1 minute ago, GreenDragoon said:

Just throwing out there and with a sample size of one single game: I had several times 2+ tokens on two ships (Soontir 2 and Whisper 3) during the game. Also, I get plenty of action economy.

I'm not sure why we (me included!) keep insisting that token stacking is gone. What token stack in 1.0 went over 3? Soontir got up to "5" with autothrusters and Palp, if you want to count those, and he still fell out of favor.

I would think people are more specifically referring to the ability to stack modifiers via predator, expertise, various crew cards, fire control system, palpatine, guidance chips, friendly pilot abilities, and so on. Certainly there were more ways to stack tokens even just with things like push the limit and attani mindlink, but it was the ability to easily combine tokens AND various modifiers, even when stressed or after getting blocked or repositioning.

You can stack a couple tokens on certain ships in 2.0, sure, but it's a lot harder and has way more limitations/requirements/cost. it's still nothing like what you could do in 1.0 though, which was the intent. At the very least, it's a good place to start, even if a lot of upgrades feel kind of weak.

7 minutes ago, LordFajubi said:

The limited pallet of upgrades will disappear, the token stackers ARE present, we just need double modded multi-shots and this will be very close to 1.0.

I'm not sure I agree with that conclusion. In my opinion, two things happened:

1) Token stacks now can be prevented much easier by blocking. That is, the ability to get passive modifications is reduced, and those were the problem. I suggest that when talking about token stacking we were simply lazy in our choice of words and at some point the initial meaning got lost.

2) Unlike 1.0, you can now again overcome token stacks by volume and luck. 1.0 had some 100% chances to evade - Soontir with 4-5greens, autothrusters, 2 focus, 1 evade and Palp as backup will simply never be damage by two dice. Conversely, my Soontir in the mentioned game got shot at range 3 by Arvel - 2red+focus vs 5green + focus+ lone wolf, and I took a damage. That was unthinkable in 1.0

So my suggestion is that we should be more precise in our criticism, because the lazy version is demonstrably false and misleading.

*edit: @Effenhoog was faster and said it very well! There is a clear difference to 1.0, but calling that "token stacking" is misleading I believe.

1 minute ago, GreenDragoon said:

I'm not sure I agree with that conclusion. In my opinion, two things happened:

1) Token stacks now can be prevented much easier by blocking. That is, the ability to get passive modifications is reduced, and those were the problem. I suggest that when talking about token stacking we were simply lazy in our choice of words and at some point the initial meaning got lost.

Which only helps in knife fighting or you are spot on at long range anticipation. You’re not blocking a turret shot from a small base very easy and alpha strikes are nearly impossible to block unless the attacker is careless. Maybe with boba, I don’t know.

4 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

2) Unlike 1.0, you can now again overcome token stacks by volume and luck. 1.0 had some 100% chances to evade - Soontir with 4-5greens, autothrusters, 2 focus, 1 evade and Palp as backup will simply never be damage by two dice. Conversely, my Soontir in the mentioned game got shot at range 3 by Arvel - 2red+focus vs 5green + focus+ lone wolf, and I took a damage. That was unthinkable in 1.0

This is valid but with evade nerfs probably wouldn’t have happened as often. But overall agreed, my big problem is with stupid modded red dice. They did that in 1.0 to counter-balance your point. If they do it here, it will be a freaking disaster and non token stackers will disappear faster than free cake at a jenny craig convention.

7 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

So my suggestion is that we should be more precise in our criticism, because the lazy version is demonstrably false and misleading.

Agreed.

Seriously, decriers really sound like they haven't played the game at all

Even the most broken upgrade imo (scum gunner Han at FOUR POINTS) is a red action

So 1.) Action. Can't do it when stressed, can't stack with another focus action

2.) Stresses, shuts itself off unless you do blues, limiting your manueverability

You can stack it with boba (recommended, it's scary good) but remember his rerolls are r1 only. He also can't red reinforce and gunner Han in the same round

The mechanics thus far are exceedingly well balanced. Only problem children may be the always on synergy folks that work on themselves (howlie...could've been "while you are focused")

49 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Unlike 1.0, you can now again overcome token stacks by volume and luck. 1.0 had some 100% chances to evade - Soontir with 4-5greens, autothrusters, 2 focus, 1 evade and Palp as backup will simply never be damage by two dice. Conversely, my Soontir in the mentioned game got shot at range 3 by Arvel - 2red+focus vs 5green + focus+ lone wolf, and I took a damage. That was unthinkable in 1.0

This is the big point for me. The issue in 1e wasn't that tokens stacked; it's that you couldn't overcome a token stack without making a list specifically to do that. Any ship that couldn't roll enough red dice was pretty much useless.

Even if pilots manage to stack just as many tokens in 2e, as long as those stacks can be overcome, the token-stacking problem will have gone away.

35 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Seriously, decriers really sound like they haven't played the game at all

Even the most broken upgrade imo (scum gunner Han at FOUR POINTS) is a red action

So 1.) Action. Can't do it when stressed, can't stack with another focus action

2.) Stresses, shuts itself off unless you do blues, limiting your manueverability

You can stack it with boba (recommended, it's scary good) but remember his rerolls are r1 only. He also can't red reinforce and gunner Han in the same round

The mechanics thus far are exceedingly well balanced. Only problem children may be the always on synergy folks that work on themselves (howlie...)

Yeah, i’m expecting Scum Han Gunner to get a price hike in the future. But it still has plenty of counter play and weaknesses, so I expect the price to not go up too much.

10 hours ago, JJ48 said:

Rather, it's just less likely that you'll be able to compare two lists and declare a winner without bothering to actually fly.

This is what I was getting at. When you play tournaments, you roughly know your chances of winning without taking into account player skill.

I used to be a 40K player. Don’t hate me, but it was less about your ability as a player, and more about which ever codex was released last that was OP.

List building is fun, but it shouldn’t be the winning aspect of games.

You want to see real token stacking from 1.0, built and played this fun little thought experiment just to put an absurd amount of green tokens next to one ship:

An unreasonable amount of tokens (100)

•Kanan Jarrus (49) - VCX-100
Fire Control System (2), •Lando Calrissian (3), Recon Specialist (3), •Ghost (0), •Experimental Interface (3)

•Lowhhrick (35) - Auzituck Gunship
Push The Limit (3), •Jan Ors (2), Jyn Erso (2)

•AP-5 (16) - Sheathipede-class Shuttle
Inspiring Recruit (1)

Kanan gets 8 green tokens, 1-4 of them being evades, and the others being focus results he could use for himself to reduce enemy dice, plus he can get an extra Evade result from Lowhhrick.

In 2.0 The evades don't work on a 0 agility ship and Kanan, despite being half your list, can't even use his ability on himself haha.

On 8/16/2018 at 10:02 AM, player2422845 said:

If I had to convince you ( and I don't, so no offence) I would say this to you. I are not that hyped by the competitive play, but now, in V2, with the game balance, there is possibility for ( almost) all ships to be winner. Imagine you favourite ship was B-wing. You can build your squad and try to be the best B-wing player, and if so, you have a chance to be best player of the game. This is what I like. The possibility to play fun game with all my ships ( I hown a punisher for a year and never played it!)

That's exactly why i'm not interested in 2.0 at all.

The whole concept of so called "balance" seems broken and ridiculed.

Ships, as any objects, are purpose-built. Is hairdryer better than helicopter? It depends on competition you put them in, but military-wise it usually ain't.

Is bomber better at dogfight than actual fighter? Not unless you make huge gap in quality of both ships. The beauty of original rules was the "make good combo and win; drain points in useless stuff and loose". If you want to play with punisher then find a good combo that will support it's pros and cover it's cons.

You may argue that FFG destroyed balance with this or that decision on pricing, but in general the old technology is obsolete and replaced with new one. Is team of 10 cavemen better than 1 modern soldier with heavy machine gun? Usually not, so if you decide to use them in fight then it's you tactical ignorance, not "lack of balance".

Goal of the bomber is to effectively destroy heavily-guarded places, such as bases or strong hulls, so don't expect them to be viable in 1vs1 fight against aces which were built with taking other fighters down in mind. On the other hand when you're fighting against almost impenetrable wall of armor then don't be surprised that your swarm of light fighters got decimated.

4 minutes ago, cupakabra said:

That's exactly why i'm not interested in 2.0 at all.

The whole concept of so called "balance" seems broken and ridiculed.

Ships, as any objects, are purpose-built. Is hairdryer better than helicopter? It depends on competition you put them in, but military-wise it usually ain't.

Is bomber better at dogfight than actual fighter? Not unless you make huge gap in quality of both ships. The beauty of original rules was the "make good combo and win; drain points in useless stuff and loose". If you want to play with punisher then find a good combo that will support it's pros and cover it's cons.

You may argue that FFG destroyed balance with this or that decision on pricing, but in general the old technology is obsolete and replaced with new one. Is team of 10 cavemen better than 1 modern soldier with heavy machine gun? Usually not, so if you decide to use them in fight then it's you tactical ignorance, not "lack of balance".

Goal of the bomber is to effectively destroy heavily-guarded places, such as bases or strong hulls, so don't expect them to be viable in 1vs1 fight against aces which were built with taking other fighters down in mind. On the other hand when you're fighting against almost impenetrable wall of armor then don't be surprised that your swarm of light fighters got decimated.

Interestingly enough, some 1.0 bombers were far more powerful than purpose-built fighters.

1 minute ago, JJ48 said:

Interestingly enough, some 1.0 bombers were far more powerful than purpose-built fighters.

Well it really is a matter of which ships you compare and how you define "bomber".

Which pairs exactly do you mean?

6 hours ago, cupakabra said:

Well it really is a matter of which ships you compare and how you define "bomber".

Which pairs exactly do you mean?

I guess I was thinking of the K-Wing and the Scurrg for bombers, and ships like the A-Wing and X-Wing for fighters.

On 8/17/2018 at 6:03 PM, LordFajubi said:

This right here. They have taken token stacking away from ept’s and just given it to individual pilots. Token stacking is alive and well and will be ridiculously prominent at tournaments.

This really isn't accurate, in my experience. I mean yes, it's there - but just the fact that it's moved from EPTs to specific pilots means it's far more limited, and a simple boolean "It exists" really doesn't capture the differences.

The post you quoted mentions Fel and Whisper. They're both good examples. Old Fel was basically guaranteed three tokens. New Fel caps at two, and you need a bullseye arc target to get the second. Yes, Whisper (and Echo) can easily end up with multiple tokens, but the new Phantom requiring an Evade to recloak changes that dramatically.

These things do not disprove the claims that it's back to a game of flying and decision-making - it reinforces them. Sure, Fel can still get multiple tokens, but it relies on flying better than your opponent. Phantoms under fire have to make a choice between spending the Evade to avoid damage or saving it to recloak. Incidentally, the recloak also becomes subject to the various token stripping effects.

If you walk into a random game of 2.0, look at the table, and go "Fel still has two tokens, pfft, nothing's changed" and walk out, you're really, REALLY missing the point.

5 hours ago, JJ48 said:

I guess I was thinking of the K-Wing and the Scurrg for bombers, and ships like the A-Wing and X-Wing for fighters.

Well that's what i mean, K-Wing ain't regular bomber, it's more like a flying fortress with a lot of AA firepower so the generic fighters like A or X-wings shouldn't stand a chance. The space for argument lies in it's age since it's drastically outdated at the time of X-wings.

And remember that X-wings are rebel's generic fighters just as TIEs- produce a bunch of it, give it to everyone and when someone deserves it he gets mods to make it better. The only viable X-wings are pilotted by big names who can fly literally anything, others die as quicly as regular TIEs (despite the "x-wings are better tech narration").

And A-wings were never made for dogfight and rebels modified thmem even futher into weaklings (in terms of regular fight) compared to the original idea. So it's really hard to say that A-wing flown the wrong way (as rebels did in movies) should win over warmachine like K-wing.

When it comes to Scurrg it was very expensive experimental fighter with bombs, but very very old so it's hard to say if it should be any good against x-wings. However it had 6 laser cannons and TLT in default compared to t-65's mere 4 laser cannons and it was almost as fast as x-wing so i wouldn't call it "bomber better than fighter".

13 hours ago, cupakabra said:

Goal of the bomber is to effectively destroy heavily-guarded places, such as bases or strong hulls, so don't expect them to be viable in 1vs1 fight against aces which were built with taking other fighters down in mind. On the other hand when you're fighting against almost impenetrable wall of armor then don't be surprised that your swarm of light fighters got decimated.

There are plenty of historical examples of multirole aircraft which were spectacular in both. The P-47 Thunderbolt is my personal favorite, but most modern aircraft are multirole and excel at it.

2 minutes ago, Buhallin said:

There are plenty of historical examples of multirole aircraft which were spectacular in both. The P-47 Thunderbolt is my personal favorite, but most modern aircraft are multirole and excel at it.

Yeah, but that's not my point.

P-47 was a great plane for Japanese but inferior to BF-109 (germans lost a lot of pb-109's because they used them wrong but then they learned P-47's weaknesses and could beat them). And it's super weak against the cheapest, weakest fighters of our times.

What i mean is that cheap, mass-produced fighter should loose fight against custom-made figther, bomber without escort should loose against fighters (if it didn't have any AA tricks up it's sleeves), bomber should win against non-excellent AA on-ground defense and fighter should loose against even weak AA defense (it has to attack from low altitudes so odds are on AA). Of course there are multi-purpose aircrafts but each and every of them looses with purpose-built competitors in each competition. Multi-purpose is better economy, but not better in every role it takes.

32 minutes ago, cupakabra said:

M  ulti  -purpose is better economy,  but not better in every role it takes. 

That‘s all nice, but Xwing is limited to one single situation: short range dogfight confined to a 2D area of roughly 270x270 meters.

What you are asking for is to limit the number of ships to only dogfighters because everything else would never wait for a range of 100m to engage. (E:) and all for realism

3 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

That‘s all nice, but Xwing is limited to one single situation: short range dogfight confined to a 2D area of roughly 270x270 meters.

What you are asking for is to limited the number of ships to only dogfighters because everything else would never wait for a range of 100m to engage.

Not really, what i'm asking for is to have a wide range of aircrafts with ups and downs so you can mix them, add tactics and make effective squadrons. If you want to put bomber in a dogfight then feel free to do it but don't whine about not being very effective. Making a regular bomber (like a TIE bomber) viable against x-wing just for the sake of "equality" is ridiculous. What's the point of having different ships if they all are boosted or crippled to be equal? If you make a bad squadron then you should be wiped out not praised and handicapped.

If you wanted to play golf with a baseball bat should you get extra points for using wrong tool?

18 minutes ago, cupakabra said:

Not  really, what i'm asking for is to have a wide range of aircrafts with ups and downs so you can mix them, add tactics and make effective squadrons. If  yo  u want to put bomber in a dogfight then feel free to  do it  but don't whine about not being very  effective.   M  aking a regula  r bomber (lik  e a TIE bomber) viable against x-wing just for the sake of "equality" is ridiculous. What's the point of having different ships if they all are boosted or crippled to be equal? If you make a bad squadron then you should be wiped out not praised and handicapped.

If you wanted to play golf with a baseball bat should you get extra points for using wrong tool?

Do you want there to be one best squadron, or severals?

In either case: do I understand you correctly that these best, topnotch squadrons should not include bombers, freighters, tractors and the like?

21 minutes ago, cupakabra said:

Not really, what i'm asking for is to have a wide range of aircrafts with ups and downs so you can mix them, add tactics and make effective squadrons. If you want to put bomber in a dogfight then feel free to do it but don't whine about not being very effective. Making a regular bomber (like a TIE bomber) viable against x-wing just for the sake of "equality" is ridiculous. What's the point of having different ships if they all are boosted or crippled to be equal? If you make a bad squadron then you should be wiped out not praised and handicapped.

If you wanted to play golf with a baseball bat should you get extra points for using wrong tool?

Sorry, dude, but you are talking bullcrap! I want to play the game of X-Wing, that is made and distributed by FFG. Therefore, I want to be able to use all of their products made for this product line and to have chance to win in this game on the competetive events organized by the producer and distributor of the game.

I don't want to simulate science-fiction combat situations, especially when it is set in rather fantasy setting (come on, there is not much of science in Star Wars).

What the heck are you talking about?

1 minute ago, GreenDragoon said:

Do you want there to be one best squadron, or severals?

In either case: do I understand you correctly that these best, topnotch squadrons should not include bombers, freighters, tractors and the like?

Not at all, what i mean is that topnotch ships should dominate in 1 vs 1 fights, but should be countered by smart moves or numbers. Can you imagine 1 TIE vs 1 defender fight being fair? It's not and should not be made so.

1 hour ago, cupakabra said:

Well that's what i mean, K-Wing ain't regular bomber, it's more like a flying fortress with a lot of AA firepower

Except that that's not what the K-Wing is supposed to be at all.

It's a dedicated ground attack bomber. It's weirdly angled middle engine is supposed to be used to help it pull up out of a dive bomb. They're not supposed to carry laser cannons at all. Because of their modular loadout, they could also be used to take on large capital ships but the idea that they could even use concussion missiles to target nimble dogfighters is laughable based on the original source.

Go read the Black Fleet crisis some time. Every single K-Wing pilot mentioned by name gets killed. Entire K-Wing squadrons get absolutely shredded by enemy starfighters.

FFG changed the K-Wing's role so that it would be a viable platform in the game. That is exactly what everyone else is arguing *should* be the case. That is what balancing is.

If a ship is to be played in the game, it needs to be balanced and it needs to be viable. If that means changing the capabilties of the ship from the lore somewhat then that is what should be done.

Beyond that, I'm really not sure I understand the point you're trying to make. This isn't a WW2 dogfighting simulator.

It's a tabletop game about pushing small plastic spaceships around. It's supposed to be fun. You're supposed to be able to enjoy saying 'that ship looks cool' and then have fun winning a game with it so long as you build the list properly and make good decisions during the game, regardless of whether that ship is a 'bomber' (in space FFS), a fighter or an old freighter that was only ever supposed to haul cargo about.

3 minutes ago, cupakabra said:

Not at all, what i mean is that topnotch ships should dominate in 1 vs 1 fights, but should be countered by smart moves or numbers. Can you imagine 1 TIE vs 1 defender fight being fair? It's not and should not be made so.

If you think about the best player ever, who does only smart moves: should he be better with ships that are made to be fighters, or with freighters/bombers?

Same player, same tricks in his mind. Which type of ships should be better in his hands?

On 8/16/2018 at 7:20 AM, ficklegreendice said:

Yeah, you're taking crazy pills. Play the game before trying to analyze it

My games so far have been the best I've had in Xwing since my Deathrain run to store championship victory just after the release of Omega Leader. Been here since the dawn of the horrid dark age that was wave 5.

Now obviously there's no meta yet, just locally most everyone's gravitated to ace + miniswarm be sure Howlie and co have proven monsterously effective

And yet? Counterplay abounds. just properly utilizing obstacles is the literal difference between failing to catch Soontir forever or getting swiss-cheesed by TIEs.

Also, game may feel more limited just at a glance at the cards...then you remember the scant percentage of first Ed that was actually viable ...yeah no, we're swimming in options here

Empire especially is AWASH in amazingly distinct ships with incredibly varied playstyles necessitated by their unique capabilities.

Basically, yeah even this prerelease state matches and sometimes exceeds the absolute golden Pinnacle of first Ed for me. Flying matters more than upgrades and turrets for ******* once, and there's tons of combos to explore

@ficklegreendice , are you being positive? *le gasp*

Jokes aside, this is my experience so far as well. Man, I love this game.

4 minutes ago, Jiron said:

Sorry, dude, but you are talking bullcrap! I want to play the game of X-Wing, that is made and distributed by FFG. Therefore, I want to be able to use all of their products made for this product line and to have chance to win in this game on the competetive events organized by the producer and distributor of the game.

I don't want to simulate science-fiction combat situations, especially when it is set in rather fantasy setting (come on, there is not much of science in Star Wars).

What the heck are you talking about?

I think you miss the point. What if FFG decided that they will make ISD the same size as x-wing and give it more or less the same firepower and survivability?

Would you still go "it's science fiction fantasy, it's just a boardgame, i want to play competitive match of ISD vs single x-wing"?

Bombers are built for bombing and bombing is not part of dogfight, so putting bombers in dogfight game is nice for playing scenarios but pointless in competitive dogfighting.