Ric Olie up 3 points? Whyyyy

8 minutes ago, Dwing said:

Ric Olie up 3 points? Whyyyy

Because he was an extremely powerful and highly played character for the entire 6 month period of this points change who gave a faction that already had super hard to hit aces, and who's points reflected an assumption that it would be harder to get the bonus attack than it actually was, resulting in a list where it was very possible to have 4 ships despite running a 3 ace list where 2 of the aces had 3 effective actions a turn if they had any force banked and effectively had 3 dice in bullseye, while the 4th had 3 dice basically all the time.

Pretty much every meta 'We are aces/swarm but also have super amazing passive modding' list got (rightfully) nerfed so you have to make more sacrifices for them. Ric going up 3 means you now only have 7 points really in the "Ric-Jedi" list to play with upgrades outside of CTL and talents. It still works as a list, but you no longer can add tons of bells and whistles too it, or out ace more traditional tri-ace lists because all your aces are I5 and they can bid harder than you.

Having not bought into cis, someone help me understand what this does to the top swarms?

14 minutes ago, Archangelspiv said:

4 Fanatical or go home! But seriously, Fanatical is the best faction talent by far. Haven’t read the article yet, hoping it’s still 2 points.

🤨 Moot. SJEs don't have the slot for Fanatical.

10 minutes ago, Dwing said:

Ric Olie up 3 points? Whyyyy

FFG decided to crack down on Init 5-6. Most pilots in this range got nerfed.

Ric specifically had a bonus dice pilot ability (usually quite premium) at a pretty budget price.

Just now, Cr0aker said:

Having not bought into cis, someone help me understand what this does to the top swarms?

Reduces their token efficiency.

5 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

🤨 Moot. SJEs don't have the slot for Fanatical.

When in your excitement you confuse 2 pilots on the same chassis 😳

Just now, Archangelspiv said:

When in your excitement you confuse 2 pilots on the same chassis 😳

Happens. 4x SJE does not look fun to go up against, even with them being I1s.

5 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

Reduces their token efficiency.

Agreed, but I hesitate to offer an opinion on how much of an impact as I don't fly the list.

As 5x was not touched... 🤔

Just now, Cr0aker said:

Agreed, but I hesitate to offer an opinion on how much of an impact as I don't fly the list.

As 5x was not touched... 🤔

5x isn't great

47 minutes ago, Do I need a Username said:

5x isn't great

In extended. I won a decent sized store champ with it. Cis swarm was one of the few lists that gave me trouble. I've been playing long enough to know when Rebel beef is ignored (or its counters are softened) it becomes a problem.

The iceing is 3x and vcx.

Reminds me that I need to still look into selling all that f/o stuff.

2 hours ago, Cr0aker said:

Having not bought into cis, someone help me understand what this does to the top swarms?

I don't think any of the top swarms will exist in their current form, but belbulabs are back (outside of sear) so relays can show up in hyperspace again. I have to imagine people will be dropping more struts to make stuff fit? All the puzzle pieces are slightly differently sized now, but its not like we figured out the perfect way to put them together before.

13 minutes ago, AEIllingworth said:

I don't think any of the top swarms will exist in their current form, but belbulabs are back (outside of sear) so relays can show up in hyperspace again. I have to imagine people will be dropping more struts to make stuff fit? All the puzzle pieces are slightly differently sized now, but its not like we figured out the perfect way to put them together before.

Relays could always show up in Hyperspace - the Infiltrator never left the format. May not be "top-tier", but it wasn't shabby, either.

4 minutes ago, feltipern1 said:

Relays could always show up in Hyperspace - the Infiltrator never left the format. May not be "top-tier", but it wasn't shabby, either.

Yeah, and the one hyena had the slot and was legal too, but outside of the XY system open list I don't think they really turned up.

Looking at it now it is a tight squeeze to get relay, 8 bodies, and 3 discords but still possible if you skip struts and bulbasaur title.

2 minutes ago, AEIllingworth said:

Yeah, and the one hyena had the slot and was legal too, but outside of the XY system open list I don't think they really turned up.

Looking at it now it is a tight squeeze to get relay, 8 bodies, and 3 discords but still possible if you skip struts and bulbasaur title.

Assuming you want 8 bodies. I've never played with more than 7 ships in a CIS list, so it's been a more favoured ship for me.

It does feel like they did a good job of forcing all the really strong meta lists that lacked a lot of weaknesses to basically 'pick a weakness' rather than just smashing them with a hammer. And it is nice that the buff hammer is the one doing the smashing now (Some ships had 9 point swings holy crud!).

Droids now are more comparable in price to naked TIEs, which makes sense because it turns out networked calculations easily made up for their worse dial, lack of focus, and 1 less defense. Now Swarms have to either have fewer calculate resources so they might, you know, run out, or have way fewer tricks and specialized ships that made them have disproportionate utility for their price point.

The Republic Nerfs force the Ric+Jedi list between having a bid at all, having the 4th ship that makes it so distinct from other tri-ace lists, having the CTLs, and having a talent on Ric. It now is a little bit less of a 'do everything' ace list that also packs Ahsoka.

The nerf to Boba was clever: Boba now can't have it all with a strong passive modding upgrade, a strong wingman or two, and the best reposition in the game, and a deep bid: He can't have Fenn+Maul+Slave 1+a 10 point bid. I am skeptical if this will actually fix the core issues (The bid issue wasn't as big of an issue in the spot where he really was oppressive, casual fights vs non-optimized tournament lists), but it at least forces them to commit to a weakness of some sort in the list, rather than letting Boba do basically everything while also packing ridiculous backup.

I am also loving how (most) ships that were seeing no experimentation, even in janky extended lists, were assumed to be so bad that they needed a 5 or even 9 point buff. It is encouraging to see ships that are so clearly far from viability being pushed really hard, because usually even a not very good ship will see some people futzing about with it: If a ship has NO presence in the meta it usually means its off by over 5 points anyway, I mean people futz about with E-wings and Lambda shuttles despite their performance being rather poor, so it is nice to see them just slashing the prices when a ship has been used in tournaments a number of times you could count on one hand (Which is the case for a lot of these big points drops) rather than insisting their current guess on value was close and creeping it down by another point or two: Zero play means WAY off, like 10% off, is a good rule of thumb .

Avenger + 3x SJE 🤔

2 hours ago, dezzmont said:

The nerf to Boba was clever: Boba now can't have it all with a strong passive modding upgrade, a strong wingman or two, and the best reposition in the game, and a deep bid: He can't have Fenn+Maul+Slave 1+a 10 point bid

Fang Fighter - •Fenn Rau - 76
•Fenn Rau - Skull Leader (68)
Fearless (3)
Adv. Proton Torpedoes (5)

Firespray -class Patrol Craft - •Boba Fett - 109
•Boba Fett - Notorious Bounty Hunter (86)
Fearless (3)
•Maul (12)
Seismic Charges (3)
• Slave I (5)

Total: 185/200

View in the X-Wing Squad Builder

Oh definitely still can, in fact if you removed advanced proton torps (eliminating the 6 dice Fenn attack) its a 20 point bid. If you don’t add anything else.

Just to present confirmation to the above post since the official app has a justly deserved bad rep:

Boba Fett (86)
Fearless (3)
Maul (12)
Seismic Charges (3)
Slave I (5)

Fenn Rau (68)
Fearless (3)
Adv. Proton Torpedoes (5)
Total: 185

View in Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0

Well aren't I just the biggest dunce today? Coulda picked any other meta wingman combo but noooope had to pick the cheap one that still would obviously work because I have seen it 22 point bid before.

I will see myself out.

1 hour ago, dezzmont said:

Well aren't I just the biggest dunce today? Coulda picked any other meta wingman combo but noooope had to pick the cheap one that still would obviously work because I have seen it 22 point bid before.

I will see myself out.

People moved away from Fenn with Boba because a few bad green die could spell doom for Fenn, whereas someone like Dengar has staying power to at least get his points back and allow Boba to clean up.

Fenn used to be my favourite pilot in the game, a string of bad dice culminating with my Fenn being killed at range 3 by 2 Torrents made me look elsewhere.

i'm bit scared of the continuos downing in points. Every 6 months few (or lots) ships goes down. The average ship count rises and the average game turns go down.... it's rare finish a game in time.

edit: still no Tail Gun on Kallus VCX?

3 hours ago, alien earth said:

i'm bit scared of the continuos downing in points. Every 6 months few (or lots) ships goes down. The average ship count rises and the average game turns go down.... it's rare finish a game in time.

Yep this is a big problem.

Games keep getting slower. Bulk is very effective. Too effective.

10 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

Yep this is a big problem.

Games keep getting slower. Bulk is very effective. Too effective.

In fairness there isn't a direct relationship between ship count and slowness. Big squads can dial in turns respectably quickly (especially formation swarms) whereas aces can cause extra thinking time for their player because of the danger of one wrong move.

The other thing is that bulk at least wants to lumber towards the enemy. Smaller squads often want to delay engagement until it's favourable for them, and some (especially 2-ship ace lists) want to get a points advantage and then run away. If a game consists of turn after turn of feints and evasion, some turns of combat, and then indefinite turns of hypermobile superaces fleeing, a faster pace per turn isn't helping more actually happen in a game, it's only stretching out a futile endgame.

Anyway, I don't think that there's a problem with bulk X-Wing. For 50%+ of 1.0's lifespan (after Dengaroo killed off the Howlrunner swarm) bulk was mostly garbage and it wasn't to the game's benefit. About the only time bulk was strong was wookiee spam, and it was only a problem because it was calibrated to match the crazy card combos so it had to be super-bulk. 2.0 hasn't been dominated with bulk - the 5 X-Wing spam that many feared when they dropped to 40 hasn't been a top performing list. Vulture spam has been extremely successful but that got a nerf (even +1 cost per ship matters to a swarm). In contrast, Boba+Fenn has been one of the best lists of this hyperspace season and it still works with some toys and a bid even after the points increase on Boba.

the community isn't ready for the conversation about how aces push games to time.

also, everything that got cheaper was bad, so... it's not even an increase in ship count because basically nobody used that stuff at all before. meanwhile, a couple of the most commonly used pieces got more expensive.