10 hours ago, Khobai said:

otherwise surge tokens will never be as good for rebels and empire as they are for CIS and GAR.

*Imperial shore trooper gunline glaces over nervously*

2 minutes ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

*Imperial shore trooper gunline glaces over nervously*

Monkey puppet meme

1 hour ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

*Imperial shore trooper gunline glaces over nervously*

shoretroopers are the exception not the rule though. as a general rule imperials get offensive surge to hit on their units.

15 minutes ago, Khobai said:

shoretroopers are the exception not the rule though. as a general rule imperials get offensive surge to hit on their units.

Almost like its their... Faction ability?

12 hours ago, Khobai said:

otherwise surge tokens will never be as good for rebels and empire as they are for CIS and GAR.

I think that’s fine b/c you save 10pts on Aggressive Tactics that way. I don’t want a reason to need surge tokens as a Rebel player. Native surge, dodge, and aim are superior.

15 minutes ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

Almost like its their... Faction ability?

Its not their faction ability lol.

Its to improve their attack from a white die to something in between a white die and a black die.

I might consider it their faction ability if they actually got an advantage over other factions by surging on offense. But they dont. a stormtrooper with a white die and offensive surge is still worse than a clone trooper with black die and no surge. theres no advantage gained over other factions from surging.

I think youre confused about what a faction ability is. A faction ability wont appear on any of the unit cards. It only appears in the rule book. Like token sharing or the droids suppression rules, you wont find those on any of the unit cards.

Factions rules arnt unit specific rules. Theyre high level rules that apply to multiple units within a faction.

So for example if rebels got a global rule that let any rebel unit spend a surge token to get a half-dodge effect (roll a red die and on a block you dodge a hit) that would be an example of a faction ability. But rebels surging on defense is not a faction ability. Thats just their saving throw... its in between a white and a black.

12 minutes ago, smickletz said:

I think that’s fine b/c you save 10pts on Aggressive Tactics that way. I don’t want a reason to need surge tokens as a Rebel player. Native surge, dodge, and aim are superior.

native surge isnt always better though

white attack dice with surge are worse than black attack dice without surge

white saving dice with surge are worse than red saving dice without surge

surging is not always better than not surging and a lot of times is worse because you cant use surge tokens

6 minutes ago, Khobai said:

I think youre confused about what a faction ability is. A faction ability wont appear on any of the unit cards. It only appears in the rule book. Like token sharing or the droids suppression rules, you wont find those on any of the unit cards.

Factions rules arnt unit specific rules. Theyre high level rules that apply to multiple units within a faction.

The issue there is that Droid Troopers aren't unique to CIS, so can that really be considered a faction ability for them? Especially since they do actually have many units with something that nobody else has: AI. Except that AI is printed on the cards, which, per your definition, doesn't qualify as a faction ability (never mind that it's more like the opposite of an ability).

what other faction consists of mostly droid troopers?

so yeah it is a faction ability for them.

I mean theres like droid operatives but they dont really count. because its a one off model not the entire army.

I wouldnt consider a rule that affects 1-2 models in an army to be a faction rule. But when it affects the entire army its different.

In the future, there could conceivably be units in other factions that share tokens with exemplar but that doesnt make it that factions ability either.

4 minutes ago, Khobai said:

what other faction has droid troopers?

so yeah it is a faction ability for them.

K2 ... R2 ... 3PO ...

18 minutes ago, Khobai said:

native surge isnt always better though

Yes it is.

If you roll 4 surges on 4 dice of ANY color and have 1 surge token, you’d rather have a native surge. Always.

33 minutes ago, smickletz said:

If you roll 4 surges on 4 dice of ANY color and have 1 surge token, you’d rather have a native surge. Always.

Nope. And ill give you an example.

Say one unit has a black attack dice with native surge and another unit has a red attack dice without surge.

The red attack dice can spend a surge token while the black dice cant because it has native surge.

Having a better die without surge is always better than having a worse die with surge. Natively surging is not always better.

So heres a real game example of when native surge is actually a hindrance. I have a Palpatine list with force guidance and aggressive tactics. Palpatine functions as a support commander by handing out boatloads of surge tokens each turn.

Shoretroopers are actually the best units in the list. Because they dont surge natively on offense OR defense. And their coordinate means one extra surge token from aggressive tactics.

Ive also used Scout Troopers in the list because they dont surge natively on offsense and Scout Troopers with surge tokens can do some pretty ridiculous damage.

I use snowtroopers+gideon hask in the list too even though they surge on offense, but snowtroopers with potentially 12 wounds thanks to the broken leader rules are too obnoxious not to use right now IMO. And they work well with palpatine because of steady.

Units I wouldnt want to use in the list are things like Death Troopers. Because natively double surging means giving them surge tokens is pointless.

The idea of the list is to maximize surge token usage by taking as many units that dont surge innately. And then you use pulling the strings on the snowtroopers or to try to use up surge tokens on units that didnt get surges during their own activations.

Besides theres no guarantee youll even roll a surge anyway. Surge tokens are completely erratic in that regard. Thats why I feel there should be a more consistent outlet for spending surge tokens than praying you roll surge icons on the dice.

28 minutes ago, Khobai said:

Nope. And ill give you an example.

Say one unit has a black attack dice with native surge and another unit has a red attack dice without surge.

The red attack dice can spend a surge token while the black dice cant because it has native surge.

Having a better die without surge is always better than having a worse die with surge. Natively surging is not always better.

Furthermore theres units that surge innately on both offense and defense which have absolutely no use for surge tokens yet sometimes end up getting surge tokens anyway.

Right now rebels can only get surge tokens via aggressive tactics or force guidance. For empire inferno squad has reliable 1, otherwise again only aggressive tactics or force guidance. So your taking an upgrade to give units surge tokens, that primarily already have a surge on defense or surge on attack, and you complaining because it’s not effective enough?

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Right now rebels can only get surge tokens via aggressive tactics.

And force guidance

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So your taking an upgrade to give units surge tokens, that primarily already have a surge on defense or surge on attack, and you complaining because it’s not effective enough?

You have completely missed the point.

What im saying is that units that dont surge innately are sometimes more effective than ones that do.

Surging innately is not always an advantage.

Units that dont surge innately can improve their die results with surge tokens. Units that surge innately cant improve their die results with surge tokens.

So a unit like scout troopers that get two black dice and no native surge can surge those black dice with surge tokens. That makes them very potent offensively when a 60 point unit can throw out 8 black dice and sharpshooter and can also be given surge tokens to offensively surge. Thats deathtrooper levels of damage from a 4 man unit of scouttroopers.

If scout troopers had innate offensive surge they would probably only get a black die and a white die not two black dice. the fact they dont have offensive surge means their base attack is better than it normally would be if they had offensive surge, so adding surge tokens on top of that is even better yet.

its the same with shoretroopers. they get a black die for attack. But if shoretroopers had offensive surge they would probably only get a white die instead. And when you combine the black die shoretroopers get with a surge token it gets even better.

7 minutes ago, Khobai said:

Units that dont surge innately can improve their die results with surge tokens. Units that surge innately cant improve their die results with surge tokens.

I'm pretty sure that's exactly how the designers intended it to work

1 minute ago, lunitic501 said:

I'm pretty sure that's exactly how the designers intended it to work

Yes, but that would too reasonable

1 hour ago, Khobai said:

I think youre confused about what a faction ability is. A faction ability wont appear on any of the unit cards. It only appears in the rule book. Like token sharing or the droids suppression rules, you wont find those on any of the unit cards.

Factions rules arnt unit specific rules. Theyre high level rules that apply to multiple units within a faction.

As others have pointed out, the Clone and Droid trooper types are not "faction" abilities. They are trooper types, like creature or emplacement. Granted, clone troopers are Republic exclusive now, but not every unit in the clone wars factions has a faction wide ability. Republic AT-RTs, BARCs, most of the tank pilots, and Obi-wan cant share tokens.

Yes but the designers also usually downgrade the attack dice on units that surge innately.

Thats why stormtroopers and snowtroopers get a white die because they have native surge. And why shoretroopers get a black die because they dont have native surge.

Not having surge often means the unit's dice get upgraded to the next level.. white goes to black.

And those are the units that work best with surge tokens, the ones that have upgraded attack dice due to not having native surge.

Those are your shoretroopers, scout troopers, royal guard, etc...

So if youre running a palpatine surge token list thats why you wanna use those units and not other units. I would never run stormtroopers with palpatine for example because theres no synergy there. snowtroopers are kindve an exception though because steady is really good with palpatine and snowtroopers are pretty broken right now with gideon hask and the dumb leader rules.

Quote

As others have pointed out, the Clone and Droid trooper types are not "faction" abilities. They are trooper types, like creature or emplacement. Granted, clone troopers are Republic exclusive now, but not every unit in the clone wars factions has a faction wide ability. Republic AT-RTs, BARCs, most of the tank pilots, and Obi-wan cant share tokens.

When a trooper type is ubiquitous throughout a faction a rule that affects that trooper type becomes indistinguishable from a faction ability. Its essentially the same thing. Because the entire faction benefits from that rule. Its not just a handful of models in the army benefiting from it.

For arguments sake lets say they do decide to "faction abilities" to rebs and imps. I think easiest way is to just make 2 maore keywords Rebel trooper, and Imperials trooper and give those keywords abilities (same as clone trooper or droid trooper). Not sure what abilities I would give them but I think that's thr best way to go about it it would make them feel similar to the clone wars factions in term of execution.

new keywords that affect all rebel troopers and all imperial troopers would be fine too. thats basically the same thing as a faction rule.

1 hour ago, Khobai said:

what other faction consists of mostly droid troopers?

so yeah it is a faction ability for them.

I mean theres like droid operatives but they dont really count. because its a one off model not the entire army.

I wouldnt consider a rule that affects 1-2 models in an army to be a faction rule. But when it affects the entire army its different.

In the future, there could conceivably be units in other factions that share tokens with exemplar but that doesnt make it that factions ability either.

The faction is not "mostly" Droid Troopers. Of the units released for CIS, only 4 out of 10 units are Droid Troopers (I am counting BX droids as 2 different units). Rebels have 2 Droid Troopers. CIS have 4. Faction ability?

8 minutes ago, arnoldrew said:

The faction is not "mostly" Droid Troopers. Of the units released for CIS, only 4 out of 10 units are Droid Troopers (I am counting BX droids as 2 different units). Rebels have 2 Droid Troopers. CIS have 4. Faction ability?

But youre only counting the different types of units

Youre not accounting for the composition of the armies. CIS is mostly droids. Rebels is not.

Youre seriously going to try to argue that the droid rule is just as applicable to a rebel army using zero to two droid operatives as it is to a CIS army using 8+ units of droids?

When a rule affects most of the units in a faction it becomes more or less indistinguishable from a faction rule. Its not a faction rule for rebels because rebels dont use mostly droids in their army. The rebel army is comprised mostly of space roaming hobos not droids.

4 minutes ago, Khobai said:

Youre seriously going to try to argue that the droid rule is just as applicable to a rebel army using one or two droid operatives as it is to a CIS army using 8+ units of droids?

I mean it is. It works exactly the same for those 2 droid operatives as it does for the ones in the CIS army

Yes but it doesnt apply to the entire army. Just 2 operatives. Which may or may not even be in the rebel list. Whereas CIS always takes droids.

23 minutes ago, Khobai said:

Yes but it doesnt apply to the entire army. Just 2 operatives. Which may or may not even be in the rebel list. Whereas CIS always takes droids.

It does not apply to the entire army for CIS either...

If the CIS get those Geonosians for a corps unit, there might actually come a time where you could field an entire Separatist army that doesn't have Droid Trooper, Coordinate, or AI. I'm not saying this is guaranteed to happen or that it will happen, but would those abilities still be considered "faction abilities" at that point? The same could be said for the GAR and Gungans.

What happens then? Do all Rebel and Imperial units get the new upgrade to faction specific trooper status? If so, why? What do units like the Wookiees become, just Rebel Troopers? If GAR also get a Wookiee unit, do they suddenly get some "Republic Trooper" designation?

Edit: to make my point clearer and to use less of a socratic method, I'm wondering why the Imperials and Rebels would suddenly get an ability that effects all of their troopers, even their commanders, as opposed to the Prequel factions whose ability only affects some to most of their currently released units. If this is truly a faction ability, then it should apply to all of their troopers, like the proposed changes would to the Civil War Era factions.

4 hours ago, Khobai said:

new keywords that affect all rebel troopers and all imperial troopers would be fine too. thats basically the same thing as a faction rule.

Clone trooper and droid trooper do not affect their whole factions!!!

The leaders/ops/vehicles do not get the abilities.

ffs...