9 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Have you actually tried this?

I played some games (about 4) with Jedi Knights with and without CLT. I doubt CLT makes THAT huge of a difference.

CLT isn't bad. Against higher-init ships, these Jedi are great blockers, and CLT means a lot of essentially 4-dice attacks.

Against lower-init X-Wings? I'm less sure, but seems like a worthwhile upgrade on JK against the field.

My conspiracy theory as to why the Silencers didn't get the same spammable generics treatment as all of the other ships is that the 2nd Edition release of them actually sold well. Between the remodel and the late 1st Edition release, many folks probably picked 1 or 2 up. While plenty of folks had Xs, Zs, Bs, Ys, Scyks, JM5Ks, TIE/ln, TIE/in, and TIE/fo - which probably sold less on thier re-release.

If this is the case, I honestly don't begrudge FFG, as I want them to make money, but I do think that 4 I1 Silencers should join the fray of generic spam lists.

Knight with CLT is essentially extra hit vs lower PS.... Also Force....

Revolutionary idea: Price ships according to their actual power level and not out of a fear of some imaginary good spam list.

Devs have recently shown a newfound openness to this idea, but there are still cases where they did not make the change. Noticeably the I1-2 X-Wing went to 5x exactly. The I1 Interceptor and Striker went down, along with the Resistance Sympathizer, and all of those to allow (#)x and then some not just going exactly to the breakpoint.

I know I'll take flak for this but I honestly think the Defender is in a good place. You don't need three defenders in a list to get very good mileage out of the ones you have. 2x Defender + Ace is probably strictly better, and is also not nearly as much of an NPE against 2-primary lists.

This game has a lot of different elements going on, each of which has counters from another; if you double-down into one area, you will do well against certain lists, but you also open yourself up to hard counters.

I1 defenders are very well priced at 67 points. The I4 at 74 might be a touch overpriced, but certainly not by much. The I4 named pilots need to come down by about 6 points though. A delta defender for 67 is an extremely good value, it slots into a lot of lists very well, and it gives you excellent bang for the buck.

The same is true of the B-Wing: 41 points and it will still see a lot of play. Do you want a Red Squadron Veteran or do you want 2 extra shields at the cost of an agility? It depends on your list. The B-Wing is far from dead, in spite of the largely unnecessary cannon nerf. These will still be seen everywhere, as the cost to upgrade from an X-Wing is pretty negligible at 1 point. No you can't spam 5 of them, but spam isn't good unless something is underpriced.

The ships that are closest to good when spammed are the ones that are very well-rounded generalist ships. The X-Wing is probably the very best example of this; it has speed, it has maneuverability, it has firepower, it has tankiness. Not too much of any of these, but a pretty decent amount of each. It's hard to find a hard counter for it, so that spam list will be closest to good, but I still suspect there will be a list or two out there that these will just hate to see. Particularly, something that's all at I3 and a little more maneuverable would give them a bad day. If you go all in on I2, someone comes with I3 and your game plan goes to pot.

Now there are still some cases where the devs seemed to balk at adjusting something beyond a threshold for no perceptible reason. The I1 Silencer is the best example of this. Why is it a problem? It's not worth 51 points within the context of a mixed squad, so why should it be worth 51 points when put together with itself? 50 would be too much. It's a faster and more maneuverable X-Wing with more health and a better dial, true, but you could price it up 10 points from a CAZ and still end up at 49 points. I suspect these should be around the 46-48 mark, but I'm not sure. I'm guessing the devs are just holding off for now and may revisit it in the future. I will be rather surprised if it doesn't drop next adjustment. Nothing is immutable; this last adjustment has proven that. The fact it was missed this time around doesn't mean it will never be fixed. We have Dash to prove this point.

37 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

Revolutionary idea: Price ships according to their actual power level and not out of a fear of some imaginary good spam list.

Now there are still some cases where the devs seemed to balk at adjusting something beyond a threshold for no perceptible reason. The I1 Silencer is the best example of this. Why is it a problem? It's not worth 51 points within the context of a mixed squad, so why should it be worth 51 points when put together with itself? 50 would be too much. It's a faster and more maneuverable X-Wing with more health and a better dial, true, but you could price it up 10 points from a CAZ and still end up at 49 points. I suspect these should be around the 46-48 mark, but I'm not sure. I'm guessing the devs are just holding off for now and may revisit it in the future. I will be rather surprised if it doesn't drop next adjustment. Nothing is immutable; this last adjustment has proven that. The fact it was missed this time around doesn't mean it will never be fixed. We have Dash to prove this point.

You're not wrong in general. And while I'd love to test out 4 Silencers, I'm not sure you're right about what they should cost.

Their mobility is really good, and they can be deceptively tanky with a Focus token. With blocks (particularly cascade blocks) they can be a real threat to punch hard, and take little to no damage in return.

I've flown a decent amount of E-Wings fairly recently, and only a few of these, and these seen SIGNIFICANTLY better. E-Wings enable alpha-strike torpedoes, and maybe that levels the playing field for them, once you're into the scrum. But the mobility and flexible actions of the TIE Silencer are just miles ahead. Now I'm not saying E-Wings are correctly priced 50, but my early impressions is that these are easily worth 2-4 points more than an E-Wing, and I'm not necessarily ready for 42-44 point E-Wings.

Overall, I think more folks need to just put these folks on tables, feel them out. I think they're better than folks are giving them credit for.

20 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Their mobility is really good, and they can be deceptively tanky with a Focus token.

Very good point: I've always been partial to I1 because while they never have perfect information for positioning, they always have perfect information for focus usage. They will never spend it on offense and be vulnerable on defense. They always have it for defense, and they will still often have it for offense as well! That's one thing that makes Delta Defenders amazing, and it keeps Alpha Interceptors okay.

22 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

With blocks (particularly cascade blocks) they can be a real threat to punch hard, and take little to no damage in return.

The problem is that you really want blockers to be cheap and expendable so that you have enough in your squad to capitalize off of the blocking. I'm worried that FO doesn't have enough to take full advantage. It's true that they are peerless blockers, it's just that that doesn't do too much if you can't use that blocking as a focus-fire force-multiplier.

23 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

E-Wings enable alpha-strike torpedoes, and maybe that levels the playing field for them, once you're into the scrum.

My admittedly limited experience wonders if that's not optimal usage of them? I feel like you get more mileage from FCS and R3 for always-on passive mods on the cheap...

24 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Overall, I think more folks need to just put these folks on tables, feel them out. I think they're better than folks are giving them credit for.

Couldn't agree more. Honestly I feel like that's true of almost everything since the points adjustment; even the traditionally go-to aces will feel totally different in the new meta.

1 minute ago, ClassicalMoser said:

The problem is that you really want blockers to be cheap and expendable so that you have enough in your squad to capitalize off of the blocking. I'm worried that FO doesn't have enough to take full advantage. It's true that they are peerless blockers, it's just that that doesn't do too much if you can't use that blocking as a focus-fire force-multiplier.

That's what I've been used to thinking, but I'm not entirely sure.

Zealous Recruit Fangs are pretty good. They're sort of a "heavy blocker." I've read a good batrep or two about Init 1 Blue T-70s with BB Astromech. At 43 points post-adjustment, that sounds like a solid ship. I think these Silencers are probably underrated.

These are all folks who can take a punch (cheap blockers often can't), and when they don't go for a key block, they can pewpew pretty well. When someone is blocked at Range 1 of these folks, you've got 4-dice attacks. Two of those, against a 2-green ship, hit as hard as three 3-dice focused attacks.

I think some of that depends on a different strategy. But then, flying even a TIE fighter purely to block also seems like a wrong strategy.

1 hour ago, theBitterFig said:

That's what I've been used to thinking, but I'm not entirely sure.

Zealous Recruit Fangs are pretty good. They're sort of a "heavy blocker." I've read a good batrep or two about Init 1 Blue T-70s with BB Astromech. At 43 points post-adjustment, that sounds like a solid ship. I think these Silencers are probably underrated.

These are all folks who can take a punch (cheap blockers often can't), and when they don't go for a key block, they can pewpew pretty well. When someone is blocked at Range 1 of these folks, you've got 4-dice attacks. Two of those, against a 2-green ship, hit as hard as three 3-dice focused attacks.

I think some of that depends on a different strategy. But then, flying even a TIE fighter purely to block also seems like a wrong strategy.

Honestly that makes a lot of sense. It's often surprising to see a lot of conventional wisdom challenged (more or less) but it all mirrors my own recent successes with my current favorite Hyperspace list: 3x Red Squadron Veteran, 2x Phoenix RZ-1 with Intimidation and Concussions.

Blockers are best when you can leverage them offensively when they survive. You force your opponent into the difficult decision of either targeting the blockers and leaving the power pieces on the board, or ignoring the blockers and suffering more for it in the long run. If these A-Wings are ignored, they graduate into 3-attack range-denying monsters with extra splash damage. They do incredible work at every range: At close range they act as a force-multiplier for your X-Wings by denying defensive dice, at long range they're snipers that still deny defense dice. Either way you can't ignore them, and meanwhile your I3 X-Wings can dodge or initiative-kill the meta staple of XXXXX, and out-joust almost everything else. Generally I think overlooking the RZ-1 in favor of the RZ-2 is a mistake.

But the same is probably true of the Silencer; sure, at I1 it's not going to initiative-kill or dodge anything, but it becomes tantalizing bait that lets your aces live into the endgame or else gets to keep shooting on and on while they fruitlessly hunt your aces.

Worth playing some more to tell for sure...