Just now, Drasnighta said:

Looks like.

Fresh Start?

Just now, Drasnighta said:

Looks like.

Holy guacamole.

3 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

Hold up, was that other Sloane thread deleted??? I have no record of it in my posts, nor is it listed on Boris's profile.

It never happened. You didn't see anything. Move along.

Yeah I think so. FFG doesn't like posts from angry customers about their poor design ability.

So no fresh start?

Noticed Ten numb hasn't been mentioned. He is a mauler on attack. With any combo of yav adar and toryn he can proc easy and multiple times to shred ties with AOE damage. Also forces ties to spread if they want to reduce damage. Slow speed but if the ties are coming for your ships that is not really a problem

1 hour ago, Madaghmire said:

A couple of other things about sloane counterplay from my still limited table experience (4 games, 2 with, 2 against)

Because her preffered squadron complement is often heavily invested in low hull squadrons, auto damage and strong flak is particularly effective. Ruthless Strategists, Mithel, Soontir, Boba, Ten Numb all provide solid auto damage.

It does somewhat exacerbate the issue that the rebels dont have a great ruthless platform, although the scout hammerhead can put it on the table for you with medium range for 45 points. Also, most squad stand based autodamge is imperial, so if you're a rebel player, I can see some frustration there. Although, I pulled off an adar/yavaris numb triple tap where if ten had procced each time, i would have wipped out his entire squadron force, save dengar and a lambda. Its a thing. Sadly, I messed up my activation order and got toryn killed.

The Biggs Ball is a little weaker against Sloane then other opponents, but the basic Jan ball suffers almost not at all as a result of sloane. Just watch out for six die saber snipes.

Speaking of Sniping, Ewings are pretty solid agaisnt those crazy counter balls you see when the scatter aces get together. Flight controllers help.

Anyway just a few thoughts.

5 minutes ago, Muelmuel said:

Noticed Ten numb hasn't been mentioned. He is a mauler on attack. With any combo of yav adar and toryn he can proc easy and multiple times to shred ties with AOE damage. Also forces ties to spread if they want to reduce damage. Slow speed but if the ties are coming for your ships that is not really a problem

45 minutes ago, Boris_the_Dwarf said:

The other problem I have with Sloan is that it's just all around poor game design. The "hero" fighters cost more and have unique abilities. To offset their higher cost, they also come with an extra layer of survivability, which makes sense. Sloane strips that in a synergistic build that removes the Star Wars named characters as an element of game play.

Not really. Check the other comments and mine. If you are throwing large dice pools at aces, you were going to kill them quickly anyway. Barring really bad luck.

In the squad to squad, she makes weak attacks do more against aces by spending tokens that were otherwise preserved. Aces then die a little quicker.

She also encourages her own fleet to take aces. Her real benefit is against ships, but she need squads that can survive in the flak umbrella. That means high health (Lambdas) or aces with scatter/brace.

Enter anecdotal eveidence: The store champs Inwas at in Saturday. I brought Rieekan and 5 Rebel aces (Luke, Wedge, Biggs, Ten, Dutch). I wiped 15 TIEs in two different games (each). Flak did heavy lifting the second time. If they had brough some scatter aces with those squads, I would have had a much harder time.

31 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

Hold up, was that other Sloane thread deleted??? I have no record of it in my posts, nor is it listed on Boris's profile.

It was not me... I think

30 minutes ago, Church14 said:

Not really. Check the other comments and mine. If you are throwing large dice pools at aces, you were going to kill them quickly anyway. Barring really bad luck.

Maybe, but not in one round. I don't recall all the cards but my opponent's Interceptors were throwing 6 dice per attack. If he rolled 3 accuracies, he would spend one to exhaust one of my braces on something like wedge or Biggs, then use the other 2 to lock them both down. If they were already exhausted, then it was a discard.Multiply that by 8-10 in a combination of TIEs and Interceptors with 5-6 dice each and it was like they weren't unique at all. So you're paying points for the special pilot abilities that you never get to use. He might have locked them down but after the first 2 or 3, he didn't need to lock them down so he could safely reroll for more damage. When he swarmed my ships with the same tactic it was just like a knife through hot butter. Squadron command, activate 5 TIEs, strip the tokens then pound with the ship that commanded them. In this case it was an ISD.

52 minutes ago, Boris_the_Dwarf said:

Maybe, but not in one round. I don't recall all the cards but my opponent's Interceptors were throwing 6 dice per attack. If he rolled 3 accuracies, he would spend one to exhaust one of my braces on something like wedge or Biggs, then use the other 2 to lock them both down. If they were already exhausted, then it was a discard.Multiply that by 8-10 in a combination of TIEs and Interceptors with 5-6 dice each and it was like they weren't unique at all. So you're paying points for the special pilot abilities that you never get to use. He might have locked them down but after the first 2 or 3, he didn't need to lock them down so he could safely reroll for more damage. When he swarmed my ships with the same tactic it was just like a knife through hot butter. Squadron command, activate 5 TIEs, strip the tokens then pound with the ship that commanded them. In this case it was an ISD.

Other than one reroll for a crit, and spending one token per squadron... If they get an accuracy, (something they spent 24 points to do,) Imperial players have been able to do this since wave 2. This was my preferred counter to Rieekan Aceholes before wave 6, even if it usually ended in attrition. Double blue flack dice and generic squadrons are the hard counter.

Just now, cynanbloodbane said:

Other than one reroll for a crit, and spending one token per squadron... If they get an accuracy, (something they spent 24 points to do,) Imperial players have been able to do this since wave 2. This was my preferred counter to Rieekan Aceholes before wave 6, even if it usually ended in attrition. Double blue flack dice and generic squadrons are the hard counter.

But... but... clearly Sloane has to be the problem, because everyone only used to run Rhymer before! CURSE YOU SLOANE! /sarcasm

1 hour ago, Boris_the_Dwarf said:

Yeah I think so. FFG doesn't like posts from angry customers about their poor design ability.

More that FFG appreciates constructive criticism rather than threads that attack and insult their company and design team that work hard to bring you plastic spaceships.

But if I had to guess, I'd assume that the thread was reported by enough people that it was taken down.

24 minutes ago, cynanbloodbane said:

Other than one reroll for a crit, and spending one token per squadron... If they get an accuracy, (something they spent 24 points to do,) Imperial players have been able to do this since wave 2. This was my preferred counter to Rieekan Aceholes before wave 6, even if it usually ended in attrition. Double blue flack dice and generic squadrons are the hard counter.

And they don't get to reroll a crit antisquad so, you know, the only difference between pre and post sloane antisquad is that the first accuracy rolled by a non rogue also spends the token it blocks. Thats the sum and substance of what she gives you antisquad.

She sort of soft buffs imperial antisquad by making those crazy antisquad TIE builds more viable as they are no longer 134 points of wasted antiship.

5 minutes ago, Madaghmire said:

And they don't get to reroll a crit antisquad so, you know, the only difference between pre and post sloane antisquad is that the first accuracy rolled by a non rogue also spends the token it blocks. Thats the sum and substance of what she gives you antisquad.

She sort of soft buffs imperial antisquad by making those crazy antisquad TIE builds more viable as they are no longer 134 points of wasted antiship.

And if they had left rieekan alone, I would say she is a fair addition to the game. But, they did what they always do - they nerfed a problem on the heels of the counter only to have an NPE counter that has to undergo its own errata at some point, Hust in time for the release of the next NPE counter and so the cycle continues.

12 minutes ago, Boris_the_Dwarf said:

And if they had left rieekan alone, I would say she is a fair addition to the game. But, they did what they always do - they nerfed a problem on the heels of the counter only to have an NPE counter that has to undergo its own errata at some point, Hust in time for the release of the next NPE counter and so the cycle continues.

What does NPE mean? All I can find for it in gaming parlance is new player experience.

1 minute ago, Madaghmire said:

What does NPE mean? All I can find for it in gaming parlance is new player experience.

He means it as Negative Play Experience.

IE, the Game taken out of your hands, nothing you can do about it, not counter-able, "No Fun", etc.

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

He means it as Negative Play Experience.

IE, the Game taken out of your hands, nothing you can do about it, not counter-able, "No Fun", etc.

Thanks Dras.

Just now, Madaghmire said:

Thanks Dras.

No worries.

Its not often used in Wargaming - I mean, it is, but not often - it comes up more often in Magic and other Card games, especially with Counter and/or Control heavy decks... The idea being that the entire point of your game is to make your opponent never be able to actually play, as its out of their hands.

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

No worries.

Its not often used in Wargaming - I mean, it is, but not often - it comes up more often in Magic and other Card games, especially with Counter and/or Control heavy decks... The idea being that the entire point of your game is to make your opponent never be able to actually play, as its out of their hands.

I've heard it used in reference to all sorts of games. YMMV

13 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

No worries.

Its not often used in Wargaming - I mean, it is, but not often - it comes up more often in Magic and other Card games, especially with Counter and/or Control heavy decks... The idea being that the entire point of your game is to make your opponent never be able to actually play, as its out of their hands.

It was popular on the X-Wing forum for a while. Not sure if it still is.

3 minutes ago, Boris_the_Dwarf said:

I've heard it used in reference to all sorts of games. YMMV

I'm sure you have, I won't doubt that at all.

But when we break down to the pedantic semantics, of the definition of NPE as such, we look at this:

The core of its original definition, however, is not being able to play.

Its rarely used correctly in that instance, out of an environment where your decisions can be deliberately countered and/or interrupted, and thus dictated by your opponent.

The whole idea of an "NPE" isn't so much that you didn't get to play effectively, its that you didn't get to play at all.

Not being able to play effectively is a Poor Play Experience, for sure... But to actually broach through the original definition of Negative play experience, you have to not be able to basically do anything.

So nothing against you and your statement - it certainly seems that you feel you suffered an NPE through what you encountered, and I won't deny that or you that option, for sure.

But in my experience as a games designer, "NPE" is oft thrown around incorrectly. It means something far worse than what most people intend.

On the statement that you made, that an NPE is the absolute worst thing that a Games Designer can introduce into a games system - that I totally agree with.

I just disagree that Sloane is one of those, and can't see any statement to the other.

*On the note of NPEs in Wargames, I can think of a couple. One, for example:

The ability for Close Combat Troops to Charge, Engage, Kill, and then Consolidate into Fresh Enemies was bordering on an NPE for Gunline players in 40k, back in 3rd/4th Edition, for example.

51 minutes ago, Boris_the_Dwarf said:

YMMV

?

2 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

?

Your mileage may vary

The reason I love Konstantine and Slicer tools so much is that they take the control away from my opponent. Its still highly transparent that I am going to do it so they get to prepare for it and embrace it how they choose, so it isnt negative play experience.

The same is true for imperial aces. You know in advance they can decimate your squads with an alpha, you can choose to leave them in range, or back them away in order to force the timing of their alpha strike to your advantage. It isnt negative play experience because its so blatantly telegraphed.