Today is my own design for a new blue token for X-Wing 2.0!
I decided to go with a blue token as I feel its a potentially good token type to expand and play around with as there is only the cloak token so far.
Blue Tokens:
As there is only 1 blue token in the game so far I decided to use this opportunity to define the blue tokens as the rest of the tokens have a general feel/set of guide lines they follow:
Green tokens: Good tokens, used to modify dice and protect as ship or make its attack stronger. Round shape, so get removed during the end phase.
Orange tokens: Bad tokens, effecting your ability to defend or attack effectively. Again they are round, so they get removed during the end phase.
Red tokens: Bad tokens, again effecting your ability to defend or attack, and even perform actions. Diamond shape so have special requirements to let them be removed like blue manoeuvres.
So from this we can roughly say that:
Blue Tokens: Good token so far, seems to aid your ship in defence, so could also help attack. But also seems to have a disadvantage as well. Diamond shaped so I was originally going to make you remove all blue tokens when you execute a blue manoeuvre like red tokens, but decided that its your choice to dial in that blue manoeuvre like how its your choice to remove a cloak token during the systems phase. Due to this, blue tokens should always be up to you to remove, but maybe in a different phase to just the systems phase.
So What Token To Make?
I'd actually had an idea for a new blue token over a year ago when I was still just scrawling down ship designs for myself. The idea was to use a blue token as a way to make a solar sail work on a ship like the Punworcca 116-class interstellar sloop or Ginivex-class fanblade starfighter.
I have made both of these ships already and posted them to Instagram but never used this new token because I struggled to explain it at the time so I avoided it and used configuration cards instead.
The Token:
The Velocity token would be a way to show a ship using a different form of propulsion, like a solar sail, making the ship move at a faster speed, and so harder to hit but also forcing the ship to stay at those speeds until the pilot turns off/puts away the other form of propulsion.
To show this the Velocity token would:
Force you to only perform manoeuvres of the same speed or higher than the last manoeuvre you executed.
Lets you treat your agility value as equal to the speed of your revealed manoeuvre to show how your ship is moving so fast its hard to hit.
Force you to roll 1 fewer attack dice if the defender is not in your bullseye arc to show how your ship would be shaking and make it harder to like up a shot.
How To Remove Velocity Tokens?
To remove these tokens, after you execute a manoeuvre, you must gain 1 strain token to remove 1 Velocity token to show the effects of starting to slow your ship down.
Failed Velocity:
Similar to trying to execute a red manoeuvre while stressed, if you fail to follow the rules set out, like setting a manoeuvre of a speed lower than your last executed manoeuvre, you must instead execute a red straight manoeuvre of the same speed as your last manoeuvre.
How To Gain Velocity Tokens?
I see the Velocity token and blue tokens in general as the effects a ship gains from experimental or rare technologies used to propel ships. It is very powerful for the ship, even with its drawbacks, however because of this experimental nature, the ships with access to these tokens are rare themselves. As with the Tie Phantom and Scimitar being the only ships to easily access the Cloak token, I see the Velocity token as only really available to a couple of ships, these being the Punworcca 116-class interstellar sloop or Ginivex-class fanblade starfighter, two ships that made use of Solar Sails and had colossal speed when using them.
I see these ships having a standard action on their action bar/upgrades to access the Velocity token, in the same way as the Cloak action, then having a configuration card to add flavour to the sail, for example:
The Solar Sailor gains a sail remote in front of it that would move like the buzz droid in front of you, and would add even more defence for the ship like a portable obstacle that could shield your entire squad. This would be especially useful as the solar sailor has no weapons and would be purely a support ship.
The Fanblade uses it's sail to generate a powerful shield, at the cost of being very easy to detect. So you can open and close your sail to regenerate your shields, however if you wish to slow down, if you still have an active shield you must loose it to close your sail.
What About Other Ships?
Like I said earlier I feel this token/action should be incredibly rare to access, as I don't think other ships should have access to a permanent Velocity action, but something close to the illicit Cloaking Device would probably work. The card I came up for this, Overcharged Engines, is a mix of allowing you to gain access the velocity action and SLAM action, making it a successor to the 1.0 Burnout SLAM. It does this by letting you perform the Velocity or SLAM action twice per game, but it also has a risk of damaging your ship as your engine is working over-time to cope.
Conclusion:
The Velocity token is a rare and exotic token, similar to the cloak token before it. The token's ability to increase the agilities of ships using their speed is incredibly beneficial and very strong, however it makes them very predictable as eventually they can only pull off only one speed of manoeuvres, and normally only 4-5 straight. Because of this its great for a single round of deadly engagement but then it becomes tricky to decelerate or turn around.
As per normal, feel free to use them in friendly games!
If you wish to see more of my redone Solar Sailor and Fanblade starfighter, look out for future articles, I'll be covering them soon!
Watcher Leader out!
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