/swg/ - Star Jam Edition

Finally, the dumbest thing of all, by far the creme de la creme of idiocy: it fucking worked.

The FO comes back, blows up three planets, and rules the galaxy. Because the writers have no sense of scale, plot pacing, politics, or general logic. The FO with its tiny fleet and army now rules the entire galaxy unopposed because it blew up three planets among the thousands in the galaxy. Operation Cinder, the shittiest fucking thing ever, worked, because fuck Disney.

That, in painstaking detail, is why Operation Cinder is a farce.

Tbh while it wouldn't fix most of the problems of Op Cinder or the FO, I think it'd help a lot if it was revealed that yes in fact the Palpdroids that gave the order were hacked by the Rebels and that it was their plot to fuck up the Empire. Only problem is it'd take a lot to explain their foresight in knowing Palps would die on Endor and getting those bots to major officers and knowing those officers would obey extremely questionable/dumb orders.

I just don't understand, there were a metric fuck tone of imperal remnant factions to take inspiration from and they picked none of them and instead went with the "from nothingness" approche, but I don't understand why, evil, especially powerfule evil doesn't form in a vaccume. This is just telling viewers that bad people just... happen and nothing can stop them from coming into power over you.

I'd have gone with world devestators, that would at leaSt justify all the hard ware without needing an economy

I'm bothered with the presentation in BF2 because the explanation in other source material was explicitly not "reminding them whi si in charge" but just "you fuckers are not worthy to persist"

So /swg/, I posted a couple threads back asking for advice to predict what my party is going to do in my sandbox-y EOTE campaign. I know that they are going to try to obtain better space ships than their current Z-95 pair and a YT-something, but I'm not sure what method they are going to do.

Long story short, they stole their current ships from a scap-yard/crash site, Hyperspaced into an ongoing fight between Empire and Pirates, helped the Empire, who repaid them with some fuel and credits, as well as changing the registration of their ships to say that they are theirs.

My questions are

- There was some cargo that the pirates lost when they fled- What could be interesting things for it to be?

- Where would you go to in a backwater imperial sector with some hutt presence to get a heavy-duty space ship?

- How much would it cost to restore a Y-wing that was just shot down with laser fire?

- Is there a better way to get ship prices that make a bit more sense? Eg, a Y-wing costs more than a lancer with what I'm looking at.

The battle of jakku should have taken place at least 2 years after endor, you could belive that attrition would actually bring them down with a galaxy united against them

Looks like a mashup of several designs, probably an ugly.

>fixing the y-wing
Uh just assign it a crit, give it a bunch of hull damage and use the numbers in the book for repairing that (500 credits per point of damage, plus or minus some percent for ease of access to facilities)

>Interesting cargo
I like making the cargo medicine since that can introdce interesting story elements on who wanted it and why. But if you wanted to go for something more obtuse: physical printed books. Old ones that have local secrets written in a long dead tongue. Either have the guy with points in Lore do some rading or it is a hook to find some deranged hermit that can make sense of them.

>Heavy duty ship
Do you mean just a big cargo hauler or something that could put up a fight?

So for X-wing, what do you guys think of the new Epic changes?

In short-

- Your deployment zone is now Range 1 instead of Range 2 from the board edge

- Obstacles now follow a variant of standard placement, 1-2 from any edge, in pairs that are within 1 of eachother, and 1 away from any other pair.

- Must include an Epic ship

- No more than 4 copies of the same EPT or Secondary Weapon cards

- no more than 4 of the same Large-Base ship, or 8 of the same small base ship.

So what do you guys think?

I'm kinda disappointed that my all First Order squad is no longer legal (although I can replace the Upsilon and one TIE/FO for a Gozanti and make it legal), but that's a good price to pay to stop shit like 12-Y-wings with twin Laser Turrets from shitting up the game.

Also, do you think the Objectives mode that the community is making would be cool to mix with epic? Slap 3 objectives at the same time on the board, and then play?

dropbox.com/sh/clott5ozs0upf6f/AAALiqY4Q6y_qU4WrG4n9pONa/Full Page Objective PDFs?dl=0&preview=Xwing Objectives Version 1.pdf

Link to objectives.

For the ST they are trying to take the blank canvass approach like the OT where we were introduced to concepts like the Empire, Jedi, Rebellion, etc. Except they have done it with the First Order, Snoke, the Resistance, etc. The problem is how the plot should works ignores all the pre-established lore of the current EU and goes with what is most convenient for plot and for Abram what will create the coolest visuals. So you have the FO making a bigger Death Star with exotic ftl particles to blow up Hosnian Prime and the Republic falling immediately afterwards in TLJ. If your idea of canon was just ANH, ESB and ROTJ like the current crop (and ignores the prequels and everything else), it kind of makes sense since the Empire fell with the death of the Emperor. With that mentality why would you need to know where Snoke came from? The OT doesn't establish that much either about Palpatine.

It all makes sense since the ST is just desperately copying all the beats from the OT.

I don't know if I can commit to this joke

Or if I should

The epic changes are for sure the best.

One day I will run my 4 IG-88 build.

The objectives you linked actually seem pretty nifty.

But the issue is the OT was made in a vaccume, the ST, no matier what, does not have that luxary, the canvas is not blank. And it never will be again without destrying it in the process

My dream is to run a campaign where the players are captured by an ISB/Spynet/SpecForce operative and it's literally Bane Fire Rises scene.

>Bring Double Defender/Omega Leader to tournament
>First round is against Super Nym Trajectory/Genius and Super Miranda
>Get raped

Fuck

Yes exactly however the people making the movies don't seem to want to confront this fact and rather want to go with this clean canvas philosophy not realizing how it's hurting the franchise.

The big issue is they claim to want a clean canvas but then do nothing but recycle old elements while making them worse. FO is just the Empire but worse, Resistance is just the Rebellion but worse, and hell, they even draw in content from the EU but make it worse, like how Hell's Hammers are back but a total joke. Their supposed clean canvas is just a mismash of stuff people already did way better.

>What sort of assets would an ISB agent have on hand, do they have personal bases?
They probably have standard military assets. Stormtrooper squads are confirmed, and most likely can acquire other things to carry out their mission for the time being, like Navy vessels and TIEs.

I should probably have mentioned, I'm using X-wing/HotAC rules for ship combat since I've heard/seen that the FFG RPG space fighting rules were terrible.

Two players fly single-pilot craft, (currently Z's), one flies a bigger ship, and the 4th copilots (making checks to emulate the effects of crew and droid cards)

My question was really to make the credit costings make sense logically, and or stop them from immediately being overly wealthy or poor. The 500 per damage seems really cheap- They would immediately sell a Z and repair the destroyed Y and have credits to spare.

I'm wondering if there are cost fixes or the like anywhere as well.

The Backdoor FAQ is here to save us brothers! Just explain the strange legal scenario FFG is in and how the Backdoor FAQ is a FAQ from the future to the TO and ask him to use it, or at least put up a poll.

It's the Podcast objectives (made by all the podcasters) made to force engagements and make always-kite-never-engage lists drastically weaker.

I'm thinking that I could run this in Epic with the shield bubble and 2 of the turret control and fluff it as capturing a space station.

If they really wanted this clean canvas they would have just bitten the bullet and done a full reboot.

I only play Armada, but:
>Must include an Epic ship
sounds like a dumb change. At best, it locks a group of friends out of Epic until everybody has bought a $100 box.

>Also, do you think the Objectives mode that the community is making would be cool to mix with epic? Slap 3 objectives at the same time on the board, and then play?
X-Wing should've had objectives a long time ago, so I'm guessing yes. For some reason my phone refuses to open the PDF so I can't actually look over them though.

How's that homebrew adventure coming along, /swg/?

Here's a different link

imgur.com/a/Ox7T9

For the mandatory epic ship, that's the one i'm mixed on. It stops Epic ships from being a penalty to bring by just forcing them, but it also stops shit like All FO and all Resistance squads.

It's a "You must be this fluffy to proceed" line, which while it's cool, it is a bit heavy handed in the implementation.

Maybe make it to bring a mandatory epic ship OR some other "Must be this fluffy to proceed" line?

>The big issue is they claim to want a clean canvas but then do nothing but recycle old elements while making them worse.

My thoughts exactly.

They also lift whole sections of EU into Canon without considering the events and facts that made those elements noteworthy.

For instance, Thrawn.

I'm more impressed with his performance in EU as a talented commander attempting to revive a fragmented nation than a commander working for a power that is possibly more bungling than it's EU incarnation. It just does not have the same impact story wise.

Thrawn being turned into a generic incompetent lackey and the Empire being turned into a group of wholly evil idiots are both two of the biggest slaps in the face Disney's given us.

What scale is legion in? 32 or 35mm? All I can find are people bitching about the scale but no one saying what it is.

I don't know that anyone knows the answer to that question

It's not like we have the models in hand to measure to the millimeter, and FFG haven't said

Well, according to this thread:

boardgamegeek.com/thread/1833989/scale

> A comparison between Legion and IA storm troopers can be seen here:

It's why this edifice of the Disney Canon can't last. If it's all callouts and storybeats from the previous Legends or the Original Trilogy, you just don't have the opportunity to do anything new. And if we are just getting inferior versions of the old stories, people are going to wise up and stop coming back and just going with the old versions instead.

We are already seeing this with TLJ and Rebels imo.

So about 35mm then it looks? But yeah, I guess we won't know until it drops

Would Wilson/CIA just be a generic ISB agent, or would he have unique stats?

Is it though? We never had a story about Leia getting kicked out of the NR senate because of her lineage, and Rebels despite touching on some old ground (malachor, inquisitors, rogue jedi, the start of the rebellion, Thrawn) is remixing it in a very different manner, leaving them nearly unrecognizable. Hell, there have been some downright better changes, like the Vader comic giving a more interesting story to Jocasta Nu and better establishing what happens to the Jedi's librarian, linking her fate not just to Vader but also the inquisitors and Luke.
Most importantly, you need to keep in mind they have to reestablish how the universe works with their 'blank slate' which is clearly meant to be anything but. They have to paint the broad strokes before going into details. So they don't want to change most things that were in the old universe, just retell them quickly so the landmarks are still there. If you don't enjoy the new tellings, and the old tellings are similar enough to not matter except for a few changed details, the old stuff is still there and they're still selling it. They just aren't beholden to follow the details in the old stuff.

Mandatory epic ship is excellent. That, combined with the limit on EPTs and secondary weapons cuts down on the spam bullshit you could do previously.

I don't like not being able to deploy at range 1-2 and the new asteroid rules. Range 1-2 allowed more varied deployment and also allowed the game to not necessarily take forever. The old asteroids rule made sure that players had lanes of approaching each other by making asteroids have to be at range 2 of other asteroids. With this you can just kinda put all asteroids on one side of the map and make sure the battle mostly takes place on the other side.

>a $100 box

Transports, Gozantis, and C-ROCs can be gotten for half that price. And they're often times the ones you want anyway since they're better and don't take half your list like the CR-90 and Raider do.

Currently working on a reimagining/reworking of the old Tatooine Manhunt adventure. The twist is that you play as the bounty hunters in this one.
I'm trying to make it into a complete experience, so it also comes with new templates, 5 that are full characters, with a background and personality and such, and 4 that are more class-like and allow personalization (considering adding more but I want to keep it very simple and straightforward). Right now I'm working off 1st edition rules.

While the points you are to raise are to be acknowledged, the Films are a testement to the points raised here .

They re-introduce a lot of the same concepts an ideas featured in the Original Trilogy.

They also fail to make the antagonists interesting or even the heroes interesting in a lot of cases.

Take the destruction of the Hosnian system.

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to feel sympathy for the New Republic or scorn for them for allowing that to happen in the first place.

Same with the First Order.

Am I suppose to feel they're a threat just because they destroyed a system? While it is true they accomplished said feat, they've been seen and caught doing a bunch of incompetent, neanderthalic things that make me question if they are really the threat they pose, or if they're enemies just happen to be stupider than they are.

Speaking of which, they've also doubled down on Imperial incompetence in Rebels and other media of the New Canon. It's hard for me to feel any sort of attachment to a Resistance that appears to be fighting what amounts to armed morons that are cartoonish in their evil and lacking in flavor.

If you include Jodo Kast, play him off as a Fett wannabe just like Kylo is to Vader.

Yeah I agree that the films are shit and retreading a boring area. Hard to care about 30 years in the future to begin with, never mind if its just a retread.

I feel like Rebels is getting a bit of an unfair rap. Between important characters showing up and kicking the rebel's asses every season, and the constant losses the rebels face whenever they try to extend as a military operation its hard to say the Imperials are totally incompetent. Season 1 empire, maybe, but season 2 saw the rebels lose their main carrier and most of their squadron in the opening, getting attacked while hiding in a spaceport city and having to evacuate without inflicting any significant losses on the empire, and while they eventually secured a carrier ship and secret base they lost all that the next season. Add on that Thrawn has been weeding out incompetents and left Lothal so locked down the Rebellion's attempts at counter strikes have now twice been smashed apart and it seems like the show wanted to show the Empire slowing shifting from idiotic goons to actual well trained forces led by a competent commander intent on hammering the rebellion out of Lothal.

Whatever happened to the Sith as a species? How did they go extinct?

I bought my Gozanti box for $35.

Also, for Asteroids and Deployment, that's a mixed bag. Since both players place rocks, you can't go too far to the side unless both players want to do that. Deployment on one hand allows less cool deploying, but it also forces people to spread out and makes turn 1 exchanfes less common.

>ywn own a pimped out starfighter

End of the day intentional or not they are running up against previous attempts at doing the same story. Because this is actually the third time we have done the Imps vs Rebs storybeat. The first with the OT and the Marvel comics/newspaper stripes. Then with the Legends EU. And now here with the Disney Wars. And a lot of it is repeating the motifs we had before. Han/Leia's son turning bad, more Imperial superweapons, another Imperial remnant, a main female character living in a junkyard, etc.

And the result is diminishing returns. TLJ didn't do as well as they had hope. And it certainly didn't do as well as the theater chains had been promised or as Disney had hoped in their expansion plans overseas like in China. The same for Rebels, the show was intended for five seasons and they end it at four.

It's why I don't think the sequels can sustain fan interest or Disney's desire for new cash flows.

>Hell, there have been some downright better changes, like the Vader comic giving a more interesting story to Jocasta Nu

I would qualify this as more an inter-era story like Darth Vader and the Ghost Prison than strictly Prequel or Sequel. But this era is really not well explored as well even in the old Legends era post-ROTS.

Yup, Jodo's in it, he's one of the templates, and yeah he's pretty much nerfed Boba Fett. I even took away his Lambda shuttle and gave him a Firespray.

I think it suffers some of the perennial issues with Filoni. He is always trying to tilt the scale in favor of the main characters when we are in an era when the Empire is dominating everything. He is also obnoxious about trying to insert his favorites like Rex and Ahsoka into everything and trying to have them survive. And with Thrawn imo he is really pulling the punches with the character. But likewise I think he does with Vader.

Bred out of existence when the Empire expanded

And yet for these faults I still think he's probably the most compitent writer lucas arts has right now

>Jodo is literally just the Robot Chicken version of Boba Fett

I think the only time thrawn really could be said to hold back was very early in season 3, and even then he was sizing the Ghost crew up so he could pick them apart better.

When there is an element thrawn knows about, he has always come ready for it in both legends and canon. And in both cases it's only things that come super out of left field that best him

A buddy of mine saw Jacen Solo in the shower.

Said he was actually shredded. Unlike Kylo Ren.

And had a 12-pack.

Unlike Kylo Ren.

THat makes no sense though.

Other races would have gone extinct that way if it was possible. Humans, at the very least.

In old canon they simply merged with sith humanity, many sith human families in the latter days proudly tracing their heritage to prominent sith species people.

I don't know about nu canon.

How many fucking times have they retconned Boba's ops to be a clone/wannabe/his daughter?

Wasn't there a genetic experiment attempt to bring them back?

Humans have always been among the most numerous species.

The Sith species started small, got beat to hell and back and interbred with humans, and by the time of TOR there's very few purebloods left. Sometime between TOR and the rise of Darth Bane, they finally were gone. We don't have any specifics for their disappearance.

The old red-skinned, tentacle-faced Sith species has not appeared in canon materials.

You haven't noticed yet that most canon lore in Star Wars as a whole is laughably bad, barely above the cringiest possible fanfic.
Theres zero subtlety in anything and its all "as a writer I need an excuse for these characters I like to do cool shit"?

Unpopular opinion I know, but I think SW is best enjoyed when you ignore most of the big lore stuff and just use the pretty well built world as a sandbox to do your own thing.

Humans have a dominate genetic code, original Sith didn't. Plus, the extinction occurred over the course of like a thousand years, if I remember correctly. Same thing that happened with the mandalorians too, iirc

So I just saw Last Jedi.
The plot was terrible and so filled with holes that it made no fucking sense why they did anything the way they did.

Why were their ships filled with enough fuel to only jump twice?
Why didn't they just ferry people off on Fin's shuttle in groups?
Why didn't they just all jump in random directions?
Why didn't they use their ships as decoys?

I'm not even mad, I'm just disappointed. I'm legit thinking the Prequels are good now.
And fucking Rogue One was great.

>we'll never get Clone Wars in Armada

it hurts

>Humans have a dominate genetic code, original Sith didn't.

Citation needed.

I have zero doubts it'll come eventually. They literally don't have enough ships to make vessels for both sides any longer. We might get it slowly and we might only get one side getting clone wars vessels at first but Venators and Acclamtors are recognizable, as are the CIS vessels.

>dominant genetic code
bullshit, the sith species and humanity were able to interbreed due to rakata fuckery and alchemy; after the first few dozen instances of it it just took off and the sith as a species were more near-humans than anything else

words to live by: When in doubt, blame the Rakata.

Escape pods aren't hyperdrive capable, are they? Even then, they explicitly say it's a long shot if they hyperjump, and it's pointless because the First Order is tracking them, anyway. I'm also assuming there's just not enough ships to fit every survivor on board., and coming back for survivors is risky.

Also, y'know, the fact DJ marked all the ships in range for death.

>le prequels are good

no

>I'm legit thinking the Prequels are good now.
Right there with you. It's now clear that Lucas was the soul of Star Wars, and even though the execution of the prequels was flawed, they still had a great story.

Most of it is just simple authorial hand waving and plot convenience.

>Why didn't they just all jump in random directions?

A guerilla group would have thought of this. But I guess like everything else, Johnson was just being very unoriginal so that he could have his shitty chase plot with Poe vs Holdo and the b-plot with Rose/Finn getting screwed by DJ to subvert ESB with Lando.

Where's that from?

Source: my ass.

However, considering Sith as a species were bred out of existence after humans discovered them, chances are any offspring from human sith pairings would take after the human parent more often than the sith. Add in centuries of conflict, and well, it's possible. Plus, the plethora of 'near human' races dotting the galactic landscape, certainly lends weight to the idea. At least in my opinion.

finklematter.artstation.com/projects/3qJDJ

>I'm legit thinking the Prequels are good now.
If you'd told me five years ago that someone would be singing praises of the prequels and I'd agree with them, I'd have laughed you off the board. And here we are, 2018 and that's exactly what's happening.

Fuck the mouse.

Fin just up and left on the shuttle that had a hyperdrive with no issue.
Just left and no one did anything to stop him.

The entire fucking situation makes no sense.
>We're running out of fuel to escape them!
How? You're in space, max burn the engines and coast. You flat said yourself that the enemy ships are slower. THIS WAS LITERALLY A PLOT POINT!
Why don't you just do two small jumps? Jump, then jump again before they can fucking track you.

Then there was sir Edgealot, Kylo Ren. That was literally a pointless character arc, along with Snoke. Why was Snoke even in the movie? Why could he read minds with the Force?

I never really took issue with the Prequels as they seemed to stand on their own as something distinct and different from the Originals, but entertaining all the same.

They also had a bit more diversity that could be done over the Originals which were hampered by budget.

The Sequels lack the originality of the Originals and the diversity of the Prequels.

Yes the Sequels do still feel like Star Wars, but it just does not have the same attraction or appeal as the previous films to me.

Rogue One was the exception, but to me Rogue One tells a story that is actually compelling.

This isn't a reply because it's not actually a reply to that user or even related to TLJ specifically, but in general I've noticed that people who don't watch that many movies always obsess over plot holes after the fact regardless of whether they actually held the film back in the given instance or not, and I wonder why

Seeing these paint jobs really makes me wish Attack Squadrons didn't get scrapped.

Maybe I'll steal a few of them for X-Wing.

Attention 2013 you; Donald Trump is our president as well. Go place a bet.

Because everyone is a critic

this is the /swg/ I think people are going to be more obsessed with the fleet logistics and fleet tactics.

>rakata fuckery

I'd believe it. The bits you learn about them in kotor, they are into genetic manipulation and all that jazz, especially with their slave races. It'd stand to reason that they might make various ones potentially compatible at a genetic level

Is it worth buying into Armada?

I have played X-wing and like it, but Armada seems more my speed.

Finn and Rose had Poe and others distract the ones who would stop him from taking the shuttle, directly lying to the Admiral in the process.

Nigga.

If you write a plot and a player character can make it fall apart in 20 seconds flat, it's not well written.
They had fucking hours to plot shit out in that movie and couldn't figure out BASIC STRATEGY. LITERALLY OPEN ART OF WAR AND READ IT TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO FIGHT ON THAT LEVEL.

While I can see Snoke being present to make sure the (ultimately laughable) threat of the Resistance is destroyed for good, why the heck did he feel the need to risk the big and expensive capitol ship-factory ship-ship yard-research lab to do it?

That made even less sense than dragging that turbo laser across the desert.

And if Snoke can read minds, how did he not know of Phasma's betrayal?

What a coincidence, people talking about Sith-species and their interbreeding with humanity!

I'm considering having a pure-blooded Sith crop up in a planned F&D game where my players crash land on Weik in the immediate aftermath of the first Death Star being destroyed.

Said pureblooded Sith has, by various dark means, lived for millenia and has sired many, many children across this time. My thinking is that the party would cross paths with this guy while investigating a cult which has been connected with a string of disappearances.

Is this a terrible idea? I'm wanting to give my players a foe who is different from the more modern dark sider, so I intend to play up the use of Sith Alchemy and ancient weaponry to contrast with the Inquisitors that they will have crossed paths with (briefly) at the start of the game.

It depends on your local scene, like most other games. If no one around you plays it, then it'd be kind of a waste, unless, like me, you'd get it just because you like the models

>Finn and Rose had Poe and others distract the ones who would stop him from taking the shuttle, directly lying to the Admiral in the process.
>Caring about the Rebel command

Nigga, the First Order didn't notice. At all. They just didn't notice. THAT'S THE FUCKING MAIN POINT.

Yeah, it's a great game.

If you wanna LARP as Thrawn and lean back stroking your chin while your plan unfolds (for better or worse) there's nothing like it.

From what I heard the gameplay wasn't the greatest but I'd be lying if I said I wouldn't spend a lot of fucking time messing around with my ships.

The capital ships are super bad-ass looking. I rather pilot a Star Destroyer than a a couple TIE's any day.

>and rules the galaxy
I realize you're assmad because The Mouse, but they didn't magically rule the galaxy, they were in the process of conquering it more or less unopposed because those three planets they blew up also had most of the nuRepublic fleet in orbit, so all that's left to oppose them is stragglers and planetary fleets. The opening crawl says it, Rey says it to Luke. Maybe they should have included some shots of fleets flying around occupying planets for all the brainlets in the theatre, but it was already a pretty long watch.

Question, are the sith species as a whole inclined to the darkside or is it just a cultural thing that theoretically has exceptions?

Are their sith jedi?

So guy reading NJO for the first time here. Who the fuck thought Dark Journey was a good choice to put after Star By Star? It's just a long winded GRRL POWER screed with the second worst Solo kid.

Reminds me of the Lost Tribe of Sith, except that was completely human centric and all the purebloods got wiped out, so the opposite of your idea in a way.
I'd read up on it all the same since it's the same basic thing and you may get some new ideas.

The Sith race/culture came to be dominated by rulers using the Dark Side to maintain their power. This does not mean that you couldn't have a Sith who doesn't use the Dark Side.

One idea I'm turning over in my head is that one of this Sith's children, who takes very much after him in appearance, will be strong in the Force and will aid the party in fighting their father, rejecting the use of the Dark Side