We see a lot of interesting card creation topics lately to address perceived balance issues in the game. Wave 7 is introducing lots of new abilities that players have requested for a while now such as the ability to pass an activation, force a ship to go first or last, and even to make an extra round of squadron attacks!

This thread is to create hypothetical cards intended to defend the fleet, be it against damage or interference by enemy shenanigans. It also might include cards that are designed to heal damage or avoid negative effects of risky plays. It might also be designed to offer defensive counter-play to a particularly nasty upgrade or combo.

I'll lead off with a potentially interesting solution to the BT Avenger combo:

Redundant Power Relay: Defensive Retrofit: 3 points. "When defending, at the start of the Spend Defense Tokens step, you may discard this card to refresh one of your exhausted Defense Tokens."

I don't quite understand the point.

Personally, I'd like to see maneuvering allow for different game outcomes. Something that would let me actually get flak off on a bunch of squadrons that have 6 activations to my 4 for instance.

1 minute ago, Blail Blerg said:

I don't quite understand the point.

Personally, I'd like to see maneuvering allow for different game outcomes. Something that would let me actually get flak off on a bunch of squadrons that have 6 activations to my 4 for instance.

We see a lot of cards already designed to hit harder or sabotage better or position for both, but not much to make ships defend themselves better while not turning the game into a massive slog.

DEFENSIVE RETROFIT

Sealed Hangars

5 points(?)

At the start of any round, reduce your squadron value to 0.

When receiving critical damage, turn face-up damage cards face-down up to your initial squadron value.

At the start of the following round, discard this card.

4 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

I don't quite understand the point.

Personally, I'd like to see maneuvering allow for different game outcomes. Something that would let me actually get flak off on a bunch of squadrons that have 6 activations to my 4 for instance.

I'll add them to my campaign because I can

Quadranium Armor Plating - Large ship only. When you overlap a flotilla, destroy it. Complete the maneuver as normal. Offensive Retrofit - 2 points

Oscillating Shields - When you spend a Brace token, reduce the damage by half rounded down if the defending hull zone has at least 1 shield. Defensive Retrofit - 4 points

Point Defense Array - While defending, before the Spend Defense token step, you may roll a blue die for each black hit in the attack pool. For each Acc rolled, you may cancel a black hit, or 2 Acc to cancel a black hit/crit. Defensive Retrofit - 7 points.

Reactive defenses: when an enemy squadron attacks a friendly ship, exhaust this card to perform an anti-squadron attack. Offensive retrofit 5 points.

Maybe make it so you can't attack from the arc you choose can't be used for attacks for the rest of the round.

2 minutes ago, TallGiraffe said:

Reactive defenses: when an enemy squadron attacks a friendly ship, exhaust this card to perform an anti-squadron attack. Offensive retrofit 5 points.

**** yea! Now my 4 flotillas in the corner can attack from across the board!

Perhaps when a ship at close is defending? This would be great on Raiders.

2 minutes ago, Undeadguy said:

**** yea! Now my 4 flotillas in the corner can attack from across the board!

Perhaps when a ship at close is defending? This would be great on Raiders.

Well they aren't in range for the flotilla. Unless I worded it wrong.

3 minutes ago, TallGiraffe said:

Well they aren't in range for the flotilla. Unless I worded it wrong.

Oh duh. Anti-squad attack still applies to your dice.

1 minute ago, Undeadguy said:

Oh duh. Anti-squad attack still applies to your dice.

I was tempted to make it a discard. I think it would help against squadron heavy lists.

Damage control central: repair command reduce the cost to remove a damage card by half round down. Defensive retrofit 10 pts

2 minutes ago, chr335 said:

Damage control central: repair command reduce the cost to remove a damage card by half round down. Defensive retrofit 10 pts

So just make it 2? Not really worth 10 points in my opinion. Or worth the slot.

4 minutes ago, TallGiraffe said:

So just make it 2? Not really worth 10 points in my opinion. Or worth the slot.

It reduces the cost to remove a damage card to 1 engineering point

1 hour ago, TallGiraffe said:

I was tempted to make it a discard. I think it would help against squadron heavy lists.

Make it a discard, otherwise it would be impossible to bomb anything that can take Flechette Torpedoes.

11 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

Make it a discard, otherwise it would be impossible to bomb anything that can take Flechette Torpedoes.

Since the squad already activated, FT would do nothing.

Point Defence Cannons

5 pts

Whilst Defending roll one dice of your choice. Cancel one dice in enemy attack pool that matches the color and icons rolled on your dice.

Auxiliary Shield Generators: At the start of the ship phase, you may discard this card. If you do, you may add 2 additional shields to one hull zone until the end of the round. The number of shields in a zone cannot exceed a maximum of "6".

8 points

The goal is for this to be like disposable capacitors or external racks for defense. The beauty of this card is that it can be used during the start of the ship phase, meaning you can turn them on the ideal hull zone you know for certain will get hit last or first in around. However, it comes at the expense of not saving as much damage as reinforced blast doors, or having the longevity of ECMs or Early Warning, while being very expensive.

Also worth noting is that these are temporary shields, not permanent ones. After the round is over, you lose the shields you've gained. If you have one or two shields remaining in that zone, they're gone when the round ends.

Emergency Bridge:

When you reveal a command dial you may choose to discard it, if you do you may gain any type of command token.

4 pts

as a measure against slicertools etc

also intended against the damage vard which name i forgot, though i am not sure about the wording if it would work

What about a card where you gave something up to drastically boost your shields.

Power Diverters:

At the start of the ship phase you may discard this card. If you do you may gain 4 shields to add to any of your hullzones to a maximum of 6. You cannot attack this round.

5 points

I'm not sure on the price, but you're giving up attacks. You could also limit it to not being able to spend a dial this turn, or a lot of things. Essentially its a "well otherwise this ship will die, so why not?"

Or a reactionary card:

Shields of super quick regeneration-ness:

When one of your hullzones reaches zero shields, you may discard this card and an engineering token to add shields to that hullzones back to its maximum shield value.

X points. X+Y points if you don't need an engineering token.

Rapid response team - support team, 4 pts

Before revealing a command dial, you may discard this card to discard any number of raid tokens.

(Thematically, this is a troop of marines responding to incursions and driving of the boarders)

Rapid repair bays - offensive retrofit, 8 pts

Repair: you may spend engineering points to remove damage from unengaged squadrons at close range at a cost of 1 engineering point per point of damage removed. You may not remove more than one point of damage from each affected squadron each turn.

Ever want to defend yourself against Demolisher, Defiance, Avenger etc?

Saboteurs

Discard this card to remove the Title card of one ship within distance 5, or to deal 1 facedown damage card to one ship within distance 5. (12 points)

(expensive, because it should be. facedown damage because it's too expensive to do nothing to a titleless enemy)

On 2/3/2018 at 7:10 PM, Undeadguy said:

Since the squad already activated, FT would do nothing.

Your terminology could potentially allow a player to attack all the enemy squads in range and arc.

22 minutes ago, MattShadowlord said:

Ever want to defend yourself against Demolisher, Defiance, Avenger etc?

Saboteurs

Discard this card to remove the Title card of one ship within distance 5, or to deal 1 facedown damage card to one ship within distance 5. (12 points)

(expensive, because it should be. facedown damage because it's too expensive to do nothing to a titleless enemy)

This is what Darth Vader already does. I think it needs to have a greater opportunity cost. The card here just eliminates titles for a fraction of the effort of any other method.

Zero-Gravity Response Team (unknown slot): When you reveal a (Repair) command, discard this card, you may flip a face-up damage card face down for one engineering point.