4 minutes ago, flatpackhamster said:

From what I understood (I could be wrong) is that you'll get a fixed number of pass tokens for the whole game and you can choose to spend them each turn or more than one per turn. So you might get 3 pass tokens and you could use them all on turn 4 to wait out a particular attack or use 1 each turn on turns 2-4.

I doubt that will ruin the chances of MSU, it'll just make bringing two Gozantis to make up extra activations less common.

That doesnt do anything to help lists with less activations. Cause if I show up to a game and I have more activations then my opponent and we each get 3 pass tokens at the start of the game then I'm going to hold onto my pass tokens and only use them when my opponent uses theres to maintain my activation advantage and render there tokens useless

My guess would be at the beginning of the game u get 1 pass token for every fewer activation u have compared to your oppenent. So if u have 4 activations and they have 5 u get 1 token. If u have 3 and they have 7 then I get 3. Idk though thats just an idea

2 minutes ago, lunitic501 said:

My guess would be at the beginning of the game u get 1 pass token for every fewer activation u have compared to your oppenent. So if u have 4 activations and they have 5 u get 1 token. If u have 3 and they have 7 then I get 3. Idk though thats just an idea

I think you're right. I don't think that the number of tokens will be equal.

10 minutes ago, lunitic501 said:

That doesnt do anything to help lists with less activations. Cause if I show up to a game and I have more activations then my opponent and we each get 3 pass tokens at the start of the game then I'm going to hold onto my pass tokens and only use them when my opponent uses theres to maintain my activation advantage and render there tokens useless

32 minutes ago, lunitic501 said:

My guess would be at the beginning of the game u get 1 pass token for every fewer activation u have compared to your oppenent. So if u have 4 activations and they have 5 u get 1 token. If u have 3 and they have 7 then I get 3. Idk though thats just an idea

Only a single token for a whole game feels like it would hardly make a difference at all, and wouldn't really make the 5 tokens in one pack super logical. I mean, can you even *make* two fleets with a 5-activation disparity?

(Answer: yes, of course, MSU vs SSD. But it's not going to be common enough to be the baseline in a kit, IMHO, and the SSD already has one of these tokens anyway.)

Hrm. Well, clearly as they have noted, there are some kind of nuance to the rules around these. So I guess we'll see.

31 minutes ago, lunitic501 said:

My guess would be at the beginning of the game u get 1 pass token for every fewer activation u have compared to your oppenent. So if u have 4 activations and they have 5 u get 1 token. If u have 3 and they have 7 then I get 3. Idk though thats just an idea

Sounds sensible.

I have a 400 point list of a Jerjerrod SSD-CP and 133 points of rogues.

I could end up with say 4 one-shot pass tokens vs a 5 Ship fleet and an extra one per turn for having a huge ship. I may even end up out activating him on the all important turn 2

48 minutes ago, lunitic501 said:

That doesnt do anything to help lists with less activations. Cause if I show up to a game and I have more activations then my opponent and we each get 3 pass tokens at the start of the game then I'm going to hold onto my pass tokens and only use them when my opponent uses theres to maintain my activation advantage and render there tokens useless

I'm guessing only the guy or gal with less activations will get the pass tokens, but then, what do I know? We'll find out soon enough!

4 hours ago, Darth Veggie said:

My bad English. Yes, I tried to refer to that. I love it. But I fear that MSU becomes even less viable.

We still dont know how you get pass tokens maybe if you only have small ships in your fleet you get more pass tokens? Its still a bit early to say but I understand your concern.

50 minutes ago, Rmcarrier1 said:

I'm guessing only the guy or gal with less activations will get the pass tokens, but then, what do I know? We'll find out soon enough!

Agreed I don't think it makes sense to give a fleet that is all ready out activating u pass tokens

My guess: Flotillas don't get pass tokens but combat ships do. And once you spend a pass token it's gone.

How about.....

• The player with fewer activations receives a number of pass tokens equivalent to the difference between ships (PLUS one if you are the first player)
• Each pass token may only be used once and is then discarded
• For every enemy ship you destroy, discard one of your pass tokens

Thus for one critical turn you could out-activate an opponent by one assuming you suffer no ship casualties but you can never do this by more than one activation unless you destroy enough ships that no pass tokens are in play any longer. This removes the last-first threat unless you actually lose a ship in which case the overall advantage rightfully goes back to the other player for managing to disrupt the enemy's fleet structure. It also maintains the informational advantage the player with more ships has so he still receives significant benefit to bringing more ships (but not potentially overwhelming benefit)

Few things I have thought of that I haven't seen mentioned yet.

Intel - Do you want it to take an Ace slot? this is more imperials than rebels

6 squadrons don't take up the full squad points limit. This makes make max squadron fleets need a pocket carrier. I like that idea. (list diversity!!)

Will we see a lot of the same aces. Over time there will be some variation in different builds.

Is this worth it for Clone Wars and health of the game? YUP!

Pass tokens I would like more rules to see if I like it or not.

31 minutes ago, Wolf_58 said:

Few things I have thought of that I haven't seen mentioned yet.

Intel - Do you want it to take an Ace slot? this is more imperials than rebels

Jumpmasters get Swarm and with RHB can come back for 3pts.

48 minutes ago, eliteone said:

Jumpmasters get Swarm and with RHB can come back for 3pts.

yeah but no counter 1 or scatter form Dengar vs 5 hull? Depends on how much you want to keep intel around.

Maybe only second player with less activations get some pass tokens. Or some extra.

On 8/7/2020 at 1:46 PM, Tokra said:

And Rieekan: "Not me again...."

As much as i like a change in the ace squadron balls (even if i am once again someone that is hurt really badly by this), i do not like this kind of change (at least in view of the existing squadrons).
It could happen, that quite a lot of unique squadrons will not be played anymore at all. Just because there are better ones.
And the unique without token will be hurt the most from it (if they count into this limit). They are unique, they have no token and no special effect. Why would you still play them with a max. 4 unique limit.
For Imperial i still find the ace ball of Jendon, Stele, Ciena, Valen one of the most deverstating ones. I tested these 4, combined with Tel, in a german tournament. And they were unbelievable effective. Replace Tel with two escort (just noticed that Imperials do not have this many non uniques), and you have a cheap squadron ball that can control quite a lot.

My guess is, that one reason for this might be the new squadrons that come with the republic or Seperatists. Maybe they have a bad combination, when you use too many of them.

This will be the effect, I agree.

Some very few aces will continue to be played, most will not.

Pricing and utility. And now capped by max 4 aces.

However, it will mean overall fewer aces on the table, which is a plus IMO.

You'll be pleasantly surprised, I think. These doom and gloom predictions are hot-takes, but they're largely unfounded.

I barely ever run more than 3 or 4 aces anyway.

1 hour ago, Formynder4 said:

You'll be pleasantly surprised, I think. These doom and gloom predictions are hot-takes, but they're largely unfounded.

No no no, I wanna complain some more.

3 minutes ago, geek19 said:

No no no, I wanna complain some more.

I thought that was kind of our thing though. We get the Chimaera , we complain that we haven't got the Tector. The SSD is released, but we also wanted a Death Star.

Personally, pretty happy with everything that's happening.

Are the new Armada rules going to coincide with the Clone Wars release or an independent implementation?

4 hours ago, Antonio_F said:

Are the new Armada rules going to coincide with the Clone Wars release or an independent implementation?

Sort of both - the Clone Wars sets will include the new rules out the gate.

But FFG has said they'll be posting the updated rules, FAQ, and errata at least in part beforehand for players to get familiar with.

On 8/6/2020 at 4:28 PM, xanderf said:

Ya know, when asking a designer the sort of questions you started with - 'what were the most interesting things', or 'what were the most challenging things' and such...

...I'd be really curious, some time, to hear a designer talk about the roads not taken .

I don't think he'd be able to answer that, at least beyond a "we talked about it, but didn't make any decisions before the change happened."

One of the FFG playtesting NDA agreements is that you can't talk about previous versions of tested content. If they were ever seriously outlining the plan for the game and making decisions based on that material, they probably couldn't say anything about it. And especially for that work, Disney may have rules about what can and cannot be mentioned in regards to ongoing projects associated with the previous expanded universe content since it could inadvertently canonize content for the existing official lore.

Rule:

When a player would activate a non-small ship, the player may place a pass token on that ship instead.

When a non-small ship activates, before it reveal a command dial, if that ship has a pass token on it, discard a dial. Do not reveal a dial for that ship this round.

----

1. Non MSU fleets get a way to deal with activation disadvantage.

2. It comes with a price.

3. MSU still get some advantage as they get activation advantage "for free". Side note: the original idea allowed small ships to do this.i think loosing a dial hurt the smaller the most but not sure if it hurts enough.

4. Strategic Advisor is till useful as it gives you an activation at a different cost and for an specific ship. Not sure if a 3 activation big ship is too much.

5. Sadly it interferes with SSD's activation token mechanic.

----

Just an idea. I rather like something in these lines than a "how many tokens do you need to make your bad ships choice irrelevant". I'd like a fix on the activation system but I'd like MSU to still be a thing somehow, I'd like that when building a fleet these is some to work out and I honestly would like that the fix would turn the game on a stupid"my-turn-your-turn" festival where nothing actually happen (though this last part is hard considering the "fix" involves pass tokens...).

I like the intent of reducing the all-ace squadron builds but would have preferred the rule to be something like this:

You can have a unique squadron for every non-unique taken of the same type.

Note, saying unique instead of non-defense-token squad was intentional. So, to take Mauler and Howlrunner you would have to include 2 TIE fighters in your list. Seems like a better way to get non-uniques into the game and limit the flood of uniques.

The upcoming rule change hardly changes anything. There are still more than enough incredible unique squads without defense tokens to add to the 4 uniques taken. Pretty much every full squad list will have the same low number of normal squads (1-2):

• Jendon (20)
• Marrek (21)
• Cienna Ree (17)
• Morna (27)
• Black (9)
• Saber (12)
• Tempest (13)
• Jumpmaster (12)

Still, most/all of the squads on the table will uniques. NOTGOOD ?