5 hours ago, GrimmyV said:

likewise autodamage is avoidable, even the Autoblaster Accuracy Corrector combo: stay out of range one! That annoying PS 10 bomber? Just as vulnerable to a ps 1 blocker or enhanced scopes as any other small based ship, even with post move repositioning.

What about pre-move re-positioning? Nym is the single hardest ship in the game to block. Adv. Sensors, barrel roll, and PS10 make him nigh impossible to block with a low PS blocker. The ability to barrel roll means you will never be able to predict where he can end up. The only real option for avoiding the auto-damage is to just stay on the opposite side of the table from him. It's the worst kind of counterplay: 'Don't interact with this ship or you instantly lose.'

1 minute ago, Scumwing Apologist said:

What about pre-move re-positioning? Nym is the single hardest ship in the game to block. Adv. Sensors, barrel roll, and PS10 make him nigh impossible to block with a low PS blocker. The ability to barrel roll means you will never be able to predict where he can end up. The only real option for avoiding the auto-damage is to just stay on the opposite side of the table from him. It's the worst kind of counterplay: 'Don't interact with this ship or you instantly lose.'

yes, adv sensors on PS10 Nym is crazy good. he can even bump, lose his action and still drop bomblet tokens with genious droid giving lots more options.

8 minutes ago, Da_Brown_Bomber said:

yes, adv sensors on PS10 Nym is crazy good. he can even bump, lose his action and still drop bomblet tokens with genious droid giving lots more options.

Alpha strike then? That's all o got. Sorry

I'm holding my judgement on Nym for now. He is just the new shiny. Time will tell if he is too powerful

31 minutes ago, Scumwing Apologist said:

What about pre-move re-positioning? Nym is the single hardest ship in the game to block. Adv. Sensors, barrel roll, and PS10 make him nigh impossible to block with a low PS blocker. The ability to barrel roll means you will never be able to predict where he can end up. The only real option for avoiding the auto-damage is to just stay on the opposite side of the table from him. It's the worst kind of counterplay: 'Don't interact with this ship or you instantly lose.'

Well, if its an Adv Sensor Nym, then its not an AC Nym, so the autodamage chance is reduced from 100%.

As well, my personal take on it is that people need to start investing in control options, specifically Ion. Lt Kestal w/ ICT or a Lambda with Hux (FanDev) and an Ion Cannon are pretty much guaranteed Ion Tokens on a 1 Agility ship, that can barrel roll while moving 1 white forward but can't reveal a dial to drop bomblets anymore, and should melt under fire. Less point intensive options may be squeezing an Ion Missile into a list as a less guaranteed measure.

19 hours ago, Mackaywarrior said:

I wonder if it is in an effort to Europeanize the game to make it more appealing for that market. Lots of dice throwing in a game is considered "Ameritrash" style gaming.

I lived in Europe all my life (which amounts to more than four decades), and I never heard of such a thing. In fact, I respectfully have to call total bull on it. We like throwing our dice A LOT. Ever heard of a company called Games Workshop? Yeah, that's Europe. We used to play Warhammer throwing dice from a small bucket and having a good time. Risk , Axis & Allies , Shogun , those are the games that EVERYBODY in Europe has played as a teen and preteen, having lot of fun. Honestly, most people in an European game store can't really tell if a game is from the US or UK or wherever, not that they would care.

I think @haslo 's post fails to take a very important aspect into consideration: Settlers of Catan is a casual game. It's played mostly by families and people who don't consider gaming as a hobby, but just something you do on certain Sunday afternoons. You can't compare casual games with wargames, especially not the hardcore style wargames with maps and hexes and games that last a full week-end. Miniature games are yet another beast, the casual crowd would never play them because it's hobby-ish, but the serious hardcore wargamers also mostly ridicule them because to them it's playing with toys, it's putting too much emphasis on visual elements rather than strategy. Warhammer is a game born to give model builders and collectors something to do with their figures. All these different crowds (party gamers is another one, but that's so wide and undefined that it doesn't really represent anything but a marketing target) sometimes overlap (or sometimes one gamer moves from one to the other as their interests and free time shift), but they have different needs and opinions on what constitutes a good game, or even a game worth playing at all. To combine them all together, it's like putting in the same pot people who construct things with Lego bricks with people who assemble and paint Gundam model kits, with people who build ships-in-a-bottle. Or people who collect M:TG cards with people who collect stamps. It's just making a mess of things, not useful in establishing anything at all, because all these people are not the same people and aren't doing the same thing.

More useful is to note that X-Wing is (or was) actually situated at the lower end of the miniature games world, in that it's (or was) one of the miniature games more likely to be played by casual gamers, because it only requires two or three pieces per side, you don't have to paint them, setting up the battlefield doesn't take an hour, and the basic rules are easily explained in 5 minutes and assimilated in a couple rounds of play. But I say "or was" because the complexity crept up over the years, and now you have to explain to the newbie that there are hundred of customizations that change the basic rules in often crucial ways. If anything, the game is moving (awkwardly) in the direction of the more demanding miniature gamers, and away from the casual players. So if "Eurogames" means Settlers of Catan , rest assured no Settlers of Catan player will find X-Wing more appealing now that you have to learn and execute complicate combos. Throwing dice, if anything, is simpler, more childlike, more casual-like, and more of what the average person expects from a board game.

8 minutes ago, Kumagoro said:

I lived in Europe all my life (which amounts to more than four decades), and I never heard of such a thing. In fact, I respectfully have to call total bull on it. We like throwing our dice A LOT. Ever heard of a company called Games Workshop? Yeah, that's Europe. We used to play Warhammer throwing dice from a small bucket and having a good time. Risk, Axis & Allies, Shogun, those are the games that EVERYBODY in Europe has played as a teen and preteen, having lot of fun. Honestly, most people in a European game store can't really tell if a game is from the US or UK or wherever, not that they would care.

I think @haslo 's post fails to take a very important aspect into consideration: Settlers of Catan is a casual game. It's played mostly by families and people who don't consider gaming as a hobby, but just something you do on certain Sunday afternoons. You can't compare casual games with wargames, especially not the hardcore style wargames with maps and hexes and games that last a full week-end. Miniature games are yet another beast, the casual crowd would never play them because it's hobby-ish, but the serious hardcore wargamers also mostly ridicule them because to them it's playing with toys, it's putting too much emphasis on visual elements rather than strategy. Warhammer is a game born to give model builders and collectors something to do with their figures. All these different crowds (party gamers is another one, but that's so wide and undefined that it doesn't really represent anything but a marketing target) sometimes overlap (or sometimes one gamer moves from one to the other as their interests and free time shift), but they have different needs and opinions on what constitutes a good game, or even a game worth playing at all. To combine them all together, it's like putting in the same pot people who construct things with Lego bricks with people who assemble and paint Gundam model kits, with people who build ships-in-a-bottle. Or people who collect MTG cards with people who collect stamps. It's just making a mess of things, not useful in establishing anything at all, because all these people are not the same people and aren't doing the same thing.

More useful is to note that X-Wing is (or was) actually situated at the lower end of the miniature games world, in that it's (or was) one of the miniature games more likely to be played by casual gamers, because it only requires two or three pieces per side, you don't have to paint them, setting up the battlefield doesn't take an hour, and the basic rules are easily explained in 5 minutes and assimilated in a couple rounds of play. But I say "or was" because the complexity crept up over the years, and now you have to explain to the newbie that there are hundred of customizations that change the basic rules in often crucial ways. If anything, the game is moving (awkwardly) in the direction of the more demanding miniature gamers, and away from the casual players. So if "Eurogames" means Settlers of Catan, rest assured no Settlers of Catan player will find X-Wing more appealing now that you have to learn and execute complicate combos. Throwing dice, if anything, is simpler, more childlike, more casual-like, and more of what the average person expects from a board game.

Lol more importantly, have you ever heard of Spartan Games? Sooooo many dice. I have paid many-a-pounds to play firestorm armada.

perhaps the Euro/AT thing is just for casual games.

4 minutes ago, Mackaywarrior said:

perhaps the Euro/AT thing is just for casual games.

It's possible. Although, Zombicide is a French game, and it involves a lot of dice-throwing. Pandemic is American, and has no dice.

13 hours ago, Kumagoro said:

I think @haslo 's post fails to take a very important aspect into consideration: Settlers of Catan is a casual game. It's played mostly by families and people who don't consider gaming as a hobby, but just something you do on certain Sunday afternoons. You can't compare casual games with wargames, especially not the hardcore style wargames with maps and hexes and games that last a full week-end.

Casual vs. hardcore is an entirely different axis. What I talked about in Euro style games also extends to games like Troyes, Terra Mystica, Through the Ages, Dominant Species (only using examples here that I own), all of which are heavy multi-hour affairs for dedicated gamers. On the other hand, there's wargames like C&C:Ancients, Battle for Hill 218, and there even was a line called "Pocket Battle Games" with wargames that literally are distributed as a postcard.

You're right: You can't compare casual games with wargames, because that's apples and oranges. Where I disagree is when you say that euro games are casual games. There are casual euro games, casual AT games, casual wargames, casual abstract games just like there are heavy euros, ATs, wargames and abstracts.

13 hours ago, Kumagoro said:

I lived in Europe all my life (which amounts to more than four decades)

It'll be another two years before I can say that of myself

Another note: Euros don't need to be created in Europe, just like AT doesn't need to be created in America. Claustrophobia is AT and comes from France, while Acquire is an early Euro and comes from the US. "AT" and "Euro" are just names, which happen to be easier to remember than, say, "Wozzlygock" and "Blurplegurp".

19 hours ago, Mackaywarrior said:

I'm holding my judgement on Nym for now. He is just the new shiny. Time will tell if he is too powerful

I just spit tea all over my keyboard ?

.....thanks a lot @Mackaywarrior ; where's a towel?

20 hours ago, Da_Brown_Bomber said:

yes, adv sensors on PS10 Nym is crazy good. he can even bump, lose his action and still drop bomblet tokens with genious droid giving lots more options.

I think that for Imperials Tie/D with a control cannon (either ion or flechette) is a pretty good threat to Nym. I personally prefer flechette as it currently covers a wider field of threats.

27 minutes ago, PT106 said:

I think that for Imperials Tie/D with a control cannon (either ion or flechette) is a pretty good threat to Nym. I personally prefer flechette as it currently covers a wider field of threats.

It's not a bad solution, but it has it's problems. For example: There's only one Defender pilot who can get up to PS 10 (Rexler Brath with VI). Nym is the best arc-dodger in the game, and so actually tagging him with and Ion/Flechette can be really tricky. Ion Turret is another solution (on a TIE aggressor), but it's 1-2 range puts you in real danger of having Nym blow you to bits because you're too close to him. Plus Ion does nearly nothing to reign in TLT Nym, which just doesn't care if he's drifting.

My biggest problem I have with TIE/Ds is that they usually get Alpha-Striked before I get a chance to engage Nym. Two recent games, my TIE/D Vessery died to Dengar/Nym before he could get any control out.

24 minutes ago, Scumwing Apologist said:

It's not a bad solution, but it has it's problems. For example: There's only one Defender pilot who can get up to PS 10 (Rexler Brath with VI). Nym is the best arc-dodger in the game, and so actually tagging him with and Ion/Flechette can be really tricky. Ion Turret is another solution (on a TIE aggressor), but it's 1-2 range puts you in real danger of having Nym blow you to bits because you're too close to him. Plus Ion does nearly nothing to reign in TLT Nym, which just doesn't care if he's drifting.

My biggest problem I have with TIE/Ds is that they usually get Alpha-Striked before I get a chance to engage Nym. Two recent games, my TIE/D Vessery died to Dengar/Nym before he could get any control out.

I don't think that getting to PS10 is necessary in this case, as dodging Range 3 arc is much harder to do (and even if Nym manages to do that, it usually leaves him in a bad position to do any kind of attack except TLT, so even a threat of attack would force some suboptimal flying on his part)

TIE/Ds survivability is a main issue, I agree, so they do require some kind of defensive investment/protection, be it extra hull, a bigger threat in a rest of the list or something else (My current personal approach is DTF Quickdraw, but there are multiple ways to approach this). Vs Dengar/Nym list I would be tempted to go after Dengar first to shutdown expertise.

9 hours ago, haslo said:

Where I disagree is when you say that euro games are casual games.

I never said that. I said that if Settlers of Catan is what you use as an example of the alleged "Euro" direction X-Wing is taking, then it's a meaningless example because it's a casual game vs. a hobby game (but also a strategy game vs. a miniature game). And you can spin your tale all you want, the idea that European players don't like throwing dice is total bull. Games Workshop games are already enough evidence to shut that line of thinking off immediately.

As for this alleged label of Eurogame, I see now it's what in Italy we sometimes call "German games" (in fact, they list that alternate moniker on the Wiki page as well). But what exactly do they have to do with anything here? It's just a style that can apply only to certain type of games, mostly strategy games about resource allocation and management; and yes, not all of them are casual, but most of them are, here's an excerpt from the Wiki page: "While many titles (especially the strategically heavier ones) are enthusiastically played by gamers as a hobby, Eurogames are, for the most part, well suited to social play." Also: "Eurogames are usually less abstract than chess, but more abstract than wargames. Likewise, they generally require more thought and planning than party games, such as Pictionary or Trivial Pursuit , but less skill than classic strategy games, such as chess and Go."

It's also mostly meta-labeling, like saying some films are "Tarantino-esque", but it's neither a category nor something that can apply to any film. In short, there's no miniature wargames in the German style, because the German style doesn't apply to them. As I said, miniature games are centered on the miniatures, either from a hobby (model building) or collector's point of view, or through a tie-in aspect which is crucial in X-Wing's case: Disney/Lucas wants the models to look like the actual models, not like the pieces in Carcassonne . The German style has neither rhyme nor reason for applying here.

Case in point: your examples are mostly Civilization -like games (and by the way, Troyes does use dice). Some of those (like award-winning 7 Wonders ) are essentially non-collectible card games in light disguise. If you do something like that, of course you don't use dice, why should you? The card-drafting is a randomization factor in itself and it's already pushing the boundaries of the German style. And to get back to the crux of it all, so is auto-damage, because the German style doesn't encourage that kind of inescapable doom, it's about always giving a chance to counter things. So if there were bombs in a German-style setting, there would also be anti-bombs deployed in the same way at the same time.

tl;dr: the so-called Eurogames and X-Wing exist on different worlds altogether, they don't have neither the reason nor the physical means to collide.

4 hours ago, clanofwolves said:

I just spit tea all over my keyboard ?

.....thanks a lot @Mackaywarrior ; where's a towel?

What can I say, I am a very conservative player lol I didn't even accept that the Scout + Dead-eye was broken until they released an FAQ. That's when I was like "Ah, I guess it was broken, my bad". I just always assume it is me and that there is a way to beat things I just need to figure out how.

4 hours ago, Kumagoro said:

I said that if Settlers of Catan is what you use as an example of the alleged "Euro" direction X-Wing is taking, then it's a meaningless example because it's a casual game vs. a hobby game (but also a strategy game vs. a miniature game).

I used Settlers of Catan as an example of an Eurogame, not specificially as something that applies to X-Wing directly. What X-Wing does is, it reduces the impact of dice by giving us more and more means to make both attack and defense rolls predictable. I think that can be said to be an Euro influence, but whether we call it that or just say "FFG decreases randomness in X-Wing" is just semantics.

4 hours ago, Kumagoro said:

And you can spin your tale all you want, the idea that European players don't like throwing dice is total bull. Games Workshop games are already enough evidence to shut that line of thinking off immediately.

I absolutely agree. Wozzlygock players don't like to throw dice, and they called their style of game "Eurogame" for historical reasons, while Blurplegurp players love dice and indeed many Blurplegurp players live in Europe.

4 hours ago, Kumagoro said:

As for this alleged label of Eurogame, I see now it's what in Italy we sometimes call "German games" (in fact, they list that alternate moniker on the Wiki page as well). But what exactly do they have to do with anything here?

Take it from the horse's mouth: Christian Petersen, FFG's CEO, wrote this in the designer's notes for TI3 (page 41 of the rulebook ):

Quote

The Strategy Card mechanic of TI3 originates from an inspired evolution within German board
games. From the small but clever Verrater by Marcel-André Casasola Merkle, to Citadels by Bruno
Faidutti, a development had begun that, in my opinion, will change the board games of the future.
The principle innovation of these games was that the typical "Phases" were greatly simplified, with
the core game engagement now tied elegantly to components (in Citadel’s case, the Character Cards)
rather than a heavy list of phases. Wolfgang Kramer also touched on this evolution in a different way,
with the magnificent El Grande . In El Grande the essential component, the action cards, do not simulate
phases as in Citadels, but prod players forward by having them choose specific strategies in a
perfect-information environment. The engaging Vinci by Philippe Keyaerts introduced the wonderful
"increasing value" system that provided balance to unselected abilities by increasing their value every
turn until selected. Andreas Seyfarth took this evolution a step further as he combined the above elements
(as well as adding his own innovation) in the wonderfully crafted and popular Puerto Rico .
Puerto Rico merged the dynamic phases (Verrater, Citadels), perfect information selection strategy
(El Grande), and the increasing value mechanic (Vinci) of its illustrious predecessors.
This series of brilliant developments provided me with the tools needed to break free of the stagnant
linear phase structures that have dominated our simulation games of the past.

Nobody is saying that X-Wing is an Eurogame. But AT games have taken influences from Eurogames over the years, and lowering the impact of chance is an Euro influence. That is all.