So. Jam tokens go away at the end of the round.

What good is a jamming beam now? Especially without a cannon doubletap from the defender... When would you ever use this weapon?

It let's you remove a green token... No locks anymore. Focus or evade.... Thats it. Utterly useless.

I don't understand the purpose of this card. It's ps dependent, doesn't deal damage, sacrifices your attack, and might not even do anything.

Well, there do seem to be a lot of abilities that trigger off a ship having or not having particular tokens.

****, what good was it in 1.0?

I get the impression the design team is really worried about control effects.

Jam tokens got nerfed.

Ion effects got mostly nerfed (you need to have at least two uncancelled results to get the same effect as in 1.0; large ships take 3 tokens to ionize instead of 2, but you can land 2 tokens if you have 3 uncancelled results and ionization restricts the defender to the focus action).

Stress control seems to be gone/mostly gone.

I'm not sure if we've heard anything about tractor tokens (although it gets hurt a bit by the barrel roll change).

My guess is that jamming beam is bad because the designers want it to be bad.

It's really underwhelming to learn that not only is the action only at range 1, but that the Jam token now goes away at the end of the round.

50 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

So. Jam tokens go away at the end of the round.

What good is a jamming beam now? Especially without a cannon doubletap from the defender... When would you ever use this weapon?

It let's you remove a green token... No locks anymore. Focus or evade.... Thats it. Utterly useless.

I don't understand the purpose of this card. It's ps dependent, doesn't deal damage, sacrifices your attack, and might not even do anything.

It hits reinforce now (and calculate, but that would have just been focus in 1.0, so that’s a push)

46 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:

Well, there do seem to be a lot of abilities that trigger off a ship having or not having particular tokens.

But... if you attack with a jamming beam, those effects won't trigger on your attack, unless you can attack twice.

19 minutes ago, kraedin said:

I get the impression the design team is really worried about control effects.

Jam tokens got nerfed.

Ion effects got mostly nerfed (you need to have at least two uncancelled results to get the same effect as in 1.0; large ships take 3 tokens to ionize instead of 2, but you can land 2 tokens if you have 3 uncancelled results and ionization restricts the defender to the focus action).

Stress control seems to be gone/mostly gone.

I'm not sure if we've heard anything about tractor tokens (although it gets hurt a bit by the barrel roll change).

My guess is that jamming beam is bad because the designers want it to be bad.

Ion got buffed, because now it restricts actions also. No more boosting or brolling away.

Jamming beam has no real purpose - it does almost nothing that a regular attack can't do. Regular attacks will still strip tokens even if they miss, and will actually do damage if they hit.

The only thing making jam special is that it can remove target locks and reinforce tokens. Removing a target lock is only marginally useful - you're sacrificing your own attack to make the enemy attack without mods (and preventing them firing munitions) but they can still shoot, and thye took no damage! Removing a reinforce is only useful if the token would block more damage on subsequent attacks than the damage you lost by firing the jamming beam in the first place.

However, if jam tokens stayed after the end of the round, it would be very possible to dump a large pile of tokens on an enemy ship, preventing it from ever taking an action again. This might not often be an effective strategy, but it would certainly not be a fun strategy. Preventing your opponent from taking actions forever is very much against 2.0 design philosophy.

If it’s 1-2 points I might put it on a high-PS ace if he has a swarm. Pull a reinforce off of a Ghost now and then. It’s not going to come into play in lots of games and I bet its price will reflect that.

9 hours ago, RStan said:

It's really underwhelming to learn that not only is the action only at range 1, but that the Jam token now goes away at the end of the round.

Yea the action isnt very goid but jamming beam can give multiple tokens and mess up a defender stack. Its hyper specific but its going on muh gunboats that dont have prockets. Ok yea...its still underwhelming but i think token denial can be in valuable real X-Wing now that tokens actually matter. Its why Reb Fenn scares me if the game ever evolves away from swarms.

Also a smarter person than me once said "You want Jam to be bad".

They were right.

21 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

But... if you attack with a jamming beam, those effects won't trigger on your attack, unless you can attack twice.

And on subsequent attacks. Think the newly revealed Rexlar who needs an evade token to trigger his ability, or the ... (was it the falcon title that we first saw the “if you are evading” text), or the new tie advanced ability.

Im not saying it is necessarily good, but there seem to be a lot of abilities that depend on HAVING a token. It may be that it is a better effect than 1.0 eyes may think because of that.

It may also be a ploy to put your support ship in at high Int not your damage dealers. Fleet glasses the planet, MI mops up. It’s not ideal but it would be a nice change of pace instead of pswars.

I also think @Boom Owl nailed it with the in thing this season being token holding. Kinda hard to use that sweet ability that requires you to have a token with no token. I’d throw jam on a high Int high hp ship and go death by a thousand cuts as the gob flies swarm.

edit:Also normal attacks strip tokens but only if your opponent lets them. With regen still around I’d sure let a hit or 2 through if I needed that token, regen later. Jam puts the choice in the attackers hands not the defenders.

32 minutes ago, Forgottenlore said:

And on subsequent attacks. Think the newly revealed Rexlar who needs an evade token to trigger his ability, or the ... (was it the falcon title that we first saw the “if you are evading” text), or the new tie advanced ability.

So now all you need is to get a cannon carrier at I5 to land at least two hits against Rexlar with a Jamming beam.

The Jamming Beam was trash tier in 1.0, and it is trash tier in 2.0 barring some neat Imperial upgrades. Jamming Beam should have been an action to fire, or is should keep the tokens at the end of the round.

2 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

Also a smarter person than me once said "You want Jam to bad".

They were right.

If they were really smarter than you they probably said "you want jam to be bad." ?

I think the devs were having this dilemma:

1. Ions, tractor and jamming exist in the dogfight lore, so players will want to have them in this game.
2. Getting ioned, tractored, or jammed isn't fun for the defender, so we don't want to have them in this game.

Then, we go what we got.

I have got to say that I am a bit miffed about this... the Tie Reaper is all over the jamming scene with a big deal being made of it in the articles. However we will only get to use this for a month or two until we get 2.0 when it is all nerfed to utter irrelevancy.

The best use of it is clearing reinforce I think.

But having tested Jam a bunch, I have NO problem with it being bad. It's a massive PITA and verging on NPE.

Jamming beam should go on high I ships, jamming action should be used by low I ships.

The other way round makes no sense whatsovere. But if you use it as described then Jam is still pretty good.

39 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

The best use of it is clearing reinforce I think.

But having tested Jam a bunch, I have NO problem with it being bad. It's a massive PITA and verging on NPE.

Essentially on anyone who gets a bonus from 'having' the token and is unlikely to spend it. Reinforce is the obvious one, but Poe (assuming Poe's ability stays the same) is another one, as is Juke.

The ability to slap someone with multiple jam tokens is nice too, I guess.

Clearing Fat Han's evade to stop the Falcon title working.

Clearing focus of Bistan gunner.

Clearing RAC's reinforce in particular given that his ability is dependent on it.

Blocking Juke.

Blocking Rexler's ability.

Etc etc etc.

Personally I'd bet on Poe's ability being 'when attacking or defending, if you are focussed, spend any number of charges to change that many eyes to hits or evades' and him getting a high regenerating charge total. Maybe 3 or 4 charges, so he can have one attack or defence that's ridiculous, or a lot in a single round, but he can run out.

Having a low PS ship Deny a high PS ship a focus action is amazingly strong.

PLus Jam worked in spaceballs so it’s bound to work in x-wing

What’s the source?

1 minute ago, TreebeardTheEnt said:

What’s the source?

For what aspect?