Swarmers get 1-shot all the time. But their high strength in numbers means that the 1-shooting is not game-ending (unlike those infamous pot-shot destroyed arc-dodgers that we all have unfortunate stories about!). A Z-95 has only 1.111... more hit points than a vulture droid, yet the discount X-Wings seem to be doing well (although, anecdotally, I have had experienced/seen some insane luck that enabled 1 shots at the hands of Fangs, Maarek + Vader Crew, or Juke Whisper + Vader Crew). Against ships without pre-maneuver movement (Advanced Sensors, Supernatural Reflexes, Coordinate, Jerjerrod, Adaptive Ailerons, etc.), swarmers are great at blocking, and typically have a spike in playing field advantage when they block (3 greens don't mean all that much when your focus/evade are gone, 3 reds are a lot less impressive when you consider their expected hit count to be 1.5 without mods, reposition is meaningless if you are stuck, etc).

I'm sure they'll be fine. Now the real question is why the V 19 has the old Inquisitor linked actions from 1.0's TIE V1, lol. And with Debris Gambit, often they will perform the literal linked action from 1.0! ClOnEs Op FfG PlZ nErF! lUkE gUnNeR wIlL dEsTrOy Us AlL, dAsH iS tHe SiGn ThAt ThE sKy Is FaLlInG!

5 hours ago, SpiderMana said:

Eesh, tone it back a bit, maybe?

I came here to say this, but with less pretension. There’s no reason for the struts to even be double-sided unless you lose something in flipping the card. A defensive bonus seemed likely, and I hadn’t even noticed their 2-agility.

Defensive and possibly offensive. If defensive only I'm going to be giggling my butt off if the other side is +2 agility. Same for +1 agility, + 1 red against targets in bullseye for primary attacks. I'd be fine with just + 1 green die though.

their chances for survival will be dramatically improved if you play the Bee Gees

your opponent will be too busy grooving to pay attention

1 minute ago, ficklegreendice said:

their chances for survival will be dramatically improved if you play the Bee Gees

your opponent will be too busy grooving to pay attention

Or smashing the stereo depending on their taste.

9 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

their chances for survival will be dramatically improved if you play the Bee Gees

your opponent will be too busy grooving to pay attention

So we already know that Countdown's music when he ability's at 2 hull is by Europe, Vultures are the Bees Gees, but what does that make Deathfire? Walhalla Awaits by Junkie XL?

IMO, the droid swarm will live and die by the support ship(s) that you bring with it. The droid fighters are going to be very weak independantly, but you will have access to ships that will boost the group and give quality to the quantity.

Also, please remember that the CIS faction will be getting its sheathapede ship. I expect this faction to have cheap, small, potent support ships.

2 hours ago, JJ48 said:

Did the Vulture droids have on-board AI? Otherwise, the ships should probably just sit on the table doing nothing until FFG releases some kind of Epic droid-control ship.

The good news is that I'm pretty sure the broadcast range of control ships is larger than the miniscule 3x3 board of X-Wing...

4 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

The good news is that I'm pretty sure the broadcast range of control ships is larger than the miniscule 3x3 board of X-Wing...

Are you sure about that? They thought it was a good idea to put their entire control system in a single ship, with no backups whatsoever on any of the other capital ships in their blockade fleet. My faith in their engineering prowess isn't exactly soaring...

1 minute ago, JJ48 said:

Are you sure about that? They thought it was a good idea to put their entire control system in a single ship, with no backups whatsoever on any of the other capital ships in their blockade fleet. My faith in their engineering prowess isn't exactly soaring...

? You must be fun at parties. And like, I get it's fun to crap on everything. But sometimes it's more fun to just like stuff.


But even if you need to find an in-world explanation for centralized droid command, it took me about thirty seconds to think one up: When your entire army is droid fighters, you have to make sure they are 100% loyal and that they can't or won't be turned against you. Remember that in Star Wars droids are far, far more like autonomous individuals than Roomba vacuums. Starting in ANH and all the way through the franchise, if you want a droid's loyalty you've got to treat it really well and trust it and/or slap a restraining bolt on it. Even the Lars family used restraining bolts on their droids. So if the opposition can bust restraining bolts off of your fighters, suddenly you've got an uprising on your hands (e.g. see: Solo). Even if you trust your droids to stay loyal, they can still have emotions like fear or doubt or defiance that might prevent them from performing as you need to them to (see Threepio's incessant worry or K-2SO's disobeying Cassian's orders to stay with the ship).

So if you want an entire army of droids that you want to have total faith and control over, well then you need to have centralized command that activates, deactivates, and directly feeds commands into the units. Because otherwise you're risking dealing with troops that are unreliable or potentially even mutinous, especially if the enemy can try to turn them.

1 minute ago, JJ48 said:

Are you sure about that? They thought it was a good idea to put their entire control system in a single ship, with no backups whatsoever on any of the other capital ships in their blockade fleet. My faith in their engineering prowess isn't exactly soaring...

In their defense, they never expected the spinning tactic.

It's a good f-ing trick.

1 minute ago, JJ48 said:

Are you sure about that? They thought it was a good idea to put their entire control system in a single ship, with no backups whatsoever on any of the other capital ships in their blockade fleet. My faith in their engineering prowess isn't exactly soaring...

When you take into account that the control ship was in orbit over Naboo and controlling the B1s with only a few relay units on the ground, yah it has the range for the Trade Federation init 1s to function.

17 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

The good news is that I'm pretty sure the broadcast range of control ships is larger than the miniscule 3x3 board of X-Wing...

Well, they did call the droid upgrade a Tactical Relay so maybe it is meant to represent people/droids/ships off of the board acting as a controller for droid ships?

11 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Are you sure about that? They thought it was a good idea to put their entire control system in a single ship, with no backups whatsoever on any of the other capital ships in their blockade fleet. My faith in their engineering prowess isn't exactly soaring...

Just because you buy software and hardware in bulk doesn't necessarily mean you know how to use it or how best to use it.

I’m thinking it might be a good tactic to slow roll the first two rounds, build a nice calculate token pool before coming it to engage. Yes you might lose a ship to enemy fore but if you have four bearing down on a single enemy ship it could eat a lot of damage quickly from a tokened up swarm.

11 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

Just because you buy software and hardware in bulk doesn't necessarily mean you know how to use it or how best to use it.

I'm envisioning a deleted scene of Nute Gunray making a holocall to his grandson, who is trying, very patiently, to explain in simple terms how to reset the wireless router.

17 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I'm envisioning a deleted scene of Nute Gunray making a holocall to his grandson, who is trying, very patiently, to explain in simple terms how to reset the wireless router.

Nute Gunray: "Queen Amidala, you are young, right?"

Amidala: "...Yes."

Nute Gunray: "Good, good, do you know how to set up a droid network? I had my grandson set it up on one of the ships, but I can't figure out how to do it with the others."

Amidala: "Why do you need extensive droid networks on all of your ships?"

Nute Gunray: "... ... Trading..."

21 minutes ago, HelHound said:

I’m thinking it might be a good tactic to slow roll the first two rounds, build a nice calculate token pool before coming it to engage. Yes you might lose a ship to enemy fore but if you have four bearing down on a single enemy ship it could eat a lot of damage quickly from a tokened up swarm.

I can get slow rolling turn one, but Kraken would only let 3 of your ships keep 1 calculate token on them. So at most they can have a bank of 2 tokens on a ship + 1 on the others, or am I just not seeing what you are?

1 hour ago, player3010587 said:

but what does that make Deathfire? Walhalla Awaits by Junkie XL?

Another one Bites the Dust.

9 hours ago, Mangipan said:

What if, and this is crazy right, but what if they had only shown us the Grappling Struts open?

And what if there was a wild universe where generally ships with multiple flight modes like the X-Wing and the U-Wing had increased agility on one side?

Wild, I know. But what if both those things were true and closed Grappling Struts probably offers +1 Agility?

The X-Wing can get increased agility?

7 minutes ago, skotothalamos said:

The X-Wing can get increased agility?

Compare what happens to the wings on an X-Wing when the S-foils are open to what happens to a Vulture Droid's wings when they transition to walk mode. No X-Wings don't gain agility by opening/closing their wings (the T-70 does get more nimble by closing them for some blasted reason) but a Vulture Droid might since it no longer will have them pointing odd directions when closed.

11 hours ago, Forgottenlore said:

Not that I know of, but tournament rules could be different.

Ive certainly been assuming that these will either be fieldable in bigger numbers, or have some gimmick that keeps them alive longer. They are able to share calculate tokens, so no matter which one you shoot at, it will probably have modded defense at least.

From the Tournament Regulations:

Quote

Squad Building (p.2)

Each player must build one squad to use in a tournament. A squad cannot exceed 200 points, though it may contain fewer than 200 points. A legal squad list contains between 2 and 8 ships from a single faction.

I think some folks have read this as being a suggestion rather than a firm requirement, but it looks like a requirement to me.

A hard limit of 8 ships makes a lot of sense to me. These Vultures should be cheap. Z-95 minus a shield upgrade is 17 points. If there isn't a limit in the size of a squad, running like 11 of these might be a problem. But presuming 17 points, a swarm of 7 would still allow 81 points for the 8th ship. That's an impressive mini-swarm plus an impressive ace.

//

Anyhow, I think a lot of us are thinking that some vulture droids will have defensive abilities.

I was also listening to the Mynocks, and there was some concern about a full squad of Vultures with the Energy Shell Charges. I almost wonder if the missile slot won't be on every Vulture. Maybe the ones with Missile upgrade slots are limited to 4 per squad, or they're on two different 2 per squad limited ships, or somethhing. That'd be an interesting way to have both a potent, cost-effective alpha-strike, but at the same time prevent 7 or 8 missile attacks in the first round of combat.

//

There's just so much we don't know.

However, I think there's a lot of potential in the design of Vultures, and having partly-limited quantities.

Well there is also the problem that you need a crew slot for Kraken somewhere. I guess that means you will need to play the Infiltrator already.

honestly, i hope these droids can have a way to boost their defense a bit more, or they need to be a lot cheaper than a Tie in order to be any good at 2 green dice.

The mentioned Energy shell strike could make them pretty much obnoxious first round however.

Seems like a pretty much all or nothing tactic. Either you lose too much before firing or you do some serious mayhem.

2 minutes ago, ForceM said:

Well there is also the problem that you need a crew slot for Kraken somewhere. I guess that means you will need to play the Infiltrator already.

honestly, i hope these droids can have a way to boost their defense a bit more, or they need to be a lot cheaper than a Tie in order to be any good at 2 green dice

Kraken goes into the Tactical Relay slot, not Crew. Likely the Bulblbubulbub-22 will have one.

3 minutes ago, ForceM said:

Well there is also the problem that you need a crew slot for Kraken somewhere. I guess that means you will need to play the Infiltrator already.

honestly, i hope these droids can have a way to boost their defense a bit more, or they need to be a lot cheaper than a Tie in order to be any good at 2 green dice

Kraken is a Tactical Relay, not a Crew upgrade.

ninja'd!

54 minutes ago, PanchoX1 said:

Another one Bites the Dust.

Dangit. I will still whisper "Witness me..." as he wrecks stuff in his dying breath.

11 minutes ago, eMeM said:

Kraken goes into the Tactical Relay slot, not Crew. Likely the Bulblbubulbub-22 will have one.

„Goooooood“

*Cackling*

33 minutes ago, eMeM said:

Kraken goes into the Tactical Relay slot, not Crew. Likely the Bulblbubulbub-22 will have one.

33 minutes ago, nexttwelveexits said:

Kraken is a Tactical Relay, not a Crew upgrade.

ninja'd!

On that note. We know about Kraken, does anyone have any ideas about the Tactical Relay upgrade that has the BX Commando Droids pictured? Bottom Right of the Squadron Pack spread.