I see Rey all the time and she generally doesnt bug me. Shes a threat, but shes not anywhere close to an auto-win threat. Also a ship that costs 50+ pts should be deadly as balls.
I didnt really have a problem with Dengar specifically either (99% of my jm5k woes were manaroo/generics, not dengar). Again, hes 50+pts often pushing 60 and is immensely weaker if you can outfly him, which isnt as hard as people think (though it is still hard, just not impossibly hard where its more sheer luck you dodged it than skill). Also he has always had this stigma of "Dengar OP, Dengar smash things, Dengar win because Dengar!" and idiots will fly him suicidally right into an alpha strike thinking the revenge shot will be enough to either deter my attacks or kill a ship if i do attack. When im running 4+ ships with 3+ attack dice....go ahead pop one i dont care because you will NOT survive the rest unless your green dice roll solid evades.

You never saw that level of points-sink into a jm5k except for dengar, all the other builds were abusing the fact that its such a laughably cheap ship for what it offers. Thus, Dengar was a turret that didnt want out-of-arc shots but could still do it.

While were at it, Lancer. Yes its not a turret, but its "technically" a turret that just doesnt spin around that quick. Its really hard to avoid it's arc when it can point it right at you, but its still possible and again is a 50-ish pt ship so it SHOULD be deadly.

Ghost w/o Fenn around isnt that big of a problem either, it can still kick your butt if you ignore it like an idiot but theres a reason it was rarely used until now. Its the extra action via Fenn and token-denial via Fenn that kicks it up to ridiculous. Prior to Fenn being around the number of times ive popped a ghost in 1-2 rounds is comical. Fenn should be around 35pts for what he brings, not 25pts.

Fenn should not exist with coordinate and any ps above 7 max. That whole ship is an overpowered nonflavorful mistake

10 hours ago, CRCL said:

Kanan has been dumb since his release. He should have been 1-2pts and only worked on another friendly ship at R1-2 (you know, you should actually have to work a bit for the benefit). Kanan + Dash is (somewhat) hobbled by dash being PS7, but he's pretty much the reason I don't run swarms anymore. Dash is fairly common in our meta, and that matchup is so one-sided it's just not fun to play. I can fly well, and my opponent flys poorly, and he still wins 75% of the time.

flying should be THE difference maker save basic dice variance. It's becoming a card game huh?

7 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

An IG-88 or a Lancer on drugs should be able to dodge most of, or all of, incoming fire. But agility 0 targets tanking that much fire feels weird.

This

.....WTH???

7 hours ago, Vineheart01 said:

Fenn should be around 35pts for what he brings, not 25pts.

Could work.

3 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Fenn should not exist with coordinate and any ps above 7 max. That whole ship is an overpowered nonflavorful mistake

I'm thinking this too; seems Fenn is the possible straw that paralyzed our beloved camel, haha.

4 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Fenn should not exist with coordinate and any ps above 7 max. That whole ship is an overpowered nonflavorful mistake

This. Feels like they translated the writer's pet attitude with the Rebels characters perfectly into game terms.

Turrets were always a massive design problem in a game that is built around tactical manuevering

The only time they weren't a problem was when they were so overpriced and/or **** that no one used them. Once we got out of there we needed Band-Aids like thrusters.

If we needed to have such a lazy mechanic, instead of mobile arcs, I'd say the ideal would be Synched turret with no TL restriction: range limit, no range 1 bonus, and actual incentive to still use arc.

Unfortunately we got **** like TLT ghost with full unstoppable modifiers that cancel range 3 bonsuses, or a very sturdy Miranda that barely pays for her added durability. Only way we're getting out of it is limiting nontoken mods to arc-only and hitting TLT in some capacity

As for Fenn, I'm 10000% positive he is the reason Biggs got nerfed as he is essentially a much better Biggs. Stacking the two would collapse reality as we know it

Play Armada. At least until it gets to the same state as X-wing is now, and it will get to that point believe me. Or jump now into Legion. Ride that boat until FFG runs it into the nearest blackhole, and be ready to jump to the next thing.

Welcome to wave 4.

Do? I expect you to die.

5 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Fenn should not exist with coordinate and any ps above 7 max. That whole ship is an overpowered nonflavorful mistake

I feel that there’s something needed in this game to keep ships from consistently taking actions. It’s like, yeah, a basic mechanic like a token that stops actions or...maybe causing a higher PS ship to lose its action by flying into your ship! But that would take a 2.0 edition or something. Guess we’re stuck with Super Ghost and unstoppable Fenn

1 hour ago, GrimmyV said:

I feel that there’s something needed in this game to keep ships from consistently taking actions. It’s like, yeah, a basic mechanic like a token that stops actions or...maybe causing a higher PS ship to lose its action by flying into your ship! But that would take a 2.0 edition or something. Guess we’re stuck with Super Ghost and unstoppable Fenn

Tie Reaper with Jam, Blocking consistently, and maybe a mechanic that makes stress harder to shrug off.

On 09/03/2018 at 8:59 AM, CMDR Ytterium said:

Tie Reaper with Jam, Blocking consistently, and maybe a mechanic that makes stress harder to shrug off.

One of the major issues with X-wing is the constant increase in upgrades that improve a ships ability to take actions and/or modify dice.

Back in the early waves, a well placed block could be devastating. If you blocked a ship's K-turn, it was out of the action for at least 2 turns, and even blocking a white/green robbed them of their modifiers. Now with the plethora of actionless mod cards/abilities (pred, palp, expertise, FCS, coordinate, rey, C3P0, etc) blocking has become a much poorer strategy.

It's part of why swarms have fallen out of favour. A large part of their strategy is lowering the enemy's efficiency by robbing them of actions. It's much harder to do that now, when a ship can bump and still fire at your ships with full mods.

Despite my generally snarky attitude about the game, I feel like I need to back up and clarify a very important aspect of my feelings for the game. Simply put, X-wing, it's parent game engine, and for much of it's own development, I would call one of my top three game designs of all time. I am of the opinion that the game was poorly just developed by designers who had good skills that had not yet been tempered by experience. And this led to serious issues in the player experience. This was compounded by an unfortunate lack of foresight about the games lifespan that led to a diminishing return on early concept promises. I just want to establish with those thoughts how much I think of the game system on a fundamental level.

5 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Do? I expect you to die.

James Bond is having considerable concern about attacks in his primary arc:

Fly StarVipers with Autothrusters. I want StarViper meta.

9 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

Turrets were always a massive design problem in a game that is built around tactical manuevering

The only time they weren't a problem was when they were so overpriced and/or **** that no one used them. Once we got out of there we needed Band-Aids like thrusters.

If we needed to have such a lazy mechanic, instead of mobile arcs, I'd say the ideal would be Synched turret with no TL restriction: range limit, no range 1 bonus, and actual incentive to still use arc.

Unfortunately we got **** like TLT ghost with full unstoppable modifiers that cancel range 3 bonsuses, or a very sturdy Miranda that barely pays for her added durability. Only way we're getting out of it is limiting nontoken mods to arc-only and hitting TLT in some capacity

As for Fenn, I'm 10000% positive he is the reason Biggs got nerfed as he is essentially a much better Biggs. Stacking the two would collapse reality as we know it

Indeed. That, I think, is the problem:

Rey, Dengar, Synced Turret, and things like the YV-666's auxiliary-arc-with-a-cannon-down-the-primary are good examples of 'turrets' to me - they can engage someone outside their arc, but they're detectably much better when you get shots front-and-centre. Which means you're still encouraged to engage someone in a sensible fashion.

Heck, even Autoblaster turret is cool. It's undodgeable(ish) and 360' but it's also only 2 dice so in theory it won't ever kill someone in one shot (even a basic TIE fighter) and it's range 1 only so you've got to throw yourself into the middle of the fight to use it.

The problem is that none of these things un-invent the primary turrets, outrider title and twin laser turret that (unsurprisingly) the ones that keep getting used.

5 hours ago, CRCL said:

One of the major issues with X-wing is the constant increase in upgrades that increase a ships ability to take actions and/or modify dice.

Back in the early waves, a well placed block could be devastating. If you blocked a ship's K-turn, it was out of the action for at least 2 turns, and even blocking a white/green robbed them of their modifiers. Now with the plethora of actionless mod cards/abilities (pred, palp, expertise, FCS, coordinate, rey, C3P0, etc) blocking has become a much poorer strategy.

It's part of why swarms have fallen out of favour. A large part of their strategy is lowering the enemy's efficiency by robbing them of actions. It's much harder to do that now, when a ship can bump and still fire at your ships with full mods.

I'm hoping Reapers with Jam might be a possible answer, but I suspect, again, it's the elite ships and large ships with huge upgrade bars that will get the tokenless modifiers to ignore them, or the ability to generate sufficient tokens to 'burn through' the jamming via recon specialist, fire control system, etc, etc.

I agree that blocking is - not dead, precisely (you still get to control your opponent's placement) but massively reduced in effectiveness. Things like K4/Expertise gives you "what's your point? TL/F shot!" that makes you wonder why you bothered giving up a shot of your own for the block...plus, again, large/elite ships tend to be in 3 or even 2 ship squads - meaning you don't get block/bump/bump/bump chains that used to strip half a squad of its actions, because there's only one other enemy ship on the board and they're safely at range 2 of the action.

14 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

Turrets were always a massive design problem in a game that is built around tactical manuevering

The only time they weren't a problem was when they were so overpriced and/or **** that no one used them. Once we got out of there we needed Band-Aids like thrusters.

If we needed to have such a lazy mechanic, instead of mobile arcs, I'd say the ideal would be Synched turret with no TL restriction: range limit, no range 1 bonus, and actual incentive to still use arc.

Unfortunately we got **** like TLT ghost with full unstoppable modifiers that cancel range 3 bonsuses, or a very sturdy Miranda that barely pays for her added durability. Only way we're getting out of it is limiting nontoken mods to arc-only and hitting TLT in some capacity

As for Fenn, I'm 10000% positive he is the reason Biggs got nerfed as he is essentially a much better Biggs. Stacking the two would collapse reality as we know it

This needs repeating.

...and repeating.

...and repeating.

Best.

Explanation.

Ever.

On 08/03/2018 at 8:34 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

I haven't had a chance to face it with strikers yet, but I'm hoping they can make a mess. I'm worried that it'll not be as easy as it sounds in practice - because there's pretty good odds I'll lose a striker a turn, and that pool of firepower dries up fast.

I'm trying to decide if I need to focus up and strafe the ghost, or evade up to try and preserve my ships whilst I get past the ghost and hunt down fenn.

If I can kill the ghost, the match is basically over - yes, all right, I'll need to take out Fenn and Zeb, but Zeb is a striker with no lightweight frame, no ailerons, and the same PS as my generic ships so theoretically I should stand a good chance against him even if left one-on-one, but killing the ghost is easier said than done - especially if we're talking Kanan/Recon Specialist/Sensor Jammer/Fenn/Hotshot Copilot, dropping two of my ships to 2-dice attacks, and stopping 2 of them using tokens against the sensor jammer, and tanking the first hit on an evade token, every round.

If I can catch fenn first before facing the VCX, the irritating little squit is dead meat - 5 hits, no evade action and no repositioning action means 3-4 strikers can chop him into dogmeat in a single shooting phase, but it's a question of how many strikers I'll lose to the ghost whilst doing it - and if I'll still have enough left to beat the ghost once I've done so.

Strikers lack the damage output, without target locks, and also struggle to keep their arcs pointing at the ghost for 3 rounds in a row because they are so fast.

The Cartel Marauders can have Thread Tracers (to give out those target locks) and Contraband Cybernetics (to be able to k-turn to keep firing with the essential focus). And, since I'm not trying to keep in the small 'bubble', the boost isn't so much of a problem. That's 7 to 12 damage per round. Despite Fenn robbing one focus and then locking down another. If the first thread tracers miss because of Fenn's ability (only one hit rolled out of three dice; sensor jammed and then guidance chipped means the ghost has to spend its evade), then fire the next. There are still 3 ships with both TL and focus to shoot, plus one which lost its focus to Fenn's HSCP. Round 2, the wounded ship dies, but then there are 4 ships still to shoot. You still have to fly well, avoiding bumping your own ships so they can get actions, and get arc on the ghost. But it works, generally with 3 ships left to take down Fenn & Zeb. Killing Fenn first makes it even easier, but that tends to be harder to arrange since the opposing player expects you to try that.