16 hours ago, SEApocalypse said:

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.

you're talking about 3 ships v 1 x7, with the 1 x7 being 3 points cheaper than 1 Tie/D with beams that don't even work at range 3

Tie/Ds that are also significantly squishier than the far cheaper x7s

my thought is a pair of the ps 1 gunboats with jamming beam may be something to think about. I mean it could make your opponent have to make the decision to keep the tl, focus, evade so they do not get jammed the next round or spend those and then run into not having those actions next turn. Not meta changing and very situational but it may surprise some people.

the xg-1 though i think i'd rather this than linked batteries.

Especially at a low skill. Part of the issue of firing at a high skill is you need to punch through tokens, which is why i like having one of my damage dealers deliberately a lower ps than usual. Give the gunboat the jammers so if theres no tokens (especially on an ordnance user) i can basically negate his next round so my real damage dealers can keep working. They cant fire ion cannons while disabled anyway and that would be the obvious "support" cannon at a lower skill.

if you're actually excepting to hit with jamming beam, then you're better off with t-beams setting up the opponent for a lethal round of shooting between the agility drop and displacement rolling the enemy into your other firing arcs

Jamming beam seems completely useless as they may use up a focus/evade when rolling the green dice against it anyways.

3 minutes ago, william1134 said:

Jamming beam seems completely useless as they may use up a focus/evade when rolling the green dice against it anyways.

in this case, the token sticks around

so it "eats" the next token your opponent gets in the following round

jammed itself is a very well made rule, just the cannon (thus far the only spoiled means of applying it) sucks

11 minutes ago, william1134 said:

Jamming beam seems completely useless as they may use up a focus/evade when rolling the green dice against it anyways.

So "mission accomplished", even if you miss.

Seems good to me.

27 minutes ago, kris40k said:

So "mission accomplished", even if you miss.

Seems good to me.

Really?

7 minutes ago, HolySorcerer said:

Really?

You are shooting at someone to remove a focus or evade token. In the process of attempt to "evade" the attack, they remove a focus or evade token.

Yep. Did exactly what you were goaling for.

Just now, kris40k said:

You are shooting at someone to remove a focus or evade token. In the process of attempt to "evade" the attack, they remove a focus or evade token.

Yep. Did exactly what you were goaling for.

How is that any different from them burning a focus or evade to dodge an attack that would actually hurt them though? And lets be fair here, nobody is going to spend a token to dodge jamming beam, they'll let it hit them and then discard a single token of their choice. Tractor can push them out of position and lower their agility, making them vulnerable to follow up shots, they'll spend the token to dodge that, giving you a jamming beam hit even when you miss. The difference is that tractor can hurt them if it hits.

22 minutes ago, HolySorcerer said:

How is that any different from them burning a focus or evade to dodge an attack that would actually hurt them though? And lets be fair here, nobody is going to spend a token to dodge jamming beam, they'll let it hit them and then discard a single token of their choice. Tractor can push them out of position and lower their agility, making them vulnerable to follow up shots, they'll spend the token to dodge that, giving you a jamming beam hit even when you miss. The difference is that tractor can hurt them if it hits.

The discussion was Tractor vs Jamming, not an attack that can actually hurt them.

Tractor can push them and lower their Agi by one, I've already stated that Tractors are better at higher PS due to that. If no one is shooting after you, the -1 Agi is wasted. If you are firing at low PS, you are likely shooting a target that has already had its tokens stripped and your Jam token will carry over to next round.

Tractor only hurts if you can place them in a position to hit a rock, which is iffy but great if you can pull it off as you have a 50% chance of 1 damage, and can cause them to lose actions, or maybe they just turn/AS BR/etc. and dodge it. You also can't push Large ships. It is good, don't get me wrong. Putting a Jam token on an /x7 or similar and forcing them to lose an Evade token next round is effectively +1 damage next round.

Edit: Oh, and I agree with your "let's be fair" comment, but you were quoting me replying to @william1134 's statement that someone would spend a token to do just that.

Range 1-2 sucks.

45 minutes ago, Boba Rick said:

Range 1-2 sucks.

As is I don't see when you would even want to use it at range 1. At range 1 the XG1 can either make a three die primary attack and strip tokens and do damage, or fire a 3 die attack that at best removes one token. At range 1 a TIE/d with tractor could remove an agility die making their range 1 primary that much more devastating.

A better design would have been range 1 only, but roll four dice and give a token for each uncancelled hit, maybe two tokens for a crit. This would be an interesting trade of for a primary attack. You wouldn't do any damage this turn, but you could seriously set yourself up on future turns if you could jam it good.

I like it. It's not great against high agility token stacking targets, mostly because it is difficult to hit, and it doesn't bother them that much... but it is great against low agility targets. It even cancels out FCS, and K-4, which is extra nice.

Removing the ability to attack with ordnance carriers is great. It stacks and does not fall down which means you can deny your opponent of any tokens for a good while.

The usefulness of this card will be dependent on the meta at all times. If the meta is saturated with low agility ships relying on tokens (Gunboat, other ordnance carriers and heavy fighters), then jamming is great. If the meta is saturated with bombers or aces, it will be less prominent.

The card doesn't have to be great for every matchup.

Totally not thematic but I'm thinking a pair of jamming BSP followed up with a lite dash or maybe Corran would be an interesting setup.

4 minutes ago, RufusDaMan said:

I like it. It's not great against high agility token stacking targets, mostly because it is difficult to hit, and it doesn't bother them that much... but it is great against low agility targets. It even cancels out FCS, and K-4, which is extra nice.

Removing the ability to attack with ordnance carriers is great. It stacks and does not fall down which means you can deny your opponent of any tokens for a good while.

The usefulness of this card will be dependent on the meta at all times. If the meta is saturated with low agility ships relying on tokens (Gunboat, other ordnance carriers and heavy fighters), then jamming is great. If the meta is saturated with bombers or aces, it will be less prominent.

The card doesn't have to be great for every matchup.

The issue is that you're not really doing anything to help you win the game if you're just stacking jam tokens with Jamming Beam. Sure, maybe you strip them of their lock from FCS, but they still get to shoot and do damage, you don't. This discussion will be more interesting once Scrambler Missiles are spoiled, but if they do even a single point of damage then they will be far more viable than Jamming Beam.

1 minute ago, HolySorcerer said:

The issue is that you're not really doing anything to help you win the game if you're just stacking jam tokens with Jamming Beam. Sure, maybe you strip them of their lock from FCS, but they still get to shoot and do damage, you don't. This discussion will be more interesting once Scrambler Missiles are spoiled, but if they do even a single point of damage then they will be far more viable than Jamming Beam.

Maybe in isolation, it's not that great, but a TIE/D ryad can be a good wingman with it. Since she'll probably shoot last, the jamming beam is already doing work for the next turn. The high price of the Defender makes it difficult to use higher PS pilots, so shooting last is something that happens, especially in a high PS meta. A tractor beam's effect would be lost in most team compositions.

1 minute ago, RufusDaMan said:

Maybe in isolation, it's not that great, but a TIE/D ryad can be a good wingman with it. Since she'll probably shoot last, the jamming beam is already doing work for the next turn. The high price of the Defender makes it difficult to use higher PS pilots, so shooting last is something that happens, especially in a high PS meta. A tractor beam's effect would be lost in most team compositions.

Sure, you'll see it on occasion on a TIE/D that cannot afford an Ion Cannon and doesn't want Tractor, but that's about the only use I can really see. Even then, at that point I'd be asking if that was worth 3 more points than /x7.

I think Jamming Beam would have been great on an XG-1... if only they had not included Linked Battery in the same pack...

imo, the REAL "problem" is they also gave the Rho an ept and how can you not slap crackshot on there!?

seriously, 4 dice HLC + LRS + crackshot is just ****** as an alpha strike and then you get linked battery HLCs for powerful, sustained follow-up

to get a similar effect with an XG-1 capable cannon, you need to get predator or something as an ept. And really, where's the fun in that?

2 hours ago, kris40k said:

Tractor can push them and lower their Agi by one, I've already stated that Tractors are better at higher PS due to that. If no one is shooting after you, the -1 Agi is wasted. If you are firing at low PS, you are likely shooting a target that has already had its tokens stripped and your Jam token will carry over to next round.

I think this about sums it up. Tractors are better fired early in the sequence, when low-PS ships after them will get the full benefit. Jammers are better later in the sequence when the ship's already stripped their tokens, and you'll be able to preemptively strip next round's tokens so that your high-PS ships can take advantage.

A shot of J. Beam is best before setup

Hummm.. I was really hoping that the gunboat would have something like the Tie/D where you could shoot both cannon and laser in a single round.

20 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

you're talking about 3 ships v 1 x7, with the 1 x7 being 3 points cheaper than 1 Tie/D with beams that don't even work at range 3

Tie/Ds that are also significantly squishier than the far cheaper x7s

My main point was that TIE/Ds become less squish than x7s, while still being more expensive in situations like 3 vs 3
And only IF the Ds can focus fire to remove at least one offensive mode on top of the evade.

Unused evades on the x7s are basically worthless, meanwhile the jamming tokens can stay for several turns. Now the fact that x7s are 2 points cheaper a piece AND the r2 limitation for the jamming beam remains. But under optimal conditions the jamming beams should completely negate the advantages from the x7 title and then some more. If that is worth 9 points is still doubtful. With x7 you can have 2 names in a triple list, while with jamming d's you are down to only one named and actually vessery is pretty barebones still. The issue of cost still remains a problem for defenders with the d title.

Unused evades on x7s aren't worthless at all, they're Juke.