1 hour ago, wurms said:

Cheap regen will never be DOA.

Says who? The rule of thumb with defensive upgrades like regen is they're good when they don't require actions to use, and you can stack them (Eg: Autothrusters, Pre-nerf X7/Palp, Poe's ability, C3P0, Latts, R2D2, Miranda's ability, Lone Wolf, Countermeasures, etc).

Off the top of my head, there's 6 Regen cards in the game at the moment, and only one sees frequent play (Miranda). R2D2 and R5P9 occasionally show up on Poe/Corran, but Gonk, Deflectors and IG88A are all binder fodder. Chopper is just a worse, slightly cheaper version of Gonk (both are limited use action regen). Gonk's in a different faction and slot, but his carrier ships are arguably better, and he's not exactly popular.

If you're going to go for a tanky regen ship, don't half-**** it. Pay the extra 2-3 points for R5P9 or R2D2 and then stack a bunch of other defensive upgrades on the ships to make it a real pain to remove and threaten the endgame (Autothrusters, Going up to Poe, maybe even Comms + Intensity). Half building a ship is usually a mistake in my experience, unless you really need those points for something else. In which case drop down to a cheaper ship/combo you can build properly.

Your Ello build looks fun, but for 33pts I want a ship that can tank damage, deal damage, control, and/or arc dodge. He does one, maybe two of those fairly averagely. In contrast, if I ditch trying to make use of Chopper-jank and go for something solid, I can bring a ship that does 2-3 of those pretty well:

• 33 Jake w/ PtL, PRockets, AT, Title, VI.
• 32 Braylenn w/ R3A2, Gunner, Title.
• 33 Wookie w/ Expertise, Tactician, Breach Spec.
• 32 Wes w/ VI, BB8, IA.

All 4 are solid, proven ships that are worth the 33ish points you pay. Chopper is a bit of fun (no argument there), but when I'm building a list for a tournament I'm still not going to be reaching for Chopper. Don't misunderstand me I'm no meta-slave, I like running my Janky lists, but I like them to be at least somewhat decent.

I could be wrong, and if so I'll embrace the new Chopper meta, though I don't think that very likely. I imagine you'll use him once or twice then unless FFG release something to combo with, he'll live the rest of his days in your binder between R5X3 and the R3-Astromech.

20 minutes ago, CRCL said:

I could be wrong, and if so I'll embrace the new Chopper meta, though I don't think that very likely. I imagine you'll use him once or twice then unless FFG release something to combo with, he'll live the rest of his days in your binder between R5X3 and the R3-Astromech.

A card doesnt have to be meta defining or win a major tournament to be useful. But to call it DOA is crazy. Gonk is not useless. I have battled some tough *** builds in regionals versus stuff like PTL manaroo with painbot and gonk that was **** tough and a scary scary ship to face. The person flying it made top cuts in system opens, etc. He never won a major tournament, but did quite well with it. This is basically where chopper is gonna come in at. You wont see it everywhere, but it can be a powerful card in the right hands on the right ship.

With ships like Cracken, Ahsoka, and soon to be coordinate action for rebels, getting the action to regen should be fairly easy to boot.

It's a well-designed card, but...

...as bad as it is for a droid to be cutting up other droids, just wait until Chopper uses Luke's severed head to restore shields to the Falcon, or perhaps on some ship with a wall of corpses made from a Team. "Chopper" is an appropriate name, indeed. Just figured that is a bit too dark for Star Wars. Even the Empire wouldn't do that.

6 minutes ago, Knightcrawler said:

It's a well-designed card, but...

...as bad as it is for a droid to be cutting up other droids, just wait until Chopper uses Luke's severed head to restore shields to the Falcon, or perhaps reinforces a bulkhead with a wall of corpses made from a Team. "Chopper" is an appropriate name, indeed. Just figured that is a bit too dark for Star Wars. Even the Empire wouldn't do that.

I mean that's probably not what happens

The "crew" slot represents the ships ability to have non pilots influence the ships combat capabilities.

For example, Luke is a gunner. So what chopper does isn't dice Luke into fragile organic gibblies that wouldn't hold two magnets together, he's taking apart the firing mechanisms that would allow Luke to contribute as a gunner and basically using the scrap as a patchwork bandaid

Woe be unto Luke if he tried to stop the little Droid, though...

I'm gonna try this on Red Ace!

Regen is always good. Having the option is always nice.

But we have an example for regen costing actions. Namely, Gonk. Does anyone ever uses Gonk? Sometimes, but there are better SA options.

Chopper can be useful on Y-Wing generics for example, but costing an action and an equipped upgrade card is just too much for the competitive scene. I doubt he'll see much play outside casual gaming, but it's nice to have him at least for casual gaming.

So shield upgrade on Biggs could be used after the shield has collapsed?

I’m not staying it’s best use... just wondering on rules

25 minutes ago, Lobokai said:

So shield upgrade on Biggs could be used after the shield has collapsed?

I’m not staying it’s best use... just wondering on rules

I can't see why not. The shield upgrade increases your shield limit. That ability stays in play even when you've lost all your shields - for example, R2-D2 could bring an X Wing with a shield upgrade back up to 3 shields even if all those Shields had previously been lost.

It would be a pretty bad listbuilding decision though - equipping Extra munitions would be nearly as good (2 extra shields, but costing two actions rather than one) for half the points.