Can we get some ideas for an illicit for scum that costs 1 point?

@Cuz05 @Kleeg005 @theBitterFig @underling @Cerebrawl @Bucknife @Cloaker @ClassicalMoser

Glitterstim 2.0, 3 non recurring charges

”When you defend or perform a primary attack, if you are not stressed, you may spend up to 3 charges. If you do, convert that many eye results to hit or evade results. Then, gain a stress token.”

I feel like it captures the feel of 1.0 glitterstim without being as busted as it used to be. Passive mod for a cost. Yes you pick when it triggers like force charges do, but you do not regain charges and there are limits to when you can use it (stress for example).

I think all my stupid ideas in the upgrade collection thread were probably worth a point?

Out of all those worth a point or less, I think I most liked the one about chipping bits of your crappy ship off and hitting a ship behind you with them.

Charge based. Enemy ship in your rear arc at R0-1 rolls a red die and takes one of a selection of red tokens/damage etc. On a crit, you get one too.

Whatever timing seems most useful....

Or... Deafening External PA System Blaring Amateur Jizz, Live From Jabbas Barge. 1 charge, enemy ships cannot spend focus tokens while attacking you this turn.

Aftermarket Electricals

Increase the difficulty of your hard turns. While you execute a red non-stop maneuver, during the check difficulty step, gain 1 deplete instead of a stress.

Just a lot of one time burners would be Nice. 1 or 0 points for a one time evade, Focus, TL, barrel roll, bonus attack etc. Nullify a TL from an enemy ship above I 5. Reaction actions, if you get tl from an enemy ship you may something? ... Just some small trollish stuff. Or for one round you may copy the skill of a named pilot in your arc.

3 hours ago, ScummyRebel said:

Glitterstim 2.0, 3 non recurring charges

”When you defend or perform a primary attack, if you are not stressed, you may spend up to 3 charges. If you do, convert that many eye results to hit or evade results. Then, gain a stress token.”

I feel like it captures the feel of 1.0 glitterstim without being as busted as it used to be. Passive mod for a cost. Yes you pick when it triggers like force charges do, but you do not regain charges and there are limits to when you can use it (stress for example).

That feels more like a 4 pointer than a 1 pointer.

48 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

That feels more like a 4 pointer than a 1 pointer.

We all know they’d introduce it in a $30 medium base ship expansion and have it priced at 1 point until the next points change after everyone has spent $120 when they really can fly max 2 of the new ship.

4 hours ago, Cuz05 said:

Deafening External PA System Blaring Amateur Jizz, Live From Jabbas Barge.

Aren't you supposed to go into battle blaring Trombe?

1-point upgrades (other than talents) usually fall into two camps.

• First are the double-edged ones. Zeb crew, Greedo gunner, Automated Target Protocols. These can easily be as much of a drawback as a benefit, and take choices out of your hands and can help an enemy more than you. I suppose a subset of these are ones which help you alone, but come at the cost of health, like Chopper crew, or pre-nerf Inertial Dampeners.
• Second are the kind which require other upgrades to function . Delayed Fuses, Munitions Failsafe, Ciktaro Vizago crew. They do nothing on their own, but help another upgrade.
  • Biohexacrypt Codes kind of don't fit into either, but they're also pretty thin. They require an action of set-up to do a 2nd action with better range. Inefficient Utility.

So... for 1-point Illicits, I'd want to follow one of these general directions.

• Blaster Safety Bypass Circuit. 1 charge, non-recurring. " When you perform a cannon or turret attack, you may spend 1 charge. If you do, suffer 1 damage and roll 1 additional attack die. If you do not spend a charge, roll 1 fewer attack dice. "
  • Basically, a cannon or turret goes from a repeatable consistent weapon, into a one-and-done piece of ordnance.
  • Suffer a damage to roll an extra result is somewhat comparable to Ruthless.
  • I'm not even worried about Kavil throwing a 5 dice range 1 Dorsal Turret attack, since it'd effectively neutralize his pilot ability for the rest of the game.
• Friend-Foe Piggyback Signal . " After you acquire a lock on an enemy ship or an enemy ship acquires a lock on you, assign 1 calculate token to both ships. "
  • Maybe this is worth more than 1 point... 1 pointers are tricky, since they should be noticeably worse than Contraband Cybernetics at 2 points.
  • Anyhow, literally anyone who locks you gets double-mods. But you get a Calculate token you can use to defend yourself.
  • But the fact that you always get double-mods while locking someone to attack is really nasty... On any sort of ordnance ship, it'd be really strong. I don't think Scum really have anything which easily gets Locks with Passive Sensors, so there may not be a great home for it, but it's risky.
    • The more I think about it, I don't like it as a 1-point illicit. I love that effect, though. Real double-edged-sword potential, but on the right ship, maybe you can leverage those Calcs better than an enemy can.
  • A safer version would be " After an enemy ship acquires a lock on you, you may acquire a lock on that ship. After you acquire a lock on an enemy ship, that ship may acquire a lock on you, ignoring range restrictions. "
    • The last bit is important, since if you have some shenanigans that let you get long-range locks, they can still get a lock on you. If they're the only ones with shenanigans, you're out of luck. That's entirely fair for a 1 point upgrade.
    • In some ways, that's a lot more modest. It's still a free action, and you don't gain anything too much if multiple opponents lock onto you, since most folks can only lock one object at a time.

1 hour ago, ScummyRebel said:

We all know they’d introduce it in a $30 medium base ship expansion and have it priced at 1 point until the next points change after everyone has spent $120 when they really can fly max 2 of the new ship.

They're not giving folks 3 force charges for 1 point, no matter how much they want to move product.

3 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

Blaster Safety Bypass Circuit. 1 charge, non-recurring. " When you perform a cannon or turret attack, you may spend 1 charge. If you do, suffer 1 damage and roll 1 additional attack die. If you do not spend a charge, roll 1 fewer attack dice. "

As an upgrade that technically costs more than one point (because that cannon or turret it's rendering otherwise useless also costs points), it probably shouldn't both damage you AND make your weapon worthless for the rest of the game. If only one or the other is still too good, it should only turn the weapon off after you have no active charges (which, unlike this wording, would allow you to fire normally until you decide to get the overcharge, only punishing you if you miscalculate when to use it).

I think the desire for a 1 point scum only illicit upgrade is sort of a desire to give them a heroic equivalent, not in the sense of accomplishing a similar mechanical effect, but sort of helping build a faction identity through a very minor benefit that is so cheap it is almost free. Considering one of the main things that unites most scum ships is their illicit slot, and the faction's identity is in a weird spot (They have dirty tricks but the faction focus pre-Sep Firespray upgrades is hugely focused on... brawling kinda...) maybe get some more scummy moves into the list by 'default' wouldn't be a bad idea.

Zam opens up a really interesting design space for Scum, in that we now have a precedent for 'hidden information' cards. While crack shot as +1 damage per game at 1 point was a bit too much, it was borderline, which means with a stricter trigger condition a once a game impact that is about on par with 1 damage might be ok, or a generally easy to trigger once a game effect that applies strain or disarm, or negates a damage, might be ok.

I could see a 1 point 'minor trap' effect existing. Something like the following:

Hidden Blow Away Compartment. At the start of game, select a Blow Away Compartment card secretly and equip it to this ship.

All blow away compartment cards would be 'traps' that trigger under very specific circumstances once per-game and then cease functioning. Ideally ones your opponent has to trigger or which can be predicted, and there would only be a few of them, and their trigger conditions are mandatory so your opponent can forcibly test them. Some potential effects:

If an enemy ship ends a manuver within 0 of you, you must reveal this card. That ship takes 1 damage/gains a stress/something other relatively minor. This one is the most interesting to me because it existing would create a lot of fun boardstates where someone is either way too cautious about even being threatened with a bump, or goes ham bumping a super tough ship into every single thing trying to figure out if they got this one or ensuring it doesn't hit a more fragile expensive ace.

The second time you are attacked this turn, deal 1 damage to your attacker. Punishes overly-agressive focus fire, helps solve the I-kill problem a bit for scum, encourages your opponent to consider inefficiently shooting everything and makes the joust a bit less straightforward.

If a ship modifies its dice against you more than once, gain 1 evade result. Punishing both super-ships being a bit too frisky just messing with ya, Jedi, and 'classic' double modded shots. Played around by just accepting a minor damage loss and using a mod for defense. It also is mostly limiting the spike damage your taking, rather than making you super 'tanky.'

Just flat out the text of Deadman's Switch. Its bad both because its points total and because its a bit too easy to play around. It being uncertain if a ship has DMS would certainly make it more interesting, and I think power-creeping on DMS is pretty fair considering its actually an interesting upgrade. If people really don't want the potential for secret DMS it could just get a 'roll a hit or crit to do a damage, otherwise apply a strain.'

What is interesting is that these can be selected pre-game, so you can use them to counter specific lists or synergize with your own ships match by match... but your opponent knows this and so will be expecting certain traps and might try to trigger them. On top of that, because most of these effects are opponent controlled, there is a lot of play around potential and the need to test for traps, or the potential to trigger traps on purpose. Unlike Crack Shot, ideally you can't just use these to force in an extra damage. You might convince someone to crash a cheap ship into Unkar Plutt just because they assume you have the 'don't bump me or you will regret it' one, but whoops it was the bomb the whole time!

Obviously though, these are hecka cardgamey. It may make sense for it to be a limited set so you don't just shove these onto swarms. I can see this being the most fun as something you have maybe 3 of in a list: Enough to keep you on your toes but not enough to just slap on 8 ships for basically free. Also would be way too much info to track on a generic swarm. The other thing is that this would probably be ideal to limit to smalls or larges, to prevent Boba from being able to get even more power to dictate engagements. Would be fun for larges perhaps, and further encourage it to be a small number of surprises in a list.

Ultimately I think what I really want from illicits are dirty tricks. And part of what make tricks feel tricky is that your the passive element setting something up for your opponent to 'blunder into' so your rewarded for being clever getting them to do it. These existing and being a little bit pushed would introduce a lot of bluffing to scum play, doing stuff like pretending to clearly have/not have the DMS-alike by flying close or far from your own ships, baiting big beefy double modded torp shots, or whatever. It makes flying against scum a bit more thought provoking without altering 'core x-wing' too much: its still ultimately a game about prediction based on partially hidden information with you trying to make guesses about what your opponent is planning, its just adding a new unpleasant dimension where certain ships in your opponents list might behave... strangely in very specific scenarios that make you have to read into what your opponent does not to just predict where they will end up after moving, but what they want to happen.

Off-Book Refit.

2 pip.

Illicit/Mod dual slot.

Restrictions: Missile and/or Torp slot. No cannon slot.

Text: Remove all torp and missile upgrade slots. Adds cannon slot.

While you perform an attack, you must re-roll all critical results.

Attanni Mindlink

5 hours ago, dezzmont said:

I think the desire for a 1 point scum only illicit upgrade is sort of a desire to give them a heroic equivalent, not in the sense of accomplishing a similar mechanical effect, but sort of helping build a faction identity through a very minor benefit that is so cheap it is almost free. Considering one of the main things that unites most scum ships is their illicit slot, and the faction's identity is in a weird spot (They have dirty tricks but the faction focus pre-Sep Firespray upgrades is hugely focused on... brawling kinda...) maybe get some more scummy moves into the list by 'default' wouldn't be a bad idea.

While I think there's some desire for that, an illicit upgrade that, like Heroic, gets stapled onto every scum ship is *A TERRIBLE IDEA* because it doesn't create faction identity, it'd destroy it. Illicits are strange and illegal and risky upgrades that pirates and various outlaws are customizing their ships with. Having a standard one that everyone equips entirely breaks the theme.

Contraband Cybernetics is close to that, but it's expensive enough at 2-points that it's not an auto-include.

Talents can be this cheap, because you have to invest in that talent slot. It'll come with higher initiative, which is also a perk, but it allows the weakest talents to be cheaper and better than the weakest upgrades of other kinds, since they aren't available to the lowest cost generic pilots.

//

To have an auto-include set of secret/trap cards that have some actually-decent effects... seems too much to me. I feel like there's certainly room for something along those lines, but probably the range of choices should be narrow (two per trap-upgrade?), and probably shouldn't be auto-include prices.

6 hours ago, Matanui3 said:

As an upgrade that technically costs more than one point (because that cannon or turret it's rendering otherwise useless also costs points), it probably shouldn't both damage you AND make your weapon worthless for the rest of the game. If only one or the other is still too good, it should only turn the weapon off after you have no active charges (which, unlike this wording, would allow you to fire normally until you decide to get the overcharge, only punishing you if you miscalculate when to use it).

Thinking around it a bit. I still think it's close to an appropriate power level, since 1-pointers should be niche and double-edged, but maybe it is a bit too harsh.

• Totally shutting off without a damage penalty could work.
• Alternately, you could always roll 1 fewer die, but get it back if you suffer a damage, and gain an extra die on top of that if you spend a charge (maybe there'd now be 2).

Overall I think folks in this thread are typically asking for a lot more from a 1-pointer than should be offered.

my input...

Unstable Energy Cells - During the setup phase add one energy to any one upgrade that uses energy already equiped to this ship. When the last energy token is removed from this ship suffer one damage. All ships at range zero also suffer one damage.

Few ideas:

1 charge. At the start of the Engagement Phase you may spend 1 charge to gain tractor token.

1 charge. After you defend, you may spend 1 charge to acquire a lock on attacker.

1 recurring charge. After you defend, you may spend 1 charge to acquire a lock on attacker. You can't spend lock for the default effect.

14 minutes ago, Boreas Mun said:

1 charge. At the start of the Engagement Phase you may spend 1 charge to gain tractor token.

🤨 So Brotex's? Aggressors are the only ship this would be even remotely close to an okay idea on. Every other ship with the slot would get dropped to A1 or A0, or it just wouldn't have an effect at all.

• Hunter Fob

1 Charge, Illicit slot

Setup: After placing forces, assign the condition "Tracked" to an enemy ship. This card's charges cannot be recovered.

Tracked

During the System Phase, if an enemy ship carrying Hunter Fob is at Range 2 - 3 of you, it must spend 1 [Charge] from Hunter Fob. You and the enemy ship flip your dials faceup. The enemy ship may change its maneuver to a basic maneuver of either the same speed OR the same bearing as your maneuver. After executing a maneuver, the enemy ship gains 1 stress token.

19 hours ago, ScummyRebel said:

Glitterstim 2.0, 3 non recurring charges

”When you defend or perform a primary attack, if you are not stressed, you may spend up to 3 charges. If you do, convert that many eye results to hit or evade results. Then, gain a stress token.”

I feel like it captures the feel of 1.0 glitterstim without being as busted as it used to be. Passive mod for a cost. Yes you pick when it triggers like force charges do, but you do not regain charges and there are limits to when you can use it (stress for example).

16 hours ago, Cerebrawl said:

That feels more like a 4 pointer than a 1 pointer.

^Yep, to both. Great design idea, @ScummyRebel , but a little pricier than 1 point, for sure.

42 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

🤨 So Brotex's? Aggressors are the only ship this would be even remotely close to an okay idea on. Every other ship with the slot would get dropped to A1 or A0, or it just wouldn't have an effect at all.

So you think that reposition during Engagement Phase is not worth it, or what? (it would work only on small ships and it's only 1 per game)

3 minutes ago, Boreas Mun said:

So you think that reposition during Engagement Phase is not worth it, or what?

In the unlikely event that it'd put you into 0 firing arcs or behind a gas cloud? Sure, it'd be worth it. Outside of that no. Even then, not sure I see it as worth even 1 pt.

9 hours ago, dezzmont said:

I think the desire for a 1 point scum only illicit upgrade is sort of a desire to give them a heroic equivalent, not in the sense of accomplishing a similar mechanical effect, but sort of helping build a faction identity through a very minor benefit that is so cheap it is almost free. Considering one of the main things that unites most scum ships is their illicit slot, and the faction's identity is in a weird spot (They have dirty tricks but the faction focus pre-Sep Firespray upgrades is hugely focused on... brawling kinda...) maybe get some more scummy moves into the list by 'default' wouldn't be a bad idea.

Zam opens up a really interesting design space for Scum, in that we now have a precedent for 'hidden information' cards. While crack shot as +1 damage per game at 1 point was a bit too much, it was borderline, which means with a stricter trigger condition a once a game impact that is about on par with 1 damage might be ok, or a generally easy to trigger once a game effect that applies strain or disarm, or negates a damage, might be ok.

I could see a 1 point 'minor trap' effect existing. Something like the following:

Hidden Blow Away Compartment. At the start of game, select a Blow Away Compartment card secretly and equip it to this ship.

All blow away compartment cards would be 'traps' that trigger under very specific circumstances once per-game and then cease functioning. Ideally ones your opponent has to trigger or which can be predicted, and there would only be a few of them, and their trigger conditions are mandatory so your opponent can forcibly test them. Some potential effects:

If an enemy ship ends a manuver within 0 of you, you must reveal this card. That ship takes 1 damage/gains a stress/something other relatively minor. This one is the most interesting to me because it existing would create a lot of fun boardstates where someone is either way too cautious about even being threatened with a bump, or goes ham bumping a super tough ship into every single thing trying to figure out if they got this one or ensuring it doesn't hit a more fragile expensive ace.

The second time you are attacked this turn, deal 1 damage to your attacker. Punishes overly-agressive focus fire, helps solve the I-kill problem a bit for scum, encourages your opponent to consider inefficiently shooting everything and makes the joust a bit less straightforward.

If a ship modifies its dice against you more than once, gain 1 evade result. Punishing both super-ships being a bit too frisky just messing with ya, Jedi, and 'classic' double modded shots. Played around by just accepting a minor damage loss and using a mod for defense. It also is mostly limiting the spike damage your taking, rather than making you super 'tanky.'

Just flat out the text of Deadman's Switch. Its bad both because its points total and because its a bit too easy to play around. It being uncertain if a ship has DMS would certainly make it more interesting, and I think power-creeping on DMS is pretty fair considering its actually an interesting upgrade. If people really don't want the potential for secret DMS it could just get a 'roll a hit or crit to do a damage, otherwise apply a strain.'

What is interesting is that these can be selected pre-game, so you can use them to counter specific lists or synergize with your own ships match by match... but your opponent knows this and so will be expecting certain traps and might try to trigger them. On top of that, because most of these effects are opponent controlled, there is a lot of play around potential and the need to test for traps, or the potential to trigger traps on purpose. Unlike Crack Shot, ideally you can't just use these to force in an extra damage. You might convince someone to crash a cheap ship into Unkar Plutt just because they assume you have the 'don't bump me or you will regret it' one, but whoops it was the bomb the whole time!

Obviously though, these are hecka cardgamey. It may make sense for it to be a limited set so you don't just shove these onto swarms. I can see this being the most fun as something you have maybe 3 of in a list: Enough to keep you on your toes but not enough to just slap on 8 ships for basically free. Also would be way too much info to track on a generic swarm. The other thing is that this would probably be ideal to limit to smalls or larges, to prevent Boba from being able to get even more power to dictate engagements. Would be fun for larges perhaps, and further encourage it to be a small number of surprises in a list.

Ultimately I think what I really want from illicits are dirty tricks. And part of what make tricks feel tricky is that your the passive element setting something up for your opponent to 'blunder into' so your rewarded for being clever getting them to do it. These existing and being a little bit pushed would introduce a lot of bluffing to scum play, doing stuff like pretending to clearly have/not have the DMS-alike by flying close or far from your own ships, baiting big beefy double modded torp shots, or whatever. It makes flying against scum a bit more thought provoking without altering 'core x-wing' too much: its still ultimately a game about prediction based on partially hidden information with you trying to make guesses about what your opponent is planning, its just adding a new unpleasant dimension where certain ships in your opponents list might behave... strangely in very specific scenarios that make you have to read into what your opponent does not to just predict where they will end up after moving, but what they want to happen.

I think that each of these trap card ideas are amazing (though some would probably be more 2 pointers then 1 pointers) but instead of having just one upgrade that let's you choose between 4 different trap cards, there could be multiple different illicits that each let you choose between 2 different trap cards (like Zam). This would help simplify the cards, and also give the Scum faction multiple exclusive illicits to make the faction feel unique.

LOOK AT ME! I AM THE CAPTAIN NOW!

1 Point, 1 pip unique

1 Charge

Restrictions: Scum, Non-limited pilot

”During the system phase, you may spend 1 charge. You must then repeat the title of this upgrade three times. If you do, your initiative value becomes 7 until the next round.”

1 hour ago, nopedz said:

I think that each of these trap card ideas are amazing (though some would probably be more 2 pointers then 1 pointers) but instead of having just one upgrade that let's you choose between 4 different trap cards, there could be multiple different illicits that each let you choose between 2 different trap cards (like Zam). This would help simplify the cards, and also give the Scum faction multiple exclusive illicits to make the faction feel unique.

5 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

(two per trap-upgrade?)

I think 3 is the golden number per-card, especially if they could be themed together to make it non-trivial to guess when they would trigger and make testing a smiiiidge harder. While I think Zam is a great design my main problem with the card is the trigger conditions are 'inverted' on each other, and are heavily 'lose-lose.' Its fine, especially because Zam is unique, but it doesn't quite scratch that 'Hearthstone Secret' itch, which to be fair Hearthstone doesn't scratch that often unless there are a lot of interesting secrets in the same meta.

I think the real danger of having only two is it makes it too easy to estimate which one it is if the trigger conditions are appropriately narrow. Two works fine for Zam because her trigger condition for the 'best' outcome of her trap is extremely broad and will happen constantly. Ideally most ships that would want to take this have a good reason to take at least two different traps.

1 hour ago, dezzmont said:

While I think Zam is a great design my main problem with the card is the trigger conditions are 'inverted' on each other, and are heavily 'lose-lose.' Its fine, especially because Zam is unique, but it doesn't quite scratch that 'Hearthstone Secret' itch, which to be fair Hearthstone doesn't scratch that often unless there are a lot of interesting secrets in the same meta.

Hearthstone is an illustrative example. Secrets are important there, because players can't interrupt their opponent's turn or break up their plans.

In X-Wing, counterplay is a lot more organic. I don't think there's a need for a huge range of secrets and traps and hidden tricks. The dial is the most important secret there is.

1 hour ago, dezzmont said:

I think the real danger of having only two is it makes it too easy to estimate which one it is if the trigger conditions are appropriately narrow.

I think it's good for players to make reads, and be able to play around them. If a Scum-Hidden-Trick was the equivalent of Counterspell and Mirror Image. Test one, and then you'll know if you have to play around the other.