@Hoarder of Garlic Bread : Looks like your Cloaking Device image doesn't want to load. I assume the goal of this is to cloak Quickdraw while regenerating shields?

I like combo #4 a bit.

It's too bad he doesn't include "you may equip duplicate Illicit upgrades"; I'd like some popcorn TIE/fos with deadman.

I suspect the Inertial Dampeners + Quickdraw combo is going to trigger a response from FFG at some point. That's really interesting, but also probably something they wanted to avoid. I'm not worried about a few points reduction in cost so much as having the stop at QD's initiative (which calls back to the now banned handbrake han combo), and maybe her ability to fire when she stops (assuming that works as we assume, see below). That's fascinating but also something you probably want to enjoy while it lasts. An ace like QD doesn't need even more positional control.

It's too bad though that illicit upgrades are once again being put to better use in factions that are not Scum. 😕 But oh well, that complaint has been done to death.

Agent Terex crew is interesting. He has a 3-4 round phase of granting calc tokens to allies, and then he switches to long-range jamming and handing out calc tokens based on his die roll. As with Hondo the long-range jam could be quite handy, though it won't prevent alpha strikes since he typically won't be ready by the time that's happening.

@DarthSempai : This is a fair question. I suspect spending causes you to lose a shield, just based on common English interpretation and logic. However, this isn't just common English, it's game rules with keywords etc. Looking at the rules for Charges (RR page 7), Lose and Spend are treated as separate effects and explicit keywords, and they don't reference each other, which could be trouble for Quickdraw:

Quote

When an effect instructs a ship to lose a charge, a charge assigned to the relevant card is flipped to the inactive side.

When a ship spends a charge, that charge is flipped to its inactive side. A ship cannot spend a charge for an effect if all of its charges that are available for that effect are already inactive.

So it's very obvious something like Electronic Baffle works for QD because she suffers a damage, which causes her to lose a shield. But it's much more murky with spend; IMO after looking into it, I'm not assuming it works anymore.

IMO this is something FFG will have to address. Hopefully they do so quickly; this is the sort of rules question that results in forum wars. 😕

But I assume people are going to follow the common-English interpretation that spending indeed also causes you to lose a charge, until FFG says otherwise.

1 minute ago, 5050Saint said:

While it would probably look pretty neat upside down, I wouldn't want to land it upsidedown with that huge fin.

It folds behind the cockpit and up, a la Torrent :P. Tartakovsky had so many great designs in his Clone Wars cartoon. I'm hoping he's commissioned for some EU stuff in the sequel era, especially in the Resistance department.

2 minutes ago, Wazat said:

@Hoarder of Garlic Bread : Looks like your Cloaking Device image doesn't want to load. I assume the goal of this is to cloak Quickdraw while regenerating shields?

That is the plan. Also, opening turn to cloak so that you can boost/roll when you engage, a la TIE/ph. Even the maneuvering from decloaking will make regenerating shields easier, although the main desired effect is to just cloak behind a cloud.

Hmmmm. If E-Wings get tech as so many would want them to, there might be promise with Automated Targeting Priority to help their general lack of good action economy.

9 minutes ago, Npmartian said:

Hmmmm. If E-Wings get tech as so many would want them to, there might be promise with Automated Targeting Priority to help their general lack of good action economy.

Makes me sad that the I4 is the elite E-win. But an I2 with the tech is better than none.

Terex is so dang cool. Deadman's Switch for TN-3465? Nice.

13 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Terex is so dang cool. Deadman's Switch for TN-3465? Nice.

That was my thought exactly lol. FO finally gets bomb drop, and in true FO fashion, it cost you a pilot! But it's gonna be pretty funny to send Tina into a swarm of vultures and make her explode along with a bunch of extra crits.

7 minutes ago, DarthSempai said:

That was my thought exactly lol. FO finally gets bomb drop, and in true FO fashion, it cost you a pilot! But it's gonna be pretty funny to send Tina into a swarm of vultures and make her explode along with a bunch of extra crits.

The best part about this expansion IMO is that it nails the first order theme. Absolutely nails it. All the pilots and crew feel like a diabolical galactic terrorist organization that uses whatever it needs to to push through to victory.

59 minutes ago, Skitch_ said:

Apparently illicits were never part of the Scum identity for 2e. Scum truly is the faction without an identity.

If "has exclusive access to a mediocre upgrade slot" really, truly was the entirety of Scum's faction identity, then they haven't even lost anything of value in losing it.

At some point, you have to recover from the first edition hangover...

Man, that is a fun expansion. A lot of support for the FO and SF.

Not sure I'm reading Malarus pilot right... Can you do any other reroll effect (predator) before taking the strain to do the Malarus reroll?

10 minutes ago, svelok said:

If "has exclusive access to a mediocre upgrade slot" really, truly was the entirety of Scum's faction identity, then they haven't even lost anything of value in losing it.

At some point, you have to recover from the first edition hangover...

Seems overly snide.

If Tech spread to all factions regardless of timeline, and at the same time FO + Resistance kept getting their other identities nerfed like has happenend to Scum's tractor shenanigans etc, then we'd hear FO + Resistance players making the same lament. It's not just that Illicits should be a Scum thing and it's being diluted, it's also part of a larger pattern of "oh, you're neat; let's take that away from you because reasons ". Scum didn't ask for the Nantex fallout to screw their more interesting mechanics. Scum didn't deserve to have mostly boring illicit options. The fact that one of the faction's few identifying features isn't an identity is not the core shock, it's just adding insult to injury. This is why the complaint comes up each time another faction gets access to illicit: it's crappy that Scum can't even have that, when a lot of their other cool features have been nerfed to **** already.

Occasionally Scum can have a dominant Boba or an efficiency list with Kihraxz, but their identity keeps getting diluted and it's a regular reminder of other losses.

52 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Terex is so dang cool. Deadman's Switch for TN-3465? Nice.

FO's getting some fun shenanigans for sure. That he can hand out up to 3 illicits means you could support Cloak/Damp Quickdraw, Timebomb Tina, and maybe one other ship with some fancy new cybernetics.

30 minutes ago, Wazat said:

FO's getting some fun shenanigans for sure. That he can hand out up to 3 illicits means you could support Cloak/Damp Quickdraw, Timebomb Tina, and maybe one other ship with some fancy new cybernetics.

Given Proud Trad and Pattern, cybernetics are cool, but diminishing returns. Fortunately, they are cheap and can synergize with Pattern. As with anything, points are the big determining factor.

49 minutes ago, svelok said:

If "has exclusive access to a mediocre upgrade slot" really, truly was the entirety of Scum's faction identity, then they haven't even lost anything of value in losing it.

At some point, you have to recover from the first edition hangover...

It's only mediocre because FFG has so far chosen to make it mediocre. They could very easily make it a fantastic slot.

Just now, Hoarder of Garlic Bread said:

Given Proud Trad and Pattern, cybernetics are cool, but diminishing returns. Fortunately, they are cheap and can synergize with Pattern. As with anything, points are the big determining factor.

Yea, not knowing the price on these cards limits what we can scheme for now. I expect the Xi to be a much cheaper shuttle than the Upsilon in general, but certain pilots could be pricey.

Double post.

2 hours ago, Hoarder of Garlic Bread said:

#4:

+

Maybe not incredible, but add Pyre and Phasma and put them all on POT...

Not sure, seems fun. Dormitz really really wants an errata. So bad. I so want him to be good.

Also I want to see RHan and GA-97 laugh at these cards.

39 minutes ago, Wazat said:

Seems overly snide.

It's part of @svelok 's charm.

But I agree @Wazat , much of Scum's identity is either stolen, nerfed by, or done better by CIS. Illicits getting spread around when Scum can't even get good use out of them is annoying. Scum can't even use Coaxium Hyperfuel at this point. The one useful illicit that Scum has is Contraband Cybernetics, and Leia crew still kind of does that better even at 7 points. If the TIE/rb turns out to be a better cannon carrier than anything in Scum, they'll lose that identity, too.

2 hours ago, Hoarder of Garlic Bread said:

#2:

+ + + + + +

This was my first thought, too. I love Howl swarms and this would be more flexible (range 0-2) and tougher, even though the reroll ability isn't as strong and comes with strain. I hope Malarus comes in at 50 or less but with Howl at 46 I'm not sure that will happen.

48 minutes ago, Skitch_ said:

It's only mediocre because FFG has so far chosen to make it mediocre. They could very easily make it a fantastic slot.

That is one of the problems with Terex pilot. He closes that design space. We already now have the situation that he can buy dampeners for half the price for an I6 friend. He can assign whatever new Illicit to all of the SF and FO pilots, so FFG can only design stuff which doesn't make any of these pilots OP. And FFG really maneuvred themselves into a corner here, because they cannot just remove the Illicit slot in the pdf for the resp. pilot if there is a problem. They either have to nerf the Illicit itself, Terex or the pilot into oblivion, if any OP Illicit combo shows up. If they not finally take the step and make a ban-list of certain combos.

Pyre pilot is not fun at all for the opponent. He essentially destroys turn zero deployment, as you have to take the double stress into consideration. Fleets with few blues on their dials and some form of range dependent interaction are practically forced to "one straight to victory"-strategy. Boring. And people like to complain about one straighting, here it is forced upon.

Even fast flankers will hate Pyre pilot.

I like the Sept 25 release date. This looks great. Malarus crew could be fun on an upsilon (tavson).

21 minutes ago, Gausebeck said:

the reroll ability isn't as strong and comes with strain.

It's really not meaningfully weaker at I1, except just marginally:

• You almost always only re-roll blanks at I1 anyway. Perfect information for focus usage means you're free to spend it on attack 90% of the time.

• Strain doesn't matter if there's no one left to shoot at you

• The TIE/fo has a lot of green on the dial and moves first so that strain doesn't stick around long anyway

It's really a beautiful synergy. The only downside is if you've already spent your focus on defense or if you need to k-turn or do a white that badly.

Just now, ClassicalMoser said:

It's really a beautiful synergy. The only downside is if you've already spent your focus on defense or if you need to k-turn or do a white that badly.

IMO strain on generics is much gentler than stress, since they can do that k-turn or do a white + action next round. All they give up is 1 agility for one defense, on a ship that can afford to be a bit more disposable to give it more teeth. It's a nice effect.

32 minutes ago, Managarmr said:

That is one of the problems with Terex pilot. He closes that design space. We already now have the situation that he can buy dampeners for half the price for an I6 friend. He can assign whatever new Illicit to all of the SF and FO pilots, so FFG can only design stuff which doesn't make any of these pilots OP. And FFG really maneuvred themselves into a corner here, because they cannot just remove the Illicit slot in the pdf for the resp. pilot if there is a problem. They either have to nerf the Illicit itself, Terex or the pilot into oblivion, if any OP Illicit combo shows up. If they not finally take the step and make a ban-list of certain combos.

or they make the new hot, OP, game breaking illicit ''Scum Only'' ??? 🤨 or since keyword are coming, Black Sun Cartel Only, etc. Or go the way of a lot of the new release, and make it tied to the new /re-edited ship exclusively.
I wouldn't worry too much, the designer presently have a LOT of tools to build constraint, fixes, errata, etc. I doubt we'll see a big, goofy broken combo each and every wave. It'll probably happen again, because it's inevitable in games like these, but they showed that they learned from their mistakes now.