I may be jumping the gun here, as I've only had a small chance to use them, but I'd like to take a moment to discuss the NK-7 ion cannons upgrade. For those unfamiliar with it:




After @Ginkapo's never have I ever post, I started thinking about upgrades I never use. (Thank you Gink, that post inspired a wave of oddball fleets I can't wait to try.) Nk-7s were at the top of that list. I think the general consensus is that because of the high cost, crit dependence, the upgrade slot it occupies, and parts of the effect, the card has been largely disregarded, at least as far as I've seen.

A.) High cost. At 10 points it is the most expensive ION upgrade released so far. At 10 points a pop, even putting them on Imperial Raiders starts to add up quick. Considering the effect takes place after defense token are spent, and that the defender decides the token, it's certainly a high price for a small reward.

B.) Crit dependence. This is less of an issue for the Imperials, as taking screed can guarantee you that crit when you need it, but it also limits the commanders this upgrade is useful with. The rebels have it pretty hard especially. With no way to guarantee crits, and limited reroll capabilities, NK-7s are high risk little reward. (considering one of the only ways to reroll for rebels competes for the same slot).

C.) Ion slot. This may be the leading reason this upgrade is rarely taken. The slot is too valuable to waste on things like Nk-7s when Leading Shots competes for the same spot. Even in terms of generating Crit effects, this slot is likely to be occupied by something else. Heavy Ion Emplacements seem to be a popular choice in wave 7, but I've seen Overload pulse, and SW-7s both compete for that slot. Any way you cut it, there is likely something cheaper and more directly useful you can put in that slot.

D.) The effect. Nk-7s take the choice out of the attackers hands making the effect a little weak. Considering everything else above, it certainly doesn't seem worthwhile.


All these points aside, I wanted to build something that gave them a real shot at working. I came up with this:

Snapping Turtle
Author: Darth Sanguis

Faction: Galactic Empire
Points: 386/400

Commander: Admiral Screed

Assault Objective: Most Wanted
Defense Objective: Contested Outpost
Navigation Objective: Dangerous Territory

[ flagship ] Imperial Star Destroyer Kuat Refit (112 points)
- Admiral Screed ( 26 points)
- Avenger ( 5 points)
- Strategic Adviser ( 4 points)
- Fire-Control Team ( 2 points)
- Electronic Countermeasures ( 7 points)
- Heavy Ion Emplacements ( 9 points)
- Assault Concussion Missiles ( 7 points)
= 172 total ship cost

Victory II-Class Star Destroyer (85 points)
- Intel Officer ( 7 points)
- Quad Battery Turrets ( 5 points)
- NK-7 Ion Cannons ( 10 points)
= 107 total ship cost

Victory II-Class Star Destroyer (85 points)
- Intel Officer ( 7 points)
- Quad Battery Turrets ( 5 points)
- NK-7 Ion Cannons ( 10 points)
= 107 total ship cost

= 0 total squadron cost

While this list has an obvious weaknesses to high activation, msu, or squadron lists, in terms of sinking medium and large ships. it shines. I had a chance to play a game with @cynanbloodbane last Friday. He ran a Motti fleet featuring 2 Kuat ISDs, 2 VSD Is with Motti, Strat adviser, and Hondo as his only upgrades.

Obviously this isn't the best fleet to test run against, as it lacks proper threat. The lack of upgrades was an apparent detriment very early in the game when several of Cynan's close range shots rolled blanks on black dice. This aside, when the VSD IIs fired their shots at long range the Intel Officers on his brace ensured that a redirect was being spent. The Nk-7s then ensured that redirect was discarded. By round 3 when my ISD kuat and it's double Crit shenanigans was in range, the shields and defenses of his ships that had been taking shots were completely stripped. It was a blood bath.

This is only the first time I've used this fleet, and it was a massive success. I plan on playing this fleet 9 or 10 more times before I decide if I really like the Nk-7s, but I definitely see some potential.


Has anyone else built a fleet around Nk-7s, or had any success when using them?

I have considered this in a papatine fleet, or add in an intel officer, like you did; you can really strip tokens fast with all that. will it work im not sure, but seams fun.

The problem is that, ok, NK7 is removing the redirect and IO is keeping the brace unspent. They have two redirects, and by the time those are both discarded, they don't have anything to redirect TO.

Try combining IO/NK7 and XI7, so not only are they discarding that redirect, but they're also only getting one point of damage reduction out of it. That limits you to large bases and the VSD2, I guess, and you might find leading shots to be more compelling when you have so many dice in the pool already.

21 minutes ago, rasproteus said:

[...]

Try combining IO/NK7 and XI7, so not only are they discarding that redirect, but they're also only getting one point of damage reduction out of it. That limits you to large bases and the VSD2, I guess, and you might find leading shots to be more compelling when you have so many dice in the pool already.

That means...VADER!

20 minutes ago, rasproteus said:

and you might find leading shots to be more compelling when you have so many dice in the pool already.

see

41 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

C.) Ion slot. This may be the leading reason this upgrade is rarely taken. The slot is too valuable to waste on things like Nk-7s when Leading Shots competes for the same spot. Even in terms of generating Crit effects, this slot is likely to be occupied by something else. Heavy Ion Emplacements seem to be a popular choice in wave 7, but I've seen Overload pulse, and SW-7s both compete for that slot. Any way you cut it, there is likely something cheaper and more directly useful you can put in that slot.

lol

That's fair. I must have glossed over that emphasis

9 minutes ago, Darth Veggie said:

That means...VADER!

But honestly, even if you don't need leading shots, HIE is both cheaper and more effective. If NK7 weren't an exhaust-on-use, perhaps it would be more valuable.

Just now, rasproteus said:

That's fair. I must have glossed over that emphasis

But honestly, even if you don't need leading shots, HIE is both cheaper and more effective. If NK7 weren't an exhaust-on-use, perhaps it would be more valuable.

Agreed, and it could be better outfitted that way too. If it weren't an exhaust I'd have taken IOs, gunnery teams, D-caps, and X-i7s in conjunction with it. A little more costly, but WAY more effective.

Hold up. Someone played VSD I’s? Wow.

48 minutes ago, Fuzzywookie said:

Hold up. Someone played VSD I’s? Wow.

One of the strongest ships in the game if you outfit it right. 10/10 can attest @cynanbloodbane's dominator build is a disgustingly powerful ship.

107 points and it will throw 6 black, 2 blue, 3 red with rerolls on blacks.

ECMs and XI7s too.

It's something like this I believe

Victory I-Class Star Destroyer (73 points)
- Dominator ( 12 points)
- Minister Tua ( 2 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- Electronic Countermeasures ( 7 points)
- X17 Turbolasers ( 6 points)
- External Racks ( 3 points)
= 107 total ship cost


Alas, this isn't what he ran, the ones he brought were bare, but they can be good.

Maybe it might be of use on the SSD, where there are spare Ion Cannon slots and a need to burn through Defense Tokens? Except, again, it is an exhaust - so unless you have an Interdictor around it isn't going to be worth it for the three shots you get.

It's been a while but I used NK-7s on a rebel fleet at a tornament once. I don't remeber the whole fleet, but it had two CR90 Bs each with NK-7s and Nym was in there too. I also don't remeber how it did, but I had a fun day.

2 hours ago, Darth Sanguis said:

C.) Ion slot. This may be the leading reason this upgrade is rarely taken. The slot is too valuable to waste on things like Nk-7s when Leading Shots competes for the same spot. Even in terms of generating Crit effects, this slot is likely to be occupied by something else. Heavy Ion Emplacements seem to be a popular choice in wave 7, but I've seen Overload pulse, and SW-7s both compete for that slot. Any way you cut it, there is likely something cheaper and more directly useful you can put in that slot.

I think this is the real culprit. Frankly, the costing of Ion Cannon upgrades has never made any sense to me. Leading Shots is arguably far and away the most valuable ion cannon (on medium/large ships) yet costs the least points, while most other ion cannons are situational and cost between 8-10 points. If most of the ion cannons cost around 6 points and Leading Shots cost 10 points, I think we'd see more diversity in ion cannon selection.

8 minutes ago, Grumbleduke said:

Except, again, it is an exhaust - so unless you have an Interdictor around it isn't going to be worth it for the three shots you get.

I initially liked this idea, but since it would be exhausted through using during the Interdictor's activation, un-exhausting it using the title would do nothing because you won't fire again until the next round.

14 minutes ago, Grumbleduke said:

Maybe it might be of use on the SSD, where there are spare Ion Cannon slots and a need to burn through Defense Tokens? Except, again, it is an exhaust - so unless you have an Interdictor around it isn't going to be worth it for the three shots you get.

I definitely think the SSD is going to use something like HIEs and LS over Nk-7s, even with Papa Palpatine and/or Intel Officers. It just seems more useful that way? But maybe you're right. Definitely testing it once the SSD drops.

13 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I think this is the real culprit. Frankly, the costing of Ion Cannon upgrades has never made any sense to me. Leading Shots is arguably far and away the most valuable ion cannon (on medium/large ships) yet costs the least points, while most other ion cannons are situational and cost between 8-10 points. If most of the ion cannons cost around 6 points and Leading Shots cost 10 points, I think we'd see more diversity in ion cannon selection.

Agreed.

It would be interesting to see ions costed that way. Seeing how rare rerolls are for rebels, I'm kinda surprised LS wasn't priced higher.

There is an odd shortage of ion cannon crit delivery platforms too. Its odd.

Dcap Raiders tend to be the only real users.

as a base I view this item as being the choice of killing an opponents ship or having them discard tokens after they've already had the opportunity to use them. It's a lot of points to spend on mostly messing with an opponent when you have options like leading shots and SW-7's for cheaper and, arguably, more effect effects.

7 minutes ago, dominosfleet said:

as a base I view this item as being the choice of killing an opponents ship or having them discard tokens after they've already had the opportunity to use them. It's a lot of points to spend on mostly messing with an opponent when you have options like leading shots and SW-7's for cheaper and, arguably, more effect effects.

Can I counter this with a question?

When everyone has ECM does extra damage on the attack actually make a big difference to damage taken?

19 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

There is an odd shortage of ion cannon crit delivery platforms too. Its odd.

Dcap Raiders tend to be the only real users.

On larger ships, which other than the raider and the cr90b are the only place you can find ion slots, it seems wasteful to not use something more directly effective. Leading Shots being the major contender. I was hoping for a medium class ion delivery ship, but it seems unlikely at this point.

49 minutes ago, Ginkapo said:

Can I counter this with a question?

When everyone has ECM does extra damage on the attack actually make a big difference to damage taken?

Ugh, i see your point but wouldn't they just start by discarding something lower in priority (contain) assuming they're going to brace anyway?

In reference to sw-7 you'd have the option to only convert to an odd number, causing the maximum damage while still tapping the ecm for that attack.

I'd probably just say ECM is going to impact the situation about the same way(assuming we're trying to kill an ISD), SW-7 gives you flexibility and 5 points while NK-7 is going to kill their contain.

53 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

On larger ships, which other than the raider and the cr90b are the only place you can find ion slots, it seems wasteful to not use something more directly effective. Leading Shots being the major contender. I was hoping for a medium class ion delivery ship, but it seems unlikely at this point.

I want a medium ship sized Gladiator that's 10 or 15 points cheaper than the vic, speed 3, with no real squad capability (1), and armament similar to the interdictor. I'm clearly a crazy person by wanting this ship.

Just now, dominosfleet said:

I want a medium ship sized Gladiator that's 10 or 15 points cheaper than the vic, speed 3, with no real squad capability (1), and armament similar to the interdictor. I'm clearly a crazy person by wanting this ship.

Not really. I was barking up a tree for something similar back in the day... just dug up the thread. Boy, have I matured as a player since then. Crazy. Still the pic below is what became of it.



and this is the thread if you're looking for a good laugh.

Honestly, if some Crit Effects happened before the defender spent defense tokens (e.g. Overload Pulse or NK-7) then they'd probably also be a lot more tempting. Most new players tend to assume that Overload Pulse's effect happens before the Defender spends tokens anyways...

At the very least, it might justify the incredibly high point cost and opportunity cost of these cards, especially given how much effort usually has to go into setting up a reliable Blue Crit.

I remember that thread.... good times.... good times....

The logic behind the upgrade doesn't seem to be in competition with Leading Shots. As everyone who plays the game competitively knows, upgrades and ships tend to pair together, so claims about Leading Shots competing with it are simply fundamentally misunderstanding the game as it stands now.

As Ginkapo notes, the difficulty is partly in Ion crit delivery platforms. It is an old upgrade, so I suspect they were thinking of CR90-Bs and Raider-IIs, and in wave-2, there were a few more interesting things you could do with NK-7s. Unfortunately for NK-7s, the meta has moved on. Even in wave-2, they were extremely expensive for what they did. If it was a flat "pick the opponent's token you want to discard" they might be worth it, but they generally face two problems:

1. The ship that you're criting on is small/medium, and you were just going to kill it easily enough even (or not at all) without the crit effect. Net result is spend 10 points on something else.

2. The ship that you're criting on is large, in which case, they pick their most disposable token (usually the contain, but sometimes a redundant redirect). You then eventually kill them (if you're going to), with relatively minimal help from the NK-7.

3. Even a list with lots of chip damage and stacking token removal effects struggles with the fact that if they pitch a contain first, then a redirect only after they've burned shields, they've basically got the benefit they needed out of that token anyway.

Vergilius has it right