So there is a bunch of cool new things being speculated upon from what we've seen in the CIS spreads. Many have already jumped on the Grappling Struts configuration and the Networked Calculations ship ability in the Vulture Droid pack, but the thing that caught my eye immediately is the buzz droid token we can see below the ship model. We can also see the 'Discord Missiles' ( proper name for the buzz droid missile ) card next to the Grappling Struts card in the spread.

I've done my best to decipher what the 'Discord Missiles' card text says below; [my guesses in brackets]

"[At the start of the] engagement phase you may spend [1 calculate] token and 1 charge [to launch buzz droids using a] 3 bank left, straight, or right template. This cards charges cannot be recovered"

I guessed start and not end of the engagement phase as that seems to make more sense in my head, but its a 50/50. It does look like a (t) right where the card is overlapped but its hard to see. I've guessed a calculate token as its cost as it would restrict the card to droid ships (Vulture/Hyena/ Tri-fighter) which is canonically accurate, but it also just as easily be a target lock instead. There is also a white restriction block at the bottom of the card we can can just barely see under the grappling strut card. My guess is this will have "Separatists' 'Calculate' restrictions for same reasons.

What do you think the Buzz Droid token will do when triggered? I'm thinking maybe a damage over time tick each round (with a maximum round count) with maybe a clause of doing a certain speed or difficulty manoeuvre in order to 'shake them off'. Or maybe a stress dealing mechanic with a dice roll? e.g. deal a stress and roll a die, on a hit take a damage, on a blank remove the condition etc? This is all speculation of course, but I feel like a dice roll mechanic is a little too 'First Ed', but what do you guys think?

I think you have the card wording correct enough (I think it says "This upgrades charge cannot be recovered" so only a minor difference). As for the template's effect: When overlapped by a ship, that ship rolls (?#) attack dice. On a (or for each) (hit) apply (new token) to that ship . Though we didn't see the new token type in the Vulture droid spread so it could be apply an Ion on a hit, Tractor on a crit and a stress on a focus result.

I think that Buzz Droids would be condition based but considering we don't see a condition token or card in the spread I'm guessing maybe it deals a faceup ship damage card on the person who hit it, that or maybe a console fire. Based off the weird template I wonder if it has the ability to move too.

1 minute ago, Animewarsdude said:

I think that Buzz Droids would be condition based but considering we don't see a condition token or card in the spread I'm guessing maybe it deals a faceup ship damage card on the person who hit it, that or maybe a console fire. Based off the weird template I wonder if it has the ability to move too.

I missed that... Possibly attaches itself to the front or rear of a ship that overlaps and causes mayhem till it is expended or a condition is met?

Yeah, it’s the buzz droid token that has me curious as it can either slot into a base, or be slotted into by a template. Cannot figure out what that’s about.

14 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

I think you have the card wording correct enough (I think it says "This upgrades charge cannot be recovered" so only a minor difference). As for the template's effect: When overlapped by a ship, that ship rolls (?#) attack dice. On a (or for each) (hit) apply (new token) to that ship . Though we didn't see the new token type in the Vulture droid spread so it could be apply an Ion on a hit, Tractor on a crit and a stress on a focus result.

I took the wording from Conner Net which says "This card's charges...". Upgrade makes more sense to me too, but the existing cards wording took precedence.

I like the idea of different triggers depending on dice results.

7 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

I think that Buzz Droids would be condition based but considering we don't see a condition token or card in the spread I'm guessing maybe it deals a faceup ship damage card on the person who hit it, that or maybe a console fire. Based off the weird template I wonder if it has the ability to move too.

Good pick up! That is a cool idea. Maybe its a single trigger but then its attached to the ship until something else overlaps it?

5 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

I missed that... Possibly attaches itself to the front or rear of a ship that overlaps and causes mayhem till it is expended or a condition is met?

Not sure, but it would make sense that they would be a bit annoying to deal with. They are one of the things that I'm most interested seeing revealed. But looking at the spread and the fact the ship comes with a disarmed token I'm going to guess that Energy-Shell Charges does make the ship take a disarm token to recharge the card though I'm sure some people will argue otherwise considering the way it is phrased.

3 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

I'm sure some people will argue otherwise considering the way it is phrased.

I'm one of those. It doesn't say perform a Reload action, it says "Action: Reload this card". Still another good spot with that. I wonder if it could be tied to the buzz droids as a possible result of their mayhem IF it is not tied to the Energy-Shell Charges.

7 minutes ago, BVRCH said:

Maybe its a single trigger but then its attached to the ship until something else overlaps it ?

Ooooo… I like that. Even if it only does little minorly annoying things, playing "hot potato" with buzz droids sounds like it could be interesting.

2 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

I'm one of those. It doesn't say perform a Reload action, it says "Action: Reload this card". Still another good spot with that. I wonder if it could be tied to the buzz droids as a possible result of their mayhem IF it is not tied to the Energy-Shell Charges.

And I'd agree, since well it would come off as a special action to recharge it but the fact it says reload rather than recover a charge brings up some debate. I guess the only reason they are wording it this way, if it is a reload action, is to future proof the card so that it wouldn't just give the Hyena Bomber a white reload action. Hopefully it will be clarified for us.

6 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

Ooooo… I like that. Even if it only does little minorly annoying things, playing "hot potato" with buzz droids sounds like it could be interesting. 

Only question then is can your opponent hot potato the buzz droids to your ships, that would be a bit silly/stupid.

1 minute ago, Animewarsdude said:

Only question then is can your opponent hot potato the buzz droids to your ships, that would be a bit silly/stupid.

That's why I used the word interesting. Generally fun, unless they Tallon or K-Turn one onto you're command vessel. If FFG ingrained IFF into the buzz droid effect I'd be shocked.

1 minute ago, Hiemfire said:

That's why I used the word interesting. Generally fun, unless they Tallon or K-Turn one onto you're command vessel. If FFG ingrained IFF into the buzz droid effect I'd be shocked.

No, they just make it so that the only way to get rid of them is by hitting them in the center eye.

12 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

No, they just make it so that the only way to get rid of them is by hitting them in the center eye.

So three actions and a crit on a red after the third action.

7 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

So three actions and a crit on a red after the third action.

R2's Republic version just auto gets rid of it. He is another card I'm interested to see how they hand for Republic and he will likely be packed in the Rep pack with R4-P17 and whatever the third named Republic astromech is. It would be a bit nasty if they ended up making the Republic R2 a mix of Rebel R2 and BB-8 being charged based but letting you wither recover a shield or perform a boost.

8 minutes ago, Animewarsdude said:

R2's Republic version just auto gets rid of it. He is another card I'm interested to see how they hand for Republic and he will likely be packed in the Rep pack with R4-P17 and whatever the third named Republic astromech is. It would be a bit nasty if they ended up making the Republic R2 a mix of Rebel R2 and BB-8 being charged based but letting you wither recover a shield or perform a boost.

Honestly I'm no sure why he didn't get shown in the spread for the single ship expansion. If his ability is much different from a standard R2 unit (instead of just the extra charge of the Rebel R2-D2 astro slot) I'm going to be surprised. It could be the exact same as Rebel R2-D2.

I was thinking it will make the ship that overlaps it roll dice and tar a maximum of one damage while all other dice force the pilot to spend charge tokens from upgrade cards.

i think this partially due to lack of an “ion bomb” or munitions that deals solely condition damage and it works thematically as R2 would have to fight them off or they could eat into your missile storage.

It would be a nice counter to munitions and not too harsh seeing as reload is more common now, however there would be matches where it’s useless, or it could also apply to force charges as the Jedi use the force to rid themselves of the droids.

2 hours ago, Quadjumper King said:

I was thinking it will make the ship that overlaps it roll dice and tar a maximum of one damage while all other dice force the pilot to spend charge tokens from upgrade cards.

Another cool idea!

Another idea I had was while its attached to the ship you can't use upgrade cards. It's a pretty hefty trigger but it could have an easy remedy. Maybe an action to get rid of the buzz droid?

For Buzz Droid I agree an action to remove them seems fair.

As for what they do...I'm thinking while you have them "attached", you have to treat all maneuvers as one level up in difficulty (Obi-Wan had trouble flying when they fogged up his viewport). And also at the beginning of combat each round you still have them attached, you roll an attack die, and on a hit result you have to discard one of your equipped upgrades on that ship (they were definitely trying to take apart his ship, starting with his astromech).

8 minutes ago, markcsoul said:

For Buzz Droid I agree an action to remove them seems fair.

As for what they do...I'm thinking while you have them "attached", you have to treat all maneuvers as one level up in difficulty (Obi-Wan had trouble flying when they fogged up his viewport). And also at the beginning of combat each round you still have them attached, you roll an attack die, and on a hit result you have to discard one of your equipped upgrades on that ship (they were definitely trying to take apart his ship, starting with his astromech).

I like the maneuver difficulty increase. Swap the discard upgrades part for receiving a token (Ion, Stress, or Disarm) and maybe making all actions done by the ship red until it is removed (red action to do so) would also be a nice addition. It being annoying and disruptive is one thing. Eating an opponent's invested points for them just flying over it with bad RNG is an other, and a bit much in my book. A good way for it to be blanket banned, which should be avoided.

Take away all green maneuvers and you have to take an action to get rid of them?

So... you’re screwed if you’re stressed? I doubt it.

I did speculate that the new red tokens might make maneuvers more difficult, so applying one of those would be interesting (though yes, the Vultures are one of the few packs lacking those tokens.)

17 hours ago, markcsoul said:

For Buzz Droid I agree an action to remove them seems fair.

As for what they do...I'm thinking while you have them "attached", you have to treat all maneuvers as one level up in difficulty (Obi-Wan had trouble flying when they fogged up his viewport). And also at the beginning of combat each round you still have them attached, you roll an attack die, and on a hit result you have to discard one of your equipped upgrades on that ship (they were definitely trying to take apart his ship, starting with his astromech).

I like that idea. I think increasing manoeuvre difficulty and making it an action to resolve is a bit too harsh though. If they were to increase difficulty they'd need an easier way to remove the condition as some ships will be locked down big time, and if you're already stressed it will be impossible to shake.

How about this?

They attach to your ship once overlapped, and you can action to remove it. Whilst attached, once per round at the end of engagement the buzz droids expose one of the ships damage cards?

That way it pseudo increases the difficulty of your moves as you'll want to stay away from red moves to allow to action off the buzz droid, but if you're stressed already you still have access to blue moves. I think it would be pretty thematic as they were just dismantling the Jedi Starfighters in RotS.

Hmm yeah no condition card seems odd to me. Wonder if we will get rules in the Rules Reference for them?

There could still be a condition card. The lack of condition token could be because the buzz droid token stays on (behind) the ship

13 minutes ago, SpiderMana said:

There could still be a condition card. The lack of condition token could be because the buzz droid token stays on (behind) the ship

But why? What does that accomplish that a regular token doesn’t? If someone gets to close to the rear end they transfer? If so, why only the back and not the front or sides, wouldn’t a regular condition token and a rule saying it transfers at range 0 be more in keeping with the rules? What if your dropping a device, your bombs go further because you have buzz droids eating your ship?