Veteran Instincts is the worst card and has consistently broken it or simply lead to insane pilot skill wars. These instances include:

• TIE Phantom
• RAC
• Early Poe
• Nym
• Fenn and later Poe

The only point in which VI was NOT really that prevalent was during the rein of the alpha strike scouts and attani mindlink (and even then it started to creep back during the latter).

Whole SHIPS are designed without and EPT slot, notably the Ghost and the K-wing, because of the possibility that they could then have taken VI.

By this point already PS9 is starting to be almost too LOW to be considered and ace and I can only imagine what will happen when the X-wing (with Wedge, Wes and Luke) come back and Krennick further improves aces like Vader and Quick draw. So VI will only get MORE prominent.

The argument against it is always "well you aren't getting another EPT if you take it" but a ton of the pilot abilities paired with everything else a ship can be equipped with more than make up for it. Not to mention most of these are maneuverable enough it that it stops you from getting shot so in many of these cases it is more useful than your 3 or 4 point EPTs like predator or expertise.

Pretty much every card game has banned cards, so can we just get rid of Veteran Instinct by this point? Adaptability too.

4 minutes ago, Unremarkable Cardboard Box said:

Krennick further improves aces like Vader and Quick draw.

You can't apply the Optimized Prototype condition to any 'First Order' Ships. IE FOs, S/Fs, Silencer, etc. Just FYI.

But yeah man, I'm all with you, I say cap PS at a max of 9 and call it good!

Vi would be nice to have for pilots who can't reach 9 naturally, so let's not ban ot outright yeah?

Cap at 9 is the most reasonable suggestion I've come across

If VI were banned, the Phantom would not have needed nerfing.

Nah - just errata it to be " may not be equipped on a unique pilot ".

Probably do the same for 'Adaptability'.

- - - - -

Then create a new crew for the TIE Phantom that allows you to insta-cloak when out-PS'd:

When you are declared the target of an attack and do not have a Cloak token you may perform a free Cloak action.

I think a ban takes it too far, especially when some ships need it to be playable (phantom), which to be fair is bad game design. If they do a 2.0 they should kill it and make pilots like whisper ps 9 by default. For the current iteration, I think a better solution is to cap it at 9. Sure, it will start initiative bid wars, but they'll be slightly more interesting than just ps wars, because people will be able to take different EPTs, so it will be more diverse.

2 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Vi would be nice to have for pilots who can't reach 9 naturally, so let's not ban ot outright yeah?

Cap at 9 is the most reasonable suggestion I've come across

Cheapens natural 9s (and even more so natural 8s).

You mean the pilots that would get to take actual epts without being out psed by VI?

Yeah, not feeling their plight

I know this topic has been covered over and over here. I think a good point has been made that the bidding war at PS 9 would go bonkers. Maybe that would be ok? At some point you would reach a level of diminishing return, which might balance it out?

I've been wondering what would happen if instead VI and Adaptability only applied to the Combat phase. This still gives all PS 9 ships the opportunity to bid and play around each other. It also makes high PS ships care about their picked maneuvers because they can't "figure it out later" as easily. In that way it rewards good moves with the opportunity to PS kill an enemy. Fenn/Ghost is less broken, VI Poe and Kylo care about what their dial says, and Whisper still gets the benefit of shooting at high PS to cloak (but super cares where she lands to get the shot).

Could also flop these to Activation phase only, but I think that leaves a lot of the existing problems in place.

X-Wing is a weird, tangled knot. I'm not convinced that pulling on that one thread in particular is The Answer.

12 minutes ago, Unremarkable Cardboard Box said:

Cheapens natural 9s (and even more so natural 8s).

Not at all. It would acknowledge the lore of the game. How can some unknown pilot just step in and suddenly be a better pilot than Vader or Wedge? Or, how can Vader all of a sudden be a better pilot. It's not good lore wise. Make VI and Adaptability for generic pilots only. Give a little more variety among the PS level of generics.

5 minutes ago, drail14me said:

Not at all. It would acknowledge the lore of the game. How can some unknown pilot just step in and suddenly be a better pilot than Vader or Wedge? Or, how can Vader all of a sudden be a better pilot. It's not good lore wise. Make VI and Adaptability for generic pilots only. Give a little more variety among the PS level of generics.

No, that is good. I was replying to someone else. Generic only is actually a pretty good idea.

This isnt the problem you are looking for.

Cap PS at 9. That way if you want to boost a PS 6-8 feel free to. Natural PS9s can actually use their EPT for other things.

I always thought it should have been two cards...

Veteran Instincts 1pt - At the start of the Activation phase, you may increase your Pilot skill by 2 until the end of the phase.

Combat Veteran 1pt - At the start of the Combat phase, you may increase your Pilot skill by 2 until the end of the phase.

45 minutes ago, pickirk01 said:

I always thought it should have been two cards...

Veteran Instincts 1pt - At the start of the Activation phase, you may increase your Pilot skill by 2 until the end of the phase.

Combat Veteran 1pt - At the start of the Combat phase, you may increase your Pilot skill by 2 until the end of the phase.

this solves basically none of the problems. If you are not in danger of getting PS killed, you actually want to shoot last so that you have more perfect knowledge as to what tokens you can or cannot spend on offense. It lets you play more defensively/conservatively more easily, and in the current game style of MoV bunkering, that's the dominant/correct strategy. People take PS for more perfect information when they move.

I don't think this is the answer to the game's problems. PS is only a problem if your build relies on being top PS, and as someone already mentioned will lead to ugly bidding wars.

24 minutes ago, Rat of Vengence said:

I don't think this is the answer to the game's problems. PS is only a problem if your build relies on being top PS, and as someone already mentioned will lead to ugly bidding wars.

I don’t understand the concern over bidding wars if PS is capped at 9. If someone wants to come to a 100pt fight with a 10pt bid, let ‘em. That’s 10pts of upgrades they’re not using and they’re only going to be at most PS9 like me... with less upgrades.

I'm actually running an event this weekend (it's serving as our "not at Worlds" tournament) where among other list-building restrictions, PS is hard-capped at 9 (the other restrictions require lists to bring unique pilots with epts equipped, which makes for exactly the environment the hard-cap would affect).

I'm interested to see what people bring and how it goes.

Moving last is of tremendous value in this game, because position matters. If you cap pilot skill, then you will just see initiative bids become insane instead.

A better idea is to make veteran instincts and adaptability cost more on ships that are already higher pilot skill to begin with. People are going to spend points to try and move last, so just put an extra tax on getting to PS9, 10, and 11. For example, my change for Community Mod is to tweak the wording for Veteran Instincts:

Increase your pilot skill value by 2. If your printed pilot skill is greater than 6, the cost of this card is increased by your printed pilot skill minus 6.

This is at a 200 point scale, so at a 100 point scale, so for getting to a given pilot skill, the cost for veteran instincts goes up by:

• VI to PS9, +0.5 points
• VI to PS10, +1 point
• VI to PS11, +1.5 points

Maybe the tax needs to be even more extreme, but the general principle is to impose a forced bid on anyone that wants to get to stratospheric pilot skill. You can make a good argument that the tax should actually start if you can get to pilot skill 8.

11 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

Moving last is of tremendous value in this game, because position matters. If you cap pilot skill, then you will just see initiative bids become insane instead.

Except with a hard ceiling, larger bids have a diminishing return. You’ll eventually get to a point where you’re bringing a knife to a gun fight because you’ve forgone upgrades and capabilities for the initiative.

24 minutes ago, Dr Zoidberg said:

Except with a hard ceiling, larger bids have a diminishing return. You’ll eventually get to a point where you’re bringing a knife to a gun fight because you’ve forgone upgrades and capabilities for the initiative.

That's true. Capping at 9 would in some ways be much better than what we have now. One way or the other, you need to force people that really want to move last, to have to pay for it. Most of the PS11's are happy to pay for it, because it's dirt cheap. As a result, high pilot skill isn't a big deal. Capping pilot skill mostly accomplishes the "forced points spent" because it instead encourages bids, but it's an inelegant blunt approach that has some other indirect consequences. One big problem with capping at 9, is that 7, 8 and 9 would largely cease to become meaningful, because most of them would just become 9.

I don't know if that would necessarily happen. A lot of the 6-8 pilots have really nifty skills that synergise well with other EPTs. You often don't see many of them because all the PS9 pilots are being fielded at 11 in a PS arms race. With a hard cap at 9, I suspect we would see more variety in the pilots fielded as PS becomes less important and deployment of various EPTs and Pilot abilities becomes more viable.

10 minutes ago, Dr Zoidberg said:

I don't know if that would necessarily happen. A lot of the 6-8 pilots have really nifty skills that synergise well with other EPTs. You often don't see many of them because all the PS9 pilots are being fielded at 11 in a PS arms race. With a hard cap at 9, I suspect we would see more variety in the pilots fielded as PS becomes less important and deployment of various EPTs and Pilot abilities becomes more viable.

Capping PS at 9 wouldn't change that much. Even if these 6-8 pilots you mention synergise WITH other EPTs, the fact that you don't see them means they do suffer from being lower PS. Even with a hard cap at 9 they'd still be lower PS unless they take VI/Adaptability. I also highly doubt you'd see many other EPTs. IMO, empty EPT slots for bid is just as likely. Moving last is just that good and most 0 or 1 point EPTs don't even begin to compare (to replace VI with a more expensive EPT you'd need to start shaving points from elsewhere).

5 hours ago, ABXY said:

Nah - just errata it to be " may not be equipped on a unique pilot ".

Probably do the same for 'Adaptability'.

- - - - -

Then create a new crew for the TIE Phantom that allows you to insta-cloak when out-PS'd:

When you are declared the target of an attack and do not have a Cloak token you may perform a free Cloak action.

This but errata cloak to say you can discard your cloak token when you activate in combat (No decloak move). If you do, -1 red until end of round.