So the other night, using some of the pre-built 200 point squads (we assume) from various videos of 2.0, I played two games last night (with a new damage deck, and all the rules we know). Both games were Vader and 4 TIEs vs. Boba Fett and 2 Fang Fighters. Besides the fact that I think generic Fangs are great (that boost or barrel into a red focus is nice), here are my thoughts on Vader.

To sum it up, before I go into detail, I believe Vader is best described as...balanced. He is better than his current incarnation in some ways, and worse in other ways. Here are the points.

Pros:

1. Force - With 3 Force on him (as pseudo-focuses), Vader kind of has three actions banked until he needs them. This is pretty nice, and means he can k-turn or T-roll without a huge loss to his action efficiency, which is very nice. The force power they gave him (sense) I don't think makes sense on him and doesn't really help him, but maybe there is another one which we don't know yet which will work well on him.

2. Dial - The 2-banks being blue, plus the white-1 forward are very nice (as well as the t-rolls), but I have been saying for years that he needed a 1-turn, which they didn't give him. The dial is unarguably better than what it was, but not quite what I was hoping for.

Cons:

1. Actions - I know it sounds weird on a Vader that can theoretically chain actions to say there's a problem here, but there really is (imho). New Vader only has reliable access to three actions: Focus, BR, TL. That's it, and natively, the BR is already chained to the Focus. So I found myself on many turns with Vader (since I already had the TL up), simply 'turning' the red BR white, essentially, as I would Focus and BR. And if you don't need to BR, on many turns, you'll find yourself with 'nothing to do' with Vader other than Focus. He reeeeeaaaallllyyy misses the Boost and the Evade, which leads us to the next point.

2. Squishier - Without Evade and only access to a very limited Boost, Vader is much more squishy than before, and can't really rely on new Palp either. This makes new Vader feel very squishy, as he has no way to deal with a bad roll. He just takes it. He never had autothrusters, but now without the evade...Ouch.

In Conclusion, this Vader build they gave us might not be optimal (I doubt it is), but my conclusion is Vader is balanced. He's not OP, from what I can tell. And to tell you the truth, since Advanced don't want to use their TL anyways, most other Advanced Pilots will have similar action economy to Vader (if you accept getting stressed). When all of this comes out, I may consider playing a lower PS Advanced, if they cost alot cheaper. Will be interesting to see it all play out.

This is a good write-up, thank you for making it and I think it'll be interesting to see what Force powers really mesh well with Vader. Clearly Sense is kind of a waste of the slot on him, but I think they wanted to keep some of those Force goodies as secrets before release. Maybe something to help his survivability or a nasty Dark Side power to make him less of an appealing target (something akin to ISYTDS).

Im sure there will be a number of upgrades that add actions and will make Vader's ability much more powerful.

Already we've seen Squad Leader which allows Vader to give his Tie allies barrel rolls at initiative 6 which can be nice if you flew them in as blockers earlier that turn.

16 minutes ago, NoZone said:

Im sure there will be a number of upgrades that add actions and will make Vader's ability much more powerful.

Already we've seen Squad Leader which allows Vader to give his Tie allies barrel rolls at initiative 6 which can be nice if you flew them in as blockers earlier that turn.

Only problem is, according to the devs, if you are a Force user, you don't get access to Talent slots, only 'Force' slots, which is interesting. But still, there might be an awesome Force power for Vader to really shine. I have no doubts that Vader will be good, but he isn't as OP as he first seems.

I'm sad to hear that the Empire becomes even more fragile... Especially now that rebels and scum have wide access to regen.

I feel like FFG dropped the ball on the "we design each ship to feel right" with the TIE advanced.

His ship should not have been a worse version of the X-wing. It shares no similarity to any other revealed TIE craft, supposedly from the same line.

TAP has green turns, better actions

The defender can just do EVERYTHING

The aggressor has linked evade action.

The Advanced has nothing. It's ship ability is just a worse version of a native 3 attack dice. It's actions are pretty basic, and not very synergistic with the ship's upgrades or abilities. If you want to benefit from using the action chain, you cannot even set up your ship ability in the same turn(unless you are Vader).

The stats are unchanged, the dial is better, but it still doesn't feel threatening. Green turns would have been really nice, or even speed 1 white turns.

Overall, the ship feels like it got second grade everything. It doesn't have a great dial, or great stats, or a great ability. Which is... you know, fine, when designing just ANY ship. The bomber looks similar in this regard, and I'm fine with it. It isn't the best at anything it does, but it is a solid ship...

But that kinda starts to fall apart when we talk about a ship called TIE advanced.

There is no excuse for not making the ship better. Shift the power from Vader to the ship a little. Make it more similar to the other ships of the same design family. Make it exceptional (or at least good) at something.

If given the chance to recreate everything, I'm not sure I would have went so conservative with this specific ship. It feels like it desperately needs help from another source to feel whole. Either Vader as a pilot, or someone coordinating it to get actions to play the basic combo.

I would be happier with a weaker Vader, just to have a stronger base ship.

That he is even squishier is concerning. Vader was always one of the first ships to die whenever I played him before. Powerful, but with no survivability.

I really don't know why they removed the evade from the Advanced. Vader was already fragile with it, and now he doesn't even get the nerfed form.

8 minutes ago, DarkArk said:

I really don't know why they removed the evade from the Advanced. Vader was already fragile with it, and now he doesn't even get the nerfed form.

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be Rebel Bias. "

21 minutes ago, DarkArk said:

I really don't know why they removed the evade from the Advanced. Vader was already fragile with it, and now he doesn't even get the nerfed form.

Evade is now generally weaker than Focus, especially on high-agility ships, so they've eliminated it from a lot of craft.

That said, Vader's action-chaining is one of the most quintessential places you'd have liked to have had it...

But yeah, I'm a little sad to see what they did with the Advanced, too - it's a very middling ship, which for something so iconic seems a missed opportunity; Especially with that dial.

X-wings, in contrast, get to be both more straightforward to use, and just straight up cooler. An interesting mix.

The devs mentioned that they were not going to spoil any Force cards because marketing had an article queued up. I’m withholding judgment until I’ve seen some of the Force cards - and Dark Side cards - that are probably designed *for* Vader. After all, Sense doesn’t have Vader’s mugshot on it.

15 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

"Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be Rebel Bias. "

If Vader is finding himself often not needing his bonus actions, then FCS is probably the wrong call on him.

I think it’s still too soon to judge powerlevel with an obviously suboptimal build. We still don’t know if Vader gets access to the Afterburners mod that gives a free Boost, and we still haven’t seen any of the Dark Side Force cards.

1 hour ago, SirCormac said:

So the other night, using some of the pre-built 200 point squads (we assume) from various videos of 2.0, I played two games last night (with a new damage deck, and all the rules we know). Both games were Vader and 4 TIEs vs. Boba Fett and 2 Fang Fighters. Besides the fact that I think generic Fangs are great (that boost or barrel into a red focus is nice), here are my thoughts on Vader.

To sum it up, before I go into detail, I believe Vader is best described as...balanced. He is better than his current incarnation in some ways, and worse in other ways. Here are the points.

Pros:

1. Force - With 3 Force on him (as pseudo-focuses), Vader kind of has three actions banked until he needs them. This is pretty nice, and means he can k-turn or T-roll without a huge loss to his action efficiency, which is very nice. The force power they gave him (sense) I don't think makes sense on him and doesn't really help him, but maybe there is another one which we don't know yet which will work well on him.

2. Dial - The 2-banks being blue, plus the white-1 forward are very nice (as well as the t-rolls), but I have been saying for years that he needed a 1-turn, which they didn't give him. The dial is unarguably better than what it was, but not quite what I was hoping for.

Cons:

1. Actions - I know it sounds weird on a Vader that can theoretically chain actions to say there's a problem here, but there really is (imho). New Vader only has reliable access to three actions: Focus, BR, TL. That's it, and natively, the BR is already chained to the Focus. So I found myself on many turns with Vader (since I already had the TL up), simply 'turning' the red BR white, essentially, as I would Focus and BR. And if you don't need to BR, on many turns, you'll find yourself with 'nothing to do' with Vader other than Focus. He reeeeeaaaallllyyy misses the Boost and the Evade, which leads us to the next point.

2. Squishier - Without Evade and only access to a very limited Boost, Vader is much more squishy than before, and can't really rely on new Palp either. This makes new Vader feel very squishy, as he has no way to deal with a bad roll. He just takes it. He never had autothrusters, but now without the evade...Ouch.

In Conclusion, this Vader build they gave us might not be optimal (I doubt it is), but my conclusion is Vader is balanced. He's not OP, from what I can tell. And to tell you the truth, since Advanced don't want to use their TL anyways, most other Advanced Pilots will have similar action economy to Vader (if you accept getting stressed). When all of this comes out, I may consider playing a lower PS Advanced, if they cost alot cheaper. Will be interesting to see it all play out.

Thank you for the write up but I do have some questions to and concerns about your analysis. I actually feel vader is great in the new 2.0. He may feel fragile, but so is everything in 2.0. Almost nothing can tank like it use to. And that’s a good think

1. I think vader at ps 6 need to concern himself with careful flying and arc dodging( which is the same has him now actually) also you didn’t mention afterburners which was on that build in the demo game. It will allow him 2 free boosts In game which can be huge if leveraged properly. I fee a real auto include. This also means he shouldn’t be getting shot by more then one ship a round, hopefully non. Like I said in 2.0 you can’t rely on tanking shots.

2. also I think their build is still really underwhelming. 1 you need to have fire control on him. The atc, a free reroll , and a force point should be plenty to keep his offense consistent and impactful. That allows you to bank a focus for defense. Which now that evade is weaker, probably best to stay far from target.

I think vader is going to be skill intensive, as aces should be in 2.0 if you are not careful and cautious he will blow up. But if you manage arc dodging and range 3 and things like that, you should be fine, and at ps 6 with multiple actions I don’t think that is actually any different than it is now.

also I think it is way too early to cast away the ability of a well practiced player to boost, focus barrel roll, with force points and target lock if he needs it all in one play! In second edition that should be huge

2.0 is going to be much harder then the current game, if your playing an ace, you have to have excellent positioning or else your gonna get screwed..with any ship

Vader's fine

Lack of evade has to be contrasted with loss of hyper modified four dice+ (Poons) bull, as well as the fact that he gets a ton of actions per turn (multiuse per turn ability + linked action) AND action independent Forcus

As for the Advance, it was ALWAYS a **** xwing. It's literally just an advanced tie fighter. Maker knows that ain't much of a standard

I thought it was clear that the TAP was superior to its descendant the TIE Advanced only because the designers had more to work with later on in the days of 1.0. It makes no sense to me that the older ship gets boost, green turns, and better linked actions than the descendant that should have been a strict improvement on it. Missing out on boost and green turns (and anything else that could have made the ship unique) was a huge mistake.

12 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

I thought it was clear that the TAP was superior to its descendant the TIE Advanced only because the designers had more to work with later on in the days of 1.0. It makes no sense to me that the older ship gets boost, green turns, and better linked actions than the descendant that should have been a strict improvement on it. Missing out on boost and green turns (and anything else that could have made the ship unique) was a huge mistake.

Empire is all about mass production, right? It makes sense that the X-1 would be less awesome. The hard part for me to swallow is why would Vader be in one?

25 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

I thought it was clear that the TAP was superior to its descendant the TIE Advanced only because the designers had more to work with later on in the days of 1.0. It makes no sense to me that the older ship gets boost, green turns, and better linked actions than the descendant that should have been a strict improvement on it. Missing out on boost and green turns (and anything else that could have made the ship unique) was a huge mistake.

The advanced is more heavy duty though with more hull, better guns, systems

Evades are still good on high agility ships. They got weaker on low agility ships.

54 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Vader's fine

Lack of evade has to be contrasted with loss of hyper modified four dice+ (Poons) bull, as well as the fact that he gets a ton of actions per turn (multiuse per turn ability + linked action) AND action independent Forcus

As for the Advance, it was ALWAYS a **** xwing. It's literally just an advanced tie fighter. Maker knows that ain't much of a standard

Well. I'm pretty sure Dash can get some mods via crew and stuff.

Or the Ghost.

Or Fenn Rau.

2 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

Well. I'm pretty sure Dash can get some mods via crew and stuff.

Or the Ghost.

Or Fenn Rau.

ah, but I know for certain that Vader gets all that without further investment, whereas we can only speculate for the others

although Fenn Rau can get predator (bullseye only), but if that's the criteria these guys get for full mods then I think we're going to be okay (especially since bullseye arcs don't rotate)

It's a ship we saw once flying in a straight line shooting fish in a barrel.

1 minute ago, Rodrigo Istalindir said:

It's a ship we saw once flying in a straight line shooting fish in a barrel.

Hey, it was a very difficult straight line. That's pretty much all the action Luke gets in a fighter, and it earns him PS 8/Initiative 5

18 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

Hey, it was a very difficult straight line. That's pretty much all the action Luke gets in a fighter, and it earns him PS 8/Initiative 5

Don't forget he can also get womp rats in his T-15's Bullseye arc, and they're not much bigger than a meter.

2 minutes ago, HammerGibbens said:

he can also get womp rats in his T-15's Bullseye arc

Objection; hearsay.

35 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

Hey, it was a very difficult straight line. That's pretty much all the action Luke gets in a fighter, and it earns him PS 8/Initiative 5

Luke also saved Biggs and avoided dark curse long enough for wedge to save him.