Points Balance New Era - Audacious Balance

By Blail Blerg, in X-Wing

FFG has chosen audacious balance/going past break points.

5 Xwings, 6 Ints, 4 Ewings, 22pt Tie Fighters + Howl8swarm, etc.

What this means in this new 6 month era: FFG was looking for a way to speed up the game, increase damage, as it was noted that damage was starting to flag.

Bulk/tank lists will no longer be nearly as effective.
This will slightly affect the power of Ace high Init, especially ones with low firepower (like Repub Triple aces at 8 red dice).

Raw dice on the board now means 15 red dice. This vastly increases the power of low Init, and forces a huge increase in effectiveness of more tactical lists with less dice.

Bwings were no more effective than Xwings, especially with the reduction to tank effectiveness, this makes me surmise that Bwings will be BAD for the next 6 months. (Especially also that the title isn't free).

This is a game shaking change. GOOD! Great excitement for the game.

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This is for the folks who think I don't speak English. I'm from space.

Definition of audacious
1a : intrepidly daring : ADVENTUROUS
an audacious mountain climber
b : recklessly bold : RASH
an audacious maneuver
2 : contemptuous of law, religion, or decorum : INSOLENT
an audacious maverick
3 : marked by originality and verve

A couple of additional noteworthy breakpoints:

6 Grey Squadron Pilots with Dorsal turrets: went from 204 to 198. That's a massive amount of arc coverage and health, even if you're only rolling two dice on attacks.

8 naked Techno-Union Bombers: 200 points for 40 hull behind two green dice, Networked Calculations, and it's Hyperspace-legal .

Thanks for adding.

They increased ship counts too. Not sure this will have the intended effects.

hope I’m wrong tho!

Just now, TasteTheRainbow said:

They increased ship counts too. Not sure this will have the intended effects.

hope I’m wrong tho!

they have intentions.

They might not be the intentions you or I personally suspect. As they rarely attribute result and reason directly.

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I have heard they said they wanted to figure out how to speed up the game and increase damage.

I suspect one of their intentions is this.

And sell more ships. Which is good for the game.

10 minutes ago, TasteTheRainbow said:

They increased ship counts too. Not sure this will have the intended effects.

where is this in the rules ref?

Do you people mean literal ship limits, as in no more than 8 ships per squad or no more than 12 of the same in epic?

3 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Bwings were no more effective than Xwings, especially with the reduction to tank effectiveness, this makes me surmise that Bwings will be BAD for the next 6 months. (Especially also that the title isn't free).

Nah, B-Wings are just actually different from X-Wings now in a way that's a lot more meaningful than just HP/Ability balance and dial.

You can fit 4x Blue Squadron Pilots with the config, FCS and Autoblasters

There's still some debate about how FCS actually works with the double tap, but assuming you can in fact use it on the first shot and spend the lock to double tap, then that's a lot of dice that can be thrown without losing all of your mods.

And with Wedge gone, I'm pretty sure we'll see Braylen and Ten take centre stage even more. Ten with the config and Crack Shot is 50 points dead, and if you can fly such that the barrel roll gets you arc into the red lock, he becomes one of the most brutally efficient ships in the game.

Braylen is going to get pricier, because he'll be packing the config and a cannon, but he'll be worth it. Again, Autoblasters will be the cannon of choice because Ion was too much before it went up a point. But he could be a monster with it.

I think some combination like an XXBBZ list with Blount as the Z (if that's possible?) could be the best of both.

I'm actually tempted to make that my first list of the new points era

2 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Do you people mean literal ship limits, as in no more than 8 ships per squad or no more than 12 of the same in epic?

There is no ship count limit in Epic Battles unless the group you play with chooses to add one. I asked them specifically while the stream was starting up by request of @5050Saint .

2 hours ago, Cloaker said:

where is this in the rules ref?

Break points, not rules.