5 hours ago, LordFajubi said:

Was gonna say the same thing but they will just contend the stat line is better on the defender so it made it OP. Even though long ago MJ himself proved focus tokens are mathmatetically better than evades. So I agree with you but some won't.

It's contextually dependent on which is better. If you know that you are going to get shot, then evade is generally better (unless you're rolling 4+ dice). If you're going to be able to attack, then focus is better overall, unless that ship is about to die anyway (see point 1).

The problem with x7 Defenders is that they got both the evade and the focus, at a consistency (for the evade anyway) and price point that made it too efficient (especially for the named pilots), which was made worse when used in conjunction with their 4K.

Conversely, stock Defenders were Dead On Arrival because their cost efficiency was about the same as a turreted ship, which by definition it had to be strictly inferior to regardless of dial, as it was stuck shooting out of its front arc.

As for the OP, Mindlink is too good for 2 reasons:

• The floor is too low for ships that have green turns; if stress is in the game then you're actually better off with Mindlink than without it, which is almost certainly opposite of the designers' desired effect.
• It costs too little. PtL gives a (conditional) free action for 3 points, and that is a reasonable baseline for the game. In a 3 ship list, mindlink gives 2 focus tokens for 3 points, and those focus tokens go to the most expensive ships, which has an outsized effect.

4 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

if stress is in the game then you're actually better off with Mindlink than without it, which is almost certainly opposite of the designers' desired effect.

If, and only if, you need a focus token. If you would like to boost, barrel roll, evade, rotate a mobile arc, target lock, Gonk, or any other action, the above statement is untrue.

Not trying to be a jerk, it's just the "mindlink doesn't care about stress" myth drives me up the wall. My latest competitive list has Chopper (pilot), tactician, and 3 debris tokens. It's a real problem for Attanni lists.

Remember when Rebel Captive was all the stress a list needed to bring to be competitive?

Yeah. It's always been a damned if you do, damned if you don't mechanic for the designers. When stress shuts down efficiency people complain that stress is too good.

When Attanni allows you to retain some level of efficiency even when stressed, people complain that stress is useless.

They can do no right, and people looove to let them know it.

32 minutes ago, Sekac said:

If, and only if, you need a focus token. If you would like to boost, barrel roll, evade, rotate a mobile arc, target lock, Gonk, or any other action, the above statement is untrue.

Not trying to be a jerk, it's just the "mindlink doesn't care about stress" myth drives me up the wall. My latest competitive list has Chopper (pilot), tactician, and 3 debris tokens. It's a real problem for Attanni lists.

100x this.

1 hour ago, Rakaydos said:

Kind of a super wingman effect.

If you read the lore, this is really what it should be. It's more typically a bond established between two romantically bonded beings:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Attanni

Easy lore-based fix: make the Upgrade a 2-dot Unique.

1 hour ago, Sekac said:

If, and only if, you need a focus token. If you would like to boost, barrel roll, evade, rotate a mobile arc, target lock, Gonk, or any other action, the above statement is untrue.

Not trying to be a jerk, it's just the "mindlink doesn't care about stress" myth drives me up the wall. My latest competitive list has Chopper (pilot), tactician, and 3 debris tokens. It's a real problem for Attanni lists.

I did not say that mindlink doesn't care about stress. I said that if stress is in the game, then a list with mindlink is actually going to be better off than a list without mindlink. At an absolute minimum, if you're rolling defense dice or attack dice, then you need a focus token to remain cost effective. While you may be pedantically correct for a very small number of lists that never do damage via direct attacks such as triple bombing K-wings, for the other 99% of lists ships need their focus tokens.

Last season I placed #2 in Deep Core in the Vassal league flying Mindlink meta trash, mostly Fenn Boats.

The previous season I had the best record in the entire league, advancing from Core to Deep Core in the process, flying pre-nerf Parattanni.

I recently started flying a post-nerf Parattanni variant at the second half of our local 6 week league. The list was 8-1, and overall I came in second in the league at 15-3.

I won a Store Championship 2 weekends ago 6-0, with the same list.

So it's safe to say I understand how the mechanics work. I have rigged Cargo Chute on my Scout now because stress is a factor, but opposing mindlink lists still handle stress the best. Flying against an all-out stress list like yours would be interesting, and I would be intrigued by the entire list. There's not many, if any, viable control lists in X-wing now.

4 hours ago, Thormind said:

Sorry to say this but i really wish there was an option to ignore someone on this forum... Here is your citations:

"Figure of speech : a word or phrase used in a non-literal sense for rhetorical or vivid effect. "

There is an ignore option unless they removed it with the Asmodee migration, has to be somewhere in the settings.

Frankly the "figure of speech" you used there was more of a strawman - you'd be hard pressed to actually find someone who says Mindlink is fine and prenerf Defenders weren't. It certainly is not a common standpoint. Both have the same problem in that they ignore (d) any controll aspect of the game which really dumbs it down.

The Jumpmaster expansion pack is X-Wing's fire nation.

45 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

I did not say that mindlink doesn't care about stress. I said that if stress is in the game, then a list with mindlink is actually going to be better off than a list without mindlink. At an absolute minimum, if you're rolling defense dice or attack dice, then you need a focus token to remain cost effective. While you may be pedantically correct for a very small number of lists that never do damage via direct attacks such as triple bombing K-wings, for the other 99% of lists ships need their focus tokens.

Last season I placed #2 in Deep Core in the Vassal league flying Mindlink meta trash, mostly Fenn Boats.

The previous season I had the best record in the entire league, advancing from Core to Deep Core in the process, flying pre-nerf Parattanni.

I recently started flying a post-nerf Parattanni variant at the second half of our local 6 week league. The list was 8-1, and overall I came in second in the league at 15-3.

I won a Store Championship 2 weekends ago 6-0, with the same list.

So it's safe to say I understand how the mechanics work. I have rigged Cargo Chute on my Scout now because stress is a factor, but opposing mindlink lists still handle stress the best. Flying against an all-out stress list like yours would be interesting, and I would be intrigued by the entire list. There's not many, if any, viable control lists in X-wing now.

Sorry, MJ, did not intend to imply you're the propagator of the "Attanni doesn't care about stress" Myth, but the myth does exist and has been expressed numerous times including in this thread.

My paragraph after I quoted you was the only bit relevant to you. I agree with what you're saying, but I think your statement should specify that Attanni is better off than non-ttanni lists at acquiring focus tokens when facing stress. For the purposes of performing other actions, the shared stress puts them in a worse position than other lists.

That, I believe, was the intended trade-off by the design team. Your efficiency floor is higher due to the ease of acquiring focus, but stress control is even better at preventing other actions. I'm not saying, BTW, that Attanni is well balanced, I just think people need to understand that trade-off when conceptualizing counters. Perhaps I'm being pedantic, but the lack of specificity does more to perpetuate the myth of "not caring" than it does to correct it.

As to your success with Attanni (congrats btw), I think that speaks more to how insanely efficient it is when not facing stress than telling of its ability to handle it. Though I'm sure you've got plenty of useful anecdotes as to what you've seen and how it went.

Anyway, the full list is:

49: Chopper w/ TLT, FCS, Hera, Ezra, Ghost

31: Thane w/ Alliance Overhaul, Tactician, M9-G8

20: Zeb w/ Autoblaster, Phantom

Total: 100

I went 4-1 and got 5th in Redmond, WA. My only loss was to the winner of Seattle Regional and Endor Open, with his modified Parattanni. I got Asajj to 1 HP and would've finished her off with an M9-G8ed autoblaster, if Zeb didn't get one-shotted by her first. Oh well. I'll take an 80-100 loss to a player of that caliber.

I also played a true Parattanni and beat that, once blocking Fenn into a double stress by blocking his 4k with a phantom drop, and forcing him to stay in contact with Chopper. It's a hoot of a list, and really makes Attanni sweat.