1 minute ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Nope. Get two ions on a big ship? Doesn't matter; they go away at the end of a round now too. Two tractors? Still goes away. They're the same shape and color. I'm not sure why you're making this argument tbh

Get two ions on a big ship, and it will have two ions. Next turn, you can give them 1 ion. And then all 3 ions go away, ionizing the ship. Ions are square, so they stick around.

Two tractors reduce the agility by 1 as well.

And yes, if you put 1-2 tractors on a large ship, and then you don't shoot it again, they will get lost. But if you can put them on, it will work. No matter how many jam tokens you slap on something, if they don't have a green token, they won't do anything.

Seriously man... Do you even check these claims before you say something, or you just type the opposite of what I wrote to "prove me wrong".

2 minutes ago, Commander Kaine said:

Seriously man... Do you even check these claims before you say something, or you just type the opposite of what I wrote to "prove me wrong".

Sorry, my bad. I apologize. It really is nothing personal. I've just spent too much time on these threads lately. Clearly it's not good for me. I'm getting off.

16 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Nope. Get two ions on a big ship? Doesn't matter; they go away at the end of a round now too. Two tractors? Still goes away. They're the same shape and color. I'm not sure why you're making this argument tbh

I disagree.

Ions stay.

1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

You don't have to use jamming beam even if equipped. You will know perfectly whether attacking with it will have an effect or not. You don't know that perfectly for the jam action, but it does not matter there because you deny the action and that is the goal of the jam anyway.

This.

Yes, it is true that sometimes a Jam won't do anything. But in those cases just don't fire the cannon/use the action.

Maybe they over-nerfed Jam and maybe they didn't. But the fact that sometimes applying a Jam won't have any effect is not particularly strong evidence for an over-nerf since a ship can always choose to do something else instead of jamming.

9 minutes ago, JamesWG said:

This.

Yes, it is true that sometimes a Jam won't do anything. But in those cases just don't fire the cannon/use the action.

In that case however why bother equipping jamming beam anyway, instead of something else that will come into play more often, or just a bid?

Just now, LordBlades said:

In that case however why bother equipping jamming beam anyway, instead of something else that will come into play more often, or just a bid?

That both depends on cost - which we don't know - and on how important those green tokens/locks are for opposing lists - so meta dependent, which we also don't know yet.

I assume you would then say the same about tractor beams?

As I said repeatedly, the action is ok or even great on a support ship, while the jamming beam can be ok in a list with 4-6 ships of low PS. And there you neither care about bid nor about the few points that would go into such a beam. But the effect might be worth it - again, depending on cost and meta.

14 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

That both depends on cost - which we don't know - and on how important those green tokens/locks are for opposing lists - so meta dependent, which we also don't know yet.

I assume you would then say the same about tractor beams?

As I said repeatedly, the action is ok or even great on a support ship, while the jamming beam can be ok in a list with 4-6 ships of low PS. And there you neither care about bid nor about the few points that would go into such a beam. But the effect might be worth it - again, depending on cost and meta.

Completely agreed on jam action.

Tractor beam was exactly what I had in mind when thinking about the jamming beam. In 1.0 I never saw people throwing a tractor beam in their list just in case. I saw it on stuff that either had a way to negate the opportunity cost of not doing damage (TIE/D) or stuff that was built entirely around controlling movement (control bots).

Without either of those, the only way I see jamming beam being useful is if there really aren't any more useful upgrades in the same price range. Something like 'I have these X points left, might as well throw in a jamming beam since nothing else fits'.

9 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

Completely agreed on jam action.

Tractor beam was exactly what I had in mind when thinking about the jamming beam. In 1.0 I never saw people throwing a tractor beam in their list just in case. I saw it on stuff that either had a way to negate the opportunity cost of not doing damage (TIE/D) or stuff that was built entirely around controlling movement (control bots).

Without either of those, the only way I see jamming beam being useful is if there really aren't any more useful upgrades in the same price range. Something like 'I have these X points left, might as well throw in a jamming beam since nothing else fits'.

Which is exactly what I've been saying.

It needs a double tap to make it worth it. Because it is crap design.

Just playing around in my head (since there is plenty of room in there)...

For strictly thematic purposes, It would be fun if:

• Double sided Jam tokens, red/orange
• Jamming:
  • Immediate effect: Assign a Red Jam token to the target ship. The jammed ship loses all target locks.
  • On-going effect: A jammed ship can not assign, be assigned or use tokens from other ships. A jammed ship can not perform Target Lock or Coordinate actions.
  • On-going effect: A jammed ship may remove a Jam token after performing a red maneuver.
• End of round/Cleanup: Remove all Orange Jam tokens; Turn all Red Jam tokens to their Orange side.

Jamming is about blocking electronic signals to/from a ship. A lot of token passing can thematically be attributed to comms chatter ("Look out Blue 3, you have one on your tail" -> gain an evade token,....) or ship-to-ship communications to relay targeting info. Jamming a ship would be more about preventing that ship from gaining or providing support. The token flip will make it a little sticky so it can impact the 'next' action too but won't be able stick around forever.

22 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

In 1.0 I never saw people throwing a tractor beam in their list just in case. I saw it on stuff that either had a way to negate the opportunity cost of not doing damage (TIE/D) or stuff that was built entirely around controlling movement (control bots).

Sure, for 1.0. But it was basically impossible to play many 5+ generics in a list, and hopes are very high that 2.0 makes that viable again. In that case it might be a good meta call against token dependent ships like Defender, Vader and Soontir, to name few aces, or Han, Dash/Leebo and Wookies for examples where tokens do important things besides pure stacking. And they are all currently suspected to dominate early on.

If that's true then jamming beam might be a useful card.

Jamming Beam would work fine if the card said:
"You may perform this attack at initiative 7. If you do, you may not attack again this round."
That is, Jamming Beam always fires when it's meaningful, regardless of the initiative of the equipping ship.

Well... It feels a bit sad that we are already with "fixes" for Second Edition, 3 months away from release.

Quite honestly, if this cannon, that can dispense maximum 3 Tokens now (not one like the old version) would have lasting tokens, this could make it so some ships would never get access to a token during the whole game again.

Just for example, the opponent has a Y-Wing with Torps and Bistan Gunner with a turret. An expensive ship, maybe not very optimized. I have 2 cheap scyks with jamming beams. I hit the ship sith both scyks, giving it 6 jammed tokens. If these didn’t go away that ship would never be able to use its ordnance nor gunner again. Nor evade further attacks and jamming beams.

So either they should have kept the old version of the weapon, or the tokens can’t stay.

As it is, it is more effective on the turn itself, but doesn’t cripple a ship forever. Yes you probably need it on a high PS ship to do something useful.

That’s also why they largely removed stress control. Because it could make it so that a ship would never be able to recover, not even through good play afterwards.

3 minutes ago, Azrapse said:

Jamming Beam would work fine if the card said:
"You may perform this attack at initiative 7. If you do, you may not attack again this round."
That is, Jamming Beam always fires when it's meaningful, regardless of the initiative of the equipping ship.

Well... It feels a bit sad that we are already with "fixes" for Second Edition, 3 months away from release.

But you’re absolutely right. This coincides very well with what i just posted.

Or as I first said when they announced Second Edition, beams shouldn't be cannons, but devices, and be used in the System phase along with the cloacking device, bombs, etc.

I disagree @Azrapse and @ForceM on the Ini7. There are two parts to jamming:
1. weakening defense
2. weakening offense

The first is the main importance in 2.0 where tokens are rarer and more valuable, and where the general damage rate seems to have increased. The second is an additional benefit if possible (and exactly why the action is IMO better) but not necessary.

The way jamming beam works currently forces a ship to spend tokens on offense, and we know that's a very good thing for the game in general and for the player with jamming beam specifically. Again, assuming that you can have 3-4 ships next to the carrier that fire after the token was removed.

6 hours ago, Azrapse said:

Well... It feels a bit sad that we are already with "fixes" for Second Edition, 3 months away from release.

And I hate to jump sides but I agree with certain people on this one. People are trying to fix things before:

A: most people know how 2.0 works...which is almost no one

B: jam itself hasn’t released and all the mechanics that pertain to it are unknown. Some yes but no one has the jammming rules yet in complete form

If Luke gets a pass I can sure forgive this thing. Underpowered is infinity greater than overpowered. We had op bs in 1.0 out the wazoo. Everyone knows what that got us.

6 hours ago, ForceM said:

Quite honestly, if this cannon, that can dispense maximum 3 Tokens now (not one like the old version) would have lasting tokens, this could make it so some ships would never get access to a token during the whole game again.

Just for example, the opponent has a Y-Wing with Torps and Bistan Gunner with a turret. An expensive ship, maybe not very optimized. I have 2 cheap scyks with jamming beams. I hit the ship sith both scyks, giving it 6 jammed tokens. If these didn’t go away that ship would never be able to use its ordnance nor gunner again. Nor evade further attacks and jamming beams.

So either they should have kept the old version of the weapon, or the tokens can’t stay.

As it is, it is more effective on the turn itself, but doesn’t cripple a ship forever. Yes you probably need it on a high PS ship to do something useful.

That’s also why they largely removed stress control. Because it could make it so that a ship would never be able to recover, not even through good play afterwards.

This is wrong.

In 90% of the cases when it would be useful otherwise (so a high PS cannon carrier sacrifices an attack) additional jam tokens will do nothing, since token stacking is almost non existent. The ships that can token stack also have high agility, which makes the mechanic questionable.

Against a Defender, for example, you roll 3 vs 3 dice, against 2 green tokens, to remove 1 for each uncancelled hit. It is unlikely you get 2 or more hits against these odds. Plus you can probably achieve the same result by attacking regularly.

I don't think removing 2 or more tokens will be a thing... like ever. Maybe against 3PO.

6 hours ago, Azrapse said:

Or as I first said when they announced Second Edition, beams shouldn't be cannons, but devices, and be used in the System phase along with the cloacking device, bombs, etc.

If this is how it works, (which would be amazing and thematic) I'll officially eat my words

Just to focus the argument a bit here.

There is one side that is saying this cannon is useless and a waste of cardboard,

and another side that is saying it doesn’t look great, but we don’t know everything yet, so let’s wait and see.

1 hour ago, Commander Kaine said:

If this is how it works, (which would be amazing and thematic) I'll officially eat my words

No. It is how it should have worked.
But they insisted on making them useless cannons instead of hard-to-use systems.

Maybe the Jam cannon should have had more dice?

Maybe it should fire at in the systems phase / Initiative 7

Maybe it should give a stress instead of a second Jam?

I think there are many ways to make the cannon interesting and viable so we will just have to wait and see what FFG are going to do.

3 hours ago, Commander Kaine said:

This is wrong.

In 90% of the cases when it would be useful otherwise (so a high PS cannon carrier sacrifices an attack) additional jam tokens will do nothing, since token stacking is almost non existent. The ships that can token stack also have high agility, which makes the mechanic questionable.

Against a Defender, for example, you roll 3 vs 3 dice, against 2 green tokens, to remove 1 for each uncancelled hit. It is unlikely you get 2 or more hits against these odds. Plus you can probably achieve the same result by attacking regularly.

I don't think removing 2 or more tokens will be a thing... like ever. Maybe against 3PO.

Depends on the opponent’s ship and his dice luck.

And if it does or does not remove locks.

If it does, you can remove a crucial lock from a lower PS ship along with other tokens, making ordnance hard to get off.

Otherwise, this argument that just throwing red dice at them does the same is wrong.

It won’t remove reinforce, and if you have a 2 attack ship with jamming beam, chances are the opponent won’t need to focus or evade.

Ships that have a combo going with a certain token will also often rather take a damage than spending the token in question. A few come to mind... The Falcon title, Brath, Bistan, C-3PO, Juke carriers,... there are more of these ships than you think, and with the beam, you can target these tokens now, switching combos off.

Regarding token stacking, Rebels have a lot of pilots handing out free tokens or other actions. Most of them at I4. So having an I4-5 jamming beam could help with that a lot.

Others like Vader and Soontir will probably still have 2 tokens on a lot of turns.

There are some uses for this thing. Although it is still pretty niche.

Just that i think giving it multiple tokens that stick around would be a very bad idea too.

So the best thing would probably indeed have been to allow it to shoot before combat starts. I7 or systems phase, to make it significant on low PS ships. Because then it’s a real choice between shooting early for tokens or shooting late for damage.

3 hours ago, Commander Kaine said:

If this is how it works, (which would be amazing and thematic) I'll officially eat my words

We can probably find out if we look at the card. Has it been spoiled? Does it have the cannon symbol? If so, it’s probably a cannon (duh!)

21 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

But reducing the agility means you have to put the cannon on a high PS ship, and you taught us that this makes it unplayable?

Only has to be equal initiative or higher than ideally all your other ships.

So you could easily field a Mini swarm of initiative 1 Scyks. And have one or two with tractor beams, while the others have ion or even HLC.

Actually the tractor beams might be instrumental in getting enemy ships into the HLC arc and with reduced agility.

Jamming beam isn't even range 1-3!

I think we don't fully understand Jamming in X-Wing 2.0, as it feels so underpowered.

48 minutes ago, Scum4Life said:

Only has to be equal initiative or higher than ideally all your other ships.

So you could easily field a Mini swarm of initiative 1 Scyks. And have one or two with tractor beams, while the others have ion or even HLC.

Actually the tractor beams might be instrumental in getting enemy ships into the HLC arc and with reduced agility.

Jamming beam isn't even range 1-3!

I think we don't fully understand Jamming in X-Wing 2.0, as it feels so underpowered.

The only way jamming becomes decent is if we get some good Imperial only upgrades in the conversion kit or Reaper set.

9 hours ago, ForceM said:

We can probably find out if we look at the card. Has it been spoiled? Does it have the cannon symbol? If so, it’s probably a cannon (duh!)

I haven't seen it. Anyone? is there even a jamming beam in 2ndE?