4 hours ago, ScummyRebel said:

The rules reference guide makes reference to allied ships now. I could see the possibility of a casual format coming that allows a handful of points allowing hiring of an ally. Probably Rebels and Resistance, empire and FO, and anyone taking a little scum (maybe?)

"Allied" is a definition from Epic Battles. It means ships belonging to another player that is on your team. "Friendly" is the ships in your own squad/list. Them adding "Allied" to the RR is likely just them covering their bases to try and reduce confusion among tournament die hards if an ability or upgrade references "allied" ships.

Scum & Villainy (the one faction that really keeps me around, but I am terrified they will split it up eventually into Cartels and Bounty Hunters)

1) Illicits, which should be hugely faction defining and a bit of a showcase for the faction, are largely irrelevant except Contraband Cybernetics. Sigh.

^This^

Scum has enough toys, to keep scum centric players interested there needs to be some growth/development for the faction. New illicit upgrades would be great.

24 minutes ago, Greedo_Sharpshooter said:

Scum has enough toys, to keep scum centric players interested there needs to be some growth/development for the faction. New illicit upgrades would be great.

Our "toys" keep getting stolen and broken by the other factions.

2 hours ago, Hiemfire said:

Our "toys" keep getting stolen and broken by the other factions.

I don't necessarily think Illicits need to be exclusive, but its sorta similar to how Rebels are a lot less special when Mechs and Torps don't have a diverse set of viable options: Part of what being a scum is should be access to those slots to allow them to heavily feature in your list, but because the illicit slot is mostly relevant for making a powerful ship more powerful (with dampener combos or Contraband on a ship where getting an action when you shouldn't can outright change the game) rather than being something that scales well over a list, there isn't much of a point in having the option on everything.

Terex isn't a terrible idea, but when Scum isn't able to justify using those slots its a bit tacky for FO to suddenly be able to toss those around willy nilly.

20 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

Agreed. And FFG really need to start designing around keywords like Pirate, Hutt, Bounty Hunter, etc. It would add layers of flavor without diluting existing factions.

They have added the "Bounty Hunter" and "Mandalorian" keyword, and I curious to see what they do with that. I could see "Black Sun" or other cartel style things popping up.

There isn't enough being done with illicit upgrades and modifications for Scum. It has always seemed a bit not with the fluff for any scum ship to hit the table without a modification or illicit or illicit modification on it. One of the failings of 2nd Edition thus far has been in not having made that more of a thing for Scum and even Rebels somewhat.

I've always thought Imperial ships should be "straight off the assembly line." Empire doesn't "fix" stuff or upgrade stuff in the field. They just get a new one. Rebels should have a bit of that but also more holding stuff together and making it better with whatever they can buy, beg, or "borrow."

Scum shouldn't have much of "stock" about them at all (although there comes a chance of add "sub-factions" to Scum with your Concord Dawn being a bit more "by the numbers" and your bounty hunters not leaving the hangar without changing something.)

But as has been noted we do not play Upgrade X-wing we play Chassis X-wing.

I'll never understand Camp Illicits. You'd think people bought into a faction called "Illicits and Villainy".

It has to be first edition hangover right? No faction is defined by a specific upgrade slot, why on earth would/should scum be?

1 hour ago, svelok said:

I'll never understand Camp Illicits. You'd think people bought into a faction called "Illicits and Villainy".

It has to be first edition hangover right? No faction is defined by a specific upgrade slot, why on earth would/should scum be?

It's less illicits, but more just any Scum identity in general. What ever identity scum has, someone typically comes along an does it better, usually the CIS. Tractor controls used to be a Scum identity, but has nerfed because of and better executed by CIS. IG calc sharing was an interesting mechanic that was done better and much cheaper in CIS. Constable Zuvio's ability was straight up taken by a generic Hyena bomber. CIS is even getting the Firespray. A lot of Scum identity is being syphoned into CIS.

As to the illicits, they were largely unique to Scum for the longest time, which established them as part of the Scum identity. Smuggling Compartment and Saw's ships getting illicits were rare exceptions. But now the majority of the factions have access to illicits, and once Jango comes out, 5 of 7 will have them.

Scum's current identity is "be at range 1", which doesn't feel very Scummy.

2 hours ago, svelok said:

I'll never understand Camp Illicits. You'd think people bought into a faction called "Illicits and Villainy".

It has to be first edition hangover right? No faction is defined by a specific upgrade slot, why on earth would/should scum be?

There is a difference between mechanical identity and thematic identity.

Illicit slot upgrades kinda would fit both.

Its downright weird scum, who are meant to be these outliers of society rather than an organized army or elite fighting force, are winning fights with the raw firepower of ships that are just great brawlers. I have talked a bit about this, but its actively kinda funny that Boba is so good at flying past people and fighting them up close when that is literally how he died in the OT and one of the few things we know about him is that he actually kinda shouldn't have been zooming past people basting them up close. For crazy powerful and scary super ships, depending on implementation, you should be looking at Empire or Rebels, not scum. Which raises the question of how to make them scummy mechanically. Even DJ, who is probably philosophically scum, lied, cheated, and hacked his way out of problems and never committed to anything. Scum can totally have powerful characters and ships with more combat oriented abilities, but every faction should, and it should be a question of what extra tricks those characters need to use to gain their value.

Dirty tricks and unorthodox solutions are very scum, most of the scum faction pilots we see in a lot of material use stuff to try to even the odds against superior opponents, like how Jango (Yes, I am counting him as scum) uses Seismic charges to shake a Jedi right on his tail, or Cad Bane turns off the gravity in a ship with his magical gadget gauntlet to make it easier to fight a bunch of clones. They often use tons of gadgets like with what the Beskar is associated with in the old EU. Hondo being generic is legitimately fantastic because his effect is fun and Hondo basically will do whatever for anyone, but it reflects his scummy nature so well of kinda betraying you while he works for you. Also, a lot of design effort is already in Scum=Illicit. For example, Jabba is probably the most iconic scum character from the OT (Boba, in the end, wasn't even a speaking role and mostly is an EU character), and he is all about recharging Illicits. Many scum ships get illicits rather than talents, meaning 'conventional' ways to improve ships are somewhat off limits to them.

So we see this recurring motif of using exotic, forbidden, or just unusually applied technology to fight people in scum. Are Seismic charges an illicit slot? No, but they definitely feel like they COULD be both mechanically and lore wise (After all, rigged cargo chute isn't a bomb either!), and more to the point the style of play where you throw up obstacles or do something unexpected like annihilate a terrain feature to hurt your opponent and clear something up for you feels very scummy, down to the fact that scum already have terrain based gimmicks (That are bad).

So illicits aren't necessarily necessary, they just are this weird failure of design, especially when a lot of scum characters were designed to be tricky and in 1e Illicits very much were a selling point of the faction. And most of their other 'mechanical toys' will inevitably be stolen because... what mechanical identity does scum have? Fighting at range 1? Fighting inside your enemy's arc? Neither of those are very special mechanics or heavily scum flavored. So what else is there? Being a rotten scumbag and not fighting fair!

Finally: Literally every faction writeup for scum notes their love of trickery or control effects... which is uhh... a lie. At least right now. They sure have a lot of ways to do it, just like how rebels have a lot of teamwork effects, but having a lot of an effect doesn't matter if the implementation of those effects makes you not very good at actually doing them, which is why scum isn't really a control faction anymore unless you could them spamming M3-As with tractor beams, which is certainly a controlly effect, but is questionable on the flavor compared to 'Lets jury rig a trash ship to be a tractor boat to use in a fight against the space nazis' with the Spacetug.

1 hour ago, svelok said:

I'll never understand Camp Illicits. You'd think people bought into a faction called "Illicits and Villainy".

It has to be first edition hangover right? No faction is defined by a specific upgrade slot, why on earth would/should scum be?

It is as mentioned with Scum not particularly having an identity.

It is also a question of being very much with the fluff for bounty hunters and for smugglers. It goes back to that world-building in Star Wars, "She may not look like much but she's got it where it counts. I've made a few special modifications myself." Where did they find Han Solo? With the best pilots. So probably all the best pilots have made a few special modifications themselves.

Bounty Hunters and Smugglers are operating outside the law or out on the raggedy edges of the law with very bad people. You need advantages against them. You may be doing villainy yourself. Why would you care if something is legal?

In the early Brian Daley Han Solo stories there is a character there to "audit" Han Solo because his ship is not to spec. He has military hardware on the ship. It is not to spec because he's a smuggler. He disobeys the law to make a living why would he obey the law with regards to what he puts on his ship?

The Empire doesn't want the citizens to have access to military grade hardware.

2 hours ago, dezzmont said:

I have talked a bit about this, but its actively kinda funny that Boba is so good at flying past people and fighting them up close when that is literally how he died in the OT and one of the few things we know about him is that he actually kinda shouldn't have been zooming past people basting them up close.

Boba Fett is a chump. This is part of why he's great. He's a dirtbag **** up.

Zuckuss and 4-LOM didn't need a Vader finger-wag to do their jobs. Dengar knows where his towel is. Boba Fett? He can do disintegrations. Not much else. If he shows up on film again, he should keep getting in over his head, blowing everything up, and limping away.

Because that's who he's always been.

@theBitterFig

While it is fun to note that in the OT Fett was actually a huge chump and all the hype around him was based purely on his visual design, he is still an important character in the greater SW mythos and should probably get some respect.

Part of why The Mandalorian is so clever is because they manage to keep that aspect of Mandalorians, despite being badasses, often geting into situations when their technology fails or they just get knocked on their ***. Having a new character to play off that mix of cool and loser rather than trying to continue Fett's story as that when in the comics and stories he was way more gritty was a smart idea.

I just think that Fett a really poor realization of how to make a 'badass fighter' in the scum faction because he isn't 'dense stats who tries to leverage them on people who are affected by other scum tools, or use scum tools himself' but instead is just 'dense stats that let you ignore all other scum mechanics because he is so good' and a flavor fail because maybe Fett should not be rewarded for flying past Luke and sticking super close. And he shouldn't be defensively strong at all!

He feels like a parody of Boba Fett, like the memetic mutation of him, where he just has a super generalist ability (two of them even, with the title) that just makes him better at everything almost all the time, rather than actually trying to reflect anything about the character, in a ship really unsuited for getting that ability in a faction that shouldn't have such an ability. Feels more Wedge than Fett.

14 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

While it is fun to note that in the OT Fett was actually a huge chump and all the hype around him was based purely on his visual design, he is still an important character in the greater SW mythos and should probably get some respect.

He's Star Lord, not Wolverine, that's all. But that's also why I like him.

If Taika Waititi wrote and directed Boba Fett movie, and dude was a lovable dirtbag who can't quite get it right, but still makes it work? I'd eat that right up.

If folks want a perfect badass, Din Djarin is right there.

1 minute ago, theBitterFig said:

If folks want a perfect badass, Din Djarin is right there.

Din Djarin is actually amazing because he ISN'T a perfect badass. He wins a ton of fights effortlessly, but sometimes he just makes a bad move and gets stunned and looted by a bunch of Jawas like a chump!

Just now, dezzmont said:

Din Djarin is actually amazing because he ISN'T a perfect badass. He wins a ton of fights effortlessly, but sometimes he just makes a bad move and gets stunned and looted by a bunch of Jawas like a chump!

See, I'd consider him less being a chump, but it's more that he's *alone*. When he works with others, he succeeds. That's very Star Wars to me.

Just now, theBitterFig said:

See, I'd consider him less being a chump, but it's more that he's *alone*. When he works with others, he succeeds. That's very Star Wars to me.

There are a lot of great dimensions to him that ground him but also make him cool. His humiliation in the fight with the mudhorn where every tool of his failed because he wasn't prepared and the raw power of the creature overwhelmed him made the first moment he really hit his 'badass stride' in the Imperial Remnants Base fight all the sweeter.

Boba's EU depiction was spotty, but Disney gets in trouble a lot for paving over both good parts of the EU and bad. Boba is one of the most loved EU characters despite being all over the place on how he is portrayed because he got yanked around from book to book and comic to comic, he got yanked around because people really loved him. Hence, wolverine, while Din is more Starlord, down to really coming into his own when he is part of a group, and having these moments of genius and these moments where everything falls apart.

But because he is loved, they can't be too mean to him, but because he is inconsistent and doesn't... really make sense in the canon of what Mandalorains even are in most of his apperances, he is a tricky character to bring back. Hence why The Mandalorian was clever: It allowed Disney to exploit the popularity of him as an iconic character while not taking all his baggage forward, so Din could be our loveable badass, but hapless, mercenary, rather than people getting mad 'They made Boba look dumb' or 'They gave Boba stupid oneliners!'

39 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

@theBitterFig

While it is fun to note that in the OT Fett was actually a huge chump and all the hype around him was based purely on his visual design, he is still an important character in the greater SW mythos and should probably get some respect.

Part of why The Mandalorian is so clever is because they manage to keep that aspect of Mandalorians, despite being badasses, often geting into situations when their technology fails or they just get knocked on their ***. Having a new character to play off that mix of cool and loser rather than trying to continue Fett's story as that when in the comics and stories he was way more gritty was a smart idea.

I just think that Fett a really poor realization of how to make a 'badass fighter' in the scum faction because he isn't 'dense stats who tries to leverage them on people who are affected by other scum tools, or use scum tools himself' but instead is just 'dense stats that let you ignore all other scum mechanics because he is so good' and a flavor fail because maybe Fett should not be rewarded for flying past Luke and sticking super close. And he shouldn't be defensively strong at all!

He feels like a parody of Boba Fett, like the memetic mutation of him, where he just has a super generalist ability (two of them even, with the title) that just makes him better at everything almost all the time, rather than actually trying to reflect anything about the character, in a ship really unsuited for getting that ability in a faction that shouldn't have such an ability. Feels more Wedge than Fett.

Fett a huge chump? Did we watch the same movies? He got called out personal ly by Vader, due to his ruthlessness. He outsmarts the heroes in the trash get away. He went toe to toe with them on Bespin. He actually delivered Han to Jabba. His end was not that impresdive no, but he was pretty bad *** in the rest of his scenes in two movies.

16 minutes ago, Dwing said:

Fett a huge chump? Did we watch the same movies?

I dunno. DID we watch the same movies? He has 6 minutes of screentime (counting him being retaconned back into ANH which was very much NOT his first appearance. But I am not going to count his debut in the Holiday Special against him) and mostly stands around, does nothing, or dies instantly.

16 minutes ago, Dwing said:

He got called out personal ly by Vader, due to his ruthlessness

Gets called out for messing up a job.

16 minutes ago, Dwing said:

He outsmarts the heroes in the trash get away

He tracks them. He doesn't do anything that screams 'badass.' I actually think this is a good indicator of 'cunning Boba' over 'powerful Boba.'

16 minutes ago, Dwing said:

He went toe to toe with them on Bespin

He does not at all actually. He just stands there and aims a gun because the heroes in that situation were just completely surrounded by enemies. Didn't fight at all.

16 minutes ago, Dwing said:

He actually delivered Han to Jabba

Yeah, he delivered a completely incapacitated Han given to him by Vader in exchange for information on the location of the other Rebels. About as badass as a pizza delivery guy. It was an important plot beat, but not exactly a crazy badass moment.

He basically didn't do anything besides tattle on Han and then get his *** kicked, and standing around, admittedly looking REALLY cool while he does so.

He was a hugely popular character because he was this dude who got the one up on our heroes and clearly had this crazy visual design and a jetpack, and there was a 3 year gap between Empire and Jedi where people expected him to end up doing something as he was played up as a character in Empire despite having basically no characterization or screen time, or effect on the plot really besides bringing Han to Jaba, and that could have just been a deal between The Empire and Jaba, and explaining why Lando felt forced into betraying Han and Leia.

He was, in essence, a Jobber who became a fan favorite and was retaconned into being this awesome badass. But in the actual movies? Doesn't do much.

And, again, the EU is not invalid. If it was, I wouldn't be so grumpy about the A-wing not being a neat little elite scout/raider ship because, hey, the big moment from the movies where it crashed into something got in. He is an important character in the EU and, again, the love for him is legitimate because Star Wars is way bigger than the movies. The movies are the primary source, sure, but ultimately they are literally the smallest part of the canon, despite their importance.

Its just that its funny that Boba became a big character PURELY through speculation about him and his character design, more than an argument he should suck. I will defend that him having a defensive ability was dumb (and can we talk about how weird it is that Luke has a defensive ability rather than an offensive one, and Wedge an offensive one rather than a defensive one? That is the wrong way around!) as well as an ability that rewards being up close where he like... canonically not only got killed, but when most of his actual actions in the movie were keeping his distance and watching the action, or helping cover his targets.

24 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

canonically not only got killed, but when most of his actual actions in the movie were keeping his distance and watching the action, or helping cover his targets.

Ironically, Boba was killed by a blinded pilot, one of his weaknesses.

Sorry, no sympathy from me. Scum is full of scummy tricks, and it's entirely on you lot if you fail to use them.

Was just discussing a list with a really good scum player. Both illicit slots are filled. There is obstacle manipulation (Beckett, seismics, pioneer, trickshot, qira), there is stress manipulation (zuckuss, contraband), there are clever tradeoffs (r5p8), there is punishment for killing a ship with deadman switch, there is punishment for bad maneuvers in Torani, and bomb manipulation (Nym, delayed fuses).

I see it again and again in these threads, all the complaining without actually putting the tools on the table. Scum is full of them! It's your mistake if you fail to use them.

1 hour ago, GreenDragoon said:

I see it again and again in these threads, all the complaining without actually putting the tools on the table. Scum is full of them! It's your mistake if you fail to use them.

Right, but being 'full of' is not the same as it being the focus of the faction, or actually good.

A big problem with Scum until Boba meta was these tricks didn't really congeal into a good strategy. Scum was notorious for not really having much going for it besides Quad fangs and Quad Star Vipers, neither of which are tricky, or particularly fantastic. Pre January 2020, those were the only lists, with any real success rate, and only Quad Fangs were in the top 20. If we don't count Contraband Cybernetics on Boba as a 'tricky illicit' (which we shouldn't really) then the only moderately 'tricky' thing they did was one list in the 50's slot of the top 100 lists of that entire era that had... rigged chute on Boba. Also, they basically didn't show up at all in HS, they were like 5% of the meta, it was pathetic.

Like lets really boil down what your saying here, if unintentionally: "Your take on the game is invalid because I ASSUME you don't play with stuff based on the fact you don't agree with my evaluation of the faction.' That is a super... demeaning and egotistical take. I have full faith you found a tricky scum list you love and that does fantastically for you, but there is a difference between advocating that people's take was too hasty or formed incorrectly and being so dismissive of the experiences and evaluations of others you make a super sweeping assumption about what they played with.

Like for real I want to hear about this tricky terrain list because my experiences with Qi'ra and Beckett were so terrible and they seemed to have such utterly little potential that I literally use them as shorthand for what is wrong with the faction (And because I am very aware your almost certainly a much better player than me), especially in the context of their low statistical success rate. But I am struggling to get past the fact your implying I am not willing to bash my head against a rock 20-30 times to be sure something isn't good when I was the loon who tried out some odd 15 lists with different permutations of snap shot over the course of 2 months to my local scene just to make it work. If Tricky scum lists aren't bad, they are at the very least so inaccessible that none have made a 'breakthrough' in 2 years.'

2 hours ago, dezzmont said:

I dunno. DID we watch the same movies? He has 6 minutes of screentime (counting him being retaconned back into ANH which was very much NOT his first appearance. But I am not going to count his debut in the Holiday Special against him) and mostly stands around, does nothing, or dies instantly.

Gets called out for messing up a job.

He tracks them. He doesn't do anything that screams 'badass.' I actually think this is a good indicator of 'cunning Boba' over 'powerful Boba.'

He does not at all actually. He just stands there and aims a gun because the heroes in that situation were just completely surrounded by enemies. Didn't fight at all.

Yeah, he delivered a completely incapacitated Han given to him by Vader in exchange for information on the location of the other Rebels. About as badass as a pizza delivery guy. It was an important plot beat, but not exactly a crazy badass moment.

He basically didn't do anything besides tattle on Han and then get his *** kicked, and standing around, admittedly looking REALLY cool while he does so.

He was a hugely popular character because he was this dude who got the one up on our heroes and clearly had this crazy visual design and a jetpack, and there was a 3 year gap between Empire and Jedi where people expected him to end up doing something as he was played up as a character in Empire despite having basically no characterization or screen time, or effect on the plot really besides bringing Han to Jaba, and that could have just been a deal between The Empire and Jaba, and explaining why Lando felt forced into betraying Han and Leia.

He was, in essence, a Jobber who became a fan favorite and was retaconned into being this awesome badass. But in the actual movies? Doesn't do much.

And, again, the EU is not invalid. If it was, I wouldn't be so grumpy about the A-wing not being a neat little elite scout/raider ship because, hey, the big moment from the movies where it crashed into something got in. He is an important character in the EU and, again, the love for him is legitimate because Star Wars is way bigger than the movies. The movies are the primary source, sure, but ultimately they are literally the smallest part of the canon, despite their importance.

Its just that its funny that Boba became a big character PURELY through speculation about him and his character design, more than an argument he should suck. I will defend that him having a defensive ability was dumb (and can we talk about how weird it is that Luke has a defensive ability rather than an offensive one, and Wedge an offensive one rather than a defensive one? That is the wrong way around!) as well as an ability that rewards being up close where he like... canonically not only got killed, but when most of his actual actions in the movie were keeping his distance and watching the action, or helping cover his targets.

We did not.

I like Boba Fett as much as the next person, but it's impossible to ignore that he is essentially an ascended extra in the movies. The most impressive thing he does is track the Falcon to Bespin, but other than that he's just a guy that looked cool and apparently forgot he had a jet pack and ranged weapons, leading to his hilarious death. If it weren't for his awesome design, and the EU lovingly making him into someone memorable to match that design, his popularity would've fizzled out long ago. Boba is cool, but in the movies he's just the bounty hunter that got lucky finding his target, and then that luck ran out during his targets second escape attempt. He sure did look awesome for almost all of his exceedingly brief screen time though.

5 hours ago, dezzmont said:

Din Djarin is actually amazing because he ISN'T a perfect badass. He wins a ton of fights effortlessly, but sometimes he just makes a bad move and gets stunned and looted by a bunch of Jawas like a chump!

Someday his flamethrower will be effective...

2 hours ago, Hippie Moosen said:

I like Boba Fett as much as the next person, but it's impossible to ignore that he is essentially an ascended extra in the movies.

Oh for sure; it’s all because of the EU that he is as awesome as he is. And I realize that all got decanonized officially but without a contradictory canon element it’s worth assuming they are for now.

I used to be a bigger fan of him. Now it’s more the Mandalorian culture itself (the true culture, not the pacifists that ruled during the clone wars).