So just because someone made a mistake, they'll make that mistake again? FFG did playtest it, but there is a VERY big difference between getting 20 people to test your product, and then putting it out in the hands of hundreds if not thousands of people. Balancing games is not easy and requires feedback. Yes, the JumpMaster was a mistake. Will they make another? Who knows? I hope not.

If you don't trust FFG...I'm sorry but why are you still here? If you don't trust the designers then you don't have faith in the game or it's future and if it bothers you that much...it's time to call it a day.

The fact of the matter is, we don't know anything about the design process and if we assume things, we know the saying: assume makes an *** out of 'U' and 'Me'. For all we know FFG playtested the JumpMaster, and it passed all because the playtesters (who are players in our own community I will point out) missed X, Y, and Z combining to make: OP.

We can't be sure if they adiquately tested it or not and to pass judgement on that means nothing. The only thing we can do is test it ourselves. If you truly and utterly believe the ARC Caster should be permitted for Imperials and that people are wrong that it will break the game...then prove it! Playtest it yourself and give us the results. I'll be all too happy to hear about your findings.

Also, flying out of formation as a counter tactic...yeah..fantastic if you are running a synergistic list that relies on you being close to each other.

3 minutes ago, Ebak said:

So just because someone made a mistake, they'll make that mistake again? FFG did playtest it, but there is a VERY big difference between getting 20 people to test your product, and then putting it out in the hands of hundreds if not thousands of people. Balancing games is not easy and requires feedback. Yes, the JumpMaster was a mistake. Will they make another? Who knows? I hope not.

If you don't trust FFG...I'm sorry but why are you still here? If you don't trust the designers then you don't have faith in the game or it's future and if it bothers you that much...it's time to call it a day.

The fact of the matter is, we don't know anything about the design process and if we assume things, we know the saying: assume makes an *** out of 'U' and 'Me'. For all we know FFG playtested the JumpMaster, and it passed all because the playtesters (who are players in our own community I will point out) missed X, Y, and Z combining to make: OP.

We can't be sure if they adiquately tested it or not and to pass judgement on that means nothing. The only thing we can do is test it ourselves. If you truly and utterly believe the ARC Caster should be permitted for Imperials and that people are wrong that it will break the game...then prove it! Playtest it yourself and give us the results. I'll be all too happy to hear about your findings.

Also, flying out of formation as a counter tactic...yeah..fantastic if you are running a synergistic list that relies on you being close to each other.

I actually have! (TIE/Ds being my favorite ship in the game). It's very strong against swarms- for sure. You usually get a strong alpha strike as you joust the swarm (which usually confuses them a bit because they're not used to be flown into head-on). With Ruthlessness and the arc, when you hit range I, you're generally throwing out an extra 3-4 damage if you get all of them off at R1 (which is hard). Most players panic and break up the formation after the first joust, but some keep it together. The problem is you can only run this D list with 2 PS1 pilots and Arcs, leaving 28 points for a filler ( I use Omega Leader as a finisher). And you have big intervals in-between these big spikes of damage due to the recharge. It's certainly more balanced that JM5K alpha strikes that do near guaranteed 4 damage per ship. It's also REALLY dangerous. If you mess up and mis-manuver the swarm pours all their fire into your defenders, and it doesn't take long to eat them up- because they're not x7s.

Okay! That sounds really good and I'm not surprised that it can be risky to Swarms but what about more traditional two or three ship builds. I imagine they get absolutely trouced by that build.

My concern, and I say this as someone who hasn't played against or with this list...but against someone with Ruthlessness and Tractor beam...I find that list very unfun to fly against. I get hit, I take one defense dice AND pass a damage over to a friend. I get hit again because I've been debuffed and thus usually suffer 2-3 uncancelled damage, and another damage over to a friend.

That's 5 damage, in the context of the game that's on par with Fen Rau but spread over two ships (2-3 on one, 2 on the other) rather than one. If we were to add in the ARC Caster instead of tractor beam we are looking at the original target getting between 2-7 damage, and then a damage to another ship, two if the Defender also has Ruthlessness. That's a total of 9 damage maximum; to me, that is huge and exactly the reason you can't take HLC on a TIE/D, because why would you take anything else if you can shoot once with 3 dice and then again with 4. They don't even allow Mangler cannon with the TIE/D. Every cannon that can work with the TIE/D can give out one extra damage at most. You are talking about increaseing that by +3 and passing off an extra hit to someone else (which I do admit can go back on yourself...but you are still increasing the net damage by 3 without the passing effect).

FFG are probably restricting it to Rebel/Scum because they can't allow it in Imperials and keep it cheap without somehow stopping the TIE/D from getting a frankly obnoxious double tap. If this was not an issue for them, we'd be able to take any cannon upgrade with TIE/D. Clearly there is a limit to how much damage the TIE/D should be able to output with a double tap and the idea is you have a 'control' cannon to supplement your attack or provide a future boon.

The ARC caster is essentially "This is a cheap HLC and so should follow the same rules as HLC, but it does do splash damage....however to keep it cheap we have to do it so you can only attack once every other turn."

I'm still prepared to hear arguments about why the ARC Caster should be allowed on the TIE/D, however from a design perspective if HLC isn't allowed on a TIE/D (and for good reason I think) I don't see why the ARC Caster should be allowed, particularly because it becomes VERY powerful and then even moreso when you add a card like Ruthlessness on top of it, which I will point out is an "Imperial Only Card" so they don't have to worry about Scum and Rebels being able to stack extra damage on it (as far as I am aware).

It's meh against 3 ship lists- everyone catches on real quick and splits up. I did manage to blow up one of my own TIE/Ds with the splash damage though, that was an interesting game.

I guess my whole thing is that we never get to try it out, because FFG decided early to leave Imps out. Every time I sit down to make a list, I feel like I have so many less options when I play Imperial- and it's just compounded by expansion after expansion of Scum and Rebel only goodies. I hope Scurrg and Auzituck are better at sharing.

I mean, the Jaraxxus is the Scum X-wing, so there's a non-trivial chance Scum Aces is a preview of the X-Wing fix. Sure, sure, X-Wings have astros, but the Jaraxxus has scummy scum upgrades. I don't see R2-D2 or R4-D6 as dealbreakers if EMP or BMST or Inertial or whatever is totally fine. And sure, maybe the X-Wing fix doesn't ship this year...but I wouldn't bet on it, if I were betting.

Year of Scum? Nah. Year of Wedge. Move aside, Talonbane. Mr. Antilles is walking here.

22 hours ago, Johen Dood said:

It's meh against 3 ship lists- everyone catches on real quick and splits up. I did manage to blow up one of my own TIE/Ds with the splash damage though, that was an interesting game.

I guess my whole thing is that we never get to try it out, because FFG decided early to leave Imps out. Every time I sit down to make a list, I feel like I have so many less options when I play Imperial- and it's just compounded by expansion after expansion of Scum and Rebel only goodies. I hope Scurrg and Auzituck are better at sharing.

I actually think it's a two way street actually. I can appreciate that you feel that you have less options as Imperial, I don't feel the same but I am a different person.

I would agree with you about the arc caster and TIE/D if there was a precedent set for allowing a canon on the TIE/D that can do the full damage. As of right now, the TIE/D can do a maximum of 4 or 5 damage a round depending on canon and positioning. It gets a 3/4 dice primary depending on its range. The canon slot offers 3 options:

Tractor Beam: No damage, but can change the position of a ship and make the primary weapon attack more potent or likely to hit.

Flechette: 1 damage and stresses the opponent if they do not already have a stress.

Ion Canon: 1 damage and deals an ion token to said ship.

This was probably balanced with the idea in mind that a much higher yield weapon, such as a Mangler canon, Autoblaster canon (arguably), and Heavy Laser canon would do considerable damage when combined with the double tap potential. You can further increase this with an Imperial only card: Ruthlessness. Now if they allowed any of these canons originally, I think the arc caster would have been open to all factions for use. The problem is they wanted the arc caster to be cheap, thus the recharge mechanic...but it doesn't change that you're getting a 3 / 4 attack and then dealing an extra damage for a net total of 8 damage cards. That's oneshotting a majority of ships in the game that can usually total to a similar point value.

Now there are ways to combat this, don't fly in formation? That doesn't stop the fact that it is still a 3 / 4 attack coming at one ship that can be done repeatedly despite a recharge mechanic. Yes the canon need to recharge, however knowing a Defender dial as I do, it's no slouch and can usually get at least to range 3 or even out of range depending on the maneuver of the enemy ship. Arc dodging is also a thing, a majority of the Empires ships live and breath on getting out of firing arcs so converging fire is not always possible.

I just don't see why the arc caster should be permitted for the TIE/D when it would drive up the damage output and could contribute to red dice creep.

Just my perspective of breaking down the problem...although from what I gather its less of a problem with the arc caster specificially and your feeling that Imperials lack options. I do and don't agree, the Empire has options but not many that are competitive bar TIE/D's. I remember a day when Soontir was king, and I'd love to see the Interceptor return to the game sans Soontir. I'd love to see a reason for people to take the Interceptor other than to simply arc dodge all the time. They may have less options, but it isn't like they have no options. Defenders are still very strong and I stand by the TIE/SF and the Strikers.

All faction players should be excited... Scums most unused ships got love first, yes. But we all need to see the bigger picture. FFG is willing to not just fix un-used ships but even possibly make them competitive. You better believe that things like The TIE Punisher and T-65 X-Wing are going to get the same kind of love at a later date, Scum was just on the books first.

41 minutes ago, Phoenix5454 said:

All faction players should be excited... Scums most unused ships got love first, yes. But we all need to see the bigger picture. FFG is willing to not just fix un-used ships but even possibly make them competitive. You better believe that things like The TIE Punisher and T-65 X-Wing are going to get the same kind of love at a later date, Scum was just on the books first.

Scum wasn't the first, and we didn't need this to know ships would get fix. We've had 4 previous acesnoack...

On 5/31/2017 at 11:43 AM, Joe Censored said:

The Quadjumper is from Episode 7. You see it get blown up right before Rey says "The garbage will do" and boards the Falcon instead.

The quad Jumper wasn't a part of Wave 8 the wave the TFA expansions were integrated into. So it isn't exactly a movie tie-in ship.

So I already talked about my predictions in the thread below. We can safely say that at the very least two are for the movie tie-ins, three of those are for the "rest" of Wave 11, which leaves only one SKU in question.

Just to recap on speculations for that missing SKU you have

• An additional Movie Tie-in that could be integrated into Wave 12 (could be Scum, could be the other TFA subfactions)
• An additional ship for Wave 12 (so again probability points to scum as they still have the lowest ship count)
• A Special release expansion. (so any wild guess, I would say the Scum equivalent of the CR-90 and Raider Corvettes).

But those are my three, who knows what they are. We wont until more SKUs start popping up.

Now we have 3 still unknown.

• SWX67: ?
• SWX68: ?
• SWX69: Alpha-class Star Wing Expansion Pack
• SWX70: M12-L Kimogila Fighter Expansion Pack
• SWX71: ?
• SWX72: Phantom II Expansion Pack
• SWX73: Guns for Hire

67 and 68 are most likely TLJ ships, but the empty spot in the middle of the wave looks strange. Or maybe 68 is Imperial TLJ ship and 71 is Rebel, and then we have an empty slot before the wave?

33 minutes ago, eMeM said:

67 and 68 are most likely TLJ ships, but the empty spot in the middle of the wave looks strange. Or maybe 68 is Imperial TLJ ship and 71 is Rebel, and then we have an empty slot before the wave?

Maybe a Scum ship from TLJ that got revealed to them late?

Resistance A-Wing title: Enhanced engine: "Before you reveal your dial perform a 2 straight/bank/turn maneuver" make them super duper fast!