Push the Limit (3)
Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 1 stress token.

Is Push the Limit too powerful?

Is it the best and most undercosted Elite Pilot Talent?

Should it be more balanced? if you think so then how?

what if it gave two stress tokens instead of one? eg.

Push the Limit (3)
Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 2 stress tokens.

Here's my 2 cents.

Push the Limit (3)
Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 1 stress token.

Is Push the Limit too powerful?

The whole reason that PtL works, is because you get an extra action, but at some point cost and tradeoff (stress). Getting 2 stress would give you +1 action in round 1, but -1 action in the next round, and this still assumes that you have green moves every round. This would make it only marginally useful at a cost of zero points, let alone costing 3 points. I don't think it would get used.

There are a lot of cards that are coming out that will make PTL a less auto include in lists, or at least auto initiate with certain ships.

2 stress tokens is way to much, you gain 2 actions in exchange for next turn no action and 2 turns of mediocre turn rates before you are stress free. Seems pretty horrible. This version of the upgrade should be 1 point at best.

You can house rule it by letting you not use focus with push the limit as it it to hard to focus while multitasking. But is PTL too strong, I'd look at the top 16 worlds... not that many PTL's there. So I think the pilot upgrade is good, but not OP enough to change.

Well MajorJuggler why don't you just ninja my post! XD

What about just making it cost 4 points? I think that would make everything even. If a fix was really necessary.

PtL is one of those upgrades that helps different pilots differently. I will not be acknowledging and reference to "fixes" or "broken" new personal rule. There is a great thread on this topic, I recommend anyone read it.

PtL gives an extra action obviously this is great for everyone, but less so for Darth Vader since he already has 2. I know some people like giving him 3 actions, but I would argue that going from 1 to 2 actions is of more value than going from 2 t 3 actions.

PtL costs you a stress. Getting a stress token during the action phase is not as bad as getting one in the movement phase because you may never lose an action. But this means that PtL is much better on ships with lots of green maneuvers, like an A-wing or a TIE Interceptor, than say a Y-wing of B-wing. It is particularly good on Soonter Fell of Tycho since they have special abilities that relate to stress.

It has one more cost - your elite slot. This have several consequences, first you can't take a different or additional elite upgrade. Second you simply can not put it on many ships. But the third one is the one that I find the biggest. You pilots with elite upgrades lots are already expensive versions of the ship they are in. They are already going to be prime targets for your opponent. As any one who has flown Soonter Fell or Wedge can tell you, if your opponent can they are going to kill them right off the bat. Sometimes in a single shot in the case of Soonter. Putting PtL on the them may make them better, and possibly harder to kill, but definitely makes them even more of a target, and hurts you more when the are killed.

I definitely would not call push the limit broken by any means. If it is the "best" elite pilot talent, it is only because many/most of the other EPTs are too situational and/or overpriced for what they do. Granting an additional action potentially every turn is obviously useful against pretty much any opposing build. The stress token is a big deal, and limits the ships it can be effectively used on. If your ship does not have a lot of green maneuvers it is less useful, which is why you normally only see it on A-wings/interceptors and a select few other ships like Rhymer attempting to TL+Focus his missiles or Wedge with an R2 astromech.

it has already been demonstrated that prioritizing ship count over individual ship quality is a trend in X-wing. Basically, if an upgrade does not drastically improve a ship's ability to survive or to destroy other ships, it is probably not going to see much play time. The lack of use seen by many other elite pilot talents simply reflects this.

I disagree. Of course it is broken/undercosted. The reason it sees play on every ship in the game that can take it is because it offers so much more value for those 3 points than any other option, EPT or otherwise. Any ship with an EPT and 3 spare points will run it, with the sole exception of Darth Vader because he ALREADY has the skill inherently.

Make it 5 points, leave it alone. At 5 points, it will see play on ships that can really use it (Interceptors), and will become a maybe/maybe not choice for other ships (like X-Wings). Of course, that will make the already difficult to use Interceptors even more difficult, but at least we would begin seeing a variety of EPTs in use.

Really, I think the YT-1300's are as much to blame for the prevalence of PTL as Push is itself. By providing a very powerful 360 degree attack, YT-1300's have dramatically reduced the usefulness of maneuvering. Any list that spends a significant number of points on maneuverability is seriously disadvantaged in a tournament/competitive setting, because the first time they meet a turret list all those points are wasted. This means that points spent on action economy are far more valuable. Compare Daredevil at 3 points to Push the Limit or Advanced Sensors, also at 3 points each. PtL and Advanced Sensors see play on virtually every ship that can use them, Daredevil does not. At 2 points you will see Squad Leader or Swarm Tactics, but rarely if ever see Expert Handling. With turrets making maneuver a non-issue in any game with a YT-1300, points spent on maneuver are dead weight too often to be tourney-viable.

This is also the reason Interceptors see so little tourney use. They are definitely worth every point they cost against any combination of ships, EXCEPT the YT-1300's who just hard-counter them like Chuck Norris taking on the Karate Kid. Too much of their cost reflects their maneuverabilty, if it weren't for the undercosted PtL giving them a shot at action economy (while they completely ignore any pretense at maneuvering), any game against YT-1300's would be an auto lose.

Want a suggestion? How about a modification like this one...

Hard to Track: 2 points.

You may take a free evade action whenever you are attacked by a turret.

Those 2 points would be wasted points (and a slot) against "regular" ships, but would allow maneuver focused ships a hard counter to the turrets hard counter. They would also require the ship running this mod to have access to evade on its bar to use it, and would further make it difficult to combine with PtL for obscene combinations.

Just a thought, it might not be a great solution.

I'm on the fence here. I think it should be one more point as it's ace and a lot of the argument to keep it where it is could b people who rely on it and dont want it trimming.

I don't think it's crazy though to b fair.

Just quickly about the Turrets against empire, they ARE a mare. I find the one thing with the falcon is if you can keep it at range 3 it kind of struggles a bit to do much damage, particularly on things with dodge builds. My answer to everything is missiles but Vader and bombers can really hurt it quickly. I love Vader dearly :-)

I disagree. Of course it is broken/undercosted. The reason it sees play on every ship in the game that can take it is because it offers so much more value for those 3 points than any other option, EPT or otherwise. Any ship with an EPT and 3 spare points will run it, with the sole exception of Darth Vader because he ALREADY has the skill inherently.

Make it 5 points, leave it alone. At 5 points, it will see play on ships that can really use it (Interceptors), and will become a maybe/maybe not choice for other ships (like X-Wings). Of course, that will make the already difficult to use Interceptors even more difficult, but at least we would begin seeing a variety of EPTs in use.

Really, I think the YT-1300's are as much to blame for the prevalence of PTL as Push is itself. By providing a very powerful 360 degree attack, YT-1300's have dramatically reduced the usefulness of maneuvering. Any list that spends a significant number of points on maneuverability is seriously disadvantaged in a tournament/competitive setting, because the first time they meet a turret list all those points are wasted. This means that points spent on action economy are far more valuable. Compare Daredevil at 3 points to Push the Limit or Advanced Sensors, also at 3 points each. PtL and Advanced Sensors see play on virtually every ship that can use them, Daredevil does not. At 2 points you will see Squad Leader or Swarm Tactics, but rarely if ever see Expert Handling. With turrets making maneuver a non-issue in any game with a YT-1300, points spent on maneuver are dead weight too often to be tourney-viable.

This is also the reason Interceptors see so little tourney use. They are definitely worth every point they cost against any combination of ships, EXCEPT the YT-1300's who just hard-counter them like Chuck Norris taking on the Karate Kid. Too much of their cost reflects their maneuverabilty, if it weren't for the undercosted PtL giving them a shot at action economy (while they completely ignore any pretense at maneuvering), any game against YT-1300's would be an auto lose.

Want a suggestion? How about a modification like this one...

Hard to Track: 2 points.

You may take a free evade action whenever you are attacked by a turret.

Those 2 points would be wasted points (and a slot) against "regular" ships, but would allow maneuver focused ships a hard counter to the turrets hard counter. They would also require the ship running this mod to have access to evade on its bar to use it, and would further make it difficult to combine with PtL for obscene combinations.

Just a thought, it might not be a great solution.

It sounds like your play group differs radically from mine. Expert Handling is incredibly popular on the big ships. Falcons are used a lot, but rarely with PTL. I say this to only illustrate that different players like to do different things. In my area PTL has generally been relegated to Wedge, Fel, Interceptors, and A-Wings. That's it. PTL on Fel and Wedge is killer but incredibly expensive. PTL on the Interceptor/A-Wing helps surviveability and firepower respectively. Beyond Wedge, none of these see regular use in a competitive setting, beyond my personal use of A-Wings.

To each group their own is my guess but PTL has fallen out of favor with the advent of B-wings. With everything the way it is I would understand the case for making PTL cost 4, but with the stress inducing I understand why it only costs 3 points, and I would never understand why making it cost 5 points, and be the most expensive upgrade in the game, would be fair when it tends to be used in corner cases now. The problem in comparison to Daredevil is that Daredevil is way too expensive for what it does and should probably cost a 1-2 points instead of 3.

One of the difficult things about the cards is that, as someone pointed out, a hard cost for every ship inherently makes things unbalanced.

On the other hand PTL is available to both sides here, and when that's the case, I'd have hard time arguing something is broken and needs a fix.

I played in a 16 player tourney and I didn't see a lot of push the limit. I had it but I didn't play anyone else with it. In one game, an ion cannon effectively neutralized its use a couple of times.

What I did see were a lot of B-Wings (practically every rebel list), most agreeing that advanced sensors were the way to go, including those that didn't take them. So, should I start a thread about how broken both are and how they need to be fixed? The B-wings especially fit the criteria of being only available to the rebels.

Instead, I think we'd be better served doing what Hrathen suggested and talk about how to counter things we struggle with or find effective uses of things that don't get used.

I think PTL is a good sign of that the the strategies in this games are not fully developed yet.

Players still count damage vs protection as the main resolver, but in thye end it is actually movement that will win games.

- Keep flying after the enemies and you will eventually win.

Now, if you only look after attack vs protect. PTL is surely good. (you can either evade + focus or focus + TL)

If you look at movement, it still is not bad. You can for example do an extra boost or barrel roll.

At the same time you will limit your movement next turn, so you pretty much buy actions with your movement and predictablity.

There is also a good deal of situations that makes the card useless.

EG:

Luke has a targetlock on a tie from before and takes a fokus to hit hard. - No PTL possible

You face a tie-swarm that block your movement more often than not. No action, no plt

You are stressed (from ptl, from red moves etc. No ptl

Only one action is usefull in the given situation. No PTL

Actually. The extra stress is great for one of my darlings, the YYBB (all with ION)

If I ion you, i know exactly how you will fly, and no barrelroll or boost will save you

Push the Limit (3)

Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 1 stress token.

Is Push the Limit too powerful?

Is it the best and most undercosted Elite Pilot Talent?

Should it be more balanced? if you think so then how?

what if it gave two stress tokens instead of one? eg.

Push the Limit (3)

Once per round, after you perform an action, you may perform 1 free action shown in your action bar. Then receive 2 stress tokens.

So if I have the Baron I can Roll then PTL boost and then get two focus and stress, sounds kinda nice..

I feel that PtL is fine point wise, it's good but not an auto include. I think the issue is a few of the EPTs may be too expensive like Daredevil. Others are more situational, eg Expert Handling can be awesome on a YT. Over time what I think you will see is more EPTs that will be competitively priced, so PtL will become less prevelant, things like Opportunist which I feel will be great on low PS ships like Black Squadron. What this means is things like Daredevil will go obsolete (not that it isn't at the moment except for Vader) but will probably get replaced with new shinier versions that do something similar but for a better cost.

PTL has fallen out of favor with me, and I see plenty of ways to counter it already. First off, as everyone has already mentioned, its primarily used on high PS ships. I almost always include a Prototype or Gold/Blue/Rookie in my lists specifically to play as a blocker (Proto/Gold are generally the two choices). If I block you, you lose your action and can't PTL. This doesn't work all the time though, as Lando/SL/Turr can give you another action, which you can then use to PTL. Or AdvS which allows you to PTL first, but only two ships (with starting costs of 34 and 37 w/ AdvS and PTL) can do that. If you want to spend that much on a ship to make sure you get two actions, be my guest.

Then there's the wonderful Ion Cannon (turret). Feel free to PTL. I will then just ionize you (with my PS2 gold so others can shoot at you first and strip your tokens) and you can float along without an action. And then it's that much easier to continue to ionize you (or just kill you). I plead for Fel to PTL around my Y wings. It makes life so much easier.

Finally, for the imperial love, there's the rebel captive and Kath. You PTL, get a stress, and since you're typically a high PS, you're going to be the first to shoot at me, and get a second stress from that. Now you can do a green and shed one of the stresses, but it takes a second turn to shed the second, assuming you didn't shoot at me again the next turn. Or if you don't target me, Kath will just target you, and you can either take a crit or a stress. And then you don't get an actions next turn.

And that's not accounting for the fact that you have to consistently do green maneuvers (not every turn, but most) to make use of it. And with the exception of R2 + Wedge/Luke, or Interceptors/A Wings, there aren't that many green maneuvers, even fewer that you want to do at any given point. *shrug* PTL seems fine to me, and the meta is starting to catch up with how to counter it effectively.

I'm still not seeing where Push the Limit is so dominating over every Elite Talent. Yes, it is really good on certain ships, especially the ones that can shred stress easily. But I'm finding I'm preferring other Elite Talents on many other ships. I don't think player preference is reason to mess with a card.

Like any card, ability, or what have you the true test is when you look at competitive lists. In this case, Push the Limit occurs far, far more often than any/all of the other Elite Pilot Talents. I LIKE other EPTs, in fact I don't particularly like PtL, but it is far, far more common.

There is some room for chicken/egg arguments, but at the end of the day if you see any one ship, talent, or upgrade showing up in such disproportionate numbers, that is a good indication that it is undercosted vs. the rest of the field. Push isn't completely broken, it doesn't make the game completely collapse, but at the same time it is definitely a much better value for points than any other EPT. Which says that either every other EPT is overcosted, or that the one card is undercosted.

If you make push the limit worse, or cost more, what does it really accomplish? The main use for it at the moment is to make ships like the A-wing and the interceptor better (and maybe Maarek Stele), and those ships already see less play than the others.

Push the limit's only fault is that it doesn't suck/isn't annoyingly situational for its cost, which is already kind of high at 3 points. making it worse is not going to suddenly make daredevil/elusiveness/marksmanship more desirable outside of their current specific setups.

There really aren't that many EPTs to choose from, and FFG has been so conservative in designing them that other than PTL and a couple 1-point upgrades like veteran instincts and adrenaline rush that mostly work because of how cheap they are, none of them really have a spectacular use that makes you want to work at fitting them into your squad. We've got Han/marksmanship, draw their fire on Luke and Chewbacca, and squad leader and swarm tactics fit into specific builds, but almost none of the 3-4 point EPTs really do anything amazing to justify their cost.

Elusiveness rerolls a die that has a good chance of just rerolling to a hit or focus anyway. It can combo with Soontir/Ibtisam's abilities but still doesn't impress. Daredevil can be kind of useful but is limited to ships with boost and still gives you a stress token. Expose is borderline useless for anything, especially at 4 points. Opportunist is still fairly untested but it needs to be pretty amazing to be worth it at 4 points, even if you were to remove PTL from the game entirely.

So yes, I would agree that push the limit is much more valuable than the other similarly priced EPTs, but only because most of them are hardly with using on their own merit.

I didn't see it much at worlds, so I'm not sure what the problem is. I think we'll see more of it when Imperial Aces comes out... seems important on TIE interceptors in general.

the problem isnt so much as PTL is broken (for the record, yes I think it is completely broken beyond belief, like "WTF were the playtesters smoking!?" levels), but that the other upgrades are worthless except a select few. I mean seriously, look at the jokes that were Deadeye, Daredevil, Elusiveness. To be fair, there are good upgrades like Swarm Tactics, Squad Leader (although I think giving it 3 drawbacks/limitations is a bit excessive), adrenaline rush even, but these upgrades tend to be rather specific in terms of usage, unlike PTL.

Sure, there are counters to PTL, but not everyone will be fielding those exact counters. Not every list has a Ten Numb + marksmanship in it, only Rebels have turret weapons, not every list can afford to park 1 ship in front of the PTL user and have another ship hammer it from the sides.

The reason why ships like Awings, TIEint and TIEadv arent seeing play is simply because they are overcosted, the game favours the red dice more than the green dice, and there are so many ways to modify the red dice but not as much ways to modify the green dice (imagine a TargetLock for defense dice). You can introduce a strong generic upgrade like the PTL to try and help them, but you end up helping the other ships as well, and since everyone benefits together at the same time, you basically didnt change anything.

I say make PTL cost 5 points. It is rather obvious that the usage is meant for single elite ships to make them stand out from generic mooks, and if you can already spare the points to play these kind of characters, surely you can easily spare 2 more points for them.

PTL for every ship= 5pts
PTL for awings, interceptors, and other specific ships just to make them relevant= 3pts

In the end I think the real cost of PTL is 4 pts but since it so seldom sees play outside of a few ships that need it just to compete I'm ok with that. I think about half of "PTL is sooo broken/good" comments are really just "I wish I had other viable options at that point and slot". Very seldom does anything make me not want PTL. Most other EPT's are so inferior, not because PTL is so awesome (It's all that makes interceptors and awings viable some days), they are all just so niche or so terrible, or so overcosted for what they do.

Then there's the wonderful Ion Cannon (turret). Feel free to PTL. I will then just ionize you (with my PS2 gold so others can shoot at you first and strip your tokens) and you can float along without an action. And then it's that much easier to continue to ionize you (or just kill you). I plead for Fel to PTL around my Y wings. It makes life so much easier.

Then the people who play with you must not be great at taking their actions, because when people have tried this with me they almost never (about 1 in 10) actually manage to hit me with them. If you're an idiot and you try to take up too many of the actions with boosts or barrel rolls, then you leave yourself open. Try hitting Soontir Fell with two ion turrets when he's got an evade and two focus tokens. Unless you roll incredibly well or he rolls incredibly poorly, he's likely to still have at least one of them by the time everyone has taken their shots. And if you've got 3+ ships with solutions on him in a single turn then your opponent must be terrible at breaking enemy squadrons apart, and they don't deserve to fly a white knuckle Fel anyway.

Nothing hits Soontir Fel easely. That's not the point...

But ionizing Soontir, and then killing him is one of the best way to get rid of him since just one Ion hit basicly kills him. Next turn you know where he will be and he has no actions. Without turrets it's nearly impossible to get a shot at him anyway.

When i fly my Y-Wings (which i do fairly often) i love to see PTL on the other side. Nothing like Ionizing a stressed ship. It's basicly GG when that happens on a super elite pilot.

And not being able to hit Soontir Fel has little to do about flying well than just bad luck on the defender. (exept if you are action denied). Soontir on 4 evade dice with focus and evade has the following chances to get at least... (added % without actions)

- 1 evade 100% (84.74%)

- 2 evades 98.02% (48.12%)

- 3 evades 84.84% (15.16%)

- 4 evades 51.88% ( 1.98%)

- 5 evades 15.26% ( 0.00%)

So saying that it's a bad strategy because you won't hit Soontir is... well duh.. there aren't any reliable ways to hit him except when Soontir is flown badly and loses his action step... But ionizing him when he's stressed increases your odds.

PTL is very strong, but there are counters and it's not needed to win. 2013 World Champion did not have any PTL in his Squad and neither did second place, did they?

EDIT: Just to add something many players forget. Using PTL makes your next move way more predictable. Good opponents can use that to their advantage.

It's never easy to hit Fel, I'll agree to that. But I like to sick Wedge + Gold (or more often Dutch) on him. Depending on init, Wedge moves after he does, so he can't fully predict how to get out of arc. I also like to stay at R2 against Fel since its way too easy for him to side slip a R1 shot. Wedge with F+TL @ R2 is going to roll 2.81 hits, and Fel with F+E is going to roll 1.88 Evades. The average damage put through (without spending the evade token) is .93. So to keep the stealth device, Fel will likely have to spend both the F and the E token, stripping him of all tokens.

In comes Dutch with his TL on Fel, and he'll roll 2.25 hits on Fel. Fel will still have his stealth, but no tokens, so he'll roll 4 evade dice, for an average value of 1.5 evades. The expected damage of this attack is .95. So... if we consider average damage to approximate % likelyhood of getting 1 hit (which isn't actually true, but it's close enough in this case)... we have a 93% chance of stripping tokens, and a 95% chance of ionizing him, for an overall success rate of 88.35%.

And then the remaining two hull is easy to take care of. A 3 dice focused (or TL) attack against his 3 naked dice will yield an average result of 1.22 damage.

It's far from an auto kill, but having that ion turret on the board should make any PTL player think twice before pushing the limit while in range of an ion.

For counter arguments sake - if Wedge doesn't get an attack off first, the expected damage of the ion vs. a F+E stealthed Fel is only .08. It is crucial to strip the tokens before the ion attack, otherwise you might as well not bother. And if Wedge only strips one of the two tokens, the expected damage is .35. Which once again, is far from a sure fire thing.

PTL for every ship= 5pts

PTL for awings, interceptors, and other specific ships just to make them relevant= 3pts

In the end I think the real cost of PTL is 4 pts but since it so seldom sees play outside of a few ships that need it just to compete I'm ok with that. I think about half of "PTL is sooo broken/good" comments are really just "I wish I had other viable options at that point and slot". Very seldom does anything make me want PTL. Most other EPT's are so inferior, not because PTL is so awesome, they are all just so niche or so terrible, or somovercosted for what they do.

WHAT????????

If anything push the limit is better not worse on A-Wings and TIE Interceptors. All those green maneuvers, not to mention Tycho's and Soonter's abilities that basically beg for you to put PtL on them.

This just doesn't make any sense to me.