Bikini Battle Basics- Skill, Ability, Action Chart

Bikini Battle Basics is a series of articles here on TheMetalBikini.com where we dissect certain game mechanics to aid in understanding and promote effective application. In short, it's stuff you need to know, but is somewhat obtuse or hard to understand or could just be a topic that warrants further discussion, but doesn't fit directly into a category like Listbuilding, for example. 

So this is one of those things people are either going to think is totally useless or really handy. Me? Well, obviously I think it's really handy. 

I've been messing around with my Regionals lists again and for whatever reason, I've found myself wanting a list of all the Elite Pilot Skills arranged by whether or not they require an Action. 

Predictably, I've gone and made one since I couldn't find one lying around anywhere. 

After I did that, I added in other stuff that also counts as Actions- a couple of droid abilities and the three basic Actions along with Boost and Barrel Roll.  

Yellow are the "icon" actions that are available inherently to ships in X-Wing Miniatures. Red are Actions that actually require you to spend your Perform Action on them. Green are Action type effects that don't require you to actually spend an Action to activate them. 

I can't really say why I didn't include the named pilot abilities or why adding in the rest of the Astromechs doesn't jive with what I "need" out of this list. If enough of y'all want me to, I will add them though. 

Please note that the summaries and notes are just that- not the full card text. Read the appropriate entry in the Listbuilding Resources section for the full monty. 

Sorry if this seems like kind of a short update- I went and played Arkham Horror with the owner of one of my FLGS tonight and it ran rather late. Also, there's going to be another article that will inevitably going up later today anyway. 

Bikini Battle Basics- Things Every X-Wing Player Should Know

Bikini Battle Basics is a series of articles here on TheMetalBikini.com where we dissect certain game mechanics to aid in understanding and promote effective application. In short, it's stuff you need to know, but is somewhat obtuse or hard to understand or could just be a topic that warrants further discussion, but doesn't fit directly into a category like Listbuilding, for example. 

Bikini Battle Basics- Things Every X-Wing Player Should Know

This is one of those articles I've had sitting around in my "drafts" folder for like a month and a half now. It's changed pretty substantially over that time, it started out being "10 Things..." and briefly expanded to "15 Things...", but as I wrote articles on topics like The Three Main Actions , The Damage Deck Explained!, and Obstacles and Asteroids Explained! the list has gotten shorter and shorter and killed any potential 10 Things I Hate About You jokes in the process, which let's be honest, wasn't going to turn out well for any of us anyway. Hell, I might have even had Ion Weapons in there at some point- can't remember for sure now. Probably did. But as I often do, I digress.

As you might imagine, in most of those cases, as I started to write the entry in this list for the above topics, I soon had enough material to make an dedicated article, so that stuff spun off into the articles I've linked to above. 

There were always still a few more though, and as they've been sitting around that dusty old drafts folder for several weeks with no significant changes in the form of additions or subtractions, I figure I'm finally safe to write this article. 

1. When Can I measure/ pre-measure stuff?  

If you think about this for a moment, there are two times you'd want to pre-measure or measure before being committed or whatever in this game- before you move, that is, before you select a maneuver or Action that allows movement, and to see if a target is in range so you may fire when ready.

So which, if either or both, are permissible? 

For shooting, i.e. determining if a target is in range of your weapons or if the target is in your arc, that's always fine according to the rules. The main takeaway here is if you declare a target that turns out to be beyond the range of your weapons, you can still choose another target with no penalty. It's also totally cool to measure with one weapon system, realize your target is out of range, then decide to fire another weapon system at that same target, or pick a different one using either weapon system on it- whatever. 

For moving your ship, there's a little more to it than that, but not a lot really. 

In the rule book on page 6, it says, "... During the Planning phase, players canot use maneuver templates in order to "test" where ships will end up." 

Breaking that down, it does just what it says- you can't stick a template down on the board to make sure you're going to avoid an Obstacle with a particular maneuver in your Planning Phase. 

As for Actions that produce movement outside of the Execute Maneuver step, and therefore aren't really married to the Planning Phase, of course this is totally kosher. In fact, as the rules says you can't Barrel Roll or Boost into another ship or an Obstacle, you have to "pre-measure" before hand to ensure you won't violate that rule. 

The only grey area I've seen folks talking about on forums is whether or not a player can pre-measure a Daredevil maneuver. If you recall, Daredevil is kind of strange in that it's a Maneuver that occurs in the Perform Action step (all the other moves during Perform Action are termed Actions). In my mind, the using a template to pre-measure is more linked to the Planning Phase than anything else, so I think you can go ahead and use a template to pre-measure Daredevil, personally although there is some room for debate or ambiguity, I suppose. 

I think the main thing to remember here is X-Wing Miniatures isn't a "Gotcha!" type game like 40k is when it comes to stuff like this. You can pretty much try whatever you want, whenever you want, barring of course laying down a maneuver template in the Planning Phase as mentioned above so it's more about making a smart decision rather than penalizing you for making a wrong one. 

2. Initiative- What is it, do I have it, what's it good for? 
The rule book defines and discusses Initiative on page 16, but to answer the three main questions people have regarding Initiative- 

What is it? It's a way of resolving timing conflicts. If you and your opponent both have Pilots at the same Pilot Skill, whoever holds the Initiative activates all of his Pilots with that Pilot Skill value first. In other words, the guy with initiative will maneuver and do his Perform Action step before the other player. 

When the Combat Phase rolls around, the guy with Initiative will resolve his combat steps before the other guy. I know. I used to get that mixed up too. 

Additionally, the book says if there are multiple abilities resolving at the same time, the guy with Initiative resolves his first. I'll be honest, I can't actually think of a scenario in which that would occur, but if/ when it does, the guy holding Initiative would resolve first. 

Do I have it? It depends. If both players spent the same amount of points on their lists and you're the Imperial player, then yeah- you have Initiative. If the two players didn't spend the same amount of points, the guy who spent less on his list has Initiative, regardless of Faction. 

EDIT: Bikini Aficionado Marty Ellenberger pointed out in the comments that Initiative works a little differently in Tournaments than above- in Tourneys, there's no tie goes to the Imperials stipulation- the player with the lower point total has Initiative as usual, but if there is a tie between the players' point totals, the Tournament Rules say it goes to the winner of a coin toss. 

What's it good for? Well, that's definitely a matter of opinion. Obviously there are uses for Initiative  but the real question to me boils down to, "If I'm eyeing a one-point upgrade, do I take it or leave it hoping to get Initiative?" 

Well, it depends on your list, of course. If that one point is going to get somebody and R2 Astromech and you really feel like you could use the extra green maneuvers, then I'd say to hell with the Initiative and spend the point. If you're just looking to add Determination for the hell of it, maybe hold onto it and secure Initiative. 

I don't think I've ever had any good or bad experiences with Initiative either way. In general, I think most folks made way too big of a deal out of it in the beginning, then as we got games under our belts, we realized it wasn't that big of a deal and stopped worrying about it. Now that everyone is like, "Meh- whatever", towards Initiative it might be the time to start securing it again. It does have some tangible benefits after all, and who knows- it might be the difference in Han firing on Soontir Fel or Vader instead of the other way around. 

3. Conflicting Rules
This one isn't really spelled out explicitly anywhere I'm aware of, but we do have a bit of a precedence from the X-Wing FAQ. 

From the Upgrade Cards heading on page 3 of the FAQ:  


Q: If two or more game effects conflict in 
changing the difficulty of a maneuver, which 
effect takes priority?
A: An effect that increases the difficulty of a maneuver 
takes priority over an effect that decreases the 
difficulty. For example, if a ship equipped with R2 
Astromech is dealt the Damaged Engine card, all 
of the ship’s turn maneuvers are treated as red 
maneuvers, including the 1- and 2-speed turn 
maneuvers.


You'll see people talk about stuff like, "the worst of two possibilities" when it comes to conflicting rules debates on forums and stuff. That's kind of not entirely accurate. What we've actually got here is a situation where two cards change the difficultly of a maneuver, and in this situation the FAQ says the effect that increases the difficulty takes precedence. That's it.  

4. What's the difference between "Large" ships and everything else? 
Well, first, as of the time of this writing, there are two "Large" ships in X-Wing Miniatures- the YT-1300 and the Firespray-31. Nevermind any rumor stuff about those being medium ships or whatever, if you look at the little pamphlet that was included with those two ships, they're both termed "Large." 

The pamphlet calls out three main things to keep in mind with Large ships- Ion Tokens, Overlapping, and Setup. To be honest, you really only need to know the first one and the last one- Overlapping works exactly the same way it always does- just with a bigger base in play.  

When it comes to Ion Tokens, a Large ship takes two (or more, I guess) Ion Tokens to trigger the Ion Weapon card text. If a Large ship only has one Ion Token, there's no effect. If you do end up with two Ion Tokens on your Large ship, after you run through the rules on the Ion Weapon card, you discard both Ion Tokens. 

Ok, all well and good, but what about that part in the pamphlet that says, "A large ship is unaffected by a single ion token; the ion token simply remains assigned to the ship."- does that mean Large ships can't get rid of Ion Tokens unless they get Ionized- i.e. from a second successful Ion hit? 

Well, yeah. I'm pretty sure it means exactly that, actually. I can't find any other way mentioned anywhere in the rules, FAQ, Ion Card text, or Large ship pamphlet that states anything about otherwise ridding yourself of a single Ion Token, can you? That's me actually asking the question, not me being a smart ass. It can be hard to tell the difference sometimes. 

As for Setup, rather than extend the standard "deployment zone" for X-Wing past Range 1 of your own board edge, they simply decided that Large ships' bases may extend past the designated setup area so long as no part of the Large ship's base is outside the play area (i.e. off-table) in doing so and it fills the length of the area. 

That sounds kinda convoluted, doesn't it? What's it really mean? 

More or less it boils down to if you don't want to have your base square with your table edge, that's ok as long as your Large ship's base is filling the entire Range 1 deployment area. In other words, you can't deploy your ship square to the table edges with the rear edge of the base just a tiny bit inside your deployment zone. If you want to stick your base out over the edge of your DZ, it has to fill the entire DZ, or put another way- one of your corners better be touching the table edge. 

5. How many moves does it take a ship that can move at a Straight 5 to get across the board? 

Dig on the above picture. Scary, innit? Tape measure included so you know I'm not showing this example on a piece of felt that's less than 36" wide. 

Bikini Battle Basics- The Three Main Actions

Bikini Battle Basics is a series of articles here on TheMetalBikini.com where we dissect certain game mechanics to aid in understanding and promote effective application. In short, it's stuff you need to know, but is somewhat obtuse or hard to understand or could just be a topic that warrants further discussion, but doesn't fit directly into a category like Listbuilding, for example. 

The Three Main Actions- Focus, Evade, and Target Lock

It's always kind of bothered me that I've gone to such great lengths talking about the Elite Pilot Skills, which in many cases are Actions that you've paid points for, and made statements like "ships without an Action get dealt with", but never really discussed the Actions that will make up the bulk of most X-Wing Miniatures lists- the three main ones: Focus, Evade, and Target Lock.

Now, I know, I know- a lot of you guys are waaaay past this article. I understand, but I can tell you from the search engine referrals I get here on TheMetalBikini.com, there are still a lot of new faces wandering into the bar every day, and while many of y'all are pickled barflies when it comes to a topic like this, I'm still serving up a lot of virgin pina coladas and Shirley Temples, if you take my meaning. 

Hyperbolic statements about the importance of not losing your Perform Action step aside, let's take a look at base Actions that are available to most ships in X-Wing. 

I came close to including Barrel Roll in this thing, as it's an Action that's detailed in the rule book, but frankly, there aren't enough ships that have it stock as an Action to be included in an article like this. I know, kind of any ship can have it via Expert Handling, but I just don't see enough pilots take that for me to really buy into that line of thinking. If enough folks really feel like I'm short-changing them by not including it, I'll edit it in, so let me know what you think. 


Focus
Usage in game: Changes any rolled eyeball die results to a filled explosion die results (a "hit" in local parlance) while attacking, changes any rolled eyeball die results to wavy lines (an evade) while defending. 
Availability: Every ship in the game
Offense or Defense: Both
Removed during End Phase: Yes

Focus is a brilliant fence-sitter Action because you can choose to use it either trying to shoot somebody or when somebody tries to shoot you; declaring a Focus, you leave your options open either way, which having an option as contextual as that is huge. It is likely to be your most used Action on just about any ship lacking a more specialized Action available because of an Elite Pilot Skill. If you're a beginner level player, I'd suggest Focusing by default any time you get the chance. 

If you take out an Attack die and examine it closely, you see how much more likely your attack is to hit by using Focus over just rolling the die stock. The Attack die has 3 hit (local parlance) symbols and 1 crit (ditto) symbol on it, so stock, you've got a 50% chance of rolling something that will generate a hit if left uncancelled by the defender. If you Focus that Attack roll, you still have those 4 faces and gain the two eyeball symbols as well, improving your odds of generating some sort of hit from 50% to 75%. Not bad! Essentially the two blank faces are the only things that screw you if you've Focused your Attack roll. 

Using it for a Defense boost works in a similar manner. The green die has only 3 wavy arrows on it, so with no modifier, you're statistically only going to roll an Evade 37.5% of the time. Not great odds. However, if you tack a Focus onto that, you get to count the two additional eyeball faces, improving your odds to Evade from 37.5% to 62.5%. Again- a pretty significant improvement! 

My statements about losing your Perform Action step don't seem so hyperbolic now, do they? :) 

Last bit about Focusing- it's not considered a re-roll, it's considered to be a change or modification, so stuff that doesn't allow re-rolling can still be Focused. Long story long, yeah, it's perfectly acceptable to Focus a Target Locked Attack roll and not violate the "no re-rolling re-rolled dice" rule. This was kind of my lightbulb moment playing X-Wing in a little 25-point beginner tournament my FLGS offered back in October or early November. Of course, I didn't figure it out until my third and last game of the mini-tournament, but once I did, it was like, ohmaigerd! It makes a difference for sure and you'd be crazy not to capitalize on it any chance you get. 


Evade
Usage in game: Hit (rulebook sense) cancelling 
Availability: TIE Fighters, TIE Advanced, TIE Interceptors, A-Wing, Firespray-31, YT-1300 via the Millennium Falcon Title
Offense or Defense: Defense 
Removed during End Phase: Yes. 

Evade effectively gives you an extra green Defense die that automatically rolls a wavy arrow result. This is a good thing because the stock Defense die only has 3 wavy arrows on it, as previously mentioned. 

Is it better to Evade or Focus; that is the question. As I've said on here many times, I'm no math whiz. I've never taken stats or even had probability formally presented to me in my academic career (which should give you a pretty good insight into my level of commitment when it came to securing higher education as a brash, young man and why I always find my real jobs fairly unsatisfactory- stay in school kids!). So while I'm sure there's a way to mathematically ascertain that one is better than the other (which will likely to be presented to me in the comments very soon after this article goes up), for me, it's about the context. 

The first criteria I use to make my Focus v Evade decision is- am I likely to get shot at in this Combat Phase? If that's a no, and I have an opposing ship I can fire on, then I'm going Focus, no question about it. If the answer to the first question is a yes, then I try to ascertain how badly that ship's likely to hurt me. If the answer is not much, or I'm unlikely to incur so much damage that my ship will be removed, I stick with Focus. If however I'm likely to get shot at, and it's likely to destroy me, and I need to have that ship on the table still, I'm going to Evade. 

TL;DR version- I usually Focus instead of Evade unless in some very specific circumstances. 

There's probably a Dos Equis ad in that statement somewhere, but it's eluding me (Evading me? Haw, haw!) at the moment, so instead, I present to you my favorite Roberto Luongo parody Dos Equis ad. 

Target Lock
Usage in game: Re-roll attack dice of your choosing
Availability: X-Wing, Y-Wing, A-Wing, YT-1300, TIE Advanced, Firespray-31
Offense or Defense: Offense
Removed during End Phase: No.

A lot of the time, beginning X-Wing players think that Target Locks are only good for being the prerequisite to firing off a salvo or torpedoes or missiles. While they're good for that, they're also worthwhile in a normal, Primary Weapon situation too. 

Acquiring a Target Lock isn't quite automatic like declaring a Focus or an Evade, however. You have to pick a target that's in Range 1-3 of you, but that target does not have to be within your firing arc just to select him as the target of your Target Lock (I know that reads clunky, but intended recipient sounds even worse, and victim doesn't quite convey the meaning I want it to).  Also bear in mind how this actually goes down- the ship you Target Lock could very well move away from you in his movement phase if he's of a higher Pilot Skill than your Target Locking ship; that's fine- your Target Lock still stays in effect. Once you've got it, it sticks around until you either use it to modify an Attack roll, and as I mentioned last week- turns out that yeah, you can burn it and choose not to actually re-roll any dice or decide to abandon it simply by TL'ing another ship. 

Target Lock when used with a Primary Weapon allows you to re-roll any dice you want, which is pretty nice as if you've got a Focus token to burn, you can pick up just the blanks you've rolled and keep the eyeball, hit, and crit results, or if you have no Focus token, you can choose to re-roll everything but your hits and crits (local for both). 

As trying to get them both is something of a no-brainer, the real question is if you can only get one this game turn, which one do you pick? 

For me, there's a selection process kinda like Evade, but the main difference here is I try and gauge how likely I am to destroy the other ship as my main determinant. If I need the TL to make sure every shot hits because that's likely to grease that ship I usually do it. If that's unlikely to happen and/ or I'm going to get fired on by multiple ships before the end of the game turn, I'll probably fall back on Focus as usual. 

Bikini Battle Basics- The Damage Deck Explained!

Bikini Battle Basics is a new series here on TheMetalBikini.com where we dissect certain game mechanics to aid in understanding and promote effective application. In short, it's stuff you need to know, but is somewhat obtuse or hard to understand and warrants further discussion, but don't fit directly into a category like Listbuilding, for example. 

The Damage Deck

I've mentioned a few times in my Wave 2 breakdowns that one of the currently overlooked ways to try and deal with a big ship, is to try and inflict some Critical Damage, which is local parlance for a face-up Damage card. 

That sounds good on paper and all, but how significant are the face-up cards, really? Are they actually a valid way to mitigate someone's Exposing Chewie Falcon or a Marksmanship Han or Kath or Trelix or you should just stick with the notion of packing enough missiles to blow them out of the sky quickly? 


To put this another way, why didn't we see this or talk about Critical Damage more in Wave 1? Why did so many people say crits sucked (which of course took Proton Torpedoes along for the ride as well)? More importantly, why did they seem to be right?

Well, because they kind of did. 

Think back to your Wave 1 games, did you have many matches where you were dealing with the effects of a Critical Damage card for more than a game turn or two? I don't think I did- I hardly ever got them to start with- usually I'd just get blown up outright instead, or gunned down the very next turn. In all likelihood, if you got yourself a crit, you had 1, maybe 2 hull points left and it didn't take long for your opponent to finish you off once you were down that low, especially dealing with whatever penalty you'd just incurred from the face-up card. 

That's changed now. The Falcon has 8 Hull and a Firespray has 6. There's a good chance that both of those ships will be operational far past just a turn or two once their shields are gone, unlike a starfighter. 

I decided regardless of the validity of strategy in Wave 2, it was high time to take a much closer look at the X-Wing Miniatures Damage deck, so without further adieu, let's talk about (Damage) decks, baby. 

All right, so first off, you've got 33 cards in a Damage deck. If after reading that you're thinking to yourself, "But, oh. Uh, I, uh, bought two Core Sets and since I only ever play with my brother, we, uh, mixed up-" 

Just stop right there. Combining two Damage decks isn't tournament legal or even rules legal, and while in the grand scheme of things, I guess you're not really changing the odds of what you're going to pull, the reality is, of course, you just have increased the amount of all the possible cards in your deck. Does this make a difference? Well.... yeah. An 8-ship TIE Swarm can't possibly get Direct Hits on every single ship (as there are only 7 instances of that card), but if you stuck two damage decks together that could happen quite easily. Through the course of this article, I'll be mentioning all the cards that go in a Damage deck and the amounts of each, so just pay attention and fix your deck to match what would be in a standard deck if necessary. 

Right. So of the 33 total cards, you'll notice they're broken down into two categories: Ship and Pilot. Let's go through the Pilot cards first. 

There's actually only 4 different Pilot cards. We get 8 total cards because there are 4 pairs each of 2 duplicate cards. The 4 Pilot cards are Blinded Pilot, Damaged Cockpit, Injured Pilot, and Stunned Pilot. Generally speaking, Pilot cards are going to produce effects that minimize or subvert abilities and Actions associated to the ship's pilot as opposed to the ship itself. I'm not going to do a complete, TMB-style breakdown for each one, discussing impacts on each particular pilot, but I'll give you the card text at least, for the sake of discussion. 

Note that a face-up Damage card still counts as 1 Damage (unless otherwise noted, of course), so you have the effect of the card text and the 1 Damage applied to your ship if/ when you receive a face-up Damage card. I know that y'all all know that, just making sure. 

Pilot Cards
Blinded Pilot- The next time you attack, do not roll any attack dice. Then flip this card face down.
Damaged Cockpit- After the round in which you receive this card, treat your pilot skill as "0." 
Injured Pilot- Al players must ignore your pilot ability and all of your <Elite Pilot Skill icon> Upgrade cards. 
Stunned Pilot- After you execute a maneuver that causes you to overlap either another ship or an obstacle token, suffer 1 damage. 

Critical Damage Pilot cards are going to have a much more significant effect on the named Pilots than generic no-names, and the higher the PS, usually the worse the effect seems. Getting an Injured Pilot on Han, for example, is a good way to stop your opponent from making "Han Shoots First" jokes all day. Damaged Cockpit on a Gold Squadron Pilot or Rookie Pilot likely won't have much actual effect at all. 

The Pilot Cards out of the way, of course leaves the Ship cards. Like Pilot cards, they're all pairs of cards too- there are only 10 unique Critical Damage Ship cards. 


Ship Cards
Direct Hit- This card counts as 2 damage against your hull. Also note there are 7 copies of this card in a Damage deck.
Damaged Engine- Treat all turn (not bank, just turn) maneuvers as red maneuvers.
Munitions Failure- Immediately choose 1 of your secondary weapon Upgrade cards and discard it. Then flip this Damage card face down. 
Thrust Control Fire- Immediately receive 1 stress token. Then flip this card face down. 
Minor Hull Breach- After executing a red maneuver, roll 1 attack die. On a <hit> result, suffer 1 damage. Then flip this card face down.
Minor Explosion- Immediately roll 1 attack die. On a <hit> result, suffer 1 damage. Then flip this card face down. 
Console Fire- At the start of each Combat phase, roll 1 attack die. On a <hit> result, suffer 1 damage. Action: Flip this card face down. 
Structural Damage- Reduce your agility value by 1 to a minimum of "0". Action: Roll 1 attack die. On a <hit> result, flip this card face down. 
Weapon Malfunction- Reduce your primary weapon value by 1 (to a minimum of "0"). Action: Roll 1 Attack die. On a <hit> or <crit> result, flip this card face down. 
Damaged Sensor Array- You cannot perform the actions listed in your action bar. Action: Roll 1 attack die. On a <hit> result, flip this card face down. 

Right, if you look closely, you'll see I've listed these Ship cards in something of an order. 

The first two entries, the dreaded Direct Hit and Damaged Engine, are both bad things. There's no option to Action: them away or flip a card or any of that hoo ha- just bad. End of. 

Of course, there are six copies of Direct Hit in a Damage deck, so you've got almost the same odds of pulling that as your Damage card as you do rolling a 6 on a six-sided die. It'll probably come up if you're running a big ship that gets down to hull early in the game. Just hope it doesn't happen multiple times to the same ship. 

The next four entries are all "do something, blah, blah, then flip this card face down", meaning that after their initial effect, they just become standard damage cards. The first two of these four, Munitions Failure and Thrust Control Fire have no random chance element associated with them- you discard a Secondary Weapon System or invoke a Stress Token respectively, then they just become standard damage. The next two, you roll an Attack die to see what happens next. Note that in this context, when it says to roll a hit (filled explosion symbol), that's actually what you do need to roll- a crit (unfilled explosion symbol) doesn't trigger anything special. Basically, it's a probability thing rather than an actual damage thing- FFG wants you to have a 3/8 chance of doing whatever, so they said for us to use an Attack die and look for filled explosion symbols, ya dig? 

The last four entries are all semi-permanent bad things you can get rid of, or at least attempt to get rid of, by spending an Action messing around with them. All four of these cards, Console Fire, Structural Damage, Weapon Malfunction, and Damaged Sensor Array have the potential to be pretty terrible for you, Console Fire and Damaged Sensor Array being slightly worse than Structural Damage and Weapon Malfunction as there are contexts where losing a point of Agility is kind of not that big of a deal (you have a ship like an A-Wing or Interceptor with a high Agility to start with and/ or many maneuvers and Actions available to help mitigate) or a die off your Primary Weapon Attack value (a ship like a Y-Wing with an Ion Cannon or Firespray with HLC or Ion Cannon as all those weapons are Secondaries and wouldn't be bothered). Losing all the Actions in your Action Bar is going to always suck however, as will rolling to see if you take damage at the start of the Combat Phase every turn until you actually do. Unless you're in a really tight spot, or you've got one of those above situations that kind of minimizes the effect of the card on your particular ship, you're usually better off trying to Action that effect away as soon as possible- multiple times if necessary.

Taking all of the above information into account, is finding a way to reliably inflict criticals on big ships worth it in Wave 2? That's up to you (and quite possibly the topic of another TMB article... hmmm...), but from what I've seen so far, there are a lot of Wave 2 lists that feature the big ships with named pilots, and with those two criteria filled, I think a pretty compelling case could be made for the idea. 


EDIT: Bikini Aficionado Forensicus added a couple of pretty useful links in the Comments section I wanted to make permanently part of this article for folks who maybe don't read all the way down to the comments section- 

The very nice mr. Will Balvanz have made this ledger of all the Crit Damages in the Damage Deck: http://teamcovenant.com/wbalvanz/files/2013/03/Damage-Deck.pdf

And someone at AFM have made this "Damage Deck" and Squad List check list for tourney use: http://www.mediafire.com/view/?631l9n3qn3bdazb

Both are pretty handy in the context of this article. Check them out!

Bikini Battle Basics- Obstacles and Asteroids Explained!

Bikini Battle Basics is a new series here on TheMetalBikini.com where we dissect certain game mechanics to aid in understanding and promote effective application. In short, it's stuff you need to know, but is somewhat obtuse or hard to understand and warrants further discussion, but don't fit directly into a category like Listbuilding, for example. 

Obstacles and Asteroids

All right. So first, technically, yeah- asteroids are obstacles in X-Wing Miniatures. I just figured if I titled this post, BBB- Obstacles, folks wouldn't know what I was talking about as everyone in my neck of the woods simply refer to the tokens as asteroids. Currently, they're the only obstacles, but that may change down the road, obviously. 

Obstacles are discussed in the X-Wing Miniatures Rule Book towards the back on page 20. There's really only a few things you need to understand about obstacles- initial placement, effects on ships that collide with them, and effects on ships trying to shoot past them. Like in real life, they can have some devastating effects on your game if you're not careful. 

Initial Placement of Obstacles
Initial placement is simple enough- in most dogfight games without special house rules, specific tournament rules, or scenario rules, you and your buddy each get three and you take turns placing them starting with the Imperial player (note I'm not leaving off a bit about initiative that's usually there, it's not mentioned in my rules; just says "Imperial Player"- you'll see why in a sec.). The only rules here is that you can't place an Obstacle within Range 1-2 of any edge of the play area. After you're finished with placement, the Rebel player gets to choose which side of the table he deploys from. I find lots of references on forums regarding setting up asteroids to make it tougher on your opponent. It makes me wonder if these folks know something I don't, or they've forgotten the bit about the Rebel player getting to pick his table edge.


Obstacles and Maneuvering & Actions
As you'd expect, Obstacles affect ships that overlap them kinda like when you overlap another ship. Ships that execute a maneuver where either the ship's base or the movement template overlap an Obstacle lose their Perform Action step and have to roll an Attack die. If that die comes up a hit or crit (local parlance), then the ship suffers that damage (as per usual- against shields if they have them, against Hull if not, etc., etc.). One thing that bit me in the KRT- if you mange to land your base on top of one of the bigger Obstacles, you'll likely hit it again when you attempt to maneuver off of it because your template will overlap the Obstacle again, which of course triggers the usual effects I just mentioned above again. 

Note the main thing that trips folks up here (including me at the KRT) is that it doesn't have to be the ship's base doing the overlapping- if you lay down a movement template and it overlaps the Obstacle, you invoke the penalties for bonking into one. I totally thought it only mattered if my base hit it, but nope- template too!

Also notice that you don't move your ship back along the template if you overlap an Obstacle like you do when you overlap a ship. Your ship still executes the maneuver you picked on your dial (or was picked for you by an Ion). I've seen folks mess this up too. Don't be that guy. 

Another thing I see that confuses people is whether or not they can use Actions if they hit an Obstacle. The text says you lose your Perform Action step, but what effect does that have on Free Actions, pilots that get an Action Token if they pull a particular maneuver, or pilots who dish tokens to other ships? 

If you look it up, the Perform Action step is step 6 of the Activation phase which the rule book describes as: 

The ship may perform one action. Actions provide a wide range of benefits and are described on pages 8-9. A ship with one or more stress tokens cannot perform actions (see Stress on page 17). 

So what's that mean exactly? 

Well first, you can't declare an Action with that particular ship this turn. Doesn't matter if it's out of your Action bar or something you've bought as an upgrade. That part pretty much everyone gets right, but it can get complicated really quickly with Free Actions and Action Tokens being passed around, so what's the story?  

If you're dished an Action Token, like a Focus from Garven Dreis or Lando, or a Target Lock from Dutch Vander, you're home free right off the bat. Remember what I talked about in the Multiple Actions, Single Actions Explained! article? Most of that applies here too- namely the part about spending an Action Token not actually being the Action. Same goes for guys who get a token if they do a particular maneuver, incur a Stress token, etc. Just be aware that some movement methods (like Boost) don't actually allow you to execute that movement into an Obstacle, so it may actually be a moot point in some specific cases. 

What about Free Actions though? Like if somebody with Squad Leader is flying around near the guy who dinged the Obstacle? Can he pass along a Free Action? The answer here is yes. Remember a Free Action is simply an Action that doesn't count against the "one Action per turn" quota, but the rest of that sentence (from the top of page 8) reads, 

"If an ability allows a ship to perform a "free action" this action does not count as the one action allowed during the Perform Action step." 

Long story short, if a Free Action doesn't count as the Action in the Perform Action step, then it doesn't happen in the Perform Action step (usually, it happens in somebody else's Perform Action step than the ship that ends up being the recipient of the Free Action). A little bit of reading into the rule there, but that's what the official FAQ says, so that's how it works. 

EDIT: Wanted to add some content to this section from feedback in the comments below. 

A question was asked regarding Barrel Rolling and Obstacles with some Squad Leader Free Action thrown in for good measure. 

To answer this question brings up some other good points about Obstacles and Actions (as opposed to Maneuvers), so I wanted to highlight it a bit here. 

First, to answer the questions- No, Yes. 

Here's why- 

No Attack roll gets made to see if the TIE damages itself for moving off the Obstacle because the whole template overlap trigger deal only happens with Maneuvers, not Actions. As Barrel Roll (or Boost, for that matter) is an Action, that criteria doesn't apply here. To answer a possible derivative question down the road, no, there's really no way an Attack roll could happen because you can't legally Barrel Roll (or Boost) if your ship's base is going to end up on an Obstacle- you just pick another Action (if possible) to perform instead. 

Second part, the TIE can now fire because the rules reference being on top of an Obstacle in the Combat Phase for that ship. As the TIE in AMike's question has moved off via the Squad Leader Action from Vader (which must have happened before the TIE's Combat Phase because of Vader's Pilot Skill 9- i.e. when he'd have passed it) and is no longer overlapping in the Combat Phase, he's completely free to Attack another ship this round. xad5xhytg  <-- my oldest just ran up and hit a bunch of keys on the keyboard while I was writing this. 

Big ups to Rules Gangsta and Bikini Aficionado Marty Ellenberger for keeping a brotha on point. 

Obstacles and Combat
First, understand that an intervening Obstacle (just like ships), even one that denies you line-of-sight, never completely denies you a shot on your target as long as you're not touching it. I've seen some folks claim they're completely obscured by an Obstacle- not in this game you're not. We ain't playin' 40k here, boys- no camping!

What does happen is the defender can possibly get an extra green die if the shortest path between the base of the Attacker and the base of the Defender (i.e. the Range Rule) overlaps an Obstacle. If that happens, the Defender gets a green die. 

This got FAQ'ed a little bit in reference to the width of the X-Wing Miniatures range ruler. If it's an issue, like the ruler only partially overlaps the obstacle, turn the ruler on its side and use the skinny edge to draw the shortest path between the bases and see if you overlap, and use the rule as appropriate.  

Last bit, and really I'm just drawing attention to something I just mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago- if you're overlapping an Obstacle in the Combat Phase, you can't attack any ship. However, and I've seen people miss this second part before, so pay attention, the overlapping ship may be targeted as usual by other ships. 99% sure we played this wrong at my local FLGS Kessel Run as I seem to remember me attempting to do this on purpose to deny shots and hopefully force a fly-by of the TIE Swarm I was facing. Karma works though- I lost my last Hull point on the collision with the asteroid. 

So there ya go- simple, right? Now go play!

Bikini Battle Basics- Ion Weapons Explained!

Bikini Battle Basics is a new series here on TheMetalBikini.com where we dissect certain game mechanics to aid in understanding and promote effective application. In short, it's stuff you need to know, but is somewhat obtuse or hard to understand and warrants further discussion, but don't fit directly into a category like Listbuilding, for example. 

Ion Weapons

I just recently realized I've been playing Ions wrong from basically the start, which while disappointing to be sure, I think will turn out to be a good thing in the long run, at least for the purposes of TheMetalBikini.com and readers like you. 

After my incorrect rule interpretation was brought to light, I wondered how many other people have been playing it wrong as well. Not trying to sound egocentric or anything- I hope that doesn't come off as, "Oh, well if I've got it wrong, everyone else must too" as that's not my intention. The fact of the matter is though, I wrote the Ion Cannon Turret post with my previous (in other words, incorrect) understanding of the rule quite a while back and none of y'all called me on it. Don't bother clicking on it now and trying to find where I screwed it up- I've fixed it. And yeah, I realized all of this before I posted Ion Cannon, so don't bother. :) 

Secondly, there's the matter of the rule being written with some rather ambiguous language. The rule isn't exactly 100% straightforward to begin with, so it's rather easy to see how and why so many people have gotten this rule wrong. 

So what's the story with Ion Weapons? You've got two groups of rules, essentially- the card text on the Ion Weapon cards themselves (Ion Cannon Turret and Ion Cannon) and the Ion Token card. The weapon cards explain how to inflict an Ion Token upon some poor sap, the Ion Token card, as you might expect, explains what that means exactly when a ship ends up with one. 

First, let's look at the text on the Ion Cannon Turret and Ion Cannon cards. The text is virtually identical save for an inconsistency where the ICT talks about the target ship and the IC which talks about the defender. I'm comfortable saying they're virtually identical, other than the bit on the turret card being able to fire at stuff outside the firing arc. The text is as follows: 

If this attack hits the target ship/ defender, the ship suffers 1 damage and receives 1 ion token. Then cancel all dice results. 

Ok, so first, the word "hit" is an official rulebook sense of the word "hit", not the local parlance for a attack die result that looks like a filled in explosion symbol. For more info on that, check out the Bikini Battle Basics- Combat Phase Explained!. To sum up succinctly, if after cancellation you've got at least one hit on your target, he suffers one damage and gets an ion token. 

What effect does this Ion Token have on the target? Does it have an immediate effect besides the 1 Damage? 

Well, yes and no. He does immediately gets the token, but it doesn't really have any effect until after this round ends- that is, he can still use any Action Tokens he has in play and shoot as normal for the rest of this game round. 

As soon as the End Phase is complete, ending that game round, a new round begins with another Planning Phase. That's when you pick up all your movement dials and start selecting the maneuvers for your ships. The guy that has the ship with the Ion Token though doesn't select a maneuver on his dial though- he now has some sparkly new special rules to adhere to. This is when the text on the Ion Token actually invokes some effects. The Ion Token card text is as follows... 

Drum roll, please. 

Drum roll. 

1. Planning Phase: The owner does not assign a maneuver dial to this ship. Yes, this is the only way I know of to keep somebody from dropping Seismic Charges out the back of a Firespray. 

2. Activation Phase: The owner moves the ship as if it were assigned a white 1 straight maneuver. After executing this maneuver, remove all ion tokens from the ship. It may perform Actions as normal. 

3. Combat Phase: The ship may attack as normal. 

So that's it. 

The only other thing worth mentioning about Ion Tokens is you need two of them on a YT-1300 or Firespray to ionize it as they're large ships. 

As I've alluded to before, an ion shot in and of itself isn't bad, especially on some super maneuverable, super dangerous enemy, but the time you really want to get an ion shot in is on a ship with a Stress Token. As Ion Token card point number 2 forces them into making a white maneuver instead of a green one, they keep the Stress Token and therefore can't declare an Action this turn. That's good stuff right there. 

Bikini Battle Basics- The Combat Phase Explained!

Bikini Battle Basics is a new series here on TheMetalBikini.com where we dissect certain game mechanics to aid in understanding and promote effective application. In short, it's stuff you need to know, but is somewhat obtuse or hard to understand and warrants further discussion, but don't fit directly into a site category like Listbuilding, for example. 

I've seen a lot of questions on rules forums about weapons, ability effects, and face-up Damage card text that can be resolved by simply taking a really close look at the Combat Phase. As I'm not immune to stuff like this either (I just figured out last week when writing up that article on the Ion Cannon that I've actually been playing Ion Weapons wrong), I thought perhaps a Bikini Battle Basics- The Combat Phase was in order. 

Before you start reading, bear in mind, what we call hits and crits when we roll the dice are not actually hits and crits. I think this is where a lot of folks get confused with rules and card text. Hits and crits (local parlance) are simply filled explosion symbol results (what most folks call hits) and unfilled explosion symbol results (what we call crits) until Step 6, so throw the hits and crits thing out the window for now.

Just realize if you haven't already, if I say "local parlance", I'm talking about what people say (i.e. die results, not a rules defined "hit"), otherwise when I use the term "hit" I'm talking about what the rules say. 

Clear as mud? Ok, let's go.

The part in the rulebook we're looking at is the Combat Phase, page 10-13.

1. Declare Target
Ok. Right. Pretty standard stuff here, the only thing I'd draw attention to is not being able to target an enemy ship you overlapped in the maneuver phase that's still touching you. Also note that you're totally fine pre-measuring to see if your intended target falls within the range of your weapon at no penalty (meaning if he's out of range, you can still choose to fire on somebody else this turn that's in range, in arc, etc.). 

2. Roll Attack Dice
K. Determine the attack value of the weapon you want to fire, pick up that many red dice, drop them on the table. Simple enough. Remember if you're at Range 1, you roll one extra die unless you're using a Secondary Weapon System (in which case, you get no extra dice- no soup for you).

3. Modify Attack Dice
This is where you can spend action tokens and resolve abilities that re-roll or otherwise modify attack dice results. I don't think it could happen in Wave 1, but in Wave 2, there are some defender abilities that resolve against the attack dice. If you're in a situation where both the attacker and defender have abilities that modify the attack dice, the defender resolves his modifications first, then the attacker resolves his.

4. Roll Defense Dice

Defender rolls number of defense dice equal to his ship's Agility value. He gets an extra green die if he's at Range 3 from you (unless you're firing on him with a Secondary Weapon System), or there's an obstacle between y'all. I'm going to write up a BBB on asteroids/ obstacles in the next day or two where I'll talk about this more in-depth, but for now, if the shortest path between your base and his base (which is how the "Determining Range" rule works) crosses an obstacle, he gets an extra green die. 

5. Modify Defense Dice
Same deal as attack, but for the defender this time- spend those Action tokens if you've got them and you want to use them. Also note if both the attacker and defender have abilities that resolve against the defense roll, the attacker's abilities resolve first, then the defender's. 

6. Compare Results

This is where the die result cancellation actually happens and is the first time the word "hit" is actually used in this context. Note when cancelling, Evade results and tokens are applied to filled explosion symbols (hits, in the local parlance) before the unfilled explosion symbols (crits). 


7. Deal Damage
If the defender was successfully hit (official rules definition) by the attacker, he loses shield tokens (if applicable) and/ or receives Damage cards based on the damage it suffers- uncancelled filled explosions result in a Damage card, uncancelled unfilled explosions result in Critical Damage, which is a Damage card turned face up). Note that crits (local parlance) have the same effect as hits (local parlance) against shields- it's only when they hit the hull that something different happens. 

Of course, if a ship incurs damage equal or greater than its Hull value, it's immediately destroyed (unless subject to simultaneous attack rule- long story short, you and the other guy are at the same PR) and the model is removed from the game. 

Bikini Battle Basics- Boost Action Explained!

Bikini Battle Basics is a new series here on TheMetalBikini.com where we dissect certain game mechanics to aid in understanding and promote effective application. In short, it's stuff you need to know, but is somewhat obtuse or hard to understand and warrants further discussion, but don't fit directly into a category like Listbuilding, for example. 

Boost Action

Many of the Wave 2 ships, and Wave 1 ships when outfitted with the Engine Modification upgrade, can make use of Boost Actions. So what is it and what's it good for? 

Let's start off with talking about what's on the card and how it translates in-game. 

First, as the name implies, Boost is an Action you can declare after you move. Essentially, it allows you a little more movement, hence why a lot of folks were referring to this as the "Rebel barrel roll" once folks started seeing the tri-arrow Boost icon in photos of the A-Wing cards. 

Once you declare a Boost, you can make a straight 1 move or a bank 1 one move in either direction. Effectively, you do this immediately following your movement maneuver, and for future reference, Boost does not count as a maneuver. Additionally, you cannot Boost if the move would cause you to overlap with another ship's base or an obstacle token- there's no moving your ship back along the template when it comes to a Boost. 

So now that we know what it is, what's the point of it? 

The criteria for Boosting is contextually similar to Barrel Rolling. Probably the most obvious application is to try and get your Boosting ship out of a would-be attacker's arc of fire, especially if they're at Range 1. Similarly, a Boost can be all it takes to get yourself into Range 1 of an enemy ship you've been tailing. Now whether or not it's better to be in Range 1 or stay at Range 2 but use a Target Lock or Focus for your action, I'll leave that up to the math wizards, but let me say this- it really probably depends on the PR of your ship and the PR of the other ship more than anything, if there are any enemy ships that still have you in their sights, and other extenuating circumstances, but whatever. Somebody's gonna do a stats math probability graph and conclusively prove you should always do one or the other sooner or later, so take it for what it's worth. 

I think Boost is one of those cards that really helps a newer player mitigate ineffective maneuvers (which is nice that it comes on so many of the Wave 2 ships few of us have any real experience maneuvering at this point).

Sure, using Boost along with a stock maneuver can cause you to end up in places that a maneuver alone wouldn't allow for, and advanced players will certainly make use of the card, but mostly I see this card benefiting new players more than experienced ones. Making safer, shorter turns or banks to close on an opponent, then Boosting to get into Range 1 of the target, for example. Or misjudging the distance you need (could be shorter, could be longer even) to fire your missiles. End results of maneuvers can be fudged a bit with a Boost. Or perhaps you're trying to get back into range of a Swarm Tactics bubble and you fell a bit short, or you're trying to get back into range of a Squad Leader or Dreis or Howlrunner after running down an enemy ship on the fringe of the battle. Boost helps make that happen too.