Um... what happened? Everyone was saying SMs were going to be the next Harpoons, but I don't think it can do it. I can use it for control OS-1s, but that's it.

What are your thoughts on this meh card?

They are good. You have a good control element (cheap Wes removing tokens) for 2 points (and one less defense die for the defender on range 3, and optionally guidance chip mods/failsafe)

Edit: see below, they dont do damage

If they did damage, they would have been. Even as it is, this is probably the first pure-control card that I've thought it might be worth giving up a damaging attack for, given its capacity to RUIN defences and ordnance shots for an entire enemy squad, or force them to fly wel apart from each other.

It's also the first 2-point missile, which is a price point where 'throw it in because you have a spare point or two' is viable, but it's a lot more useful than tracers.

I'll certainly be giving it a try.

I think its really nice as a tech-kind of upgrade for squads preparing for a hard counter/mirror/against the meta.

Say you wanna run vaksai khiraxz, like talonbane. The extra point is very well worth it to counter deadeye harpoon lists.

14 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

If they did damage, they would have been. Even as it is, this is probably the first pure-control card that I've thought it might be worth giving up a damaging attack for, given its capacity to RUIN defences and ordnance shots for an entire enemy squad, or force them to fly wel apart from each other.

It's also the first 2-point missile, which is a price point where 'throw it in because you have a spare point or two' is viable, but it's a lot more useful than tracers.

I'll certainly be giving it a try.

Yes you are right. Didnt see that they don't do damage...

It may also be worth noting that (good) cheap missile carriers are more common than (good) cheap torp carriers, in particular zs and ks. A whole bunch of zs with these and Blount with Thread Tracers could do a HILARIOUS amount of jamming to a single target or group of targets it managed to get in arc.

As it has been pointed out in another thread, you can use it in combination with the new droid to fire at one of your own low agility ship. (YV-666 anyone?). In epic, you could send the YV-666 Forward, have it use a Slam illicit to crash straight into the enemy formation, fire the missile at your own ship with a high PS pilot to disperse a lot of tokens and even a huge ship's target lock.

How does that sound?

Use Action to lock

Use attack to fire missile, and missile get's discarded

Net gain, they lose a token and take no damage

It's a hard sell and requires a specific target type and setup to make sense for the points even on Z i.e. you have to be able to take advantage of the shot. It's alsio worth noting that if you do it with a Bandit, the bandit is firing last, so it raises the point of "well, if I'm in a good position next turn it'll be great". Decoy could actually solve this problem, but then you're using an EPT on high PS ship to enable a once per game shot. I'm not sure the economy is there unless something weird is happening.

An example I could see working is if the meta shifts heavily towards high PS ordinance (lists we've seen a few variations of locally) using Roark Garnett or your own high PS ship with the missiles to break their alpha before they shoot (assuming they're close enough to hit multiples).

Tractor beam saw, and still does see, very little play for similar reasons despite being an equally good effect when it works. It either appears on ships that can fire it and other things (TIE defenders with the title) or the cheap and pretty disposable tug and that's basically it.

3 minutes ago, MasterShake2 said:

Tractor beam saw, and still does see, very little play for similar reasons despite being an equally good effect when it works. It either appears on ships that can fire it and other things (TIE defenders with the title) or the cheap and pretty disposable tug and that's basically it.

The critical difference between this and Tractor Beam is that this splashes.Denying two or three ships their action might be worth your action and attack.

Jamming BEAM is just not very good I don't think.

1 minute ago, thespaceinvader said:

The critical difference between this and Tractor Beam is that this splashes.Denying two or three ships their action might be worth your action and attack.

Jamming BEAM is just not very good I don't think.

There is a single instance where I can think that jamming beam would be good: against an ordance configured huge ship. It might not even be necessary to go for a PS bid either since the scrambling effect would persist for the next turn.

preeeeeeeeeeeeeeeetty garbage

no damage upgrades have to contribute a LOT to be worth wasting an attack for, and jam (while good) ain't a lot. At least t-beam, when used at a higher PS, can deny the enemy an attack as well by rolling them onto rocks

Scramblers are, at most, a one point missile costing twice as much as it should

I disagree with most that has been said, even though I suspect that we‘d be closer in opinion than it looks. I will assume that the missile carrier has higher PS.

First off, the Scramble can completely shut down a good deadeye list like the only one being flown competitively, 3-4 LokRevenants. They can‘t get a second action, so one missile will stop 3 Harpoons and most likely let you survive the alphastrike and then the whole game. This will be a meta call, but right now many people are playing Harpoons, which might change or not in the next three weeks.

Second, let‘s look at popular builds:

Miranda usually only gets one modification. Not anymore, one turn focus/TL free.

Dash very often spends an action on barrel roll. Even if he goes for 2 focus with Rey - not anymore. And that hurts him because his focus bank is very important.

Wookies don‘t care, at all. Reinforce and Expertise completely ignores this.

Nym usually only gets a single focus, and you can strip that, which is nice.

Poetensity can be stripped of the evade by attacks and then of his focus with the missile, really hurting his action economy for more than one then!

Imperial Aces often stack tokens, and don‘t fly close to each other. But they are still rare, which might change again though.

Quickdraw is the main imperial ship, and she hits hard with FCS targetlock and focus from action or expertise. Scrambler doesn‘t really help here, because she gets these things for free.

RAClo spends his action on Kylo, so he also won‘t care.

Dengar gets his free TL if he has K4, so you at best negate the effect of a free action, which is not worth it.

Assajj does not care about the missile.

I‘ll stop here, as it looks to me that most top builds don‘t care. So is the missile that bad? It‘s interesting that particularly Rebels, which are now dominating again, are especially weak against this missile.

I think it has its niche use, specifically to counter a weakness of your own list. If you have trouble to survive a lowPS deadeye alpha and usually lose instantly then you have now a good chance, at the cost of 2 points.

The question whether that‘s worth it or not depends on your list and the meta of the day.

15 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

I disagree with most that has been said, even though I suspect that we‘d be closer in opinion than it looks. I will assume that the missile carrier has higher PS.

First off, the Scramble can completely shut down a good deadeye list like the only one being flown competitively, 3-4 LokRevenants. They can‘t get a second action, so one missile will stop 3 Harpoons and most likely let you survive the alphastrike and then the whole game. This will be a meta call, but right now many people are playing Harpoons, which might change or not in the next three weeks.

Second, let‘s look at popular builds:

Miranda usually only gets one modification. Not anymore, one turn focus/TL free.

Dash very often spends an action on barrel roll. Even if he goes for 2 focus with Rey - not anymore. And that hurts him because his focus bank is very important.

Wookies don‘t care, at all. Reinforce and Expertise completely ignores this.

Nym usually only gets a single focus, and you can strip that, which is nice.

Poetensity can be stripped of the evade by attacks and then of his focus with the missile, really hurting his action economy for more than one then!

Imperial Aces often stack tokens, and don‘t fly close to each other. But they are still rare, which might change again though.

Quickdraw is the main imperial ship, and she hits hard with FCS targetlock and focus from action or expertise. Scrambler doesn‘t really help here, because she gets these things for free.

RAClo spends his action on Kylo, so he also won‘t care.

Dengar gets his free TL if he has K4, so you at best negate the effect of a free action, which is not worth it.

Assajj does not care about the missile.

I‘ll stop here, as it looks to me that most top builds don‘t care. So is the missile that bad? It‘s interesting that particularly Rebels, which are now dominating again, are especially weak against this missile.

I think it has its niche use, specifically to counter a weakness of your own list. If you have trouble to survive a lowPS deadeye alpha and usually lose instantly then you have now a good chance, at the cost of 2 points.

The question whether that‘s worth it or not depends on your list and the meta of the day.

But you're spending an attack. They might have had to spend a token anyway to defend. A real attack might actually do damage. The card is garbage.

5 minutes ago, tortugatron said:

But you're spending an attack. They might have had to spend a token anyway to defend. A real attack might actually do damage. The card is garbage.

With some few exceptions where the token missing really hurts later on, so ships carrying Rey (Dash, Miranda), or Poe as mentioned.

I agreed, in the part you quoted, that most good builds don‘t care.

Which is why the following part was the most important one:

„I think it has its niche use, specifically to counter a weakness of your own list. If you have trouble to survive a lowPS deadeye alpha and usually lose instantly then you have now a good chance, at the cost of 2 points.

The question whether that‘s worth it or not depends on your list and the meta of the day.“

Spending 2 points to win a frequent matchup is AMAZING. But only if the matchup is frequent enough.

It is situational, much like the tractor beam cannon; most of the time, the cannon won't be of much use since it costs an attack... except the day where you ion a Miranda and push her closer to the edge of the board... and she can't escape.

On that specific day, "situational" becomes a cherished memory for a lifetime

The other point to note is that the first attack of the game against certain lists, just doesn't often do much. If all that attack is doing is missing with a chance of stripping tokens anyway, why not make it almost guaranteed to strip tokens - because they're spend-or-lose - anf give it a chance to throw out some pain to ships you're not targetting as well.

It's the latter part that's important - this is the first time splash control has happened on this sort of scale. Ion Torps are super expensive and only dealing one ion isn't enough against large ships.

I suspect it will have some impact. I'll certainly be trying it out.

21 minutes ago, dotswarlock said:

It is situational, much like the tractor beam cannon

With the difference that this missile can be really game deciding. I know you just gave an example where tractor beam was, too. But I‘d expect that tractor beam is less often as important as this new missile potentially can be.

I‘ll be happy to be wrong, but I have this in mind:

ImperialAlphaAces - Scrambler (98)
•Darth Vader (34) - TIE Advanced
Adaptability (0), Harpoon Missiles (4), TIE/x1 (0), Guidance Chips (0), Advanced Targeting Computer (5)
•"Quickdraw" (35) - TIE/SF Fighter
Adaptability (0), Fire Control System (2), Harpoon Missiles (4), Special Ops Training (0), Guidance Chips (0)
•Lieutenant Kestal (29) - TIE Aggressor
Veteran Instincts (1), Harpoon Missiles (4), Scramble Missiles (2), Guidance Chips (0)

(e: current Inquisitor (31) with Veteran Instincts (1), Harpoon Missiles (4), TIE/v1 (1), Guidance Chips (0))

This Kestal both takes the place of Inquisitor AND provides security against the super hard matchup of lowPS alphastrike lists. Scurrg made that a nightmare: 3 Harpoons are enough to bring one down, but then 2-3 Harpoons come back, instantly vaporizing Vader or Inq, or even Quickdraw. But now with Kestal I trade 1 PS for an insurance against a super hard matchup! The remaining 2 points can be spent in several ways - ini, autoblaster, advanced optics/PA, or 2 VIs.

So I don‘t lose too much compared to an Inquisitor, but I potentially gain a won matchup that is currently very hard! And I have sideboard-like flexibility on how I play the opening depending on the matchup.

I think they're good if you can stack them.

So maybe in a list like this, Sure would make any type of formation very sad.

You definitely can stack them.

I know, I was just saying it gets better the more sources of Jam you have.

So with that list, you fire one missile. It strips their tokens/adds tokens. The second missile gives them tokens for next turn. And then the Beam can tag a ship to give it a 2nd token for two turns of sad panda-ing.

Doesn't really look any better than the terrible Jamming Beam.

38 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

With the difference that this missile can be really game deciding. I know you just gave an example where tractor beam was, too. But I‘d expect that tractor beam is less often as important as this new missile potentially can be.

I‘ll be happy to be wrong, but I have this in mind:

ImperialAlphaAces - Scrambler (98)
•Darth Vader (34) - TIE Advanced
Adaptability (0), Harpoon Missiles (4), TIE/x1 (0), Guidance Chips (0), Advanced Targeting Computer (5)
•"Quickdraw" (35) - TIE/SF Fighter
Adaptability (0), Fire Control System (2), Harpoon Missiles (4), Special Ops Training (0), Guidance Chips (0)
•Lieutenant Kestal (29) - TIE Aggressor
Veteran Instincts (1), Harpoon Missiles (4), Scramble Missiles (2), Guidance Chips (0)

(e: current Inquisitor (31) with Veteran Instincts (1), Harpoon Missiles (4), TIE/v1 (1), Guidance Chips (0))

This Kestal both takes the place of Inquisitor AND provides security against the super hard matchup of lowPS alphastrike lists. Scurrg made that a nightmare: 3 Harpoons are enough to bring one down, but then 2-3 Harpoons come back, instantly vaporizing Vader or Inq, or even Quickdraw. But now with Kestal I trade 1 PS for an insurance against a super hard matchup! The remaining 2 points can be spent in several ways - ini, autoblaster, advanced optics/PA, or 2 VIs.

So I don‘t lose too much compared to an Inquisitor, but I potentially gain a won matchup that is currently very hard! And I have sideboard-like flexibility on how I play the opening depending on the matchup.

That works too

Wait, scrambler? Didn't we have a gaggle of people absolutely positive it was scramjet missile and tearing into FFG for the stupidity of not knowing what scramjet was?

Where are those clowns?

2 hours ago, HolySorcerer said:

Doesn't really look any better than the terrible Jamming Beam.

It’s probabky worse than the Jamming Beam and that’s saying something.

Both have a range restriction (this completely ruins the Jamming Beam which otherwise had a home on TIE D Defenders).

Both only attack with 3 dice which for non damaging effects just doesn’t feel like enough. If you are giving up the chance to deal damage you really want a higher chance to get off your briefing effect. This is also the issue with tractor Beam and to a degree the Thread Tracers. At least Threads are a positive effect.

Scramble Missile requires a target lock. It doesn’t matter that you don’t discard the lock, it requires one.

Scramble Missile is a discard card. You get to use it once.

Jamming Beam can be effective when fired late in the turn, unlike a tractor beam. You get add a jam token which will persist. Scramble Missiles, because they require a target lock, will never be effective like that.

Like Tractor Beam I expect that in wave 14 or 15 FFG will come out with a ship/title that does a Jamming Effect much much better than either of these upgrades.

Also I have no idea why Jam doesn’t effect reinforce - Epic?

It probably does not affect reinforce because at this current time, the wookie's reinforce is not all that life threatening. As for Epic, losing a target lock is far more damning (nothing worse than having a 100+ points ship fire and deal 1 damage because it had no way to affect its dice).

What I expect is that you will eventually have an upgrade (EPT?) that takes advantage of the "jammed" clause of the rule card ("a ship is jammed if it has a jam token"). Maybe something like:

"After you perform an attack, if the defender jammed, you may perform another attack. You cannot attack again this round".