I'm not a tournament player. The FAQ is out of control. I don't want to consult a giant FAQ every time I want to play. On the other hand, four or five corrections is fine. Hence the topic: what do you think are the best 5 fixes that will help to balance the game for casual play? I play rebel vs imperial if that helps (don't own any scum). I'm looking for official, or at least tested, fixes.

Well, 'fixes' usually come in Ace packs, so are easily aquirable.

If you mean "what are the top 5 errata I need to know as Imp or Reb", here are some:

1. Palpatine has to choose before the dice are rolled, not after

2. Biggs is one turn, once per game

3. X7 Defenders can't bump, cross obstacles, or be stressed to get their evade

4. You can't use Genius if you bump, and it now makes you discard the bomb upgrade card to do it.

I actually can't think of a 5th that is a must, but I'm probably forgetting something

5. Phantom decloak happensat the start of the activation phase.

Though depending on when you bought your products, you may already have some of this errata.

1 hour ago, period3 said:

I'm not a tournament player. The FAQ is out of control. I don't want to consult a giant FAQ every time I want to play. On the other hand, four or five corrections is fine. Hence the topic: what do you think are the best 5 fixes that will help to balance the game for casual play? I play rebel vs imperial if that helps (don't own any scum). I'm looking for official, or at least tested, fixes.

Don't play meta-stank.

One and done.

And, BTW, I'm kinda not kidding. If you don't play what is current decried as "broken" the game is doing very well. There is a lot of stuff that works in the 80th-90th percentile, when 99% isn't your goal.

And to further clarify, that doesn't mean don't play JM5K. It means build your own, non-optimized version. Once that's the case, a stupid broke ship just becomes pretty good.

Thanks, good suggestions!

My question is not motivated by not owning certain cards, I just don't want to have to look at a giant faq to figure out if wording on my cards have changed, and I don't want to try to piece together what the rules are by trying to merge the core set rulebook (either, I have both) with the FAQ. I know how to play x-wing based on the rules as printed. Now I want to make four or five corrections for balance, and leave it at that.

The suggestions made so far seem good though so I will try those!

1 hour ago, period3 said:

Thanks, good suggestions!

My question is not motivated by not owning certain cards, I just don't want to have to look at a giant faq to figure out if wording on my cards have changed, and I don't want to try to piece together what the rules are by trying to merge the core set rulebook (either, I have both) with the FAQ. I know how to play x-wing based on the rules as printed. Now I want to make four or five corrections for balance, and leave it at that.

The suggestions made so far seem good though so I will try those!

Use an online squad builder. They will, normally, have the most up to date errata text for each card.

The biggest pain is the timing chart. That’s not gonna be in any list builders.

53 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

The biggest pain is the timing chart. That’s not gonna be in any list builders.

As much as I winced when the timing chart came out (and was simultaneously thankful that it was codified) I've actually found that it actually only comes up in a few edge cases where specific ships are paring off against each other. 99% of games I don't even really have to think about it.

To be honest, if you aren’t a tournament player, just play what’s on the cards and house rule stuff.

If you don't want to use the FAQ, then don't. But to state that it's out of control is just silly.

@period3 You could always print the errata cards if you don’t want to refer to the FAQ https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/249703-errata-cards-for-faq-441/

Yeah, you don't need to read the whole FAQ for casual play. The majority of it is clarifications, the balance fixes are mostly in the errata section near the start.

36 minutes ago, faceyfood said:

If you don't want to use the FAQ, then don't. But to state that it's out of control is just silly.

The Core Rulebook is 28 pages.

The FAQ is 25 pages.

It's out of control.

We need a 2.0 version now ! Quick ffg !

if there were no FAQ nerfs, what would be the 5 top required nerfs? Note that if there were multiple nerfs, a single nerf must be sufficient for the problematic stuff to be not problematic.

Problematic scum stuff:

jumpmaster chassis (which was the real problem underlying dengaroo and triple jumps), attanni mindlink (again, mostly due to jm5k), party bus

The jumpmaster is the top issue. The top nerf for it is the chassis. With the chassis nerf, op triple jumps and op dengaroo are not viable.

#1: The Jumpmaster loses torpedo, torpedo, elite pilot talent and salvaged astromech slots. The punishing one title gives those slots back.

No ept for the jumpmaster means no attanni on manaroo or contracted scout, making attanni weaker. I don't know if an attanni list not using jm5k or party bus in 2k18 would be oppressive enough to warrant the coveted nerf slots.

After that, biggs was considered too good. Now, not that there isn't more broken stuff around. Lowhrick and Fenn are even more punishing, imo. With biggs, you can just use a different weapon, with fenn having no modifiers requires a different squad building approach, namely you must use upgrades that modify your rolls. Lowhrick just makes rebels so tanky. Out of the three, biggs was nerfed because it was the oldest, and the auzituck and the sheathipede need more sales. Maybe making the enemy use whatever weapon available could be enough. Also, nerfing biggs allows for the t-65 fix. The third problem with the current biggs nerf is that it makes him not competitive at all. No biggs has appeared in the top tables ever again. There was a fan fix that required biggs to be in arc in order for it to work. I like that.

#2: Biggs Darklighter ability now reads: If an enemy ship inside your primary firing arc at range 1-3 would attack another ship, it must instead attack your ship if able, with whatever weapon would allow it to attack this ship.

Now, there are many more problematic things in rebels: Genius/Trajectory, Ghost, Miranda.

A TLT nerf would take care of all three, probably an autoblaster or full bombing nym avoiding it partly, while still keeping them relevant.

#3: TLT Now has the added clause at the end: During the compare dice step, cancel all crit results.

The fourth nerf should address one stuff from imperials. /x7 is more broken than palp.

#4: /x7 If you ship or maneuver template did not overlap an obstacle or ship, you may perform a free evade action.

Now, is prenerf palp more broken than genius/traj nym without tlt? I don't think so.

#5: Genius now reads: After moving, you may discard this card to drop a bomb token without the action header. This is what the genius nerf should have been, as it avoids every problem along with the trajectory problem. Making it a one trick pony is enough.

Notable stuff avoiding the nerf hammer:

-Attanni mindlink unlimited. A popular choice was inaldra or palob instead of jm5k, but i think it is weaker.

-Zuckuss requires no stress to activate. Party bus would be weaker today, since the ghost is 0 agility.

-Fenn Rau (Rebel) . It is problematic combined with TLT ghost, but TLT has been addressed.

-Lowhrick. It might be problematic.

-Palp. It might be problematic.

If there was a sixth slot, I may consider Attanni, Lowhrick or Palpatine.

This has not been tested but i think is enough. If you still want to go with official rulings, I don't think 5 would be enough to cover 3 factions. Also, note that each official nerf takes into account the available expansions at the moment, the current meta and the previous nerfs. Just having 5 'previously tested' nerfs actually means less than what I propose above, because the previous testing would be invalid, as the three environmental factors mentioned are invalid, and also because there is always a rationale behind each nerf, which contextless nitpicked nerfs do not have. In other words, your proposed requirements lack both rationale, meaningful playtesting and the three environmental factors, my proposed requirements take into account those and only lack playtesting. Since you will have to play with whatever fixes you choose, playtesting must occur and is a moot point. And yet another factor: I don't know what expansions you have, which factions you will play, and whether you would be capable of coming up with the best squads or how to counter them or how to play them at their maximum potential, yet another important factor in defining a meta. Also of note is that there most likely will be a skill gap between players in your group. Having a stronger player play a weaker squadron and weaker players play stronger squadrons is also better for balance. It wouldn't be a problem if a low skill player plays with broken stuff if the player can't use it properly. Hopefully all those arguments make you consider what you want and whether what i propose may be of use or not.

7 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

The Core Rulebook is 28 pages.

The FAQ is 25 pages.

It's out of control.

Yeah that rule book is way too long

1) play the game more.

2) see rule one

3) see rule one

4) see rule one

5) see rule one

On 3/4/2018 at 5:45 AM, Darth Meanie said:

The Core Rulebook is 28 pages.

The FAQ is 25 pages.

It's out of control.

The majority of that FAQ is largely related to questions of "How does this card work?" or "How do X and Y interact?" The actual errata portion is maybe two pages.

29 minutes ago, PhantomFO said:

The majority of that FAQ is largely related to questions of "How does this card work?" or "How do X and Y interact?" The actual errata portion is maybe two pages.

Hard errata or not, it's still a ton of extra material to "master" the game.

For casual play? The extra hitpoint to Scyks seems an important detail.