1 minute ago, It’s One Of Ours said:

Exception given to some pilots, ruthless pirate queens, and Decimator captains who have a large bulldozer on their prow.

Feedback Array is... well... yeah... It does have some hefty penalties, however.

To me it seems like a similar intent: You're getting super close-in to wreck your opponent's flight pattern, physically damage them, flip their ship over, etc. In that sense it's kind of thematic.

And I mean I really do get what you're saying. But here's the thing: It's not like you can accurately guess which maneuver was selected, and then still have nothing to do about it . If you accurately predict their maneuver, you can avoid the Ensnare. Remember that the boost is only straight, so there's a very limited number of end locations for the Nantex once dialed (unlike SR or AS Guri and the like). The heat map for a given maneuver is quite straightforward, and if you stay outside of R1, or in their rear arc, OR in their active turret arc, you can be pretty confident you won't get tractored.

Of course, if you guess their maneuver wrong there's all kinds of ways they can punish you, even if they smash into you. That can be un-fun, but it's not like there's nothing you can do about it. Sun Fac can't just "nope" out of a maneuver choice at I6, and his reposition options, while powerful, are still strangely limited.

Seems to me like it’s still too early to judge the power of Nantex despite these changes. In the future, if orangized play become all Nantex lists and large base counters, then, like so many other games who’s metas are defined by “the deck to beat vs the deck to counter the deck to beat”, something is getting nerfed and all will go back to normal, right?

I don't even think Sun Fac or any Nantex is too powerful. If the Nantex plus Ensnare is even remotely competitive it's going to be annoying to play against.

It slows down an already slow game. As an opponent I have to consider all of the enormous possible areas that I could end up tractored and then decide which ones are worth the risk. Then, during the turn, the Nantex player has to decide which of the options works best, then has to decide which of the available tractor targets works, and execute all the stuff there.

Dial setting gets slower, activation gets slower. More decisions isn't necessarily good for the game. Players who want to set up an elaborate Rube Goldberg board state and see what happens are going to love the bejeezus out of the Nantex.

32 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

To me it seems like a similar intent: You're getting super close-in to wreck your opponent's flight pattern, physically damage them, flip their ship over, etc. In that sense it's kind of thematic.

...

You do have a very good point. The heatmap of where the Nantex can eventually end up is considerably more straightforward than other well-known arc-dodger ships. And there is a potential for it to mess itself up if it doesn’t end in a R1 by the end of the activation phase.

Interstingly enough however, someone further up commented about Starvipers having a particularly rough time with them. I tend to staple Adv Sensors to my Starvipers which adds to their unpredictability, but even so... The Nantex in general is an extremely hard-counter to Guri’s natural playstyle and pilot ability, due to how tractor tokens interact with the Starviper’s barrel-rolls. She can engage at R2-3, which will have to be her strategy. But any successful range 1 and arc position token-transfer on her means she’s likely to be swung out of position by 45-degrees and without a shot. Sum Fac is a harder counter to Guri than Midnight has typically been, even in the days when they were Omega Leader.

That’s not necessarily a bad thing... Many aces have hard counters. And in v2 it seems more of an unintended result, as opposed to being a deliberate design choice made because some developer really hates -insert name here- (A.K.A. The Warhammer effect).

32 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

And I mean I really do get what you're saying. But here's the thing: It's not like you can accurately guess which maneuver was selected, and then still have nothing to do about it . If you accurately predict their maneuver, you can avoid the Ensnare. Remember that the boost is only straight, so there's a very limited number of end locations for the Nantex once dialed (unlike SR or AS Guri and the like). The heat map for a given maneuver is quite straightforward, and if you stay outside of R1, or in their rear arc, OR in their active turret arc, you can be pretty confident...

I think you need a vassal zone map of how huge that danger zone is. Very often if you are avoiding that bubble you are avoiding everywhere that gets you a shot. They can also move that arc at their initiative by a significant amount.

4 minutes ago, It’s One Of Ours said:

You do have a very good point. The heatmap of where the Nantex can eventually end up is considerably more straightforward than other well-known arc-dodger ships. And there is a potential for it to mess itself up if it doesn’t end in a R1 by the end of the activation phase.

Interstingly enough however, someon further up commented about Starvipers having a particularly rough time with them. I tend to staple Adv Sensors to my Starvipers which adds to their unpredictability, but even so... The Nantex in general is an extremely hard-counter to Guri’s natural playstyle and pilot ability, due to how tractor tokens interact with the Starviper’s barrel-rolls. She can engage at R2-3, which will have to be her strategy. But any successful range 1 and arc position token-transfer on her means she’s likely to be swung out od position by 45-degrees and without a shot. Sum Fac is a harder counter to Guri than Midnight has typically been, even in the days when they were Omega Leader.

It's true they do represent a pretty hard counter to Vipers and Fangs in particular, and likely other interceptor types. There it becomes a game of who-moves-last, etc.

To be fair though, they are also pretty hard-countered by passive Ion torpedoes, pilots like Longshot, Large ships, high-attack ships, and especially the YT-2400... HAHAHA man if that is ever playable I'll have a field day.

Such hard counters unfortunately do exist in this game. They've mostly been pretty rare up to now, and pricing has typically evened them out. I do think Ensnare is a bit too cheap, but I don't think it will be quite as dangerous as it seems now once we get them figured out a little better.

And if the meta moves toward larger ships, I won't complain at all.

Just now, TasteTheRainbow said:

They can also move that arc at their initiative by a significant amount.

Only if they're okay with reduced agility, and it's still a 2-die attack. Slow-roll them if you expect them to go slow, rush beyond them if you expect them to hurry. You can usually tell by the way their arc is pointing what they want to do; land in their active arc and they won't want to tractor you out of it.

3 hours ago, heychadwick said:

Those aren't helpful comments? Try to engage at at distance. Don't clump all your ships together. Spread your ships out to try to get a wide birth of firing arcs. Try to be smart on the engagement and remember the Rule of 11. Do your best to blast the ship at a further range.

The ship only has 3 Agility and 4 Hull. It has one action a turn that is either a Focus or an Evade. Multiple shots will put a hurt on it, if not kill it outright.

This is how you deal with it. What's so hard to understand? If you want even more in depth see my other comments in the same thread.

This is the part people aren’t understanding. A lot of these comments are talking mid game, it’s the early game where you beat these guys. Do what Heychadwick says, why is everyone jumping to range 1 against a ship that lives in range one? It’s like jousting Fenn at range 1 and getting upset he burns you into a screaming fire while you do nothing against his 4 greens and auto evade.

Just now, Archangelspiv said:

This is the part people aren’t understanding. A lot of these comments are talking mid game, it’s the early game where you beat these guys. Do what Heychadwick says, why is everyone jumping to range 1 against a ship that lives in range one? It’s like jousting Fenn at range 1 and getting upset he burns you into a screaming fire while you do nothing against his 4 greens and auto evade.

A 5-Speed straight followed by a boost forward is a surprisingly-friendly and substantial lunge against anything that’s not slow-rolling in. And yes, everyone should absolutely expect the Nantex to do that maneuver.

4 minutes ago, Archangelspiv said:

This is the part people aren’t understanding. A lot of these comments are talking mid game, it’s the early game where you beat these guys. Do what Heychadwick says, why is everyone jumping to range 1 against a ship that lives in range one? It’s like jousting Fenn at range 1 and getting upset he burns you into a screaming fire while you do nothing against his 4 greens and auto evade.

They have 3 Agility. When the green dice fail, it's an easy focus fire to victory at R3. When the green dice are on, it's functionally only possible to push damage through at R1, which is exactly where they kill you.

This is 1.0 Fenn w/ AT all over again, where unless you catch Fenn at R2 AND the dice cooperate, you're not doing damage, and you probably only get one good chance at it all match if the opponent knows what they're doing. Dice variance will keep the Nantex from taking over the top tournament meta, but the inability to meaningfully block them is going to mean a lot of unlucky people are going to play as well as could be reasonably expected and still get crushed.

18 minutes ago, It’s One Of Ours said:

And yes, everyone should absolutely expect the Nantex to do that maneuver.

I mean the proof is in the pudding. You can probably guess what they're wanting to do at any given point. That's useful because it lets you deny it to them.

Most of the time I can see a 5-straight-boost coming a mile away on Interceptors and A-Wings. In this case, you have two safe arcs to be in if you don't want to get tractored.

And not getting to bank on the boost is really an enormous handicap for these guys and their final positioning.

14 minutes ago, RampancyTW said:

This is 1.0 Fenn w/ AT all over again, where unless you catch Fenn at R2 AND the dice cooperate, you're not doing damage, and you probably only get one good chance at it all match if the opponent knows what they're doing. Dice variance will keep the Nantex from taking over the top tournament meta, but the inability to meaningfully block them is going to mean a lot of unlucky people are going to play as well as could be reasonably expected and still get crushed.

Like 1.0 Fenn w/ AT... no. No it's not. They're not pulling free evades out of anywhere. If you do happen to have a large ship along, be my guest and block them. If you don't then you probably have 4 ships or so and can shoot 3-4 times at R3. Focus gives out, green dice give out. Everything gives out over time. If he chases you, it's not too hard for most things to run away or just match speed to jump behind him. Again, you can scatter. If you do let him dumpster one of your ships, you should be taking advantage of the situation to focus-fire him from his disadvantaged position.

What I haven't seen anyone say yet is that there strictly isn't counterplay for this ship. But notably, blocking isn't usually a part of that counterplay, and guessing the chosen maneuver is about 95% of what it takes to beat him, which can prove difficult given how many he has available. In my mind though, that's some of the best X-Wing has to offer.

I agree in that they’re not like Fenn from v1 with Autothrusters. They’re more like a mini-Dash, in a small ship, with tractor beams. I say that because there’s nothing stopping them from zooming through an asteroid, and tractoring themselves into Range 1 so that they can Ensnare, except the potential damage from the asteroid itself.

I’m totally going to fly them through a space potatoe just to throw my opponent on to the space potatoe.

2 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Like 1.0 Fenn w/ AT... no. No it's not. They're not pulling free evades out of anywhere. If you do happen to have a large ship along, be my guest and block them. If you don't then you probably have 4 ships or so and can shoot 3-4 times at R3. Focus gives out, green dice give out. Everything gives out over time. If he chases you, it's not too hard for most things to run away or just match speed to jump behind him. Again, you can scatter. If you do let him dumpster one of your ships, you should be taking advantage of the situation to focus-fire him from his disadvantaged position.

What I haven't seen anyone say yet is that there strictly isn't counterplay for this ship. But notably, blocking isn't usually a part of that counterplay, and guessing the chosen maneuver is about 95% of what it takes to beat him, which can prove difficult given how many he has available. In my mind though, that's some of the best X-Wing has to offer.

Sigh. Of course it's not literally the same thing in terms of ship capabilities. The point is that if variance protects them at range, there's not much you can do since the way to definitively beat high-agility aces is to pin them down and deny them tokens/exits. Otherwise it's just dice since you can't guarantee spike damage higher than their defenses.

I have a pretty good track record facing them so far, but it's not fun to play against them. Four rounds of position jockeying followed by two rounds of combat where had the dice trends not been in my favor I would have had a really bad time re-engaging despite successfully lining up the perfect engage where I could not be tractored into a bad position.

That's why it's like 1.0 Fenn. You sell out for the goldilocks engagement and hope the dice agree, because after that the game mechanics are going to favor the ship moving last that gets to ignore the downsides of being at R1 and can murder you extra-hard.

1 hour ago, MasterShake2 said:

Takeaways:

My original plan on gas clouds as the obstacle pick was both to improve long range durability and to keep from removing my own options for maneuvering. That reflex was spot on and these clouds were incredibly important every game. Interestingly, I observed that the gas clouds tend to be some of the narrowest obstacles, so it's actually easy and common to barrel roll or boost all the way to the other side of the cloud, so you don't even get the negative effect next turn either. These games have mostly cemented my opinion that rocks are a greed play with trip Nantex and you should definitely be taking gas clouds because, if you're tractoring people, you're already winning and you don't need to tractor them on a rock to beat the **** out of them. With a Nantex + droids, it's a lot more debatable.

Looks like the Rules Reference update just stopped you getting an action after going through your gas clouds. Still good for defence while you close the gap though.

49 minutes ago, Alarum said:

Looks like the Rules Reference update just stopped you getting an action after going through your gas clouds. Still good for defence while you close the gap though.

Only asteroids and debris fields are listed below "While a ship is not executing a maneuver, if it moves through or overlaps an obstacle, it suffers an effect based on the type of obstacle (after resolving its move, if applicable):", so gas clouds are not affected by this new rule.

1 hour ago, Mighty said:

Only asteroids and debris fields are listed below "While a ship is not executing a maneuver, if it moves through or overlaps an obstacle, it suffers an effect based on the type of obstacle (after resolving its move, if applicable):", so gas clouds are not affected by this new rule.

It seems like a mistake that it doesn't work like the others but it looks like you are correct.

Suppose the transfer of orange tokens from one ship to another was so difficult to carry out, it was "straining" (=gain a strain token) for the ship performing that transfer.

Then the use of Ensnare would add a strain token to ex. Sun Fac, thus either limiting the manouvers he had to perform the following round or (somewhat) keep the agility penalty (at least until shoot at). The Nantex+Ensnare combo would still be very powerfull as you still get to reposition, change your firing-arc, and assign a tractor token to your enemy (pr update without moving him) and take an action, but you dont get off completly free - you are at least strained.

This way it could be curbed per rules update, and not as an errata to the card.

6 hours ago, Mighty said:

Only asteroids and debris fields are listed below "While a ship is not executing a maneuver, if it moves through or overlaps an obstacle, it suffers an effect based on the type of obstacle (after resolving its move, if applicable):", so gas clouds are not affected by this new rule.

Yup, not only did the RRG not stop it, it actually clarified that this totally worked. A quick print screen for those that don't want to look up the PDF:

14 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

And not getting to bank on the boost is really an enormous handicap for these guys and their final positioning.

Definitely. I've been using them as a bughouse swarm of 5 ships rather than with ensnare, but I can add in here that not being able to bank on the boost is bigger than you'd think.

My previous squad was build around strikers, and dear god I'm missing those lovely big swoopy turns. Not being able to change heading at anything above speed 3 feels painful.

5 hours ago, Alarum said:

It seems like a mistake that it doesn't work like the others but it looks like you are correct.

That's because it has no generic effect for landing on it when not executing a manoeuvre. Note that landing on a rock when not executing a manoeuvre doesn't make you skip your action, and making you skip your action is all a gas cloud does .

19 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Definitely. I've been using them as a bughouse swarm of 5 ships rather than with ensnare, but I can add in here that not being able to bank on the boost is bigger than you'd think.

My previous squad was build around strikers, and dear god I'm missing those lovely big swoopy turns. Not being able to change heading at anything above speed 3 feels painful.

I'm going to be honest, these ships would be utterly broken with Ensnare and a normal boost...

2 hours ago, MasterShake2 said:

I'm going to be honest, these ships would be utterly broken with Ensnare and a normal boost...

Agreed. The question is whether they're utterly broken as-is.

Probably still not as broken as Protorps and SR at first release, at the very least. Though I'd like to see Ensnare go up by a good 50% or so.

How did you all get a copy of the Nantex? According to the Upcoming page, it's still in development. 🤣

On 9/18/2019 at 1:29 AM, executor said:

These kinds of plays actually make the game the most like star wars though.

There's always that ace villain pilot that's dominating the fights and watching all the no name heroes getting blown up and then there's the top heroes blowing up all the no name villains.

Then the eventual show down between the main hero and main villain.

Well, two responses I suppose:

1st: That doesn't sound anything like Star Wars, aside from A New Hope with Vader and Luke having a showdown in the trench. Aside from that, across 10 films thus far, there is never a showdown between characters in cockpits on both sides of a battle. Either the heroes are battling/destroying nameless enemy hordes (e.g. Coruscant, Maelstrom, Scariff, Hoth, Endor, Starkiller) or an enemy pilot is wrecking the hero's stuff unopposed (Kylo in TLJ), or the fight starts and ends as a showdown between characters (Obi-Wan vs Fett at Kamino). Setting aside potential EU books and children's cartoons, I cannot think of anytime this sort of dynamic happens in Star Wars outside of Luke/Vader in the trench, and even then it's not like Luke and Vader where dogfighting each other...

2nd : I'm not sure the key to a game that is fun and balanced is to make as much like the movies as possible... otherwise, I mean who would ever play Imperials in Legion? Imperial Troopers would all have an ability during attacking that would read: "cancel all attack dice."