Many, Many Fixes (EPT Edition)

By Astech, in X-Wing

Posted at

There are a lot of lousy cards in X-Wing. Sure, there are almost as many good ones, but it's always sad to see half my collection gathering dust while the other half is pushed through the same old combinations over and over again. Here are my proposed fixes to the EPTs of the game that have been shown to be lacklustre to date:

1 point EPTs:

Adrenaline Rush: Aside from Tomax, no pilot gets much of anything out of this upgrade. And even Tomax clearly loves Crack Shot more. The fix is to take it down to 0 points, to make it a true throwaway card.

Attanni Mindlink: This card has been absurd since its release. Outside of 100/6, it utterly dominates Epic play. The fix is to limit it to two ships in a squad, which also makes a lot of sense lore-wise.

Cool Hand: Similar to Adrenaline rush, Cool Hand is simply outclassed by other 1 point EPTs (attanni can give you a focus, too). The fix is again to drop it down to 0 points.

2 point EPTs:

Bodyguard : Bodyguard is rarely as effective as it first seems. If you spend the focus, your opponent will just target your now tokenless ship and do even more damage. Here's the fix.

Bodyguard (EPT, 2 points, Unique)
Scum Only. At the start of the combat phase, if you have a focus token, you may receive one stress token to increase the agility value of a friendly ship at range 1 with higher pilot skill than you by one until the end of the round.

Now the drawback is serious stress limitations, but at least you don't lose defensive power by taking a defensive upgrade.

Decoy: Decoy is so much worse than Swarm Tactics, and both are typically worse than VI would be. As such, it should be discounted to 1 point, and the range band increased to R1-3.

Elusiveness: It's soo much worse than Lone Wolf as a defensive upgrade - get stress for a 25% chance to decrease damage by one. Here's the fix.

Elusiveness (EPT, 2 points)
When defending, you may receive one stress token. If you do, the attacker cannot change [focus] results to [hit] during this attack. If you have 1 or more stress tokens, you cannot use this ability.

It's carefully worded to shut of Expertise and Accuracy Corrector and focus spending, yet still allow TL rerolls. It would also combo extremely well with Sensor Jammer. I think it's balanced, given the stress vulnerability and inherent weakness to spike damage.

Expert Handling : Despite some hilarious uses on Kylo, this card is largely useless, given that Vectored Thrusters is now out. Here's the fix.

Expert Handling (EPT, 2 points)
Action: Execute a barrel roll. Then you may remove 1 enemy target lock token from your ship. You cannot equip this card unless you have the [barrel roll] action icon.

It's now worded so that Vader can stack barrel rolls, and the debilitating stress requirement is gone. Here, the opportunity cost to equip a better EPT like Predator compensates for the strong changes.

Squad Leader: Spend 2 points to shift an action to another ship, or spend 3 points to just get another action with PTL? Here's the fix.

Squad Leader (EPT, 2 points, unique)
Friendly ships at range 1 of you may receive 1 stress token to perform 1 action on their action bar while stressed.

It's been changed quite a bit, but I think it is very thematic now - a Commander watching every move, ensuring you always do as instructed, stressing out over the potential punishment. It's been carefully worded to not have synergy with bombs.

Swarm Tactics: It's a very janky card that's only really useful in alpha strike lists, but even there Deadeye is more desirable. Here's the fix.

Swarm Tactics (EPT, 2 points, Unique)
Imperial Only . At the start of the combat phase you may increase the pilot skill of each friendly ship at range 1 with a lower pilot skill than you by one.

Now Howlrunner has a useful EPT for her swarm. I don't think it's very strong even now, but it could help the Imperial swarm back onto its feet.

Wingman: When Epsilon leader does the same thing, for every ship at range 1, it's hard to justify waking this over other EPTs. Here's the fix.

Wingman (EPT, 2 points)
At the start of the activation phase, you may remove 1 stress token from a friendly ship at range 1-2.

you get a range boost and a better timing window. Whether it's worth 2 points or not is still iffy.

3 point EPTs:

Daredevil: The only good build I've seen this one is Bossk, and he pays 7 points (including engine upgrade) for the ability to turn around a little quicker than a boost. Here's the fix.

Daredevil (EPT, 3 points)
Action : Execute a while [1 hard left] or [1 hard right] maneuver. Then receive 1 stress token.

The fact that it takes up your EPT slot is punishment enough, to say nothing of the actual 3 points you pay for it.

Marksmanship : Now utterly overshadowed by Expertise, Marksmanship is one of the worst EPTs, only seeing niche use on the likes of Ten Numb and Kylo. Here's the fix.

Marksmanship (EPT, 3 points)
While attacking a target inside your firing arc, if you spend a focus token to change all [focus] results to [hits], you may also change 1 [blank] result to a [crit].

You're still action-dependent, but in a better way. You get, essentially, guidance chips for a primary weapon. The firing arc restriction is to prevent even more hyper-accurate PWTs from mucking up the game. 3 points is still a pretty steep price to pay, especially when Predator isn't action-dependent and has a 75% chance of doing the same thing, but the crits could be worth it.

Outmaneuver: It' so hard to get in the kind of positions this card likes without PTL boost + barrel roll. Here's the fix.

Outmaneuver (EPT, 3 points)
When attacking a ship inside your firing arc, if you are not inside that ship's firing arc, you may either decrease its agility value by one or assign it 1 stress token.

The option to stress a ship, especially with a relatively easy trigger, could make up for the high cost.

Ruthlessness: Ruthlessness' only home is on TIE/D defenders, and they're expensive enough as it is. Just take it down to 2 points.

4 point EPTs:

Expose: Expose is typically worse than the focus action (on everything but a HWK...), so the 4 points and EPT slot it takes up are just icing on the cake. here's the fix.

Expose (EP, 4 points)
Increase your primary weapon value by one. When defending, you must either roll 1 less defense die or, if you are not stressed, receive 1 stress token.

Expose is now permanently on. Every turn you're probably going to get stressed, and then start losing agility. The stress requirement is to stop PWTs from running away with a 4-5 die gun (thanks, engine upgrade), while still giving jousters a chance against a single incoming attack.

Opportunist: I personally love this card - I flew HLC Keyan + Opportunist to a small tourney victory once upon a time. But it's impossibly hard to trigger, especially for its 4 points. You basically have to build a squad around the card to get it to trigger reliably (which you really want in a 4-point card). Here's the fix.

Opportunist (EPT, 4 points)
When attacking, if the defender does not have a focus and evade token, you may receive 1 stress token to roll 1 additional attack die. You cannot use this ability if you have any stress tokens.

Suddenly, only PTL aces and Attani lists can prevent Opportunist from dishing out the damage. It always made no sense to me that any ship in the game could block this very expensive card, just by using the action they were going to use anyway.

Well, that's it for EPTs. If you see any stupidly broken combos, let me know.

Edited by Astech
Posted at

I love almost all of these ideas. I think though that you could make Cool Hand playable just by not having it as a discard. Then its actually pretty powerful!

Also I think opportunist should not give you stress. Its already more than predator!

Posted at

I like Marksmanship especially.

Posted at

I like these ideas, hopefully we'll see a 2.0 edition some day to make mass revisions like these a reality.

Outmaneuver just needs to be 2 points (It was released at the same time as Predator and with the same cost, we all knew it was overcosted on day one)

Opportunist also just needs a cost reduction. I love this card (it is actually usable in epic against capital ships who cannot take focus or evade tokens). I would leave it as it is and drop the cost down to 2 points (-1 point for receiving a stress token to trigger and -1 for situational)

I like the tactical choice involved with Expose, I would just drop the cost down to 1 (or maybe 0). It's got so many downsides.

Posted at

Kind of an impossible task given the nature of the expansive game. You just won't know how cards will fit when new ones are out. I have given up on every upgrade and pilot card being good, so I will settle for every ship to have a good build and every upgrade slot to hold something of value. EPTs are one of the oldest upgrade slot being in since wave 1 and nearly every expansion pack has brought in a new EPT with a new series of EPT upgrades every wave. As you may have notice most (if not all) Wave 1 EPTs have been replaced and are out classed. That is to be expected.

Here is a video which might help you understand what I am trying to explain.

Hope that clears things up.

Posted at

Wingman working at start of combat is a really useful timing for it. The best use I've ever had for it is with Whisper, allowing her to K turn safely, which is really nice. But expanding the range would be great.

I really like most of these, except Mindlink. Making it two ship only mostly kills it, and definitely kills a number of interesting but not particularly strong things that can be done with it on EPT generics. The problem with it is that it's too good on a small array of ships which are just more efficient than everything else in Scum - named Fangs, Assaj, and Jumpmasters. So my proposal would be that it needs to take away some of the things that make those good - in particular, green turns, high PS, and pilot abilities. So, I'd suggest MIndlink should add one or more of the following: make all turn maneouvres white, treat your pilot ability as blank whilst other friendly ships with mindlink are in play, treat your PS as equal to the lowest PS of the ships with which you are mindlinked. Preferably the latter two, not the former, as it's probably fine on Guri and Palob. It's too good in certain contexts, and fine in others; this fix doesn't change most of the contexts in which it's fine, and does change the ones in which it's good. Two ships only just wrecks it. And four-ship elite generic mindlink lists are SUPER fun.

Of course, this and most other fixes are contingent on un-fracking the Jumpmaster, too. They can only be viewed in that context.

You also forgot LIghting Reflexes, which should probably also be 0.

Posted at
9 hours ago, Astech said:

Attanni Mindlink: This card has been absurd since its release. Outside of 100/6, it utterly dominates Epic play. The fix is to limit it to two ships in a squad, which also makes a lot of sense lore-wise.

I don't mind this idea. I'd thought of making the EPT unique but having it confer a 'mindlinked' condition, but that gives the problem that one of the pair still has their own EPT slot free.

Black Squadron Scout/Adaptive Ailerons/Adrenaline Rush at 20 points would be interesting - giving up the Lightweight Frame for a +1PS and the ability to do a weavy-segnor's-loop and still get actions (and ailerons next turn!) would be cool...

8 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

The problem with it is that it's too good on a small array of ships which are just more efficient than everything else in Scum - named Fangs, Assaj, and Jumpmasters. So my proposal would be that it needs to take away some of the things that make those good - in particular, green turns, high PS, and pilot abilities. So, I'd suggest MIndlink should add one or more of the following: make all turn maneouvres white, treat your pilot ability as blank whilst other friendly ships with mindlink are in play, treat your PS as equal to the lowest PS of the ships with which you are mindlinked. Preferably the latter two, not the former, as it's probably fine on Guri and Palob.

Indeed. Mindlink isn't too bad when you're looking at Khiraxz, or Starvipers, or...well, essentially stuff without green hard turns and/or white segnors loops.

Posted at
Just now, Magnus Grendel said:

I don't mind this idea. I'd thought of making the EPT unique but having it confer a 'mindlinked' condition, but that gives the problem that one of the pair still has their own EPT slot free.

Black Squadron Scout/Adaptive Ailerons/Adrenaline Rush at 20 points would be interesting - giving up the Lightweight Frame for a +1PS and the ability to do a weavy-segnor's-loop and still get actions (and ailerons next turn!) would be cool...

Indeed. Mindlink isn't too bad when you're looking at Khiraxz, or Starvipers, or...well, essentially stuff without green hard turns and/or white segnors loops.

Even the EPT Fang generics are fine with it - they're just not efficient enough points wise to be problematic.

Posted at

Yeah even with the stress thing your fix for Expose is bonkers. 4-die primary RAC is good unto himself, and that's with running EI to get the TL. Now he gets the action, can take an EU, and only takes the stress if he gets shot? No thanks. Frankly all add-attack-die cards should be left in the dustbin; they break the game too much.

Also you don't have a once per turn limiter on your outmaneuver, so a /D Defender could stress twice with it out at range 3. Also nuts good.

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Attanni Mindlink: This card has been absurd since its release.

Seriously, let me laugh. Attanni was garbage when it came out because Scum was bad when it dropped outside brobots. As someone who actually ran attani Starvipers and Kihraxz back in wave 8, it was not a good enough card to carry them. Limiting it to two ships is also a horrible idea, because it is useless when you only have one ship left. Attanni only became good because Scum received three ships with green hards at a ridiculous price discount compared to the other factions, and Fenn getting proton rockets every round.

Anyway you have some good ideas in there. I'm a fan of the double barrel roll with EH.

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You also forgot LIghting Reflexes

Just make it three points, have it only be after white maneuvers, can't use while stressed, and give it unlimited uses. Basically make it a new Falcon title. Keyan could use the buff, and I'm not sure there's anyone else would actually receive much benefit from it besides HWK pilots.

Edited by DarkArk
Posted at

lol, making Lightning Reflexes work all the time would be broken as heck given that Kanan crew exists. Good lord.

Posted at

Marksmanship is reasonably clever.

Outmaneuversimply wants to be 2pts - a shiny little bonus in the elusive 2pt offensive EPT catalogue; it'd sit well alongside Juke.

Your elusiveness wouldn't stop Accuracy Corrector, by the way. It doesn't change results, but add them, x1 style. Probably want to keep the 'if you're unstressed' rider, too.

Posted at

Some good fixes there, but I don't think FFG will ever start changing the printed price of cards.

I also agree that Mindlink only working with 2 ships effectively kills it. I've posted this Mindlink fix a lot, but I still like it:

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Each time you are assigned a focus or stress token, each other friendly ship with Attanni Mindlink must also be assigned the same type of token if it does not already have one. You may not receive a Focus token if you are in contact with another ship.

This gives you a chance to block ships with Mindlink.

Another I like is:

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Each time you are assigned a focus or stress token, each other friendly ship with Attanni Mindlink must also be assigned the same type of token if it does not already have one. For each additional Mindlink EPT more than 2, increase its point value by 1.

Not sure how to word this one, but essentially if you have three Mindlink ships, the point cost for the EPTs would be 4 instead of 3. For four ML's, its 6 instead of 4.

Posted at
10 minutes ago, Jo Jo said:

Not sure how to word this one, but essentially if you have three Mindlink ships, the point cost for the EPTs would be 4 instead of 3. For four ML's, its 6 instead of 4.

Again this, doesn't really punish the current broken uses, but DOES punish the cool ones that are currently not really up to meta-scratch.

Stopping it working on ships in base contact would be... interesting... but not my preference.

Posted at
Just now, thespaceinvader said:

Again this, doesn't really punish the current broken uses, but DOES punish the cool ones that are currently not really up to meta-scratch.

Stopping it working on ships in base contact would be... interesting... but not my preference.

Or maybe an inverse of what I suggested: ' If you have 3 or less Mindlink EPTs in your squad, increase each of their point value by 1 '?

Posted at

Best EPT? Probably PTL.

Favorite EPT? Wired. All the time

Posted at
5 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

lol, making Lightning Reflexes work all the time would be broken as heck given that Kanan crew exists. Good lord.

Not really. New Falcon title already exists with that combo, and while it's decent Rey isn't exactly tearing up the meta.

Every other Rebel small ship with a crew slot is pretty bad. Attack shuttle is a glorified Z-95 with a turret, the best HWK pilot couldn't use it anyway because her ability stresses herself, ARCs don't really care and since I specified white maneuver Norra will never take it, Keyan can already get rid of his stress, Nym is not not taking VI, and that leaves the Wookies. So yeah, I suppose if you wanted to spend 2/3s of your upgrade slots and six points you could turn around your Auzitucks. Doesn't seem broken to me.

Posted at
22 hours ago, AngryAlbatross said:

I love almost all of these ideas. I think though that you could make Cool Hand playable just by not having it as a discard. Then its actually pretty powerful!
Also I think opportunist should not give you stress. Its already more than predator !

The thing about cool hand is that if you don't discard it it becomes far better than Outlaw Tech since you can get an evade token, not just focus. Opportunist, when it triggers, is far better than predator, since the variance in dice is massively decreased and your damage cap gets higher.

17 hours ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

I like these ideas, hopefully we'll see a 2.0 edition some day to make mass revisions like these a reality.

Outmaneuver just needs to be 2 points (It was released at the same time as Predator and with the same cost, we all knew it was overcosted on day one)

Opportunist also just needs a cost reduction. I love this card (it is actually usable in epic against capital ships who cannot take focus or evade tokens). I would leave it as it is and drop the cost down to 2 points (-1 point for receiving a stress token to trigger and -1 for situational)

I like the tactical choice involved with Expose , I would just drop the cost down to 1 (or maybe 0). It's got so many downsides.

Even at 2 points it's worse than lone wolf, since they trigger in similar circumstances. With Opportunist, decreasing the point cost to two opens the door to A-wing Snap Shot abuse. With expose, even at 0 points its worse than the focus action (unless you have either 2 dice and a focus token, or 1 die primary) thus, you must give it a buff to make it worth it at all.

16 hours ago, Marinealver said:

Kind of an impossible task given the nature of the expansive game. You just won't know how cards will fit when new ones are out. I have given up on every upgrade and pilot card being good, so I will settle for every ship to have a good build and every upgrade slot to hold something of value. EPTs are one of the oldest upgrade slot being in since wave 1 and nearly every expansion pack has brought in a new EPT with a new series of EPT upgrades every wave. As you may have notice most (if not all) Wave 1 EPTs have been replaced and are out classed. That is to be expected.

Here is a video which might help you understand what I am trying to explain.

But re-releases of older packs can easily keep the game's accretion to 2 years or so max. I won't settle for each ship having a single good build - because it means that squad building is mostly worthless, since you're just putting pre-assembled pieces of a puzzle together.

You wouldn't believe the number of times that accretion video is referenced. However, what we're talking about here isn't accretion, but a combination of accretion and power creep. It's more insidious, but also obvious. You've no doubt noticed that every new wave (JM5K excluded) is slightly stronger than the previous one. It's intentional, and older cards are not updated as they should be (after an appropriate money-making period).

12 hours ago, DarkArk said:

Yeah even with the stress thing your fix for Expose is bonkers. 4-die primary RAC is good unto himself, and that's with running EI to get the TL. Now he gets the action, can take an EU , and only takes the stress if he gets shot? No thanks. Frankly all add-attack-die cards should be left in the dustbin; they break the game too much.

Also you don't have a once per turn limiter on your outmaneuver , so a /D Defender could stress twice with it out at range 3. Also nuts good.

Seriously, let me laugh. Attanni was garbage when it came out because Scum was bad when it dropped outside brobots. As someone who actually ran attani Starvipers and Kihraxz back in wave 8, it was not a good enough card to carry them. Limiting it to two ships is also a horrible idea, because it is useless when you only have one ship left. Attanni only became good because Scum received three ships with green hards at a ridiculous price discount compared to the other factions, and Fenn getting proton rockets every round.

For expose - it's a 4 point card that is no better than Expertise on a 3-die PWT, and has a massive drawback. Limiting a PWT (that doesn't have Kanan) to green maneuvers is massive, and means that the PWT cannot run away effectively, and can easily be blocked. Given that the drawback works on turret shots, you're basically going to be stressed every turn, but every meta list.

TIE/Ds need all the help they can get, and they don't really have the dial for Outmaneuver.

Attanni... Was garbage? Firstly, it came out with the JM5K. The JM5K, since the day of its release, has been the best ship in the game. Limiting it to two ships worked for Dengaroo. Attanni would get mileage on Imperial aces and Rebel swarms too.

9 hours ago, Jo Jo said:

Not sure how to word this one, but essentially if you have three Mindlink ships, the point cost for the EPTs would be 4 instead of 3. For four ML's, its 6 instead of 4.

Your math is a little off there, given that it's current wording increases the cost of every Attanni card. So the true price, where N is the number of Attani cards in the list is : N * (N-1), if you have more than one card in the list. This is an exponential relationship which might actually fix the card except that it's only ever used in 3 ship lists. So even then, you're paying only 2 points per ship (just doubling the price) for unblockable actions.

As for lightning reflexes, I looked at it long and hard when deciding if it needed a fix. On the one hand it's better than Adrenaline Rush, but on the other it's worse than Crack shot. Perhaps if we made it a dual card, and gave it two uses through that mechanic?