Before I start, please don't take this as inflammatory, I just felt like spilling my thoughts out.

The Last Jedi visual dictionary is now available to the world and as such, it comes with all the interesting information regarding new ships, pilots etc.

With the release of the new Resistance bomber, we once again run into a Tie Striker situation where FFG has no idea what function this ship plays.

Having an attack of 2 (which is a joke considering the 3 turrets and 4 front mounted guns, also see: Phantom I for ridiculous comparison), the MG-100 StarFortress (its real name, not the BSF whatever) is now going to suffer in that it plays totally differently to how we will see it in the film.

Based on information and current X-Wing wave-by-wave progression, it would have been nice to have seen this ship with some more thought. Firstly, primary turrets are bad for the game, this ship should have used the mobile firing arc mechanic. On top of that, I though that maybe the ship could have an attack value of 4 in the primary but 2 in the mobile. Give the ship 2 mobile arcs to represent multiple turrets and when both arcs are lined up it can have 3 or 4 attack.

Anyway, i'll look forward to the potential ace release to correct in the future.

Honestly not fussed to not be getting another powerful turret ship.

Ever heard of the tragedy of the TIE Strikers?

It's also ridiculous that this ship doesn't have a crew slot.

Relevant visual dictionary page if anyone's interested:

Speaking of ridiculous, minor spoiler, the dictionary states that EVERY. SINGLE. T-85 X-WING (and I guess all the documentation and factories) has been destroyed by DS3 in TFA and now T-70 is the most advanced X-wing

Some top notch believable world building here, as expected from the sequel trillogy.

EDIT: This ship has fixed frontal cannons, it could have just a primary arc and turret slot (or slots), or even rear arc.

I assume no crew because of Sabine.

I assume you meant misrepresented? Underrepresented means it isn't represented enough rather than not being represented accurately.

2 minutes ago, william1134 said:

I assume no crew because of Sabine.

So nerf Sabine. Imagine they made a powerful astromech a few waves ago and then decided T-70 won't have an astromech slot because it would be too good.

And Sabine works for the whole board anyway, so good Job FFG.

To be honest:

• I don't mind it not being a perfect match. It may, for example, have a million turrets, but if they're blasters or light lasers, the net effect might be more akin to the pair of medium lasers of a TIE fighter.
  • Except, reading the text, the two ball turrets each pack a pair of heavy laser cannons, so bugger that argument.
  • And, as noted, it does have fixed weapons.
  • It would have been nice to have another mobile arc ship. A 3 or even 4 dice mobile arc without a primary arc would have been a very different experience to a lancer or the other turreted ships (especially since gyroscopic targeting is Lancer-class only).
• I do mind - and this is my big bugbear - the idea that details being agreed to be published in the same week don't agree on fundamental issues up to and including the darn ship's NAME .
  • Disney's IP management people will have commissioned these entries from the various companies making books, lego, toys, whatever, and the idea that they couldn't co-ordinate the name of the bloody ship is annoying beyond all reason.
  • We 'know' that a book focusing on - not just featuring - these ships has been in progress since July.
  • Yes, the author of the visual dictionary could have talked to FFG. Or FFG could have talked to the author of the visual dictionary. But the person whose job it is to ensure they are talking sits at the licensing body.
• The ship does have a 'flight engineer' so a crew slot wouldn't be unreasonable - turret gunners and bombardiers are not 'free crew slots' but essentially included in those slots, but there is at least one 'ops officer' who could be a generic crewman.

Hahahaha they didn't even get the fracking NAME right?

Wow. Or the colour.

I'd've maybe liked to see it get a Team slot. Gives you the 'it's fricking massive why doesn't it have crew' factor without enabling it to carry Sabine. Though it might need to ship then with either Energy rules or a range 5 ruler or both, which is probably too much.

And yeah, LFL's licensing arm have a LOT to answer for.

And the Silencer should have a droid slot; the Striker should have a bomb slot; the Lambda should have a rear arc; etc.....

They do what they can with info they have and, as @ficklegreendice always laments: gameplay > fluff

20 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Though it might need to ship then with either Energy rules or a range 5 ruler or both, which is probably too much.

Not necessarily. Give it a 'bombardier team' card which affects bomb dropping but isn't sabine and doesn't require energy

If you want to give it a sensor team upgrade then by definition you must have a range 5 ruler because they come in the same box. (the same reason why I think a TIE bizzaro expansion without a range 5 ruler could work).

As to energy counters.....you'd probably have needed some mechanic to handle it, or you could just have ignored energy rules, meaning no ordnance experts or gunnery team.

6 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

And the Silencer should have a droid slot; the Striker should have a bomb slot; the Lambda should have a rear arc; etc.....

They do what they can with info they have and, as @ficklegreendice always laments: gameplay > fluff

And I accept that argument for not giving it, say, a 360' 3-dice primary turret. Not for two officially LFL-licensed products released in the same week not agreeing on the name of the dratted thing.

I'm not saying it's necessarily FFG's fault; I doubt they would (or could or indeed would dare to) change the ship's name without someone okaying it. It's the 'someone' (who as I say is either at disney's IP team or is overseen by someone at disney's IP team) who needs a swift kick to the unmentionables for not paying attention.

4 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

They do what they can with info they have

ie the ship model and nothing else, apparently they don't even know ship names.

3 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

And the Silencer should have a droid slot; the Striker should have a bomb slot; the Lambda should have a rear arc; etc.....

They do what they can with info they have

They are just not looking for info.

All film tie-in ships released so far were disappointing (if not simply done wrong).

1 minute ago, Odanan said:

All film tie-in ships released so far were disappointing (if not simply done wrong).

I don't know about disappointing. For all the arguments of what the TIE striker should have been, the TIE striker we got is a joy to use, and the TIE/fo is a wonderful upgrade over the basic TIE fighter.

1 minute ago, Odanan said:

They are just not looking for info.

I don't think this is the case at all.

They're not being given info early enough, probably because the info is not available in time. The x wing dev cycle is something like a year to a year an a half long, and when reshoots and editing changes are happening 3 months before release, when the ships are already in boxes on a boat, there's literally nothing FFG can do to make their stuff more accurate than the information they had 6 months to a year prior, which was probably during storyboarding or very early shooting.

That's thought to be what happened with K2 - the reason he wasn't in the U Wing was because he basically wasn't in the film at the time they got the names and so forth to put on the ships. It's always going to be difficult to do this kind of tie-in well when the dev cycle is so long.

3 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I don't know about disappointing. For all the arguments of what the TIE striker should have been, the TIE striker we got is a joy to use

I would find much more satisfactory if the TIE Striker had bombs and maybe even cannon (it has 6 guns) and/or crew.

7 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

I don't think this is the case at all.

They're not being given info early enough, probably because the info is not available in time. The x wing dev cycle is something like a year to a year an a half long, and when reshoots and editing changes are happening 3 months before release, when the ships are already in boxes on a boat, there's literally nothing FFG can do to make their stuff more accurate than the information they had 6 months to a year prior, which was probably during storyboarding or very early shooting.

That's thought to be what happened with K2 - the reason he wasn't in the U Wing was because he basically wasn't in the film at the time they got the names and so forth to put on the ships. It's always going to be difficult to do this kind of tie-in well when the dev cycle is so long.

If the developing cycle for a ship is 1 and a half year (heck, some games are done faster), they should stop to do this tie-in releases. Because they suck.

3 minutes ago, Odanan said:

If the developing cycle for a ship is 1 and a half year (heck, some games are done faster), they should stop to do this tie-in releases. Because they suck.

even shipping is 3 months usually, if not longer. Manufacture is probably another 3. So it's 6 months at a bare minimum prior to release, when they have to finalise the artwork for the release. And that's probably a low-end estimate. It's not surprising that things go wrong.

I mean, for Rogue One there was a whole new director and about a third of the film got re-shot in that time.

39 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

And the Silencer should have a droid slot; the Striker should have a bomb slot; the Lambda should have a rear arc; etc.....

They do what they can with info they have and, as @ficklegreendice always laments: gameplay > fluff

Why? Did we ever see a Striker bomb anything??

Maybe the BOOK is "wrong."

18 minutes ago, Odanan said:

If the developing cycle for a ship is 1 and a half year (heck, some games are done faster), they should stop to do this tie-in releases. Because they suck.

Arguably. But at the end of the day, when the Mouse says Jump, FFG jumps, and having a large company with the star wars license not take part in the release hype seems like bad business to the bean counters.

29 minutes ago, Odanan said:

I would find much more satisfactory if the TIE Striker had bombs and maybe even cannon (it has 6 guns) and/or crew.

Meh, the version we have on the tabletop matches the version we see in Rogue One pretty well. I don't particularly care what some writer of some obscure book said it could do, if we get what we see on the screen.

11 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Why? Did we ever see a Striker bomb anything??

Maybe the BOOK is "wrong."

I've never seen a Lambda shoot anything either on the big screen, let alone out of it's backside. And Anti Pursuit lasers sum up what it can do in the PC games pretty well (it was the Escort Shuttle that had the PITA aft turbolasers).

Eh. It will be cool in the movie, and we get a less powerful version for the game. I'm just annoyed at the name. That's all.

But if it turns out to be good in the movie, NERF IT INTO OBLIVION!!!

3 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

To be honest:

• I don't mind it not being a perfect match. It may, for example, have a million turrets, but if they're blasters or light lasers, the net effect might be more akin to the pair of medium lasers of a TIE fighter.
  • Except, reading the text, the two ball turrets each pack a pair of heavy laser cannons, so bugger that argument.
  • And, as noted, it does have fixed weapons.
  • It would have been nice to have another mobile arc ship. A 3 or even 4 dice mobile arc without a primary arc would have been a very different experience to a lancer or the other turreted ships (especially since gyroscopic targeting is Lancer-class only).
• I do mind - and this is my big bugbear - the idea that details being agreed to be published in the same week don't agree on fundamental issues up to and including the darn ship's NAME .
  • Disney's IP management people will have commissioned these entries from the various companies making books, lego, toys, whatever, and the idea that they couldn't co-ordinate the name of the bloody ship is annoying beyond all reason.
  • We 'know' that a book focusing on - not just featuring - these ships has been in progress since July.
  • Yes, the author of the visual dictionary could have talked to FFG. Or FFG could have talked to the author of the visual dictionary. But the person whose job it is to ensure they are talking sits at the licensing body.
• The ship does have a 'flight engineer' so a crew slot wouldn't be unreasonable - turret gunners and bombardiers are not 'free crew slots' but essentially included in those slots, but there is at least one 'ops officer' who could be a generic crewman.

I just feel like any designer imagination was absent during the creation of this ship. I think the Phantom II is a brilliant example of packaging a reasonably well thought out product that reflects both the theme and game play as it was done after the material was available. I am just hoping that the obvious omission of the new A-Wing will mean we will at least get some named pilots with abilities and skill to match their movie counterparts.

Ditto the /fo bomber.