Yet another post about the Nantex. Here are my thoughts. Let me know what you think.

And unlike previous boogeymen like Handbrake Han and Tripsilon, Sun Fac has clear and easy counterplay: he can’t do any of his shenanigans against medium or large ships, except repositioning when bumping.

@theBitterFig lol. I love it!

7 minutes ago, Matanui3 said:

And unlike previous boogeymen like Handbrake Han and Tripsilon, Sun Fac has clear and easy counterplay: he can’t do any of his shenanigans against medium or large ships, except repositioning when bumping.

Again, NPE != OP

6 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

Again, NPE != OP

Yep.

13 minutes ago, Matanui3 said:

And unlike previous boogeymen like Handbrake Han and Tripsilon, Sun Fac has clear and easy counterplay: he can’t do any of his shenanigans against medium or large ships, except repositioning when bumping.

Like, if folks feel forced to stop flying small-base ships because of the Nantex, that's also kinda bad.

1 hour ago, Matanui3 said:

And unlike previous boogeymen like Handbrake Han and Tripsilon, Sun Fac has clear and easy counterplay: he can’t do any of his shenanigans against medium or large ships, except repositioning when bumping.

Nope nope nope. This is totally bogus.

For the last time:

LIST BUILDING IS NOT COUNTERPLAY!

If counterplay for a specific list means "Just bring this" then there's nothing you can do once you're already across the table from it. And it also means the the archetype already has a meta-warping effect, which is stupid.

Counterplay means that for any given list, there will be some tactic or another that you can use against it to gain an advantage. There are certain archetypes (any 3-4 ship mostly-small-base list, so basically anything rebel, resistance, republic, FO, or empire) that really don't have anything they can do once they're on the table across from triple-ensnare or Sun Fac + Vultures. "Bring a different list" is the worst possible kind of advice you can give someone to beat a list.

1 hour ago, theBitterFig said:

Yep.

Like, if folks feel forced to stop flying small-base ships because of the Nantex, that's also kinda bad.

Seriously, I want medium-large ships to be viable just as badly as anyone (pour one out for the YT-2400 again...) but an absolute hard-counter for non-swarm small ships is not the right way to make that happen.

Honestly I think that the Nantex on its own is quite a cool and wholesome piece of design; you have tremendous action economy if you're okay with reducing your own agility. You have a great attack if you can land a bullseye without a banked boost. You have a tremendous area of coverage, but only with two dice and if you plan well or are okay with reduced agility again. You can even move yourself after bumping, but with no tokens and reduced agility, do you really want to, or is R0 a safer bet for you? It's all cool and unique. At first.

But Ensnare is the stupidest most brainless bit of design in a long time. It takes absolutely everything that balances the chassis and turns it around into a broken-powerful positive asset, for a small fraction of the chassis's cost. Now the thing can effectively double-barrel-roll, then reduce an opponent's agility after being blocked . It's like giving the TIE Interceptor a talent to pass off the Autothruster Stress after a reposition; utterly stupid.

You can't really fix this card without errata. You can price it to where it's almost completely unplayable (multiply it by about 2-3x) but that's kind of sad and takes some flavor from the ship. My favored solution: Move the trigger to the end phase.

Think about it: In the end phase, you're getting to move people around. That's really cool because it gives you new ways to plan and that's super neat and fun. BUT crucially, it still means you have to suffer the consequences . You'll be sitting with reduced agility after you reposition, and you can only reposition once before shots are fired. And with blocks denying your tokens, that means that wrong moves make you really quite vulnerable, especially on 4 hull. And you're not reducing your opponent's agility and moving them around before they shoot, you're just setting yourself up a little better for the next turn after shots are fired. That doesn't kill it, it just makes it considerably fair and more fun to play or play against. It's also a quite small errata that would likely be an easier pill for the devs to swallow.

I'm happy to see that your blog, @MidWestScrub , provides a less "Nantex is so OP" / "this one ship breaks the game" discussion of the ship, unlike so many other posts in the forums - good job!

12 minutes ago, feltipern1 said:

I'm happy to see that your blog, @MidWestScrub , provides a less "Nantex is so OP" / "this one ship breaks the game" discussion of the ship, unlike so many other posts in the forums - good job!

I love @MidWestScrub to death, he's one of my locals, but he's played one game against it with one Nantex in the list. Give him time.

17 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Nope nope nope. This is totally bogus.

For the last time:

LIST BUILDING IS NOT COUNTERPLAY!

If counterplay for a specific list means "Just bring this" then there's nothing you can do once you're already across the table from it. And it also means the the archetype already has a meta-warping effect, which is stupid.

Counterplay means that for any given list, there will be some tactic or another that you can use against it to gain an advantage. There are certain archetypes (any 3-4 ship mostly-small-base list, so basically anything rebel, resistance, republic, FO, or empire) that really don't have anything they can do once they're on the table across from triple-ensnare or Sun Fac + Vultures. "Bring a different list" is the worst possible kind of advice you can give someone to beat a list.

Good point. List-building should not require advance knowledge of what your opponent will play.

2 minutes ago, gennataos said:

he's played one game against it with one Nantex in the list. Give him time.

I'm fully prepared to be wrong in my assessment. Being wrong is a fairly normal state for me, and one I've become comfortable with. Lol.

https://imgur.com/a/82TdCwg

reposting my pinpoint gallery since this thread is now in the Nantex too

tldr turret, plus reposition after bump, plus rotate after reposition, is quite strong

1 hour ago, Matanui3 said:

And unlike previous boogeymen like Handbrake Han and Tripsilon, Sun Fac has clear and easy counterplay: he can’t do any of his shenanigans against medium or large ships, except repositioning when bumping.

I've played Medium/Larges, just being a medium/large doesn't help, it's still a turreted ace that can always repo.

32 minutes ago, MasterShake2 said:

I've played Medium/Larges, just being a medium/large doesn't help, it's still a turreted ace that can always repo.

And let’s not forget that it’s easier to get a shot on a medium or large base to begin with, so you don’t need the reposition, and medium and large bases traditionally have less agility anyway, so the -1 from tractored is less of an issue. You can still pass your token off so you don’t suffer the -1.

I’m not generally a “Sky is falling” kind of guy, and I will not take a knee jerk reaction just a couple weeks after release that the Nantex is a scourge on X-Wing (heck, I love playing Jedi Aces, which a lot of folks hate playing against), but at this point I am a little worried that they will have a meta warping effect and render entire list archetypes non-competitive.

@ClassicalMoser problem with moving Ensnare to end phase is that Sun Fac and Chertek's abilities become blank. They need Ensnare to make their pilot abilities do anything (can't have them rely on a Tractor beam Sith Infiltrator to trigger it).

A better solution (including Pinpoint adding fully) would be to either prevent the re-positioning aspect of Ensnare, or have the timing window for when Pinpoint triggers to be changed, such as System Phase.

" but Sun can be blocked, still reposition, and still get a modified shot out of it."

How can he get a modified shot if he blocks? He loses his action.

I am glad you don't scream the sky is falling. Paying attention to the turret helps you find places to go that are safe. I think people just need to learn to play against it.

I'm OK if the Nantex reduces the number of 2-3 ship lists.

So I'm not sure exactly how FFG plans on correcting this particular issue, but I will say that they've reacted pretty well considering the weight of the decisions they need to make. Triple UPS and Handbrake Han were dealt with, largely based on them being NPE rather than tournament defining. I think with the RRG that we won't see an actual "fix" before worlds, and honestly I don't think we should see such a fix before then even though I'm fully in the camp that Sun Ensnare makes the game not fun to play.

I liked the blog!

2 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

" but Sun can be blocked, still reposition, and still get a modified shot out of it."

How can he get a modified shot if he blocks? He loses his action.

Sure, he losses his action. But he reduces your agility, while also increasing his attack dice. Maybe not a "modded" shot in the traditional sense, but the dice pool is getting modified.

4 hours ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Nope nope nope. This is totally bogus.

For the last time:

LIST BUILDING IS NOT COUNTERPLAY!

If counterplay for a specific list means "Just bring this" then there's nothing you can do once you're already across the table from it. And it also means the the archetype already has a meta-warping effect, which is stupid.

Counterplay means that for any given list, there will be some tactic or another that you can use against it to gain an advantage. There are certain archetypes (any 3-4 ship mostly-small-base list, so basically anything rebel, resistance, republic, FO, or empire) that really don't have anything they can do once they're on the table across from triple-ensnare or Sun Fac + Vultures. "Bring a different list" is the worst possible kind of advice you can give someone to beat a list.

Seriously, I want medium-large ships to be viable just as badly as anyone (pour one out for the YT-2400 again...) but an absolute hard-counter for non-swarm small ships is not the right way to make that happen.

Honestly I think that the Nantex on its own is quite a cool and wholesome piece of design; you have tremendous action economy if you're okay with reducing your own agility. You have a great attack if you can land a bullseye without a banked boost. You have a tremendous area of coverage, but only with two dice and if you plan well or are okay with reduced agility again. You can even move yourself after bumping, but with no tokens and reduced agility, do you really want to, or is R0 a safer bet for you? It's all cool and unique. At first.

But Ensnare is the stupidest most brainless bit of design in a long time. It takes absolutely everything that balances the chassis and turns it around into a broken-powerful positive asset, for a small fraction of the chassis's cost. Now the thing can effectively double-barrel-roll, then reduce an opponent's agility after being blocked . It's like giving the TIE Interceptor a talent to pass off the Autothruster Stress after a reposition; utterly stupid.

You can't really fix this card without errata. You can price it to where it's almost completely unplayable (multiply it by about 2-3x) but that's kind of sad and takes some flavor from the ship. My favored solution: Move the trigger to the end phase.

Think about it: In the end phase, you're getting to move people around. That's really cool because it gives you new ways to plan and that's super neat and fun. BUT crucially, it still means you have to suffer the consequences . You'll be sitting with reduced agility after you reposition, and you can only reposition once before shots are fired. And with blocks denying your tokens, that means that wrong moves make you really quite vulnerable, especially on 4 hull. And you're not reducing your opponent's agility and moving them around before they shoot, you're just setting yourself up a little better for the next turn after shots are fired. That doesn't kill it, it just makes it considerably fair and more fun to play or play against. It's also a quite small errata that would likely be an easier pill for the devs to swallow.

https://giphy.com/gifs/week-media-person-RL0xU1daTlMoE

8 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

I'm OK if the Nantex reduces the number of 2-3 ship lists.

I understand that sentiment.

But I personally love playing 2-3 ship lists.

We all have different types of lists that we enjoy playing, and I hope that the game will continue to move towards more and more stuff being viable in multiple different ways, rather than becoming more restrictive.

1 hour ago, MegaSilver said:

@ClassicalMoser problem with moving Ensnare to end phase is that Sun Fac and Chertek's abilities become blank. They need Ensnare to make their pilot abilities do anything (can't have them rely on a Tractor beam Sith Infiltrator to trigger it).

A better solution (including Pinpoint adding fully) would be to either prevent the re-positioning aspect of Ensnare, or have the timing window for when Pinpoint triggers to be changed, such as System Phase.

If you're following the unofficial rulings yes, if your going by RAW a tractor token applied in the End Phase sticks around till the next End Phase.

20 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

" but Sun can be blocked, still reposition, and still get a modified shot out of it."

How can he get a modified shot if he blocks? He loses his action.

I am glad you don't scream the sky is falling. Paying attention to the turret helps you find places to go that are safe. I think people just need to learn to play against it.

I'm OK if the Nantex reduces the number of 2-3 ship lists.

-1 defence, +1 attack, predator, and 2 calculates from 311/Kraken. In my list.

Palp and coordinate also work, but require the other ship to be somewhere near engagement, whereas carrying a calc in with 311 and Kraken doesn't rely on much proximity and is immune to bumps on the engagement turn if 311 is on a rock.

13 minutes ago, MidWestScrub said:

I understand that sentiment.

But I personally love playing 2-3 ship lists.

We all have different types of lists that we enjoy playing, and I hope that the game will continue to move towards more and more stuff being viable in multiple different ways, rather than becoming more restrictive.

I don't think the Nantex is going to kill off the ability to play High Aces, but I think it is going to make it harder. I think that right now there isn't a natural predator to High Aces and only bad dice or mistakes can lose you the game. So, it's good to see a nice counter to High Aces out in the wild.

13 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

If you're following the unofficial rulings yes, if your going by RAW a tractor token applied in the End Phase sticks around till the next End Phase.

<sigh> Do we have another ruling directly contradicting the official rules?

Just now, JJ48 said:

<sigh> Do we have another ruling directly contradicting the official rules?

This is an old one (back in Jan or Feb this year iirc) from the group of judges jokingly known as the "Illuminati", not FFG (unlike the Cova ruling).