviously overpowered for its cost that FFG must have their heads up their butts. The sky has been falling for:
Bantha
Bossk
Murne
eWing Guards
Blaise
Obi-Wan
Inquisitor
Luke / Rangers / Terro / Dewbacks / Jabba / eGammoreans / eWeequays / Shyla / basicallyeverythingthatcameoutintheJabba'sRealmwave
Aaaaaaaaaaaand now BT.
Every. Single. Wave.
And it's always the same story: "Compare this with Vader or Han or Dengar! POWER CREEP!"
The sky is not falling. It's not power creep. BT is not overpowered. He's just actually good for his cost, unlike the vast majority of figures released before the Bantha wave.
Exactly. He's good enough that you actually have to decide whether you want to take him + a Probe Droid, or a unit of eTroopers, instead of the Troopers being the obvious choice. But not so good that he's a must-pick.
He is a hunter, droid; sure there is good command card for those traits but the rest of your army will not share those traits.
This is what doesn't make sense. FFG paid a small fortune to attain the licensing rights. You spent that money to make the most recognizable characters come to life. Why waste it on characters that your average Star Wars fans aren't familiar with?
The goal is to achieve some sort of broad base appeal. How are you going to do that when icons like Chewie, Han, and Darth Vader are on the sidelines in favor of these characters few of us have ever heard of?
Please return to the movies (you know that thing that millions of fans have spent billions of dollars on). Please offer fixes to overcosted figures. Please give away errata updates for core deployment cards.
Two things: about the new figures
Point 1 - Lots of people on the boards think it should be super easy to fix the early and iconic figures and yet every time new things come out there are mass cries of "broken" and "power creep". Im convinced this is because a lot of people are still not familiar with the benchmarks the designers have recently shared they shoot for in efficiency - elite stormtroopers and elite probe droids. And because a lot of people don't understand the basic point that the majority of the core/first few waves were balanced poorly and that design is being "fixed" going forward. I think this is evidenced by this next point.
Point 2 - I would argue BT-1 and 000 are not overpowered or broken in any way. They are unique and interesting decisions and they are better balanced/costed than many iconic and core/early wave figures/groups. That's called fixing the game! Let's compare BT-1 to crappy regular stormtroopers to make my point that the game is becoming better balanced (especially to make individual figure deployments more on par with multi figure deployments which have long been considered to have the advantage). BT and Reg Storms both cost 6. BT has 10 health they have 9 but it's split up into three figures for more versatility. BT can roll a giant four dice attack - cool! But his surges on that are very unforgiving - and that attack can end up being very much overkill or it can be awesome sure. You want that or he's overcosted. But his average attack has been stated to be about a five. That's a little stronger than one elite storm trooper because they can surge for plus two. Now, missile salvo is 3 - 2 dice attacks. That are all relatively comparable to regular storm troopers attacks but stormies are more consistent with their rerolls and all blue green attacks. And each defender rolls a defense die, making three defense die to the six total attack die, again keeping missile salvo in line and interesting choices of who you'll use what dice to attack. And BT is forced to split up his three attacks to three different targets or he doesn't get all of them. He won't always get all of them. And many times he will die because of the position he had to go to for it.
To finish I echo statements from above. When first spoiled, people thought bossk was overpowered - he's not. When first spoiled, people thought the grand inquisitor was wayyyyy overpowered, until people made comparisons like this one to elite stormies. And he's not overpowered! Figures have a base efficiency the designers are starting from and then they add creative plus and minuses to make the play choices interesting and it's up to us to learn how to decode those things instead of saying this game is doomed all the time.
And fixes for old characters are coming but they aren't as easy as I think they should be or it wouldn't take posts like this and many others to point out all the interesting intricacies that are being put into designing and balancing and fixing this fun and awesome game. We can have patience or we can give up and kill the game and ensure it never becomes as great as it should be. And I for one think it's got the best competitive system to build on of the current FFG miniature/strategy games. It's only recently felt like enough units have come out to flesh out the factions and it's not even close to saturation, and then our iconic heroes will be fixed and close the circle.
Edited by MasterchiefspiffI absolutely loved Dengar for his ability to apply conditions en masse to opposing figures. He turned out to be crap, as they had not yet calibrated unique figures. 0-0-0 looks awesome (and fun). Just what I've been waiting for to try a condition list in Mercs (with the Jawa I can actually get him) combined with the fact that we are moving towards lesser and bigger targets. A fix for Dengar now would be so awesome, but those two in pair could put some serious condition hurt on your opponent.
11 hours ago, bdgolish said:This is what doesn't make sense. FFG paid a small fortune to attain the licensing rights. You spent that money to make the most recognizable characters come to life. Why waste it on characters that your average Star Wars fans aren't familiar with?
The goal is to achieve some sort of broad base appeal. How are you going to do that when icons like Chewie, Han, and Darth Vader are on the sidelines in favor of these characters few of us have ever heard of?
Please return to the movies (you know that thing that millions of fans have spent billions of dollars on). Please offer fixes to overcosted figures. Please give away errata updates for core deployment cards.
Man, it's almost like the wave is based around some kind of theme or something, maybe it's all the Droids? I guess they could have used the famous Imperial droids from the movies, like...uh...
Lets ignore that opening people up to something new isn't neccasarily bad, or releasing fixes for popular characters has 0% impact on the choice of new figures unless they are remakes. Just the fact that none of the movie characters are Droids makes this kind of complaint worthless.
25 minutes ago, Abyss said:Man, it's almost like the wave is based around some kind of theme or something, maybe it's all the Droids? I guess they could have used the famous Imperial droids from the movies, like...uh...
Lets ignore that opening people up to something new isn't neccasarily bad, or releasing fixes for popular characters has 0% impact on the choice of new figures unless they are remakes. Just the fact that none of the movie characters are Droids makes this kind of complaint worthless.
And I thought there was a theme called Star Wars and not some mediocre kids' show dressed up in Star Wars clothes to appeal to those who can't tell the difference.
People love Star Wars for the main characters. Fix them first. Release new versions or IG fixes.
I swear to God I will eat a laser if one of my kids says, "I want to be some worthless droid" from a show no one cares about instead of Han, Luke, Boba Fett, or Darth Vader.
Well, hopefully we get more IG-88 style fixes for skirmish.
For campaign, well-
What I think we really need, and what I think FFG may be starting to do, is to reintroduce some of the less-used figures from the core box as open or reserved groups in future missions. Han, Luke (less so, since we have his Jedi version now), Chewie, Vader, IG-88, the AT-ST... all adjusted as groups for a more appropriate evaluation.
I wouldn't even mind seeing the Rebels work alongside Rebel troopers and saboteurs more often in new missions. In fact, I think a really cool finale for the next big box campaign might see something like this- let's say it's set on Endor, for simplicity's sake (maybe our small box was a Sullust thing or something, I don't know), so one of the blisters for the wave was Ewok warriors. As the finale, the Rebels get automatically 1 group of regular Rebel troopers, 1 group of regular Saboteurs, 1 group of regular ewok warriors, and Han. Meanwhile, the Imperial player has a huge army of his own to field, featuring an AT-ST, Royal Guard Champion, and the villain of the current campaign, among others (including elite officer).
Something like that, that utilizes the rather forsaken units from the core box alongside components from a new campaign would be fantastic. I know that we're starting to get that, but I'd love for them to just go all out with it.
These units are perfect, just enough to get us excited and start imagining where we want to put them in our armies, but not powerful enough to 'break' anything. Great job by FFG of balancing excitement and usefulness without breaking the game.
I really like that FFG has been willing to go to the new (and old) EU, including the comics. It shows that they are willing to take a risk on some of the less-well-branded characters. If you haven't read them, I highly recommend the new Jason Aaron Star Wars comic and Darth Vader, both are very good. There are many great characters in the Star Wars universe to play around with: BT1, 0-0-0, Black Karrsantan (ohhhh yeah he's coming!!!) and maybe even something from Aftermath (which has finally taken shape by Empires End). For Star Wars nerds, the more the better. I mean we already have Han, Luke and Leia which could be fixed with a couple cards. I don't really need Ewok village Leia. I would be fine to see them pull more from the books and I'm also fine with having stories that aren't directly related to the movies or any other media. To some extent, FFG is probably testing the waters with some of the new EU stuff. A lot of people bought the Inquisitor so they released Hera, if a lot of people buy Hera, they'll probably try a Rebels small box expansion. If Bt-1 sells, we'll see Dr. Aphra! You know what would be totally rad, if FFG worked with Lucas Film Story group to give us a CANNON story in IA!
1 hour ago, VadersMarchKazoo said:....You know what would be totally rad, if FFG worked with Lucas Film Story group to give us a CANNON story in IA!
It's interesting you say that, because as I watched Rogue One I was thinking to myself, "Now this looks just like a dramatized version of a really cool IA Campaign mission (or series of missions)."
It's like a number of the scenes were the result of a cool IA mission design:
I've only seen the movie once so I'm pretty sure that I'm missing some things, but I was struck by how IA-esque the Rogue One movie was...and also by how SW-esque IA Campaign is!