I'm wondering if anyone has seen a list of or counted the number unique upgrade cards per faction (not including epic only cards) I may end up doing it but I thought I'd ask before going through with it.
Unique Card Count?
I truly don't mean for this question to come across snarky, as I really am curious ...
WHY?
What does it matter how many of them there are per faction, outside of:
- Morbid Curiosity ...
- Boredom and it gives you something to do ...
- Other?
5 minutes ago, any2cards said:I truly don't mean for this question to come across snarky, as I really am curious ...
WHY?
What does it matter how many of them there are per faction, outside of:
- Morbid Curiosity ...
- Boredom and it gives you something to do ...
- Other?
4. OCD
2 hours ago, AlexW said:I'm wondering if anyone has seen a list of or counted the number unique upgrade cards per faction (not including epic only cards) I may end up doing it but I thought I'd ask before going through with it.
Call it OCD, or CDO (letters in order... as they should be ) but my binder is separated this way. Rebels have the most because of Droids that only work in that faction as well as crew. I think I have three pages of upgrades, so about 48. There's only a couple EPT's. I think my Imperials is one page so about 16, and same with Scum, about 16. (I'd give you a specific but I don't have my binder on me)
Edit: I have a 3 ring binder with 9 pocket regular pages and 16 pocket upgrade pages, all by Ultra Pro. Works great but ****, its a 3" binder full! I also have multiples of each ship and only keep a regular set of items bound.
Edited by jonnydUnique cards per Faction. Does that mean that any unique card that could be used by any faction doesn't get counted? Examples include Squad Leader or Experimental Interface. What about those that are ship type specific but those ships could appear in multiple factions such as the Firespray and HWK titles? You may have asked about "upgrades" but when I think of that I also have to put all the unique pilots on that list as well; after all what is a unique pilot if not an "upgrade" on the generic ones?
I keep a count, it's 587 unique cards in the entire game. Hopefully it's accurate; shouldn't be off by more than a few if it's off at all.
That count includes the upcoming C-ROC and Wave 11 ships, BTW.
[edit] That counts the epic-only pilot and upgrade cards, too. I don't know what the count is without those; sorry, OP. Nor do I have them broken out by faction.
Edited by Danthrax7 minutes ago, Danthrax said:I keep a count, it's 587 unique cards in the entire game. Hopefully it's accurate; shouldn't be off by more than a few if it's off at all.
That count includes the upcoming C-ROC and Wave 11 ships, BTW.
[edit] That counts the epic-only pilot and upgrade cards, too. I don't know what the count is without those; sorry, OP. Nor do I have them broken out by faction.
I think he means cards that are unique in game (meaning you can only have on ein the list), not separate individual cards. A quick look in my data for aurora looks like 176 unique pilots and 109 unique upgrades (including wave 11 and epic)
So far, more questions than answers
but I understand. The reason I'm curious is more of a theoretical exercise in game design philosophy with respect to unique upgrades as it approaches the meta.
Here's my brief version: The game is being more and more defined by combinations of cards and I believe that faction balance is and will be determined most by access to unique upgrade cards, ie reasons for people to turn to a particular faction. I focus on upgrades because they are the most flexible.
Unique pilots are certainly important as well and I don't know what the balance of that is, but because of their flexibility, I wanted to focus on upgrade cards only. There are certainly important combinations and synergies that pilots create, but pilot ability lacks flexibility which means it can be more easily countered and is less flexible to changes in the meta.
As one minor example, even though bombs have received a bit of a buff, but they're currently working best in the faction that has both Sabine and Advanced Slam. If you want to create a "bomb" focused list, even though they are accessible in other factions, there's really no point since you can do it better with rebels.. Deathrain and Deathfire have great abilities, but aren't enough by themselves to make a list of bombs work.
42 minutes ago, StevenO said:Unique cards per Faction. Does that mean that any unique card that could be used by any faction doesn't get counted? Examples include Squad Leader or Experimental Interface. What about those that are ship type specific but those ships could appear in multiple factions such as the Firespray and HWK titles? You may have asked about "upgrades" but when I think of that I also have to put all the unique pilots on that list as well; after all what is a unique pilot if not an "upgrade" on the generic ones?
Well, initially, I was just seeing if anyone had looked at any of this because I was looking for data. Since I've started looking at this myself, I'm sorting them by cards that aren't accessible to all three factions with a couple of asterisks for illicit slots. As a couple of examples, Bomb Loadout counts as a card I would track since Imperials don't have access to it, and the Firespray titles do as well because Rebels lack access to them.
Edited by AlexW32 minutes ago, VanderLegion said:I think he means cards that are unique in game (meaning you can only have on ein the list), not separate individual cards. A quick look in my data for aurora looks like 176 unique pilots and 109 unique upgrades (including wave 11 and epic)
This is probably very close to what I have, though I am not including Wave 11 and I included upgrades that were accessible to two factions.
My current totals are 55 for rebels, 29 for Imperials, and 48 for Scum. I did not include turrets in the count for Scum or Rebels (there are 6), nor illicit upgrades that Rebels have very limited access to (11).
28 minutes ago, AlexW said:The game is being more and more defined by combinations of cards and I believe that faction balance is and will be determined most by access to unique upgrade cards, ie reasons for people to turn to a particular faction.
Frankly, I don't believe that is true. I think, the balance is mostly determined by the effectiveness of the ships, and most of them are faction limited, with a few cross-faction ones. There are upgrades that have impact on the meta, but they are not necessarily unique or faction specific, but they work better on certain ships than on others (see Deadeye - Torp Scouts, Crackshot - TIE swarms, TLT - Y-wings etc).
There are a few meta defining unique and faction limited upgrades (Emperor Palpatine, for example), but also there are a bunch of unique/faction specific upgrade that are garbage.
Edited by Ubul39 minutes ago, Ubul said:Frankly, I don't believe that is true. I think, the balance is mostly determined by the effectiveness of the ships, and most of them are faction limited, with a few cross-faction ones. There are upgrades that have impact on the meta, but they are not necessarily unique or faction specific, but they work better on certain ships than on others (see Deadeye - Torp Scouts, Crackshot - TIE swarms, TLT - Y-wings etc).
There are a few meta defining unique and faction limited upgrades (Emperor Palpatine, for example), but also there are a bunch of unique/faction specific upgrade that are garbage.
As I mentioned, I get that pilots are a factor, and I agree to some extent that it becomes a combination of these things but I think unique upgrades play a big role in faction balance but I wasn't saying they were the only factor, nor was I saying that they are key to balance overall.
Two of your examples illustrate this since it wasn't just Deadeye on Scouts -- the R4 was key to that build and now we're seeing Mindlink or K4, both faction specific. TLT is only accessible to Rebels and Scum for now.
Just looking back at scum upgrades and since Wave 8, almost all of their faction unique upgrades are viable and are seeing a lot of play in different lists. Yes, their best ships like Fenn and the Jumpmaster see more play but those upgrades, especially Mindlink, fuel things. The same is true of the Emperor in that there are a lot of ships that you could run him with (and whether he'll make it out of the FAQ is still to be determined). It's probably less true of the rebels as their pilot abilities are playing a big role right now (Biggs!), but I see a lot of R2D2, Sabine, R3-A2 and Kwings with Advanced Slam as very key components to all of their successful lists right now.
Edited by AlexW8 minutes ago, AlexW said:As I mentioned, I get that pilots are a factor, and I agree to some extent that it becomes a combination of these things but I think unique upgrades play a big role in faction balance but I wasn't saying they were the only factor, nor was I saying that they are key to balance overall.
Two of your examples illustrate this since it wasn't just Deadeye on Scouts -- the R4 was key to that build and now we're seeing Mindlink or K4, both faction specific. TLT is only accessible to Rebels and Scum for now.
Just looking back at scum upgrades and since Wave 8, almost all of their faction unique upgrades are viable and are seeing a lot of play in different lists. Yes, their best ships like Fenn and the Jumpmaster see more play but those upgrades, especially Mindlink, fuel things. The same is true of the Emperor in that there are a lot of ships that you could run him with (and whether he'll make it out of the FAQ is still to be determined). It's probably less true of the rebels as their pilot abilities are playing a big role right now (Biggs!), but I see a lot of R2D2, Sabine, R3-A2 and Kwings with Advanced Slam as very key components to all of their successful lists right now.
R4 wasn't key to the deadeye scout build, as evidenced by the fact that when r4 was changed (clarified) to not work with deadeye, everyone just switched to overclocked and kept running them. And TLT becomes imperial too soon enough :P.
19 minutes ago, VanderLegion said:R4 wasn't key to the deadeye scout build, as evidenced by the fact that when r4 was changed (clarified) to not work with deadeye, everyone just switched to overclocked and kept running them. And TLT becomes imperial too soon enough :P.
Yeah, it's why I didn't include it in the count but it was brought up. R4- to Overclocked was a minor change but still faction specific and it continues to fall back on faction specific upgrades as the other nerfed right?
Edited by AlexW38 minutes ago, AlexW said:Two of your examples illustrate this since it wasn't just Deadeye on Scouts -- the R4 was key to that build and now we're seeing Mindlink or K4, both faction specific. TLT is only accessible to Rebels and Scum for now.
The key for the Torp Scout build is the JM5K ship itself. Its cost effectiveness (you could fit 3 fully kitted torp carrier in a 100 point squad), its upgrade bar (EPT slot, 2 torp slots, astromech, crew) and the huge synergy you could create, its large base (very wide firing arc), its dial (white S-loop) and tankiness (9 hp behind 2 greens).
Edited by Ubul6 hours ago, any2cards said:I truly don't mean for this question to come across snarky, as I really am curious ...
WHY?
What does it matter how many of them there are per faction, outside of:
- Morbid Curiosity ...
- Boredom and it gives you something to do ...
- Other?
Organization. "How many binders do I need? Can I feasibly organize them by faction?"