I am absolutely baffled by this. Both the T-7 Ion Trooper and the MPL-57 Fleet Trooper have dice that are less effective than any other heavy weapon upgrade so far... despite being comparably costed. Exhaust heavy weapons appear to be in a bad spot cost-wise already, with insufficient discounting for the exhaust condition. I just can't understand how paying 10+ points more for these upgrades over the standard heavy weapon options makes any sort of sense.

I don’t see a reason to use those in particular, but the HH12 seems to be acceptable. Maybe that’s just because our group always plays with a lot of armor and it works in that scope?

It is interesting- in the case of the T-7 ion trooper- you're spending 34 points to add: 1 black, two white, ion, and Impact 1.

Since you're adding a mini that would normally add one white dice (and one health point for the unit) for 12 points- that means 22 points are going towards 1 black dice, 1 white, impact 1 and ion. Ion isnt that detrimental to a vehicle and impact 1 with the black die means you most likely get a crit. Both effects only apply to vehicles anyway so its very situational. With a having to ready it as well, I dont think theres much value... maybe in the future there will be upgrade cards that help with the exhausted weapons.

Thats still so expensive, in case of the snow troopers, you might as well just put those 34 points towards the flame trooper or even another unit of storm or snow troops.

The designers definitely think more highly of Ion than I do. That's clear. And they seem to be less bothered by Exhaust. I wonder if their play testing showed something that the world isn't seeing yet. Or whether there are additional units in the pipe that these would be far more valuable against. Currently I just don't think that either are worth the points.

25 minutes ago, Brightguy said:

The designers definitely think more highly of Ion than I do. That's clear. And they seem to be less bothered by Exhaust. I wonder if their play testing showed something that the world isn't seeing yet. Or whether there are additional units in the pipe that these would be far more valuable against. Currently I just don't think that either are worth the points.

Yea, it makes me wonder what they have down the pipeline. I mean, who expected Boba to be a new unit type. I'm looking forward to the next reveal come june, maybe it will be new armor units.

One of the things the designers of Magic always say is that they intentionally don't make every card in a release equally powerful.

Some cards they include to synergize later - as speculated above.

Some cards they include cause folks have fun with the theme of it and enjoy pulling it off even if not optimal - maybe some folks just like the lore around Ion or the boom of big rockets.

Some cards they include in order to give folks who are trying to min max the satisfaction of figuring out that some things which look good at first blush, may not be as efficient as other options.

I don’t have the cards in front of me, but don’t we have some command cards that also allows you basically refresh for free?

Vader has the choke a trooper for free action, and Veers has some free aim stuff. Not sure about Leia. Luke has no free refresh.

2 hours ago, Jman444 said:

It is interesting- in the case of the T-7 ion trooper- you're spending 34 points to add: 1 black, two white, ion, and Impact 1.

Since you're adding a mini that would normally add one white dice (and one health point for the unit) for 12 points- that means 22 points are going towards 1 black dice, 1 white, impact 1 and ion. Ion isnt that detrimental to a vehicle and impact 1 with the black die means you most likely get a crit. Both effects only apply to vehicles anyway so its very situational. With a having to ready it as well, I dont think theres much value... maybe in the future there will be upgrade cards that help with the exhausted weapons.

Thats still so expensive, in case of the snow troopers, you might as well just put those 34 points towards the flame trooper or even another unit of storm or snow troops.

Each Ion token on a vehicle when it activates removes one of the 12 regular actions a vehicle potentially gets over 6 turns. If the ion units wait till after the vehicle acts, they can guarantee that the vehicle basically skips its next turn. A single unit can potentially neuter the vehicle by firing after them on one round, then acting first the next round.

Every vehicle in the game costs substantially more than a trooper with an ion weapon:

AT-RT (55 base, 75/80/85 with weapon, up to 100 with a jammer), Speederbikes (90 base, up to 105 with jammer), Airspeeder (175 base), AT-ST (195 base). Even if we assume that’s only half value for removing half an action, we are looking at 22.5 to 97.5 value return from hitting a vehicle, each time.

Ion is worth a lot because, properly deployed it will make a big difference.

27 minutes ago, Brightguy said:

Vader has the choke a trooper for free action, and Veers has some free aim stuff. Not sure about Leia. Luke has no free refresh.

Veers imperial discipline is the one I was thinking 3 pip, himself and 2 units

“when a friendly unit is issued an order it may recover”

1 hour ago, Derrault said:

AT-RT (55 base, 75/80/85 with weapon, up to 100 with a jammer), Speederbikes (90 base, up to 105 with jammer), Airspeeder (175 base), AT-ST (195 base). Even if we assume that’s only half value for removing half an action, we are looking at 22.5 to 97.5 value return from hitting a vehicle, each time.

You’re assuming you’re going to land six ion tokens on a vehicle with a single unit? That’s ridiculously unlikely even from a simple dice averages perspective, because even an AT-RT will on average block one of those. Not to mention there will be turns when you are out of range, or exhausted and surpressed. And your math also assumes every action is equally valuable, which is not the case (attacking, for example, is more valuable than aiming, dodging, recovering...).

Granting that final assumption to make the math easier... each action on a naked AT-ST is worth 16.25 points. On average you need to make 3 attacks on it to make back your points (taking into account defense dice) Against a rotary AT-RT you need to make 5-6. But again that’s based on a very flawed assumption.

7 hours ago, WAC47 said:

I am absolutely baffled by this. Both the T-7 Ion Trooper and the MPL-57 Fleet Trooper have dice that are less effective than any other heavy weapon upgrade so far... despite being comparably costed. Exhaust heavy weapons appear to be in a bad spot cost-wise already, with insufficient discounting for the exhaust condition. I just can't understand how paying 10+ points more for these upgrades over the standard heavy weapon options makes any sort of sense.

You can't just consider the dice on the heavy weapon in isolation, you have to consider it with the heavy weapon's keywords and dice added to the entire unit's dice pool.

In the case of the grenade launcher, that's potentially 12 white dice and 1 black with blast and impact, not to mention attack surge. That's an average of 5.125 hits a roll and with roughly double the crit chance of standard rebel trooopers, with keywords which can go through cover and go partially through armour.

For comparison, only the shotgun gets more hits on average for troopers on the rebel side with 5.5 but gets pierce (which is great). The z-6 on the rebel troopers gets you to 4 hits on average and the ion gets you to 4.25.

My point is, the dice on the grenade launcher card aren't stopping the whole unit from throwing out one of the highest hit averages from a trooper unit combined with some great keywords. Through heavy cover, they do the most damage of any trooper unit in the game apart from, perhaps, the snowtrooper flamethrower (I haven't calculated that) but that's at range 1.

The real crime, as yourself and many have mentioned, is still that exhaust. I did the math, and the shotgun does approx 0.1 hits less than the grenade launcher through heavy cover when you aim beforehand but can also run and gun. Only at range 2 but it seems to be lethal, much more flexible AND cheaper. Unless I'm expecting to see a lot of vehicles, I'll be taking the shotgun on my fleet troopers.

Ion has been amazing in the games I have been playing, so much so that we are usually seeing more ion then any other heavy weapon.

5 hours ago, Zepherite said:

The real crime, as yourself and many have mentioned, is still that exhaust. I did the math, and the shotgun does approx 0.1 hits less than the grenade launcher through heavy cover when you aim beforehand but can also run and gun. Only at range 2 but it seems to be lethal, much more flexible AND cheaper. Unless I'm expecting to see a lot of vehicles, I'll be taking the shotgun on my fleet troopers.

Exactly. I ran the numbers myself and even without aiming the MPL-57 does an average .625 damage more than the shotgun into heavy cover. My sense is that the shotgun can easily make this up over the course of the game due to the lack of exhaust.

So that leaves Impact 2. A fleet trooper unit with MPL-57 does 3.375 average damage to armor which isn’t bad for the points... comparing to other Rebel options:

Rebel Troopers + Impact Grenades

45 points / 2 avg damage = 22.5

Rebel troopers + MPL-57 Ion

72 points / 1.75 avg damage = 41.1*

Fleet troopers + MPL-57 Barrage

77 points / 3.375 avg damage = 22.8

So it’s roughly equivalent to Impact grenades’ efficiency with double the range but with exhaust. I’m actually not sure what to make of all of this.

* this doesn’t take into account ion. To bring it in line with the other two efficiency-wise 1 ion token should equal approximately 1.5 damage.

Oh and a minor correction to your math but both Z-6 and Ion trooper add the same average damage (1.5). A fully loaded unit with either will do an average of 4 damage against troopers.

The best I have been able to figure is that the MPL-57 options, both the Ion and Barrage, seem to be extremely situational options. If you happen to run up against a list with lots of Vehicles either could be useful, but against Trooper Spam not so much. In my experience eliminating enemy Trooper units is much more valuable than eliminating enemy vehicle units.

I'm sticking to my hunch that FFG has releases planned over the next year or two that will make the Ion and Exhaust weapons make more sense than they do now. Until then, I'll stick with my Z-6s and Scatterguns.

8 hours ago, Zepherite said:

You can't just consider the dice on the heavy weapon in isolation, you have to consider it with the heavy weapon's keywords and dice added to the entire unit's dice pool.

In the case of the grenade launcher, that's potentially 12 white dice and 1 black with blast and impact, not to mention attack surge. That's an average of 5.125 hits a roll and with roughly double the crit chance of standard rebel trooopers, with keywords which can go through cover and go partially through armour.

For comparison, only the shotgun gets more hits on average for troopers on the rebel side with 5.5 but gets pierce (which is great). The z-6 on the rebel troopers gets you to 4 hits on average and the ion gets you to 4.25.

My point is, the dice on the grenade launcher card aren't stopping the whole unit from throwing out one of the highest hit averages from a trooper unit combined with some great keywords. Through heavy cover, they do the most damage of any trooper unit in the game apart from, perhaps, the snowtrooper flamethrower (I haven't calculated that) but that's at range 1.

The real crime, as yourself and many have mentioned, is still that exhaust. I did the math, and the shotgun does approx 0.1 hits less than the grenade launcher through heavy cover when you aim beforehand but can also run and gun. Only at range 2 but it seems to be lethal, much more flexible AND cheaper. Unless I'm expecting to see a lot of vehicles, I'll be taking the shotgun on my fleet troopers.

3 hours ago, WAC47 said:

Exactly. I ran the numbers myself and even without aiming the MPL-57 does an average .625 damage more than the shotgun into heavy cover. My sense is that the shotgun can easily make this up over the course of the game due to the lack of exhaust.

So that leaves Impact 2. A fleet trooper unit with MPL-57 does 3.375 average damage to armor which isn’t bad for the points... comparing to other Rebel options:

Rebel Troopers + Impact Grenades

45 points / 2 avg damage = 22.5

Rebel troopers + MPL-57 Ion

72 points / 1.75 avg damage = 41.1*

Fleet troopers + MPL-57 Barrage

77 points / 3.375 avg damage = 22.8

So it’s roughly equivalent to Impact grenades’ efficiency with double the range but with exhaust. I’m actually not sure what to make of all of this.

* this doesn’t take into account ion. To bring it in line with the other two efficiency-wise 1 ion token should equal approximately 1.5 damage.

Oh and a minor correction to your math but both Z-6 and Ion trooper add the same average damage (1.5). A fully loaded unit with either will do an average of 4 damage against troopers.

Are you guys factoring in the cost of exhaust? Sure, Z6 and the scatter gun deals less damage, but I can use it every round. Add suppression, and now your fancy exhaust weapons aren't doing anything, because you can't refresh and shoot in the same round.

If you want an accurate damage output, use both actions. So the exhaust weapons NEED to refresh, and the non-exhaust can aim. This represents both units holding a position.

Both of your calculations are done in a vacuum, so it appears the exhaust weapons are superior. In my experience, Z6 is always better than the ion, and I expect the scatter gun to be better than the grenade launcher because fleet troopers need to use both actions efficiently (move n shoot) with their short range.

That said, the grenade launcher is the most exciting heavy weapon IMO, because it has such versatility. It's the first weapon to have an appropriate cost, and I expect wipe out squads with an alpha so the exhaust is a minor detail.

You are absolutely correct. All of those weapons are hideously overcosted relative to their effectiveness.

Ion is simply not a powerful enough ability to make it worth the downside of having to spend an action to get one weapon back online.

The T-7 is 14 points more expensive than the Flamethrower, only has 1 more range, requires an action to reload it, and only rolls 1 black and 2 white.

the HH-12 is 10 points more expensive than the DLT-19, cannot move and shoot, has a minimum range, and only has 3 black dice vs 2 red. Impact 3 is nice, but the DLT-19 has Impact 1.

The MPL-57 is 10 points more expensive than the Z-6, only rolls 2 red dice, takes an action to reload, and only has impact 1.

To make these guys balanced, they should probably change to the following,

T-7: No longer needs to ready, 5 points cheaper.

HH-12: Change attack to 2 red dice and 1 black. Change range to 2-5. Impact 4. Gain Armor Piercing: When attacking a unit that has armor, roll an additional red die.

MPL-57: no longer needs to ready, 5 points cheaper.

If exhaustable weapons didn't have exhaust, vehicles would be unuseable.

How would you like an AT-ST which gets 2 Ion tokes per round for the entire game?

5 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

the HH-12 is 10 points more expensive than the DLT-19, cannot move and shoot, has a minimum range, and only has 3 black dice vs 2 red. Impact 3 is nice, but the DLT-19 has Impact 1.

HH-12: Change attack to 2 red dice and 1 black. Change range to 2-5. Impact 4. Gain Armor Piercing: When attacking a unit that has armor, roll an additional red die.

I would disagree on the HH-12 needing any changes. It is very effective at it's job, which is armor elimination. While it may not be able to move+shoot it CAN move+standby which allows it to react to anything that moves into Range 2.

The one game I played against it my opponent absolutely wrecked my AT-RTs with his HH-12. A couple squads of Stormtroopers with HH-12s should be able to effectively cover a large portion of the map and put a serious hurt on enemy vehicles.

The Ion weapons have a much shorter range and require additional dice from the rest of the squad to be effective, especially against Speeder vehicles with their built-in Cover 1. I was seriously underwhelmed when I tried using MPL-57 Ion weapons against Speeder Bike squads. In the 3 shots I got off, from two different squads, only 1 was able to land an Ion token.

48 minutes ago, Indy_com said:

If exhaustable weapons didn't have exhaust, vehicles would be unuseable.

How would you like an AT-ST which gets 2 Ion tokes per round for the entire game?

This guy gets it

12 hours ago, WAC47 said:

You’re assuming you’re going to land six ion tokens on a vehicle with a single unit? That’s ridiculously unlikely even from a simple dice averages perspective, because even an AT-RT will on average block one of those. Not to mention there will be turns when you are out of range, or exhausted and surpressed. And your math also assumes every action is equally valuable, which is not the case (attacking, for example, is more valuable than aiming, dodging, recovering...).

Granting that final assumption to make the math easier... each action on a naked AT-ST is worth 16.25 points. On average you need to make 3 attacks on it to make back your points (taking into account defense dice) Against a rotary AT-RT you need to make 5-6. But again that’s based on a very flawed assumption.

No, I used math to prove that a single ion token pays for the cost of adding that mini.

2 hours ago, NeonWolf said:

The best I have been able to figure is that the MPL-57 options, both the Ion and Barrage, seem to be extremely situational options. If you happen to run up against a list with lots of Vehicles either could be useful, but against Trooper Spam not so much. In my experience eliminating enemy Trooper units is much more valuable than eliminating enemy vehicle units.

I'm sticking to my hunch that FFG has releases planned over the next year or two that will make the Ion and Exhaust weapons make more sense than they do now. Until then, I'll stick with my Z-6s and Scatterguns.

Are there really people running no vehicle lists?

5 minutes ago, Derrault said:

Are there really people running no vehicle lists?

Not that I'm aware of...yet. I'm sure once the Commandos/Scouts release we might see some vehicle-free lists.

In the games that I've played I have focused on eliminating Troopers over vehicles and it seems to be a good strategy. The one exception is Speeder Bikes. However, since they don't have armor and have built-in Cover 1 the Z-6 is able to damage them just fine whereas the MPL-57 Ion gets no bonus against them. Add in that you have to actually Damage a vehicle to give it an Ion token, as opposed to just rolling a hit like Suppression, and Ion is even less useful against Speeder bikes.

16 hours ago, Derrault said:

Each Ion token on a vehicle when it activates removes one of the 12 regular actions a vehicle potentially gets over 6 turns. If the ion units wait till after the vehicle acts, they can guarantee that the vehicle basically skips its next turn. A single unit can potentially neuter the vehicle by firing after them on one round, then acting first the next round.

Every vehicle in the game costs substantially more than a trooper with an ion weapon:

AT-RT (55 base, 75/80/85 with weapon, up to 100 with a jammer), Speederbikes (90 base, up to 105 with jammer), Airspeeder (175 base), AT-ST (195 base). Even if we assume that’s only half value for removing half an action, we are looking at 22.5 to 97.5 value return from hitting a vehicle, each time.

Ion is worth a lot because, properly deployed it will make a big difference.

This is spot on, and key.
Keep in mind, you can purchase multiple Ion bearing troopers for far less points than the vehicle they target, potentially nullifying the vehicle for the most of the game. This is why Ion has a cost premium. If Ion weapons were cheaper and less clunky to use, armies wouldn't use vehicles for fear their opponent having a few cheap and easy-to-use ion weapons to completely shut down their very high costed ATST or Airspeeder.

I think Ion is well costed and the designers did a good job by not making it super easy to nullify the super expensive vehicles (ATST and Airspeeder now, tank eventually).

2 hours ago, Derrault said:

No, I used math to prove that a single ion token pays for the cost of adding that mini.

...

what?

Show your work. Because I honestly have no idea what possibly could have given you those numbers other than dividing the point costs of the vehicle units listed by 2. And there’s no freaking way a single ion token halves a units value.