Hello there!
Tune Up is a new series I'm starting where I will update and modify both ships and upgrades that either I've made in articles in the past and have play tested or actual ships and upgrades in the game that need some love to make them relevant again!
We'll be starting with my two massive beauties, the Arquitens and Nebulon-B which I recently tested in the Battle of the Titans!
Firstly I'd like to say thank you to all the people who joined me for the massive game, and a special thanks to Nils Tillander for both streaming the game and using his computer to run the TTS room as my laptop could not handle it at all!
Now, let's look at how these ships faired:
After playing the game we did see that other than it being a lot of fun, it did reveal some massive flaws in my designs, especially with the Nebulon-B!
We quickly discovered that the Nebulon's ship ability was both miss-named (oops) and massively overpowered (double oops)! Tough Head, Weak Spine works as an idea but needed just a little rewording, with the timing of the added evade result shifting forwards as it is it means you reduce the total damage by one with a reinforce token then adding an evade result. This means that while reinforced only three hit results can cause it damage, and that's only at range 1-2, and it gets next to impossible beyond that.
I considered just rewording the ability, to make it work as intended, but I also started to feel even that may be too powerful as three hits just become one with no real effort. So I decided to reword it completely, letting you instead change one of your defence dice results to an evade result. This still makes you very tough against the long-range and deadly attacks of capital ships while also allowing daring fighters to get closer and hit you harder.
As for the Arquitens, I will be honest, I felt it worked as intended. A real powerhouse that could deal terrific amounts of damage to capital ships while struggling to hit its opponent's starfighters that get too close.
I did realise that its ship ability is a little pointless as all epic ships can perform every written attack and bonus attack, so technically you could see the second primary like this and perform both anyway!
However, luckily I did feel that it needed a little boost on its primaries so I rewrote its ship ability. I was torn between, either making their primaries four attack dice or widening the range of the arcs, and decided on a mix where you have the wider arcs with three dice but can choose to either perform two weaker attacks or one more powerful attack in your front arc to show the overlapping arcs working together!
We also all agreed that both the capital ships needed a 3 and 4 straight red manoeuvre, just so they can get into the game faster, and that they had way too much health/regen, as by the time we decided on ending the game after four hours of play, we had only just started
to put damage on the Nebulon and the Arquitens had only lost three-quarters of its shields.
Because of this, both ships have had their health reduced drastically while letting them retain their high regeneration. The energy of both has also taken a little hit by losing its third regen. It was only a small reduction because although my Turbolaser heavy build never fully drained my supply of energy, I didn't use them as often as I expected, we quickly realised there was no way to hit the Nebulon!
One last thing for the epics, we also settled on a final rule that could also be used for any epic ship:
Ship Graveyard:
Before a huge ship is destroyed, that ships player and one of their opponents must place 2 debris cloud obstacle at range 0 of the destroyed ship and beyond range 0 of another obstacle if able.
If the ship is a massive ship, both those players must place 1 additional debris cloud at range 0 of the destroyed ship and beyond range 0 of another obstacle if able.
This shows the size of the epic ships, as even when they die in a massive explosion, debris are left behind as a hazard to smaller starfighters.
For upgrades, there were only a couple that needed a change, but they were biggies...
Firstly we have Caitken and Shollan, and I'll admit, I was warned about them when I posted the article. However, I believed just increasing the price would fix them, but god no, it just allowed them to continuously hit ships, even the most manoeuvrable of ships and it barely affected them as their build didn't otherwise require too much energy. To fix this I've gone with a more watered-down version of their ability, letting them reroll two dice per energy spent, making them a more efficient version of Gunnery Specialists instead of infinite almost free locks!
However the power of Caitken and Shollan pail in comparison to the godly power of Vanguard! I thought that Vanguard would be a fun boost for Dodonna, not the anti-Christ itself, as retaining all focus and evade tokens is risky, especially the Nebuon-B that can hold Lando, Jyn and Perceptive Copilot, and slow rolls up the board collecting tokens as it goes (I will admit it was funny to see that many tokens
for one ship though, it reminded me of a first edition epic game I played with the fire edition Moldy Crow). When was thinking on how to change up Vanguard, I actually decided to both massively weaken it while allowing something I thought would be too powerful, but I've now seen real power so it pails in comparison. This new version, lets you only retain 2 green tokens like the
second edition Moldy Crow, but those
tokens must be of different types. The big difference is that it lets you retain a second reinforce, letting your ship be much more powerful in defence, or never need to perform the reinforce action again. I decided on this as firstly the Nebulon's ship ability is now much weaker, and secondly, with you only retaining two tokens, tactical jamming can remove that reinforce more easily.
I am happy to say my beloved Thrawn and Eli worked as I intended but weren't too powerful or broken, though Thrawn could possibly come up a few points, which I'll put in a list below with the rest of the cards updated points!
Points Update (ooo I feel like FFG desperately fixing their mistakes!):
Massassi Group Escort: 220-250 points
Outer Rim Enforcer: 260-290 points
Caitken and Shollan: 12-14 points
Vanguard: 10-14 points
Thrawn: 16-20 points
Conclusion:
Despite the changes I had to make here I do feel the overall ships worked as intended, and I will give myself some credit, I'm one mad man making way too many cards a day (90% I never get round to posting because I make a new one and fall in love with it on the day). So some of the flaws I become blind to as I write and rewrite these card like twenty times before I'm happy with them, and sometimes overlook something massive like a god-tier title (and my Fiancée tries her best to read them all, but I am driving her mad with my obsessive nature(love you dear!))
I plan to start to do more test games for all my ships and upgrades as I want to refine one ship for each faction so I can run a Watcher Squadron tournament where each player can use a custom ship nonmatter the faction.
So if you want to join in keep an eye out and join up on my discord for announcements of when I'm available to play a game, which is most of the time (I keep telling you all I'm obsessed)!
Otherwise, as normal, Thank you all for reading,
Watcher Leader out.