Well Tomorrow is the day we will find out, what I will assume will be quite a bit about the new ships. I have not heavily invested myself into any list as if I am going to go to a major tournament anytime soon it will be after these ships are out, and as soon as they are out I hope to hit the ground running with them, probably won’t be the easiest thing in the world, with the holidays and such, but I got to try. So there are a lot of questions we have, but I just wanted to talk about my biggest one’s and what I am most excited for going into tomorrow’s live stream.
Salvo
How Salvo exactly works, and how readily available it will be to other ships in the game is probably my biggest question. From the very little we know about Salvo it has the potential to be one of the most game changing mechanics introduced into the game. First it would change the whole first and second player dynamic, because all of a sudden going first last is not quite as appealing if you are going to have to take shots anyway, again this depends on several factor to how much it will deter first last play, but even just the possibility is game changing. ECM is pretty much the de facto upgrade card taken in the defensive retrofit slot, even though I personally feel EWS with smart flying could potently save you more over the course of the game then ECMs, it’s still a hard sell even for myself, with salvo though it could be dangerous for a ship to lock up you brace and not your salvo. Activation game won’t matter nearly as much, so having activations is there to keep you from flying into unnecessary range and take damage you don’t need to, but with salvo it could matter a lot less, because it gives you a better shot too. A lot of these things are dependent on exactly how salvo works mechanically, and how readily available it will be to other ships, but because of the impact it could have these are probably the questions I am most excited to have answered to really see how this new token will change the game.
Ship Upgrade Bar and Point Cost
This is again one that is pretty high up there I want to start theory crafting with these new ships ASAP and knowing this is pretty much all I need to do that. If I had to take a stab and points with the ships, well let’s look at the Star Hawk. So I can’t quite tell what the hull value of this guy is but it looks like 13 to me, but it is a bad quality image, however it does have 6 shields in front and 4 on the sides so it’s going to be a bear to take down. It also likely has 7 dice out the front and 5 out the sides, it’s a mean ship, I really think it’s going to costing the 130-150 point range. would say the Onger looks less defensible then an ISD, but depending on how the super laser works has more firepower, and can also attack “beyond long range” so it really depends on how they value that, I would guess around 115-130 points. I am guessing we will find out how wrong/right I am tomorrow.
The Super Laser
So this really goes hand in hand with the ship upgrades and points, but we need to know exactly how the super laser works in order to start theory crafting. We know it shoots beyond long range, and I assume for simplicity's sake it would be if you are in arc and have LoS you can shoot, but it could have a limited range who knows. Also how does its battery work can I attack out of my front arc and the super laser, or do I add the die from my front arc battery to my super laser battery when attacking at close to long range? There are just a lot of questions around this and should be answered in the stream as they are playing with it.
Upgrades
This is specifically toward the super laser upgrade, and if the star hawk has an experimental tractor beam upgrade slot as there is a upgrade card that shows the star hawk tractor beam, but does this does not mean that it will be exclusive to the star hawk unless it’s a new upgrade slot or the first experimental retrofit slot for rebels, but I am not sure I see that. We also have plenty of upgrade card that have not even been spoiled at all so I expect a few to make an appearance. I am however fairly confident the box will be fully spoiled before release as I am sure we will get an article on the FFG website before these ships come out with even more spoils, if we don’t get everything from this stream.
Once we get these questions answered, I am sure I will have plenty of follow up, but I am very excited for the new ship and very intrigued about the possibilities with Salvo. I am excited to see the new ships on the table particularly the Star Hawk mostly to see just how big it really is. I am looking forward to all the information we get from tomorrows stream.
We also had some interesting winners of PRIMES this past weekend, I will definitely have some coverage of PRIMES and my thoughts about the "new meta" but that will wait until after wave 8 is out I will definitely talk about post wave 8 primes, but it will be extremely interesting to see how wave 8 shapes PRIMES.
The stream of the wave 8 ships starts at 1:00 PM Central time tomorrow. What are some question you have that you would like answered? Until next time have a great week!
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