Imagine Biggs had the following ability instead of his current one: "Other friendly ships that are at Range 1of you may increase their agility value by 1."

Would this be better? Sure, it's strong, esp. as it address a common problem with Rebel ships (namely low agility) but the simple solution is to kill Biggs first. Rather than FORCING enemy ships to target Biggs, with all of the game (and design)-warping issues that come along with that, Biggs increases his friend's survivability and makes himself a more tempting target. You can even play him in some of the same lists, where you try to make Biggs harder to hurt, and he accomplishes the same thing... the longer her survives, the better off his wingmen are.

Thoughts?

Serisslu?

He would not be nearly as useful. But if it is what's needed to get a fix for the x-wings, then maybe.

It'd be better in that his pilot ability would be more on par with other ships in the game.

It would be worse in that you would never see ANY X-Wings played anymore, and if you did, they'd be exclusively Wes and Wedge. (I'd imagine)

The thing about giving out agility is that the more you have the more valuable the extra becomes.

Boosting the 0 or 1 agility ships +1 may help a little but they are still likely to get hit and suffer damage quickly. Now boost that A-Wing from 3 to 4 and throw in some tokens it may be better than sucking the damage down.

If it opened the door to a T-65 fix then I'm all for it.

In practice, Biggs would go from must have to dust collector real quick.

I think there are more thematically appropriate changes that could be made.

Like: "At the start of the game (or round), select one other ship at range 1 -- your opponent cannot target that ship if it is within range 1 of Biggs if you could attack Biggs instead"

Can't shoot Luke, but you can shoot Wedge.

I'd kinda like some kind of Rebel Captive kind of thing, like "Once per round, when another friendly ship at Range 1 is declared as the target of an attack, you may assign one stress token to the defender." Thematic and still good, just not AS good.

I find it hilarious that a pilot flying a ship that is not consider up to spec and has a big "Shoot Me" sign on his back is ruining the game.

In other words, if Luke and Wedge are so easy to kill and are thus not worth taking, how does Biggs manage to stay alive long enough to be an issue??

(N.B.: I don't play Rebels, so I don't know the obvious answer.)

Interesting that some people say it could be OP and yet others say Biggs would collect dust because nobody would use him. In my experience with homebrew rule mods, that is usually a sign that it's probably pretty good. Note that this ability is very similar to Serrisu, as somebody else said, and nobody has been saying it's too good on her, and she flies with 3-agility ships (fellow Scyks) all the time.

Hawkstrike and Ailowynn have good ideas too. I do think Biggs needs some major rework, so that a potential incoming X-Wing fix doesn't have to take into account his insane ability.

32 minutes ago, Hawkstrike said:

Like: "At the start of the game (or round), select one other ship at range 1 -- your opponent cannot target that ship if it is within range 1 of Biggs."

Can't shoot Luke, but you can shoot Wedge.

That's a more potentially more powerful ability than Biggs's current ability. Kanan could be sitting at range two of your ships immune to attacks with Biggs outside of range three (but still range one from Kanan). Currently, if you can't attack Biggs then his ability has no effect.

3 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

That's a more potentially more powerful ability than Biggs's current ability. Kanan could be sitting at range two of your ships immune to attacks with Biggs outside of range three (but still range one from Kanan). Currently, if you can't attack Biggs then his ability has no effect.

Editted for better language ... the intent is to get the current Biggs effect, but only on one ship, not on everything in Range 1.

Biggs sort of becomes like a Kallus condition that you apply at the start of the game.

12 minutes ago, Hawkstrike said:

Editted for better language

So something like like "At the start of the Combat Phase, nominate 1 other friendly ship at Range 1. Enemy ships cannot target that ship with an attack if they could target you instead." Or "At the start of the Game, nominate 1 other friendly ship. Enemy ships cannot target that ship with an attack if they could target you instead."

I'm still not a fan of game effects that say "you can't do that." I'd rather give a choice like, "you can do this and it will suck, or you can do that and it will suck less."

2 hours ago, mkevans80 said:

Imagine Biggs had the following ability instead of his current one: "Other friendly ships that are at Range 1of you may increase their agility value by 1."

Would this be better? Sure, it's strong, esp. as it address a common problem with Rebel ships (namely low agility) but the simple solution is to kill Biggs first. Rather than FORCING enemy ships to target Biggs, with all of the game (and design)-warping issues that come along with that, Biggs increases his friend's survivability and makes himself a more tempting target. You can even play him in some of the same lists, where you try to make Biggs harder to hurt, and he accomplishes the same thing... the longer her survives, the better off his wingmen are.

Thoughts?

You must want to make sure X-wings are never played again in X-wing.

Low agility isn't a "problem" with Rebel ships, it's part of their design. Rebel ships favor heavy hull and shields, and have several mitigating strategies such as regen and Biggs. Low agility is simply a tactical issue that your squadron design needs to take into account.

How about a free defensive focus token to ships at range 1?

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

I find it hilarious that a pilot flying a ship that is not consider up to spec and has a big "Shoot Me" sign on his back is ruining the game.

In other words, if Luke and Wedge are so easy to kill and are thus not worth taking, how does Biggs manage to stay alive long enough to be an issue??

(N.B.: I don't play Rebels, so I don't know the obvious answer.)

I wouldn't say he ruins the game so much as that his game effect is very distorting. His biggest impact comes from his ability to force opponents to split their fire. He's most powerful when he's able to set himself inside range 3 of some enemy ships, but outside of range 3 for others. Both Biggs and his wingman will last a lot longer when they take away their opponent's ability to focus-fire a single target.

Luke and Wedge are also hurt by their point cost. They're nearly 30 points before you even start adding upgardes in. Luke's ability only helps him somewhat on defense (and very minimally if he has Biggs), and Wedge's ability doesn't work against 0-agility ships.

28 minutes ago, lkb57 said:

Low agility isn't a "problem" with Rebel ships, it's part of their design. Rebel ships favor heavy hull and shields, and have several mitigating strategies such as regen and Biggs. Low agility is simply a tactical issue that your squadron design needs to take into account.

This is the obligatory "how dare you change anything, change your list/gitgud" post I expected to see. I'm surprised it took as long as it did.

You can't put regen on every ship. Biggs is another mitigating strategy but he pushes out all of his X-Wing brethren and is so game-distorting that I don't think he's good for Rebel squad design, let alone the future hoped-for X-Wing fix. Yes, I understand that low agility with more hp is a design feature, but Y-Wings and B-Wings in particular get chewed apart very, very quickly... even if you try to load them up with things to add survivability.

37 minutes ago, Marinealver said:

You must want to make sure X-wings are never played again in X-wing.

I would like to see more than just one specific X-Wing pilot. A fix would be nice to make ALL X-Wings better so you might see them once in a while. Biggs is so good and meta-warping that any fix has to take him strongly into account. Kind of like how an E-Wing buff will be very difficult to pull off thanks to Corran... only worse.

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

I find it hilarious that a pilot flying a ship that is not consider up to spec and has a big "Shoot Me" sign on his back is ruining the game.

In other words, if Luke and Wedge are so easy to kill and are thus not worth taking, how does Biggs manage to stay alive long enough to be an issue??

(N.B.: I don't play Rebels, so I don't know the obvious answer.)

Because biggs is there to die. You bring biggs because you have other scarier aces that you want to keep alive for the end game. By forcing them to shoot biggs first, they aren't shooting the other aces, while you most likely can still shoot at their most important target. If you bring Wedge as your scariest ship and don't have biggs, now they can just blow up your scariest ship first, instead of being forced into shooting the least scariest.

Also, biggs DOES tend to survive longer than luke or wedge because he frequently has the asntromech to cancel any hits beyond 2 that get through. Barring crits, that means it's a minimum of 3 shots to kill him. Luke or wedge typically have other droids, so a big alpha can wipe them out in a shot or (more likely) two.

3 hours ago, StevenO said:

The thing about giving out agility is that the more you have the more valuable the extra becomes.

Boosting the 0 or 1 agility ships +1 may help a little but they are still likely to get hit and suffer damage quickly. Now boost that A-Wing from 3 to 4 and throw in some tokens it may be better than sucking the damage down.

But I mean, at that point they shoot Biggs anyway... which is what he currently does??

53 minutes ago, mkevans80 said:

This is the obligatory "how dare you change anything, change your list/gitgud" post I expected to see. I'm surprised it took as long as it did.

No, he didn't say get gud. He said low AGI is a feature of the Rebel faction. If you want high AGI, fly Imps. . .and lose the shields.

3 hours ago, Hawkstrike said:

Like: "At the start of the game (or round), select one other ship at range 1 -- your opponent cannot target that ship if it is within range 1 of Biggs if you could attack Biggs instead"

Can't shoot Luke, but you can shoot Wedge.

similar to the errata they did for palp where you have to declare the target first. I like it.

Assign an evade token to each other friendly ship at range 1.

Thats my vote.

8 minutes ago, Shenannigan said:

Assign an evade token to each other friendly ship at range 1.

When? As an action?

What about a defensive version of Howlrunners ability? Ships in range 1 can reroll one agility die?