Hey everyone!

I am a new player, drawn to X-Wing by the new Force mechanics and the prospect of being able to fly Jedi fighters! I read the preview article today but am still a little confused by the purple evade action on the Delta-7. Since I am not a practiced X-Wing player, please forgive if this question reveals my ignorance.

Does the purple evade costing a Force charge mean I can take a normal action (e.g., focus) and then spend a Force charge to take an evade action as well? Similarly, does the Delta-7's ability mean I can spend a Force charge to both Focus and barrel roll? If this is correct, can I combine the abilities and spend 2 Force charges to Focus, Evade, and barrel roll after I fully executed a non-stressful maneuver?

Thanks!

We have no way to know for certain until the sets and associated rules updates are released.

Current best guess is that it will simply be an action you can do whenever you can normally do an action, but which has an added penalty of spending a force.

The Delta 7 ship ability is very clear though. You would fully execute your manoeuvre (so it wouldn't work wghen you bump a ship, but would after crossing an obstacle, if you're not stressed), then take your perform action step as normal.

Thanks @thespaceinvader

I will be sad if your best guess is the case. From everything I have gathered, the Evade action in 2.0 is pretty weak, so if it costs both your single action and a Force point, it hardly seems worth it. The article made it sound much better than that, but maybe that's just FFG trying to make it seem better than it is.

I look forward to seeing the official rules update.

16 minutes ago, AeroEng42 said:

Thanks @thespaceinvader

I will be sad if your best guess is the case. From everything I have gathered, the Evade action in 2.0 is pretty weak, so if it costs both your single action and a Force point, it hardly seems worth it. The article made it sound much better than that, but maybe that's just FFG trying to make it seem better than it is.

I look forward to seeing the official rules update.

I am hoping that purple force actions are similar to how Vader chains actions. Instead of any action, tho, it’s just purple actions. Kind of a linked action for force users.

32 minutes ago, JBFancourt said:

I am hoping that purple force actions are similar to how Vader chains actions. Instead of any action, tho, it’s just purple actions. Kind of a linked action for force users.

I understand that FFG is involved here, but...

If it were a force-linked action, wouldn't it appear beside the other actions as a purple linked action, rather than a red linked action?

6 minutes ago, Damo1701 said:

I understand that FFG is involved here, but...

If it were a force-linked action, wouldn't it appear beside the other actions as a purple linked action, rather than a red linked action?

That would be my expectation. I could JUST about see them putting it in as its own action to avoid having to print QUITE so much on the card, and making it auto-linkable in the rules, but I woudl expect they would be more clear with their iconography, given that they put the iconography to do it into the game in the first place.

FFG: We changed Green Maneuvers to Blue, to aid the vision impaired!

Also FFG: Here's a light purple action to go next to your white actions!

Personally I am most curious about the purple action mechanic not because of the evade but because of the Battle Meditation Force upgrade in the Delta-7 expansion pack with its purple Coordinate action 🙂

2 minutes ago, AeroEng42 said:

Personally I am most curious about the purple action mechanic not because of the evade but because of the Battle Meditation Force upgrade in the Delta-7 expansion pack with its purple Coordinate action 🙂

?

2 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

?

One of the pictures in the spread seems to show a Force Slot upgrade that gives a Purple Coordinate action.

And the end of the title that you can barely see looks a lot like Meditation. Between that and the fact it is a Coordinate action, it must be Battle Meditation.

It's in the announcement article for Wave 3

9 minutes ago, Innese said:

One of the pictures in the spread seems to show a Force Slot upgrade that gives a Purple Coordinate action.

Ah. I must have been blind. Bottom right. Shown letters of the upgrade name are "ion". It is certainly a strong likelihood. I wonder if it'll be faction locked or if I could sneak it on Dooku or Ventriss. Even a purple coordinate would be useful for Scum and the Seps.

Personally I was thinking Rey with 3P0 could be quite strong and fun. Get all the dice fixing tokens 🙂

11 minutes ago, AeroEng42 said:

Personally I was thinking Rey with 3P0 could be quite strong and fun. Get all the dice fixing tokens 🙂

Oookaaay… I'll start rooting for it to be faction locked... In my opinion the 2 super aces factions don't need anymore help.

14 minutes ago, AeroEng42 said:

Personally I was thinking Rey with 3P0 could be quite strong and fun. Get all the dice fixing tokens 🙂

Now you have me looking at Rey with 3P0 & Tac Officer...

3 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

Oookaaay… I'll start rooting for it to be faction locked... In my opinion the 2 super aces factions don't need anymore help.

Haha, I am too new of a player to know how broken it might be. I was just theory-crafting based on what I saw on paper. Faction-locked would probably make sense though.

I don't think there has ever been any reason but wishful thinking to suppose that Purple Actions are somehow bonus or surplus to taking a white action. Folks shouldn't get their hopes up.

1 minute ago, theBitterFig said:

I don't think there has ever been any reason but wishful thinking to suppose that Purple Actions are somehow bonus or surplus to taking a white action. Folks shouldn't get their hopes up.

I was always of the hopeful belief that it would allow the action to be taken while stressed (meaning they would have that single action as an option even when other actions were locked out due to stress). As a bonus or 'free' action purple evade would be way too potent.

23 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

I don't think there has ever been any reason but wishful thinking to suppose that Purple Actions are somehow bonus or surplus to taking a white action. Folks shouldn't get their hopes up.

They better be more than just spend a Force charge to take that action as your normal, unstressed action or they will never be used. I would rather spend my action taking a Focus and saving my Force charges for Fine-Tuned Thrusters, changing dice on attack or defense, or the pilot's special ability. If they were just normal actions, it would make the Delta-7's subpar of it contributed to their cost.

I like the idea that they can still be used even while stressed. That would make them worth something.

I’ve been wondering about this too, and posted the following in the article thread on the main board;

The question in my mind for the purple evade is whether or not you can perform it any time you have the opportunity to spend a force token (i.e. while attacking or defending).

The example shown in the picture in the article just states “ Plo Koon spends a Force charge to perform a purple evade action! “, without any further context in regards to timing... being able to spend a force to take an evade token if you blank out on defence would be a quite powerful ability, but also highly thematic for Jedi!

@AeroEng42 as a new you player, you likely didn't see the horrors of 1st edition "token stacking." There were ace type ships that had so many tokens and abilities (offensive and defensive) that effectively gave very little reason to actually roll the dice because the odds were so high that with the token mods available, that the dice would just end up getting all the results that ace needed (Soontir Fel or Grand Inquisitor of 1.0). That also meant because they were "unhittable" that they could just end up in opposing ships firing arcs and not care making them too powerful. If these Jedi had access to a white evade along with their 2-3 stack of Force charges (for the named Jedi), the odds of hitting them with any 3 dice or lower attack become very small. So overall, it's a game balance issue.

Now where the Purple evade can still be valuable is with a Jedi Starfighter that takes the Delta 7B Config where it drops the agility to 2. An evade on a 2 agility ship becomes more valuable for defense as you will likely want to use the remaining force charges potentially on the offense you spent the points on that config for.

24 minutes ago, RStan said:

@AeroEng42 as a new you player, you likely didn't see the horrors of 1st edition "token stacking." There were ace type ships that had so many tokens and abilities (offensive and defensive) that effectively gave very little reason to actually roll the dice because the odds were so high that with the token mods available, that the dice would just end up getting all the results that ace needed (Soontir Fel or Grand Inquisitor of 1.0). That also meant because they were "unhittable" that they could just end up in opposing ships firing arcs and not care making them too powerful. If these Jedi had access to a white evade along with their 2-3 stack of Force charges (for the named Jedi), the odds of hitting them with any 3 dice or lower attack become very small. So overall, it's a game balance issue.

Now where the Purple evade can still be valuable is with a Jedi Starfighter that takes the Delta 7B Config where it drops the agility to 2. An evade on a 2 agility ship becomes more valuable for defense as you will likely want to use the remaining force charges potentially on the offense you spent the points on that config for.

You are right, I didn't experience the insane token stacking in 1.0, but I have heard about it when listening to all the changes made in 2.0. I think my point (and again, this may be my lack of actual experience coming into play) is that if the Evade is basically a white Evade as found on other ships, except that it costs a Force charge, it doesn't seem very good. Mathematically, would it be more advantageous to take a Focus in the hopes of being able to change multiple dice from Focus to Evade or Hit instead of guaranteeing an Evade on a single die? Plus, if you Focus, you would have an extra Force charge available to change a Focus on either defense or attack or to power one of the pilot abilities (like Obi's ability to get that Focus you took as your action right back).

I am not saying the purple Evade has to be a bonus action, but I don't see how it is value added unless spending the Force charge lets you "break the rules" in some way, like the previous idea of still having access to that account even while stressed (effectively the same as Fine-Tined Thrusters in that regard).

4 minutes ago, AeroEng42 said:

if  the Evade is basically a white Evade as found on other ships, except that it costs a Force charge, it doesn't seem very good.

Mathematically, would it be more advantageous to take a Focus in the hopes of being able to change multiple dice from Focus to Evade or Hit instead of guaranteeing an Evade on a single die? Plus, if you Focus, you would have an extra Force charge available to change a  Focus on either defense or attack or to power one of the pilot abilities (like Obi's ability to get that Focus you took as your   actio   n right back).    

This is true of red actions, too. They're worse white actions. They're bad. But they're way better than not having the action at all. It would be a very different perspective if there was an I1 "Republic Test Pilot" that wasn't force sensitive!

But that's fine, because it leads to different playstyles or sets of decisions for those ships. In the Delta 7's case, it's resource management - you have a passive calculate + an action, an evade token, or a boost/roll + an action. On 2/3 force pilots, you then can do multiple per turn but have to carefully mind your recharge rate.

Mathematically, Evade > Focus at 3 green dice or fewer. Even more better for the 2 agility of the Delta 7B config.

For pilots with 2 force or more, Evade+Force is dramatically better than Focus on defense. When you want to not take damage, and you can't reposition out of arc, you can be extremely tanky. It's context dependant, which is fine.

Thanks for the info! That's the part I don't have experience with, gauging the value of a Force charge+Evade action vs a Focus that doesn't cost a Force charge (and I didn't actually work out the probabilities of the dice roll). It's good to know that Evade is still better than Focus on 3 or less defense dice.

3 hours ago, RStan said:

@AeroEng42 as a new you player, you likely didn't see the horrors of 1st edition "token stacking." There were ace type ships that had so many tokens and abilities (offensive and defensive) that effectively gave very little reason to actually roll the dice because the odds were so high that with the token mods available, that the dice would just end up getting all the results that ace needed (Soontir Fel or Grand Inquisitor of 1.0). That also meant because they were "unhittable" that they could just end up in opposing ships firing arcs and not care making them too powerful. If these Jedi had access to a white evade along with their 2-3 stack of Force charges (for the named Jedi), the odds of hitting them with any 3 dice or lower attack become very small. So overall, it's a game balance issue.

Now where the Purple evade can still be valuable is with a Jedi Starfighter that takes the Delta 7B Config where it drops the agility to 2. An evade on a 2 agility ship becomes more valuable for defense as you will likely want to use the remaining force charges potentially on the offense you spent the points on that config for.

3 hours ago, svelok said:

This is true of red actions, too. They're worse white actions. They're bad. But they're way better than not having the action at all. It would be a very different perspective if there was an I1 "Republic Test Pilot" that wasn't force sensitive!

But that's fine, because it leads to different playstyles or sets of decisions for those ships. In the Delta 7's case, it's resource management - you have a passive calculate + an action, an evade token, or a boost/roll + an action. On 2/3 force pilots, you then can do multiple per turn but have to carefully mind your recharge rate.

Mathematically, Evade > Focus at 3 green dice or fewer. Even more better for the 2 agility of the Delta 7B config.

For pilots with 2 force or more, Evade+Force is dramatically better than Focus on defense. When you want to not take damage, and you can't reposition out of arc, you can be extremely tanky. It's context dependant, which is fine.

All of these calculations are against a single attack, with the defender starting from a full force pool before the evade action is paid for... Evade tokens can only be used for 1 defensive roll each and taking a Purple Evade action uses both the action and a mod (the Force Token). It is only useful on a single force token pilot (or if you're down to a single force token), if how it is implied to function in the article is accurate, if you will not have a shot and will only have 1 enemy ship shooting at you.