July 2020 Points Changes - Resistance & Generic Upgrades

Finishing up my review of how I think the July 2020 points changes will play out for the various factions I'm going to look at Resistance in this blog, and also cast an eye on some changes to Generic Upgrades that I've not talked about already as part of the previous blogs.

If you recall my original totem pole of faction power level before the points change I had Resistance pegged in the second tier along with the First Order.  

Much like the First Order I think the Resistance has tons of very good and solid ships but a lack of any really super-strong S-Tier guys who you can build a squad around with confidence that you're going to have something special at the end of it.  It means you get lots of squads circulating that have bits of shared DNA between them as everyone can agree that the ingredients are good and are trying to just find a magic recipe for success, but you don't really see any one squad type become adopted and proving repeatedly successful like you get in the top tier factions.

RESISTANCE

It's taken me a little while to get round to writing about Resistance points changes and I left them to last for a reason: I don't think there's much to say.

Of all the factions the Resistance have had maybe the least impact in the July price changes with no major pricing moves at all, really.  On the one hand that's great news as it means things like the RZ2 A-Wing or the incredibly efficient generic T-70 X-Wings got away without being hit at all, and even my boy Finn and his transport pod were left alone.  There's a lot of players who have been having success with various versions of Resistance efficiency lists because you could assemble these pieces in almost any way you liked and find success, with most players landing on four or five ship versions.

I've been championing a six ship version, and although it came out on 201pts after the change (stupid Crack Shot increase) that's easily remedied.

And yes, you can still run five RZ2 A-Wings, which is a great squad but just not a great squad for right now in this metagame.  If anything the RZ2 A-Wings got a little bit of a hit in Zizi Tlo going up and also Crack Shot, although I think they'd already got squeezed on points so much that Crack Shot was out of most squads anyway.

Likewise, Rey went down 2pts in the Salvaged Millenium Falcon but does that do a lot?  Well in the case of the most recently successful build - running deep in the LA Space Jam event - all it did was offset the +2pts of Zizi and Crack Shot and net the list back out at 200pts.

In the whole of the Resistance arsenal probably the only squad to meaningfully come down in cost was Vennie and her humongous Starfortress because not only did Vennie herself get cheaper but there was a price cut to Veteran Turret Gunner too. The only problem is, well, what do you get the girl who has everything?  Vennie already had all the toys she wants and there's no room for anything else... the only thing I can think to spend those saved points on is an upgrade to her T-70 wingman and that maybe the newly discounted Joph Seastriker could shore up a weak point in the list.

Let's get one thing straight: Vennie is not to everyone's taste and the experience of flying her lumbering bomber is about as far from a fun and whizzy A-Wing as you can get... but she damn sure is effective and can have some great matchups into all the swarm squads around.  

And yeah, that's the Resistance in this points cut: it doesn't change.  It was pretty good before and it's pretty good now, but there's no reason to think it's suddenly going to be able to compete with the best factions or that it's worth revisiting Poe Dameron now he's 1pt less.

GENERIC UPGRADES

Not a faction but with some of the points changes being made I thought it was worthwhile stopping by to look at what has happened to some squadbuilding decisions that could affect all the squads.

Torpedoes & Missiles

I really appreciate the little changes made to all the less popular Torpedoes and Missiles in this points cut and I think it makes decision points between them all a lot more valid.  Previously for all the diverse range of torpedoes and missiles in the game you saw 90% of them being played as either Proton Torpedoes or Concussion Missiles.  I still think those are the main go-to secondary weapons but there's now that little more incentive to trim points here when things get tight.  I'll pull a few out to talk about...

3pts - Ion Missiles - a cheap way to bring a 3rd red dice to a fight.  I've been a huge proponent on Ion Cannons for Scyks playing exactly this role in that getting Ion tokens through is a secondary benefit to simply being more likely to chip a damage in by rolling 3 red dice.  The missiles are weaker because you need the Target Lock and it's hard to get at low initiative so I think even at 3pts they're not quite good enough most of the time.  They may actually find more play as a cheap addition to an ace pilot who will find it easier to get the lock.

5pts - Ion Torpedoes - a cheap way to bring a 3rd AND 4th red dice to a fight!  I like these more than Ion Missiles because that 4th dice is really hard for an enemy ace to ignore and you only have to pay 2pts for it over the Ion Missiles.  That 4th dice threatens to reliably punch through damage and even ion tokens against even 3 Agility ships and it means even the smallest ship can cast a big shadow on the table that the opponent has to run from.  You can bring an N1 Starfighter with Passive Sensors and Ion Torpedoes for 40pts and it will be something that any enemy ace has to treat with utter respect.

8pts - Plasma Torpedoes - probably the 3rd most popular ordnance weapon already I actually think the points change WON'T see much increase in how many of these you see.  It's like the inverse of the Ion Torpedoes argument, in that for 8pts you're still only swinging 3 red dice and no guarantee that it will punch through a 3 Agility target to hit and cause the shield strip... assuming the opponent has any shields left to strip.  Because you really need to push those 3 red dice as hard as possible I think Plasma Torpedoes remain glued to the few ships capable of reliably getting double mods for them who were already using them.  For just 5pts you can throw Ion Torpedoes single modded and get the value you need but that's not true here and I think it limits how many ships will take them.

2pts - Passive Sensors - not strictly ordnance but an enabler for it on low initiative ships.  It all helps you to push cheap ordnance carriers as effective 'super-filler' ships that can deliver a real bite for relatively low cost.  Targeting Synchroniser getting a points cut has a similar effect and I've already seen some janky Z-95 swarms that use a Quadjumper with Targeting Synchroniser to get their missiles away!

Payloads

Ion Bombs, Conner Nets and Electro-Proton Bombs all get a point cheaper.  Ok.  Ion Bombs are still a niche use item, Conner Nets still aren't good enough with just one charge and Electro-Proton Bombs are still a meme.

Gunners

Agile Gunner finally costs a probably fair amount considering what Gyroscopic Targeting cost for the Lancer in First Edition.  5pts on a large base is really reasonable and I wouldn't be surprised to see this starting to creep into some big turret builds on 100pt ships because those boys need every bit of action economy they can lay their hands on.

Veteran Turret Gunner dropping on large bases has already been mentioned in this blog with regard to Vennie but while it's a welcome price drop I'm not sure it's going to get played very often.  Without Paige Tico's ability to swing that arc around and allow for double tap attacks on the same target I think it's still going to be limited by just how often you're going to have targets in two different arcs as the Starfortress is the only large ship currently able to pull off that double-tap trick.

Crack Shot

Crack Shot is now 2pts.  This is arguably the single biggest change in Generic Upgrades because of how much it was being played vs anything else that got a price change.

Firstly: Crack Shot was too good at 1pt.  Even at 2pts it routinely outperforms Predator in terms of combat math for almost any ship in the game and there's actually a mathematical argument for making Crack Shot 3pts so that there's a reason to use Predator instead.

Secondly: Crack Shot did have a role to play in controlling token-stacking defensive aces and doubling it's cost will limit how well it can perform this role.  At the moment I'm not too concerned by this as I think the token-stacking defensive aces are already coming under much more pressure from the huge ranks of hyper-efficient generic ship swarms.  If that ever changes and the efficient swarms go away I could see an argument for bringing Crack Shot back down in price.  In the meantime losing Crack Shot from things like Rebel Beef is just another nail in the coffin of that archetype - already unable to beat off the hyper-efficient swarms it now finds it harder to fit key anti-ace tools too.

Thirdly: you're going to play a lot of Marksmanship now.  You don't think you are because you think Marksmanship is rubbish and it's not really a proper dice mod.  And you'd be right.  But when you've got 3pts hanging and 3 empty Talent slots you're going to add Marksmanship in anyway... and then later you'll realise it's actually winning you games a fair amount of the time.

WRAPPING UP

I set out in my first blog by saying how I thought the factions lined up in three tiers and after reviewing all the changes and stewing on it for two weeks, I still think not a vast amount is going to change, at least before new ships come out and possibly shake things up.

Tier 1 is still Boba/Dengar or Boba/Koshka, Imperial Aces, Droids and the Agi3 Swarms (Scyks, Sloane, FOcho etc, now maybe joined by Spamtex and TIE v1 swarms)

Tier 2 is still where you find best jousting blocks of First Order and Resistance ships in their many configurations, or First Order aces and Vennie or Rey hoping to dodge the wrong matchups.

Tier 3 is still whatever the best of the Rebels and Republic can throw together after their dominant 2019 squad archetypes got hammered into the ground at the end of last year.

New ships are coming and I really hope they do something to shake this all up.  With no serious events happening during the continued Coronavirus lockdown I think FFG may have missed a trick by not just throwing everything up in the air for six months and experimenting with some wacky points costs to see what happens.  But on the other hand, with no serious events happening maybe that's our release valve that not everyone is going to be taking the game seriously enough to really make us sick and tired of seeing Boba in every other match for another six months!