So what am I missing? Is it worth the 7 points? Because I don't see it. Can someone explain the advantages and disadvantages of it to a newb?

You are rolling four attack dice, a feat normally only accomplished by other ships at range one or by using a missile. It has unlimited uses, and as a secondary weapon your target does not get the range 3 bonus defense die. On the firespray you are now firing 4 attack dice at any range.

The small tradeoff is the loss of criticals on the initial roll, and the extra cost to equip it

additionally, Krassis Trelix has the ability to reroll one die when firing a secondary weapon, so it is even better with him

Also in an environment where a lot of stealth devices are around, it permits you pretty often to strip those off even from range and with an evading enemy. I don't know the exact odds of attack vs defense dice, but you should have a significantly better chance of damaging a ship with 4 attack dice than with 3, or to achieve that one-turn kill you desperately need vs guys like Biggs, Soontir Fel or Howlrunner.

I have the same problem, at first sight it look like a disavantage, the high cost, the conversion of Crtitical hits in regular hits, but when I use it I love it, like Effenhoog siads is like if you use unlimited missiles, and it let that the firespray always throw four dice, it's very cool, greettings.

Well yeah, if you spend the 7 points for the cannon, invest in a gunner too, or take 2 firesprays, one being Krassis and take Howlrunner as an escort…

What i want to say is if you take tge HLC, stay consequent in squad building and focus on supporting your HLC ship, then it pays off!

I played a game with 2 HLC firesprays where i shot down soontir and Howlrunner first turn of engagement, because i had so many rerolls that it was 4 hits twice. Basically he made 2 bad rolls and half his fleet was gone!

ForceM said:

A few things to keep in mind, Howlrunner only allows reroll of primary weapon attacks, and the HLC is a secondary weapon. Also the general consenus is gunner and HLC are often mutually exclusive, in that usually you only want to equip one or the other, but usually not both on the same ship, as they do different things. And Gunner is also a primary attack, not an HLC attack, so even if you miss with the HLC, now you're attacking with the primary weapon with your gunner attack.

I like 'Marksmanship' with the HLC as it's ability occurs after you change crits to hitsper the HLC rule, so I can get a crit back. You can go all out and add a Merc Copilot as well, but that never seems to pay off for me.

I've had success using a Weapons Engineer for target locking, then HLC and Markmanship with a target lock reroll gets real nasty.

This combo still works well at range one with the primary weapon as well.

Here is a squad that enables this tactic well.

Total Squad Points: 100

Pilot: "Night Beast"
Tie Fighter (15)
Upgrades:

• No Upgrades Selected

Pilot: Darth Vader
Tie Advanced x1 (29)
Upgrades:

• Squad Leader (2)
• Stealth (3)

Pilot: Kath Scarlet
Firespray-31 (38)
Upgrades:

• Marksmanship (3)
• Weapons Engineer (3)
• Heavy Laser Cannon (7)

Vader provides an action allowing Kath to Marksmanship each time she has to re-target lock so she always has marksmanship and target lock up.

hothie said:

Yes i know hothie. This is not all on one ship or in one list. Just saying that you need to be consequent and support your choices and i give a few examples.

To save points and to be effective it is often Kath with Gunner and Marksmanship for me, and Krassis with HLC. This gives me the most consistent results at least.

But you can't really say Gunner and HLC on one ship is bad, it is just often overkill. Because you can fire the HLC, then if you miss Gunner kicks in and you do a normal Primary weapon attack. If you have Howl nearby you can use her reroll on that attack too. I am not saying this is a great idea, because it is expensive and situational, but it is not totally useless either.

I am really looking forward to the B-Wing since Rebels have better support ships for HLC B-Wings as a combination. Instead of a reroll, i would take a free Focus or TL any day…

The rules are quite clear (page 12) that dice can be rolled, then modified multiple times in an order decided by the roller (only 1 reroll allowed), so that allows marksmanship etc to give crits after doing the HLC mods

HOWEVER (I know this is total cheese, but it seems to be allowed)

The rulebook (page 11) says "Step 2 Roll Attack dice; Step 3 Modify attack dice" SO….

Rerolls are included in the Modify attack dice section, so does this mean that the steps are:

Roll dice
Apply HLC effect
reroll dice
Apply other effects

Before you all hit me with a barrage of abuse, I don't think it should work this way - I reckon that rerolls should happen before applying the HLC effect

FFG Rule Barons - how about an FAQ to make this absolutely clear

Generally speaking you have a point. However the wording on the HLC card makes it clear that its effect resolves before others. "Immediately after rolling your attack dice, you must change all of your [crit] results to [hit] results."

This would also make it an exception to the general rule requiring the defender to modify/reroll the attack dice before the attacker does. The HLC effect is a special rule, that occurs immediately after rolling the dice, not during the normal modify/reroll dice phase.

I think it is reroll dice then resolve the effects. Once you reroll (i.e. TL) you can't reroll the dice you didn't reroll. This makes since in my head…hopefully it translates well.

So in short:

Roll attack dice

Defender modifies attack dice (if able..i.e. elusiveness, etc)

use reroll ability (TL, HAN, Howl, etc..) on attack dice that have not been rerolled /modified by defender.

Modify attack dice (attacker)

Roll defence dice

Modify defence dice

I think I have the sequence correct (heck…I better after the amount of games I have played!!)

~Ron

Englishpete said:

Is marksman ship really that worth it though? I find its much better to have push the limits on Kath and skip squad leader entirely. Sure, you don't get the extra crit from Marksmanship instead of focus, but you can double stack actions when ever you want without having to have vader nearby and alive. Also, I like to run Stealth on the Firespray - thats the same defense dice as a Tie and you can use push the limits for evade and focus. Once they finally break through the stealth, they still have to eat through the rest of the firespray's hit points too.

All rules shenanigans aside, the Heavy Laiser Cannon is a proton torpedo that you can fire every round that do not require a target lock. Yes there is some other stuff reguarding crits, but I will get to that latter.

So first turn you will fire at range 3 at a 2 defense Dice X-wing with 4 attack dice. Most people play 4 points and a target lock for that one shot. And then you get to fire it every round after that.

It does have some down sides, first you lose crits. But crits ar pretty much a crap shoot anyway. Sure I like it when my opponent get's a crapy crit and had it when it happens to me, but a lot of them really aren't that bad. And it isn't like you are garanteed a crit if you don't use the HLC. There has been a lot of discussion about this downside but I see it as the least imporant. I just don't see crits as that essential to winning the game.

Second Downside, it is a secondary weapon. Again not a huge deal, but I do think it might be underestimated. As a secondary weapon it cannot be fired from the second made by gunners. It does not gain advantages from Howelrunner and so forth. It cannot be fired out of the rear arc of a firespray. But the biggest one I see is that you don't get an extra dice at range 1, In fact it can not even be fired in range band 1. Not a big deal, but it sure would have been nice to have those 5 attack dice.

The Last and definatly the biggest down side for me is the price 7 points!, or as I like to calculate things, more than half an Academy Pilot. This is compounded by the fact that the firespray (the only ship that can carry it so far) isn't cheap to begin with. Now we can argue 'till we are blue in the face about whether or not it is "worth" the points. The great thing about upgrades if you don't think they are worth it, simply don't take them. Problem solved. But this whole thread is basically about that question: is the HLC worth 7 points.

When considering an upgrade (or evebn a pilot ability) I like to consider how often the upgrade will be used in the game, and how much it can effect the game. For example a Torpedo/Missile can only be used once, but if they are used correctly they might seriously hurt or even take out an enemy ship first turn. Their realy worth, not just in their ability to take out a ship, but to do so early in the game. By both of these measure the HLC score high. You can shoot it every round (as long as you have a shot in you frount arc in zones 2-3) And it justr does more damage. It sinergizes well with both focus and lock on target actions.

Final confession: I don't have my firespray yet. I have everything else just not the firespray. I play this game a lot and won my Kessel Run tournament. So I do think I have some idea of what I am talking about. But like everything the only way to know for sure if it works is to try it out and try it out several times.

hi Jetsetter,

I agree with your process, in general, but when, specifically, is the HLC effect applied - after the initial roll, or any time dice are rerolled

I always play it that if you roll a dice (initial roll or reroll) apply the HLC ruling on crits. If you modify a dice, say with Markmanship, you do not apply the HLC rule.

Only times I can forsee this happening are Target Lock and Krassis special ability.

I play it like this

Roll dice, amend per HLC rules.

Use Krassis or TL to re-roll misses, modify per HLC rules

Use Markmanship or such like to modify dice.

This seems to be the correct way to do things.

Englishpete said:

I don't have any rules or cards in front of me, but the interpretation I rememember is that HLC text applies to any time dice are rolled, whether it's the first roll or reroll; then they can be upgraded by Marksmanship or what have you.

Second issue is cost effectiveness and whether it's worth half an Academy Pilot--A: Yes. Unequivocally, yes. *Especially* against low agility targets, this thing pounds them into dust. I don't generally care about Crits, becaust Death Is The Best Debuff.

Quoted for awesome.

I think hothie was getting at this, but it wasn't very explicit so I'm going to say it. The main reason Heavy Laser Cannon and Gunner are mutually excusive is because you will hit with HLC almost every single time. Thus, your 5 points for Gunner are wasted. As Hrathen said, HLC is worth more than half an Academy Pilot. Taking both IS worth an Academy Pilot. I'd think very carefully before putting both on one ship.

And I agree with the interpretation that HLC forces you to change [crit] results to [hit] results even for rerolls.

I don't get much into the details. My brain's much small for the whereto's and whyfor's. All I know is, the only thing I DON'T want to see coming my way is a Heavy Laser Cannon. Or much worse, a pair of them. Give me Han Shoots First all day over that thing.

The HLC worth every single point. Its your Sniper gun. All low agility ships are doomed. Even the falcon who at first hand looks pretty good get hunt down by this monster. I like it and I would never equip something else in my firespray. I now realy fear the upcoming B-Wings.

It all comes down to how you like to play, an aggressive player would like the HLC but defensively there are ways around it and a swarm can take down the firespray quickly. It's a big easy target so having the additional fire power is needed. 7 points is a lot but an aggressive player can knock out opposing key ships quickly leaving the rebels with a few stranglers your other ships can help pop off too. Anyone afraid of losing crits can think of this as a great way to chew through shields or Chewbacca who negates crits anyway.