The question of what is a template is a good one. I'm with @Hiemfire on it, the rulebook didn't make it clear. And the wording on the cards that distinguish it currently don't help because they could be read a few different ways realistically. This is hard to convey in text but I'll give it a go. I always thought the templates for bank/turns were called [L or R] templates because they worked as either/or and were a single game object. I never saw them as being either a [L] template and [R] template.

Like if I were to ask could you point me to the speed X bank template, you wouldn't ask me to clarify if I wanted the left or the right one. The one template is just the one template, that happens to serve both purposes.

Another way to look at it too might be to ask if nimble bomber would be essentially short hand. That is would it be more game accurate to actually say in it's text: "you may use the (L) template or the (R) template". Then for sure you'd know there were two different ones that just use the same tool. As it is now, it does not call the template out in plural. It calls it a singular. Like it could have been written: "...use the (L) or (R) template s ". Which would also affirm they are distinct objects. But NB just calls it as a singular object.

That's a weird one. I don't know how to rule that for this new card. I too would like better wording in the rulebook on it. If nothing else it really isn't good to have the clarifying thing be how a rule on a different card is worded, and debatable at that. For now I'm assuming it's intended to let you count them differently. But it may have been an intended limiter in place that of the two bombs, only one could be manipulated and the other would have to use its normal two positions. Classic FFG, clear as mud.

Regarding the configs: I like the idea behind the Esk, but unless I can guarantee a crit it feels a little mean to make me decide before rolling, especially with a two-turn recharge. Hopefully, this will be a very cheap config for that reason. The Besh will likely see more play, as bomb slots are fun and boosting the reliability of locks seems fair to me.

I'll likely only order two of these, which is a mercy as this will be a very expensive wave...

7 hours ago, Sciencius said:

Can Deathrain perform 3 actions ?

Drop/Launch a Thermal, perform an action (e.g. focus), drop/launch the second Thermal, and now the second action? (e.g. lock or reload) and then after movement you perform your regular action (boost into lock ). Is that legal?

As long as none of them are repeats.

I preordered two of these Nimbus V-wing and I am going to stay. Had "Precision Ion Engine" allowed up to speed 4k-turns, I probably would have bought 5-6 of these.. missed oportunity from FFG 😂

ESK looks like it essentially required you to have a combo piece to power it thanks to its timing of activation. Honestly it should be free since it will always come with a tax. I'll give them points for coming up with a second way to do ion cannons though that still follows the design of normal ion cannons. It does flip the script a bit on ion in that normally you deal one damage then the rest is ion, and this one deals all it's damage but the last one is ion. That's kinda a cute little twist really.

23 minutes ago, ForceSensitive said:

ESK looks like it essentially required you to have a combo piece to power it thanks to its timing of activation. Honestly it should be free since it will always come with a tax. I'll give them points for coming up with a second way to do ion cannons though that still follows the design of normal ion cannons. It does flip the script a bit on ion in that normally you deal one damage then the rest is ion, and this one deals all it's damage but the last one is ion. That's kinda a cute little twist really.

🤨

When the upgrade is activated all crit results , not the last result applied, of a primary attack by the ship making use of the upgrade instead inflict Ion Tokens. Couple Esk with the following and you can almost guarantee ionization of a small base or a medium base if it is in bullseye...

@Hiemfire this is true, I realized the same thing, but your not often going to get double crit, even with that setup. At least not enough for me to consider that a main feature. I count that as just a weird quirk that might occasionally happen. Especially so because that requires three combo pieces and a bullseye. That's a lot of hurdles, and investment. In general, I view it as your most common outcome that with the droid you can rely on is going to be hit-hit-crit on a R1 shot, which is probably the best time to activate it to know it will stick. Therefore the majority of the time your last damage you will deal will be ion like I said. Just like technically you could ionize a large ship with a bit of luck and the combo above, at R1, in bullseye with a botched defense roll on your opponents side. Doesn't mean I hold that up as a thing it can do either. That's just another weird quirk thing it can do.

20 hours ago, Sciencius said:

Can Deathrain perform 3 actions ?

Drop/Launch a Thermal, perform an action (e.g. focus), drop/launch the second Thermal, and now the second action? (e.g. lock or reload) and then after movement you perform your regular action (boost into lock ). Is that legal?

The boosts and BR actions give him a lot of options for dropping the 2nd bomb too.

In regards to templates I’m going with @theBitterFig for a few reasons. Mainly because it’s FFG and that they seem to do things which may not make sense to us, but mainly the only reason we don’t have a L and R template is because it’s more efficient to use one template and switch it around to get the result we want ie L or R. I think the Nimble Bomber uses this as an example of L and R templates being different, even though we all use the same template.
It requires a bit of out of the box thinking, but I do think Fig is correct.
Saying that, FFG would need a rules update as Hiemfire suggested to cover people who don’t own a TIE Bomber. For those people who only have 2nd Ed ships... that’s all of them.
Still no clue as to why we are so deep into 2nd Ed and the Bomber and Lambda are not even spoken about as releases.

15 hours ago, Hiemfire said:

🤨

When the upgrade is activated all crit results , not the last result applied, of a primary attack by the ship making use of the upgrade instead inflict Ion Tokens. Couple Esk with the following and you can almost guarantee ionization of a small base or a medium base if it is in bullseye...

I like the idea of taking 3+ V-Wings with EPTs (Shadow Squad hopefully), and only equipping 1 with Esk and Marksmanship.

That way you always shoot last with the Esk ship, and can decide then whether to use the ion or not. If they ship is small base and has a bunch of health left, you won't be able to finish it off. but you can ion it to help finish it next turn.

If you didn't get the bullseye, or it only has 1-2 hull left after the others attacked, you can just go regular primary and try and kill them.


It's something I've seen (and used) a lot on Squadrons this last week. Having a squad of 5 ships with 1-2 people carrying ion missiles. You may not always be the one to kill the ship you ion'ed, but boy does it make them easier for SOMEONE to kill. That's how I'd use the Esk config, 1 ship out of a squad with a semi-support weapon.

7 hours ago, chrisrivers said:

The boosts and BR actions give him a lot of options for dropping the 2nd bomb too.

Absolutely Got me thinking about Moff Jerjerrod allowing a red boost in the systemsphase to add more flexibility for the bombardment.

19 hours ago, Sciencius said:

I preordered two of these Nimbus V-wing and I am going to stay. Had "Precision Ion Engine" allowed up to speed 4k-turns, I probably would have bought 5-6 of these.. missed oportunity from FFG 😂

I had two on preorder, then I saw the article. With this being a cheap fighter, I’m jumping up to 4.... but I play republic and enjoy it (have 4 torrents, for example) so it seemed correct. I’m hoping they fall in below rz1 because less reposition options (cannot double repo and presumably not double talent) but higher than a GSP torrent. Seems like another decent swarming ship.

Plus I’m sure I can invent new uses for all those thermal detonators 😆

16 minutes ago, ScummyRebel said:Plus I’m sure I can invent new uses for all those thermal detonators 😆

Those are sweet

17 hours ago, Archangelspiv said:

Still no clue as to why we are so deep into 2nd Ed and the Bomber and Lambda are not even spoken about as releases.

The simple explanation is that you can still buy 1st Ed Bomber and Lambda directly from FFG:
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/x-wing/products/lambda-class-shuttle-expansion-pack/
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/x-wing/products/tie-bomber-expansion-pack/

Neither of them are listed as Out of Stock.

And before anyone starts in about them being greedy, etc, bear in mind that for the first several waves, they were releasing 2.0 editions of 1.0 ships, and the end result was a bunch of re-release ships sitting on shelves and pegs and not selling. That made stores not inclined to buy more of those re-releases, which meant that FFG was seeing it was costing them money to put out a product that few people wanted to buy. It becomes a rather easy business decision to decide to stop doing the re-releases for a while.

What they really should have done in the first place is hold off on the majority of the re-releases in general. Keep an eye on when you expect to run out of 1.0 product, and once that's been unavailable for a little bit, then put out the 2.0 versions. Basically, phase in the 2.0 re-releases as the 1.0 stock dwindles. Hindsight is 20/20, though.

12 minutes ago, Freeptop said:

And before anyone starts in about them being greedy, etc, bear in mind that for the first several waves, they were releasing 2.0 editions of 1.0 ships, and the end result was a bunch of re-release ships sitting on shelves and pegs and not selling. That made stores not inclined to buy more of those re-releases, which meant that FFG was seeing it was costing them money to put out a product that few people wanted to buy. It becomes a rather easy business decision to decide to stop doing the re-releases for a while.

Worse than that, that sorta thing harmed the perception of the game among stores that would carry it. Absolutely the right call to stop it, both financially and in terms of not forcing the stores to take on the financial burden of stocking and storing those reprints simply to carry the game.

12 minutes ago, Freeptop said:

What they really should have done in the first place is hold off on the majority of the re-releases in general. Keep an eye on when you expect to run out of 1.0 product, and once that's been unavailable for a little bit, then put out the 2.0 versions. Basically, phase in the 2.0 re-releases as the 1.0 stock dwindles. Hindsight is 20/20, though.

I mean this is essentially what every wargame on the market does: Edition updates are a pretty tried and true thing. While X-wing's situation was slightly unique in cardboard being packaged with the ship, they positioned the conversion kit as a 'old hand only' thing when in reality it should have been viewed like that edition's 'codex' of sorts, to use a metaphor from 40k: They should have expected most players to decide to purchase it so they had access to all the existing models and view reprints as a 'when needed' thing and not a 'this is a new product' thing.

Obviously do some reprints in 2.0 of the absolute core stuff like X-wings, but the smart play would have been encouraging the conversion kits as a 'mandatory' product, or at least one you will naturally get once you get 'serious' about the game, because that was pretty inevitable.

On 10/16/2020 at 4:57 PM, Sciencius said:

I preordered two of these Nimbus V-wing and I am going to stay. Had "Precision Ion Engine" allowed up to speed 4k-turns, I probably would have bought 5-6 of these.. missed oportunity from FFG 😂

What does it actually affect, anyway? The basic/mining guild TIE fighters might well be it - TIE/v1, TIE/x1, TIE/fo TIE/ba, TIE/vn and interceptor all have segnors and talon rolls not turns at low speeds, and TIE/D can't equip mods.

It seems to really be a fix card for the basic TIE fighter, and not allowing it on anything much else means it can be virtually or actually free - making it a nice choice for a 'pocket ace' like Skutu or Mithel.

1 hour ago, Magnus Grendel said:

What does it actually affect, anyway? The basic/mining guild TIE fighters might well be it - TIE/v1, TIE/x1, TIE/fo TIE/ba, TIE/vn and interceptor all have segnors and talon rolls not turns at low speeds, and TIE/D can't equip mods.

It seems to really be a fix card for the basic TIE fighter, and not allowing it on anything much else means it can be virtually or actually free - making it a nice choice for a 'pocket ace' like Skutu or Mithel.

Quite right, as it written PIE mainly helps the TIE fighter and allowing for a relatively low cost.

Especially Rebel Sabrine Wren in a TIE could love this upgrade, she is capable of preboost/barrel-roll (like supernatural reflexes) and then with this upgrade if she had dialed in a 3-k the free choice between 3-sloop left, 3-sloop right, or 3-k turn.

Agreed. Experience with a striker gives me a great deal of respect for anything that can do a pre-move boost plus a segnor.

Heck, throw in ion limiter override for the sake of it, and Sabine is going "somewhere". Granted she's hardly high initiative but twenty-something final positions from a single dial choice is kind of insane.

On 10/16/2020 at 4:57 PM, Sciencius said:

Had "Precision Ion Engine" allowed up to speed 4k-turns, I probably would have bought 5-6 of these.. missed oportunity from FFG 😂

And you would only have realised your mistake when you attempted to do a 4-Segnor's Loop! 😄

2 hours ago, Rossetti1828 said:

And you would only have realised your mistake when you attempted to do a 4-Segnor's Loop! 😄

I get the feeling they've been playing casually with Attack Wing templates instead of X-Wing templates to switch things up for fun and got the the two crossed in their head.

11 hours ago, Freeptop said:

The simple explanation is that you can still buy 1st Ed Bomber and Lambda directly from FFG:
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/x-wing/products/lambda-class-shuttle-expansion-pack/
https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/products/x-wing/products/tie-bomber-expansion-pack/

Neither of them are listed as Out of Stock.

Both of those ships are also in stock used at Hobbut. You can get them discounted well under retail and then add a Conversion Kit (or two). If you're looking to backfill a reasonably sizable collection from scratch (as I did) that is often way more cost effective than paying retail. There are also other places you can order them, again usually cheaper than from FFG back stock (if cost is your main concern).

On 10/16/2020 at 2:03 PM, Hiemfire said:

🤨

When the upgrade is activated all crit results , not the last result applied, of a primary attack by the ship making use of the upgrade instead inflict Ion Tokens. Couple Esk with the following and you can almost guarantee ionization of a small base or a medium base if it is in bullseye...

Assuming you don't just miss with your 2-die attack.

So, palpatine's shuttle is basically guaranteed, right?

It's on the card art, it's mentioned in the card text, and it's mentioned in the article.

They've never talked this much about a ship that isn't in the game before, so I'm pretty hyped

42 minutes ago, Roller of blanks said:

So, palpatine's shuttle is basically guaranteed, right?

It's on the card art, it's mentioned in the card text, and it's mentioned in the article.

They've never talked this much about a ship that isn't in the game before, so I'm pretty hyped

I'd say it is one of the competitors for the first Republic large base ship, but my money is on the Twilight (saw much more use during TCW, good mix of pilot & crew choices).

I'd prefer the Nu shuttle, outright.