System Upgrade- Sensor Jammer

This post regarding System Upgrades is part of a larger article regarding Wave 3 listbuilding- the rest of the posts n this series will be available in the coming weeks as I'm revealing a post or two per day on the various topics in that larger article. For more info, click the "List Building Resources" tab at the top of the page or simply click here.

Sensor Jammer (4)
Card Text: When defending, you may change 1 of the attacker's <filled explosion symbol) results to a <eyeball symbol> result. The attacker cannot reroll the die with the changed result.
Usage: I was playing a custom scenario that +Sean Hocking wrote last weekend with +Benjamin Coleman. I won't go into details just yet as once we get it totally worked up and playtested we'll throw it up here for y'all to check out, but I was playing Imperials and to round out my point total to 100, naturally I threw in Dark Curse, because much like bacon, Dark Curse goes well with anything, really.

Of course, I've covered him on here before, but to refresh your memory (assuming you didn't already click the link and do just that), Dark Curse is a royal pain in the gluteus maximus, and by gluteus maximus I mean ass, because spending Focus tokens and rerolling attack dice doesn't work on him.

I love this for two reasons- first and the most obvious, it's much harder to kill that guy than it oughta be, and two because that kind of stuff gets in people's head from time to time. If you go after him and fail to ding him, you feel like you wasted that ship's round worth of shooting. Do that more than a time or two, and some folks will feel like they're making a mistake and start second guessing themselves in the other aspects of their game.

That mind power doesn't work on everybody, but it works enough that I like to do it because I'm kind of a dick like that sometimes. And also because since I lose about as much as I win, I do at least like to make the people I'm playing sweat a little bit and feel like I got some kind of small victory even in my defeats.

The reason I bring all this up of course is Sensor Jammer sorta does the same thing. Where Dark Curse basically keeps your opponent from modifying his attack roll, Sensor Jammer does the modifying for him and then some- one of his hits becomes an eyeball that he can't reroll.

Now, don't get mixed up on this- spending a Focus token isn't considered a reroll, so if your attacker spends a Focus token after you've used Sensor Jammer on one of his hit rolls, that die will still end up being a hit, but maybe there's solace to be taken in the fact that he wouldn't have needed to burn the token had you not Jammed him. Ditto for stuff that specifically calls out eyeball results becoming something else like with Proton Torpedoes, for example. It also specifies, "When defending" which to me intimates a defense roll, so it's not going to work on stuff like Seismic Charges or Prox Mines, won't help with collisions when you overlap an obstacle, and some of the cards in the Damage Deck that just hurt you without allowing you to try and roll out of them.

So what does it work on? Well, Target Lock is maybe the most obvious example. If your opponent manages say a single hit result on you which you then change to an eyeball, if he elects to spend a Target Lock to reroll, he has to leave that eyeball on the table. It negates other stuff that allows rerolls to- the card text for Krassis Trelix, Solo, stuff like that. Besides of course just changing a hit to an eyeball, end of story. Don't forget about that.

Ok, so you saw me mention Solo and your keyboard ears perked up and you're all set to tell me that Gunner and/ or Luke Skywalker, Crew Member would still activate which functionally would give you a reroll. You'd be correct, of course. If you fired with a big ship and didn't land a hit against your target after all the modifying, defense rolls, and subsequent cancellations (if any) of hits by Evades, etc., the Gunner/ Luke, CM text would activate and you'd make another Primary Attack. 

However, note that Sensor Jammer is one of these always-on kind of things, so long as you're defending, no Action required or anything, so it's still in play against that second Primary Attack too. Not sayin' that's the greatest thing in the world, but there it is. As you'd expect, it's also kicked on for both salvos of Cluster Missiles.

All that said, is it worth the four points? Well, again as you currently can only stick this on a Shuttle or a B-Wing, both of whom only have 1 Defense die to start with, I think it's a good investment. I mean look, it's not a never fails, bullet-proof vest by any means, but if your game plan relies on one of those ships sticking around for awhile, I think anything that can help with that is a good idea, especially since it's not a one-shot type of thing.

As time goes by, people are going to realize more and more that one Defense die is pretty rotten despite what the Falcon would have you believe and folks will just start pouring fire into the B-Wing and Shuttle to down them, and let's face it- they'll likely have pretty good results. Sean was shocked that I managed to smoke his B-Wing in a single turn of shooting (I pointed out that it was three ships firing on it and one of them had a pretty awesome Proton Torpedo roll). Had he been stocking one of these, now I'm faced with that Dark Curse decision of feeling like I'm wasting shots because he has this defense mechanism. 

Maybe I decide to go after some other ship that's I'm more likely to kill even though the B-Wing is still the bigger threat. Or maybe I go after it with two of those ships, but give up when it's time for the third ship to fire because I'm only rolling a couple of hits which are then getting downgraded into single hits. Who knows? The point I've made on here a bunch of times is that the more you force your opponent out of his usual routine, his comfort zone- the more you actually make him think, the more likely he is to make a mistake. Sensor Jammer has that potential to make folks think, so while it's not cheap, it ought to at least get a walkout sometime in your B-Wing or Shuttle.

System Upgrade- Advanced Sensors

This post regarding System Upgrades is part of a larger article regarding Wave 3 listbuilding- the rest of the posts n this series will be available in the coming weeks as I'm revealing a post or two per day on the various topics in that larger article. For more info, click the "List Building Resources" tab at the top of the page or simply click here.

Advanced Sensors (3)
Card Text: Immediately before you reveal your maneuver, you may perform 1 free action. If you use this ability, skip your "Perform Action" step during this round.
Usage: On the surface, this card basically mixes up the order in which you perform the steps in the Activation Phase. I just talked about the Activation Phase a couple of days ago, but since I went to the trouble of pulling and cropping that image from the rulebook which outlines the steps, allow me to throw it out there once again-

All right, so instead of doing the Perform Action step as step 6, you're instead performing a Free Action before you reveal your dial. What's that mean exactly though? 

Well first and foremost, you've already selected your maneuver, but you've not turned over the dial for that ship yet, so higher PS pilots will still be picking their Free Action later in the Activation Phase than the lower PS pilots. Now, the card doesn't explicitly say which step this takes place in. I could see some folks trying to invoke the shenanigans here, but I think the intent here is exactly what it says- "Immediately before you reveal your maneuver..." So we're talking about a brief moment between the end of the Planning Phase and the start of that particular Active ship's Activation Phase or at the end of the previous Active ship's portion of the Activation Phase and the new Active ship's Activation Phase, depending on the PS of the ship bearing the Advanced Sensors card.

Brief sidenote- I can't remember if you're considered to be selecting and subsequently revealing a maneuver if you've been ionized. For some reason I thought it was FAQ'ed that you're not, which would disallow this card's use, but I can't find where I read that right now. I'll look some more and update the post accordingly. 

Anyway, now that we understand the timing of when this happen, let's talk about Free Actions for a moment. The card calls out a Free Action specifically rather than just letting you pull your Perform Action step. Is there anything significant about that? Is there a difference between a Free Action and any other Action you'd normally pick in your Perform Action step? 

A Free Action is defined in the rulebook on page 8 as simply an Action that doesn't count towards the one Action limit in the Perform Action step. Since you're losing the Perform Action step by playing this card, it really is just pretty much you picking your Action much earlier than usual. Any Action normally available to you via the Upgrade Bar, card text, or whatever is available to you as a Free Action. 

The main significance here is that since you're doing it before you move, there's nothing that can stop you from performing your chosen Action. If you realize after you selected your maneuver that you're going to crash into something- your own ships, an opponent's ship, an Obstacle, whatever- no worries, man. You can just Advanced Sensors your way into a Free Action anyway. 

A question that's bound to come up in your games is: can a pilot who is the bearer of a Stress Token still pick an Action via Advanced Sensors? 

Love me or hate me, I'm going to say that a ship with Advanced Sensors who is also Stressed absolutely cannot pick a Free Action. 

While it may be true that the card text states the use of a Free Action as opposed to telling you to do the Perform Action step earlier in the turn, and the Perform Action step is where it says you check to see if you're pilot is Stressed, later on in the rulebook on page 17 under Stress it states the following: 

While a ship has at least one stress token, it cannot execute red maneuvers or perform any actions (even free actions). 

They may FAQ it differently or something down the road, but until then, I'm playing it as it lays in this case (and no, I had no idea it was some 70's book title, I'm referencing the golf origin of the statement). 

Now, that being said- could an unstressed pilot use his Advanced Sensors to get himself an Action before revealing a red maneuver that subsequently invokes a Stress Token? Absolutely. And before anybody gets confused, remember that spending an Action Token when you're Stressed is totally kosher- it's the Perform Action step that you're not allowed to do when you're Stressed. To put it another way, getting the token is the Action, spending it is not. 

Right on, now that we know exactly how this rule works, who does it work for? 

Like we discussed in Fire Control System yesterday, there's really not many ships who can stock System Upgrades right now. In fact, currently, there are only two- the B-Wing and the Shuttle. Also like FCS, it's useful to anybody really- the selection criteria I think has more to do with whether or not you'd rather take one of the other System Upgrades because they're all pretty good for their points. Advanced Sensors is versatile enough one could conceivably use it on the generic, common, no-name pilots, but also on the named and the dotted if you wanted. 

I think generally Advanced Sensors helps a newer player more than an experienced one because he can mitigate losing an Action due to bad or unexpected movements from the other side of the table. I can't really think of another time where I'd just much rather pick an Action earlier in my turn other than I'm going to lose it because of a collision or something. 

I guess you could make a debate for pulling a movement type Action before your actual maneuver as well; Barrel Rolling or Boosting then maneuvering instead of maneuvering then Barrel Rolling or Boosting. I don't know that you'd find yourself in a situation like that often enough to justify the points, but it is a possibility for the B-Wing at least. 

The only other time I can think of right now that it would make a difference would be in the case of Target Locking a ship you're going to move out of range with after you perform your maneuver. Not sure how often that'd come up either, but it's a possibility. 

For the Shuttle, with it's limited maneuver dial and big base, I can see this being a pretty common upgrade just to be sure you're going to end up with your Action even if somebody blocks you or you run into something. That 3 Attack primary hurts bad enough as it is, but if you can pair it up with a Focus or a Target Lock even though you're going to run into somebody? That hurts even better. 

Don't misunderstand me because I'm not making a huge deal out of it towards the end trying to come up with scenarios where Advanced Sensors would be handy and not finding some uber, over the top situation. This really is a pretty powerful card- lots of people, consciously or not, adjust their strategy when they see an enemy ship hit something. If you can still Focus after you've gotten into an accident or pick Evade, that's a pretty big game changer- especially since you can do it every round instead of the Perform Action step if you want. Also, the fact that you can give yourself a token before you pull a K-Turn or other red maneuver is a pretty big deal for either of the ships that can currently take it. It's a big deal for the B-Wing because they have that nifty little Speed 2 K-Turn, but it's maybe an even bigger deal for Shuttle pilots because their dial has so many dang red maneuvers. 

System Upgrade- Fire Control System

This post regarding System Upgrades is part of a larger article regarding Wave 3 listbuilding- the rest of the posts n this series will be available in the coming weeks as I'm revealing a post or two per day on the various topics in that larger article. For more info, click the "List Building Resources" tab at the top of the page or simply click here.

Fire Control System (2)
Card Text: After you perform an attack, you may acquire a Target Lock on the defender.
Usage: Way back about a year ago, not long after X-Wing was released, my FLGS ran a little tournament. When I say little, I mean little- as in like a 25 point tournament. I think four of us turned up to play. One guy ran two TIEs (he won), one guy ran an Red Squadron X-Wing with I think it was an R2 Astromech, another dude ran a Rookie X-Wing with R2-D2, I ran a Tempest Squadron TIE Advanced with Clusters, I think it was. I came in second- that dude with the two TIEs had one hull point left when he offed my Advanced. That was my first really competitive game of X-Wing.

In the second or third match, against one of the X-Wing players, I suddenly made the realization that if you had an existing Target Lock, you could actually Focus and Target Lock the same attack roll. This was like a light bulb going on over my head. Until then, I'd played a handful of lunch hour games against a friend of mine named Dwain and we'd always had such a hard time actually shooting each other down, until I figured out the friggin' Rosetta Stone of attacking in X-Wing- the Focused Target Lock.

When I first saw the Fire Control System card leaked, it took me back to those halcyon days (WTF is halcyon anyway? I just looked it up- turns out it's an adjective meaning prosperous or golden, as a noun is some kind of bird. I always thought it was an 80's anti-depressant or something) of Wave 1 when Focusing a Target Locked attack from an X-Wing was just about the nastiest shot you could take in the game. Except of course Focusing a Target Locked attack from an X-Wing at Range 1.

So at a glance, this card lets you maintain an eternal Target Lock until the target dies or you do, basically. Use a Target Lock, get it back- that's how I've seen people describe this card. That's not incorrect, but it's not 100% accurate either. Reading the card text closely, we see that it makes no mention of renewing a spent Target Lock- no, it just says that after you perform an attack, you may acquire a Target Lock on the defender.

See the difference there?

This proper interpretation actually makes this card quite a bit more useful. First, note that all you have to do is attack somebody to get a Target Lock on them. You don't have to hit, you don't have to damage, you only have to attack. That's it. Think about that for a moment and realize that if you play your cards right, you kind of don't ever actually have to declare Target Lock as your Action if you take this System Upgrade- you can always Focus and aside from the very first time you shoot at somebody, you'll have Target Locks from then on out until they're dust or you are. Why's that so significant? Well, you can be taking some other Action in the meantime. So you're not quite as cool as Darth Vader, but you do sort of end up with two Actions with a little pre-planning while realizing that one of those Actions will always be a Target Lock.

The other thing that makes this card super nice is the fact that you're acquiring a Target Lock outside of the Perform Action step in the Activation Phase. You know how I always go on about how awesome it is to do damage to somebody outside of the Combat Phase? Well, this is kinda the same thing. Main takeaway here is you can lose your Perform Action step (for example, you've Stressed yourself by pulling a red maneuver or have collided with another ship) and still generate yourself a Target Lock. Can you use it the same round? No, but prior to this card entering the game, it was pretty difficult to get yourself a Focused Target Lock the round following a K-Turn. Now it's more predictable.

Being as how it's relatively rare for ships in X-Wing to one-shot anybody, having a Target Lock pop right back onto a victim after an attack is pretty handy because it's probably going to take you two or three rounds of shooting to punch their ticket anyway, right? When you factor in that the card is only 2 points, you really have to stop and ask, "What's not to like?"

Truthfully, not much, but you are eating up one of the Advanced System slots. These are somewhat rare in the game right now as only two ships can stock Advanced System upgrades- the Shuttle and the B-Wing, so the question becomes more is this the best option for me when it comes to Advanced Systems?

Well, as usual, it all depends on what exactly you're trying to accomplish. It depends on what role you want that particular ship to play. If being offensively focused benefits you, then yeah, Fire Control System is probably what you're looking for. If you want to be able to switch up when Actions occur or you want some extra defense, then you'd probably be better served with Advanced Sensors or Sensor Jammer, respectively. That said, FCS is the cheapest of the System Upgrades, and for only 2 points, it really is kind of difficult to dismiss.

Of the available B-Wing pilots, I think FCS might be best used on some no-name guys rather than Ibtisam or Ten Numb. This isn't to say that FCS is a waste on those two, but they both kind of already have some similar offensive benefits because of their card text, so it seems like maybe you'd be better served with one of the other two System Upgrades instead of FCS.

Regarding the Shuttle? This card works especially well with two of the three named pilots. Yorr can give himself a TL on somebody even if he has Stress, Jendon can use this non-Action Target Lock as the giveaway while generating a more versatile Focus token. Again- the question boils down to, "Is this the System Upgrade you're going with?", more than anything else. If you've got the points, the Shuttle might be better served with a Sensor Jammer instead of a Fire Control System. Like I said though, it really depends on the role for the ship and your own personal preference.