I am interested in adding the option of throwing jam tokens around with some of the best knife fighting, up close and personal aces the game has to offer thanks to the new Chopper Astro in Republic (Anakin being a prime example), but is it worth it over the tried and tested regen?

Has anybody tried going all erratic on their expensive aces yet, and if so how'd it go?

I feel like Chopper is a better candidate on a mid level ship like Mace.

If I bring other aces I want regen. If Anakin is my only ace I’ll take Chop because they’ll bully him and he won’t get to really use r2 enough anyways.

The funny thing is that there's a very real chance that chopper could save you more health than the regen droids earn you back, if you can play it right. Jamming away focuses and APT-locks can do a whole lot towards keeping him alive, and at I6 (after fine-tuned controls) there's a pretty decent chance you'll be able to get range one to at least someone. You can jam away their focus to make sure you initiative-kill them, or jam away their lock so they're throwing 3 dice instead of five, and that's assuming you haven't been able to arc-dodge.

Then again, he can force you to make some poor decisions if you're not smart about it. Arc-dodging is always most important, even if it means you'll be stuck with the jam. At least being jammed is much better than being disarmed when no one is shooting at you. Just don't fall into the trap of staying in arc just so you can pass off the jam token. At I6, it should be easy to know better.

14 hours ago, ScummyRebel said:

I feel like Chopper is a better candidate on a mid level ship like Mace.

I've run chopper on mace twice (with foresight and CLT) as an experiment to see how it worked out. My thoughts are:

• Low initiative makes it easy to trigger chopper (because you can fly to an ace and jam them before they move)
• Mace has a hard time shooting the ship he just jammed (because he often ends up facing the wrong way after flying at them). CLT never triggered in either game
• I got foresight to trigger once each game, but chopper made me fly in a way that didn't work well for foresight. To trigger chopper, I was diving towards the enemy, rather than sitting back and laying a trap with my bullseye arc covering the spots they might want to fly to
• Mace's 3 force were very handy for keeping him alive, as my opponents really wanted to kill chopper. He was a great distraction.

In conclusion, chopper was decent on Mace, but for a 60pt ship I kinda wanted him to pull a bit more weight, especially when you consider that he's essentially doing the same job as captain seevor. Sure, he's sturdier than seevor, but he's not doing that much more.

I'll be trying chopper next on 7B obi with sense. The rough idea is that obi will move last, end at r1 of an opponent, jam them and blast them to bits. Next turn, sense will trigger for free if I got the chopper trigger to work. I'm not 100% sold on sense, because if obi isn't moving last he might have a harder time getting free sense triggers (you want to be r1 of your opponent's starting position for chopper, but r1 of their ending position for sense...), but the benefits probably outweigh the cost, especially if other ships in the squad can make use of it.

I'm also considering putting chopper on anakin for the ultimate jammy ace. I'd probably put spare parts on him too so that he has a defensive option for that turn when he has to flee or can't close to range 1. Ideally, you want to stick in close, but if you have to break off then the spare parts helps protect you from attacks. Plus, it would be nice to actually use spare parts like in the movie.

I'm unsure of Chopper on a Jedi for 2 reasons. A) 7pt is quite a lot. B) Stress from the evade is not great.

Anakin can deal with the stress to a degree but then price maybe becomes a bit more an issue.

And possibly C) Jedi don't tend to stay at R1, so the Jam may trigger on your own ship as much as it does the opponents. Like, when you want to safely acquire a lock.

Just in theory....

I like the idea of it on a Y Wing or an ARC more. Then cost, and in the Y Wings case, the loss of R4 are potential conundrums.

I do think it's a neat upgrade though, balanced decisions are cool.

I really like C1-10P ... I've flown him on Obi with Sense a few times, and being able to fine tune controls into range 1 to jam is cool.

I think the toughest part about using Chopper is striking the balance between when to use the Evade actions. After all, you must use them before you can start throwing out the free jams.

Best case is to have them available in the turns where you get blocked ... then you take the evade and have a good token stack.

I think that the evade tokens, used well either dissuade opponents from targeting the jedi - so you take no damage on your ace, or they save you a health ... they are less feels bad than R2 because once the opponent gets you under half, you can't regen. For that, I think R2 edges it for most use cases ... being able to jump back above half is big in tournament play.

Chopper. For the lols and cuteness. He's lovely.

Chopper is great on Mace and Ahsoka, but I probably wouldn't put him in anyone else. I'd rather have the speed-adjusty droid on Anakin.

I'm keen to try Chop out on Y Wing Anakin. ANd as long as you actually use the evades, he should save just as much damage for less cost (the WD is a bad cost on the Y Wing given the turret).

I'm gonna have to give it some more trials on anyone else, because the stress is expensive, both for other jedi and particularly for non-force-users.

8 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

I'm keen to try Chop out on Y Wing Anakin. ANd as long as you actually use the evades, he should save just as much damage for less cost (the WD is a bad cost on the Y Wing given the turret).

I'm gonna have to give it some more trials on anyone else, because the stress is expensive, both for other jedi and particularly for non-force-users.

The problem with Y-Wing Anakin is that since he doesn't have any way of repositioning before Chopper triggers, he's going to be permanently jammed once the droid goes erratic. I suppose you could make use of that by creating a zone of control, and not performing actions besides roll and reload.

Yeah, as long as I've got my torps off by then i don't massively care, the Y wing has a decent enough dial when it's unstressed that it's going to be tough not to get r1 on something.

Aethersprite anakin is more interesting, though, for sure.

3 minutes ago, thespaceinvader said:

Yeah, as long as I've got my torps off by then i don't massively care, the Y wing has a decent enough dial when it's unstressed that it's going to be tough not to get r1 on something.

Aethersprite anakin is more interesting, though, for sure.

Makes me wonder if Protorp/Instinctive Aim/Chopper/some turret Anakin could be a fun build. Point the turret to the side and evade, roll or reload every turn, throwing dice every which way.

Instinctive aim seems excessive when you're i6.

I don’t know the rest of the build offhand, but a friend was flying Chop on lil’ Ani at the Hyperspace tournament last weekend. Unfortunately he had to leave for a minor family emergency right before the cut, but he would have been 1st or 2nd going into the cut.

His reasoning was that the passive mod granted by the force makes it relatively okay to jam yourself, though I’m sure he also used Ani’s extra barrel roll to help him get the Jam on enemies.

It seems to be very strong on paper to move last and boost into range 1 with Anakin outside of arc, or even inside, Jam and TL. Double mod vs no mod is ok.

C1-10P on Norra ARC-170 seem good? (I may be missing something, as I'm just posting the first thing that pops into my head.)

11 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

C1-10P on Norra ARC-170 seem good? (I may be missing something, as I'm just posting the first thing that pops into my head.)

republic only

you got my hopes up

D'oh!

1 hour ago, Boreas Mun said:

It seems to be very strong on paper to move last and boost into range 1 with Anakin outside of arc, or even inside, Jam and TL. Double mod vs no mod is ok.

I’ll be testing it this week vs regen in my Anakin/Ric/ARC (104th) build and will report back!

Problem with chop on Ys is the godawful selection of blue manuevers

It was obviously designed with Matchstick in mind, but being stressed makes it impossible for the guy to get the most out of his ability (vtg double tap; though the cost means he'll prob NEVER get to use his ability)

So, seems like it's stuck on force users who couldn't get the evade otherwise and whom have force to care less about self jam

Without forcus, self jam is pretty dang bad

I ran chop on 7B obi last night and it was great for bullying a decimator and even hassling Vader a bit. I burned both evades before engaging. I didn't have sense, but it would certainly have been a handy upgrade to have. Against a good enemy player, sense will really help out, and if you get stuck in a bad spot then chopper can be bad news for obi of course, but as long as you're in the thick of it he's a mean hard hitter.

I really like the suggestion of trying chopper on 7B N1 Anakin (perhaps with intimidation?) as he's a cheap and nimble blocker - although I'd also consider a Jedi Knight at roughly that price point.

I would never put chopper on a y-wing. Matchstick can enable his ability with friendly target locks, and Anakin while it works on Anakin it balloons his cost even further and eats up valuable force that he could use on offensive mods.

1 hour ago, gadwag said:

I really like the suggestion of trying chopper on 7B Anakin (perhaps with intimidation?) as he's a cheap and nimble blocker - although I'd also consider a Jedi Knight at roughly that price point

? I think you mean the N1 "spinning is a good trick" Anakin. 7B Anakin is thankfully not cheap and doesn't have the slot for Intimidation.

2 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

Problem with chop on Ys is the godawful selection of blue manuevers

It was obviously designed with Matchstick in mind, but being stressed makes it impossible for the guy to get the most out of his ability (vtg double tap; though the cost means he'll prob NEVER get to use his ability)

So, seems like it's stuck on force users who couldn't get the evade otherwise and whom have force to care less about self jam

Without forcus, self jam is pretty dang bad

Well, Matchstick wants to be locked by his buddies though.

3 hours ago, Hiemfire said:

? I think you mean the N1 "spinning is a good trick" Anakin. 7B Anakin is thankfully not cheap and doesn't have the slot for Intimidation.

Yes, sorry, N1 anakin

I have considered it on 7B anakin, because chopper sure is rude if you move last. You'd want to add precog and a very large bid, and probably spare parts canisters to ditch incoming target locks