The preview of Jamming Beam has left me wondering if there is any home for this upgrade. Outside of removing a lock on a lower PS ship and stopping it from launching ordnance (which only works if they have no other tokens), I'm not seeing much of a use for it. It is only a three die attack; it does no damage; it has a short range, so no ability to make a range 3 shot more accurate; it can only ever give one jamming token, making it pretty useless at removing defensive tokens; and it costs one point. I was hoping that it could give out multiple tokens per hit, making it effective at token striping, but being hit by the beam is no worse than spending a token to avoid the attack.

Help me out here, how often is this going to be better than a Tractor Beam for the same cost? Even on a TIE/d I think I'd take tractor over this, as a tractor token looks far more powerful than a jam token.

In what I've been seeing, Jam tokens are a LOT better. TIE/Ds are better jamming than tractoring (although Ion Cannon is still better than both), and after slamming with a GUNBOAT, you can remove a token for the rest of your ships.
Personally I love jamming beam, it's a great tool against token-stackers and abilities that depend on tokens. It may even have a place against Harpoon Missiles if you have initiative.

Whenever I use it I have to have a 20 minute Phish jam playing in the background...

Tractor Beams on low PS ships don't do too much unless your entire list is at or below the PS or you can get them in front of a rock, the -1 Agi effect may end up wasted (Ketsu Onyo excluded). Against large ships, you may end up with no effect.

The Jamming Beam token lasts between turns and so it will have some effect, either reducing their offense or defense.

10 minutes ago, HolySorcerer said:

Help me out here, how often is this going to be better than a Tractor Beam for the same cost? Even on a TIE/d I think I'd take tractor over this, as a tractor token looks far more powerful than a jam token.

I think it's probably one of those upgrades that we'll see the true value of once it hits the tables. I agree that Tractor Beam seems superior on the face of things. I mean let's face it, if you defend against a Tractor Beam you might end up using tokens anyway to avoid it, but on the flip side Jamming Beam on a tokenless target can shut their actions down for following turns as well.

Also Jamming Beam is likely to be more useful against low agility, large base ships (Tractor Beam does nothing to the Ghost or a Decimator for example).

To me the Jamming Beam TOKEN has more uses against enemy ships than Tractor Beam tokens since Tractor token's movement doesn't effect large ships except their agility although VCXs and Decis don't care at all. My main issue with how to apply those Jamming Tokens (for now) is that the Jamming Beam is only range 1-2 and the Tractor Beam is range 1-3.

Prepare to have your mind blown...

Ready?

Imagine it vs an ordnance raider or corvette.

I hadn't actually realized that they persist if the target doesn't have a Focus, Evade, or TL for it to strip. That certainly gives it a bit more utility than I initially thought. But yeah, at this point it strikes me as a tool that is simply laying the groundwork for a new mechanic -- I was surprised that there isn't really any specific interaction between the gunboat's pilots and the jamming stuff.

I could potentially see it have some use on a TIE/D, but honestly think tractor or ion will be more effective.

no damage, no bueno

even though the Jam effect itself is good (because it persists and stacks), it's just too slow to really matter unless it's fired by very high PS to strip modifiers before the enemy can use them to attack (in which case it becomes Wes Jenson, but it has to hit..)

and even then, sacrificing damage is just such a steep price to pay in this game.

In short: Jam good, Cannon bad

perhaps the Kimoglia's scrambler missiles could help apply the effect without the sharp cut in damage efficiency (just look at all them jam tokens)

Like the tractor beam cannon, the jamming beam is purely circumstantial.

- Some well placed jamming beams against a ship with deadeye or long range scanners will ruin your opponent's day.

- A few jamming cannons against PTL Soontir? He can shed up to 3 of those jamming tokens per round, so he'll have no problem getting back in the game

It's hardly overpowering and can cost you your attack, but much like tractor beam, it can create funny stories. I hold a special place in my heart for a tournament match where on the first round of shooting, I ionized Miranda and pushed her towards the edge with a tractor beam... with no way to actually escape the board's edge with the following manoeuvers. I hope to have similar stories with the jamming beam.

31 minutes ago, MaxPower said:

Prepare to have your mind blown...

Ready?

Imagine it vs an ordnance raider or corvette.

I've annoyed people with keeping Nym Ionized three turns in a row. I can't imagine the rage if you shut down someone's Ordnance Raider multiple turns by preventing them from getting locks.

2 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

no damage, no bueno

even though the Jam effect itself is good (because it persists and stacks), it's just too slow to really matter unless it's fired by very high PS to strip modifiers before the enemy can use them to attack

TIE D with a successful jamming beam hit vs TIE x7 with extra evade does literally cancel out the free evade action. But unlike the free evade token you can focus fire with those jamming beams, meaning that once you stack multiple jamming tokens on a single ship you cripple its defensive and offensive abilities. 1 jamming token is annoying. 3 will reduce PTL x7 Ryad offense and defense to an delta squadron defender without titles. Same for juke vesery.

That is quite different to having multiple x7s which often only benefit from one of the evade tokens, but not all of them. On top once a ship has a solid stack of jamming tokens, those tokens will take a lot of actions to remove, unlike ions which are anti-synergistic with focus fire … which is admittedly not an big issue on TIE D-Defenders as their primary and secondary attack can hit different targets.

Though I admit, I am not 100% sure how reliable you can really build a squadron around jamming beams without hurting your damage output to much while as well making sure to be able to focus fire well enough. So I am looking forward to those scrambler missiles.

I actually was incredibly underwhelmed by jamming beam and found myself wishing I had tractor over it in almost every instance in the game I got in with it.

The main issue you run into is the token you are stripping, they end up spending anyways to evade the shot, which makes you think, “oh, wait. That didn’t really do anything different than an attack from any other weapon would have done, did it?” Or it hits and... you did the same as if they just spent it...

The shorter range also is a big detriment. On my Tie/D, missing out on that double tap on the first engagement stunk.

I think it can be really good in circumstances, but having those circumstances occur often enough is gonna be telling, and I don’t foresee them happening enough for the beam to provide sufficient value for it to see regular competitive play.

i think the fact that it doesnt do damage will heavily limit it. The TIE/D will love it though, couple of deltas with it could completely shaft token economy.

If the Jamming Beam was hyper accurate, long range, could be fired with your primaries, or could add multiple tokens I could see the value in it, but sadly I don't think it's good enough to see use outside of the occasional budget TIE/D. Maybe on an HLC Gunboat that can't afford Linked or Flechette and doesn't want tractor? I just don't see giving up an attack to maybe counter an action as a good deal.

I think it will come into its own in Epic games. Besides the hilarious Huge ship target lock stripping, having a squad with a equal mixture of Jamming and Tractor beam tokens could be brutal, since you basically negate all the defensive abilities of an opponent's list.

Not everything has to be good in 100/6, but if any jamming mechanic will be, it's those scrambler missiles.

Is jamming beam not a hard counter to Os-1 gunboats? Are they arriving in stores with their own death sentence? After slamming they can only perform attacks on ships they have locked, but if that lock is removed, that's a round of no shots...

Maybe I shouldn't have pre ordered three..

It could have been good at keeping atani-mindlink at bay by applying a "token debt" so the first free focus token from mindlink is immediately sunk. As for now it really depends on what other factors in the meta involved. There is a lot of already potent anti-token and anti-dicemod stuff out there to make jamming tokens unnecessary. There is a lot of token-less dice modification out there as well. So it is taking a job that sort of is already being worked on. Question is can it do better than what is already out?

14 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

no damage, no bueno

even though the Jam effect itself is good (because it persists and stacks), it's just too slow to really matter unless it's fired by very high PS to strip modifiers before the enemy can use them to attack (in which case it becomes Wes Jenson, but it has to hit..)

and even then, sacrificing damage is just such a steep price to pay in this game.

In short: Jam good, Cannon bad

perhaps the Kimoglia's scrambler missiles could help apply the effect without the sharp cut in damage efficiency (just look at all them jam tokens)

Based on the number of upgrade cards, it implies a scrambler missile drops two jamming tokens. Hopefully either with some damage as well or it's nice and cheap - if it were, for example, to be a nice cheap missile like thread tracers that can be fitted for free to a Vaksai it'd be very interesting - being able to dump 2 or so into a large ship and say ' no tokens for you every again ' might actually even be worth the loss of damage.

6 hours ago, Hooba Jooba said:

Is jamming beam not a hard counter to Os-1 gunboats? Are they arriving in stores with their own death sentence? After slamming they can only perform attacks on ships they have locked, but if that lock is removed, that's a round of no shots...

Maybe I shouldn't have pre ordered three..

I do not think OS-Starwings will ever take off anyway. So it's a meta call against something that will never dominate the meta.

15 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

no damage, no bueno

even though the Jam effect itself is good (because it persists and stacks), it's just too slow to really matter unless it's fired by very high PS to strip modifiers before the enemy can use them to attack (in which case it becomes Wes Jenson, but it has to hit..)

and even then, sacrificing damage is just such a steep price to pay in this game.

In short: Jam good, Cannon bad

perhaps the Kimoglia's scrambler missiles could help apply the effect without the sharp cut in damage efficiency (just look at all them jam tokens)

Yup this is my expectation. The range limitation just murders Jamming Beam, even on TIE/Ds which are usually going to be better with Tractor, just because it works at range 3. I'm expecting Scrambler Missiles to be absolutely vicious though.

Did not notice it was only range 2!

• It's not actually that accurate, being a 3-dice attack which can't get an extra die at range 1 and has to hit to have an effect
• It can't attack at range 3
• It doesn't do damage

Given that it only eliminates a single token, I'm not convinced this is that great an ability, even for a point; given that if you were trying to strip away an opponent's ability to generate tokens, you'd need several shots, and a mix of flechette and ion cannons strikes me as a better plan since you (a) do damage and (b) make the target far more predictable into the bargain.

Yes, for all its limitations, it could have said this and not be broken:
"If this attack hits, assign jamming tokens to the defender until it gets to keep 1 jamming token. Then cancel all dice results."

Heck, they could have actually used the Jammed keyword for that: "assign Jam tokens until the defender is Jammed. Then cancel all dice results."

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Did not notice it was only range 2!

• It's not actually that accurate, being a 3-dice attack which can't get an extra die at range 1 and has to hit to have an effect
• It can't attack at range 3
• It doesn't do damage

Given that it only eliminates a single token, I'm not convinced this is that great an ability, even for a point; given that if you were trying to strip away an opponent's ability to generate tokens, you'd need several shots, and a mix of flechette and ion cannons strikes me as a better plan since you (a) do damage and (b) make the target far more predictable into the bargain.

Well, I would certainly hope that the Flechette Cannon and Ion Cannon would be better cards, considering they are more expensive. But that wasn't the question, it was:

21 hours ago, HolySorcerer said:

Help me out here, how often is this going to be better than a Tractor Beam for the same cost? Even on a TIE/d I think I'd take tractor over this, as a tractor token looks far more powerful than a jam token.

Compared to the Tractor Beam, the only difference in your list is that the Tractor Beam can attack at range 3. But otherwise, it doesn't get the bonus die at range 1 and does not do damage (if you ignore the practical effect of stripping an Evade token off of someone).

I'm not sure why they chose the Range 1-2 band, perhaps there was something found in testing that caused them to not want someone sniping at long range with it, but otherwise, I don't find it to be a bad choice if you are tight on points and having to decide between Tractor Beam or Jamming Beam. I think it really depends on what ship and pilot you are going to put it onto, as Tractor would be better on a high PS (so your other ships can benefit from the -1 Agi), and Jamming on a low PS (so the token carries over to the next round and prevents them from getting an Evade/TL/Focus).

Edit: PS If points were not an issue, I would always choose Ion over it, except maybe to have some in Epic. The 2 pt limitation of the Starwing title also changes that.

I'd guess it was probably found to be too efficient at killing ordnance alphas with the r3 band intact.