2 hours ago, Schanez said:

Phoenix should be 27 and Green should be 28 or 29 in my honest opinion. The ship ability is cool... But not really. Not on the low Initiative ones at least. If they had the Tie Interceptor ability, able to choose between Roll and Boost, that's another story entirely.

It would have been nice if the Vectored thrusters ability did just one tiny extra thing to balance it on an effect level to Autothrusters. Like sure, I'll always wish it was Roll, but it would overlap too much identity wise with the Squint. But even if it was something small and bonus I'd be cool with it. Like if it just gave you the Daredevil effect automatically, that'd be sweet and fit the Elite theme and the idea of Vectored Thrust.

If you made that elite you mentioned, it would still get used a ton by the -2. It would probably work better on the -2 honestly. Because end of day either ship could fly the same and get the same benefit, but the -2 will still get it's extras time on target from time to time making it still the better ship.

Edit, missed line: the combo of your proposed elite and advanced optics would be insane with heroic to boot.

1 hour ago, ForceSensitive said:

It would have been nice if the Vectored thrusters ability did just one tiny extra thing to balance it on an effect level to Autothrusters. Like sure, I'll always wish it was Roll, but it would overlap too much identity wise with the Squint. But even if it was something small and bonus I'd be cool with it. Like if it just gave you the Daredevil effect automatically, that'd be sweet and fit the Elite theme and the idea of Vectored Thrust.

If you made that elite you mentioned, it would still get used a ton by the -2. It would probably work better on the -2 honestly. Because end of day either ship could fly the same and get the same benefit, but the -2 will still get it's extras time on target from time to time making it still the better ship.

Edit, missed line: the combo of your proposed elite and advanced optics would be insane with heroic to boot.

Well you can reroll a die only once. So either Heroic or this. And yes, it might be powerful, but the 5 RZ-2 already struggle for points, so I do not think they would roll with another talent, unless you want to downgrade the list to 4 RZ-2. It would also not work with the rear arc, which again would not benefit the RZ-2. It was honestly just a random idea, not really thought through. Just something with the A=Wing keyword to work for the RZ-1 better than the RZ-2.

3 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

If you made that elite you mentioned, it would still get used a ton by the -2. It would probably work better on the -2 honestly. Because end of day either ship could fly the same and get the same benefit, but the -2 will still get it's extras time on target from time to time making it still the better ship.

Even if it is better on the RZ-2, it doesn't matter as long as it also improves the RZ-1 in a meaningful way that helps it overcome its flaws when a ship a list 'focuses' on.'

Main issue I see with the way the talent works is that you almost always have to spend focus on defense, which is why the RZ-1's offensive output is so unusually bad for a 2 dicer, compared to say... a Y-wing who always spends that bad-boy offensively due to a focused defense not being a huge game changer in TTK. But that isn't terrible, especially if the RZ-1 goes down a bit more and it has other options, because it means that its sorta a 'skill tester' that rewards the RZ-1 extra hard for arc dodging by getting a pseudo-double modded shot.

Its also important to note that underpricing RZ-1 exclusive stuff like a config is a potential way to 'reduce' its cost, while avoiding going below a points floor, if, hypothetically they don't want 7-A to be a thing for whatever reason, which is literally the only reason I could see them not reducing the price now.

I am quite curious, how the upcoming Missiles will change and affect the RZ-1. The CIS Tri-Fighter has the XX-23 S-Thread Tracers in it probably. And if the effect is anything similar to what I found from 1.0 Edition, it will let you pop Rockets into an enemy to give your friendlies Locks on them. RZ-1s can suddenly become quite cheap Missile Carriers. You can move, Focus > Boost and then wait for your Ace to mark the enemy with Tracers. You can use Focus on Defence and still have the Lock to attack with Missiles.

Then again, I don't think Rebels have any good Ace at I5 or higher that can carry missiles, but that might change in the Phoenix Squadron Pack, which I assume it will. For an Aces-Only ship which it was in the lore, it severely lacks Aces. Jake is cool and all, but he is just good, not acey.

I like that! I would be really surprised and extremely disappointed if there isnt an I5-I6 ace for the a wing.

We made the following two configs for strictly casual play, mostly in HOTAC where the A-wing is fun to fly but potentially lags other options in effective mission and xp contribution.

RZ-1bis
While you perform a primary attack you may add one accuracy die to the dice rolled

RZ-1m
Add a second missile slot

An Accuracy die is a Defense die rolled with the attack. An Evade result on an accuracy die cancels 1 corresponding Evade result in the defense dice. A Focus result on an Accuracy die may be converted to an Evade result through normal means and will then cancel a defense die Evade.

The accuracy die creates an interesting shift in odds largely between 2 and 3 Attack dice. The damage ceiling is still 2, but the average damage shifts up. How much depends on how likely the defender is to get Evades. An accuracy die has less impact against 2 unmodified Agility. That impact increases against defender with Focus, and a bit more against defender with an Evade. It has a larger impact again when you move up against 3 Agility. It is of course never as good as 3 full Attack dice as this die can't itself cause damage, just make hits on the other attack dice more likely to land.

The coolest thing we found about the RZ-1bis option is that it made the A-wing really sing against the kind of ships it was intended to counter per the lore, Tie Interceptors and other agile Imperial fair. It doesn't get as much a boost against larger slower moving ships, it's role stays firmly focused on being an anti-fighter fighter.

As we have used this only outside competive lists, costing would need to be looked at in greater detail than we analyzed. I believe we went with 7pts for Rz-1bis. For the Rz-1m config we costed it at 0pts if you had one missile equiped and -2pts if you had two different missiles equiped.

The RZ-1m config is a little more general purpose with the limitations that it is Target Lock action heavy, had minor missile range limitations and could run dry.

On 9/23/2020 at 8:39 PM, Borg7of11 said:

The accuracy die creates an interesting shift in odds largely between 2 and 3 Attack dice. The damage ceiling is still 2, but the average damage shifts up. How much depends on how likely the defender is to get Evades. An accuracy die has less impact against 2 unmodified Agility. That impact increases against defender with Focus, and a bit more against defender with an Evade. It has a larger impact again when you move up against 3 Agility. It is of course never as good as 3 full Attack dice as this die can't itself cause damage, just make hits on the other attack dice more likely to land.

I thought sticking to only the two types of dice was one of the big misses of second edition. The edition switch would have been a great time to introduce attack dice that were more likely to hit, but didn't hit as hard, and vice versa. They could have also added something like your accuracy dice idea.

4 hours ago, Lysus said:

I thought sticking to only the two types of dice was one of the big misses of second edition. The edition switch would have been a great time to introduce attack dice that were more likely to hit, but didn't hit as hard, and vice versa. They could have also added something like your accuracy dice idea.

It was oddly one of the more requested change discussions for years too. New dice types was discussed like in the first two years of 1e. An interesting discussion artifact from way back...

On 9/24/2020 at 3:39 AM, Borg7of11 said:

We made the following two configs for strictly casual play, mostly in HOTAC where the A-wing is fun to fly but potentially lags other options in effective mission and xp contribution.

RZ-1bis
While you perform a primary attack you may add one accuracy die to the dice rolled

(...)

An Accuracy die is a Defense die rolled with the attack. An Evade result on an accuracy die cancels 1 corresponding Evade result in the defense dice. A Focus result on an Accuracy die may be converted to an Evade result through normal means and will then cancel a defense die Evade.

I love this idea! I will certainly appropriate it to my HoTAC games... Are you present on HoTAC Facebook group? This would certainly spark some interest, as this is perhaps the most ingenious thing a player can do to make RZ-1s great a... little bit more

I like the concept but I think that FFG will be hard pressed to add a whole new mechanic, including and especially one that lets you get a full front arc crack shot, potentially multiple times per game.

How about our new Rebel RZ1 A-Wing list... are we looking at sub 40 pts for the SlashEye Green pilots?

" SlashEyez"

(32) Green Squadron Pilot [RZ-1 A-wing]
(1) Deadeye Shot
(4) Trick Shot (sub for Slash?)
Points: 37

Total points: 37

_______

Looks like optimistic pricing for Slash to me. I expect it to be priced more like Outmaneuver because it's so easy to use effectively with the RZ-2... But even at 6 points it would just about fit, so 😐

4 minutes ago, nitrobenz said:

Looks like optimistic pricing for Slash to me. I expect it to be priced more like Outmaneuver because it's so easy to use effectively with the RZ-2... 😐

I highly doubt it will be priced like Outmaneuver because if it was it would be utter garbage compared to Outmaneuver. I mean Snap Shot is at a completely wacky price point too and was in part intended for A-wings, so its possible, but that certainly isn't where it should be.

The effect is inarguably much worse, its chasis limited, has very strict positioning requirements, makes you fly predictably, can get you a penalty yourself, and is cleared if the target does a blue move. The requirement to fly through a target on your turn is just far more strict, even on an RZ-2, and its hard to do it with every RZ-2 you want to focus fire on a target with, which is part of why I am skeptical on if it will actually end up on RZ-2 spam lists even at 3, or even 2 points. It compares way more to Intimidation than Out-manuver, and because its chasis specific there is hope it will be cheaper than Intimidation.

Furthermore, we have seen with the pricing of Aimbot and Clusters that FFG REALLy wants to let you force damage to occur. Which makes sense, the last 2 entire metas have been absurdly defensive and have made it basically impossible for any ship that isn't able to do comical amounts of damage to land hits. This was a problem in 1.0 too, and a huge part of why it had to end, so it would make a lot of sense if they made ships better at handling high defense pools rather than creeping attack dice again.

" SlashEyez"

(32) Green Squadron Pilot [RZ-1 A-wing]
(1) Deadeye Shot
(1) Marksman (sub for Slash?)
Points: 34

Total points: 34

_______

If SLASH is 1 pt....

Then we get this:

(32) Green Squadron Pilot [RZ-1 A-wing]
(1) Deadeye Shot
(1) Marksman (sub for Slash?)

(6) Proton Rockets
Points: 40

______

Make it happen, team A-wings.

5 Procket SlashEyez at I3 sounds totally fair.

Is there any reason to believe that the price won't be different for the two factions? Thats what I would do! Make it more expensive for the RZ-2 and cheeper for the RZ-1.

12 hours ago, Gupa-nupa said:

Is there any reason to believe that the price won't be different for the two factions? Thats what I would do! Make it more expensive for the RZ-2 and cheeper for the RZ-1.

Wouldn't be a bad idea, but currently I don't think the point system can achieve that. They can scale with many statistics but faction isn't one of them right now. That's not to say they couldn't start now but that's a very deep rabbit hole for some other things. Almost every upgrade in the game should have cost based on chassis.

16 hours ago, Gupa-nupa said:

Is there any reason to believe that the price won't be different for the two factions? Thats what I would do! Make it more expensive for the RZ-2 and cheeper for the RZ-1.

The fact that they haven't done this before, and they haven't done scaling based on primary weapon type/turret status.

On 9/10/2020 at 7:35 PM, dezzmont said:

It seems to be the case across most lists running intimidation that the extra 3 red dice at range 0 are valued much more highly than an extra 5 points, and it makes sense. You can evaluate the difference between a lone intimidation phoenix and Arvel as you choosing to 'sell' your 3 red dice for only 5 points. The cheapest set of 3 red dice you can get in rebels is currently 24 in extended and 29 in hyperspace, and it doesn't seem to be the case that you would run either of those ships at 0 red for only 19 and 24 points respectively, so it makes sense that this is seen as generally a poor deal and doesn't see a ton of play.

Obviously there is more complexity than that, because if you block you might still get your shot, but your not getting the shot on someone with -1 agility, and you may not even be getting the range 1 bonus, while Arvel is allowing you to effectively get 3.3 dice vs a blocked target assuming it can't passive mod, not just 3.

I’m not sure I’m following this correctly, but are you saying that Arvel gets the range 1 bonus die when he’s blocking? Why would he get that? His range to the target in that case is 0, not 1.

5 minutes ago, Cpt ObVus said:

I’m not sure I’m following this correctly, but are you saying that Arvel gets the range 1 bonus die when he’s blocking? Why would he get that? His range to the target in that case is 0, not 1.

11 hours ago, Spinland said:

Ah, right. I guess I was misremembering that passage. Haven’t used Arvel in a while.

52 minutes ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Ah, right. I guess I was misremembering that passage. Haven’t used Arvel in a while.

It was semi-fresh on my mind because I recently wondered about whether range 0 got the attack bonus and had looked it up.

On 9/29/2020 at 6:53 AM, rhetor said:

I love this idea! I will certainly appropriate it to my HoTAC games... Are you present on HoTAC Facebook group? This would certainly spark some interest, as this is perhaps the most ingenious thing a player can do to make RZ-1s great a... little bit more

I am on the HoTAC FB group but under a different moniker. I will post this there too, in case there is further interest.

Could just add an A-Wing Talent with a "If you dakka dakka in bullseye, you can add 1 Die up to three" to show the 'aceness' of the ship, the precise dodgefighter. It would not be that great with Heroic and Advanced Optics, because they fall off in value the more die you roll. If you could promote precision flying on A-Wings, that would help them be the high skill ships they should be.

Could these be good on an A-wing? Something like Jake, who already fills a support role, could help out the rest of the squad with double mods?

1 hour ago, Gupa-nupa said:

Could these be good on an A-wing? Something like Jake, who already fills a support role, could help out the rest of the squad with double mods?

It can, but I feel it will help other ships more until the RZ1's drop in price.