I was looking at some of the unique non character squadrons from the CC box, and I thought it would be interesting if they weren't unique. Some of them are pretty good, others seem like a novelty that don't get used much. I wonder if that would change if you could bring multiples. Some of them I think might be a bit op (Gold Squadron) but I think most would be fine and add some interesting options. Here are my thoughts on them:

Rouge Squadron - seems pretty good, probably not op, good alternative to the lancer or YT-2400.

Green Squadron - generalist, decent bomber and ok vs other squads. I'd probably stick with normal A-Wings for anti squadron use, but I could see bringing a bunch of these by themselves.

Dagger Squadron - makes B-Wings able to defend themselves better, seems kinda meh but could be worth using.

Gold Squadron - this is the one that I think might be broken if you had more than one. Faster than a B-Wing and almost as much damage for 2 points less.

Black Squadron - escort with counter is interesting, but 3 hp makes me think they wouldn't be great in groups. They also lose swarm which isn't good with all the buffs Imperial squadrons can get for swarm.

Saber Squadron - not sure if this would be op, strong, or just fine. It can use the TIE interceptors good anti squadron value from safety.

Tempest Squadron - seems similar to Green squadron, but more expensive. I'm not sure if its a good deal, I'd probably stick with separate fighters and bombers in this case.

Gamma Squadron - switching heavy for grit is nice, but is it really worth the extra point?

I'd be interested to see if y'all think most of these would be too strong or just add some nice alternatives.

Something else I considered is making them all cost 1 point more to make them non unique. I think some of the stronger ones might be better balanced in this case, but I'd be worried others would be too expensive to be worth using over current options. Thoughts? (obviously this would be used as a house rule, most likely using normal squadron bases, maybe with a marker to indicate they are different)

Or have some squadrons like in X-wing as a limited amount

For those squads their strength and weakness is that they are unique.

For both factions, they are a nice way to burn a couple points if you don't care about your bid.

Rebel, it was mostly to synergize with aces lists.

Imperials? The best use I found was to add additional triggers to trip my opponent up. Forgetting the escort on black, or that gamma doesn't have heavy, etc, can turn the tables on a game. I never felt the rebel squads we're quite as good at that.

As to making the special squads not unique? I think more squad models would be better. Just to avoid the confusion caused by the above point.

RS Quasar-II with Gamma spam would be a thing. The biggest drawback to TIE Bomber spam right now, IMO, is that they can't provide squadron defense, and are easily completely neutralized by a very light screen (Ciena, in particular). Spammable Gamma would fix that.

Is that a good thing? I don't know.

Tempest would be amazing. It would be an X-wing that trades 1 blue to hit like a Y-wing and go faster.

I for one always swap out a generic Bwing for Dagger if I have a point. Making Dagger a generic upgrade would almost make the basic Bwing extinct to me.

Multiple Sloane Saber Squadrons with Squall Flight Controllers Quasar would probably be OP.

49 minutes ago, Bertie Wooster said:

Multiple Sloane Saber Squadrons with Squall Flight Controllers Quasar would probably be OP.

Yea, I was thinking the same thing. Thank goodness Saber is unique.

Some very good points, though I think a 1 point increase would fix a few of the potential problems. Some others like saber (rip snipe for imps tho) and gold squad I don't think could be balanced. I guess I will just need to wait for something like CC for squadron 2 packs (maybe R&V, Lando Falcon anyone?). Maybe they can do ace squadrons that are different but not better than current squadrons? Maybe I'll test some of the "weaker" CC squads and see if they could work as non uniques.

Gold and Saber would make the idea broken.
Both are really good already, and being able to use more than one of these would be really strong.

All other are no problem, and could work as non unique.

So one way that you could potentially allow the ID'd squadrons in the CC in greater numbers would be to make them limited 2 (where 1 fleet could have 2 of them in the fleet, but they would be exclusive to that fleet - ie you couldn't have a single Gold squadron Ywing in 2 fleets, but could have up to 2 in one of your player fleets). In order to support this I think you would benefit by increasing their point value by 1.

Just make them have exponentially increasing point values. The first squadron costs what it says on the card. Add a second and it's 1 more point (than what is printer on the card) per squadron. Add a 3rd and it's 2 more points (than what is printed on the card) per squadron.

2 hours ago, thestag said:

Just make them have exponentially increasing point values. The first squadron costs what it says on the card. Add a second and it's 1 more point (than what is printer on the card) per squadron. Add a 3rd and it's 2 more points (than what is printed on the card) per squadron.

I'd still take like 4 Gold Squadrons at 54 points, before even thinking what other squadrons I wanted.

Also if you thought A's and E's were good, imagine 4 Saber Squadrons mulching things with snipe from down town.

13 minutes ago, BiggsIRL said:

Also  if you thought A's and E's were good, imagine 4 Saber Squadrons mulching things with snipe from down town.

I don’t, really... but your point still stands. 😁

3 hours ago, BiggsIRL said:

Also if you thought A's and E's were good, imagine 4 Saber Squadrons mulching things with snipe from down town.

That's the dream! 😍

Just introduce Limited from X-wing: i.e. not unique, but limited by the number of dots in before their name.

But if we go here, why not also fix costs so there is better balance between squads?

On 3/17/2019 at 10:03 PM, Captain Ordo N-11 said:

I was looking at some of the unique non character squadrons from the CC box, and I thought it would be interesting if they weren't unique. Some of them are pretty good, others seem like a novelty that don't get used much. I wonder if that would change if you could bring multiples.

We did just that in our last Campaign. As a rule a player could only buy a unique upgrade if he could spend a veteran token. To make this rule and veteran tokens more useful we allowed to buy multiple non-character squadrons.

A squadron has to kill an enemy and then survive the battle, so there weren't named squadrons in abundance. My Sloane-fleet had 2 Saber Squadrons. And that was no balance issue.

I can only recommend to make a house rule regarding non-character unique squadrons for your campaign or when ever you just play a casual game.

8 hours ago, BiggsIRL said:

I'd still take like 4 Gold Squadrons at 54 points, before even thinking what other squadrons I wanted.

The way I want to price them, 4 Gold squads would cost a total of 60 points. You add to each squadron. It probably doesn't change much tho.

12 hours ago, thestag said:

Just make them have exponentially increasing point values. The first squadron costs what it says on the card. Add a second and it's 1 more point (than what is printer on the card) per squadron. Add a 3rd and it's 2 more points (than what is printed on the card) per squadron.

This is a good idea, will probably try it.

10 hours ago, BiggsIRL said:

I'd still take like 4 Gold Squadrons at 54 points, before even thinking what other squadrons I wanted.

Yeah, since they are basically Scurrg's that lose heavy, grit, and a little anti ship firepower I think they would need to be about 15 points to not make B-wings obsolete. Gold squadron is the biggest problem imo.

10 hours ago, BiggsIRL said:

Also if you thought A's and E's were good, imagine 4 Saber Squadrons mulching things with snipe from down town.

This one I'm not sure about. I pretty much never see or hear of anyone using E-wings (except Corran), so I'm not really sure how well they would do or how often they would be used. I do think they are really strong and can get more buffs than E-wings. So I'm not sure how they should be costed to make them not op but not useless, they still have 3 hp with no defense tokens. Maybe try them at 15 points too?

2 hours ago, Green Knight said:

Just introduce Limited from X-wing: i.e. not unique, but limited by the number of dots in before their name.

But if we go here, why not also fix costs so there is better balance between squads?

This is also a good idea, personally I wouldn't use more than a few of one particular squadron and it would limit spamming of the really op ones.

2 hours ago, Triangular said:

We did just that in our last Campaign. As a rule a player could only buy a unique upgrade if he could spend a veteran token. To make this rule and veteran tokens more useful we allowed to buy multiple non-character squadrons.

A squadron has to kill an enemy and then survive the battle, so there weren't named squadrons in abundance. My Sloane-fleet had 2 Saber Squadrons. And that was no balance issue.

I can only recommend to make a house rule regarding non-character unique squadrons for your campaign or when ever you just play a casual game.

I like this idea best actually. Unfortunately it only works for campaigns but I am definitely stealing it.

Saber is so much better than EWings - apart from the fact it’s cheaper, the extra speed and extra dice make real differences over hull that, in the best of occasions, never gets used... It would have to be more expensive than EWibgs to be considered non unique

If something like this was done, I'd kind want it to be that you can only have 1 generic design per squad type. So if you run X-wings, they need to be either all standard, or all Rogue Squad. Not a mix of them.