Phantom as a green-dice-tank (HA!) is dead. Good riddance, since it only half worked in that regard. Face a higher PS, face TLT spam, face stress control, face red-dice inflation (hello Scum Fenn Rau), whatever. There were so many hard counters to Phantoms they were already dead.

New Phantom is designed and almost surely priced to no longer be a green-dice-tank (HA!). It's designed to be an oddball, nimble ship. I'm personally much more excited. Phantoms were so crazy expensive before, and wicked squishy. Having an extra hit point will go a long way for those times when you can't use Phantom tricks to avoid shots. However, the new Stygium Array seems, to me, like it'll make the whole decloak thing a lot more fluid and viable at any PS.

So here's what it looks like to me: Phantoms lost dice. They gained hull, flexibility between free evades and cloaks, and almost surely cheapness. I'm expecting them to be "better" at doing the crazy Phantom decloaking dances. To me, that's a plus. What I find fun about Phantoms isn't the dice, but the decloaks. So a list I built as soon as Imperial Veterans came around was 2x PS 1 Defenders/x7, and a fairly-loaded Whisper. Given the likely increase in Defender cost and the likely decrease in Phantom cost, I'm kinda hoping I can do the inverse: two Phantoms (even if lower PS) and a stacked Defender.

11 hours ago, Icelom said:

On top of no full 360 turrets any more phantoms are going to be ark dodging like maniacs...

Turns out that was a big lie, Luke crew turns all turrets into old school 360 arcs and has zero counterplay. Ships that only survive by arc-dodging are going to get destroyed by Luke crew.

1 minute ago, Tvboy said:

Turns out that was a big lie, Luke crew turns all turrets into old school 360 arcs and has zero counterplay. Ships that only survive by arc-dodging are going to get destroyed by Luke crew.

Until we get the kylo card that makes him **** off to drink blue milk while simultaneously turning r2d2 into a paper weight.

1 minute ago, LordFajubi said:

Until we get the kylo card that makes him **** off to drink blue milk while simultaneously turning r2d2 into a paper weight.

So we’re going back to Autothrusters design philosophy then? Fix one broken upgrade by creating another one?

Just now, Tvboy said:

So we’re going back to Autothrusters design philosophy then? Fix one broken upgrade by creating another one?

It was a TLJ joke...

Yeah I'm still flabbergasted by Luke gunner

Gotta be something more we don't know

But at least the phantom is far less ****** than the poor Interceptor

At least whisper can tank things out fairly okay as her ability maintains decloak even after spending her evade (gets another one), which allows her to maintain free evade from Stygium

it's nice that she can't be roflstomped by higher ps anymore

1 hour ago, Tvboy said:

Turns out that was a big lie, Luke crew turns all turrets into old school 360 arcs and has zero counterplay. Ships that only survive by arc-dodging are going to get destroyed by Luke crew.

Yes I think most sane people are very nervous about Luke.

Hopefully the polish card was wrong or he is costed extremely high.

One other thing we really don’t know about this or any other ship, what the upgrade bar looks like. We can guess that it gets a crew and sensor upgrade, based on what they had. It could be they get a Gunner, no sensors, but 2 mod slots. Same thing with the E-Wing, we just don’t really know what’s in store till the app hits.

My personal reaction to seeing the Phantom is intruige. Echo at 4 means that you are either able to react or dictate the actions the other ships are going to try and take. The Generic is at 3 also a fairly mid level ship now so points could really decide what to take. We should know fairly quickly how much of a difference the Initiative will be after about a month or 2 of playing once 2.0 hits. Right now all the speculation is just going to lead to 2 results. 1: Self fulfilling prophecy and frustration because it’s not working for those complaining and those who were waiting are singing praises. 2. It isn’t as bad as you thought, but may not be game breaking like it was once it its 1.0 life and all the stress is really for not.

21 hours ago, Rakaydos said:

Sloan only gives you stress if you kill something. Ventress only stresses you if you dont have a token.

Try winning a game without killing something. Sloan WILL stress you, or WILL delay you from achieving your primary (and only) win condition.

18 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

Try winning a game without killing something. Sloan WILL stress you, or WILL delay you from achieving your primary (and only) win condition.

Sure, but she's not going to suddenly ruin your plans the way Stressezra does on the opening pass. She's closer to rebel captive than offensive stress control.

Being stressed when Sloane is on the board... is not a good thing.

9 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

Sure, but she's not going to suddenly ruin your plans the way Stressezra does on the opening pass. She's closer to rebel captive than offensive stress control.

She is not going to, because...

For those who are wondering how cheap this new phantom should be....

Well, a generic barebones phantom could cost around the same as an X-wing. 43-46 points, so it's likely you could fly 4 phantoms. Here's how it compares to other ships

Comparing the new numbers with the old numbers is meaningless!

A 3 attack in 2nd is better than a 3 attack in 1st

4 hours ago, TylerTT said:

Comparing the new numbers with the old numbers is meaningless!

A 3 attack in 2nd is better than a 3 attack in 1st

And still no other ship lost red dice beside the phantom (ok the lancer too in the moveable arc). Seems the want to make it less elite and hightech, which is exactly the opposite I imagine it. Thats probably the hardest pill to swallow!

36 minutes ago, beardxofxdeath said:

And still no other ship lost red dice beside the phantom (ok the lancer too in the moveable arc). Seems the want to make it less elite and hightech, which is exactly the opposite I imagine it. Thats probably the hardest pill to swallow!

Nothing high tech about putting a lot of guns on a ship. You could get that by stapling hlcs to an aged clone wars era "interceptor"

Decloak made it high tech, and thanks to Stygium array it is far superior to cloaking device

I don’t see how keeping its 4 attack dice would have been that bad seeing as its meant to be a glass cannon, now it’s more of a mid tier fighter with a gimmick

The ACD was terrible and backwards. I always thought it should have been the other way around, that ACD should have let you discard your cloak token when you activated for combat, which would open up some interesting space for the Phantom to play as either a higher-PS arc dodger or a lower-PS submarine.

The 4 attack die made it unique but also meant that it NEEDED to be vulnerable or else it would absolutely eat everything forever. The crazy min-maxed stats combined with an absolute dependence on shooting first or blowing up meant that it was basically impossible to balance properly. Removing those two issues isn't really a nerf so much as it is a massive opening of space to make the Phantom something besides a binary win or loss ship in the setup phase. Sure its identity is going to change but that is a good thing because its 1.0 identity wasn't very good to begin with.

Basically the reason that I have a lot of optimism for the 2e TIE Phantom is because its current state is Not At All Competitive and changes being made to its most problematic attributes mean that there is a possibility that it could become at least Somewhat Viable (my money is on the 2e Phantom settling in as an Interesting Niche Ship).

17 minutes ago, MrMaggles said:

I don’t see how keeping its 4 attack dice would have been that bad seeing as its meant to be a glass cannon, now it’s more of a mid tier fighter with a gimmick

drives up cost, makes balancing incredibly difficult, would result once more in high initiative dominance

at 3 dice, you can keep phantoms relatively cheap and balanced across all initiative levels, giving you many more options and much needed variety of viable squads

yt-2400s (which dont have a proper 4 dice because you can't 5-dice at range 1) and vcxs can both be assumed to be quite expensive, as yts now have outrider built in and vcxs already couldn't be fielded in numbers greater than 2 (also really, can you imagine THREE of those beasts on the table?)

4 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

at 3 dice, you can keep phantoms relatively cheap and balanced across all initiative levels, giving you many more options and much needed variety of viable squads

I agree that things need to be balanced and things and obviously everything is guess work untill we know full prices and upgrade slots...

however as it stands now with the information I have the Phantom is same power as a Tie Advanced With less defence and a cloak action

I like the cloak change and I hope it gets some interesting upgrades it could still be amazing and it’s not the first time I’ve been wrong about something like this I hope I am, hard to not be negative after seeing all the love lots of the other ships received...

The phantom is FAR stronger than the advance

I think we're all forgetting how incredible decloak is when faced with ships that can't just ignore your positioning at all times (except Luke gunner)

Also no need to TL

Fully expect the Advance to cost 36 points base. It's a poor chasis because of TL reliance and will undoubtedly be costed appropriately

Other than Vader, because he's flipping Vader

1 hour ago, MrMaggles said:

however as it stands now with the information I have the Phantom is same power as a Tie Advanced With less defence and a cloak action

You are correct! TIE Advanced generic should be 43 points. New generic TIE Phantom should be 43-45 points, at 47-48 they are no good. The new stygium array is sorta like comm relay. The evade token is "stored" when you cloak. Just like Omega Leader, I expect people will only spend the evade not to die because cloaking & re-cloaking every round is highly valuable.

Given that "starting in reserve" is now a thing, I'd not be surprised to see phantoms with special rules of deploying. After all, that's what cloak is supposed to do.

So given what we know, if Targeting Computer returns will it be worth putting on the phantom to equip FCS?

3 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

So given what we know, if Targeting Computer returns will it be worth putting on the phantom to equip FCS?

Eh...I'd rather just have predator

Not a fan of giving up mods to TL

Now advanced sensors seem REAL fun