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"Take X or lose" is pretty terrible balance and the fact that it's the answer to a Demolisher is also pretty terrible balance. A good Imperial player is going to have activations advantage and probably first player advantage, and it's really, really difficult to avoid the Demolisher trap.
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Oct 6, 2016 02:23
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We understand how to play around it, but you shouldn't have to design your fleets around a single ship that came out in the first goddamn expansion to the game. Its not that the ship itself completely breaks the game, but the rebel equivalent is supposed to be the Nebulon b at 57 points... I would easily pay 75 points for the base gladiator. Instead, the imperial player can just gladiator/rhymer ball combo their way to victory. You have to ask yourself if they play tested the game at all if they are saying that those ships are equivalent value. We figured that they determined points values using formulas. Ie. black dice are worth 3 points, blue 4 points, red 5 points, 1 shield 4 points, 1 hull 3 points. Not the actual values obviously, but you get the point. Except that they didn't actually check to make sure that the combinations of things gave points values that made sense. This is especially apparent because the II variants are often either worse or no better than I variants, but for more points. The amount of points that changes black dice to blue dice (a nerf imo) for the ISD can be used to take a (cheaper) card that gives two extra face up damage on every crit, that can't be blocked with anything but a maneuver. Like, what! How are those two things even remotely close in "value" Moreover, the point values on the upgrade cards defied all logic. I can't even begin to understand how they valued things. The titles and commanders seem to make sense, but the standard upgrade cards seem almost like the low point ones are the good ones and the high point ones are the mediocre ones.
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Oct 6, 2016 02:50
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There are quite a few ways to mitigate against a Demolisher assassin. Bomber clouds, flankers, Lando crew, Interdictor with Targetting Scramblers, Rieekan (in combination with flankers), deployment advantage (Demo lists tend to cap out around 6 or 7 deployments due to cost of multiple activations and insane bid), Mon Mothma + Admonition. It is just something you need to think about, same as "what if my opponent brings a Motti ISD (or two) and I need to crack it to win." Or, "what if I am up against Yavaris / Rieekan aces and they are doubletapping everything." It has been a dangerous ship but it is far from the be all, end all.
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Oct 6, 2016 03:10
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So, Star Wars Destiny. Some guys at league have mentioned it. Is it similar to Dicemasters but made by a generally competent company that isn't WizKids?
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Oct 6, 2016 03:51
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Admiral Joeslop posted:So, Star Wars Destiny. Some guys at league have mentioned it. Is it similar to Dicemasters but made by a generally competent company that isn't WizKids? I was wondering about Destiny after seeing the posts on FFGs website. Looks interesting, but I am not sure how I feel about the CCG aspect of it.
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Oct 6, 2016 04:11
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FFG had some rules implemented for retailers in the last year that forbids them from selling new product at the same time as used or singles. I'm guessing stores that make money on Magic are probably bugged about not being able to carry singles for Destiny if that's the case
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Oct 6, 2016 06:23
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Val Helmethead posted:There are quite a few ways to mitigate against a Demolisher assassin. Bomber clouds, flankers, Lando crew, Interdictor with Targetting Scramblers, Rieekan (in combination with flankers), deployment advantage (Demo lists tend to cap out around 6 or 7 deployments due to cost of multiple activations and insane bid), Mon Mothma + Admonition. You can play into demolisher but it's just a really dumb and degenerate ship that especially limits what rebels can do. Rhymer is also really stupid.
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Oct 6, 2016 11:33
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Panzeh posted:You can play into demolisher but it's just a really dumb and degenerate ship that especially limits what rebels can do. Rhymer is also really stupid. The EU stuff being terrible for the game feels pretty Star Wars, honestly! In all seriousness though, what can they really do at this point? The genie is out of the bottle and the cards are printed. I'm just not really sure what they could do short of print a silver bullet in Wave 5 specifically designed to mess up outliers?
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Oct 6, 2016 11:50
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Printing a card that makes Rhymer blobs miss only 1 out of 16 times is also pretty stupid IMO.
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Oct 6, 2016 12:03
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shalcar posted:The EU stuff being terrible for the game feels pretty Star Wars, honestly! This is a big problem. imo, the only solutions are tournament bans and retconning stats/price. But it seems apparent to me that balance was never a consideration in general. I might be wrong, but it seems like the empire is just leagues ahead of the rebels between that ship and rhymer.
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Oct 6, 2016 15:55
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twig1919 posted:This is a big problem. imo, the only solutions are tournament bans and retconning stats/price. But it seems apparent to me that balance was never a consideration in general. I might be wrong, but it seems like the empire is just leagues ahead of the rebels between that ship and rhymer.
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Oct 6, 2016 16:01
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Here's some good thoughts on Destiny from Team Covenant: https://teamcovenant.com/covenant/i-didnt-want-it-to-be-my-destiny (Full disclosure, I work for FFG/ANA, but I don't have anything to do with Destiny development) I've played a couple of dozen games by now, and I really, really enjoy it. It doesn't really play anything like Dicemasters in practice (I own a ton of that too, and enjoy it). To me, Dicemasters is more a dice game with cards for reference, while Destiny is a card game with dice as a mechanic. It plays more like a traditional card game than anything else. I enjoy the very fast back and forth of you take an action, I take an action. Very little downtime. I for one can't wait to be able to play more of it with more people. Happy to answer any questions that I can!
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Oct 6, 2016 17:48
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Does Destiny plan on having event prizes similar to x-wing with alternate-art cards and dice? Will it be pushed as an alternative to friday night magic with similar weekly/monthly promotions? E: specifically, I wonder if you plan on having more hard-edged casino-style promo dice that I imagine certain people would prefer. I don't like the tendency of rounded dice to roll for too long. Chill la Chill fucked around with this message at 18:36 on Oct 6, 2016 |
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Oct 6, 2016 18:34
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Meh. B-wings are better and more fun than tie bomber will ever be even with Rhymer. Yavaris for lyfe.
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Oct 6, 2016 18:59
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Chill la Chill posted:Does Destiny plan on having event prizes similar to x-wing with alternate-art cards and dice? Will it be pushed as an alternative to friday night magic with similar weekly/monthly promotions? Yep, we just announced there will be the quarterly tournament kits, as well as store/regional/etc championships similar to any of the other competitive games. No idea about totally different dice though.
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Oct 6, 2016 19:24
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For Destiny, I plan to at least buy a couple starters to see if my wife and I like it (she likes X-wing yay) but I probably will leave it at that. ...at least that's what I tell myself 
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Oct 6, 2016 19:32
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banned from Starbucks posted:Meh. This is why all the pros use firesprays instead.
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Oct 6, 2016 19:37
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And why a Rebel Mon Mothma list won US Nationals. And a pair of Dodonna's were top table for the Wave 4 vassal tournament.
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Oct 7, 2016 00:41
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Shmitty ran some interesting numbers on the last regionals: http://concentratefire.blogspot.com.au/2016/06/wrapping-up-regionals-data.html It's hardly perfect, but the data can always be fun to look at. Be interesting to see something similar for the newer ships.
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Oct 7, 2016 05:29
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twig1919 posted:This is a big problem. imo, the only solutions are tournament bans and retconning stats/price. But it seems apparent to me that balance was never a consideration in general. I might be wrong, but it seems like the empire is just leagues ahead of the rebels between that ship and rhymer. It is not that big of a problem. They are strong cards, but there are counters in the game for those cards. Rieekan is a hard counter to most alpha strike lists (as Tekopo mentions). Also, try playing an Interdoctor (Interdictor with target scrambler, projection experts and either Wuluf, or Tarken) as Imperials. And Rhymer is only truely dangerous if you don't have any squadrons, or if you are way too aggressive on your initial ship speeds. A Rhymer ball is fairly easy to lock down if you bring even a modest amount of squadrons that are not heavy. And before you bring it up, Intel is not an automatic get out of jail free card for Rhymer. Proper placement of your own TIE fighters, A-Wings, or X-Wings will be able to engage the majority of a rhymer ball and only let an Intel ship break a few free. Tie Bombers can't really deal with other squadrons, so once they are engaged, you should be able to chew them up eventually. Firesprays are a little better at anti-squadron, but to bring enough for a decent Fire-ball, you have to commit to an enormous amount of points in squadrons. If you judiciously use squadron commands, you can still get the drop on them, and tie them up long enough to remove them as a threat.
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Oct 7, 2016 18:34
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Orvin posted:It is not that big of a problem. They are strong cards, but there are counters in the game for those cards. Rieekan is a hard counter to most alpha strike lists (as Tekopo mentions). Also, try playing an Interdoctor (Interdictor with target scrambler, projection experts and either Wuluf, or Tarken) as Imperials. And Rhymer is only truely dangerous if you don't have any squadrons, or if you are way too aggressive on your initial ship speeds. Aka "Those are easy tactics that take little skill to employ, but there are skilled counters to them if you actually invest the time and energy in learning how to play well." aka "git gud scrubs"
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Oct 7, 2016 19:50
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It's interesting because the Regionals data backs up exactly what Orvin says. Namely that if the Rebels wanted to be competitive, they needed to bring Rieeken and a large number of squadrons to make the top tables/win, otherwise Demolishers and Rhymerballs went right over the top of them. Of course, all of this was before Liberty, Interdictor and the Flotillas (BCC!). Fun to note that the Rhymerball archtype was half as likely to finish in the bottom half as the prevalence would suggest which would seem to back up Cobbsprite's assertion that Rhymerballs are relatively easy tactics that require more advanced play to defeat, giving them a substantial edge in the lower skilled engagements. Of course, it's also possible that only the more skilled players took Rhymerball.     
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Oct 8, 2016 04:15
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These numbers are fascinating, and I want to play with them more. I'm curious how specific archetypes matched up. When dissimilar types paired, who won? How did Rieekens fare versus Rhymerballs? What archetype had the highest win percentage against Gladiator lists? What class of ship was most likely to survive a game, which was most likely to get objective tokens? How likely was the player with choice of initiative to win the match? DATA MINING WILL TELL YOU SO MUCH AND SO VERY LITTLE OF IT WILL BE EASILY USEFUL WITHOUT MASSAGING THE DATA
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Oct 8, 2016 08:24
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I tend to think FFG has been trying to compensate for the rebel problems in this game by giving them more and more powerful admirals. Flotillas tend to help imps more than rebs because it gives them dirt cheap activations which help demo/etc. whereas before they had to get more spendy with raiders. I imagine FFG has been really working to make imperial squadrons that don't really want rhymer because it looks like that's what they're going for.
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Oct 8, 2016 14:40
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shalcar posted:It's interesting because the Regionals data backs up exactly what Orvin says. I saw this data as well. To me, a strategy that requires a specific strategy to counter is the definition of unbalanced. It turns the game into each player only has one strategy to play. If you do A, I have to respond with B. If you do C, you can still beat B, but I have to go B all the time because if I see A then its almost an automatic loss. Likewise, having a single general become mandatory to counter him isn't "fixing" the problem. It is just creating very restrictive meta where the game quickly become uninteresting and stale. Even the data shows a fairly large bias to imperials in the top skill levels. This points to the game being more "for the empire to lose" than it does for being the rebels to win. Regardless of overall balance, I would very much venture to say the gladiator/demolisher would be fine if it costs 15-20 points more. It would be less of a "no duh" and more of a trade-off to take it. Currently, even with FFG trying to make counters to it, its still a no-brainer to always take it in a fleet. Even if it gets countered, it is so easy for it to repay its points value. It just has to get in range of literally 1 ship, and it paid for itself. That is the very definition of overpowered, it is obviously the best choice in every situation. The statistics support this, it is the most prevalent ship and has the highest win-rate of any ship, by a fairly large margin. Currently, if you don't take at least one gladiator, then you are not playing to win. Moreover, the existence of that ship makes a lot of rebel ships terrible. Why ever take an MC-30 when it isn't maneuverable enough to avoid a gladiator rush, and it certainly can't survive it. The fact that FFG didn't know what they were doing when they made the gladiator is apparent with the fact that they made the MARK 2 more expensive than the MARK 1. Even my first time playing the game it was clearly obvious that the MARK 2 was clearly worse or no better than the MARK 1. (sure, lets pay extra points for less damage) The ship is simply too cheap for what it is. My first game I saw Rhymer, and was like this poo poo is the most broken thing that I ever saw, lets take it. It can be countered if, but again. The price to counter it is much higher than the price to take it. Why ever not take Rhymer? For the money you were going to spend on squads anyway, you just get a huge bonus. It doesn't matter if your opponent stops them from being super effective, you still probably came out ahead points-wise. Because either they took less ships (re: gladiator) or because you blew up all their A-wings in 1 round or Intel'ed your way out of it because they didn't have enough squads. Again, my problem with these cards is mainly that they are obvious and boring. Their strategy is brain-dead simple compared to other strategies. If I saw similar results, but with a combo that was more complicated and/or harder to pull off then I wouldn't hate it so much. As it stands, the design feels neither interesting nor balanced. (I am just hate posting because I dropped $100+ dollars on a game that my friends and I broke over our knees in 1 session.) twig1919 fucked around with this message at 18:48 on Oct 8, 2016 |
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Oct 8, 2016 18:11
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You people don't know the luck you have to have an Armada community wherever you are. I mean, I live in a two millions strong city, and we are apparently about 15 or 20. And it's the biggest city in my country so it's probzbly even worse anywhere else. 
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Oct 8, 2016 21:23
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twig1919 posted:I saw this data as well. To me, a strategy that requires a specific strategy to counter is the definition of unbalanced. It turns the game into each player only has one strategy to play. If you do A, I have to respond with B. If you do C, you can still beat B, but I have to go B all the time because if I see A then its almost an automatic loss. Likewise, having a single general become mandatory to counter him isn't "fixing" the problem. It is just creating very restrictive meta where the game quickly become uninteresting and stale. Even the data shows a fairly large bias to imperials in the top skill levels. This points to the game being more "for the empire to lose" than it does for being the rebels to win. For what it's worth, I completely agree. The Imperials are absolutely setting the meta for the Rebels to react to and seem to be forcing a certain set-up and strategy in order for them to be competitive, which is a relatively bad state for the game to be in. Of course, the lesser problem is that non-Demo/Rhymer Imperial players seem to have the same problem against them. I'm not sure more powerful admirals are the answer, but then I don't know what the answer is since the opportunity cost is so low. Realistically if they won't "patch" the cards, then they need to have equally low cost silver-bullets which isn't all the interesting either. Maybe an A-wing squadron that removes Intel from all ships at range 1 or something to make the Rhymerball's easier to lock down. I don't really know what the answer could look like and I'm not sure FFG does as well, since these are Core Set cards so they have had plenty of time to resolve the issues. On the other hand, when playing with friends it's a simple fix to just not allow Demolisher or Rhymer. I'm not a huge fan of house-rules for "balance" but it is one solution if you want to get fun out of a purchase that you feel is wrecked because of them.
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Oct 9, 2016 04:31
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if you have an at all friendly relationship with your opponent and you're not playing in a tournament setting you can just ask them to not be a huge fucker. i dislike when players have to balance games for the designers but that's about the best you can do and still make it fun
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Oct 9, 2016 05:45
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shalcar posted:For what it's worth, I completely agree. The Imperials are absolutely setting the meta for the Rebels to react to and seem to be forcing a certain set-up and strategy in order for them to be competitive, which is a relatively bad state for the game to be in. Of course, the lesser problem is that non-Demo/Rhymer Imperial players seem to have the same problem against them. I don't play Armada, but this seems to mesh with the flavour perfectly?
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Oct 12, 2016 21:42
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Moriatti posted:I don't play Armada, but this seems to mesh with the flavour perfectly? I just heard this argument today from someone who is a star wars fan. However, its objectively wrong because its 1) not thematic and 2) not fun. The person who made the comment only played once and is often bad and misguided when it comes to strategy games so he can be forgiven. Don't get me wrong, I love asymmetric game play, but Armada isn't using asymmetric game play. If the imperial ships were indeed meant to be thematically stronger, then the objective cards would reference specific factions in their missions. The objective cards would favor the rebels because it can be assumed that thematically the rebels would only ever fight if they had some important mission or advantage for them to even risk a battle. This is exactly what happened in the movies, the rebels only fought the empire in space combat when they absolutely had to or had a good ambush planned (although it failed). However, the objective cards are pretty boring and bland (a big complaint of the game as well). So the theme doesn't really fit to the idea of differing fleet strengths; instead, the game is just unbalanced. The game just gets rote really quickly when your playing against rando's and you have no choice in what to take if you don't want to get poo poo-stomped. If your playing with friends you can at least agree to not be giant assholes about breaking the game, or house rule things back into somewhat line (usually by increasing point costs). Theme doesn't work if the game itself doesn't work. No one will ever have fun with a broken unplayable game just because it has a good theme (even if they say otherwise they will get sick of it fast). It actually has to be a game worth playing on its own right. twig1919 fucked around with this message at 07:38 on Oct 13, 2016 |
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Oct 13, 2016 07:30
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There's a good chance that playing the corellian campaign will address these issues.
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Oct 13, 2016 14:38
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There's a Hammerhead corvette briefly visible in the new Rogue One trailer, making up part of a rebel fleet, so I'm betting that ship will be in wave 6 whenever they announce it
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Oct 13, 2016 17:27
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gender illusionist posted:There's a good chance that playing the corellian campaign will address these issues. Not in a tournament setting it won't, which is a big part of the problem.
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Oct 13, 2016 17:49
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Some pretty nifty squadrons announced for Corellian Conflict, as well as tournament kit card announcements hitting the page today, I'm hoping we get new info on the next wave of ships soon. https://www.fantasyflightgames.com/en/news/2016/10/25/swm-draw-their-fire/
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Oct 26, 2016 01:31
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Sushi in Yiddish posted:Some pretty nifty squadrons announced for Corellian Conflict, as well as tournament kit card announcements hitting the page today, I'm hoping we get new info on the next wave of ships soon. I am glad to see that FF is realizing that squadrons are underwhelming. I am glad to see cheap versions for rouge. Most of the time when I take a unique squad I just want the rouge ability.
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Oct 27, 2016 17:07
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twig1919 posted:I am glad to see that FF is realizing that squadrons are underwhelming. I am glad to see cheap versions for rouge. Most of the time when I take a unique squad I just want the rouge ability. I'd assume the rouge ability will come with Red Squadron
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Oct 27, 2016 17:16
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blackmongoose posted:I'd assume the rouge ability will come with Red Squadron And maybe Howlrunner, but she seems kinda goth so maybe not.
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Oct 27, 2016 20:40
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Finster Dexter posted:And maybe Howlrunner, but she seems kinda goth so maybe not. According to the article, they are releasing versions of most squads that are the same as the base but they have rouge, for a couple points more than the base.
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Oct 27, 2016 21:47
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twig1919 posted:According to the article, they are releasing versions of most squads that are the same as the base but they have rouge, for a couple points more than the base. Rogue Squadron is, unfortunately, unique, so you only get one, or these would be a compelling alternative to spamming YT2400s for a self-sufficient rebel squadron force.
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Oct 27, 2016 22:30
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twig1919 posted:According to the article, they are releasing versions of most squads that are the same as the base but they have rouge, for a couple points more than the base. Yes, we were making fun of you for spelling ROUGE instead of ROGUE. Rouge is french for Red and also a type of makeup
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Oct 28, 2016 00:17
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