The other day I was talking with a friend about that Scum should be a faction that you can ally, rather than another faction, and that would solve the problem of having no Starter Box with Scum ships.

Then, I saw in the cards of Imperial Assault THIS card, and I saw the light:

How about having Title cards for your squadron? The idea, is having only 1 title card for you squadron.

I think that one of the main problems with scum (apart from Captain Nym or JM5K), and I am a scum player, is that you can combine ships in strange ways, that have great combos. Even, some upgrades that we have seen, as Rebel Captive, or Attani Mindlink could be designed as an Squadron title rather than a ship upgrade.

For example!

"Temporary Alliance" (1p):

Unique. You may include up to 2 Scum & Villany ships in your squadron.

"Lost captain" (2p).

Rebel Only. Unique. You can add Captain Nym to your squadron. Captain Nym cannot have more than PS9. Otherwise, you cannot add Captain Nym it. (This is a way of increasing or adjusting ship costs without re-writing original cards).

That leaves to different strategies, even the build of thematic lists, like:

"Hire of the Black Sun" (1p):

You can add any number of scum Z95 Headhunter, Khirazx Fighter, or Star Viper in your squadron. Whenever a ship of this squadron declares an attack against an unstressed ship, if at least 2 other friendly ships have that ship in their arcs and at distance 1-2, you can assign an Stress Token to that ship.

"Red Squadron" (5p):

Rebel only. Unique. T65 X Wings in your squadron gain Reload and Boost actions.

"Gold Squadron" (3p)

Rebel only. Unique. Whenever an Y Wing of your squadron declares a Target lock, on a ship, one other Y Wing at distance 1-3 can make a free Target Lock Action.

"Defenders of Scariff" (5p):

Imperial only. Unique. If your squadron is consisted entirely of Tie Strikers, Increase by 1 the Hull Value of each Tie Strikers in you squadron.

"Saber Squadron" (7p):

Imperial only. Unique. If your squadron is consisted entirely of Tie Interceptors, Increase by 1 the Agility and PS of Tie Interceptors in your squadron. In addition, you can use Evade tokens to avoid damage from bombs.

"Hidden Plans" (6p):

Imperial Only. Unique. At the end of each round, you may discard this card and deploy 1 Academy pilot in your deployment zone. If you don't have any other ship in the battlefield, you cannot use this card and the ship is considered destroyed.

"Dinner Squadron" (0p)

Rebel Only. Unique. At the end of the Activation Phase, if you have a T-65 X-Wing and an A-Wing within distance 2 of each other, give an opposing ship a Deceived Token (Deceived Tokens are never removed from a ship). At the end of the round, all ships with Deceived Tokens are thoroughly humiliated.

Squadron upgrades have been discussed before. I have long thought that squadron upgrades are the key to bringing thematic squadrons into the game. Having thematic squads would do wonders for getting new players into the game instead of/in addition to the mix and mash EU stuff we have now.

Yep, discussed many times before. That's not a bad thing though: It means it's a good idea that FFG have either seen or, more likely, thought of themselves. Why it hasn't been implemented yet I honestly don't know.

The big problem I see is I don't know how best to release such an upgrade so that it benefits earlier ships (wave 1-3 for example). Their current MO is to release "fixes" in new ship packs, but, the "fix" has to be able to be used on the ship it's released in as well. In my mind, the best way to introduce squadron upgrades is to provide several different squadron upgrades to all the factions at the same time rather than the more likely situation where they release a T-65 expansion with a T-65 squadron upgrade (as an example). Now T-65s get a squadron upgrade but what about Black squadron, Saber squadron, Blue squadron, Gold squadron, etc...?

The best thing I can think of to solve this problem is by first releasing one or two squadron upgrades that are globally useful and can be used in any faction. Something that targets using generics of the same squadron, for instance, using 4 black squadron TIEs.

"Squadron Title"
"If you have 3 or more non-unique pilots in the same squadron each non-unique ship in that squadron can perform one additional action per turn"

This is just something off the top of my head and has by no means been tested or even thought about hard enough but is just an idea on how to introduce squadron upgrades to the game in a big way rather than taking years to release more expansions for earlier ships.

50 minutes ago, spartan1128 said:

The big problem I see is I don't know how best to release such an upgrade so that it benefits earlier ships (wave 1-3 for example).

That's a tiny problem. Release a box like the Most Wanted. . .3 ships, lots of cardboard. Include a starfighter from each faction with squadron titles for more than just the ships in the box.

Call it the Galactic Civil War or Battle or Yavin or Battle of Endor expac.

1 hour ago, spartan1128 said:

The big problem I see is I don't know how best to release such an upgrade so that it benefits earlier ships (wave 1-3 for example). Their current MO is to release "fixes" in new ship packs, but, the "fix" has to be able to be used on the ship it's released in as well. In my mind, the best way to introduce squadron upgrades is to provide several different squadron upgrades to all the factions at the same time rather than the more likely situation where they release a T-65 expansion with a T-65 squadron upgrade (as an example). Now T-65s get a squadron upgrade but what about Black squadron, Saber squadron, Blue squadron, Gold squadron, etc...?

The best thing I can think of to solve this problem is by first releasing one or two squadron upgrades that are globally useful and can be used in any faction. Something that targets using generics of the same squadron, for instance, using 4 black squadron TIEs.

"Squadron Title"
"If you have 3 or more non-unique pilots in the same squadron each non-unique ship in that squadron can perform one additional action per turn"

This is just something off the top of my head and has by no means been tested or even thought about hard enough but is just an idea on how to introduce squadron upgrades to the game in a big way rather than taking years to release more expansions for earlier ships.

Maybe with Campaing boxes. Imagine... A Book, the rules for playing the campaing, and upgrades, without ships. Just book and cars. But I think this is a kind of expansión that FFG will never adress in this game.

44 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

That's a tiny problem. Release a box like the Most Wanted. . .3 ships, lots of cardboard. Include a starfighter from each faction with squadron titles for more than just the ships in the box.

Call it the Galactic Civil War or Battle or Yavin or Battle of Endor expac.

Yep, that should be the way of getting this Kind of things.

2 hours ago, spartan1128 said:

Squadron upgrades have been discussed before. I have long thought that squadron upgrades are the key to bringing thematic squadrons into the game. Having thematic squads would do wonders for getting new players into the game instead of/in addition to the mix and mash EU stuff we have now.

Oh... I didn't know... Sorry for the slowpoke. Nevertheless, is a good space of development.

The best way I can see to do it would be to do it as part of a hypothetical "Battle of Scarif" pack. In one thematic and still timely-ish box, you could establish squadrons as a mechanic for Imperial TIE Fighters, TIE Strikers, X Wings, U Wings and Y Wings, none of which are exactly tearing up the meta right now (as long as the Y Wing squadron upgrades were anti-synergistic with TLT). Could be released as a multi ship pack with any combination of the above (though probably a T-65 or a U Wing and a Striker would make sense), and just use Most Wanted as a precedent. Slap a campaign in there, price it at or just below core set price and you're good to go.

13 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

That's a tiny problem. Release a box like the Most Wanted. . .3 ships, lots of cardboard. Include a starfighter from each faction with squadron titles for more than just the ships in the box.

Call it the Galactic Civil War or Battle or Yavin or Battle of Endor expac.

Exactly. Look at the Correllian Conflict box for Armada;

It contained resources for a campaign (big shiny map, 'progress stickers', etc) as the main 'product', and then contained new objectives and unique fighter squadrons without actually having any miniatures.

Similarly for X-wing; you wouldn't get a "here, have some additional upgrade cards" box, but a "battle of scarif campaign" box is quite doable, because there's enough scarif-ey stuff you can build said expansion around:

• Campaign materials (scenarios, campaign tracker, maybe a double-sided glossy map (shield gate/scarif atmosphere)
• New terrain (orbital stations, debris*, dust clouds, atmospheric-fight-related stuff)
• Squadron cards and supporting tokens for a lot of different ships (Scarif Garrison, X-wings, Y-wings, A-wings, TIE fighters all feature, and thanks to Rebels we know B-wings, TIE advanced, TIE advanced prototypes, TIE Defenders, and TIE interceptors are all not unreasonable in the time period) - I'd mix 'known' squadrons (like Black, Red, etc) and a few 'generic' squadrons (Strike Squadon, Escort Squadron) that any ship can use.
• Possibly Partisan X-wings as scum if you really must have some scum & villainy content - which allows for an X-wing upgrade or title.
• A couple of unique crew cards - I'd suggest Saw Gerrera (for Scum), Director Krennic or Death Trooper Detachment (for Imperials) and K2-S0 (for rebels)
• A Blue Squadron and Partisan X-wing repaint if you absolutely must have some plastic in the box.

* because today you still can't get debris without buying specific expansions - the YT-2400, Decimator or Raider, so a scum player, for instance, can't get them in any expansion even vaguely useful to their faction, and neither can a pure First Order or Resistance player)