So R.B. only requires you to hit to expose damage cards, not deal damage, so tractor beams look a bit nicer.

You can literally tractor beam a ship to shreds. How frikkin awesome is that?

still need to A. put cards on first, and B. Have those cards flip down, AND C. Have that card deal damage. If that works as it looks right now, which it may not.

It works, but seems very expensive compared to just shooting them with your gun and activating the ability yourself rather than relying on other ships to help you out. I wonder if TB is going to have the same problem it had when it was first released - the opportunity cost of losing out on a better cannon and not actually doing damage with your shot seems too high to make the TB good. I don't know if the low chance of tractoring a big ship is worth all those disadvantages.

4 hours ago, Jike said:

It works, but seems very expensive compared to just shooting them with your gun and activating the ability yourself rather than relying on other ships to help you out.

You can always just shoot them with your own pew pew lasers now and Tractor Bean them later ...

Sounds fun, but I think I agree that the setup is a bit much/more pew pew shooty shooty is probably better. (Then again, high PS Initiative tractoring things onto rocks is pretty awesome...)

Yea he costs a LOT to be doing 0 damage. Putting a tractor on him for niche situations might be worthwhile, but in general don’t plan on that being what you usually fire.

4 hours ago, Jike said:

It works, but seems very expensive compared to just shooting them with your gun and activating the ability yourself rather than relying on other ships to help you out. I wonder if TB is going to have the same problem it had when it was first released - the opportunity cost of losing out on a better cannon and not actually doing damage with your shot seems too high to make the TB good. I don't know if the low chance of tractoring a big ship is worth all those disadvantages.

Tractor Beam itself isn't expensive, and Rexler is a solid pilot to have in your list regardless.

I did some maths a week or so ago, and the expected hits of two 3-attack ships firing against a 2 base agility ship at range 2 with the target's agility reduced by 1 is actually higher than three 3-attack ships shooting at 2 base agility ship at range 3 with no agility reduction. It's not by much, but the specific interaction and order of events is slightly favourable (Rexler only needs one net hit, which is the most likely result if he is shooting first anyway, and it should then make it easier for the next to ships to land their shots at all and they should make up for the damage you're missing out on with Rexler).

Bit of a specific situation, sure, but if Rexler can tractor a ship at range 3 and bring it to range 2, feeding it to two 3 attack ships (Turr and Whisper maybe?) or even three (3x Alpha Squadrons is doable), he can potentially still trigger his ability and set up a round of shooting that should do more damage.

Given that Tractor Beam is only 3 points, it's not much of an addition if you're already taking Rexler anyway. Just save it for that sort of scenario, or when you can drag them onto a rock, or mess up your opponent's firing arc on someone.

6 minutes ago, TasteTheRainbow said:

Yea he costs a LOT to be doing 0 damage. Putting a tractor on him for niche situations might be worthwhile, but in general don’t plan on that being what you usually fire.

Point is that with Rexler specifically, you still get the pseudo damage of his ability.

And if you were lucky enough to land a Direct Hit in a previous round, there's a good chance that Rexler flips that and does dish out damage with his attack.