What are y'alls thoughts on this? These three cards get cycled through a lot and I just can't settle on which one I like the most.

When do you take one over the other?

maybe the problem is I need to be flying A-wings so I can at least pick 2. Choosing one is just too hard! Lol

Personally

PTL if decent green dial (protectorate, lancer)

Expertise for offense based ship (COBRAAAA, Dengar)

Pred for other EPT carriers that A. Aren't low PS squad (would rather attani or deadeye or who knows what) B. Have crap *green* dial (my scurrgs like intensity) C. Dont have the red dice output to warrant expertise (eh - see above?)

There are exceptions but this is generally my take

1 minute ago, DragonDante said:

Personally

PTL if decent green dial (protectorate, lancer)

Expertise for offense based ship (COBRAAAA, Dengar)

Pred for other EPT carriers that A. Aren't low PS squad (would rather attani or deadeye or who knows what) B. Have crap dial (my scurrgs like intensity) C. Dont have the red dice output to warrant expertise (eh - see above?)

There are exceptions but this is generally my take

I pretty much agree except for the caveat that PTL is best on ships with an excellent pick of abilities (boost + barrel-roll, double offensive mods)

with expertise I believe it's best on ships that have another way to modify their dice innately, like Rey or homing missile or the afformentioned COOOOOBBBRAAAAAAAAAA

also predator seems to be favoured by ships that can launch multiple attacks like TLT or gunner PWT turrets. It also helps for making a shot worse with in combination with gunner can trigger certain effects such as Vader.

Broadly, the three cards are very similar, but each has its own advantages and disadvantages:

Predator gives you a partial reroll (improved to what's near enough a full reroll against low PS generics, but let's be brutally honest, given the PS limit excludes Scarif Defenders, Black Squadron Pilots, Green Squadron Pilots and Contracted Scouts......it's not going to come up very often).

Pro :

• Absolutely no prerequisites. Works when stressed and doesn't restrict your dial in the slightest.
• Because it's 'when attacking' it supports multiple attacks (like a Twin Laser Turret or Gunner) well.
• Allows rerolls on ships without the target lock action (such as the Attack Shuttle or TIE striker) for lovely double-modified shots.

Con :

• It's only a 1-die reroll. On a 2-dice attack, you won't meaningfully notice the difference. On a 3-dice, it's probably 'good enough', but on a 4-dice or 5-dice attack you'll find yourself wishing you had a 'real' target lock on a fairly regular basis.

Ideal use : 3 attack die ships that don't want to be restricted on their dials, and either have multiple attacks or don't have the ability to reroll dice of their own accord (Kavil, Duchess)

Push The Limit adds an action (generally a focus) that you wouldn't have had because you did 'something else' for your action. More importantly, you can use that action for other things

Pro :

• It's a full modification token, so if you have a big gun (or a range 1 shot) you get the full benefit.
• If generating a target lock, you can use it to fire Attack: Target Lock secondary weapons
• You can 'trade' the focus for something else (boost/barrel roll) or use the action to turtle up behind double-modified green dice instead.

Con :

• Stress. Unless you have the means to manage the stress - generally either (1) a green hard turn, (2) a turret or extra arc, or (3) some ability to remove or ignore stress, you want to steer clear of this one.
• You can only spend a focus or target lock offensively once, which may be a shame if you have two attacks.
• It gives you a free action from your action bar. So unless you could have done the action anyway, it doesn't give you access to it. Intensity gets a lot of credit on in part because it gives an X-wing or TIE/sf the ability to generate evade tokens.

Ideal use : Ships with a really good green dial, a good action bar and/or the ability to carry secondary weapons (Soontir Fel, Jake Farrel)

Expertise is essentially permenant offensive focus if not stressed.

Pro :

• It's a full modification, which is good for 3-dice and 4-dice attacks
• Because it's 'when attacking' it supports multiple attacks (like a Twin Laser Turret or Gunner) well.
• It doesn't stress you, allowing you to use your white dial (whilst Push The Limit nails you to your green dial)

Con :

• Stress shuts it down. It doesn't generate stress itself, but it does make it vulnerable to external stress attacks like R3-A2, and you don't want to be doing red moves (hence it's popular for turrets).
• It's expensive. 1 point more doesn't sound much but it means you should be looking at using it on more expensive ships.
• It only gives you focus-to-hit modification, not rerolls, so doesn't grant rerolls to ships that couldn't anyway.

Ideal use : Expensive, Turreted Ships that attack multiple times per turn, don't get stressed often and generate their own rerolls (Dengar)

Also for your consideration: Intensity, Lone Wolf & Wired. Because I like making people's decisions harder....

It's mentioned that stress shuts Expertise down, which it does. BUT it tends to be more useful on high PS ships, which means unless its "pre-combat" Stress, they've shot and used it before receiving the stress.

My point, it's less vulnerable to Stress than it first appears.

Its about the right tool for the job.

This is simple, really.

Corran might be an exception here strictly because he wants to do greens for R2-D2 and he benefits greatly from the double action from PtL when running away.

Do note however that Predator is a little underwhelming if you're not expecting to be facing ps1-2s in multiple games. (I really wish they FAQd it to ps1-3 or even all generics ). So other options like Lone Wolf or Intensity might be better.

8 minutes ago, Elavion said:

Do note however that Predator is a little underwhelming if you're not expecting to be facing ps1-2s in multiple games. (I really wish they FAQd it to ps1-3 or even all generics ). So other options like Lone Wolf or Intensity might be better.

Prefer Expertise on Rey as well.

That flow chart is way too simplistic and misses a lot of tactical considerations - do you need multiple actions to survive? How vulnerable are you to bumping? Can you get rerolls any other way reliably?

Needing multiple defensive actions is what biases Corran to PTL. He simply can't survive reliably enough to be worth his points without focus/evade whenever he's being shot at.

Having rerolls from another source biases Dengar (Similarly Scum Boba, Rey, I'd argue also Fat Han) to Expertise - without K4, he might be better spending a point less to get Predator, and using Glitterstim or RecSpec or whatever to get his multiple eyeball mods.

Expertise also likes turrets and multiple arcs the way PTL does, because if there is stress imposition around, you need to be able to clear it.

I don't think it will ever be a simple flow chart to decide - it's a heuristic assessment based on a whole range of factors, not least a person's own flying style and expected local metagame.

1 hour ago, thespaceinvader said:

That flow chart is way too simplistic and misses a lot of tactical considerations - do you need multiple actions to survive? How vulnerable are you to bumping? Can you get rerolls any other way reliably?

Needing multiple defensive actions is what biases Corran to PTL. He simply can't survive reliably enough to be worth his points without focus/evade whenever he's being shot at.

Having rerolls from another source biases Dengar (Similarly Scum Boba, Rey, I'd argue also Fat Han) to Expertise - without K4, he might be better spending a point less to get Predator, and using Glitterstim or RecSpec or whatever to get his multiple eyeball mods.

Expertise also likes turrets and multiple arcs the way PTL does, because if there is stress imposition around, you need to be able to clear it.

I don't think it will ever be a simple flow chart to decide - it's a heuristic assessment based on a whole range of factors, not least a person's own flying style and expected local metagame.

1 hour ago, FTS Gecko said:

Prefer Expertise on Rey as well.

It's pretty obvious you don't want rerolls if you already have rerolls. If I wanted to account for every single combination of cards the flowchart would be a wee bit bigger.

15 minutes ago, Elavion said:

It's pretty obvious you don't want rerolls if you already have rerolls.

@Magnus Grendel 's analysis is great.

The only thing I'd add about Expertise is that it allows ships to keep a focus token for defense (very useful on ships that would normally have unmodified defense dice).

Expertise is excellent on Rexlar Brath! he can spend his eyeball to flip all hits that are dealt to crits so much fun.

Exp. if you get rerolls

Pred. if you don't

Ptl if you can stack focus evade or are Norra (or ryad setting up tl for vess)

In addition to all the other analysis, I'll add that Predator lets you play a little more flexibly with a Focus token. Expertise means a Focus token is pretty much relegated to defense. Predator allows you to go all-in on offense by combining a Focus with re-rolls. To go all-in on offense with Expertise, you need to take a Target Lock. This makes Predatir a little more useful on ships where you needed to be more flexible with a Focus token.

Flipside is Predator works in all scenarios, while Expertise and PTL are shut down if you redmove or otherwise get stressed out.

Generally i avoid predator on ships that roll more than 3 die though. Like what was said earlier, i find myself wanting a normal TL too much.

PTL + Kanan Jarrus = Cheat Mode

5 hours ago, Elavion said:

Do note however that Predator is a little underwhelming if you're not expecting to be facing ps1-2s in multiple games. (I really wish they FAQd it to ps1-3 or even all generics ). So other options like Lone Wolf or Intensity might be better.

For 3 points, I think it's probably costed right, but if they did FAQ it to PS 3 or less I would not complain haha - eff Scouts.

7 minutes ago, Rinzler in a Tie said:

For 3 points, I think it's probably costed right, but if they did FAQ it to PS 3 or less I would not complain haha - eff Scouts.

Compare it to Dengar crew. He works on a MUCH wider selection of the current meta, for the same price, albeit he is unique.

I'd be perfectly happy for Predator to consider a broader PS range - or only generics, or maybe even pilots without an EPT slot.

Quite frankly i do wish predator would include PS3. PS3 is pretty much the default generic number, unless theyre imperial EPT users all generics that are used tend to be PS3 it seems.
Imperial EPT generics are usually PS4-5. Actually i dont think they have a single EPT below ps4 now that i think about it....

Unless youre facing a swarm of strikers/academies/scyks, pretty much the only time youre ever going to get the double reroll is if you force the target to PS0 (tried that intentionally a few times, not worth it lol)

4 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Compare it to Dengar crew. He works on a MUCH wider selection of the current meta, for the same price, albeit he is unique.

I'd be perfectly happy for Predator to consider a broader PS range - or only generics, or maybe even pilots without an EPT slot.

Oh yeah.. I forgot Scum has exclusive access to a better version of Predator for the same cost. People wonder why I'm such a **** about Scum.

ib4 But wait! One's an EPT and one's a Crew, you can't compare them!! Scum isn't over-powered/under-costed..
Sorry, I'm, done.

Im fine with dengar crew for the sheer fact hes unique. It bugs me when some cards *cough Luke cough* are literally just tweaked versions of a generic card and are either equal in overall effectiveness or only a smidgen better.

If Scum had say an Illicit targeting computer that did the Dengar effect, i'd be pissed. THAT would be utter bullcrap to give them Predatorv2 and not have it be unique.
Flipside its comical to run a generic list and see a Dengar crew. Scum players are always soooo salty when i do that lol

4 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Compare it to Dengar crew. He works on a MUCH wider selection of the current meta, for the same price, albeit he is unique.

I'd be perfectly happy for Predator to consider a broader PS range - or only generics, or maybe even pilots without an EPT slot.

Yeah, but Dengar is a much more limited card. He's faction locked and must have a crew slot to use.

Would go for a broader range for Predator, though. Though not all generics. Mid-PS generics should be able to thumb their nose to both Predator and Dengar.

3 minutes ago, Rinzler in a Tie said:

Oh yeah.. I forgot Scum has exclusive access to a better version of Predator for the same cost. People wonder why I'm such a **** about Scum.

ib4 But wait! One's an EPT and one's a Crew, you can't compare them!! Scum isn't over-powered/under-costed..
Sorry, I'm, done.

Yes, you can compare them, but you have to do so by acknowledging the flexibility Predator has over Dengar and that it is suppose to be balanced for a wider array of uses.

What if Predator was ''When attacking, you may reroll one attack die. If the target's PS is equal to, or less than, half your PS(rounded up) you may reroll 2 dice instead''

So someone like Vader would get two rerolls vs PS5 and lower. PS 8 would get two vs 4 and lower. PS5 would only get rerolls vs 3 and below.

Anybody with more than PS5 would deny two rerolls.

For me it's fairly simple.

What is my action going to be on most turns.

Focus: take predator (usually more defensive ships)

Target lock: take expertise (usually 1 evade dice ships)

I don't have a clue and my greens are ok: ptl (arc dodge ships or ships I want to take 2 actions that are not focus or TL).

Ships like defenders I am often taking a focus every turn for defense so predator is a better choice as it is always be useful while expertise is wasted on turns I don't need my focus for defense. (Ryad and brath often shoot last in high PS environments so there focus is free to spend).

Ships with one evade die I like to target lock with as the focus action is weak for defense and a tl is slightly stronger for offence so expertise won't be canabilized by a focus token.