My initial reaction to heroic was "meh how much do I really roll all blanks". But it's new content so I gave it a try in a 4 ship list on all 4 ships. And my opponent and myself were shocked how much I triggered the card.

In the end I still lost the game but it certainly made me reconsider the value of heroic. The issue with it is you really struggle to land big hits, predator for example costs only one point more and can really up the hitting power of your list by taking an average roll and making it good, while heroic sits there picking it's nose.

After trying heroic out I do feel it's worth the 1pt, would it be worth 2pts I would be hard pressed to take it at 2pts especially over predator.

On the a-wing it finds a nice home and feels right. On the x-wing I would probably try and find the points for predator, that ship is allready striving for bullseye do to it's config.

I am supper pro predator so might be projecting my bias pretty hard. What are other people's experiences with heroic so far? Is it worth the price and slot for you?

A small side note: hlc T70's for the win... Now that's a great 4pt investment I was chucking out 4 dice attacks all over the place. (It's kind of anti synergistic with heroic however.)

I love Heroic, it has been so valuable for me and at 1 point even if it saves your ship 1-2 health a game it's worth it.

You also get to sing, "I can be your herooooo baby" at least once per game and become 'that guy' in your local group.

I initially dismissed it, but I've come around. Cheap insurance has a place when none of the other talents are all that amazing. On T70s especially, if you have a Focus, you are very likely to block at least one hit. With 7 HP, it really makes killing them drag on.

7 minutes ago, Icelom said:

A small side note: hlc T70's for the win... Now that's a great 4pt investment I was chucking out 4 dice attacks all over the place. (It's kind of anti synergistic with heroic however.)

Yeah.....regardless of pilot, putting that cannon on the T-70 makes it one heck of a threat. Red Squadron Experts can pack Predator and the Heavy Laser, just for extra pain.

And yes, once you're packing a heavyweight centreline, not taking predator feels a bit dumb. I think heroic can be better on other ships (as much defensively as offensively ) - I agree it's not for landing big hits but for survivability it's nice - going from 0 evades to 1 evade is meaningful in a way going from 0 hits to 1 hit generally isn't.

Okay....random maths time:

• A T-70 with 2 dice and focus gets
  • 0 evades about 14% of the time
  • 1 evade about 47% of the time
  • 2 evades about 39% of the time
• A T-70 with 2 dice, Heroic and focus gets
  • 0 evades about 2% of the time
  • 1 evade about 53% of the time
  • 2 evades about 46% of the time

just about 1 attack in 10 you'll get at least 1 more evade than you would have done.

For an attack coming in:

• A 3-dice attack with focus (a pretty good meter-stick) gets
  • 0 hit/crits about 1% of the time
  • 1 hit/crit about 14% of the time
  • 2 hit/crits about 42% of the time
  • 3 hit/crits about 42% of the time

Combining these two together, the odds of taking damage from such an attack:

• Odds of 0 damage goes from 34% without Heroic to 30% with Heroic
• Odds of 1 damage goes from 38% without Heroic to 41% with Heroic
• Odds of 2 damage goes from 25% without Heroic to 23% with Heroic
• Odds of 3 damage goes from 6% without Heroic to 1% with Heroic

Or to put it another way, it's a mild boost to damage resistance but a particularly big boost to the odds of not taking maximum damage from a shot . That's significant because a T-70 has 7 hit points - if it only ever takes damage 2 hits at a time, it'll take a 4th attack, and either another ship or another turn to bring it down.

It's kind of like using M9-G8 as a defensive tool - forcing an opponent to reroll one die is not very good at reducing the amount of incoming damage (since if they have a focus token the rerolled die still has a 3/4 chance of coming up damage) - but it is VERY good at stopping your opponent inflicting critical hits (which is relevant, for example, if Kylo Ren is doing Kylo Ren things and showing people the Dark Side).

I definitely view it as more of a defensive talent than offensive. Blanking on your two die primary with an A-Wing is annoying, but nothing feels worse than blanking out on three greens.

17 minutes ago, SpiderMana said:

I definitely view it as more of a defensive talent than offensive. Blanking on your two die primary with an A-Wing is annoying, but nothing feels worse than blanking out on three greens.

Plus, defensive boosts tend to be more expensive. Compare Elusive - a 1-die green reroll that you have to jump through a pretty annoying hoop to recover the single charge on.

So, in Warmachine, themes started to take over pretty heavily and a common theme benefit was to get a free solo for every X pts of Y in your list. It's super common to hear someone say, "This solo is pretty meh...but they're great for free."

This is very much how I feel about Heroic. The EPT slot now is best characterized as Situational with very few being meaningful aspects of builds and many of the bonuses being minor. Combine that with the super low price tag for heroic and you have almost no opportunity cost for a pilot to take Heroic. It's pretty meh, but it's great for free.

Best analogy I've come up with for Heroic is that it's cheap car insurance. You pay for it just to take care of the catastrophic accidents. You're not paying for it hoping to actually use it.

Dice always fail, especially those pesky green ones; “Heroic” allows ships the ability to get a mulligan both on offense and defense. At its cost, I believe it’s almost auto-include. Rey/Finn (Finn any 1 agility ship), actually any resistance ship only gets stronger because if you get it to trigger just once a game, it’ll be well worth the EPT slot.

5 minutes ago, Cgriffith said:

Dice always fail, especially those pesky green ones; “Heroic” allows ships the ability to get a mulligan both on offense and defense. At its cost, I believe it’s almost auto-include. Rey/Finn (Finn any 1 agility ship), actually any resistance ship only gets stronger because if you get it to trigger just once a game, it’ll be well worth the EPT slot.

Finn is a good point to raise. Adding an automatic blank is a nasty combination with Heroic.

Kind of hard to use, though - since at the moment only Chewbacca and Han can equip both a Talent and a Crew.

1 hour ago, RStan said:

Best analogy I've come up with for Heroic is that it's cheap car insurance. You pay for it just to take care of the catastrophic accidents. You're not paying for it hoping to actually use it.

While you’re not wrong… I definitely found myself wishing many one-paint results had had just that one more blank... 😜

I guess those are the cases where your car isn’t quite totaled, but if it had been you could’ve gotten a better car. 😂

I have to say I'm still not fully convinced, but I'm coming around to it because it's cheap and there aren't automatically better options for the talent slot (PTL, VI, and Expertise being gone in 2.0), and what @Magnus Grendel is saying.

I'm a tremendous fan of Captain Fairoph (TIE Reaper pilot) because I can stick him somewhere knowing basically for sure he'll live another round. Heroic is somewhat like that - it doesn't decrease that much the expected odds I take damage (it doesn't permit my Poe to just yolo joust a swarm), but it does mean that my generic X-Wing with four hitpoints left can form up on the flank and know for certain that there's no way my opponent's ace gets out of this without being shot by me (I can't get killed before I shoot because the odds of my opponent doing maximum damage are almost zero).

My two cents: Think about how valued Lone Wolf was, especially for its defensive value. At 1 point, getting the defensive side of it is a steal.

5 minutes ago, StriderZessei said:

My two cents: Think about how valued Lone Wolf was, especially for its defensive value. At 1 point, getting the defensive side of it is a steal.

Lone wolf (1st Ed) was much much stronger.

4 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Yeah.....regardless of pilot, putting that cannon on the T-70 makes it one heck of a threat. Red Squadron Experts can pack Predator and the Heavy Laser, just for extra pain.

I just want to point out, Predator is primary weapon only. I ran in to similar disappointment when trying to run 4x B-wings with HLC and Predator.

1 minute ago, Phelan Boots said:

I just want to point out, Predator is primary weapon only. I ran in to similar disappointment when trying to run 4x B-wings with HLC and Predator.

Yup hlc and predator do not play well together. Is a nice spot for heroic on a hlc x-wing just to help on defense and those 2 dice rolls from the primary if you are running the config up.

4 minutes ago, Icelom said:

Yup hlc and predator do not play well together. Is a nice spot for heroic on a hlc x-wing just to help on defense and those 2 dice rolls from the primary if you are running the config up.

Unfortunately Crackshot is also Primary. Otherwise it would be a good alternative to Predator on HLC platforms.

And Marksmanship, while it works with secondary weapons, is nullified by HLC since it rests everything to hits after all dice modification.

There simply aren’t very many talents that work well with HLC.

1 minute ago, It’s One Of Ours said:

Unfortunately Crackshot is also Primary. Otherwise it would be a good alternative to Predator on HLC platforms.

And Marksmanship, while it works with secondary weapons, is nullified by HLC since it rests everything to hits after all dice modification.

There simply aren’t very many talents that work well with HLC.

Heroic does technically work even though it's unlikely to see a quad blank and T-70's can take it, so problem solved! (he says facetiously) I think the moral of this story is "EPT's suck".

6 minutes ago, MasterShake2 said:

Heroic does technically work even though it's unlikely to see a quad blank and T-70's can take it, so problem solved! (he says facetiously) I think the moral of this story is "EPT's suck".

Um... T-70s have a hardpoint that allows for a cannon, torp, or missile. So you *could* take T-70s with an HLC and Heroic. But like you said, the odds of blanking out on 4 dice aren’t very high. Something like Elusive would be a better EPT on them.

...or Trick Shot, if you think you can get enough use off of HLC railguns through obstacles.

Just now, It’s One Of Ours said:

Um... T-70s have a hardpoint that allows for a cannon, torp, or missile. So you *could* take T-70s with an HLC and Heroic. But like you said, the odds of blanking out on 4 dice aren’t very high. Something like Elusive would be a better EPT on them.

...or Trick Shot, if you think you can get enough use off of HLC railguns through obstacles.

Yes and both Elusive and Trick Shot will probably come up about as much as Heroic, so I standy by my assertion: EPT's suck

As a Silencer main, I've been admiring in jealousy the card since it was announced. But on the other hand, the T70 needs some love to avoid rolling its double blank greens. And Lulo agrees.

This is where gateofstorms really shines. Go to the ship durability, and you'll see the strengths of Heroic. It's a cheap insurance policy to crazy variance.

For a 7 health, 2 agi unmodded ship, against 3 die focused attacks, you die in 3 shots about 8.5% of the time with heroic, or 12.5% of the time without.

4 shots: 34% with heroic, 42.5% without

5 shots: 62% with heroic, 70.5% without

6 shots: 82% with heroic, 87.5% without

So, heroic doesn't help a ton, but it pushes down the 3-4 shot variance enough that it'll be noticeable. For 1 point, it's great.

guys. STOP TELLING EVERYONE.

LET MY OPPONENTS THINK I AM A FOOL

5 hours ago, SpiderMana said:

I definitely view it as more of a defensive talent than offensive. Blanking on your two die primary with an A-Wing is annoying, but nothing feels worse than blanking out on three greens.

You're wrong.

Blanking out on four greens feels much worse. Happend to me twice. In the same game.

P.S. on Corran Horn.

8 hours ago, Icelom said:

Lone wolf (1st Ed) was much much stronger.

No freaking duh.

I'm just saying getting a free re-roll of a single die for just one point and the blank out stipulation is still really good, compared to 1E's point cost and range from allies requirement.