3 hours ago, Khobai said:

I disagree. Not having to take a commander like Grievous is a bonus not a disadvantage. Especially for an army like CIS that wants to spam units alongside AATs anyway.

The field commander rules are absolutely terrible as written. Its all upside and no real downside.

The problematic lists are going to be the ones that dont include actual commanders and only include field commanders.

Allowing CIS to not have to take an actual commander is absurd. Especially when that same advantage isnt given to rebels or empire.

I understand your concerns, but after trying the new rules out with my CIS army it feels pretty balanced. The AAT isnt that much cheaper than Grievious, and like others have said you really miss aggressive tactics and Grievious's flexibility with his movement and ability to interact with objectives. The tank can basically just point and shoot (and is real good at it), but Grievious or Dooku allow you way more ways to shut your opponent down.

What Courage value do you use with a Field Commander?

Just the one printed on your trooper's card?

11 minutes ago, buckero0 said:

What Courage value do you use with a Field Commander?

Just the one printed on your trooper's card?

2

"while that unit has a commander token, friendly units at range 1–3 may treat their courage value as 2 when checking whether they panic. "

Page 45

5 hours ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

I understand your concerns, but after trying the new rules out with my CIS army it feels pretty balanced. The AAT isnt that much cheaper than Grievious, and like others have said you really miss aggressive tactics and Grievious's flexibility with his movement and ability to interact with objectives. The tank can basically just point and shoot (and is real good at it), but Grievious or Dooku allow you way more ways to shut your opponent down.

I think a lot of people are sleeping on why a tank as a commander is good. The tank gets to interact with an opponents army turn 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Grievous usually doesn't and it may be turn 2 or 3 before he gets to interact. At range 4 a tank has a better dice pool than Grievous (though it doesn't have pierce). It also has more hit points than Grievous (we can debate the merits of armor and impervious) and can't be suppressed like Grievous can. Finally you can build easily 10 activation lists with the tank with 9 other activations able to interact with objectives. If someone wants to use Grievous in their list that is totally fine he is a solid unit, but if I had to play against CIS and I had my choice of what list I would like to avoid it would be a tank as commander list.

15 minutes ago, Uetur said:

I think a lot of people are sleeping on why a tank as a commander is good. The tank gets to interact with an opponents army turn 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. Grievous usually doesn't and it may be turn 2 or 3 before he gets to interact. At range 4 a tank has a better dice pool than Grievous (though it doesn't have pierce). It also has more hit points than Grievous (we can debate the merits of armor and impervious) and can't be suppressed like Grievous can. Finally you can build easily 10 activation lists with the tank with 9 other activations able to interact with objectives. If someone wants to use Grievous in their list that is totally fine he is a solid unit, but if I had to play against CIS and I had my choice of what list I would like to avoid it would be a tank as commander list.

The AAT tank is the most effective use of points in the list. The fact that you can slip 2 of them in and not have to pay commander tax (not that GG or Dooku are bad, but they aren't tanks)

2 tanks, Fill in some BX droids and whatever is left fill up on B1 corps and you have a very effective, balanced list that will do severe damage every turn and capture objectives. They can play whatever scenario.

Bounty should apply to these tank substitute commanders. I'm assuming it's an error by the design team, and will argue that in my causal games.

(Since there is no organized play until late next year anyhow)

7 minutes ago, SoonerTed said:

Bounty should apply to these tank substitute commanders. I'm assuming it's an error by the design team, and will argue that in my causal games.

(Since there is no organized play until late next year anyhow)

I actually don't mind as much that the tank lacks a bounty. I'm not sure I'd ever send Cad Bane tank hunting just for one victory point, I don't think he's really suited for that.

Can't speak on the Imperial bounty hunters though.

1 minute ago, Kirjath08 said:

I actually don't mind as much that the tank lacks a bounty. I'm not sure I'd ever send Cad Bane tank hunting just for one victory point, I don't think he's really suited for that.

Can't speak on the Imperial bounty hunters though.

The reason it irritates me is bounty was always theoretically possible. Now, due to what appears to be a dev oversight/qa problem, there are times when the expensive bounty hunters can't score.

17 minutes ago, SoonerTed said:

The reason it irritates me is bounty was always theoretically possible. Now, due to what appears to be a dev oversight/qa problem, there are times when the expensive bounty hunters can't score.

Or it could be the reason Boba saw such a big price drop. Bounty losing value from the changes. Maybe it's a feature, not a bug?

26 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Or it could be the reason Boba saw such a big price drop. Bounty losing value from the changes. Maybe it's a feature, not a bug?

Boba needed a price drop to see table time even with bounty available every game.

The field commanders are the only commanders that don't change rank. Even promoted stormtroopers change rank.

Definitely a design bug, IMO.

9 hours ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

I agree. The tanks are still very pricey commanders, comparable to jedi commanders.

But CIS was running tanks anyway. So its a huge advantage for them to not have to run another commander now. They can spam more droids than ever.

1 hour ago, SoonerTed said:

Boba needed a price drop to see table time even with bounty available every game.

The field commanders are the only commanders that don't change rank. Even promoted stormtroopers change rank.

Definitely a design bug, IMO.

Its a really bad design bug. IMO it makes CIS the best faction by a good margin now IMO. You can make some really abusive lists thanks to Field Commander.

I dont think Boba Fett is too affected outside of the CIS matchup though. Im not too worried about bounty being affected by field commander.

Quote

I understand your concerns, but after trying the new rules out with my CIS army it feels pretty balanced. The AAT isnt that much cheaper than Grievious, and like others have said you really miss aggressive tactics and Grievious's flexibility with his movement and ability to interact with objectives. The tank can basically just point and shoot (and is real good at it), but Grievious or Dooku allow you way more ways to shut your opponent down.

I completely disagree that CIS getting 11+ activations while also including an AAT is balanced. That is not a list I ever want to play against.

Especially when Imperials including an AT-ST (which is noticeably worse than the AAT) are lucky to get 9 activations.

I personally think the field commander rule is whack. But even if you accept that field commander is fine theres still the issue of inequality by giving field commander to some factions but not others.

And what was the point of nerfing GAR if CIS was made overpowered now? We just traded one broken faction for another.

56 minutes ago, Khobai said:

But CIS was running tanks anyway. So its a huge advantage for them to not have to run another commander now. They can spam more droids than ever.

Its a really bad design bug. IMO it makes CIS the best faction by a good margin now IMO. You can make some really abusive lists thanks to Field Commander.

I dont think Boba Fett is too affected outside of the CIS matchup though. Im not too worried about bounty being affected by field commander.

I completely disagree that CIS getting 11+ activations while also including an AAT is balanced. That is not a list I ever want to play against.

Especially when Imperials including an AT-ST (which is noticeably worse than the AAT) are lucky to get 9 activations.

I personally think the field commander rule is whack. But even if you accept that field commander is fine theres still the issue of inequality by giving field commander to some factions but not others.

And what was the point of nerfing GAR if CIS was made overpowered now? We just traded one broken faction for another.

So I think there's some important info to take away here.

Yes, field commander does reduce the amount of points the CIS have to invest on a commander significantly if you planned on taking the AAT anyways, however they're still the only faction with no commander under 170 points, and a key component right now to the AAT field commander lists is the use of an operative. As you cannot build a command hand without 7 cards these lists must include at least Cad Bane at 125 points at least until the T series drops. Meaning, at bare minimum, to even run this combo, the investment is 295 points. (compared to the 340 it required before). If AATs were auto includes, which I do not think they are by any means, I could see it being troubling but I know many people would rather have troopers like GG of Dooku because while barrage is dope, through heavy cover and without Lok's suppression, it likely isn't killing enough, dissuading important units with suppression, it cannot capture objectives, and does not get powerful command cards.

None of this is to say it isn't a powerful mechanic , just that it doesn't seem unbalanced yet .


Maybe, MAYBE with the inclusion of the T series I could see CIS getting a considerable level of power creep from high activation/high quality lists, but I also think it's important to recognize that (now previous) design team did these balances with the whole years releases planned out. They knew what was coming and likely had testing put into how it would effect the game.


All that said, I don't think the devs were above letting balance issues into the game, no one is perfect and the changes in the RRG were plentiful after all, I just don't think it should be oversimplified.


CIS is strong right now, which is weird because they weren't weak before. The question should become, why buff units that didn't really need it?

The logical answer to me is, because they will.



Or the dev team had no idea what they were doing. lol

I've played just one game with a double AAT list using the new Field Commander rule, I was able to get 10 activations with 6 naked B1s, Cad Bane, and one BX sniper strike team. I have to say, it feels really, really good. One uplink on Bane and you have perfect order control with both tanks in the bag.

The only change I'd make is being able to drop the mandatory operative once the generic command cards drop in January. I cannot for the life of me remember if the generic 2-pip orders 2 commanders and operatives or 2 commanders and heavies, but if it's the former you'd have a turn where literally nothing can be ordered if you didn't take at least one commander or operative. HQ Uplink solves that issue obviously but it'd still feel janky. Someone please correct me if you remember what that card orders.

Edit: one thing I sorely missed was AT. B1s without the surge each turn die very quickly, even in heavy cover. And red saves on the AAT still whiff hard (granted, it was to massive dice pools from fire supporting Z6 clones) without that one surge to extend their wound pool to another round. I only had two B1 squads and one AAT left at the end to score on Breakthrough.

51 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

...
Maybe, MAYBE with the inclusion of the T series I could see CIS getting a considerable level of power creep from high activation/high quality lists, but I also think it's important to recognize that (now previous) design team did these balances with the whole years releases planned out. They knew what was coming and likely had testing put into how it would effect the game.

...

It's also making me fairly certain that two of the four "new" units that are supposed to be for the GCW factions are probably heavies. I don't have anything really to base that off of, but it feels like they're going to get Lando/Kallus and a new heavy option (that will come with a Field Commander). This would all still be quite a few months out, but this is my current hunch.

I think its more likely imperials and rebels will never get field commanders lol.

6 hours ago, Kirjath08 said:

It's also making me fairly certain that two of the four "new" units that are supposed to be for the GCW factions are probably heavies. I don't have anything really to base that off of, but it feels like they're going to get Lando/Kallus and a new heavy option (that will come with a Field Commander). This would all still be quite a few months out, but this is my current hunch.

I'm thinking a heavy with closed transport

I really hope to see a bit of a vehicle meta in the future. We had a trooper meta since the start of the game, it's time for something different.

I even think this would help empire, the faction where every unit has impact or critical. We'll see.

The Empire gets a lot of impact and critical but its mostly like impact 1 and critical 1. it doesnt do anything to heavy vehicles. The Empire still cant kill saber tanks or AATs lmao.

Even the AT-ST with impact 4 only does like 1-2 damage on average to a Saber Tank with a dodge token.

I was hoping the HH12 would get an actual buff but it didnt they just lowered the points cost which was useless.

Impact grenades actually work better than most other things in the imperial army for damaging saber tanks which is pretty sad. And impact grenades got buffed and only cost 3 now.

A vehicle meta would suck because imperials and rebels both struggle with killing heavy vehicles. And their own vehicles still arnt that great.

3 hours ago, Khobai said:

The Empire gets a lot of impact and critical but its mostly like impact 1 and critical 1. it doesnt do anything to heavy vehicles. The Empire still cant kill saber tanks or AATs lmao.

Even the AT-ST with impact 4 only does like 1-2 damage on average to a Saber Tank with a dodge token.

It's the mass that matters. Of course you don't point at the AAT once per turn and then complain that it doesn't drop immediately. And it won't always have a dodge token and without commander also no surge token.

You either ignore it and focus on the objective - which will still be the #1 strategy - or you focus it down. The second strategy will be very effective against double AAT lists which might not even have a good secondary commander option.

I quickly put together an anti armour list: Veers, AT-ST, Shoreline, ISF w/ Del Meeko and a sniper team (easy 10 acts with AT-ST). This list averages on 18 hits (including one pierce) on Veers 1-pip, possibly killing an AAT on one turn.

Sure this perfect setup will almost never work, but there is a very decent chance of damaging an AAT in one turn and taking it out on the next.

10 hours ago, SailorMeni said:

It's the mass that matters. Of course you don't point at the AAT once per turn and then complain that it doesn't drop immediately. And it won't always have a dodge token and without commander also no surge token.

It pretty much always has access to a dodge token thanks to padme having exemplar. It just pulls a dodge off her if it needs it. If it doesnt need it then whatever unit needs the dodge pulls it off her instead. exemplar allows for ultimate flexibility in spending tokens.

Quote

I quickly put together an anti armour list: Veers, AT-ST, Shoreline, ISF w/ Del Meeko and a sniper team (easy 10 acts with AT-ST). This list averages on 18 hits (including one pierce) on Veers 1-pip, possibly killing an AAT on one turn.

Obviously if you throw significantly more points at an AAT than the cost of the AAT you can deal with it. The whole problem is that Imperials (and Rebels) have to throw significantly more points at an AAT or Saber Tank to deal with it. Rather than being able to throw an equal number of points at it to deal with it.

If a fully loaded Saber Tank costs 220ish points then 220ish points in Imperial anti-armor should counter it. If you have to throw 400 points at a 220 point Saber Tank in order to kill it theres something very wrong with that. Theres a very real imbalance there.

Theres still a huge disparity between imperial/rebel heavy vehicles and CIS/GAR heavy vehicles that puts imperials/rebels at a disadvantage when dealing with vehicles. And I think the new field commander rules will exacerbate the problem since it makes taking heavy vehicles have little or no downside for CIS and GAR. Meanwhile imperials and rebels have suffer the huge downside of having to take heavy vehicles due to not having field commander themselves.

Also the problem isnt immediately noticeable because CIS has to take an operative now but once CIS gets their new generic command cards it will become a huge balance problem.

8 minutes ago, Khobai said:

It pretty much always has access to a dodge token thanks to token sharing and exemplar.

Which CIS unit exactly has exemplar? And even if, Tanks don't have nimble, so they spend the token on the first attack and the rest can shoot without dodges.

12 minutes ago, Khobai said:

Obviously if you throw significantly more points at an AAT than the cost of the AAT you can deal with it.

The problem is that Imperials have to throw significantly more points at an AAT or Saber Tank to deal with it.

Which CIS/GAR unit exactly can bring down a tank on its own?

1 hour ago, SailorMeni said:

Which CIS unit exactly has exemplar? And even if, Tanks don't have nimble, so they spend the token on the first attack and the rest can shoot without dodges.

Which CIS/GAR unit exactly can bring down a tank on its own?

the saber tank can with anti-armor rockets. 3R/4B/2W with impact 5, critical 1 tends to hurt other heavy vehicles pretty bad. A fully equipped saber tank can generally kill other heavy vehicles in 2-4 turns depending on how good the rolls are.

imperials and rebels get nothing close to that when it comes to anti-armor. primarily because they lack ordnance slots.

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Which CIS unit exactly has exemplar? And even if, Tanks don't have nimble, so they spend the token on the first attack and the rest can shoot without dodges.

im talking about the saber tank obviously

the AAT's defense comes primarily from it being range 4. which is a problem when range 1 impact grenades are your faction's best anti-armor weapon lol.

both vehicles are a huge problem for imperials and rebels to deal with in a cost effective manner.

FFG knew it was a problem too. they even said they were going to buff Imperial and Rebel vehicles to the same level as the AAT and buff anti-vehicle weapons like the HH12. and then they just lowered their point cost and didnt actually make them any better at killing vehicles or at all on the same level as the AAT lol.

1 hour ago, SailorMeni said:

Which CIS unit exactly has exemplar? And even if, Tanks don't have nimble, so they spend the token on the first attack and the rest can shoot without dodges.

Which CIS/GAR unit exactly can bring down a tank on its own?

Unfortunately your better off arguing with a brick wall. @Khobai absolutely hates the saber tank and will not concede any points or arguments that doesn’t describe it as unbalanced or unfair. Every example or description of it that he gives is ideal anti armor build with permanent dodge tokens and Padmé/R2 support, and uses that against the atst. Your not going to be able to get any solid argument out of him beyond that.

48 minutes ago, Shadowhawk252 said:

Unfortunately your better off arguing with a brick wall. @Khobai absolutely hates the saber tank and will not concede any points or arguments that doesn’t describe it as unbalanced or unfair. Every example or description of it that he gives is ideal anti armor build with permanent dodge tokens and Padmé/R2 support, and uses that against the atst. Your not going to be able to get any solid argument out of him beyond that.

I dont hate the Saber Tank at all. I have never suggested that the Saber Tank be nerfed.

What I hate is that FFG said the AAT was the baseline for all heavy vehicles, that they wanted to raise Imperial and Rebel vehicles to that baseline, and then they completely failed to do that. T-47, AT-ST... none of them are at the AAT baseline.

FFG didnt follow through on what they said they were going to. And again Im simply going by what FFG said... its not something I made up.

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Every example or description of it that he gives is ideal anti armor build with permanent dodge tokens and Padmé/R2 support, and uses that against the atst. Your not going to be able to get any solid argument out of him beyond that.

You do realize that token sharing and exemplar are integral mechanics to how GAR plays right?

Its not a permanent dodge token. Its simply a dodge token Padme is going to have every turn anyway that she can share with any unit that needs it regardless of whether that unit is a Saber Tank or not.

Assuming that Padme can share a dodge token each turn via exemplar is hardly a stretch; in fact its the norm for GAR.

Lastly the question was what GAR or CIS unit can kill a saber tank by themselves? My answer was that a Saber tank with anti-armor rockets can kill another Saber tank. I never said Saber Tanks always take anti-armor rockets. You made that up with your nonsense babbling.