Simple question. Our boy Konstantine is a pretty unpopular lad and I was wondering if this might be an easy way (very simple to errata) to make him better but (hopefully) not too overpowered.

You have to consider that you still have to get the enemy down to speed 0 which will probably take several triggers (triggerings? activations) of Konstantine or a very specialized slow down fleet and the enemy can always escape the Konstantine trap with a single Nav (token or command). So only a first player Konstantine could get a guarantied attack on a speed 0 ship and only if he ever even manages to slow an enemy ship to speed 0.

Also this could finally make VSD more popular!

https://strawpoll.com/rahhag37

it's honestly probably the only fix i can imagine that would make him even remotely viable.

Edit:

also mixing it with tractor beam would amazing. Two ISD's tractoring a ship while K'ing it would be great.

Absolutely.

Just as I tested it independently with my gaming group to be so, as a run up to a House-Rule CC campaign...

It. was. Brutal.

Turning off a ship's ability to spend any kind of defense token is...yeah, that's pretty powerful.

FWIW, I think the timing on him would have to change, as otherwise it's too powerful for first player - being able to take a shot that cannot be defended against or the threat reacted to is WAYYY too OP.

Maybe if he was something more like...

"At the end of the Execute Maneuver step, you may select an enemy ship that has not activated at distance 1-5 of at least 2 friendly medium or large ships, and increase or decrease that enemy ship's speed by 1 to a minimum of speed 0."

...that at least makes it so he cannot be used on that first attack, and indeed is only able to set up someone else for an attack. Notably with the intended victim potentially able to react, given the new activation requirement. Given that requirement, it should also prevent him from setting up an 'un-reactable' shot from having significantly more activations than your opponent - by the time you are in a situation where that would be useful, he doesn't have any other ships on the table that could be selected as a valid Konstantine target.

5 minutes ago, xanderf said:

At the end of the Ship Phase, you may select an enemy ship that has not activated

I am kind of confused. At the end of the ship phase all ships have by definition already activated, leaving no one for Konstantine to target according to your wording.

1 minute ago, LordCola said:

I am kind of confused. At the end of the ship phase all ships have by definition already activated, leaving no one for Konstantine to target according to your wording.

Errr...meant each particular ship's activation in the ship phase. Lemme re-phrase to clarify...

I am kind of fine with the fact that Konstantine’s ability sucks. So does the character in Rebels.

If I were inclined to fix it, maybe it would be better to make it work from small base ships also and/or affect squads.

31 minutes ago, xanderf said:

Turning off a ship's ability to spend any kind of defense token is...yeah, that's pretty powerful.

FWIW, I think the timing on him would have to change, as otherwise it's too powerful for first player - being able to take a shot that cannot be defended against or the threat reacted to is WAYYY too OP.

Maybe if he was something more like...

"At the end of the Execute Maneuver step, you may select an enemy ship that has not activated at distance 1-5 of at least 2 friendly medium or large ships, and increase or decrease that enemy ship's speed by 1 to a minimum of speed 0."

...that at least makes it so he cannot be used on that first attack, and indeed is only able to set up someone else for an attack. Notably with the intended victim potentially able to react, given the new activation requirement. Given that requirement, it should also prevent him from setting up an 'un-reactable' shot from having significantly more activations than your opponent - by the time you are in a situation where that would be useful, he doesn't have any other ships on the table that could be selected as a valid Konstantine target.

I think that rephrasing is unnecessary as Konstantine still would require a bit of setup for that to happen, and I think that should be a possible payoff for successfully slowing down a ship to zero. As it is an opponent would probably be spamming Navigate to prevent that, so setting up a second ship of yours to fire would likely be too late.

Gauntlet fighters might actually find a place in lists with this new Konstantine, screwing with Navigation.

3 minutes ago, Piratical Moustache said:

Gauntlet fighters might actually find a place in lists with this new Konstantine, screwing with Navigation.

Oh, I didn't think of that. That would also be a cool side effect, though that would mean that assault is much more useful for the empire than for the rebellion.

8 minutes ago, Piratical Moustache said:

Gauntlet fighters might actually find a place in lists with this new Konstantine, screwing with Navigation.

Have you checked out the Auspicses of Nose Punch 4.0 ?

Because, y'know, not new info to me Since that's what its based on. The only difference is its not Captain-K slowing them down, but the double G-7s and the ability to strike first activation.

And its a HUGE benefit... The downside? Let people do it all the time and its Game-Breaking.

Just now, LordCola said:

Oh, I didn't think of that. That would also be a cool side effect, though that would mean that assault is much more useful for the empire than for the rebellion.

The Empire got squadrons that have Assault, the Rebels have a unique boarding team. If raid tokens had been more impressive then this disparity would have been noticed, but as of now the gauntlets are underwhelming so no one really thinks about it.

2 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

Have you checked out the Auspicses of Nose Punch 4.0 ?

Because, y'know, not new info to me Since that's what its based on. The only difference is its not Captain-K slowing them down, but the double G-7s and the ability to strike first activation.

And its a HUGE benefit... The downside? Let people do it all the time and its Game-Breaking.

Only to a minimum of speed 1 though, and G7s are pricey. In any case it seems that people are more worried about OP stuff than useless stuff.

18 minutes ago, Piratical Moustache said:

I think that rephrasing is unnecessary as Konstantine still would require a bit of setup for that to happen, and I think that should be a possible payoff for successfully slowing down a ship to zero. As it is an opponent would probably be spamming Navigate to prevent that, so setting up a second ship of yours to fire would likely be too late.

'Spamming navigate' doesn't do anything if you are 1st player with Konstantine. He (currently) triggers at the very end of a turn, potentially (with the proposed change) setting multiple ships to speed '0' so they cannot use defense tokens, then you get to activate first next turn and shoot a couple of them before they could spend a navigate token to counter you.

That's the issue with the current timing and proposed change - it creates a situation where you have an attack that you cannot counter.

The closest comparable I can think of is BTvenger, which is a lot weaker given:

• It is one-use
• It isn't fleet-wide, only a single ship can do it
• It can only target one enemy ship, rather than (potentially) the entire enemy fleet
• It has fair counter-play in being extremely short-ranged
• It also has secondary counter-play in that the attacker needs to have the appropriate token/dial set to allow for it - which slicer tools (amongst other things) can prevent

Allowing Konstantine to set to speed-0 is quite a huge increase in potential damage, to multiple ships, so something needs to change to allow some kind of counter-play options to it. The easiest method is changing the timing a bit to guarantee at least some of the enemy gets a chance to do something in reaction.

EDIT: of course, you could always take a page from Raddus and just counter that specific condition. Something like '...you cannot attack speed-0 enemy ships with your first activation in a round'. But that's a lot more text, and kinda ham-fisted...

1 minute ago, Piratical Moustache said:

Only to a minimum of speed 1 though, and G7s are pricey. In any case it seems that people are more worried about OP stuff than useless stuff.

Huh?

I thought we were talking about Theoretical Kaptain-K-Speed-0.

as it stands right now,.

Nose Punch 4.0 allows you to use Mandalorian Gauntlets to Strike a Target, First activation of the game, which is at Speed 0, and hitting it with Nav Raid, making it essentially stuck there for your follow up moves...

Even when your fleet conists of 2 Interdictors and a Quasar, it is VERY hard hitting for that aspect... Because it has total control of almost all aspect of the battlefield (controlling terrain, deployment and maneuver to a certain extent).

But with the theoretical changes

If you let Kaptain-K do it during games, its even worse for the other guy, to the point the game is No Fun, and basically boils down to ISD-Offs, and nothing thats Speed 2 Max is ever put on the board... Because a pair of ISDs with Tractors and Boom, you're at 0, and Gauntlets just Rub. It. In.

2 minutes ago, Drasnighta said:

Huh?

I thought we were talking about Theoretical Kaptain-K-Speed-0.

as it stands right now,.

Nose Punch 4.0 allows you to use Mandalorian Gauntlets to Strike a Target, First activation of the game, which is at Speed 0, and hitting it with Nav Raid, making it essentially stuck there for your follow up moves...

Even when your fleet conists of 2 Interdictors and a Quasar, it is VERY hard hitting for that aspect... Because it has total control of almost all aspect of the battlefield (controlling terrain, deployment and maneuver to a certain extent).

But with the theoretical changes

If you let Kaptain-K do it during games, its even worse for the other guy, to the point the game is No Fun, and basically boils down to ISD-Offs, and nothing thats Speed 2 Max is ever put on the board... Because a pair of ISDs with Tractors and Boom, you're at 0, and Gauntlets just Rub. It. In.

I misunderstood what you were saying the first time, my bad.

1 minute ago, Piratical Moustache said:

I misunderstood what you were saying the first time, my bad.

No problem. I tend to ramble excitedly when I get to talk about my personal addition to crazy-list-building

I just think you can make him work at range 1-5 of any medium-large. Not 2.

Buff Konstantine by allowing him to do the same with his own ships, so if you run into a fleet at speed 2 and need to be speed 3 to avoid ramming next turn, you can increase your own speed by one, rather than the enemy.

Edit: or slow down your own ship to avoid running into an attempted intercepting small base ship.

On September 6, 2018 at 7:40 PM, Drasnighta said:

Huh?

I thought we were talking about Theoretical Kaptain-K-Speed-0.

as it stands right now,.

Nose Punch 4.0 allows you to use Mandalorian Gauntlets to Strike a Target, First activation of the game, which is at Speed 0, and hitting it with Nav Raid, making it essentially stuck there for your follow up moves...

Even when your fleet conists of 2 Interdictors and a Quasar, it is VERY hard hitting for that aspect... Because it has total control of almost all aspect of the battlefield (controlling terrain, deployment and maneuver to a certain extent).

But with the theoretical changes

If you let Kaptain-K do it during games, its even worse for the other guy, to the point the game is No Fun, and basically boils down to ISD-Offs, and nothing thats Speed 2 Max is ever put on the board... Because a pair of ISDs with Tractors and Boom, you're at 0, and Gauntlets just Rub. It. In.

Hmm, I'm not quite understanding your last statement. Are you saying nobody ever starts faster than speed two? Because I always start at three, and usually stay there most of the game.....

34 minutes ago, Darth Lupine said:

Hmm, I'm not quite understanding your last statement. Are you saying nobody ever starts faster than speed two? Because I always start at three, and usually stay there most of the game.....

He's talking about ships like VSDs, Peltas, Interdictors. They can't deploy at speed 3.

I just had this discussion last night with my Armada club. I think we came to the consensus that he'd be way too powerful as it stands if he was allowed to slow ships down to zero.

However, if he cost 32 points and could only do it to one ship and still had all the requirements he had now, I think it might be okay, but I still wasn't sure of the point cost. 32 was the minimum if he can slow to zero, but that was prefaced with "can only do it to one ship per round."

The problem would be that Konstie combined with tractor beams could render any ship helpless. Unless it gains both a token and a dial, it can't counter the slowing effect and once it is forced to a halt, it couldn't start moving again (at least token-wise)

Not sure about this being amazingly OP if he could reduce to zero, you need 2 large/med ships and to be in range of your opponent.

That means ISDS or Interdictor which would probably need Engine Techs on it to be useable.

Your opponent needs to not have any (command) tokens, ability to generate tokens, or move tokens.

Put it this way if your already close enough to a pair of ISDS, that have activation advantage against you, your issue is not being at speed 0.

2 hours ago, Darth Lupine said:

Hmm, I'm not quite understanding your last statement. Are you saying nobody ever starts faster than speed two? Because I always start at three, and usually stay there most of the game.....

You're validating my point, effectively.

I'm saying, "You wouldn't see anyone deploy anything that WOULDN'T be capable of starting at at-least Speed 3."

Because as stated, two ISDs and Konstantine would go "ISD 1, Phylom Q7s, you lose your Nav Command Token. ISD 2, Phylon Q7s, you're down from Speed 2 to Speed 1... Konstantine, you're at Speed 0... Now its Happytime for my Gunners."

Speed 3 potentially buys you that little buffer time.

2 hours ago, Bertie Wooster said:

He's talking about ships like VSDs, Peltas, Interdictors. They can't deploy at speed 3.

Eh, not stuff I use....lol