After playing several games its become clear that although moving last moving last (or later) in the round should be a big advantage, in reality it often isn't.

What if the pilot with the higher pilot skill could Choose to move sooner if they wanted to. The pilot with the higher skill will still benefit from seeing where other players move their ships but may opt to move BEFORE any ship with a lesser pilot on board. This rule would effectively give the better pilots 'right of way' in situations where lesser pilots move into the space they were headed for. Seems like a way to give the better pilots the advantage they deserve, instead of having them sit back helplessly and watch lesser pilots put their ships in their flight path with the intention of having them overlap bases and lose their action.

This House Rule would be called Pilot Initiative.

The_Brown_Bomber said:

actually I came upon a method of "solving" this issue you have with overlapping while i was playing the game wrongly during my first few sessions.

1) move ships as per normal, BUT DO NOT TAKE ANY ACTIONS.

2) after the last ship has moved, proceed with taking actions, starting with the ship with the lowest skill points first.

3) after the last ship has taken its action, proceed with the attack phrase.

and honestly, once you've played the game long enough, overlapping no longer becomes a problem, because you will learn NOT to make those kind of moves, eg if it is very obvious that you would do a U-turn 4, then do not do the U-turn 4, you will thank yourself when you see where your ship would end up now has like 2 TIEs parked there, and you have chose another move (say right 2 maybe), and now your opponent has 2 TIEs that are aiming at nowhere and needs another 1-2 turns to get back into the battle. Really, after like my 20th++ game I'm using the overlapping rule to punish my opponent who moves first instead.

Like you, I used to question the rules, eg. why does Ion Cannon only make the ship move forward 1 and not seal its attack and actions as well? Why doesnt shields block ionization? Why did Biggs sleep with everyone's sisters? Why is the 8 TIE swarm so invincible online, but offline it gets torn apart and eated up at my local FLGS that anybody who tries it instantly gets laughed at? But after I spent a lot more time with the game, I've realized that they are perfectly fine that way, and anything else would create some rather biased situations and result in a less enjoyable gameplay experience

tl;dr the game is perfectly fine the way it is now. Instead of creating house rules, I strongly recommend that you play more rounds following the rules exactly, there's some learning curves involved, but once you get past them the rules start to make more sense.

I have to agree with Duraham. The more rounds I play to more I realize how this pretty simple set of rules allows for some really deep strategy. Advantage in this game is really determined by who the better player is. Not which faction you're playing or how many high skill pilots you can cram into a fleet.

im listening guys. thanx for the posts.

what squad point value are most of ur games at? 60-70?

on average how many ships r u playing in a game total. mine r around 6-8 ships. clearly the more ships that r on the table the more potential there is for overlapping to occur.

do u try to include ships with the same pilot skill where possible as opposed to having a range from 1-9?

so ur saying the tactics and strategy for this game change a lot as u become more skilled right? overlapping bases becomes less of an issue no matter how many enemies u have swarming around you?

do you guys see 'mass combat' optional rules in the future? i mean will these rules stand up to 10 v 20 ships or 20 v 40?

im listening guys. thanx for the posts.

what squad point value are most of ur games at? 60-70?

on average how many ships r u playing in a game total. mine r around 6-8 ships. clearly the more ships that r on the table the more potential there is for overlapping to occur.

do u try to include ships with the same pilot skill where possible as opposed to having a range from 1-9?

so ur saying the tactics and strategy for this game change a lot as u become more skilled right? overlapping bases becomes less of an issue no matter how many enemies u have swarming around you?

do you guys see 'mass combat' optional rules in the future? i mean will these rules stand up to 10 v 20 ships or 20 v 40?

To just jump in.

I agree also with Durham, it really starts messing with people when you can move ships like a champ.

Im also still in the collecting mode, so I have been playing three rebels, vs. 4 empire. (darth vader + 4 named) and I play about 84 points. I think…lol, been drinking. But if you have a limited # or models, so that you can NOT get to 100 pts; your best bet is to just add up your empire team as fat as you can. then make that your limit for the rebel opponent. because its easier to get to high points values with the rebel ships

try to get the highest skill you can for pilots, but with swarm tactics you can take a lesser ship, save the points, and get more upgrades. though this doesnt help you during move phase…I like high values myself.

Yes on the last point. Play more!, but really try to think about your opponent. He/She can see the same board as you, so they are going to make their move based on what they think you might do and vice versa. Dont pick moves that will just ram you into your opponents FUTURE placement if you can help it. remember if you pilot skill is low, moving first say, as a TIE fighter, is tough, because the barrel roll is hard to choose when your opponent is going to be in some future location. etc….it becomes very subtle.

IF you have ion cannons, fire arcs become less of a factor too.

when your trying to complete combos, like garven dries or horton salm business, it hurts a lot to lose the action phase.

I play 100 points by default, 60 if it's near the shop's closing time and we just want to have a fast game. Tables I've played on ranged from proper 3x3 to those random rectangular-ish foodcourt/fastfood joint 1x4 tables (yes, with 100 points). This means that most of the time there's about 9-11 planes on the table from both sides.

Rebels = 3-4 ships, Imperials = usually 5-7 ships.

I do not really have any particular preference for specific skill points, just that i really do not like the middle group (3-5/6 range) because they neither really shoot first nor move first. However, I do highly recommend you try to get everybody to the same skill points as far as possible, especially if you are playing swarmy builds. I'd rather have 3 academy TIEs and 3 leftover points than say 1 Academy 1 Obsidian 1 Blacksqd TIE. This would really cut down on friendly overlapping by a lot, especially if you are doing some fancy formation flying, and the first ship gets blocked, which in turn blocks the 2nd ship, which blocks the 3rd ship, which blocks the 4th ship, etcetc

Just some fast guidelines.

1) A ship can only move in the forward direction, never backwards (although TIE with a 1 turn and roll comes close). Hence, THEY CAN NEVER MOVE BACKWARDS OR NOT MOVE, so use this for planning moves. Say your darth vader keeps getting blocked? how bout you fly such that you will end up on where the enemy ship currently is, and since he's going to move away and he's going to move first, by the time it's darth vader's turn to move, there's nothing there anymore.

2) play often, play more, play a lot. You will want to play until the point where you can immediately declare ranges without the use of the ruler, and can really picture where the ships would end up at with any of the movement templates. For this you really need to keep playing. In my spare time I like to just setup 3 TIEs and make them fly around on the table, no dials, just the movement templates. helps me get used to how the entire group moves and how the movement templates feel like.

3) Once you've mastered #2, group ships together and move them as a big group, as if they are 1 ship. This is especially useful for the imperials, I tend to group the academy TIEs together into a square box of 4 roughly 1 speed away from each other, then move that entire group as if it is one ship, ie. all 4 will be doing the same movements all the time. This way not only do you concentrate your firepower much better, but if any of your opponent ship decides to collide with the group, 2-3 ships will be able to fire at it at range 1. I'd break them only if I couldn't maintain the formation, or if I'm trying to trap someone.

4) If you have low pilot skills, learn to trap people. Put 1 TIE at his forward 2, 1 at his forward 4, and have 1 other ship coming in from the sides to catch his turns. This way there's no where he can go without hitting something or getting shot at by 2 planes. The problem with this is that almost immediately on the very next turn, your 3 ships are in very very weird positions, and it will take a while to reposition them

5) Once you've pretty much learnt how to fly around, learn to plan for your next turn. ie. your moves for this turn is affected by your moves next turn. eg. if your opponent looks like he will do a U-turn, he will definitely go for a green on his very next turn. So you already know where he is going. If you can block his U-turn, even better, you've basically chose his movements for him for the next 2 turns. Because ships can only move forward, there's only so many places they can go to, and his movements this turn will definitely affect his movements for his next turn. eg. if he chose to turn to the side for this turn, next turn he will definitely try to do a turn in the same direction. No reason for him to turn in the opposite direction all of a sudden, unless the battlefield has changed somewhat. If he does a forward 4/5, good for him, he just removed himself from the battle for the next 2-3 turns, you may now ignore him completely. If he does a reverse, then ok you know exactly what his very next movement would be. All these can only be learnt through playing and getting your arse kicked multiple times.

6) After you had #5 done to you, it's time to learn to fly unpredictably. the 3rd speed turns are very difficult to catch, especially if you have a freedom of choosing either left or right because you are at the center of the table. Alternate between forward 1 and forward 4 all the time, then use the U-turn very very sparingly. barrel roll whenever you have the chance. pull off multiple white movements when you have a stress token. etcetc, but remember to keep your maneuvers practical.

anyway, if you are using a Ywing with ion cannon, here's a 3 step guide.

1) forward 3 until you reach the middle of the battle

2) choose right turn 2.

3) repeat step 2 until your Ywing dies.

Duraham said:

Haha, I see this all the time. Lol!

I like the rule as is. I sometimes pick low pilot ships as a strategy (for example, when playing imperials I usually play 7 TIEs and nothing above a 5 pilot skill). This really helps them beat rebels, especially if they only have 3 ships (usually well upgraded with high pilot skills).

I believe the rules for movement are fine as-is. The benefit of high pilot skill is in knowing what Actions and movements have already been taken in the round (thus increasing the efficiency and usefulness of your own Actions) and the ability to fire first.. There are fringe benefits as well (you're more likely to be able to make immediate use of Target Locks, since most of your potential targets have likely already moved).

Pilots with low skill enjoy none of these benefits, often being forced to guess which Actions will be best based on predictions of how the field will look come Combat Phase. Yes, they tend to have less collisions, but what good is that if half the time you choose an Action that ends up irrelevant during Combat or, worse, are destroyed before you get a turn during combat?

Being able to predict your opponents movements and outmaneuver them is part of being good at the game. That takes practice and is part of being a good player, rather than just picking a handful of good pilots; and while being good at movement prediction is beneficial to pilots of all skill levels, the additional benefits that high skill pilots bring to the table already justifies their cost.

I think Tawnos broke down the issues with this very well. I can't argue with any of his points.

Duraham said:

Nicely done, Duraham.

Good advice.

Just to dig up this old topic I have another idea for pilot skill.

If a higher pilot skill overlaps a lower pilot skill, the higher pilot skill gets an action of either focus, evade or target lock if it has those actions available on the pilot card.

The lower skill pilot will lose the action of focus, evade or target lock. Simple to implement as you just remove the tokens of the action on the lower pilot skill.

If they are of the same skill level neither gets an action of focus, evade or target lock.

Barrel rolls, boosts and K-turns are not affected for the lower skill pilot.

One problem with allowing the higher skill pilots the option to move and/or not lose their action or even take the action away from who they bump into is that you eliminate the one advantage low skill pilots had and make it a game only good for the highest skilled pilots.

Suddenly, to play competively, every player can only play the very highest skilled pilots and everyone's squads all begin to look the same rather than the diverse mix we have now. I have actually seen this in Star Wars minis where certain minis were extremely overpowered and every Imperial squad had to have Thrawn and Mas Amedda, every Republic squad had General Obi-wan or Yoda on Kybuck, and any squad that didn't have the best named heroes of its faction stood zero chance of winning.

It took a lot of the diversity out of the game, led to extreme abuses of powergaming, and turned a lot of people away from the game. After Grand Admiral Thrawn first came out in that game, the tournies at Galaxy Comics in Winnipeg just stopped as all the people we had before no longer came because they couldn't win unless they were playing "Black and Blue" (Thrawn and Vader) squads or "Nom Bomb" (Vong with Nom Anor) squads.

I don't want to be forced to use certain pieces like I was in Star Wars minis. It really made the game suck.

I get what your saying 721 it just doesn't make sense to me that the lower skilled pilots get actions and not the higher ones.

With the lower skilled ones you get more of them as compared to the higher skilled ones.

So with the lower skilled ones you may get one overlapped and lose its action but the other one will still get one.

I have not played the game your referring to but at least in this game everyone can damage everyone just depends on dice rolls. No one is invincible.

There is no forcing in this game as I said everyone can damage everyone.

From what I've been reading the TIE swarms are used to block the enemys actions while they get all their actions and the higher skilled guys get no actions.

Would make a more interesting game than TIEs causing traffic jams, would also promote better tactics.