Shuttle Tydirium Episode 52: Turn Timers Mostly Suck

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Welcome aboard the Shuttle Tydirium podcast for episode 52! This week we're discussing a few different topics, including HotAC in the modern X-wing era, why most turn timers in X-wing scenarios suck and how to make a good one, and we each share a B-team!

Captain's Question: 3:55

Mission Design - Turn Timers: 29:40

HotAC:44:45

B-Teams: 1:01:00

Check out our background audiodramas for our upcoming gencon event: "GRAYSKULL" "Buzz the Line"

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dammit! no interwebs to download it until Friday at the earliest. ah well, all more fun for me at the weekend!!

Good episode. Think the audio levels were better balanced this time (though I still need to increase the general volume to hear anything really, which can be annoying if my phone decides to forget I was listening to a podcast between pausing and resuming and plays the queued music instead xD. But that's a minor niggle at best.)

I tried HotAC for the first time myself last saturday, been wanting to play it since I first heard of it but didn't have the stuff to play and such but it was a lot of fun and while the AI seemed a little simple it's still surprising how competent it is.)

I had a few ideas for builds going in but I was expecting most people to want to fly X-Wings which turned out to be the case, so I made a Y-wing with the goal of making it a "dogfighting" build with BTL-A4, Synced Turret (The guy who was demo'ing it had a printed card that I could borrow, I'd have used Dorsal if necessary), Vectored Thrusters for some extra repositioning and Targeting Astromech.

The Targeting Astromech was mostly a placeholder for R2 and Push the Limit, but I might hold onto it for a while because it was pretty nice to K-turn and target lock stuff, then shoot twice at them. Scored a total of 12XP in the intro mission, but despite the callsign of my dude (at least for now) being Cutthroat because I envision him as a mercenary working for the rebels (because I'm a Scum player at heart) I decided to share that with my team mates so all of them got up to 6 at least, leaving me with 8, which I spent on proton bombs and plasma torpedoes :3

Really fun to just decimate Ties when getting in at range 1 with target lock and focus and double-tapping with 3 dice, though had to K-turn onto a rock once just to not be left out of the fight for several turns, still would take that a hundred times over boring TLT.

Yes, the volume levels were better, but I agree that they could've been a little higher. I also feel the frustration when I re-listen. It's funny as I tend to forget half the stuff we talk about.

Yes, Targeting Astromech is really good! It's especially good with an Ordnance Y-wing, so that you can K-turn and still fire off those Torpedoes. It's especially nice when Extra Munitions is a mod, so you can get 4 Torpedoes.

Personally, I think all XP should be pooled and split up evenly. We found the games were more team oriented then and less cutthroat. Also, the creator says that he was thinking of making all XP pooled with the next version of the rules (whenever that is).

1 minute ago, heychadwick said:

Yes, the volume levels were better, but I agree that they could've been a little higher. I also feel the frustration when I re-listen. It's funny as I tend to forget half the stuff we talk about.

Yes, Targeting Astromech is really good! It's especially good with an Ordnance Y-wing, so that you can K-turn and still fire off those Torpedoes. It's especially nice when Extra Munitions is a mod, so you can get 4 Torpedoes.

Personally, I think all XP should be pooled and split up evenly. We found the games were more team oriented then and less cutthroat. Also, the creator says that he was thinking of making all XP pooled with the next version of the rules (whenever that is).

Yeah, I'm gonna stick with the TA and see how the torpedoes work out, having a good R3 option should be nice. EA is probably my next Mod slot upgrade, maybe Chimps after that.

I mentioned that people (you guys for instance) has discussed pooling the exp instead, though I still feel it would be fun to keep track of how much exp you earned the group and that's part of why I shared my exp since as I said it's ultimately a group effort. I felt fine keeping 2 over them since I DID kill both the Interceptors and there was no way to split it evenly

I was so excited to hear you guys talk about Runewars! I'll be picking it up soon, and everybody on the forums is super nice. It reminds me of what the X-wing community used to be like. Nobody plays at my store, so I'm going to pick it up and demo it when it's all painted up.

I still love X-wing, but I love Terrinoth, too, and I've gotta try it out.

5 hours ago, heychadwick said:

Yes, Targeting Astromech is really good! It's especially good with an Ordnance Y-wing, so that you can K-turn and still fire off those Torpedoes. It's especially nice when Extra Munitions is a mod, so you can get 4 Torpedoes.

My current HotAC campaign in progress setup is:

Ywing, ps8, targeting Astro, Predator, proton torpedo X2, extra munitions, guidance, dorsal turret, Nera's pilot ability for a torpedo turret and Keyan's ability as well. I can situationally swap out a proton for ion torp.

yes, I can do 4 red moves in a row, get TL, blow it on a torpedo anywhere 360*, and between GC, predator, and Keyan's ability I can really rack up the hits AND clear the stress off for next turn's run.

@Babaganoosh , have you ever tried Armada? That game has a built in round limit, which seemed odd to me at first. But then I realized that if one side realizes they are losing, they are going to jump to hyperspace and minimize losses. So I guess the only weird part is that each battle is always the same number of rounds - great for tournaments, downright strange thematically. Incidentally, Runewars also has round limits. As I've never played Armada (ok, two games with just the core set), I'll have to see what I think about the round limit.

I don't know when it happened, but I've just totally switched the way I enjoy X-wing (and how I will approach Runewars). I like going to tournaments to meet people and test my mettle, but I am not interested in putting in the reps to increase my competitive edge. I really am in it for the story, so I am super excited to find out about this Grayskull Base campaign. I just moved away from the midwest, so I probably won't make it to GenCon this year, but you can bet I'm going to run this campaign for the guys here this fall.