Breach Specialist is basically Wave 11's mandatory "let's release a card designed for Epic to make people think we still care about that format."

1 hour ago, RufusDaMan said:

Or why they have LESS unique crews than the scum, a faction 5 waves behind of them?

That would require The Empire to actually have more unique characters.

And for those characters to make sense in X-Wing, as opposed to say, Armada.

They don't have to be unique. They just need to be Imperial only like Systems and Fleet Officer, except not suck.

12 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

That would require The Empire to actually have more unique characters.

And for those characters to make sense in X-Wing, as opposed to say, Armada.

Thrawn, Admiral Konstantine, Administrator Tua, Governor Pryce, BT-1, 000, Doctor Aphra are just a few characters that could be imperial crew.

About not making sense in X-wing... there are already characters that don't. It doesn't matter. We could even have things like "[something] officer" as uniques, so not having characters is not really an excuse. This is a conscious design decision. And that's the problem.

On 30.8.2017 at 5:52 AM, RufusDaMan said:

Thrawn, Admiral Konstantine, Administrator Tua, Governor Pryce, BT-1, 000, Doctor Aphra are just a few characters that could be imperial crew.

About not making sense in X-wing... there are already characters that don't. It doesn't matter. We could even have things like "[something] officer" as uniques, so not having characters is not really an excuse. This is a conscious design decision. And that's the problem.

And don´t forget about: Inquisitor (Crew), Seventh Sister (Crew) or even a more general crew (not unique) Imperial Inquisitor.

Or what about Captain Pellaeon? Praetorion Guards? Captain Phasma? Krennic?

The reason the Empire did not get arc caster or pulse really shield is simple, once you remember how long the design lag is; Keep in mind, wave 14 is likely being prototyped right now. When Pulse relay shield and the arc caster were being tested, Tie Defenders and the Emperor were the hottest things in the game. Of course FFG didn't want to buff another flavor of Defender and Omega Leader. Truth is, a lot of balance issues in this game have come from the developers trying to design wave X+2 for the wave X metagame.

As for the lack of imperial crew... they could certainly use more, true. However, there's the slight problem of fitting them in a release; The renbat was the last crew carrier the Empire got, and to be fair it gave the Empire two new unique crew. Scum has gotten crew consistently because most of their ships are designed for a large operating crew and/or passengers, while rebels have been getting more crew latelt because it seems all Disney gives FFG to work with for Rebels is shuttles. Hopefully a good crew carrier is in the the works for the wave XIII Imperial forces.

Pre-emptively mentioning the SF; Gunners are not crew. The Tie/sf no more deserved a crew slot that the y-wing did (Nor did the K-wing deserve three, for that matter).

Just some ideas

On ‎29‎/‎08‎/‎2017 at 9:09 PM, Kdubb said:

You should have seen the days where the appearance of a tie interceptor or tie advanced avatar was the signal of a thread preparing to go straight down the drain.

I hate to say it, but since that time, I judge users opinions with those avatars much harsher than others.

Oi!

But yes, it's a nice card.

But the thing is, even on an Auzituck, it's not great. If you're taking Draw Their Fire and a Breach Specialist, you're not taking Predator, and you no longer have enough space in the back for Wookie Commandoes, so you're taking a (fairly expensive) big ship with no real way to improve its guns. Lowhhrick works great as an evade result dispenser because with the (cheap) commandoes he still has a sort of half-focus-token so his 3-dice attack is actually useful.

Breach Specialist, on the other hand, is awesome on capital ships. Critical hits are terrifying on huge ships, because they are generally all pretty bad and there's a big proportion of Direct Hits to boot. When about to suck a volley of critical-causing attacks - especially if you're in a crossfire where you can't reinforce both sides - Breach Specialist can be a lifesaver for a point. It's probably best on a Gozanti carrier, in fact - the Rebel Transport has extended cargo bay as an option (won't stop the criticals but you can at least make them come from the rear damage deck which doesn't have any direct hits in it), whilst the corvettes have two separate shield stacks, so a crossfire isn't as helpful.

On 29.8.2017 at 10:26 PM, Warlon said:

To be fair, Imperials had Palp Aces which, while beatable, weren't fun to fly against.

Pfff. Flying against Palp Aces is imho x-wing at its best. Target priority, opportunity based attacks and hunting for multiple arcs to get damage into opposing ships. It focus hard on maneuvering while you can just assume those 3 evades once per turn and usually 2 for the rest of the attacks.

It has those clear win conditions, it does not ever end into a endless cycle of not doing damage either, unlike regen, the only thing worth criticising imo is the double post maneuver movement, which is a little puzzle which might be a little too easy or better a little to strong against a good amount of lists.

17 hours ago, Squark said:

As for the lack of imperial crew... they could certainly use more, true. However, there's the slight problem of fitting them in a release; The renbat was the last crew carrier the Empire got, and to be fair it gave the Empire two new unique crew. Scum has gotten crew consistently because most of their ships are designed for a large operating crew and/or passengers, while rebels have been getting more crew latelt because it seems all Disney gives FFG to work with for Rebels is shuttles. Hopefully a good crew carrier is in the the works for the wave XIII Imperial forces.

Yeah, I'm sure if FFG did drop, say the TIE Reaper, or one of the many shuttle variants out there still in a timely fashion, they'd pop another cluster of crew, some of whom would probably be named - though of course some characters don't make as much sense in non Epic/Fleet scenarioes. But also I see a lot of imperial players complain about getting so many shuttles/troop carriers. Can't have more crew upgrades without crew slots, guys.

Rebels have been on a tear though because a ton of their previous ships have implicitly had free seats, for purposes of carrying crewmen lately, with the ARC, the Rebel TIE title, the Gunship, etc. And like you say, backseaters who just run weapon systems aren't necessarily crew - as seen with the Striker and SF. That represents technical/utility seats where they crewman is free to do whatever - or you pay extra points to say "Hey, I happen to ignore that free seat, and instead we have a really good guy doing weapon stuff", but if they had to be exclusive that's not really crew.

The problem with Imperial ships is that most of the crew carriers are...dedicated crew carriers. Lambda, Upsilon, TIE Shuttle. That's their primary role. The only exceptions, besides the Firespray (lol), are the Decimator and Phantom, both of which are prohibitively expensive to load out in the first place. What Imps need are more combat ships that have crew slots, which Rebel and Scum have in spades.

On 8/29/2017 at 9:31 AM, xstormtrooperx said:

Just been at list building and playing around with a Decimator list I noticed the Breach Specialist from the Auzituck. It would be great to have on a Decimator. If it wasn´´t for the requirement of USING A REINFORCE Token!

Why the **** is this crew cheaper and even much better than the uniqe Moff Jejerrod the empire got?

Yes it has a limited operation range (at the time only Auzituck) - but there it is nearly a nobrainer to take (with draw their fire). Does this really justify this low pointcost and straight better ability?

I really try to unterstand the decision behind this. What did FFG think when they created this? "Oh the Auzi should be a really hard to bring down ship, so we just give it Moff Jejerrod 2.0 ONLY MUCH BETTER! Because it is not empire!"

A-Wings would like to have a word with you about your Tie/x7 titles.....