1 hour ago, Cuz05 said:

+1 to all of the above, the Reaper is both fun and effective. Win/Win.

As a note on the Tac Officer, I agree it's not often needed but I'll always put it on if I don't have a better use of the 2pt, (I mostly don't). It just gives a lot more flexibility, even if I only use the white coord once in a game.

If I understand correctly, Tac Officer (White Cord right?) is almost compulsory with Vizier, otherwise you lose over 40% of the dial if you try and use his ability.

1 hour ago, Shockwave said:

If I understand correctly, Tac Officer (White Cord right?) is almost compulsory with Vizier, otherwise you lose over 40% of the dial if you try and use his ability.

Vizier doesn't stress himself. His ability doesn't say to do the coordinate action on his action bar, it just kinda... pulls an ephemeral one out of nowhere. It doesn't say white or red, so it's white. There was an official ruling for it, I'm pretty sure.

1 hour ago, Shockwave said:

If I understand correctly, Tac Officer (White Cord right?) is almost compulsory with Vizier, otherwise you lose over 40% of the dial if you try and use his ability.

Adds white coord, yes. Important to note it doesn't replace the red.

On Vizier, I couldn't really say, not used him yet. Just trying to visualise though, I'd say it doesn't make that much difference. In fact, the red coord gains a little more utility, since you can clear stress with a green if you choose, or perform a white to slow down next turn. It locks out a red move on the current turn but equally, a red move locks out the Coord on the other pilots. It's probably just a matter of planning around it.

3 minutes ago, svelok said:

Vizier doesn't stress himself. His ability doesn't say to do the coordinate action on his action bar, it just kinda... pulls an ephemeral one out of nowhere. It doesn't say white or red, so it's white. There was an official ruling for it, I'm pretty sure.

From the rulings-

Q: If the difficulty of an action is not stated (such as Lando Calrissian [Rebel, Crew]’s unique action or the coordinate action “Vizier” [TIE Reaper] can perform as part of its pilot ability), what is the difficulty of that action?

A: White. However, note that if a ship is instructed to perform an action “on its action bar” this way, it uses the difficulty of the action on its action bar.

Which kinda changes everything I wrote above

2 hours ago, Cuz05 said:

The  other key thing is getting it to survive the 1st/2nd engagement. Once past that, I've found it can last a fair while as it's really difficult for the opponent  to keep guns on it. I've had a number of games where it just carries on scooting about on 1 or  2 hull and being a pain  .

This is absolutely true. You have to be very cautious on the first engagement. The reaper is so much faster than any other ship in your list. It's very easy to hang them out on an island before the rest of your fleet gets there.

One other tip..

When you are going to to an adapt bank and a "3" speed. Almost always dial in the three forward. 1 bank + 3 bank almost always overshoots what I meant to do.

I'm almost to the point of writing "do the straight move stupid" on my hand.

1 hour ago, viedit said:

Almost always dial in the three forward. 1 bank + 3 bank almost always overshoots what I meant to do.

I'm almost to the point of writing "do the straight move stupid" on my hand.

So much so. I feel it's by far the hardest move to accurately visualise in the game. I've been practicing my guesses a fair bit.

There is obviously a mathematical base length and distance you end up moving to but I forget precisely what it is. I think it's like 3 small bases fwd and 5 in the direction of turn... from front near corner to rear. But if you quote me on that you'd be better off figuring it out yourself and correcting me

5 hours ago, Cuz05 said:

visualise in the game

Pretty sure I am still not used to medium bases.

17 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

Pretty sure I am still not used to medium bases.

That sloop near the corner...clench city.

1 hour ago, viedit said:

That sloop near the corner...clench city.

Similar rule of thumb with Strikers is if your near the edge of the board and want to turn around but are not sure if the 2 sloop will fit....it wont...do the 1 k turn or something else.

17 hours ago, viedit said:

When you are going to to an adapt bank and a "3" speed. Almost always dial in the three forward. 1 bank + 3 bank almost always overshoots what I meant to do.

I'm almost to the point of writing "do the straight move stupid" on my hand.

Do you mean 1 bank + 3 bank in the same direction, or opposite directions? I love being able to go same direction and say, "Surprise! It's the Deathtroopers!" landing in a very unpredictable spot (sometimes, yes, even unpredictable for myself!). My last game they never activated once, but since my opponent was flying Soontir Fel and Duchess, he said after the game that he had to think very carefully about his moves. In hindsight, I realized that the reason he broke off with Duchess was specifically to avoid my Deathtroopers because strikers love to S-loop so much. This got my very close to a win, but ultimately his Darth Vader survived on 2 hull. It was an exhilarating match!

P.S. great topic, @Boom Owl . I had to double check that it wasn't @Magnus Grendel because the format and insights were shockingly similar to his work. In other words: that was an exceptionally well written analysis!

@Boom Owl - awesome run-through.

Really good to see the dissection of the dial, too. I have a few things I remember working out for the striker dial, but the reaper going up to medium base means learning it all over again.

I think it'll be great fun to fly - and yes, it's bloody fast - the ailerons effect means it's (probably?) the only medium based ship capable of an effective 5 forward, and the bank/bank effectively adding a barrel roll during the move is great for skin dancing obstacles.

The Imperials are down a large ship in Hyperspace format at the moment, but then without most of their crew options, it's not exactly that big a deal because who did you need it for? But the reaper is a satisfying heavy fighter as well.

• I think you'll need to segnor more than you used to (losing that speed 1 white turn hurts) but eh.
• Pilots
  • All three named pilots abilities work well on segnors, because if your opponent flips to match you they're probably stressed and hence have no tokens either, and if both sides lack tokens, Captain Feroph & Major Vermeil abilities are amazing.
  • Major Vermeil is brutal because it's an automatic not-a-hit to a hit, which pairs well with Juke - since if they have no tokens, Juke will also kill a rolled evade. You need to get a tokenless target (since if you evade, you're not jamming) by blocking or engaging stressed targets, but he's got one of the biggest guns currently available to Imperials (alongside Pure Sabbac).
  • Feroph......eh. His ability (essentially an automatic evade) is great, and it even triggers when he's defending if you spend your own focus token on the attack, since it's "do you have green tokens now " not "did you have them before you rolled the red dice". Thing is, he's tougher than normal.....but at the moment we don't have Vader, or Palpatine or Sloane - I think he's a great 'VIP transport' waiting for a VIP to protect. He is a great jamming boat, though - whilst Vermeil wants to evade and kaboom things, Feroph can fly into range 1 of multiple targets, jam one, block others, and rely on his ability to keep him alive (unlikely to be 'intact' just be glad of 'alive'...) - I suspect he's the best candidate for death troopers.
  • Vizier being able to co-ordinate a squadmate before looping himself is great, too. A tactical officer is arguably a waste but it does let you co-ordinate before or after your move. He's good with any ace, but particularly the striker aces (who also tend to loop a lot) or the action-hungry TIE/x1-who-aren't-Darth-Vader.
  • Scarif Base Pilot - it's the durability of a B-wing for the price of an X-wing. don't underestimate them as a straight-up combat ship.
• Predator/Crack Shot/Marksmanship - agreed.
  • Aileron ships do have a slight edge with bullseye abilities in that they have multiple ways to get to the same orientation but slightly shifted (bank/straight vs straight/bank, for example) which in theory should help line them up but since you need to pre-plan them, and the reaper can't roll or boost if you guess wrong, I'm not convinced.
• Intimidation - I think I agree with you. It's great, and -1 agility is very powerful - if you can block someone. That depends on actually blocking successfully, and more importantly means you are required to be using one of the two more expensive reapers to get the talent slot in the first place, which is a sizeable hidden cost for a kamikaze blocker.
• Trick Shot - the 'rules queries' have indeed restored the 'you only lose actions when bumping/colliding on your actual dial manoeuvre' ruling.
  • Be warned that it's not copied into the FAQ yet so discuss and/or point out the thread to a TO if you plan on using this during an event.
  • Avoid rocks if you can - that's still a 50/50 chance of damage - but it does restore the reaper's ability to 'debris surf' - aileron across the debris, pick up stress, perform a green move, lose stress again, receive action. The fact that the aileron move is detectably larger since you're now on a medium base makes this easier to pull off but for some reason it still seems to surprise people.
  • Trick shot isn't a great ability but it is, above all, really cheap.
• Juke - I agree this is Vermeil only until we get access to some crew which can provide passive modification (read: Vader, whose ability suits Vermeil and Feroph to a T as well), because great as Juke is, going from a focus on your dice to juking your opponents is actually a downgrade, and frankly even Vermeil's initiative isn't high enough for me to be confident I won't have wanted to spend the evade beforehand
• Ruthless - you missed one! Ruthless is amazing if you've got an acceptably cheap tough ship, or an expendable one. It's full-arc, and again works during red moves. I would suggest both the TIE fighter and the generic reaper qualify, and both are likely to be in an opponent's face (trying for range 1 3-dice attacks or jamming respectively) and I think (hope?) that it might work*.
• I do think Death Troopers are potentially very powerful - if you can block someone's green move, leaving them without an action and not even clearing the stress is annoying as heck. I need practice flying the thing before I commit to this, but I can imagine a scarif base pilot with this and the three 'ace' strikers (or Feroph with generics) might work nicely.
• I'm not sure about ISB slicers. Forcing an opponent to hang onto their jam tokens sounds good, but:
  • You've still got to get to range 1 to jam the target anyway
  • A target only has a jam token 'left' if it hasn't had a token burned off during that turn, meaning either it didn't do a lock or 'green token' action (relatively rare) or you jammed it multiple times (also rare)
  • I'm not saying it doesn't work but it seems a lot more niche in its uses than the Death Troopers
• Informant - yeah. Knowing where an opponent is going lets you tweak your ailerons move to taste. It's not perfect, because unlike a TIE fighter you're aileron moving before your manoeuvre, not rolling after, but it's still a good thing to have, and that goes double if you have multiple low initiative ships in the rest of your squad. Not that TIE swarms are a thing or anything.
• Krennic - Target Lock is a nice-to-have but in and of itself isn't much better than focus - especially since Krennic's Optimised Prototype ability requires you to lock and keep the lock, not spend it shooting someone (or to keep spending your action reacquiring it). I think he's good with striker or advanced aces.
  • The latter don't need to flip cards (since they do an automatic crit on every shot with that lovely advanced targeting computer) but since they only get a 1-die reroll with fire control, and are locking a lot, there's a good chance they will have a 'spare' focus result to spend chipping through shields.
  • The former, Pure Sabbac makes a nice choice for the optimised prototype - 4 dice means you're almost guaranteed a useful die result - it makes him more of a target than he already is, but then you can afford to evade instead of focus.
  • I dunno. Krennic doesn't really grab me without a much higher powered ship. Optimising Vader's TIE/x1 is the one standout option.
• Agree on shield/hull upgrade - especially on Feroph, who should get much more mileage out of an extra hit.

• Tactical officer - good for Vizier (for more timing options) and great for generics. Noting @Kaptin Krunch 's comment - remember that tactical officer adds a white co-ordinate - it doesn't remove your red one; if you really, really want the option of stalling your ailerons for the next activation phase, you always have that, and sometimes it can be useful, since removing the 'speed 1 move plus a medium base width' is a lot of space.

19 hours ago, viedit said:

When you are going to to an adapt bank and a "3" speed. Almost always dial in the three forward. 1 bank + 3 bank almost always overshoots what I meant to do.

I have a game log from 1st edition strikers over on boardgame geek and the number of times I've written "stop going so bloody fast" in the 'lessons learned' is kind of embarrassing. However fast you think an aileron move ship is going, it tends to turn out to be detectably faster - and with the reaper now on a medium base, I'd only reach for a speed 3 move if I'm very, very confident about distances. I think I'm going to be very hesitant to have this thing outside the 'obstacle zone' unless it's either parallel to the board edge or pointing back in...

11 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

Similar rule of thumb with Strikers is if your near the edge of the board and want to turn around but are not sure if the 2 sloop will fit....it wont...do the 1 k turn or something else.

It'll probably cause issues getting past ships you've collided with, but the option of a speed 1 koiogran will help a lot at 'fitting' into the space before a rapidly oncoming board edge...

* I'm actually planning to try a Scarif Base Pilot (Hull Upgrade) with a 4-ship Black Squadron Scout (Ruthless) escort this week, if I make it to store.

3 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Tactical officer - good for Vizier (for more timing options) and great for generics. Noting @Kaptin Krunch 's comment - remember that tactical officer adds a white co-ordinate - it doesn't remove your red one; if you really, really want the option of stalling your ailerons for the next activation phase, you always have that, and sometimes it can be useful, since removing the 'speed 1 move plus a medium base width' is a lot of space.

That one is a key I didn't realise when I used the 2.0 tac officer that comes in the Reaper Pack, it says 'treat your coordinate action as white' which was way worse. Don't make my mistake people!

42 minutes ago, Roundy1161 said:

That one is a key I didn't realise when I used the 2.0 tac officer that comes in the Reaper Pack, it says 'treat your coordinate action as white' which was way worse. Don't make my mistake people!

Quite a few things in the wave 14 packs were wrong. Check the FAQ or the X-wing Wiki before using!

Interestingly the FAQ is silent on that one...

i own three reapers - I need a three reaper list

3 hours ago, freakyg3 said:

i own three reapers - I need a three reaper list

Major Vermeil (49)
Juke (4)

Scarif Base Pilot (41)

Scarif Base Pilot (41)

“Whisper” (52)
Juke (4)
Collision Detector (5)

Total: 196

Made on the fly, but I would try that list...

6 hours ago, freakyg3 said:

need a three reaper list

Scarif Base Pilot (41), ISB Slicer (3) 44

Scarif Base Pilot (41), ISB Slicer (3) 44

Scarif Base Pilot (41), Death Troopers (6) 47

Soontir Fel (52), Stealth Device (8), Predator (2) 62

Total: 197

Jam, block and stress out the opposition and hopefully Soontir never gets hit.

On ‎1‎/‎21‎/‎2019 at 4:14 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

@Boom Owl - awesome run-through.

• • Major Vermeil is brutal because it's an automatic not-a-hit to a hit, which pairs well with Juke - since if they have no tokens, Juke will also kill a rolled evade. You need to get a tokenless target (since if you evade, you're not jamming) by blocking or engaging stressed targets, but he's got one of the biggest guns currently available to Imperials (alongside Pure Sabbac).

Can someone smarter than me explain how Vermeil is getting an Evade to use with Juke? It's not on his action bar, and I don't see anything in his ability to get one.

3 minutes ago, JohnBoo said:

Can someone smarter than me explain how Vermeil is getting an Evade to use with Juke? It's not on his action bar, and I don't see anything in his ability to get one.

4 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

Well, alrighty then. I guess I need to look at the cards, rather than believe what I'm seeing in YASB 2.0!

Weird. It's there for me. Guess the jukes on you.

OK - so I just opened it in Chrome and the Evade is there now - guess the older version of IE I was using is sticking random icons in the action bar! Thanks - thought I was going crazy! (Well even more crazy....)

3 hours ago, JohnBoo said:

Well, alrighty then. I guess I need to look at the cards, rather than believe what I'm seeing in YASB 2.0!

Ooh, the rare Elite Talent action!

I really don't understand the argument for Juke.

Focus plus ability is going to hit harder than juke plus ability.

5 minutes ago, MegaSilver said:

I really don't understand the argument for Juke.

Focus plus ability is going to hit harder than juke plus ability.

Also the note about having trouble lining up Crack Shot after the opening engagement-- which is exactly when you want crack shot going off!

Crack shot is where it's at for him I think, keeps him cheap and hard-hitting, and leaves you free to Jam or Coordinate without wasting 4 points.