It's been 2.5 years since the Damage Deck was updated with the TFA Core set and the game has changed quite a bit since then. Let's talk about what crits you like, which crits you don't (and why) and how they could be improved.

here's what we have:

Console Fire: (Ship) At the start of each combat phase, roll 1 attack die. On a (hit) result, suffer 1 damage. Action: Flip this card facedown.

Console Fire is a "lose an action or else" crit that creates a ticking clock - either you deal with the crit or it will eventually kill you, but there is a lot of room for risk-reward type decisions in the meantime. This is one of my favorite crits since it's always relevant and creates a more interesting game state.

Damaged Engine: (Ship) Treat all turn maneuvers (sharp left OR sharp right) as red maneuvers.

Damaged Engine is one of the few permanent effect crits and it's brutal for ships that care about arcs. I'd prefer it to be something that could be cleared since it's so crippling (probably via a die roll?). It also could be reworded to be more like Loose Stabilizer (receive a stress after making a sharp turn, rather than changing the color of the maneuver) so you can still perform turns, but at an increased cost. Or it could be like Daredevil - a chance to take damage after making a hard turn?

Damaged Sensor Array: (Ship) You cannot perform any actions except actions listed on Damage cards. Action: Roll 1 attack die. On a (hit) or (crit) result, flip this card facedown.

Damaged Sensory Array feels like it's on the right power curve, though losing more than two turns trying to clear it feels really bad. It makes me wonder if all of the roll a die to clear crits would be better if the odds improved each time? Not sure how to achieve that without over-complicating the rules text though.

Direct Hit!: (Ship) This card counts as 2 damage against your hull.

Direct Hit is the quintessential crit, I think it's great as-is.

Major Explosion: (Ship) Roll 1 attack die. On a (hit) result, suffer 1 critical damage. Then flip this card facedown.

Major Explosion is a swingier card than the original Minor Explosion (which just dealt a facedown damage card if you rolled hit/crit). I like the possibility space that Major Explosion creates - there is always a chance that a lone crit will chain into a catastrophic amount of damage and that (remote) possibility creates tension/drama every time a crit is dealt. It's very Star Wars.

Major Hull Breach: (Ship) Starting the round after you receive this card, all Damage cards dealt to you are dealt faceup. Action: Flip this card facedown

Major Hull Breach is functionally blank for most small ships (the next shot that gets through will usually kill them regardless), but really punishing to high hull, low agility ships. In a way, it's the counterpart to Console Fire - while high hull ships can often ignore Console Fire for several turns, they can't afford to ignore Major Hull Breach. This is a very binary card - it's either going to ruin your day or have little effect on the game depending on which ship it lands on and when. I normally don't really like dead cards, but since the meta favors high hull ships, I'm fine with the current text.

Loose Stabilizer: (Ship) After you execute a white maneuver, receive 1 stress token. Action: Flip this card facedown.

I like that Loose Stabilizer creates interesting decisions in planning, I think it's great as-is.

Structural Damage: (Ship) Reduce your agility value by 1 (to a minimum of 0). Action: Roll 1 attack die, on a (hit) or (crit) result, flip this card facedown.

Somehow Structural Damage feels less frustrating that Weapons Failure. I like it as-is.

Thrust Control Fire: (Ship) Receive 1 stress token. Then flip this card facedown.

Thrust Control Fire is one of the weaker crits in the modern era since stress is so weaponized already that ships are often teched to deal with it. It feels like this needs a power boost, but maybe that's just me?

Weapons Failure: (Ship) When attacking, roll 1 fewer attack die. Action: Roll 1 attack die. On a (hit) or (critical hit) result, flip this card facedown.

Weapons Failure is really aggravating in our current era of highly modified dice and super defensive ships. This is often a "deal no damage until you clear it" crit, which is really frustrating. I think it needs a debuff - maybe just make it Action: flip this card facedown?

Blinded Pilot: (Pilot) You cannot perform attacks. After your next opportunity to attack (even if there was no target for an attack), flip this card facedown.

Blinded Pilot is my least favorite damage card. It might as well say "lose a turn", which isn't fun in any game. My fix would be something like changing "You cannot perform attacks." to "You cannot modify attack dice."

Damaged Cockpit: (Pilot) Starting the round after you receive this card, treat your pilot skill value as 0.

Damaged Cockpit is one of the few crits that can't be cleared, I'm assuming to avoid the obnoxious interactions with PS order that occur with Tel Trevura. I think it's one of the more interesting crits, particularly since the PS war is so central to the meta. It's a crit where the "penalty" can be turned into an advantage in certain circumstances, which is cool.

Shaken Pilot: (Pilot) During the Planning phase, you cannot be assigned straight maneuvers. When you reveal a maneuver, flip this card facedown.

Shaken Pilot feels way too weak - I can't remember the last time I cared that I received it. Maybe reverse the penalty to force the player to set a straight maneuver? So a more flexible Ion effect?

Stunned Pilot: (Pilot) After you execute a maneuver, if you are touching another ship or overlapping an obstacle token, suffer 1 damage.

I like Stunned Pilot since it changes the usual bumping dynamic. Triggering on just overlapping an obstacle in your final position seems odd though - I might tweak it to do the damage if your maneuver template overlapped an obstacle too?

3 minutes ago, Transmogrifier said:

It's been 2.5 years since the Damage Deck was updated with the TFA Core set and the game has changed quite a bit since then. Let's talk about what crits you like, which crits you don't (and why) and how they could be improved.

Actually, 2.5 years ago FFG attempted to update the damage deck and everyone screamed bloody murder they would have to buy another core set.

So now the game has 2 damage decks that players can voluntarily choose from. I don't think the game needs a 3rd option.

Shouldn't the severity of crits be varied? Some of them should be pretty weak and others should be devastating for variety and randomness.

2 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Actually, 2.5 years ago FFG attempted to update the damage deck and everyone screamed bloody murder they would have to buy another core set.

So now the game has 2 damage decks that players can voluntarily choose from. I don't think the game needs a 3rd option.

Every card that rolls to be "fixed" can go die in a ******* fire. We have enough RNG as is between green dice, critical results, and faceup damage. Spending an ACTION is cost enough

Major Explosion is among the worst designed things in the game

Shaken Pilot is largely useless

Fix these issues and the damage deck is super cool

Yeah I gotta agree, the roll to "fix" is terrible. Something like Damaged Sensor Array can be brutal when you can't clear it three turns in a row and it's super frustrating.

Also, just want to point out, that I have never played a game where Major Hull Breach mattered. There was 1 game where it was the first crit on an Asajj, but then the next round she took two natural crits (Blinded Pilot and Damaged Engine) and then three hits that became crits, but they were all like Weapon's Failure, PS0, stuff that didn't matter when she couldn't shoot that next round anyways and was cleared off by a PS9 Quickdraw. Not saying it's a bad card or anything, I just think its hilarious that it's somehow never mattered.

yeah major hull brach is often the butt of many-a-joke as the last damage card drawn before the ship can't take anymore

but god**** if it isn't an occasional lifesaver against yt-1300s and vt-49s and vcxs

47 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Actually, 2.5 years ago FFG attempted to update the damage deck and everyone screamed bloody murder they would have to buy another core set.

So now the game has 2 damage decks that players can voluntarily choose from. I don't think the game needs a 3rd option.

For sure, but this was meant to be a theoretical exercise in "What would an ideal damage deck look like?" not "How do you solve the community's problem with knee jerk reactions to everything that FFG does?" I don't think we'll get a new core set or damage deck unless the game gets rebooted, but it's something to do other than whine about the meta

26 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Every card that rolls to be "fixed" can go die in a ******* fire. We have enough RNG as is between green dice, critical results, and faceup damage. Spending an ACTION is cost enough

Nah, X-Wing has always been at it's core an RNG-fest. Dice are the heart and soul of X-Wing, for better or worse, and rolling those dice are fun. Let them eat cake, and let them roll for their repairs! Hear hear!

40 minutes ago, nexttwelveexits said:

Shouldn't the severity of crits be varied? Some of them should be pretty weak and others should be devastating for variety and randomness.

No.

Especially in terms of weakness. If I score a crit, it should mean something.

In fact, one of the points of the 2nd DD was that a couple of crits were meaningless to certain types of ships that received them.

you know what happens when you eat too much cake

we got enough RNG as is, we don't need more. We already have games like Yahtzee to scratch that mindless itch

39 minutes ago, nexttwelveexits said:

Shouldn't the severity of crits be varied? Some of them should be pretty weak and others should be devastating for variety and randomness.

Similarly powered cards in a vacuum are still going to have varying impact in specific game states. I think there is room for a degree of variance, but I'd like most of it to be based on context rather than objective power level of the card.

Personally I want Major Hull breach to go into effect for all following attacks not the next round. That way it could see some actual mileage.

only once did I get Bossk in the first shot with it then waisted him the next turn like I should have.

8 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

you know what happens when you eat too much cake

Fly Determination Leebo or some other big ship with that EPT. You'll pray for Blinded Pilot, and Major Hull Breach suddenly becomes fun!

47 minutes ago, nexttwelveexits said:

Shouldn't the severity of crits be varied? Some of them should be pretty weak and others should be devastating for variety and randomness.

There is already a bit of that with some ships/builds that don’t care about certain crits. Zero agi ships getting a Structural Damage crit doesn’t mean anything and Shaken Pilot can be a preferable crit if you weren’t planning on doing a straight next turn anyway.

35 minutes ago, GameError said:

Yeah I gotta agree, the roll to "fix" is terrible. Something like Damaged Sensor Array can be brutal when you can't clear it three turns in a row and it's super frustrating.

Also, just want to point out, that I have never played a game where Major Hull Breach mattered. There was 1 game where it was the first crit on an Asajj, but then the next round she took two natural crits (Blinded Pilot and Damaged Engine) and then three hits that became crits, but they were all like Weapon's Failure, PS0, stuff that didn't matter when she couldn't shoot that next round anyways and was cleared off by a PS9 Quickdraw. Not saying it's a bad card or anything, I just think its hilarious that it's somehow never mattered.

I think that the roll to fix crits are the biggest NPE in the game. Nothing is more frustrating when you just can't roll to clear a crit.

16 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

you know what happens when you eat too much cake

we got enough RNG as is, we don't need more. We already have games like Yahtzee to scratch that mindless itch

Sheesh. For someone who's done nothing but complained about dice (among other things) in this game for the past five years, like did you ever stop and think that just maybe you picked the wrong game for you?

Thanks for this post. I never new what the crits did. Thanks.

I enjoy console fire the way it is, i mean when you can force the palp shuttle to palp for 6 turns in a row to prevent him from dying from console fire it's highly entertaining. Also watching a ship die from console fire with the harpoon condition and taking out another one of his ships in the process is pretty awesome.

5 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Sheesh. For someone who's done nothing but complained about dice (among other things) in this game for the past five years, like did you ever stop and think that just maybe you picked the wrong game for you?

idk I picked a game because I was looking for beautiful models and a game of tactical space combat

no **** clue where I got that silly idea, though

yeah, no idea at all

since it was obviously and pointedly marketed as an rng-fest and nothing more

yep, no interesting mechanics or strategy whatsoever! it's just a dice fest

yep. all those unique templates and dials are just fluff they used to package the box with. they don't matter at all!

yep.

3 minutes ago, Scott Pilgrim2 said:

I think that the roll to fix crits are the biggest NPE in the game. Nothing is more frustrating when you just can't roll to clear a crit.

I agree. A 50-50 roll you can't do anything to alter isn't really fun.

14 minutes ago, Scott Pilgrim2 said:

I think that the roll to fix crits are the biggest NPE in the game. Nothing is more frustrating when you just can't roll to clear a crit.

Hyperbole much? There are so many things more NPE than failing to fix a crit.

Like when your opponent's ship Mr Magoos it's way through an obstacle and loses its actions but still rolls four natural Evades on its unmodified defense roll. Or when you roll double-blank then double-blank with a TL+F autoblaster attack against an enemy ace that only has 1 Hull remaining. Heck, both of these things happened to me in my last Regional. Welcome to X-Wing. You can either embrace the joys of the RNG-gods or not, but they aren't going anywhere in this game.

3 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

idk I picked a game because I was looking for beautiful models and a game of tactical space combat

no **** clue where I got that silly idea, though

yeah, no idea at all

since it was obviously and pointedly marketed as an rng-fest and nothing more

yep, no interesting mechanics or strategy whatsoever! it's just a dice fest

yep. all those unique templates and dials are just fluff they used to package the box with. they don't matter at all!

yep.

I'm certainly not saying everyone should like X-Wing. Heavens no. Everyone has different gaming tastes and will like different styles of game, hence why there are about a billion different games out there at this point each with their own eager playerbase. That said, I don't understand why someone who complains about so many fundamental aspects of the game of X-Wing has tenaciously stuck with it for soooo long.

because it's fun despite its flaws, and because people can enjoy things despite them being flawed

doesn't mean they cannot nor should not be improved, especially when the layers upon layers of RNG are so easily tweaked

this in contrast to an actual fundamental aspect of the game, such as the entire maneuvering system, which cannot be so easily tweaked

****, FFG proved they were willing to tweak the damage deck because its previous incarnation too wildly affected games. they could, and imo should, do so again