X-wings had front/back shields in canon, but if I remember from some quick scenes in the movies, deflectors on larger ships could be rotated in any direction. I wonder why this isn't allowed in the game on ships with the reinforce action? I haven't played too many 2.0 games yet, but already there have been a couple of times where a reinforce action to the port or starboard would have been just the ticket. Good opponents with higher initiative can still play around that with with good flying, but in general I think it'd give some ships (Decimator) a much needed minor boost.

I understand that the tokens are double-sided and show the front or back, but you could just put the token on the side of the ship that is being reinforced. Easy. I wonder why they didn't do this to begin with, now that every ship base has the necessary hatch marks to easily handle right/left sides as well as front/back?

Balance reasons, probably. It is much easier to present a side to an opponent than it is to remain pointed at them consistently. Combined with turret mechanics, if could easily get oppressive. Esp. because it gets significantly harder to position your ships so they can't all be reinforced against.

That's probably why. However, I wonder if it's really turning out that way. I believe the only two ships with turrets that can reinforce are the Decimator and Ghost, and they are both generally considered to be quite terrible at the moment? Seems like they could use a buff. Reinforce was also nerfed considerably in the new edition, since it can't reduce damage to zero anymore. I think maybe they were overly cautious, personally. It is something they could update in the rules with errata if they wanted to, though.

While I'm here, just to clarify how Reinforce works now... let's say I'm an Auzituck Gunship and I'm defending against and attack that dealt 2 hits. I have a reinforce token and I roll 1 evade result on my defense. I would take 1 damage, correct? The evade cancels one hit, and I no longer have 2 or more remaining hits, so the reinforce does nothing.

If I'm understanding it correctly, then Reinforce kind of sucks now.

Yes your understanding is correct.

I think it's a good way to deal with multiple attacks. If you only play against 2 attack dice and are always rolling an evade then you don't need it. If I'd get hit by two protorps then I'd be happy to have reinforce

Reinforcing to the side would be extremely powerful, even on non-turreted ships. It's trivial to protect one side with the board edge and the other with reinforce, making it far more powerful than reinforcing front or rear. It's also much more boring, because it leads to fewer meaningful decisions in the game. The decimator and ghost can be improved with points changes.

8 minutes ago, MikeEvans said:

While I'm here, just to clarify how Reinforce works now... let's say I'm an Auzituck Gunship and I'm defending against and attack that dealt 2 hits. I have a reinforce token and I roll 1 evade result on my defense. I would take 1 damage, correct? The evade cancels one hit, and I no longer have 2 or more remaining hits, so the reinforce does nothing.

Consider the opposite situation: I have a squadron of TIE fighters, all shooting at a first-edition auzituck with reinforce. My TIEs all have focuses and howlrunner is still alive. On each attack, if you roll a single evade result, or I roll a blank, my TIE attack does nothing. Simulating 1.0 reinforce with Norra Wexley, we see that the expected damage at range 2 is only 3.5 , which is absurdly low. The old reinforce makes 2-attack ships irrelevant, instead of merely inferior.

16 minutes ago, MikeEvans said:

If I'm understanding it correctly, then Reinforce kind of sucks now. 

Reinforce is an excellently balanced mechanic now. It still significantly improves the durability of a ship under heavy fire when compared to an un-reinforced ship . It just doesn't ignore 2-attack ships entirely. Consider that evade allows you to block a single hit, while reinforce can block many hits, but still only costs an action.

If the reinforcement was conform to the lore, each ship with active shields could use it. It would give a blue token instead of a green and attacks from the side not reinforced should damage directly the hull.

Interesting observation: you cannot Crack Shot a Reinforce evade. The sequence is that Crack Shot happens first. If you had 2 hits against a reinforced Lambda or Firespray with 1 evade, Crack Shot would do nothing except spend a charge, since Reinforce wouldn't trigger if you didn't crack shot. With 3 hits, it starts to matter, but still.

• While you perform a primary weapon attack, if the defender is in your [bullseye], before the Neutralize Results step, you may spend one [charge] to cancel one [evade] result. (Crack Shot)
• During the Neutralize Results step, if the attack would hit and there is more than one [hit]/[crit] result remaining, one [evade] result is added to cancel one result. (Reinforce, p.15)

Balance as well as ease of tracking, but for me its all about classic lore!

Remember in Star Wars in the Death Star trench Garven Dreis said " Switch your deflector shields on -- double front! " and in subsequent XWING and TIE Fighter games shields only worked front and back. Even in The Last Jedi Admiral Ackbar tells them to put all power to the rear shields. I think the mindset is that shields only go front/back and this is reflected in the rules as well.

I could see it being a costed upgrade. or a new ships unique ability. add a new type of reinforce Left and right double sided token. Because sure you are right, they have added the design space but are not utilising it yet.

Because it would make Reinforce too strong. It is already a very strong mechanic, though a lot of people underrate it just because it's not as good as it used to be in 1.0.

14 hours ago, MikeEvans said:

That's probably why. However, I wonder if it's really turning out that way. I believe the only two ships with turrets that can reinforce are the Decimator and Ghost, and they are both generally considered to be quite terrible at the moment? Seems like they could use a buff. Reinforce was also nerfed considerably in the new edition, since it can't reduce damage to zero anymore. I think maybe they were overly cautious, personally. It is something they could update in the rules with errata if they wanted to, though.

Deci is not terrible, only unforgiving. Tua is a wonderful addition to any decimator, especially RAC for expanding the life span as well as increasing his accuracy (plus, it's completely reactionary at the start of engagement!). Novice tech is some good crit-insurance, as either bad luck or Maarek Stele can easily ruin a day without him (just make those tech decisions very carefully). If you have points to throw around, I highly recommend hotshot turret gunner on RAC, as that would boost survivability as well as the firepower of your other ship (a tricked out stealth, collision, vader whisper is great). Typically, people want to give the initiative away to enhance arc-dodging or pull mileage out of a bid: always a bad move against this list, with Vader triggering before their effects, RAC stripping focus, and Juke pulling mileage both ways out of evade tokens. Don't invest in the bomb, as it isn't that much of a deterrent. Don't take the title unless you're meta is funny, as Tua will trigger even if bumped. Pro torps are ok, but that first action of engagement would best be served by a reinforce, not by a slight increase of damage output (especially with that great RAC ability that works at any range so long as the token corresponds to the target location).

Tactics vary depending your opponent's moves, but an edge-skirting gunship "toilet swirl" works really well for reducing the number and severity of shots whilst offering the collision whisper much room to operate. Although the ship lost speed and is no longer an arc-dodger, the absence of true turrets and reinforce extend its lifetime in general, sometimes not yielding half points. Speaking of half points, hull upgrade is a great investment for the even number of hit points on the ship and the low cost of 3 squad points. Baffle is meaningless so long as you plan your blues properly (which is more dependent on your proper rock placement than anything else) and static discharge vanes are little more than a funny trick.

Also, don't fear tugboats with it, as the tractor ability is meaningless to defense and it takes a whopping 3 tractor tokens to play with your base. Don't fear Wedge with it for the same reason, although try to make him pay for that pro torp on you. Palob loses his edge against you, but 4-Lom actually can pose a threat if you get too close, especially with Tua. Charging against Boba isn't the best strategy unless your whisper is hanging back, but it also isn't the worse against him. TIE Advances and control munitions/weapons become terrifying and don't expect to nick a high defense ship like Soontir or a Defender with the deci's main gun alone. It does lean a little more into a rock paper scissors meta-aspect than nearly anything else in the game, as most pieces simply require decent flying and proper decisions before any "deck building" aspects kick in.

The deci is not bad, as it is just different, and hence misunderstood. Tyler Tippet can tell you more about them.

Edit: replaced all my instances of "kagi" with "tua". Imperial names can be difficult to remember. I meant the reinforce crew, not the lock-grabbing lambda.

Reinforce mostly seems to be an action against multiple shots and Alpha strikes. On Deci and Ghost, it works reliable since you're not likely to get green dice anyway.

Probably the same reason why you can't orient your turret to the 4 diagonal directions as well as the 4 cardinal directions. I mean you could easily house rule them in so a general errata (which will still be likely) can alter those rulings. But that is only if it is determine to be too much of a problem (or a solution to one).

Besides the video game series X-wing (and TIE-fighter) you could only adjust your shields front, rear, or equal, which makes me wonder why the Y-wings don't have the reinforce action . Maybe it could be an astromech. While you have 1 active shields you have the reinforce action. When you exhaust or discard your last active shield token you must discard your reinforce token.

19 hours ago, Marinealver said:

Maybe it could be an astromech. While you have 1 active shields you have the reinforce action. When you exhaust or discard your last active shield token you must discard your reinforce token.

Adds Reinforce while charge is active. 1 Charge.

When you are no longer shielded, remove all reinforce tokens and 1 charge from this card.

Wouldn't be too expensive, but not cheap methinks.

On 10/29/2018 at 1:55 AM, gadwag said:

Consider the opposite situation: I have a squadron of TIE fighters, all shooting at a first-edition auzituck with reinforce. My TIEs all have focuses and howlrunner is still alive. On each attack, if you roll a single evade result, or I roll a blank, my TIE attack does nothing. Simulating 1.0 reinforce with Norra Wexley, we see that the expected damage at range 2 is only 3.5 , which is absurdly low. The old reinforce makes 2-attack ships irrelevant, instead of merely inferior.

I would prefer to meet in the middle: Instead of counting the number of hits after neutralizing results, count the number of hits before rolling defense dice. That way it's not completely worthless to get a single evade result when you're defending.

Example of how it is currently: An attack does two hits. I roll an evade because I was hiding behind a rock. After the neutralize results step, I take one damage and reinforce does nothing.
Example of what I propose: An attack does two hits. Reinforce negates 1 hit. I roll an evade because I was hiding behind a rock. After the neutralize results step, I take zero damage.

In the above second example, Tie Fighters and other two-die attacks aren't totally screwed, because an attack that does one damage will not trigger reinforce. But neither are 1-agility ships (or 0-agiliy guys at range 3 or obstructed) punished by getting no value from good flying (or getting an evade result on their dice). I don't think it would be too strong at all. It only gets questionably too strong when you're getting into 2+ agility. The only 2-agility ship with reinforce I can think of is the Firespray and its action is red.

On 10/29/2018 at 7:56 PM, Marinealver said:

Probably the same reason why you can't orient your turret to the 4 diagonal directions as well as the 4 cardinal directions. I mean you could easily house rule them in so a general errata (which will still be likely) can alter those rulings. But that is only if it is determine to be too much of a problem (or a solution to one).

I have indeed wondered why turrets couldn't do diagonals, and I don't see why they shouldn't be able to. Just the fact that it takes an action to choose a direction for the turret/reinforce, and extra actions are less common, should serve to keep everything in line, especially for the expensive large ships.

It is an easy enough thing for the designers to add to the rules, should they decide to. It wouldn't require them to do anything other than amend the rules.

7 minutes ago, MikeEvans said:

Reinforce negates 1 hit. I roll an evade because I was hiding behind a rock. After the neutralize results step, I take zero damage.

This was why it was changed to what it is now... 2 die attacks have value now where they had none when it worked similar to how you outline...

31 minutes ago, MikeEvans said:

extra actions are less common

Not exactly true. Extra actions might be harder to come by when list building, but look at what's popular and they are just as common on the table.

32 minutes ago, MikeEvans said:

Instead of counting the number of hits after neutralizing results, count the number of hits before rolling defense dice.

I see your argument, but I strongly disagree that it is a "middle ground". Applying reinforce before green dice makes it effectively identical to first edition reinforce if you run the maths.

Reinforce is a powerful tool in second edition and I'm glad to have it. It's one of the things that makes lambdas and firesprays so good. The reason that decimators and wookiees are bad isn't that reinforce sucks, it's that those ships are expesive and no longer have the tools that made them powerful in first edition (boost for the deci and dice-modding crew for the wookiees)

Is it really effectively identical? I scarcely think that my suggested change is anywhere close to the same thing as TIEs needing to get 2+ hits just to do any damage to a reinforced ship. Remember, most of these reinforceable ships have 0 or 1 agility. With my change, a swarm of TIE fighters will still usually deal quite a lot of damage (usually 1 each) en masse against reinforced ships. But a Decimator or Lambda that manages to scrape together some extra defense dice can be rewarded for their trouble. It's not like they'll even usually have a focus to spend, as they spent their action to reinforce (with exceptions like Tua of course). Negating an extra damage here and there when you scrape together an evade is not going to make these ships immune (or even extra highly resistant) to 2-dice attacks.

The hash marks are there. There is plently of design space for power creep. We'll see a ship with a broadsides bonus, there will be some ship that can reinforce port/starboard. If it is limited it can be janky goodness, but as an overall shield mechanic...... That's Armada.

I'm looking forward to seeing ways they play with those hash marks and side arcs. I want to see door gunners shooting out the side arcs of U-Wings!

4 minutes ago, MikeEvans said:

I want to see door gunners shooting out the side arcs of U-Wings!

They'd have to open the doors to do that...

For one, dogfights happen in atmospheric areas... a good number of the ones in the movies, in fact! Any battle where one or both sides is using TIE strikers would probably be like that... why not the same for U-Wings? Also, I'm pretty sure there are scenes of large capital ship batteries shooting out ports that would be open to space if not for force fields. Example images can be seen in the top answer of this quora post: https://www.quora.com/Why-dont-the-ships-in-Star-Wars-have-automatic-targeting-systems

Doesn't seem like much of a stretch that properly-equipped U-Wings wouldn't have similar ports with 1-way fields that hold in the atmosphere (like we see in many Star Wars cargo doors/holds) but allow weapons fire out.

14 minutes ago, MikeEvans said:

capital ship batteries shooting out ports that would be open to space if not for force fields.

Figured you'd bring these up. We haven't seen them on any ships smaller than a frigate (Han's cargo hauler in TFA is frigging huge). It doesn't mean they absolutely don't exist on smaller ships, just that it is extremely unlikely they do.

36 minutes ago, MikeEvans said:

I'm looking forward to seeing ways they play with those hash marks and side arcs. I want to see door gunners shooting out the side arcs of U-Wings!

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