1 hour ago, GuacCousteau said:

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?

Captain Oicunn: I think we just found our counter-counter strategy, boys!

4 hours ago, GuacCousteau said:

How do you recognise that it's useless against low HP ships and not understand why it's a high variance ability?

It's not variance in terms of dice variance, it's variance in terms of result. I.e depending on the list you face you can bring Thane and not get a chance to trigger his ability once, or you can keep stacking it on a high HP ship.

His ability can only very rarely actually do damage, and you need to do damage to win. It requires you to spend a paint result, so it's only worth taking if you don't have a focus token because if you have a focus, it's better to do damage then and there than to gamble them having a direct hit, or on the chain of events required if its a hull breach or fuel leak.

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.

Is he though? It's only one crit. It's not even landing a crit, its flipping a hit that already landed.

Basically his ability is to turn a previously landed hit into a crit. not so earth shattering. everyone calm down.

I fly him with 2 b wings and Kyle because hes init 5. his ability rarely is even useful and has never once been a game winner for me. I think hes fine, maybe a slight points bump just because hes 48 points for an init 5 semi-ace. I use him to outflank lower ps ships while the rest of my list plows forward. He works good for that, and as I say his ability is just an added bonus which only rarely makes any kind of impact.

Have to remember though, hes flipping a crit mid-attack so it can immediately impact said attack.

What if you were attacking a 2agi ship that had 2 cards, spend a focus to look at his cards, and saw the "reduce agility" card? Suddenly he lost an agility even for this attack before he got a chance to defend.

Or if you score all hits against a 0-1agi ship and you see the crit that makes them crits instead? Bam, instant crits.

Its the fact that he can LOOK at them and PICK is the problem. Worst complaint ive gotten from using Brath is the usual "Oh ****** it" when he randomly flips an annoying card over, ive seen people completely lose their **** over Thane flipping the same exact crit over every turn.

Okay, can someone clarify for me the mechanics of this guy? It says WHILE ATTACKING... so does that mean you can literally wait until after the defender has rolled dice?

Attacker rolls

Defender modifies then attacker modifies attack dice.

Defender rolls

Attacker modifies then defender modifies defense dice.

At any time during this process you can trigger Thane's ability???

3 minutes ago, Boba Rick said:

Okay, can someone clarify for me the mechanics of this guy? It says WHILE ATTACKING... so does that mean you can literally wait until after the defender has rolled dice?

Attacker rolls

Defender modifies then attacker modifies attack dice.

Defender rolls

Attacker modifies then defender modifies defense dice.

At any time during this process you can trigger Thane's ability???

Spending a result is part of modifying dice, so Thane needs to do it before defense dice are rolled. If you only have 1 hit against an evade token though, you know you're going to miss.

Yeah Thane has a good ability, but solidly beatable. He can’t flip damage if he doesn’t have shots. Or if you don’t have damage.

I flew against someone the other day with Wedge, Thane, Biggs, and a Red squadron, 3 of which were chain shooting I6. I had Palob, Guru, and an Ion Goon. You know what Thane never did all game? Flip a crit. My opponent got one turn with all four guns in formation. I forced him through rocks at about range 3 from my edge, Guri had blasted up the far side and was hooking around from the 1 oclock position (my perspective, is started at the 4:30 position, he at the 10:30). Engagement was at range 3, two ships in range 3 (Red and Biggs) against a tokened up Palob. Minimum damage. Palob then jammed in hard, and got into range 1 in a manner that forced two blocks. I have prox mines. My Y wing turns up behind Palob for the Ion shots.

Guri gets range 3 flank from the noon position.

Palob takes a damaged sensor from Wedge, but no more. Next turn my opponent has to either eat a prox mine and scatter formation, or eat a rock and scatter. And if he turns up towards Guri, he risks Guri being able to Collision Detector through the center rock and get behind everything.

He avoids the bomb, but his ships are scattered. Two ships do T-rolls through a debris to get shots at Palob, the others get flanked by Guri and Palob as they turned up. The Y gets an Ion on Wedge.

Thane never gets another shot.

It was about using the field and my list to force my opponent into sub optimal encounters. Palob being able to get into range 1 of the world and force two blocks? Well he took heat, and would ultimately die, but my Y skirted the edge, and Guri never rolled defense all game. Rocks, a mine in this case as well, and some control made it so he had to break formation. 3 I6 shots are a lot less scary when 2 of the 3 don’t have arc, or have arc on different things.

Thane could have been bad news, if I let my opponent do what he wanted. Namely let the other three ships take modded shots first and then clean up. Let him fly in a block and use his 4x 3 dice attacks against a single target. That’s what he wanted to do, I just didn’t let him.

Thane is fine, I’ve flown against it several times, with ships allergic to crits (Soontir says hello). You just need a plan, a plan to match your lists strengths.

9 hours ago, JJ48 said:

Sounds a bit like Optimized Prototype; except for not requiring the shot to be a forward primary, not requiring a friendly target lock, and having a choice of which card to flip.

Seeing as thane can't have a shot that's NOT forward i don't see how it's a problem

1 hour ago, millertime059 said:

Yeah Thane has a good ability, but solidly beatable. He can’t flip damage if he doesn’t have shots. Or if you don’t have damage.

I flew against someone the other day with Wedge, Thane, Biggs, and a Red squadron, 3 of which were chain shooting I6.

I6 Chain? Swarm tactics no longer modifies your actual initiative value, so it can't be chained. If your opponent used another trick, though, I'd love to hear about it. (E.G. Wedge uses swarm tactics to make Thane engage at his initiative, 6. Thane then uses swarm tactics on Biggs. Thane is still initiative 5 even if he's engaging earlier, so Biggs will engage at I5).

1 minute ago, Squark said:

I6 Chain? Swarm tactics no longer modifies your actual initiative value, so it can't be chained. If your opponent used another trick, though, I'd love to hear about it. (E.G. Wedge uses swarm tactics to make Thane engage at his initiative, 6. Thane then uses swarm tactics on Biggs. Thane is still initiative 5 even if he's engaging earlier, so Biggs will engage at I5).

Well my opponent told me wrong then! He chained Wedge to red to Biggs.

Thane also had Swarm Tactics so it was marginal difference, it would still be 6,6,5,5. And it only happened once because I forced his ships to scatter.

Palob with the bomb bull rush FTW.

Swarm tactics should still work in that scenario. It doesn't work with roark anymore though since he only makes you engage at I7 instead of treating it as 7.

6 minutes ago, WalrusofDoom said:

Swarm tactics should still work in that scenario. It doesn't work with roark anymore though since he only makes you engage at I7 instead of treating it as 7.

Huh. So they kept swarm tactics as it was, but changed Roark. Weird.

Most likely to prevent chaining your whole squad to I7.

So uh

For those of you saying that Thane is totally fine and never an issue, the problem with him is that once you get a nasty crit (ion, direct hit, panicked, etc.), it no longer matters how well you range or token control. If he ever, ever gets arc on that ship again, you're screwed. If he gets a shot (and you cannot arc-dodge a good opponent forever), welcome to NPE land. One unlucky roll means you have a ship that can no longer engage, which makes getting behind in the points race even harder to come back from.

He should minimum have to spend a hit or crit result (not focus) so there's some actual choice involves, otherwise he ceases to care about mods

8 hours ago, Darth Landy said:

if he's so annoying to you then the obvious answer is to make him your priority target. Right? And he's in an X-Wing for God's sake! These ships aren't that difficult to bring down.

This is great advice in theory. Personally, though, I'm pretty sure I got my red dice from the same place Kylo got his...

Thane is fine, he still dies quickly to concentrated fire. The only thing that irks me slightly is that his Imperial counterpart, Maarek Stele, is more expensive while riding in a slightly inferior ship and having a slighlty worse ability.

Thane's a bit rubbish. His I5 is the best reason to play him.

Apparently losing a game is a NPE, who would have known?

I played Thane last night in two games and never got to use his ability. Enemy ships would be down shields, but I couldn't land hits on the hull. It was very frustrating. I lost both games. I'll admit that either my dice were slightly under or my opponents dice were slightly over in both games, but I was aggravated.

19 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

Ah, remember when people used to cry:

BUT THE GAME IS CALLED X-WING!!!!!

You know, I seem to recall this as well...

Thane will never become a real problem because his ability does nothing initially and then kicks in as the game winds down. So it's usually useless when the game is in the balance, not balance-breaking. There'll be rare games where Thane pulls victory from the jaws of defeat, but they'll be just that, rare.

It is too bad that he's another nail in the coffin holding all the big ships atm. Between stuff like him, bullseye arc abilities and a lack of mobility on most big ships, there's no real reason to bust most of them out until the points shift.

8 hours ago, Marinealver said:

Apparently losing a game is a NPE, who would have known?

Who's talking about winning or losing games?

13 hours ago, RampancyTW said:

One unlucky roll means you have a ship that can no longer engage, which makes getting behind in the points race even harder to come back from.

I mean..you are playing Xwing Miniatures, right?

That's kinda a deal you sign up for with or without Thane

Just look at my ******* name

3 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

I mean..you are playing Xwing Miniatures, right?

That's kinda a deal you sign up for with or without Thane

Just look at my ******* name

Normally with a wounded ship you can still engage cautiously so that further risk is minimized for a round or two but it still contributes.

But Thane doesn't care if you have focus and evade at range 3 through a rock and he has no mods.

Don’t fly Rebels, I’m an Empire guy. I love Thane’s ability. It’s super cool. Yeah it can be powerful but that’s okay. He’s a really interesting ship.

Stuff will die in 2.0. Even aces. Both players need to work hard to kill stuff and keep stuff alive.

On 10/12/2018 at 11:19 AM, Koing907 said:

But I have learned to sleep on strong emotions and not make any decisions on them until cooling off.

But ******, this bugger is the worst NPE I have had in my 4 years of playing X-Wing. Paratanni, Miranda Doni, Pre-nerf Nym Trajectory Sim, don't even come close.

His ability has a very low cost (spend any not-blank result on a dice, triggers before or after modding dice (while attacking...) there is no defense, he gets to pick the flipped damage card, and in an edition with fuel leaks, the flipped crit can be a devastating chain.

I'd rather just concede the match and save myself the frustration. And I've never felt that way about X-Wing before.

Can't you just fly high PS repositioning aces and be fine?