I would be interested to see the playtests, as the odds appear to be with the proposed Defenders.

Consider this, a tricked out Han/Millennium Falcon plus an equally high PS Xeing with all the bells and whistles (in other words, your typical Han Shoots First list) will have 6 total Attack dice and 18 defense dice (Hull + Shields); if you go with a pair of Rookie X-wings, you get 9 Attack dice and 23 Defense dice! Compare this to a pair of TIE Defenders: 6 Attack dice (+ another "2 dice" if you factor in the reduction to target agility due to the effects of Tractor Beam upgrade) for an effective total of 8 Attack dice and 12-14 Defense dice (depending on whether we go with the 3 or 4 shield version of the Defender).

I think you're underestimating agility here. The YT-1300 cannot evade anything, and at range 1 can only evade 1/4 hits every turn. The big ship relies on its shields and hull enormously. Meanwhile, the YT-1300 firing back is going up against 3 defence dice + tough hitpoints. Modifications tip the balance even more to the Defender.

In any case, it's your custom card so you can do whatever you like!

I think if C-3P0 would convert a crew slot to an astromech slot might be a usable, non overpowering ability. And fluffy too.

I think if C-3P0 would convert a crew slot to an astromech slot might be a usable, non overpowering ability. And fluffy too.

nice idea. i actually think if C3PO gets made at all he will be a Falcon only Crew Card that allows ur ship to totally ignore asteroids. Lol

I think if C-3P0 would convert a crew slot to an astromech slot might be a usable, non overpowering ability. And fluffy too.

nice idea. i actually think if C3PO gets made at all he will be a Falcon only Crew Card that allows ur ship to totally ignore asteroids. Lol

That would be totally not fair.

C-3PO: Whenever this ship reveals a maneuver dial, if your opponent doesn't say "I have a bad feeling about this," you may immediately perform a free action.

Isn't that a little too powerful? As someone said (Rodent?) He is in tune with the force. Why not do something like Luke, but on the offensive - turn one focus into a hit

Isn't that a little too powerful? As someone said (Rodent?) He is in tune with the force. Why not do something like Luke, but on the offensive - turn one focus into a hit

Or one hit into a critical.

Isn't that a little too powerful? As someone said (Rodent?) He is in tune with the force. Why not do something like Luke, but on the offensive - turn one focus into a hit

Or one hit into a critical.

Agreed

Isn't that a little too powerful? As someone said (Rodent?) He is in tune with the force. Why not do something like Luke, but on the offensive - turn one focus into a hit

Or one hit into a critical.

Agreed

But it's not as good offensively. Luke can use his ability each time he is being shot at. As such, he gets potentially 8 attempts to turn a focus into an evade. Corran can only attack once, so it has to really count. I'd support the blank to a hit/crit. The new imp ace pilot gets a hit via evade token anyways, and this isn't even a sure thing. With 3 attack dice, there's only a 58% chance that he'll roll even one blank. Increase that to four dice and the probability increases to 68%.

Given, Corran wouldn't need an action to get that extra hit, which seems like a nice trade off since it's not 100%. BTW, at range 1, it would be the same as concussion missiles, meaning with a focus you'd average 3.68 hits, vs. a standard 4 dice attack of 3.00 hits. Doesn't seem too overpowered to me.

Yes, but the problem isn't that he uses it once, the problem is that with Focus, he can get all 3 hits pretty regularly. 1 of them usually being a crit.

Then you include it with Proton Torps, and suddenly both 1 Focus and 1 Blank become crits. So on average you will get 2 hits and 2 crits.

It seems overpowered to me...

Well, as I mentioned, I'd be fine with it being hit/crit. If it's overpowered as a crit, then just make it blank -> hit. As for Proton torps... easy solution. "When attacking with primary weapons, you may change one [blank] to [hit]."

You can still get 3 hits pretty reliably with F+TL(average 2.81). And if you want to say that takes two actions, then I bring your attention to Howlrunner. A ship attacking with 3 focused dice and a Howlrunner reroll has the same hit probability. But she gives her ability to all pilots.

Isn't that a little too powerful? As someone said (Rodent?) He is in tune with the force. Why not do something like Luke, but on the offensive - turn one focus into a hit

Or one hit into a critical.

Agreed

But it's not as good offensively. Luke can use his ability each time he is being shot at. As such, he gets potentially 8 attempts to turn a focus into an evade. Corran can only attack once, so it has to really count. I'd support the blank to a hit/crit. The new imp ace pilot gets a hit via evade token anyways, and this isn't even a sure thing. With 3 attack dice, there's only a 58% chance that he'll roll even one blank. Increase that to four dice and the probability increases to 68%.

Given, Corran wouldn't need an action to get that extra hit, which seems like a nice trade off since it's not 100%. BTW, at range 1, it would be the same as concussion missiles, meaning with a focus you'd average 3.68 hits, vs. a standard 4 dice attack of 3.00 hits. Doesn't seem too overpowered to me.

There is a big difference with Attack and Defence rolls though. Lets run through a little exercise to highlight my point.

You have two tie fighters shooting at let's say an X-Wing

The first Tie fighter for example might generate a single hit as might the second one. When the X-Wing rolls defense dice, he just needs to get one evade from his two rolls with each roll to avoid the damage entirely.

Now lets say a ship has four attacks and gets two hits. The X-Wing only has one dice roll to avoid both hits so his odds of not taking damage is much lower against this new attacker.

Every time you increase the odds of generating hits when you're already rolling a good amount of dice, you greatly increase the odds of overwhelming the enemy's defensive dice and generating actual damage. Turning a blank into a Critical hit means that if you've got a focus you'll almost always generate three hits unless you manage to roll two or more blanks. If you want this ability, you should be paying a lot more than 27 points for it and putting a full fledged jedi in as the pilot.

Why not make it: "When attacking with primary weapon. Immediately after rolling you may change 1 blank or <focus> to <crit>, you then change all remaining <focus> to <blank>."

I will run the numbers to see how this affects hit percentage. But it is quite hard given you may decide to exchange 2 focus to hits for 1 crit and keeping the focus token... Which kinda depends on the target's defence and whether they have any shields..

Bilisknir, couldn't I just use Target Lock to roll the other two dice after using that technique? All I'd have to do is pair him with Dutch and/or give him R5-K6 to make him have super powerful attacks.

So, I decided to run through comparing this ability to Wedge's ability. Wedge is two PS higher, and two cost more, indicating that their abilities are currently costed out to be the same. If we discuss range 1 to begin with, Wedge is likely to roll 2.00 hits naked, 3.00 with F or TL, and 3.75 with F+TL. Furthermore, against a 3 agility focused ship, he is likely to do .93 damage naked, 1.77 damage with a focus/TL, or 2.12 damage with F+TL. For all future calculations, I'm going to simplify it and say that the attacker has a F or TL, and the defender has a F.

Wedge's 1.77 damage compares favorably with a standard X wing's 1.23 damage, yielding a 44% increase to damage on against a 3 agility ship at R1. Against a 2 agility ship, Wedge's damage increases to 2.38, for a 35% damage increase. Finally, against a 1 agility ship, he deals 3.00 damage, a 26% damage increase.

Now lets take a look at Corran's mythical ability, changing a blank into a hit. At range 1, this is the same exact results as a concussion missile, which is 2.56 damage on a 3 agi ship, 2.93 dmg on a 2 agi, 3.31 dmg on a 1 agi. It would appear that Corran's ability is more powerful than Wedge, as he does 44% / 23% / 10% increased damage over Wedge. Given this ability is not nearly as good at R2 and R3, possibly bringing it back in line with Wedge's, but the R1 disparity is concerning, especially against swarms and stealh devices.

So then lets talk price. Corran is penciled at PS7 for 27 points. The PS7 vs PS9 doesn't really make a dfiference for swarms, so just increasing him to 29 points to match Wedge wouldn't make a difference - Wedge would be a hard sale at the same price - I'd rather just take Corran w/ VI for 30 points. But at the same time, we don't have a single pilot with a lower PS and a higher cost right now. So, lets go ahead and increase Corran's PS to 9 to make it equal to Wedge's. The points increase to 29 as well. Now we just have to decide how many extra points to give Corran's ability. I'm inclined to think that making him 31 points would probably be a fair place - it matches Ten as the most expensive pilot (in a small ship), gives you only 6 points to mess with a 4 XBY (with turret) squad, so it drastically reduces your build combos.

As for action stacking, it leaves enough points for Garven, but he can't give Corran his focus for offense (there's not enough points for ST with Garven). One can take Dutch, but cannot put a cannon on him. You could take Kyle, but you'd have to either get rid of the turret, or not take Recon/MC title. Any way you do that, it's not going to be a very viable ship (Ion cannon w/ Recon/MC would probably be the best way). You cannot pair him with any other real elite pilot - only Biggs / Garven / Naked Y's / A wings. TLDR - if you take Corran, the rest of your squad isn't going to be that awesome, or you're only going to have 3 ships, which has proved time and again that they're not competitive.

So, proposed changes would be increase PS to 9, increase cost to 31, write text to be "when attacking with a primary weapon, you can change a blank to a hit"

Bilisknir, couldn't I just use Target Lock to roll the other two dice after using that technique? All I'd have to do is pair him with Dutch and/or give him R5-K6 to make him have super powerful attacks.

I managed to miss out the bit that said no rerolls of the now blank dice!

We may be using the wrong comparision here. Comparing it to Wedge is difficult because, what does the cost really entail. We may need to compare both to a base X-wing to determine the real value. A second point, why raise the pilot level at all? Is it mandatory that he be a 9 to have this skill? I don think that pilot skill needs to be included in the equation.

Well, I recently made my own version of Corran's card, though it looks like I took a slightly diffrent approach:

I decided to not give him a simple offensive ability, but rather to encourage and reward an offensive playstyle. I was partially inspired by a custom Whistler card taht someone recently showed on these forums.

Also, I made up a title to further individualize Horn on the board:

Hey I played a game with them for fun. They die quickly, when they are hit, but they a super maneuverable. I think they probably cost about right. It was weird not playing evades or focus. I really think that makes them easy targets.

What turn chart did you use?

10pts, barrel roll, boost, 2/2/2/2 ignore stress, a direct hit crit kills removes them immediately from the game? Wordy but fun!

Why would they have shields? They are cheaper and more expendable than TIE/Ln, they don't have shields.. 10pt, Barrel Roll, Boost, 2/2/2/0, they have 2 less hits so I don't think you need to add the crit thing.... and anyway that is kindof the Die-Wings gimmick.

TIE/D are mass produced fairly reliable ships, not pieced together death traps.

Sorry to disrupt the current discussion, but I think the templating for the Death Trap ability needs to be changed. As is, it is unclear as to whether the hits become crits after rolling, like an inverted HLC, or upon dealing the damage cards to the ship card, like an inverted senator's shuttle, or somewhere in between.

"All damage cards dealt to this ship are dealt face up." I think this is far more elegant and clear. I only bring this up because the first thing I thought when I saw this is '8 to10 of these backed by a couple cheap ships with draw their fire would be devastating.' DTF could function like Biggs on the cheap without a clearer template. I think this would also prevent wierd interactions with other "crit" based abilities in the game.

10pts, barrel roll, boost, 2/2/2/2 ignore stress, a direct hit crit kills removes them immediately from the game? Wordy but fun!

Why would they have shields? They are cheaper and more expendable than TIE/Ln, they don't have shields.. 10pt, Barrel Roll, Boost, 2/2/2/0, they have 2 less hits so I don't think you need to add the crit thing.... and anyway that is kindof the Die-Wings gimmick.

TIE/D are mass produced fairly reliable ships, not pieced together death traps.

Sorry to disrupt the current discussion, but I think the templating for the Death Trap ability needs to be changed. As is, it is unclear as to whether the hits become crits after rolling, like an inverted HLC, or upon dealing the damage cards to the ship card, like an inverted senator's shuttle, or somewhere in between.

"All damage cards dealt to this ship are dealt face up." I think this is far more elegant and clear. I only bring this up because the first thing I thought when I saw this is '8 to10 of these backed by a couple cheap ships with draw their fire would be devastating.' DTF could function like Biggs on the cheap without a clearer template. I think this would also prevent wierd interactions with other "crit" based abilities in the game.

I would like to see more pilot options for this ship. Anyone have ideas?

Gosric's model is awesome, BTW.

I'm wondering with named pilots for the Die-Wing, if you should remove Death Trap (they will have better made ones, get the pick of the spare parts). Then give them special Pilot Skills which may be mixed blessings.

For example one pilot could have a boost built in to his ship.. but gains a stress if he uses it.

Why not the Biggs' Effect? If he's flying the nicest ship, he's going to get the most attention. Maybe throw in a title upgrade for him to have room for two modifications -- make him a bit more tough.

Another one could be, Friendly ships within range 1-2 may ignore Pilot Skills. So no Death Trap, Stress for Boosting etc.