Optimized Prototype is a two-ship wombo-combo, which would normally mean it should be stronger than a single ship expose but its not.

Granted it also has the option to remove shields so kinda voids that argument/comparison.

If he becomes too abusive, then we'll probably see him get tweaked. I could see him getting a 4-point price bump and removing his talent slot, and he'd still be pretty good.

2 minutes ago, GuacCousteau said:

Thane is a fat ship killer. That's his job. There's nothing wrong with a pilot ability that specialises you into a role. If you don't want Thane to be a PITA, then don't feed him fat ships.

"It's ok if a card is a hard counter to ships you find fun, because you can always fly other ships that you don't like as much." Seriously?

I haven't actually flown against him, so I'm not going to claim he's OP, but there has to be a better defense for him than, "just don't fly an entire class of ships". If we go back to rock-paper-scissors list building, why'd we even bother switching to 2E?

Played approx 25-30 games with Wedge-Thane-Dutch

I am roughly 75%-80% rate of victory.

Might have used Thane ability, less than 10 times. 2-3 time pick the infamous DH.

Its a neat ability. But definitely not OP

12 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

"It's ok if a card is a hard counter to ships you find fun, because you can always fly other ships that you don't like as much." Seriously?

That's not what I said at all. Thanks for putting words in my mouth, I really appreciate it.

I said don't feed him fat ships.

That means if you're playing a big, high HP ship and you see Thane across the board you need to think about your engagement. You need to think about your target priority. You need to think about what the other ships in your list are going to be doing. You need to not park your big high HP ship right in Thane's arc.

With the way 2e is shaping up, two fat ships in a list seems to bad list building regardless of what you're facing, with the possible exception of four Scum Falcons or a Lambda blob (which isn't relevant here because they have numbers, and therefore strategy is different.

That means that if you're running a ship of the sort Thane likes to prey on, you should probably also be running a smaller ship as a flanker or at least as support. In such a case, you need to think about running that smaller ship as interference until you can get Thane off the board, or use it to outright kill him if you can.

Thane's ability works if he's blocked, yes. But if you block him well enough you can also deny him the shot on the target he wants altogether.

If you're just running a group of low agility, high HP ships like Bombers (not that the Bomber swarm is ever going to have a real problem with Thane) then instead you use the numbers. Throw one at him, trade fire, bug out and throw another one at him. Thane's ability is not some OP instakill ability. He's good against high HP targets but he's also not going to take them down in one turn - his ability has less chance of doing damage than just spending a focus.

So you use that. You keep forcing him to engage different targets.

Mixed role lists are really solid at the moment. If you're worried about Thane will do to Redline, force him to deal with Whisper or Fel etc.

28 minutes ago, Muelmuel said:

I don't see anyone complaing about Zertik Strom. Granted his is random as he does not say you can look at the opponent's damage cards , but he just needs to spend a lock, don't even need to shoot the enemy. Just run around locking and exposing cards. If he is not OP I don't think Thane is

Picking the card is a huge advantage. With the proliferation of Fuel Leaks, the player can choose that to chain crits, or Direct Hit to push the last damage to finish off a target.

FFG has stated multiple times that they do not like "this card counters this card" mechanics, and thats what Thane does - he hardcounters fat ships.

Nothing else is countered that hard. Trajsim forces swarms to break formation but it hardly auto-wins against them.

13 minutes ago, GuacCousteau said:

That's not what I said at all. Thanks for putting words in my mouth, I really appreciate it.

Sorry if that's what it sounded like. It's just that you started by saying he's very effective against some lists and useless against others, and then said, "don't feed him fat ships," and didn't really talk about flight strategies, so I'm sure you can understand my inference.

Thanks for the clarification and strategy tips. Those should be rather helpful.

On the bright side, Blinded Pilot will stop Thane because spending a result is a modification. So when Kylo Ren comes around he can give Thane Kyrell what he deserves! Show him the dark side!

(Yes, I'm being flippant. I feel for the people who really struggle against Thane. I look forward to meeting him on the field of battle to develop my own opinion).

I played a game vs him with Luke and a Y-wing. I got hits on the Y-wing, but also targeted him once I was able. I did pretty well that game, so here are some tips and observations:

• He is strong mid to late game, but very weak at the start because he needs the ship that he is attacking to have a damage card on it to flip. Take him out early.
• He fires at a reasonably high initiative, so that's a problem for him (unless surrounded by other pilots of the same initiative) because there is now less of a chance for a card being already down on your ship.
• His ability is less devestating the more ships that you have on the table. I can see a two or three ship list getting devistated by him.
• You may want to put your sheilded ships in a position to trade shots with him; anything to keep cards off of your guys before he gets a shot
• X-wing weaknesses are his weaknesses (ionization is fairly strong vs. X-wings)

Summary: Shoot the little ? sucker before he can mess with you

45 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

"It's ok if a card is a hard counter to ships you find fun, because you can always fly other ships that you don't like as much." Seriously?

No, that's not fine

But Thane IS fine

Because Thane isn't actually a hardcounter.

A lot of it is dependent on which large ship you want to fly, but any high offense ship (like the vcx) should have no trouble burning him down asap

And because of the matchup, you'll want to focus him first. This is good, it adds some variety instead of just having to piledrive Luke first

Also, this really isn't a novel or thane-only concept either. As mentioned before, there are PLENTY of "pocket aces" you ignore at your peril (from traj sim + torp redline dowm to adv proton Rhymer or outmanuever Sabacc/Duchess, thr last 3 which are very close in price to Thane)

And also remember that Thane indeed has counterplay: he's an arc locked ship. It's really silly to compare him to traj genius nym when he's like an I 5 with a firing arc.

6 minutes ago, BDrafty said:

I played a game vs him with Luke and a Y-wing. I got hits on the Y-wing, but also targeted him once I was able. I did pretty well that game, so here are some tips and observations:

• He is strong mid to late game, but very weak at the start because he needs the ship that he is attacking to have a damage card on it to flip. Take him out early.
• He fires at a reasonably high initiative, so that's a problem for him (unless surrounded by other pilots of the same initiative) because there is now less of a chance for a card being already down on your ship.
• His ability is less devestating the more ships that you have on the table. I can see a two or three ship list getting devistated by him.
• You may want to put your sheilded ships in a position to trade shots with him; anything to keep cards off of your guys before he gets a shot
• X-wing weaknesses are his weaknesses (ionization is fairly strong vs. X-wings)

Summary: Shoot the little ? sucker before he can mess with you

Yep, getting him off the table early, to me, seems clutch. He's too capable of ruining things late game regardless of defensive capabilities.

17 minutes ago, Parakitor said:

On the bright side, Blinded Pilot will stop Thane because spending a result is a modification. So when Kylo Ren comes around he can give Thane Kyrell what he deserves! Show him the dark side!

(Yes, I'm being flippant. I feel for the people who really struggle against Thane. I look forward to meeting him on the field of battle to develop my own opinion).

HA youre right i forgot about that!

Glorious

You guys really need to get some perspective. Thane is good against high HP ships but he absolutely is not a 'hard counter' to them.

I think there's a lot of overreaction here based on how it feels to have cards manually dealt to you vs what's actually going on with the mechanics and the maths.

For starters, I don't know why people keep banging on about direct damage. It's only situationally better than simply spending a focus token and in many cases is straight up worse. It requires a) the enemy to already be damaged by another attack and b) that the 5/33 chance of it being direct hit has gone in your favour (obviously the odds increase the more damage is added, but still).

The big thing about Thane's ability is its trigger conditions - you get to see the results of your roll and you will know what defence dice and tokens are available to the defender. That means if you roll atrociously with no focus token, you can see if their evade token or 3 green probability or whatever will either definitely or probably block any damage you've rolled. If so, you could to trigger the ability and potentially do damage via direct hit while bypassing the defence dice.

But the net result of that is you've still only done one damage . Why is nobody raging about Wedge's ability? Or Crack Shot? Or Outmaneuver? They're all situational sure, but they all have the net result of squeezing one extra damage past defences.

Again, in almost all cases it's better for Thane to have a focus token and spend it to maximise your attack roll and directly do damage than it is to use his ability. Even when you know there's a direct damage already there . He's more like a poor Accuracy Corrector in that sense. Only really worth using if you don't have mods and you don't think your roll will push anything through.

Thane actually gets tastiest with Hull Breach or Fuel Leak, but even then only if you've rolled decent damage separately or a crit respectively.

While, in theory, you can use either of those to set off a big chain of recurring damage, the odds of it happening are extremely low and you're still sacrificing a damage to do it .

Thane is good, and it's a really strong ability. I'm not denying that. But he's not some NPE auto damage stacker, and he doesn't make high HP ships impossible to field.

He's still a 6HP, 2 agility ship. He will die to focus fire. Just recognise when he's more of a threat to your specific list than Wedge or Luke.

when thane literally 1v1's a decimator and wins every time, yes he is a hard counter to them.....

Thane is fine, and well costed. Anyone letting him get past the beta phase of attacks deserves all the pain they get later. Assessing opposing ship threats relative to game phase is what separates the good players from the average. Nothing else to see here. Standard example of poor target prioritization.

9 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

when thane literally 1v1's a decimator and wins every time, yes he is a hard counter to them.....

Hate to break it to you, but it's not exactly difficult to 1v1 a Deci sadly

Poor buggers need a cost reduction

3 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Hate to break it to you, but it's not exactly difficult to 1v1 a Deci sadly

Poor buggers need a cost reduction

? That doesn't address the weakness of the ship. It just makes it cheaper.

If you quit, can I have your stuff?

7 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Hate to break it to you, but it's not exactly difficult to 1v1 a Deci sadly

Poor buggers need a cost reduction

/agree

I was about to state that a Lambda shuttle could 1v1 a decimator these days. Poor VT49 got its sack snipped.

5 minutes ago, Koing907 said:

? That doesn't address the weakness of the ship. It just makes it cheaper.

Front arc + single mobile arc instead of no front and a bowtie would have been perfect.

16 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

when thane literally 1v1's a decimator and wins every time, yes he is a hard counter to them.....

Lol, you can't blame Thane for the Decimator's problems.

I'd challenge you to name anything the Deci is currently good against.

Again, you're not thinking about how Thane's ability actually works here. The deci has no way of denying Thane a focus token short of a bump, which would mean they're not shooting at each other anyway. So against a zero agility ship where your rolls literally cannot be countered except by a reinforce token, why would Thane not simply focus and push as much damage as possible through every single turn?

The idea of the Hull Breach or Fuel Leak chain is much worse than the reality of what Thane would actually be doing in terms of damage turn by turn in the average game.

1 hour ago, GuacCousteau said:

His ability can only very rarely actually do damage, and you need to do damage to win.

I get what you are saying but doing damage is not always linked to doing cards. Having to do nothing but roll a single result and you get a pick from available. Direct hit is great but other crits can absolutely set you up for a hammering and since thane is int 5 there are precious few ships that would have to shoot before him. It’s not the damage from him that concerns me it’s the setup with almost no cost but in arc and roll a non blank on 3 dice. That’s where I was coming from. People hated Kylo for a different but similar reason. Exploiting crits just seems a little excessive to me.

I've flown Thane a bunch now, and not got his ability off too much. Either I'm flying against ships with low hull anyway, or they've ended up with crits that stay face-up/my opponent doesn't fix because they don't affect them much, so there's nothing to flip.

Or I get great rolls with him and just let that damage stand instead of spending one.

Only 'cool'/'NPE' card I've managed is the auto-Ion one, but as it was on a Falcon my opponent had enough turns to plan ahead for when he would be ioned and so not get into a bad position.

2 minutes ago, GuacCousteau said:

Lol, you can't blame Thane for the Decimator's problems.

I'd challenge you to name anything the Deci is currently good against.

Again, you're not thinking about how Thane's ability actually works here. The deci has no way of denying Thane a focus token short of a bump, which would mean they're not shooting at each other anyway. So against a zero agility ship where your rolls literally cannot be countered except by a reinforce token, why would Thane not simply focus and push as much damage as possible through every single turn?

The idea of the Hull Breach or Fuel Leak chain is much worse than the reality of what Thane would actually be doing in terms of damage turn by turn in the average game.

Except that he can do both. If Thane rolls focus hit hit and has a Focus token, I'd spend that focus result in a hearbeat to search the existing deci damage cards to find a hull breach or something else, because it's immediate. It makes the two hits that are about to go through so much worse, and it maintains my focus token for defense.