4 hours ago, Cloaker said:

Well alrighty then

Still, then there's counters for what is the second best thing --if people are willing to try them. Like they were saying above, Rebel Ace B-Wings, Nien Nunb, Cassian.... other pilots can dispatch of Sloane lists like; Anakin Y-Wing, Matchstick, Ahsoka pilot/gunner, ARC-170 reroll offering abilities and pilots, options to mod or gain action economy such as Force Users, ATP, Primed Thrusters, Electronic Baffle, Networked Calcs, Contraband Cybernetics, acquire lock ability pilots, gain tokens, Tanky reroll providers like Sinker and Drea, Indirect damage dealers like Bombing lists, Deadman's Switch spam can hurt Sloane's tender generics. Concussion bombs, really, can wreck this list's face. Even at range 3, there's still a range band. A TIE Reaper can be hunted down and melted in two turns, but it has to be made the priority.

Dooku alone can melt a Sloane escort generic a round and doesn't give AF about red tokens. Has anyone even considered trying him with 3 Concussion bomb hurling/strut landing Bombardment Drones? Probably not EVER because people don't think a cloaked payload carrier is any good. Sure, he might be bad... but what if isn't? What if he just utterly schools that list?

I mean, this isn't unsolvable. There are TONS of options. People have to start trying different things. Also, most of this year people haven't had to fork out massive $ for 5 Aggressors. Real world in person gaming, this never even becomes a thing really.

I just think we have to acknowledge rock / paper / scissors / lizard / Spock will always be a thing, you know? And if people aren't willing to try Spock and lizard because they don't want to let go of the rock and paper options that they are most familiar with, should scissors be considered OP?

just my two credits

And then all those supposed counters are pretty bad against the rest of the fields so odds are they won't even see a Sloane list during any given tournament

5 hours ago, Cloaker said:

I just think we have to acknowledge rock / paper / scissors / lizard / Spock will always be a thing, you know? And if people aren't willing to try Spock and lizard because they don't want to let go of the rock and paper options that they are most familiar with, should scissors be considered OP?

Hard to answer question.

Sloane seems like the best card "no one" is playing, by a *VERY* wide margin, and probably has been through the whole of 2e. Before January, I probably saw more posts along the lines of "So-And-So is so good, why aren't more people playing it?" about Sloane than any other ship or upgrade.

I think... balance > animal spirits, mostly. If folks keep wanting to play stuff that isn't as good, and keep ignoring better stuff, you ought not buff the better stuff. Sloane has probably reached a tipping point where the awareness of how good she actually is has become widespread, and keeping her under-priced so folks give her a try probably isn't justifiable anymore.

1 hour ago, Cpt ObVus said:

I’m not weighing in on whether Sloane’s sufficiently balanced or not, but you can DEFINITELY count me among the votes for NOT increasing Academy TIEs to 24-25 points. That’s bananas.

Agreed.

As was pointed out already, Sloane swarms has two possible weaknesses that can be exploited: Killing the carrier and killing the filler without them defending.

Killing the carrier is doable, but if you fail or take too many turns, you're in trouble - fair enough.

Killing the swarm ships without them defending is difficult. The countermeasures do exist, but swarms are not strong enough to justify taking them.
Bombs are too bad against single low ship count list, they're expensive and it's hard to land hits with bombs, so noone brings them. They are one of the worst designed elements in the game. FFG should redesign them from scratch.

Two points come to mind as I read through the thread.

1) Extended is a disaster and every time I play or watch an event in extended, I am immediately reminded of why I prefer Hyperspace.

2) IMHO the standard TIE/ln needs to go down one point which, I think, is another argument that Sloane probably needs to go up.

27 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Hard to answer question.

Sloane seems like the best card "no one" is playing, by a *VERY* wide margin, and probably has been through the whole of 2e. Before January, I probably saw more posts along the lines of "So-And-So is so good, why aren't more people playing it?" about Sloane than any other ship or upgrade.

I think... balance > animal spirits, mostly. If folks keep wanting to play stuff that isn't as good, and keep ignoring better stuff, you ought not buff the better stuff. Sloane has probably reached a tipping point where the awareness of how good she actually is has become widespread, and keeping her under-priced so folks give her a try probably isn't justifiable anymore.

Sloane has always been good, but she was competing with utterly broken things like whisper redline +1, quad phantoms and oli aces before while also having less efficient fillers since aggressors were more expansive. But I agree with you: if we hadn't Nantex, we would have been ******* about Sloane since the last point change

She had been under the radar also because the typical imperial player wants to play aces nowadays, not swarms

24 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

Hard to answer question.

Sloane seems like the best card "no one" is playing, by a *VERY* wide margin, and probably has been through the whole of 2e. Before January, I probably saw more posts along the lines of "So-And-So is so good, why aren't more people playing it?" about Sloane than any other ship or upgrade.

I think... balance > animal spirits, mostly. If folks keep wanting to play stuff that isn't as good, and keep ignoring better stuff, you ought not buff the better stuff. Sloane has probably reached a tipping point where the awareness of how good she actually is has become widespread, and keeping her under-priced so folks give her a try probably isn't justifiable anymore.

Perhaps folks simply do not want to fly the Sloane style list even if it is good. Perhaps it goes back to what I was saying and folks not liking to be on the receiving end of it deciding they do not care to use it themselves.

Perhaps in the list-building phase players ask themselves the question of other than losing ships how can they inflict stress to not be dependent on what the enemy does to get their re-rolls. Nine points and losing a ship to pass out a pair of stress tokens and get re-rolls against just the one ship probably doesn't look very consistent or reliable. At best it doesn't look like it is something you can control. Sloane is probably "sneaky good" in that respect with players not really grasping how often their ships are stressed. That probably feeds the dislike of playing against her.

You look at her and blow her off and learn the hard way that she isn't that bad. The control part isn't her giving the stress it is all the stuff you don't choose to do yourself that gets stress which may be quite a lot.

Various agrees. The stress related rerolls seem very underestimated.

5 hours ago, Tobbert said:

If that's your assessment of the situation and if you thnk Sloane swarms are too strong, then the conclusion should be that generic empire ships are too cheap, right?

So TIE/lns should cost 2-3 points more, depending on how much Sloane is bumped up?

Actually, you are close--- I think ALL small bases generics are priced too cheap in second edition. This is why 3/4th of large bases ships do not see play, because the floor costs kept dropping and average squad counts kept rising. Large ships by and large (ha! made funny!) really can't keep up.

7 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

I take it then that we can agree Sloane has been a powerhouse for a while.

The rest is a different discussion that I will stay out of. I just want to point out that you make a lot of the same points that we always hear in the initial denial phase, including the now popular "only happens online" when we had an offline event (italian nationals) with spamtex proving that's not true.
And list building against a specific squad is a great indicator that this squad is too good. You might say overpowered or underpriced.

agreed, you da man!

2 hours ago, Frimmel said:

Perhaps folks simply do not want to fly the Sloane style list even if it is good. Perhaps it goes back to what I was saying and folks not liking to be on the receiving end of it deciding they do not care to use it themselves.

That certainly could be one reason to not run a Sloane swarm. Other reasons:

The variety of viable swarms in 2nd

A lot of swarm players gravitated towards separatists swarms.

Malware is a great swarm

Scyk swarms are good

Other reasons

The reaper aggressor variant seems to be the best. How many players have access to that many aggressors?

People like 3 to 5 ship lists.

I don't want to discount your rationale I just think at the tournament level a lot of people arent worried about their opponent having a case of the feel bads. Personally I enjoy malware more it's fun to play.

28 minutes ago, reqent said:

Malware is a great swarm

Personally I enjoy malware more it's fun to play.

Was ist denn "Malware?" 🤔

14 minutes ago, Spinland said:

Was ist denn "Malware?" 🤔

Malarus+Terex (a droid, so the connection to IT in a larger sense) and 6 epsilons

Beaten to it but yeah it's a fun swarm. Malarus can be her own and the rest of the lists worst enemy (feels very fluffy). Agent Terex is also insane and I suspect he will probably go up in points.

8 hours ago, Sunitsa said:

And then all those supposed counters are pretty bad against the rest of the fields so odds are they won't even see a Sloane list during any given tournament

Incorrect. U-Wings can pack a punch, T-70's are good, 4-LOM can ruin people's day, and B-Wings, especially Numb, can take almost anything. Focus > red Barrel Roll for stress and focus.

47 minutes ago, Bravo Null said:

Incorrect. U-Wings can pack a punch, T-70's are good, 4-LOM can ruin people's day, and B-Wings, especially Numb, can take almost anything. Focus > red Barrel Roll for stress and focus.

4-L0M isn't a counter to Sloane.

6 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

4-L0M isn't a counter to Sloane.

He gets rid of stress, that's a counter. (However soft)

31 minutes ago, Bravo Null said:

He gets rid of stress, that's a counter. (However soft)

After giving Sloane's entire squad easy double modded shots... Take another look at the G-1A dial and 4-L0M's full ability paying close attention to the timing.

Sloane hard counters 4-L0M.

3 hours ago, Bravo Null said:

Incorrect. U-Wings can pack a punch, T-70's are good, 4-LOM can ruin people's day, and B-Wings, especially Numb, can take almost anything. Focus > red Barrel Roll for stress and focus.

I don't think we are playing the same game

12 hours ago, Sunitsa said:

I don't think we are playing the same game

This is the issue, especially right now. Most player bases are smaller right now and weird home metas start creeping into people's view of the game.

1 hour ago, InterceptorMad said:

This is the issue, especially right now. Most player bases are smaller right now and weird home metas start creeping into people's view of the game.

What's the problem with that?

15 hours ago, Hiemfire said:

After giving Sloane's entire squad easy double modded shots... Take another look at the G-1A dial and 4-L0M's full ability paying close attention to the timing.

Lots of red maneuvers, but 4-LOM gets a calculate token when he does them. Free dice modding! Also, re-rolls can fail completely.

14 hours ago, Sunitsa said:

I don't think we are playing the same game

I'm pretty sure we are, I just will try ANY ship.

1 hour ago, Bravo Null said:

What's the problem with that?

No problem, just that when giving advice/solutions, we need to be aware of the difference between something happening once or twice in one game vs it happening over and over in multiple games across multiple lists and players.

For example, yes 4-Lom can get rid of a stress at the end of the turn to (hopefully) help against Sloane.

However, to do so he would have had a stress for some of if not the entire turn. Which means against a good Sloane player that's a whole turn of shots from 4+ ships with rerolls against your 1 Agility, not that beefy 4-Lom. I love 4-Lom, but I would not feel that confident about taking him against a Sloane list just because he can dump 1 stress token a turn (within certain triggers).


Both Sloane and 4-Lom have existed in their current states since 2nd ed started. Over all that time, 4-Lom has not become known as some sort of "Sloane Killer", and I feel like with the amount of players and games over the last 2 years, if he was that 'solution', he'd have been known as such by now.

On 11/11/2020 at 6:30 AM, Tobbert said:

Agreed.

As was pointed out already, Sloane swarms has two possible weaknesses that can be exploited: Killing the carrier and killing the filler without them defending.

Killing the carrier is doable, but if you fail or take too many turns, you're in trouble - fair enough.

Killing the swarm ships without them defending is difficult. The countermeasures do exist, but swarms are not strong enough to justify taking them.
Bombs are too bad against single low ship count list, they're expensive and it's hard to land hits with bombs, so noone brings them. They are one of the worst designed elements in the game. FFG should redesign them from scratch.

It also has the much more common counter of "kill a ship, get stressed, and not die because you've got either passive defenses or you used a ship that wasn't easily focused next turn by the swarm".

On 11/11/2020 at 6:52 AM, Sunitsa said:

She had been under the radar also because the typical imperial player wants to play aces nowadays, not swarms

They typical X-wing player wants to play aces, I suspect, if tournament ship counts are any indication.

On 11/11/2020 at 7:17 AM, Frimmel said:

Perhaps folks simply do not want to fly the Sloane style list even if it is good. Perhaps it goes back to what I was saying and folks not liking to be on the receiving end of it deciding they do not care to use it themselves.

The enormous prevalence of the Nantex swarm suggests that many, many players don't ignore something just because they think it's not fun to play against. The whole history of X-wing bears this out. I suspect tje bigger reason is that players want to initiative kill things and reposition after other ships, and for all its strengths, the Sloane swarm does neither of those things.

55 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

The enormous prevalence of the Nantex swarm suggests that many, many players don't ignore something just because they think it's not fun to play against. The whole history of X-wing bears this out. I suspect tje bigger reason is that players want to initiative kill things and reposition after other ships, and for all its strengths, the Sloane swarm does neither of those things.

We also can't forget the fact that the only version of Sloane swarm to really make a splash long term requires a relatively rare extended only ship due to the unique strengths spammed Aggressor ties bring to Sloane, which makes it a harder buy in, and while it is fiercely powerful in that format, extended players may be less likely to jump ship than Hyperspace players, who are likely a player demographic that is far more mercenary.

Extended is a strange format as it paradoxically is both far more cutthroat in terms of list power and preformance, and more casual due to the majority of serious competitive players gravitating towards Hyperspace. Month by month you see a lot of uhhh.... interesting lists in the top 20 lists of Extended that clearly are not an attempt to fly the best list possible but instead are more... accomplishment and faction based. Obviously its not a total clown fiesta but even if a combo became meta-dominant in extended it might just have a reduced impact overall due to the nature of the mode.

6 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

We also can't forget the fact that the only version of Sloane swarm to really make a splash long term requires a relatively rare extended only ship due to the unique strengths spammed Aggressor ties bring to Sloane, which makes it a harder buy in, and while it is fiercely powerful in that format, extended players may be less likely to jump ship than Hyperspace players, who are likely a player demographic that is far more mercenary.

Extended is a strange format as it paradoxically is both far more cutthroat in terms of list power and preformance, and more casual due to the majority of serious competitive players gravitating towards Hyperspace. Month by month you see a lot of uhhh.... interesting lists in the top 20 lists of Extended that clearly are not an attempt to fly the best list possible but instead are more... accomplishment and faction based. Obviously its not a total clown fiesta but even if a combo became meta-dominant in extended it might just have a reduced impact overall due to the nature of the mode.

What makes you think competitive players orbits more towards HS? Here in italy for example HS is mostly a laughable format never touched unless ffg force us. My international European experience also would tends toward extended being the "competitive" format while HS is the "casual"

Just now, Sunitsa said:

What makes you think competitive players orbits more towards HS? Here in italy for example HS is mostly a laughable format never touched unless ffg force us. My international European experience also would tends toward extended being the "competitive" format while HS is the "casual"

The majority of reported tournaments are HS only on Metawing (Though obviously recent tournaments trend away from this), and in my experience both in my local area and talking to people online the majority of people I see who take the competitive scene very seriously prefer HS.

Another thing I realized is that a big reason Sloane may not be as big in HS as her power level might suggest is a lot of players, at least in my local area, use casual extended tournaments to practice HS lists for major tournaments (Which is... kiiiinda a jerk move when they are wailing on newbie players at a super casual 12 person tournament who are flying a core pack+1 list with Boba and friends or a Droid swarm but... details), which may under-represent Sloane's real power: A lot of people may have been picking Spamtex over Sloane for example because they wanted to fly Spamtex regardless of the tournament structure compared to an extended only list to ensure their time with that list could carry over to their HS tournaments.

8 hours ago, dezzmont said:

We also can't forget the fact that the only version of Sloane swarm to really make a splash long term requires a relatively rare extended only ship due to the unique strengths spammed Aggressor ties bring to Sloane, which makes it a harder buy in, and while it is fiercely powerful in that format, extended players may be less likely to jump ship than Hyperspace players, who are likely a player demographic that is far more mercenary.

Just fyi, that's not true. RACsloane also made a splash and is easily available. Maybe not quite as good, but who is counting at >40% conversion rate?