In all the negativity about Nantex flying around I would like to said that I really like the design and the idea. Super cool mechanics. Kudos for the inventor!

Maybe it need some minor tweaks (maybe Sun Fac is too good with potential 5 dice and perfect knowledge) but I would like to see the designers not to overeact.

I feel that I4, I5 and generics are exactly where they should be and (this is bad part) they are even overcosted WITHOUT Ensnare (don't like stapled upgrades).

So keep calm, have fun at Worlds!

See you there!

Totally agree, Nantex are good (Sun is medicore, ensnare makes him good) but tey're far from autowin... really... i mean yes they are shaking meta upside down, but imho possibility to fit upgrade packed Soontir Vader and another High Ps up packed wingman with hge bid, or fat regen jedi is more broken, I am very happy that nantexes are killing it, it will bring Big/Med ships back to meta again. I do not understand all the whining and crying. Cutting them down by points adjusment will be a huge dissapointment for me.

Nantex without ensnare is pretty neat.

3 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

Nantex without ensnare is pretty neat.

Man, Nantex without Ensnare is HARD. I ran a triple Petranaki with Gravitic Deflection and Intimidation escorting a loaded Grievous last week and got wrecked by Wedge/Luke/Biggs. The combination of lower Initiative and fewer red *and* green dice meant the Arena Aces just popped like overripe tomatoes, and then he could hunt down Grievous at his leisure. Ensnare would have given me a chance in corralling and focusing down one of the enemy "Aces," probably. Although, there were quite a few unfortunate crits being thrown around, too. Nantex do not enjoy Panicked Pilot or Disabled Power Regulator, eh?

I guess I am therefore completely agreeing with @Oldpara . Sun Fac is maybe just a touch too good, but all the rest are maybe, maybe, maaaaaaybe a touch overcosted without Ensnare - and generally in a good spot otherwise. I reckon I'll give that little zapper swarm another look-see, maybe swap out Grievous. But it is so much fun flying some solid Interceptor-type ships with such interesting design mechanics.

2 minutes ago, Kleeg005 said:

Man, Nantex without Ensnare is HARD.

Thats pretty much exactly what makes it interesting.

6 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

Thats pretty much exactly what makes it interesting.

I was going to say something snarky, but instead I'll be serious.

I prefer it when the game design makes something hard to play rather than hard to play against. This means that by bringing it, you know that you are setting yourself up for difficulty, but that in the end you can be rewarded for taking on that difficulty. This is the primary problem with Ensnare: it removes pretty much all of that risk, and then turns a ship that normally would fall into the former category and places is firmly in the latter.

So I guess I somewhat agree with the OP: the Nantex is a really cool design, and someone, somewhere in the chain really messed up.

IMO The Nantex is a really cool and good ship. It has a very nice dial, a unique way of firing at enemies. I also think that the pinpoint tractor array is a really interesting mechanic, but FFG should have mention « fully execute » to make it reasonable.

Ensnare is also a very interesting ability. If Sun Fac was init 5, even with ensnare, that wouldn't be a problem. It's the combo of PS6 / ensnare that makes it lethal.

My suggestion ? Higher the ensnare exponentially (more) and a little Sun Fac. I am not sure that Sun Fac ensnare will be on the field at 90-95 points.

My personal experience is that Sun Fac is good but also a huuuuge bet. If you make one mistake he is toasted.

Chertek is my go too now. Juke/Ensnare makes him a good swarm leader and gives you some tools to fight those annoying aces!

To be sure, the ship does some pretty cool stuff. It's kind of a lot like an RZ-2, a fairly mobile but potentially squishy ship with a turret for high time on target.

In a way, the few ways in which it goes a bit too far (ensnare, blocking-resistance) are that much more frustrating. Like, if it was just a boring ship which was a bit too strong, this probably wouldn't be so contentious.

1 hour ago, Kleeg005 said:

Nantex do not enjoy Panicked Pilot or Disabled Power Regulator, eh?

No-one does. But action-dependent ships least of all, I guess.

Intimidation is an interesting choice. If you're not using Ensnare, I suspect trying to close to range 1 is asking for it; at range 2 you're pretty safe from being one-shott-ed, even if using pinpoint tractor array.

5 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

Nantex without ensnare is pretty neat.

Wait....didn’t you just go on a tear about how turrets and easy repositioning were awful for the game?

[insert troll face]

Disclaimer: I’m just trying to be a snarky git (any brits around, please confirm appropriate use of “git”), and this comment is all in good fun. Disclaimer over.

17 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

No-one does. But action-dependent ships least of all, I guess.

Intimidation is an interesting choice. If you're not using Ensnare, I suspect trying to close to range 1 is asking for it; at range 2 you're pretty safe from being one-shott-ed, even if using pinpoint tractor array.

Damaged Engine almost kills them by itself, partly because it's unfixable and prevents using ship ability on all hard turns.

51 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

To be sure, the ship does some pretty cool stuff. It's kind of a lot like an RZ-2, a fairly mobile but potentially squishy ship with a turret for high time on target.

In a way, the few ways in which it goes a bit too far (ensnare, blocking-resistance) are that much more frustrating. Like, if it was just a boring ship which was a bit too strong, this probably wouldn't be so contentious.

^ this is where I'm at. I like the concept, just feel it off the rails somewhat.

52 minutes ago, AngryAlbatross said:

My personal experience is that Sun Fac is good but also a huuuuge bet. If you make one mistake he is toasted.

I think that is the excuse for the busted mechanics though. However ensnare gave it both ways. Ensnare makes it easy to not make a mistake on a ship that is meant to be difficult if you make a mistake. A ship that gets a bunch of actions is sort of a "shrug." A ship that can move, re-position, and get a mod is "normal."

But Nantex/Sun Fac can make a bad move a mistake with an overlap, still get an action and a re-position, and gets to punish/hamper an enemy ship while getting a mod/more dice. That makes it the opposite of a risky bet. The ship can act on both itself and the opponent in the same turn. Not sure why that sort of thing needs continuously explained to game designers as "a problem."

2 hours ago, AngryAlbatross said:

My personal experience is that Sun Fac is good but also a huuuuge bet. If you make one mistake he is toasted.

All Imma say is there's a lot of ships which get even more toasted on one mistake than Sun Fac...

In all the Nantex-hate flying around, let's remember that before Sun Fac, Separatists had no aces worth playing . Maul on the Sithfiltrator was only I5 on a large base cloaking ship (if you used the title) that died very quickly to focus fire and took over half your list. Grievous, although a good flanker, was only I4 with some redeeming qualities (Soulless One title gave it some power coming in from the side, for sure, and beefing it up even further with Hull Upgrade or Impervium Plating gave it the most staying power of any Separatist ship). So I'm going to chime in here and say that Sun Fac makes the Separatists at least semi-competitive against I5 and I6 Force-modded, regen, repositioning Jedi who don't NEED their actions to have fully-modded shots . And for me, that trumps any of the problems that the Fac-checkers are going on about. In my opinion, "the meta-changing menace" needed to be released in order to counter shenAnakins or Obi-"Wanna play chicken?" and in order to keep the Jedi from cornering the market on meta-definition.

23 minutes ago, feltipern1 said:

In all the Nantex-hate flying around, let's remember that before Sun Fac, Separatists had no aces worth playing . Maul on the Sithfiltrator was only I5 on a large base cloaking ship (if you used the title) that died very quickly to focus fire and took over half your list. Grievous, although a good flanker, was only I4 with some redeeming qualities (Soulless One title gave it some power coming in from the side, for sure, and beefing it up even further with Hull Upgrade or Impervium Plating gave it the most staying power of any Separatist ship). So I'm going to chime in here and say that Sun Fac makes the Separatists at least semi-competitive against I5 and I6 Force-modded, regen, repositioning Jedi who don't NEED their actions to have fully-modded shots . And for me, that trumps any of the problems that the Fac-checkers are going on about. In my opinion, "the meta-changing menace" needed to be released in order to counter shenAnakins or Obi-"Wanna play chicken?" and in order to keep the Jedi from cornering the market on meta-definition.

Do I need to point you to the Australian SO? Maybe to all the other events where vulture swarms have won/done well? CIS had competitive builds before the nantex.

9 minutes ago, SnooSnarry said:

Do I need to point you to the Australian SO? Maybe to all the other events where vulture swarms have won/done well? CIS had competitive builds before the nantex.

I'm aware that Separatists are quite competitive - I play them, after all, but it might be better for me to point out that I was specifically referring to aces for the faction, not the faction overall.

3 hours ago, MasterShake2 said:

^ this is where I'm at. I like the concept, just feel it off the rails somewhat.

Same here. I really dig the Nantex. Ensnare as it is currently worded is where my beef lies. I don’t really know how to fix the problem, because a simple points-adjustment is a total cop-out and doesn’t actually solve how anti-enjoyment the Nantex can be when it’s against you.

And tractoring a Starviper should use a normal (straight) barrel-roll.

Up until ensnare, it was a good design

7 minutes ago, feltipern1 said:

I'm aware that Separatists are quite competitive - I play them, after all, but it might be better for me to point out that I was specifically referring to aces for the faction, not the faction overall.

Pilot aces were never a part of the CIS's faction identity. I agree with OP and definitely don't think the sky is falling (especially after the List Fortress goose hunt I went on today during HIPAA training), however, the CIS doesn't need aces to perform well. There is more than one way to win in this game.

8 minutes ago, Whalers on the moon said:

Pilot aces were never a part of the CIS's faction identity. I agree with OP and definitely don't think the sky is falling (especially after the List Fortress goose hunt I went on today during HIPAA training), however, the CIS doesn't need aces to perform well. There is more than one way to win in this game.

The CIS are also probably the only faction that can take a power ace or 2, and support it with the swarmiest swarm to ever swarm in X-Wing. Their ability to out-swarm a tie swarm, despite also having an expensive hyper-performing ace, is astounding at times.

1 hour ago, feltipern1 said:

Separatists had no aces worth playing .

That doesn't justify the ridiculous action economy they've given Ensnare Sun Fac.

17 minutes ago, Frimmel said:

That doesn't justify the ridiculous action economy they've given Ensnare Sun Fac.

Who is the same cost as Vader or Kylo......but dies to a sneeze.

I'll give you that he can do real work. But with that high skill ceiling comes a very high floor.

Soontir is only 54 and no one complains about his action economy......

2 minutes ago, AngryAlbatross said:

Who is the same cost as Vader or Kylo......but dies to a sneeze.

I'll give you that he can do real work. But with that high skill ceiling comes a very high floor.

Soontir is only 54 and no one complains about his action economy......

Soontir can be blocked, and gains a Stress token that he can't immediately pass off to an opponent.