Basically thread title: discuss.

Moldy Crow is basically what makes a HWK worth bringing. So many of its pilot abilities are clearly built around it. Kyle sucks without the ability to stock a few focus tokens, and the extra arc means his ability actually starts to compete with co-ordinate, or an ability like Dutch's. Without Moldy Crow, Kyle's ability is just bad. Really, really bad. Who wants to spend a whole game pointing your only attack arc at your friends instead of your enemies and passing away the only dice mod you have? His ability isn't even busted good with it. Situationally, it's worse than just brining a co-ordinate ship. It's worse action economy than Garven, just slightly more reliable. It's not as good as Jake, but you don't have to fly him quite so close.

Same, but slightly lesser for Jan. She again is severely hamstrung by having to point her along arc at friendlies instead of targets. It's worse for her in a way because she costs the same as an X-Wing, which is probably going to bring more damage output to the game anyway.

And wouldn't you know it!? Roark Garnet also has an ability that uses his firing arc to help friendlies! Three pilots who all want an arc to point at friendlies and an arc to shoot stuff with. Hmmmmmmmm.

But to truly activate these abilities, you need an insane 18 point investment. And that's before you consider that most of these pilots want to be taking some sort of crew (Leia/Chewbacca for all three, or Jyn / Perceptive on Kyle / Nien on Jan). It's too much. The title alone is nearly as much as a Bandit Z. By the time you've added crew and Crow to Kyle or Jan, you can save points by picking Ten or Braylen. No joke. Braylen Stramm is 1 point cheaper than the cheapest viable (IMO) Rebel HWK - Kyle + Jyn and Moldy Crow.

There is almost no reason to take named HWK pilots at the moment, because their abilities suck without MC and they're too expensive for a 5HP 2 agility ship with it.

The Scum pilots are frustrating in that they are also almost all dependent on firing arcs too, but they only care whether they're pointed at an enemy ship. Like, how is it not blindingly obvious that the Scum pilots have the advantage here? They don't have to pick and choose who they point at. They get the benefits of their ability and getting to attack. There's a huge gulf in utility there that's just barely recognised in the points.

And that brings us on to Palob. The reason that Moldy Crow still costs so much. Because for the first three months of 2e, he was in lists that completely dominated. Because his ability is amazing, and only gets better when you add more arc coverage and higher damage output. I get to shoot at the enemy, get free dice mods and I can take away some of your mods? Amazing. Compare that to Kyle and you see just how ridiculously unbalanced the factional design of this ship is. Compare it with Jan, even, who gets no benefit herself, has to be pointed at a friendly and has to take a stress just so the list gets one extra red die. And Palob is somehow cheaper than Jan!!???

So they costed Crow to the stratosphere to cancel out Palob and we haven't seen a single HWK since (barring, what, a month of Roark in that Dash list until that also got nerfed to high heaven). A whole chassis in two factions is now essentially unplayable outside of some super niche builds that don't really work because FFG are scared of unleashing Palob on the meta again

The worst part is, there are so many simple solutions to this. So many ways that Moldy Crow could become affordable on Rebel HWKs again.....

The Palob meta was nearly two years ago at the point and the game has changed a ton since then. It's time to stop hand wringing over it and make the HWK a platform that people might actually want to use again.

The reason is the three dice attack. Is a bad design like Luke gunner and more things that if they are affordable become broken. If not, they are unplayable.

I think the cost of the title is correct now.

The better solution is drop the chassis. I don't see many issues with a cheaper support ship if it doesn't contribute too much to the fight by itself.

48 minutes ago, GuacCousteau said:

Basically thread title: discuss.

Moldy Crow is basically what makes a HWK worth bringing. So many of its pilot abilities are clearly built around it. Kyle sucks without the ability to stock a few focus tokens, and the extra arc means his ability actually starts to compete with co-ordinate, or an ability like Dutch's. Without Moldy Crow, Kyle's ability is just bad. Really, really bad. Who wants to spend a whole game pointing your only attack arc at your friends instead of your enemies and passing away the only dice mod you have? His ability isn't even busted good with it. Situationally, it's worse than just brining a co-ordinate ship. It's worse action economy than Garven, just slightly more reliable. It's not as good as Jake, but you don't have to fly him quite so close.

Same, but slightly lesser for Jan. She again is severely hamstrung by having to point her along arc at friendlies instead of targets. It's worse for her in a way because she costs the same as an X-Wing, which is probably going to bring more damage output to the game anyway.

And wouldn't you know it!? Roark Garnet also has an ability that uses his firing arc to help friendlies! Three pilots who all want an arc to point at friendlies and an arc to shoot stuff with. Hmmmmmmmm.

But to truly activate these abilities, you need an insane 18 point investment. And that's before you consider that most of these pilots want to be taking some sort of crew (Leia/Chewbacca for all three, or Jyn / Perceptive on Kyle / Nien on Jan). It's too much. The title alone is nearly as much as a Bandit Z. By the time you've added crew and Crow to Kyle or Jan, you can save points by picking Ten or Braylen. No joke. Braylen Stramm is 1 point cheaper than the cheapest viable (IMO) Rebel HWK - Kyle + Jyn and Moldy Crow.

There is almost no reason to take named HWK pilots at the moment, because their abilities suck without MC and they're too expensive for a 5HP 2 agility ship with it.

The Scum pilots are frustrating in that they are also almost all dependent on firing arcs too, but they only care whether they're pointed at an enemy ship. Like, how is it not blindingly obvious that the Scum pilots have the advantage here? They don't have to pick and choose who they point at. They get the benefits of their ability and getting to attack. There's a huge gulf in utility there that's just barely recognised in the points.

And that brings us on to Palob. The reason that Moldy Crow still costs so much. Because for the first three months of 2e, he was in lists that completely dominated. Because his ability is amazing, and only gets better when you add more arc coverage and higher damage output. I get to shoot at the enemy, get free dice mods and I can take away some of your mods? Amazing. Compare that to Kyle and you see just how ridiculously unbalanced the factional design of this ship is. Compare it with Jan, even, who gets no benefit herself, has to be pointed at a friendly and has to take a stress just so the list gets one extra red die. And Palob is somehow cheaper than Jan!!???

So they costed Crow to the stratosphere to cancel out Palob and we haven't seen a single HWK since (barring, what, a month of Roark in that Dash list until that also got nerfed to high heaven). A whole chassis in two factions is now essentially unplayable outside of some super niche builds that don't really work because FFG are scared of unleashing Palob on the meta again

The worst part is, there are so many simple solutions to this. So many ways that Moldy Crow could become affordable on Rebel HWKs again.....

The Palob meta was nearly two years ago at the point and the game has changed a ton since then. It's time to stop hand wringing over it and make the HWK a platform that people might actually want to use again.

I dont want scum hwks to go up but its hard to disagree here.

Roark vs torkil, dropping an enemy to 0 will benefit many ships including torkil with potential to inititive kill too.

Palob is better than Kyle, especially as its a self supporting ability that also might help friendly attacks in target. Vs passing a focus you paid for in actions to a ship if available.

Jan vs Dace though is a wash, Jan is super good, especially when used with a heavy hitter. While Daces avility might never even occur unless you build around it and or get a lucky crit and are playing against a medium or large base ship.

1 hour ago, GuacCousteau said:

Moldy Crow is basically what makes a HWK worth bringing.

this means moldy crow is, in fact, still too cheap

1 hour ago, S4ul0 said:

The reason is the three dice attack. Is a bad design like Luke gunner and more things that if they are affordable become broken. If not, they are unplayable.

The two aren't even remotely comparable.

Luke bypasses a fundamental mechanic of the game.

Moldy Crow is just a statline and an average ability.

There is nothing inherently wrong with a 2 arc, 3 and 2 attack dice setup. Look at ARC-170s, they have a 3 and 2 and they're terrible. Or K-Wings - you can put three dice out the front and two out each side and they're also terrible.

The whole point of my post is that one of those arcs on the Crow gets pointed at a friendly ship anyway for the Rebel pilots.

How does 18 points for a three dice front arc attack make sense when Plasma Torpedoes cost half that? Or when Ion Cannon is overpriced at 6? Is the ability to stock two focus tokens really worth that much?

1 hour ago, S4ul0 said:

The better solution is drop the chassis. I don't see many issues with a cheaper support ship if it doesn't contribute too much to the fight by itself.

No one wants to play HWKs without the title. That's the problem.

Again, the whole point of my post is that named HWK pilots suck without the title and that will be true no matter what they cost.

All dropping the chassis will do is give Rebel Scout as a cheap Leia carrier. That's fine if all you want is a cheap Leia carrier, but it won't help the named pilots. Nothing else help even make it a cheap support ship, unless you go literal Bandit Z prices, because the Sheathipede will always be better because it actually has co-ordinate.

The support part of the HWK comes from its one crew slot and its pilot abilities.

48 minutes ago, Scum4Life said:

I dont want scum hwks to go up but its hard to disagree here.

Roark vs torkil, dropping an enemy to 0 will benefit many ships including torkil with potential to inititive kill too.

Palob is better than Kyle, especially as its a self supporting ability that also might help friendly attacks in target. Vs passing a focus you paid for in actions to a ship if available.

Jan vs Dace though is a wash, Jan is super good, especially when used with a heavy hitter. While Daces avility might never even occur unless you build around it and or get a lucky crit and are playing against a medium or large base ship.

Comparing only by Initiative kinda loses something, though. Basically, that's because Dace sucks . He's an ion control support piece in a game where the designers have explicitly said they don't want ion control to be too much of a thing.

He's the outlier here for sure. I don't think anything ever fixes him. An ability that niche will never be worth taking. Unless maybe he gets his own ion weapon.

I don't even think the Scum pilots need to be much higher relative to their Rebel counterparts, though. The key thing is that Scum clearly get more out of the title because they don't need their arcs to pull double duty pointing at friends and enemies both. Clearly the obvious solution is to make Moldy Crow cheaper in the Rebel faction.

3 minutes ago, svelok said:

this means moldy crow is, in fact, still too cheap

Whaddya know? Another hot take with no argument, justification or scope for discussion behind it. And once again, absolutely zero effort made to engage any of the points I made or come up with any sort of counter argument.

Bravo. Another valuable contribution.

Firing arc to help friendly ships was always a suspect design. I'd say that, more than Palob, is the root problem. The issue isn't that there isn't a cheap way to add a firing arc so that they can use their abilities, their abilities should have never been written that way in the first place .

Palob, like a lot of Scum in that early nerf wave, kinda got over-hit. The fact that the nerfs killed Wretched-Hive Utility 4-Ship, but didn't kill the Imperial Aces who got nerfed at the same time, kinda shows that the Scum nerfs were harder.

1 hour ago, GuacCousteau said:

Moldy Crow is basically what makes a HWK worth bringing.

I've had more fun than you'd expect with generic HWKs. It's a bit of a premium over a TIE/ag, and not quite as tanky as a TIE/sf, but it's kinda the best of both. Full arc rotation like the Aggressor, mods-while-rotating like the SF.

I run Moldy Crow Engine Upgrade Torkil with Seevor, Autoblasters Sunny, and 2 Zealous Recruits. It's a beast of a list. Not because of the 3 primary, but because of the Focus tokens. It's like a push the limit for free for no less than 2 quality engagements.

If any other of my 2 primary, 2 agility ships could gain 2+ rounds of free action economy and a 3 primary secondary arc for 9% more of my list, I'd use it every day of the week and twice on league nights.

It's a horribly broken title, easily the most broken title in the game. Adding it to a chassis that is intended to be a crew carrier is just crazy. They swung too hard on it.

It's well priced. Especially on a chassis that has those upgrade slots and action bar.

2 hours ago, GuacCousteau said:

The worst part is, there are so many simple solutions to this. So many ways that Moldy Crow could become affordable on Rebel HWKs again....

At the risk of sounding confrontational; Go on then.

Don't present a problem without presenting a solution because you're not solving the problem, merely complaining about its existence.

The whole idea that the HWK is costed around Moldy Crow is only partially true. Unlike X-Wings which you can pretty much gaurentee will want to take SFoils and so can just cost Sfoils at 0, Moldy crow is a unique card that doubles a ships arc coverage and provides a 3 dice primary on a ship that can take crew. As such you have to point each ship so that it works with the crow title.

You can't scale the crow title by initiative as it doesn't solve the problem. Although I could see an argument for Moldy Crow to be worth different points for Scum and Rebel respectively because, you are right;

Rebel HWK's often turn their turret arc towards allies and use their primary for attacks against enemies although if they catch an enemy in the turret, fantastic. Scum pilots can use their turret arc purely for coverage and I'd argue it is much easier to use a Scum HWK than it is a Rebel HWK.

It is weird that an upgrade could cost differently depending on faction? Yes.

Does it create a problem for people who don't use an app to calculate their lists: Yes

Do I care about the above problem; no, if you're reading this and you're one of these people, you're the one that's choosing to make it hard for yourself. An easier option is presented to you, if you chose to go the difficult route, you then pretty much abdicate any comments about it being 'too difficult and complex'.

Ahem...went on a mini rant there.

That's how I'd solve the problem, cost Moldy crow differently for Scum and Rebels.

As someone who's been amusing himself making scummy lists, I've personally found that Palob and Torkil (my two go-to HWK pilots) are cheap enough the added 18 points isn't much of a hindrance to making fun salads. A tab of 56 or 58 points seems fair for such a versatile platform, even if it's fragile. It's the 68 points for Fenn that bugs me but, for what's essentially an auto mod, I guess I can see why he's so spendy.

33 minutes ago, GuacCousteau said:

Whaddya know? Another hot take with no argument, justification or scope for discussion behind it. And once again, absolutely zero effort made to engage any of the points I made or come up with any sort of counter argument.

Bravo. Another valuable contribution.

With all respect to you Guac...you're the one that presented a problem in the original post and didn't provide...excuse me "no argument, justification, or scope for discussion behind it."

I think it’s fairly costed.

What may not be correctly costed are some of the HWK pilots. Torkil and Palob have amazing abilities. Jan is alright, but doesn’t need the title to be great since she’s more a support ship at that point. Those 3 are probably all fairly costed. I’m less sure about the benefits of the other pilots in a list.

I think it’s fair. It is a tremendous value: gaining the arc and additional attack die is fabulous, and that’s before banking focus tokens and opening up use of that action bar in the first couple engagements. No adjustment to the title needed in my mind.

18pt for a 0 to 3 dice front arc AND the ability to accumulate upto 3 focus tokens(!) not force/calculates, no FOCUS, that part alone is like a SUPER forceuser.

18pt for that alone is crazy good action economy and is f*** crazy good value.

It cannot be cheaper. I will join the choir of people saying the HWK is (again) poor gamedesign when considering the abilities.

Solution: FFG needs to make a 0pt non unique upgrade-card which simply adds a 2dice front primary attack and then increase the individual pilots with this in mind. Done.

31 minutes ago, GuacCousteau said:

The two aren't even remotely comparable.

Luke bypasses a fundamental mechanic of the game.

Moldy Crow is just a statline and an average ability

Sorry but I didn't explain well.

The Moldy Crow have "three" abilities. A new arc, better stats and a stack of tokens.

Not all the HWK pilots need all of them, but they need at least one. The problem is the benefit of all together is notable and that is why the title must be expensive

I think is a bad design, like Luke, because bypass fundamental mechanics too (free tokens and better arc coverage).

The HWK should be a better support ship with the title, but with a cheaper title, we have a ship that break the rules, very efficient, and that also has a support ability instead.

If the ship without the title is garbage, the problem is the ship.

9 minutes ago, Sciencius said:

18pt for a 0 to 3 dice front arc AND the ability to accumulate upto 3 focus tokens(!) not force/calculates, no FOCUS, that part alone is like a SUPER forceuser.

18pt for that alone is crazy good action economy and is f*** crazy good value.

It cannot be cheaper. I will join the choir of people saying the HWK is (again) poor gamedesign when considering the abilities.

Solution: FFG needs to make a 0pt non unique upgrade-card which simply adds a 2dice front primary attack and then increase the individual pilots with this in mind. Done.

A few more titles, perhaps still unique but less powerful, or simply adding a turret slot would be amazing.

Dorsal turret adds a 2 die arc, at a cheap cost, and ion turret woukd synergise with Dace so he can do something on his own.

In fact if the ship had launced with a two die fixed arc and turret slot, the moldy crow title could have been focussed on the focus token aspect .

1 hour ago, GuacCousteau said:

No one wants to play HWKs without the title. That's the problem.

Again, the whole point of my post is that named HWK pilots suck without the title and that will be true no matter what they cost.

I don't believe that at all. You wouldn't play a 25 point Jan Ors?

The problem with Moldy Crow is that it takes these support ships with generally quite powerful abilities, and turns them into front-line combat ships that are better than most actual front-line combat ships.

Take Jan, for example. 59 points there nets you an initiative 5, 3-dice gun that gets to roll into combat with a fully-modified attack and a backup defensive Focus token and if it happens to not spend some of its tokens, it hangs onto them between rounds. That's almost worthwhile in and of itself, before you consider what her pilot ability actually does, and that holds true for basically all of them. I am constantly amazed by how little play they see.

Unpopular opinion probably but the Moldy Crow was refitted by the Rebels for Kyle and Jan according to lore. The current title should be Rebel only and priced for them.

Give scum a new scum only Moldy Crow title card for the Hwk's.

2 hours ago, Sciencius said:

Solution: FFG needs to make a 0pt non unique upgrade-card which simply adds a 2dice front primary attack and then increase the individual pilots with this in mind. Done.

No. Just, no.

Leave it as it is for those of us who want a cheap support.

1 hour ago, Tyhar7 said:

Unpopular opinion probably but the Moldy Crow was refitted by the Rebels for Kyle and Jan according to lore. The current title should be Rebel only and priced for them.

Give scum a new scum only Moldy Crow title card for the Hwk's.

I think because the scum hawks can fire on their enemies when pointing arcs at their targets, making then cheaper and running them without any title would be viable.

Palob and Torkil at 35 and 30 respectivley would be excellent support pieces

32 minutes ago, ScummyRebel said:

No. Just, no.

Leave it as it is for those of us who want a cheap support.

I humbly submit that any cheap support not named AP-5 is an unwise choice.

Simple: more titles.

Some unique and at least one generic or limited with multiple dots.

Adding a forwards arc. Adding a turret slot. Adding other benefits.

Many ships which only have one title would be improved by having more choices. Maybe, one day, we will get Squadron titles too...

6 hours ago, svelok said:

this means moldy crow is, in fact, still too cheap

Do you have anything to back up your claim? You might as well say that having three arcs is the only thing that makes Starfortresses worth bringing, which means that Starfortresses are, in fact, still too cheap.

And we know that’s not true.

I want to play HWKs without title, but they are overcosted, so you can play only 1 HWK in the list, with the title. Palob's ability isn't even that good with jedi and droids flying around.

Rebel generic costs as much as I3 Nantex! HWKs are like torrents with mobile 2 dice arc for 3-10 points. Even 1.0 HWKs were better than 2.0.

6 minutes ago, Boreas Mun said:

I want to play HWKs without title, but they are overcosted, so you can play only 1 HWK in the list, with the title. Palob's ability isn't even that good with jedi and droids flying around.

Rebel generic costs as much as I3 Nantex! HWKs are like torrents with mobile 2 dice arc for 3-10 points. Even 1.0 HWKs were better than 2.0.

Agreed--- If HWKs were cheaper, they could be more modification friendly. I'm even fine with them increasing Moldy Crow a point for every point they reduce the base chassis. That could be one of the best ways to give the non Moldy Crow HWKs some increased factional relevancy. Make it a favorably modular platform instead of a big red Primary 3 attack value thirstytrap.