It’s no secret that Battle Meditation looks to be really good, point cost dependent of course. Coordinate has seen A LOT of play in second edition, with several of the coordinate carriers receiving a points a increase in the January points balance (Escape Craft, Sheathipede, Squad Leader). Actions are really good, and being able to redistribute them to where they can be more impactful has proven to be quite strong. But what if you could multiply them as well….

This idea is crazy enough I thought a few more people might like to hear about it and freak out. Who know’s if it will be any good, we have no idea about points costs yet, and anything could be good if it’s cheap enough . But it will most certainly be very silly.

(Shout out to Will from Gold Squadron Podcast for briefly mentioning this idea on a recent podcast, and hence basically inspiring this blog entry)

Assumptions

– Jedi Knights have the Force Power slot

– This all fits under (well) 200 points

So… Let me show you a magic trick. I’ll turn this single action on my Jedi Knight, into four actions … [maniacal laugh]

Start off with three Jedi Knights equipped with Battle Meditation:

It’s probably worth equipping them with the Delta-7B configuration as well to give them a little extra punch. The way these Jedi Knights will be flying is more of an efficiency/attrition style rather than an ace/arc-dodger style.

Jedi Knight 1 executes a maneuver and performs a purple Coordinate action, coordinating the Coordinate action to Jedi Knights 2 and 3

Jedi Knight 2 coordinates the Focus action to Jedi Knights 1 and 3

coordinates the Focus action to and Jedi Knight 3 coordinates the Lock action to Jedi Knights 1 and 2

coordinates the Lock action to and One action from Jedi Knight 1 results in four tokens (actions) for the squad

Apologies to any colour blind people if this is hard to read.

Jedi Knight 2 is free to execute a maneuver and perform a Focus action

is free to execute a maneuver and perform a Focus action Jedi Knight 3 is free to execute a maneuver and perform a Lock action

is free to execute a maneuver and perform a Lock action All three Jedi Knights end up with both a Focus token and a Lock

Seems good!! Right?

Analysis feat. Maths

However, when you stop and think about it, what are you actually gaining out of this? There are a lot of steps and moving pieces and you end up with a stack of double modified attacks, everything looks good.

But fundamentally, all that is being gained, is that the Jedi Knights are converting their Force token into a Focus token and taking a Lock for their action.

Yes, the Focus token is better, but not by much.

I had written most of this blog entry before the little actual impact of the combo occurred to me. But I kept writing, because it’s still a silly series of actions and I feel like there is almost definitely going to be something crazy that works with Battle Meditation, I just went down the wrong rabbit hole.

If the Jedi Knights did not spend their Force charge on Battle Meditation (or Fine-Tuned Controls in their activation), the only use for the Force charge is to modify a die in the engagement phase.

On Offense:

3 dice with Lock + Focus -> 2.81 expected hits, 3 hits 82.4%

3 dice with Lock + Force -> 2.64 expected hits, 3 hits 68.0%

4 dice (range 1) with Lock + Focus -> 3.75 expected hits, 4 hits 77.2%

4 dice (range 1) with Lock + Force -> 3.46 expected hits, 4 hits 55.9%

2 dice (no Delta-7B) with Lock + Focus -> 1.88 expected hits, 2 hits 87.9%

2 dice (no Delta-7B) with Lock + Force -> 1.81 expected hits, 2 hits 81.3%

Thanks to the X-Wing Probability Calculator for making my life super easy here.

There is a difference between pairing a Focus or a Force with a Lock on offense, but it isn’t very big. Gets worse with more dice, but I’d be pretty happy with 3.46 expected hits, 4 hits 55.9% from my 4 dice attack.

On Defense: assuming the dice modifier wasn’t spent on offense, the Focus is only better when 2 or more focus results are rolled. When equipped with Delta-7B and only 2 defense dice, this happens 6.25% of the time, which is less than Heroic triggering at 14.1%, i.e. not very often. Odds increase with more defense dice, from range 3, obstruction or no Delta-7B, but for maximizing offense with Lock + Focus, you’re generally willing to spend the token on offense, so what it does for defense is a bit less important.

Verdict

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should. Jeff Goldblum as Dr. Ian Malcolm in Jurassic Park

Nope.

Battle Meditation would have to be pretty darn cheap to be worthwhile in this specific combination as it’s only really converting Force charges into Focus tokens. And if it were cheap enough for that, there would certainly be something a lot more broken out there, with just a single coordinating Jedi.

Once the points list comes out for this faction, we can actually explore how good this card might be. Hopefully we don’t have to wait too much longer.

-Nathan