Should Angled Deflectors just be replaced by a new card that says “during the system phase, you may spend [charge] to gain a [deplete token]. If you do, assign a [reinforce token] to your [fore] or [aft]”?

Give it whatever restrictions needed to keep it off cancer.

43 minutes ago, PaulRuddSays said:

Should Angled Deflectors just be replaced by a new card that says “during the system phase, you may spend [charge] to gain a [deplete token]. If you do, assign a [reinforce token] to your [fore] or [aft]”?

Give it whatever restrictions needed to keep it off cancer.

I think a charge based mechanic is much more viable than it is in its current state. At the moment it costs too much as in points and an action to be worth it.

3 hours ago, Archangelspiv said:

I think a charge based mechanic is much more viable than it is in its current state. At the moment it costs too much as in points and an action to be worth it.

Reinforce generally is not good enough to compete with focus or other actions in second edition. Your opponent has agency and can elect to attack non-reinforced ships... and if they’re all reinforced, you’ve reduced damage at the cost of doing way less damage yourself.

I feel that the combo of system phase reinforce, plus deplete (muh theme) means that it’s not too bad to keep your regular action. Like, sure, now maybe your Wookiees have reinforce plus focus, but at the cost of crippling their damage.

Disengages could be more interesting if eg you reinforce rear and evade to make yourself unattractive, but systems phase trigger gives your opponent a heads up and agency about pursuit.

Reinforce is probably the strongest green token in the game. Reducing all incoming damage by 1 (as long as you take at least 2 damage) is a titanic shift in any fight, and its a huge reason why the Decimator sees play at all, and why Boba is so strong.

Vs swarms with ranged 1, focused, 3 red shots, your reinforced ship takes an entire extra 4 hits to kill, which is a big swing, you live for an entire extra turn, potentially multiple if the swarm can't maintain perfect uptime and you get I-kills. Easily worth more than the .7 damage you get spending a focus on a return fire with 4 red.

The issue is the token is situational and plays best when you can supplement it to really become a points fortress defensively, or have some offensive boon. If you can get both, its basically broken like with Boba, who vs said swarm takes 3 more shots to kill than the decimator if reinforced, and who can always fire back single modded every turn anyway. Once the number of shots per turn incoming goes down, its generally always as good as an evade, but rarely much better.

Which is fine on ships like the VCX or Deci which have reinforce just as their primary 'stay alive' tool baked into the cost of losing all their agility, or Boba who does just as fine vs small ship count lists because his passive re-rolls plus 1 focus and 1 force means he can still fantastically double mod defense vs small targets, but it makes it hard to justify paying 3-9 points and a shield for an upgade that is very matchup dependent. There are some pilots it would be kinda nuts on by making them absurd points forts (Norra with it would be tougher than a Deci at range 1 if she didn't have to spend a shield, for example), which is why it comes with so many downsides, but at that point why are you buying an upgrade that in some matchups doesn't exactly hurt you, but does very little?

But you also can't apply crazy buffs to reinforce either or you make these super defensive ships that are so hard to kill because of reinforce absolutely oppressive. Like the idea of making the reinforce persistent? That is just giving almost every ship in the game a paired down version of Nora's ability, one of the strongest defensive abilities in the game. It would make it so that generic Decis could fire away with focused 4 dice chunky blasts yet take an average of 40 attack rolls to get through them all, which is truly a ridiculous amount.

It seems to me that the problem isn't that reinforce is a bad token, but the difference in outcomes for it is too big. Vs a swarm it extends your lifespan multiple turns. Vs range 1 aces with enough action economy to double mod your looking at a turn maybe, if you can keep it on arc.

So charge based may be a way to equalize that: In some matchups reinforcing every turn as your only action is nutso, in some you would never do it ever even once, because its basically a nothingburger on par with taking an evade. But if it didn't cost an action, but happened only a limited number of times, you would win a bit less when its good, and lose a bit less when its bad. In the T-65 thread, people talked about re-inventing 'repair astromechs' as charge based reinforce to give a similar role as damage mitigation without the bad effects repairing damage has on scoring, or encouraging non-interaction. Being able to reinforce 2 times a game with a strain for no action cost is potent, so it would need to cost more than deflectors, but it also is a 'nothingburger' way less often.

On 10/10/2020 at 8:38 AM, Herowannabe said:

(I’m surprised @Wazat hasn’t weighed in yet, he has strong opinions on reinforce and Angled Deflectors.)

I actually don't check these forums much anymore... too much FFG Forums culture on the FFG Forums. And no moderators to mellow things out means that will never improve. Sometimes we can have a nice discussion about an interesting topic! But often an otherwise innocent thread devolves into wild rants over nothing, outright toxic behavior and mean unprovoked personal attacks (attack the person instead of simply responding to their comment), etc, and I'm quickly reminded of why I don't hang out here. Sorry 'bout that.

On to the subject at hand. There are several "costs" to equipping Angled Deflectors which combine to make it unpalatable:

1. Squad Points . At each price level it's absurdly expensive right now. An Agility 2 or 3 ship doesn't really want this because of how reinforce works in 2E, and most wouldn't want it even at 0 points. An agility 0 or 1 ship might want deflectors despite the lost shield, but at 9 or 6 points it's not going to make back its investment. That's crazy. Most wouldn't want it even at 1 - 3 points because of the lost shield.
2. Shield Cost . The fact that this card subtracts a shield makes it really hard to find a price at which a given ship would be willing to purchase it, let alone a price all ships should pay. You now have to shed two damage with reinforce before you gain any benefit, so agility 2 and 3 ships really struggle to ever get their points worth. At most reinforce hedges against low rolls, at the cost of other more useful actions like focus (edit: this said reinforce for some reason earlier, oops), calculate, reposition, staring gormlessly into space, etc. Agility 0 and 1 ships can block enough damage, assuming they can afford the action.
3. Opportunity Cost: Action & Slot
   1. All this card gives you is reinforce on your action bar. You still have to spend actions on reinforce instead of something else. Even ships with reinforce baked into their ship struggle to do so. 2E's Reinforce is a very niche action to use judiciously when you would benefit from it, and usually you'd prefer a reposition, or focus/evade/calc, coordinating friends, or frequently just more offense (a dead opponent doesn't shoot next round).
   2. Also included in opportunity cost is the lost Modification slot, which could simply be spent on a Shield Upgrade or Hull Upgrade, or some utility modification like Afterburners, Advanced SLAM, Impervium Plating, Electronic Baffle, Calibrated Laser Targeting, Delayed Fuses, and so on. It isn't always a heavily-contested slot, but some ships care about what they could have equipped otherwise (both with the slot and the points). It's very hard to justify Angled Deflectors when Shield/Hull Upgrade, or an empty slot and unspent points, would do better.

This trifecta of trouble makes this card really difficult to cost effectively, and one could be forgiven for wondering what exactly has FFG so worried that they price it so high. You must lose a shield and spend an action (often across multiple turns) to break even on the lost shield and eventually gain some benefit, hopefully enough to justify the points investment. The most clever and viable way to use this card, therefore, lies in shenanigans. But in shenanigans we may begin to see why this card is priced so high for everyone. Ships that offer good action economy or interesting synergy with this card start to become a problem for pricing this card for everyone who doesn't. People have mentioned some of these already, and some are pretty neato.

• Redline can reinforce while also gaining a lock. Deathrain can drop a device and Reinforce for free. Both are pilots of a 1-agility ship that might love being able to reinforce-joust a target while unloading torps/missiles, launching concussion bombs, etc.
• Lieutenant Sai can reinforce for free after coordinating a reinforce, so adding the reinforce action to the target enables this synergy. This may combine with Redline/Deathrain, or perhaps someone else. Sai with his title coordinating Redline is actually promising (if the deflector is cheap).
• Squad Leader can reinforce an ally if the squad leader adds reinforce to their bar. There's actually some potential value at current prices to adding deflectors to a coordinate slave that relies on Squad Leader, but I don't know how viable it is in actual practice. So few have a shield or 2nd mod slot to get a shield, and it tends to run expensive. Perhaps in Epic to grant a free reinforce to your huge buddy.
• Ships that can hand out green tokens to buddies, like Plo Koon (Delta-7), Axe, Manaroo (nevermind, large base), Amilyn Holdo, maybe others.
• Perhaps Miranda + Han Gunner regularly regenerating her shield.
• Beefy Swarms, whether in Standard or in Epic, especially with any kind of passive mods to help their offense keep up.
• Other stuff was explored in this thread , such as spamming cheap ships like TIEs equipped with Reinforce. Most were dead ends; cost-prohibitive and most 2- and 3-agility ships do not want to reinforce, and many don't have the health to get use out of it anyway. But Reinforced B-Wing swarms or other beef might be trouble if deflectors are cheap enough.
• TIE/fo Fighters with Fanatical (and as mentioned, maybe optics). Important to understand, they'll never use the reinforce action and they don't much care for their mod slot (solving opportunity cost), and they start the game with Fanatical active. Can be single fighters or swarms. This could be pretty viable or even dangerous, if we made Angled Deflectors super cheap for the benefit of other ships.
• I'm charmed by the U-Wing shenanigans. Rebels have some neat support options for granting mods to the reinforcing ship (K-2SO, coordinate, etc), and you're getting a 1-agility reinforce for 2-agility prices. If Deflectors were made even cheaper, perhaps a rebel fleet using this could do something viable. Maybe Saw and 3 generic U-Wings; this is 193 points now, and cheaper deflectors would simply mean more room for crew or sensor upgrades.

Are any of these great? Maybe . That's the problem: an exploit could come from anywhere, and it only takes one . This stuff is currently not being explored in the meta because of the deflector's cost, and we don't exactly know what would roar onto the scene if deflectors were suddenly cheap or free.

Any one pilot that can exploit a combo to great effect (I'm looking at you, Redline) or fleet that gains major efficiency (e.g. beef swarms, Fanatical FOs, etc) will create a problem for pricing Angled Deflectors. Whatever price seems appropriate for one ship in isolation becomes wildly inappropriate for some specific combo or efficiency fleet or other trick, and FFG's toolkit doesn't allow more precision.

This is the central problem in points-based balancing: the best use case affects the cost for everyone. It's probably a big reason why FFG included the Shield Cost for this card and also priced it so high: if you want to have the Reinforce action on nearly any ship, you absolutely can, but you have to really want it. FFG is afraid of some strategy out there, discovered or simply assumed , that would break the game. And as much as it hurts to have a DOA card like this that will never see good use, I wonder if they're right to do so. If Angled Deflectors cost 1 or 2 points (let alone 0 or negative points), or didn't steal a shield, what would Redline or Fanatical FO or beef/junkyard swarms or others make of it? Would they be too powerful, or just another niche trick build that sees some success? I can't say, but I suspect this is precisely what made FFG wince when pricing the card. And that's what makes the card unusable.

Ultimately the problem here is the same that plagues so many other cards in this game: the one pilot or fleet or strategy that can massively exploit it requires that it be priced to oblivion for everyone else. Edge cases like efficiency swarms or surprise pilot synergies always put a minimum cost on a card like this, and then those who wouldn't abuse it simply cannot afford it.

Angled Deflectors, as written, probably cannot be priced properly . The game is too complex and specific synergies cannot be banned. FFG is currently limiting themselves to a more limited toolset than what's needed to fine-tune this stuff, so we're stuck with a high price to prevent those specific abuses.

C'est la vie. As a lover of shenanigans I'll continue searching for nifty uses for this card, if only because it's such an interesting challenge. My romantic, shenanigans-threaded heart sings that there must be some fascinating edge case I can exploit to glorious unrighteous victory, but my hard practical mind says that's probably not going to happen.

I'd like to point out that one of the takeaways of my post is I'm part of the problem. If I or others ever find a great use for Angled Deflectors, it'll likely be some crazy edge case that doesn't benefit most ships. And that will be one more edge case pushing the price out of their reach.

Edit: But the other takeaway (and TL;DR ) is that Angled Deflectors can never be priced 'correctly'. The design space where it resides and the design constraints it creates can never be satisfyingly costed. It's either costed for the edge case or the common case; the two can never be happy together.

As for the idea of charges for a free reinforce action in the system phase, that's a better design, certainly. Just be aware of edge cases, like TIE Silencers or TIE Interceptors or Darth Vader getting a free reposition action, or Redline getting a free lock, during the system phase for equipping the card. That reposition, for example, is a nice way to dodge asteroids and potential blocks, get a reinforce before losing your Perform Action step to something nasty, or just gain some decloak-like maneuvering power. This could turn the new deflectors card into a sort of Afterburners-level prize for certain ships/pilots. It's very hard to hedge against synergies like that getting out of control.

All the same, here's a thought:

Angled Deflectors Mk II

Charges: 3

Before your Perform Action step, you may spend a charge to perform a white Reinforce action. If you do, you must spend a 2nd charge or skip your Perform Action step.

This iteration gives you one free reinforce action to mix with offensive actions for that clutch round, but only that one time. The other reinforce will be instead of your regular action. You can have up to three reinforce actions during the game, doing so instead of your normal Perform Action step. It's not on your action bar so that cuts away certain synergies, but it's like having reinforce in that most ships only get one action per round anyway and don't reinforce every round.

Importantly, the timing is right around when you would normally take an action, so no special system phase synergy/shenanigans for ships that can chain actions. If you skip your perform action step, you also miss the reinforce trigger, greatly limiting its utility and making it easier to price fairly.

It would need to not be cheap given the free action it grants once per game, but as said in posts above, it could actually be worth it this time. Compare to the current deflector card which, as @dezzmont put so well, just amounts to a nothing sandwich.

1 hour ago, Wazat said:

As for the idea of charges for a free reinforce action in the system phase, that's a better design, certainly. Just be aware of edge cases, like TIE Silencers or TIE Interceptors or Darth Vader getting a free reposition action, or Redline getting a free lock, during the system phase for equipping the card. That reposition, for example, is a nice way to dodge asteroids and potential blocks, get a reinforce before losing your Perform Action step to something nasty, or just gain some decloak-like maneuvering power. This could turn the new deflectors card into a sort of Afterburners-level prize for certain ships/pilots. It's very hard to hedge against synergies like that getting out of control.

All the same, here's a thought:

Angled Deflectors Mk II

Charges: 3

Before your Perform Action step, you may spend a charge to perform a white Reinforce action. If you do, you must spend a 2nd charge or skip your Perform Action step.

This iteration gives you one free reinforce action to mix with offensive actions for that clutch round, but only that one time. The other reinforce will be instead of your regular action. You can have up to three reinforce actions during the game, doing so instead of your normal Perform Action step. It's not on your action bar so that cuts away certain synergies, but it's like having reinforce in that most ships only get one action per round anyway and don't reinforce every round.

Importantly, the timing is right around when you would normally take an action, so no special system phase synergy/shenanigans for ships that can chain actions. If you skip your perform action step, you also miss the reinforce trigger, greatly limiting its utility and making it easier to price fairly.

It would need to not be cheap given the free action it grants once per game, but as said in posts above, it could actually be worth it this time. Compare to the current deflector card which, as @dezzmont put so well, just amounts to a nothing sandwich.

You could simply spend a charge to Gain a reinforce token in the system phase, negating the action requirement from Vader, Redline, Poe ect.

43 minutes ago, Tyhar7 said:

You could simply spend a charge to Gain a reinforce token in the system phase, negating the action requirement from Vader, Redline, Poe ect.

True, but then you're getting a reinforce token even if you're stressed, cannot take actions (damage card, ionized), etc, and you're doing so before moving (so you get the token even if you're going to bump a ship or crash through obstacles or other problems). In many ways those benefits are even more powerful. So that has implications too that should be explored, but it's probably better than taking an action that can trigger other effects.

Alternatively, the card still has you perform a reinforce action but says "If you do, you cannot perform another action during this phase". The Precognitive Reflexes method closes a lot of doors. It doesn't stop Redline, but a lot of the action-chaining doesn't work now.

May seem harsh, but when you want a card to be easy to price for everyone to use it, you gotta limit it good.

I dunno. Systems phase shenanigans are interesting because they require you to make a read. Especially as reinforce makes it so you need to both predict your going to take an inordinate amount of fire AND correctly guess the direction, I would say 1 charge of 'actionless reinforce' in the systems phase is worth a smidge less than 1 shield, and is worse than an actionless reinforce that is linked after a more traditional action, especially if it can't be used to trigger linked shenanigans.

Charge limiting also does a lot to allow the reinforce token to be more balanced because it rewards your opponent for noticing its happening and not hard engaging that turn allowing them to deny those points as long as they don't give up too much damage on the turn its active. Its rough on jousty swarms, but honestly its probably good for the game if tools exist that allow you to force said ships to engage more creatively than a jousting line without forcing you yourself to be an ace list or a better jousting line yourself. And if you guess wrong and end up in the wrong arc you also just lose the benefit.

If your using it in conditions where your stressed or anticipating a bump, your also probably in a situation where you can either be surrounded negating a lot of the advantage, or your opponent can 50/50 on flying over you. Not saying it would necessarily be cheap, but it would be at a point where it could be priced to be attractive without being dominant when its good or a nothingburger when its not. Shield upgrade is probably a bit overcosted (not that that is a bad thing, it allows more dynamic upgrades like this hypothetical one to be attractive in exchange for having more interaction) which means that charging a tiny bit more in exchange for a somewhat increased potential survivability increase isn't out there. Something like 2 charges at 8 on Agi 1 doesn't feel too off: In the aces matchup you might get nothing or 1-2 stopped because your less likely to be 'all inned' on a given turn or predict the correct direction, while vs swarms you do much better and it more exists to encourage the swarm to engage creatively in a fighting game style 'mix up' to help reduce the advantage (which would not be an undesired outcome. Anything that makes the game less joust focused without turning everyone into aces is good in my book).

Maybe push it to 10 on agi 1 if we are really worried? Or put it to large and medium only, because those are the ships that need the most help on the initial engagement due to it being hard for them to avoid getting jousted straight into. Compares poorly to afterburners if you assume afterburners are 'minus infinite damage' on the turn you fire them, but helps a class of ship that can't use them anyway as they stand way more to gain.

Angled Deflectors Mk II

Charges: 2

During the system phase, you may spend a charge to perform a white Reinforce action. If you do, you cannot perform another action during this phase.

Perhaps that works well enough... but anyway, aside from hypothetical homebrew (which will never officially happen, as this likely isn't FFG's priority), Angled Deflectors is currently a dead card save for one special case in Epic.

As for that special case, there's probably some (?) value in enhancing Squad Leader in Epic games for supporting your huge ship, since a lot of Squad Leader users don't have Reinforce. If the Huge ship has Damage Control Teams it could then chain into a calculate, if needed (hmm... woopie). But this does free up your huge ship's actions to do stuff like lock, focus, mass-coordinate friends or multi-jam enemies, etc.

I once flew Jan Ors with Squad Leader + Angled Deflectors (56 pts) to support a Tantive carrying Saw crew (among other joyful toys) to fire nuclear blasts at the enemy. Sure it's not meta and I spent a lot on the trick, but it's the sort of silly fleet I love to fly. Jan's eating points though, so a more practical solution is Kyle Katarn costing a total of 41, or just a Sheathipede at 32... Most factions have some native coordinate ship that works loads better than combining Squad Leader + Angled Deflectors on a cheap ship, but at least the combo is available for supporting that huge ship, perhaps in tandem with a pilot ability you like or other equipment like a Tactical Relay.

From what I saw in a quick scan, the Factions that don't have a cheap native coordinator are Republic and Seps. Republic could field a Y-Wing with the combo (45 pts) or perhaps a V-Wing (points unknown). Separatists could try a Belbullab (49 points without the relay, but at that point the relay'd be worth adding). But we're getting really specific... I doubt they're biting at the bit to coordinate a reinforce on their epic ship, especially at those prices.

Save for that one specific (and somewhat shady) case in Epic, I don't see angled deflectors really ever being worth it. It can't be priced low enough for the common case to field, because the edge cases like Redline + Sai or Fanatical FO would then be able to use it better. And clearly FFG is worried enough about some edge case that they're pricing the card way outside of practical use even for said edge cases.

On 10/10/2020 at 9:12 AM, joeshmoe554 said:

I've had fun using it on an FO Fanatical swarm and on Redline with LT. Sai as a wingman. Neither was particularly effective, but it makes for some fun combos.

I think this is where Angled Deflectors should stay, in the fun combo category. I dont want to see Angled Deflectors become "a thing" and even more games go to time.

Things like Redline who can get offensive mods, or Scum ships with lando as crew for rerolls can take best advantage of it, and probably where I would start with a fun casual list.

Zuckuss (45)
Lando Calrissian (8)
Angled Deflectors (6)
Total: 59

or

Captain Nym (47)
Lando Calrissian (8)
Angled Deflectors (6)
Total: 61

or

Nodin Chavdri (36)
Korr Sella (6)
R4 Astromech (2)
Angled Deflectors (6)
Total: 50

As a pure support ship, Nodin can do a red coordinate to a ship, then perform a red reinforce with ability for a second stress, and clear them both next round with Korr. Just fly around coordinating ships and being reinforced. If Nodin or another ship has Holdo, then you can even pass the reinforce.

I am going to experiment with angled Norra vs Nantex! Wish me luck!

19 hours ago, dezzmont said:

I am going to experiment with angled Norra vs Nantex! Wish me luck!

Yikes, you're pitting experimental and unproven against the most brutal and established the meta has right now; that's some gusto! Good luck!

I want to hear how it goes! What's your fleet composition? And did Reinforce end up helping (e.g. on the long-range approach), or was it ultimately just redundant with Norra's ability?

10 hours ago, Wazat said:

Yikes, you're pitting experimental and unproven against the most brutal and established the meta has right now; that's some gusto! Good luck!

I flew snapshot vs Boba... a LOT. Braver than most people think for all my whining!

That said I didn't do too well. I don't think I can read too much into it though. I haven't done much remote play because despite playing a lot of games I often struggle with very precise evaluation on little turns and rolls and online play messes that up more, so I had a LOT of pilot error. I am really unpracticed for online, and despite it being a casual game I got a bit thrashed

Was flying Norra, Alexsandr, and 2 A wings. Norra refused to die. She effectively had a hard damage cap of 1 and I did notice the reinforce doing solid enough work during bullseye shots when I didn't hit a rock. She basically was immortal until she lost her action and because the list featured a 'Boom VCX' with ion, VTG, and Saw she felt consistent because there generally was an ion'ed target to 'coast' on. She ended up surviving 8 shots and only was halved because two were when she was both isoalted and unreinforced for... reaaaasons.

Boom VCX felt pretty chunky vs the Nantex but my love of A-wings betrayed me yet again. I knew logically they were not the right wingmen to pair into the list but I did so anyway due to their siren call. And the Boom+Norra VCX list has the eternal problem that it always had vs lots of agile targets in that while the VCX can absolutely body those ships it doesn't kill them efficiently with how few other threat vectors are in the list: You generally just barely don't kill them and then even with a ranged 1 ion turret shot Norra can struggle to finish them off. It really wants to be supporting very hard hitting and mobile in addition to Norra, or fighting alongside Norra vs another low ship count list. I didn't expect it to do amazing. Was more a fun experiment.

Extra defensive abilities on Norra seem to be a 'difference in magnitude is a difference frence in kind' effect. When your not doing more than 1 damage to a 7 health target that is threatening to ion you with a range 1 crack shot it kinda becomes a bit silly to go for it, and the reason I tried is because mathing it out it seems better than you might intuitively think: Sure, Reinforce does nothing once the damage hits 1, but what it is doing is literally cutting the realities you take at least 2 damage from an attack of that magnitude, which you expect in the meta, by more than half. Your going from a 70% chance of eating 2+ to about a 30% chance.

This means that Norra can generally eat 5 range 1 crack shots vs the Nantex and survive the turn. Where without the reinforce she goes down from 5 shots of that intensity with it, it takes about 7, which is a pretty big difference. Vs a fleet of ranged 2 crackshots, its from 6.6 to 10. So basically the entire list suddenly has to magdump her with the crackshot token... twice... to kill her in an 'average' scenario, which isn't likely.

I think one mistake players make about reinforce is they evaluate it in the 'objective damage reduced' mindset and more in the 'what percentage of incoming damage am I reducing' mindset. Sure, if you already got a defensive ability the absolute damage reduced is smaller, but you still may be reducing the overall percentage of damage you are likely taking by any attack by a large amount. If you evaluate it as 'Do I want to reduce the incoming damage on one of my pieces any turn I feel threatened by a full half?' then reinforce on Norra makes a lot of sense. Lowering the occurance rate of 'upper end' results and concentrating things on the lower and middle end also has a lot of benefits.

The obvious weakness with Norra specifically, and not this bad list which was bad for many other reasons (reasons such as 'It having A-wings vs ships they can't hurt' and 'The person piloting the list just has their brain thrown for a loop by real world measurements forget pretend ones'), an unmodded Norra ion cannon shot, even at range 1, did very little, but Norra can struggle to have impact vs super-defensive ships anyway. That isn't really a problem with the Nantex so much as like... the entire last year of X-wing which is why despite Norra being a fantastic rebel piece you rarely see her. Early 2020 you wouldn't run her because Boba takes 1 damage from that ranged 1 turret with a focus if your lucky and can easily push damage on Norra back, forget about not focused. So maybe if we see more 'do something when you miss' effects, perhaps on a new turret, Norra as a 'megatank' might make sense. But her struggling vs Nantex isn't really a result of the Nantex more than the fact X-wing has few tools (so far) to handle misses well.

That said, my main goal in list building is 'don't get tabled.' Speaks to where I am as a player (To be fair, my regular group was 50% VERY hardcore players so I am often just getting wailed on by some of the best players in X-wing, but I can't stress enough my actual implementation of the game is way worse than my theory), but part of why I hated Boba meta is if your list wasn't an 'optimzied' list you got tabled without scoring anything. This didn't table me without me scoring anything, despite making a few major mistakes, which is IMO a good benchmark for a highly experimental list that is more about trying to discover stuff about an upgrade than like... actually winning.

26 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

I knew logically they were not the right wingmen to pair into the list but I did so anyway due to their siren call.

The struggle is real here too. I have a terrible habit of trying to shove Torani into whatever Scum list I'm flying, not because she's right for the job, but because she's what I want to fly and dam-n the synergies. Hyenas are my sirens for separatists, and occasionally TIE Reapers subvert my better judgement in Empire. It's not a healthy habit but there's that one specific brain structure/tumor in my head dedicated to it, and it's going to get its way.

I like the idea of shaving down the max and regular damage so that you're only ever taking chip damage on a chonky ship. That's a good way to evaluate the role the reinforce is taking alongside other defenses.

I wonder if that could apply to some of the chonky 2- or 3-agility aces that have really iron-clad defenses, and can also afford the action (instead of focus/evade, or in addition to it). Like slap it on a delta7 Jedi and spend their action on reinforce defense instead of locking for offense, relying on force for the rest of defense... is there any utility there? My brain tells me no. I kinda think the focus action still works better for agile ships.

Perhaps a U-Wing with Jyn Erso + Perceptive Copilot could do something similar at a smaller scale. I'd be tempted to run that on Saw for a 65 point support with teeth and armor, maybe add Advanced Sensors for turn shenanigans, but I fear he'd just amount to a points pinata. And it's still action-starved and would need a coordinate slave nearby to feed it another action each round, so I don't like where it's going. Simplifying, Just Saw with Deflectors and Advanced Sensors, perhaps. Keep turning into where foes are likely to be, reinforce, and maybe also carry Leia.

For 75 points you could have Saw with Elusive + Advanced Sensors + Leia + Angled Deflectors + Pivot Wing. Proper points pinata for the opponent! But also kinda tanky and versatile, with a good fleet support effect? Hard to say, kinda depends on which wingmates he supports.

Speaking of points pinatas, when you mentioned Norra I actually thought about the ARC-170 (took me a minute to realize she was in a Y-Wing firing the ion turret), and imagined R2 crew or astromech in there with her to heal back the chip damage against a non-swarm fleet. But that's getting really pricey, and swarms and a lot of other fleets would both outdamage the healing and outfly her, so she could never really stay ahead with those shenanigans.

Many shenanigans thoughts.. but I'd best turn in for the night. I'm sure in my sleep I'll have a brilliant-seeming list idea that, on conscious evaluation, will amount to "banana formation empire b-wings!". Still more viable than most of my waking ideas.

23 hours ago, Wazat said:

Speaking of points pinatas, when you mentioned Norra I actually thought about the ARC-170 (took me a minute to realize she was in a Y-Wing firing the ion turret), and imagined R2 crew or astromech in there with her to heal back the chip damage against a non-swarm fleet. But that's getting really pricey, and swarms and a lot of other fleets would both outdamage the healing and outfly her, so she could never really stay ahead with those shenanigans.

Norra on an Arc has a problem where she really struggles to maintain time on target at 1, and the ion turret really is low key kinda perfect for her. It is just that she really needs other people pushing damage in the list, which is hard as Rebels aren't uhh... good at that.

She strikes me as more of a platform to carry a crew safely while brawling in that case, its just hard to justify it over a U-wing simply because of how difficult it is to keep a medium like that close.

I think brawler Y-wing Norra has way more potential, its just the rebels lack options that support it well and the meta is super unkind to trying to plink away with a 4 dice single modded attack and hoping to get 2 hits on someone so you can land an ion and a single damage. Defensive creep has REALLY hurt Norra because her undying nature is less special and she really wants to be trading blows with much more 'fair' (for lack of a better word) ships than the ones that are in the meta.

23 hours ago, Wazat said:

I wonder if that could apply to some of the chonky 2- or 3-agility aces that have really iron-clad defenses, and can also afford the action (instead of focus/evade, or in addition to it). Like slap it on a delta7 Jedi and spend their action on reinforce defense instead of locking for offense, relying on force for the rest of defense... is there any utility there? My brain tells me no. I kinda think the focus action still works better for agile ships.

Its important to note if your evaluating this way you need to evaluate it by how much the actual TTK changes. For example, Delta-7 Jedi without 7B vs a 3 dice focused shot only gain... 0.12 incoming attacks survived. So clearly worse than a hull upgrade per-point by a wide margin, which gets you to 4.5, which both is far fewer points per-attack survived but is actually a meaningful change in outcome as well.

With 7B, your gaining .5 expected attacks, at 4.4 vs 3.6. Still bad, but better. However its important to note in a hypothetical reality where Delta-7 had 3 agility, your TTK from reinforce still increases by .5 shots incoming. That increase almost exclusively comes from the increased health, not the lowered agility

Lets imagine a 8 base health delta-7 (don't worry, its imaginary, it can't hurt you). At 3 agility its gaining 1.654 extra turns alive from reinforce. At 2 agility its gaining 1.55, which is worse in terms of absolute change. The proportional effect is smaller, but in many cases that is immaterial and what you actually care about is 'how many more turns does this buy me.'

This is why non-intuitively reinforce can make sense on very tough and hard to hurt ships: proportionally your gaining way less on them, but because these ships eat so many attacks anyway the reinforce creates a larger change in actual turns survived the tougher the ship is, especially scaling by health. This intuitively makes sense: if you expect to take 1 but sometimes take 2 on every shot, anything that reduces you to knowing you take 1 basically all the time extends the turns your ship survives the beefier it is.

This is why reinforce Boba is so ridiculous. Sucker has 10 health and 2 agility, and the ability to re-roll defense dice, and often passive mods like force. Being able to bank 1 evade at all times against all attacks that merely can't reduce you to below 0 is still fantastic because to bust through Boba before he kills you, you basically need to deal 2 damage across 5 attacks, or 3 damage across 3.33. The harder you can make that, the less realistic it is you ever scratch Boba. Meanwhile, while reinforce is a key component to the VCX staying alive due to its 0 agility, its still fairly easy to take 2-3 damage a pop on it while reinforced just from modded attacks. So a reinforced Boba statistically takes 13 shots to kill with 3 dice focused shots, while the VCX takes 'only' 10, but is more likely to go down much faster than that than much slower.

So really what Angled Deflectors look like is a way to 'double down' on defense. And reinforce in general is best on high health ships, and is most worth it when you can 'double down' on defense and really use it to tarpit a piece. Its just that some tarpits are better than others: Boba with no tokens at range 1 is infinitely more deadly than Ion Norra.

Defensive creep in general has been odd to watch... it's coming both from new cards and from new strategy. I remember first starting into 2.0 and being amazed at how fast it was. We were completing matches in 30 - 60 minutes with no problem. It was deadlier because shields had been scaled back and the damage deck was murderous, and the rules were just better written for a smooth, fast game.

The rules still feel overall solid save for some sharp edges. But new ships and cards have come out, and with or without those cards people have figured out strategies that are way more effective, but also that really drag out a game. And if you're not keeping up with the efficiency curve you won't do substantive damage to certain fleets. I miss the deadlier, faster games IMO, but I also realize you can never really go home again. Strategy can't be put back in Pandora's box, and the new releases aren't going anywhere (and I'd miss lots of them).

Like you said, Rebels haven't kept up with this and that sucks, they have such cool ships but they're not really designed for this meta.

Yea, Boba's ability seems like a real problem to balance. I'm amazed they made him & Slave 1 so cheap, almost like it was an experiment they knew would be chaos but wanted to run anyway. Nantexes are potent too, but like you said, they're not the same category of doom.

So exploring agile ships that could maybe benefit from reinforce's doubling down on defense (just a quick scan, not trying to push these as the next meta haha):

• E-Wing: 6 (5) HP & 3 agl, astro slot for regen, and long-range locks to open up their actions on approach. But super pricey (because Rebel).
• U-Wing: 8 (7) HP & 1-2 agl, can camp in place, hard-rotate, and do other shenanigans with their crew slots. As support pieces they can maybe justify defending instead of focus on attacking.
• Dash Rendar : Really mobile and good at run & gun, hiding behind obstacles, etc. Very expensive. Also large base, so can't equip deflectors.
• Hate Vader: Wildly expensive, but I've learned just how tanky Hate Asajj with Latts and an evade token can be. IMO Hate Vader could do something similar. He's operating on less health but much higher action economy. Very expensive though and this is certainly not where Vader shines (he should be dodging arcs and murdering fools, not tanking shots). But it's an interesting idea to combine the chip-shot effect with Hate on a ship with lots of actions.
• Aggressor: 8 (7) HP & 3 agility, lots of mobility, some token-passing or double-tap options, great slots and wingman choices. A bit pricey.
• Boba or other Firesprays: I wonder if losing a shield to make the reinforce white is a good investment for 3 points. Probably not.
• Dengar : Were he not a large base, I can see Dengar liking the reinforce so he can joust the foe he wants to counterattack. Then again, he also likes his modded dice.
• Lancer : Very fast. Hate Asajj with Latts and maybe an evade token is great at shedding damage. But fat bases get no deflectors. Also the Lancer is very expensive, moreso for hate asajj.
• Kimogila and G-1A: Not agile but both are fat and have certain ship advantages (bullseye) or pilots (4-LOM) that might allow a defense focus? But 6 points is a lot for that gamble.
• Scurrg isn't agile either, but has a turret, lots of HP, and rather open dial and some bomb shenanigans. I wonder if reinforce does anything for them.
• MG-100 StarFortress : The death shrimp wants reinforce for its double-tapping or bombing vessels, but nope for fat bases.
• Resistance Transport: As a pure support vessel, maybe the resistance transport would want it for some of its crew combos. But that's a lot of cost.
• T-70 X-Wing: 2 Agility and 7 (6) health, open dial, etc. But I expect a T-70 isn't doing its job if it's not more focused on enhancing its murder. Bastian and Jessika get free locks though so maybe. Joph is pretty tanky-minded. Between their solid health, tanky or action-economic pilot abilities, and 2 agility, I wonder if there's something here. Back when Resistance Beef (jess, bastian, composure temmin, lulo) was in vogue, it was both tanky and damaging.
• TIE/sf Fighter: 6 (5) HP but really needs actions for locking etc.
• Xi Shuttle: Pure support, okay health and agility. Might be able to justify focus on defense if it doesn't need to coordinate.
• Delta-7 Aethersprite with Delta7-B: explored above
• Sith Infiltrator : Lots of health, force, Hate, etc, this would be a good ship to reinforce. But large base can't take deflectors.

I'm thinking something dumb like this could work. The T-Squad moves in a block for Jess' benefit, while Zizi likely flanks or distracts. Though with only 6 HP (after angled deflectors take their cut), T-70s may not have enough health to extract the full reinforce benefit and have it pay off. And the mix of abilities creates clear targeting priority instead of a difficult choice (if you don't have shots on zizi, then bastian is the least defended, jess goes last), all the while they're not "focused" (hah) on offense so they're maybe not killing things quick enough... I dunno, I don't fly stuff like this much so I don't have a good sense for how it'll do. Also the TTK math is hard, or rather I haven't taken the time to look at it closely.

Jessika Pava (51)
Angled Deflectors (3)
Integrated S-Foils (0)

Ship total: 54 Half Points: 27 Threshold: 3

Lieutenant Bastian (47)
Angled Deflectors (3)
Integrated S-Foils (0)

Ship total: 50 Half Points: 25 Threshold: 3

Joph Seastriker (49)
Heroic (1)
Angled Deflectors (3)
Integrated S-Foils (0)

Ship total: 53 Half Points: 27 Threshold: 3

Zizi Tlo (41)
Heroic (1)

Ship total: 42 Half Points: 21 Threshold: 2


Total: 199

View in Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0: https://raithos.github.io/?f=Resistance&d=v8ZsZ200Z296XWW247W175WWY254XWW247W175WWY253X172WWW247W175WWY387X172WWW&sn=Unnamed Squadron&obs=

BTW... I wish YASB had a nice tool for producing this sort of layout in the forums. I wonder if I could make a wiki tool that does that... *shrug* I assume one of the squad builders already does this.

The problem is that 3-agility ships usually really don't want it, 2-agility ships still often roll too many evades to use reinforce, and large ships who would really like it can't take it.

Negative one point. Give it the Nantex treatment. See what happens. (I actually kind of want to see now)

This was touched on but the enormous drawback for this card is losing the shield. I would like to see it more as moving your shields around which is what I think fits better fluff wise.

Instead of costing a shield to equip it would give you an extra shield in only one half/section of the ship or something along those lines. Perhaps be a system phase effect that would let you regenerate a shield but only against a hit in one section. But then again we are back to the also needing to overcome the reinforce action not being optimal.

In any case until it does not cost a shield to equip it is not going to see play except at zero or negative cost or "free" reinforce action.

What if it gave reinforce to one half of the ship, but hits/crits to the other side were under shields?

18 minutes ago, Target_2.0 said:

What if it gave reinforce to one half of the ship, but hits/crits to the other side were under shields?

So if you guess wrong on reinforce you are punished?

That would work fantastically for a 'systems phase reinforce' but less so for an action based reinforce.

28 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

So if you guess wrong on reinforce you are punished?

I mean, that is kind of what angling your shields toward front or back does. It increases defense on one half while leaving the other half exposed...

59 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

So if you guess wrong on reinforce you are punished?

That would work fantastically for a 'systems phase reinforce' but less so for an action based reinforce.

I concur that systems phase would be a better phase than activation.