10 minutes ago, MalusCalibur said:

Harpoons cost the same points as Concussion and Cluster missiles, yet do not spend the target lock to fire and have a very powerful condition that almost guarantees a 5th point of damage (and potentially more). Even without the condition they are immediately better than the other 4pt missiles, and they gain that condition essentially for free. They are the most blatant and egregious example of power creep in quite a while and it was obvious from the second the card text was revealed. They render all other missiles redundant for the cost (1pt fewer for the much harder to set up Cruise Missiles is hardly a worthwhile saving) and can make alpha strikes demoralisingly effective. The fact that they 'keep arcs relevant' is a poor argument for not doing something about them and more of an indicator of overall problems with the game. The fact that 'cancelled dice' weapons have now been ruled to trigger the condition makes them even worse.
There are other major problems with the game (Sabine crew, for one), but the solution is not to allow one of the worst designed upgrade cards in years to keep its unbalanced status.

30 minutes ago, Boba Rick said:

I think the biggest reason people want Harpoons nerfed is because they are power creep over the other missiles.

If you were to change Harpoons it wouldn't be right to remove the condition from them, because that is thematically what makes them Harpoons. Just have them burn the TL. Right now they are Homing Harpoons not Harpoons.

Copy/paste from my earlier post. Yes, they are strictly better than Concussion Missiles, Homing Missiles and Assault Missiles. So what? Those cards have been bad since they came out in Wave 2. They were never a part of high level play because you were always spending points to trade your action for an extra die, which is basically the same as using Expose. FFG clearly wanted to make arcs matter in high level play again, and if they just made another missile at the same power level as those garbage cards, then nobody would use them and we'd see turrets and 4-ship Rebel fortresses and wookiees continue to dominate the game.

Again, knowing that all of the Wave 2 missiles are and always have been garbage upgrade cards that good players wouldn't touch, why do we feel that new cards must be held to that same level? Nobody complained Tactician was too good because it was so much better than Saboteur...

What if ... and here's a novel idea... like they got jousters balanced to a point where they didn't HAVE TO have Harpoon Missiles to be at all viable? Because, for starters, lots of justers don't even have a missile slot ... oh **** X-Wing, B-Wing, TIE Fighter, G1A, ... ... ...

33 minutes ago, SabineKey said:

If you check out the Regionals results page, you will still see a good number of non-Harpoon Imperial lists make cuts, even outperforming their Harpooning brethren in a couple of cases. Now, I don't know the ratio of non-harpoon and harpoon lists making cut and wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out harpoon lists are the majority.

What I’m saying is that the reason a lot of those non-harpoon lists are doing well is the dominance of Harpoons. Arc dodgers are better when arcs matter. The more harpoon lists you face, the fewer bomb and turret lists you have to deal with.

1 hour ago, Marinealver said:

Not if the Nerf Herders get their way.

[Screed deleted.]

I mean, it really seems like 95% of your posts are whining. Which, you know, would be okay in a lot of contexts, but seems both ironic and futile in this one.

3 minutes ago, Ailowynn said:

What I’m saying is that the reason a lot of those non-harpoon lists are doing well is the dominance of Harpoons. Arc dodgers are better when arcs matter. The more harpoon lists you face, the fewer bomb and turret lists you have to deal with.

Sooo much this. Harpoon obsession is absolutely an indirect buff to Rebel Fenn and Poe Dameron.

This thread is both hilarious and tragic at the same time

3 minutes ago, Ailowynn said:

What I’m saying is that the reason a lot of those non-harpoon lists are doing well is the dominance of Harpoons. Arc dodgers are better when arcs matter. The more harpoon lists you face, the fewer bomb and turret lists you have to deal with.

While it plays a factor, I do not believe it is as essential as you do. Those bombing and/or turret lists do still exist, and there is data of non-harpoon Imperial lists still winning.

4 hours ago, Ailowynn said:

I’m with the Krayts on this one. Yes, Harpoons are power creep and they’re rules creep; but their effect on the meta has been overwhelmingly positive. You think Gunboats would be top tier competitive without Harpoons? Would we even see Kimogilas? How about all those Imperial aces that have started making cuts consistently? Harpoons are putting small based, arced ships back in the game. That means arcs matter, and that means decisions matter. Only place where I see them as an issue is Nymranda, but that squad would be an issue regardless; it’s a price I’m willing to pay.

Just take a moment to think—what would the meta look like without these harpoon squads? It would be a bunch of Nymranda, fortressing Ghosts, and timewalk Asajj; and that’s it. I can’t think of another meta list right now that doesn’t rely on Poons. Stop with the nerf herding, folks. This is a good card.

I think you're making a mistake along the lines of Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc.

If Harpoons didn't exist, I think we'd still be seeing ordnance. We started seeing Imperial Missile Aces back with Cruise Missiles. I think the 22-point Gunboat is a strong enough platform that if it had Concussion instead of Harpoon, it'd probably still be really good. A Kimogila Deadeye/Overclocked R4/GChips is still going to mess things up with Concussion. Ordnance has been a large part of the metagame since Guidance Chips was released, and I don't think a vastly overpowered Harpoon Missiles is the only reason. Someone's going to say "oh, that's only because the Jumpmaster platform was busted." So the Star Wing isn't?

The other thing is this: depends on the nerf. There's kill-it-dead nerfs like Genius with Advanced Sensors and Bomblet Generator. Or Genius with Trajector Simulator. I can't exactly envision what a "kill-it-dead" nerf on Harpoons would be. I bet even if they deleted the entire first effect on Harpooned! (the explode if you suffer an uncanceled Crit for a facedown card and a damage to each ship at range 1), they'd still be hugely popular missiles, due to not spending the TL at 4 points. Or if FFG finally does what they ought to do for a whole tonne of cards across the game and changed point costs--Harpoons going up to 5, seeing changes on other things as well--I don't think that'd kill any missile-based archetypes.

Just force some actual ****ing list-building choices, since Harpoons are broken as **** and it's foolish to take any other missile or torpedo.

That's some actual bad game design, right there.

25 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

Copy/paste from my earlier post. Yes, they are strictly better than Concussion Missiles, Homing Missiles and Assault Missiles. So what? Those cards have been bad since they came out in Wave 2. They were never a part of high level play because you were always spending points to trade your action for an extra die, which is basically the same as using Expose. FFG clearly wanted to make arcs matter in high level play again, and if they just made another missile at the same power level as those garbage cards, then nobody would use them and we'd see turrets and 4-ship Rebel fortresses and wookiees continue to dominate the game.

Again, knowing that all of the Wave 2 missiles are and always have been garbage upgrade cards that good players wouldn't touch, why do we feel that new cards must be held to that same level? Nobody complained Tactician was too good because it was so much better than Saboteur...

Missiles were garbage UNTIL Guidance Chips came out.

3 hours ago, Favoritism Flight Games said:

I'm a big believer that it's harpoons, AND ONLY harpoons, that are keeping Imps relevant in the meta currently. Without harpoons Imps would have no tools to deal with the ultra-reliable defenses of rebels and Assaj. If harpoons get a big nerf, Imps evaporate.

Seriously, the only Imp list I EVER see without harpoons is TLT Aggressors.

QD, Inquisitor and Yorr beg to differ.

2 minutes ago, Embir82 said:

QD, Inquisitor and Yorr beg to differ.

And RacLo

Someone flew freaking swarm leader x7s to 2nd place at regionals in Brooklyn

9 minutes ago, Boba Rick said:

Missiles were garbage UNTIL Guidance Chips came out.

Obviously they still weren't good enough. I don't recall wave 2 missiles being a common sight in the meta right before harpoons came out, just cruise missiles being used on Imperial Alpha strike lists. The only ship that was really using a wave 2 missile competitively was Miranda with Homing Missiles and LRScanners thanks to her unique ability to add a die to the missile attack.

43 minutes ago, Ailowynn said:

What I’m saying is that the reason a lot of those non-harpoon lists are doing well is the dominance of Harpoons. Arc dodgers are better when arcs matter. The more harpoon lists you face, the fewer bomb and turret lists you have to deal with.

Could be, indirectly....yes.

40 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

Sooo much this. Harpoon obsession is absolutely an indirect buff to Rebel Fenn and Poe Dameron.

Mostly true....

36 minutes ago, SabineKey said:

While it plays a factor, I do not believe it is as essential as you do. Those bombing and/or turret lists do still exist, and there is data of non-harpoon Imperial lists still winning.

Yeah, but what if you removed Harpoons, could non-Harpoon arced squads win easier or would the field then be altered so it makes it harder....kinda like in late 2017? Interesting thought @SabineKey, just wondering really; not saying I know Jack....or Jill for that matter.

4 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

Could be, indirectly....yes.

Mostly true....

Yeah, but what if you removed Harpoons, could non-Harpoon arced squads win easier or would the field then be altered so it makes it harder....kinda like in late 2017? Interesting thought @SabineKey, just wondering really; not saying I know Jack....or Jill for that matter.

I'm willing to concede that it might be harder, but harder is a far cry from impossible. After the FAQ, we saw Imperial lists getting into cuts resurge from the poor levels over the summer. And this isn't just about arc dodging lists from my prospective. QD isn't really an arc dodger, but she's still seeing use without Harpoons or any ordinance in some cases. And we have two more ships for the Imps then we had before. Gunboats might not have Harpoons anymore, but they could adapt to another ordinance or revert to the HLC variant we saw before.

Yeah they're not gonna nerf harpoons.

Yes, they are good. 4 Dice, keep your TL, for 4 points. That's better than Concussion missiles, where you can pay 4 points to mod half your dice (assuming Chips), but everybody said this about Cruise too. It is almost like @Tvboy and others are saying, early upgrades are too simplistic and often overcosted to be relevant even when they came out, let alone when more specific and varied newer upgrades are out. It's almost like the developers are learning by seeing how people play what they actually value for points and play, or something.

But, more importantly, there's no real reason to nerf. Everybody used to be in a terror over how Kylo Ren's condition would ruin everything forever. While "icy titties" can be a real pain to actually play with, the Kylopocalypse has yet to properly materialize. Cruise Missiles were the previous alpha strike wunderkind, but it's almost like Harpoons have a niche where they can hit cards like Biggs and Auzitucks real hard, right about when that was exploding as real **** too. FFG can easily solve this problem though gameplay, if it even is a problem. People already counterplay Harpoons, and you never know what will happen in the game space. Imagine the day there is a pilot or upgrade tech to shed condition cards?

This is also without all the really dumb, senseless arguments, like "Why do my flawless Imperials require some flying war crime tech to be real good?" or "How do space harpoons even work?" which is putting way too much bother into a game about plastic spaceships. There's no real reason for it to be one way or the other, it's just the way they thought to do the thing. Why does anything do anything? Also space harpoons are pretty baller, have you checked out stuff they're showing off for Legion?

But anyway, it's dumb to think of Harpoons as a dead end. X-Wing isn't "complete" yet. More ships will come, more upgrades. They may offer other missiles of roughly the same mechanical capability of as Harpoons but with a different niche on that extra damage - maybe they hurt Large ships, or ships with more Hull, or any other number of different things they can do. Hopefully we can get some ships which are allowed Torpedo slots or some ace packs, so they can try making some moves in that arena, which will aid torpedo carriers. And you never know what anti-Harpoon tech might be lying just around the corner.

1 minute ago, SabineKey said:

I'm willing to concede that it might be harder, but harder is a far cry from impossible. After the FAQ, we saw Imperial lists getting into cuts resurge from the poor levels over the summer. And this isn't just about arc dodging lists from my prospective. QD isn't really an arc dodger, but she's still seeing use without Harpoons or any ordinance in some cases. And we have two more ships for the Imps then we had before. Gunboats might not have Harpoons anymore, but they could adapt to another ordinance or revert to the HLC variant we saw before.

True, but I think if Harpoons get the nerf-bat, there are just as powerful ships out there that will benefit far beyond now-dead swarms or Imperial Aces or anything like that.... the boogie-men that carry TLTs, are tanks or have regen will simply get stronger.

27 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

Obviously they still weren't good enough. I don't recall wave 2 missiles being a common sight in the meta right before harpoons came out, just cruise missiles being used on Imperial Alpha strike lists. The only ship that was really using a wave 2 missile competitively was Miranda with Homing Missiles and LRScanners thanks to her unique ability to add a die to the missile attack.

I took 4x Baron on the empire TAPS with concussion missiles to second place at a regional s when they came out.

Chips made them good.

48 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Just force some actual ****ing list-building choices, since Harpoons are broken as **** and it's foolish to take any other missile or torpedo.

That's some actual bad game design, right there.

Harpoons give a free dead man's switch to the opponent. Good opponents ram home their mortally wounded ship into the enemy. Now there is a tough choice....

So harpoons have disadvantages, and are not the sole missile availabke.

1 minute ago, clanofwolves said:

True, but I think if Harpoons get the nerf-bat, there are just as powerful ships out there that will benefit far beyond now-dead swarms or Imperial Aces or anything like that.... the boogie-men that carry TLTs, are tanks or have regen will simply get stronger.

Yeah, those boogie-men would get stronger. But we've seen Imperial lists beat them before. It may be a smaller sample size and require more skill, but it can still be done. Like I said before, the Empire benefits from Harpoon Missiles, but their fate it not sololy tied to that upgrade.

1 minute ago, Icelom said:

I took 4x Baron on the empire TAPS with concussion missiles to second place at a regional s when they came out.

Chips made them good.

It was a gimmick list that worked because no one had seen it before (or has seen it since...). Bombs and little to no punch after the initial salvo, in fixed arcs to boot, mean it was never anything more than a flash in the pan

I agree that Harpoons are good for the game for the most part, but I also think they push the power curve a bit much even for arced ships. I have no problem with a powerful missile that delivers an extra damage to it's target, or splashes damage to it's wingmen, but both is too much. Honestly, if it was one or the other, it would still probably be the best missile in the game while being less oppressive. Heck, even if the card had text for both effects and let the attacker choose one or the other to trigger, that would be more balanced. There are nuanced ways that they can correct this card without destroying game balance.

2 hours ago, Boba Rick said:

I'm not convinced that they are better than Concussion Missiles 100% of the time. There are plenty of time in which they are, but I don't think always.

Having built-in Guidance Chips in a missile is not bad, and Concussion Missiles don't blow up in your face. @blairbunkeeven commented recently about if he had taken Concussion Misses on that Z-95 list of his it might have been better.

You have to understand I was running a 7 ship list so of course there's an inherent risk of running harpoons with that. I'd say 99% of the time harpoons are the right missile to take.

Power creep is inevitable and even necessary to an extent. This card is clear power creep but that doesn't bother me. The thing that bothers me about the missile is the splash damage. In a game where 2-3 ship builds have been the dominant archtype for the last two years I just can't for the life of me understand why all of a sudden they thought aoe damage needed a buff. I understand they're helping to combat the wookie dominance we've seen since the outset of the last wave but were it up to me I would hit them with the nerf bat as well and remove the splash condition from harpoons. The rest of the missile I'm fine with, even if they just changed the splash to make it splash onto one ship ala ruthlessness but as long as they exist as is any kind of list that is based around formation flying is going to have a rough go of it.

I am a troglodite who stick to more traditional payload. Harpoon in SW? Moby ****? NATO Anti ship weapons?

Fix and Boost Proton Torps. Assault Misiles. Etc. Delete "Expend your TL..." and forget about the Pequod.

I just don't buy that Harpoons were them trying to nerf Wookiees. Harpoons would have been at print before Wookiees were even released. Maybe it was to nerf Biggs and FSR? I dunno. It's possible, but it's a stupid way to do it.

Imagine this missile instead: Repulsor Missile: ATT 4, R 2-3, keep TL. If this missile hits, the attacker may perform a BR* on any ship at Range 1 of the defending ship. 4 points.

That's how you combat formation flying. You want to combat Wookiees? Phased Particle Torpedo: "If this attack hits, remove a Reinforce token from each ship at Range 1 of the defending ship."

Harpoon Missiles are only slightly better than they should be, but they're horribly stupid and complicated in design.

I'm convinced that whatever Dev shepherded these was just way too in love with his own Frankenstein.

(*Or whatever you want to call it to keep it from being confused with the BR action.)