On January 9th FFG rebalanced the game once again. As in the last two points change articles, the various members of the blog and podcast sat down to lay out what we liked, what we disliked, and what we found the most surprising about this points change.

What change do you like the best?

Emily Rastl: For me personally, the answer is clearly the two point reduction to the Baby Wookiee! I feel more motivated now to try a 3 Baby Wookiees plus something list, because now you have a lot more room for Leia. And I’m just happy that the Auzituck finally got a little love.

Matt Cary: The addition of the cannon slot to the JumpMaster 5000 was a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one. I’ve yet to try it on anyone but Dengar, but it is definitely good on him, as he now will always have a forward facing attack arc to trigger his ability. I’m not certain it will bring the ship into the forefront of any meta, but it goes a long way to making the ship usable.

It also addresses my old graphic from my JumpMaster articles:

I’ll give an honorable mention to Hyperspace becoming a curated format with a rhyme or reason that I haven’t yet divined. The oddity is welcome, but strange.

Clint Hewson: The decrease in points to almost all the M3-A Interceptor pilots seems the best realization from our overlords. They never deserved to be as high as they were in the first place. I don’t even play them or scum regularly, but I am delighted to see this change finally happen.

Dan Peterson: Probably the reduction to the generic Fang fighters is the most exciting change from my perspective. They were solid before, and a three point reduction can only do good things for them and the faction as a whole.

What change (or lack of change) are you most disappointed by?

E. R.: I’m sort of disappointed or confused that life wasn’t made any more difficult for Republic beyond increasing regen. I think there was a general consensus in the community that Ric, Chopper, and Jedi in general could all go up by some amount. I’m not against the sort of mega ace play we see from Jedi, but they still feel just a leeeetle too good.

M. C.: Mine is less of a single change, but more of a criticism of the philosophy of this points change. Instead of the power curve of powerful pieces being dropped down, FFG chose to power creep up everything else. Power creep doesn’t seem like a good move just by the nature of power creep in any other game. I am in favor of a few of the break points, but I worry about others. For example, 3 Scavenged YT-1300’s is a good move, but will get eaten alive by the many new swarm lists that have been enabled. I’ll reserve any harsh judgment, but I have my doubts as to whether this is the right direction for X-Wing.

C. H.: I am surprised by the lack of direct punishment of meta pieces in general. Inquisitors, droids, Jedi, and Vader, for example, are all things that have been ruling the meta for the last half a year and saw nothing to change it up a bit. I am not very fond of the lowering of generics to make up for this lack of change either.

D. P.: For me it was definitely the lack of change to Empire. They haven’t really been the very top of the meta at any single point of Second Edition. Before the January 2019 points change it was Scum on top. Before the July 2019 points change it was Rebels that were ruling the meta. Then during this last points cycle it was Republic aces, then Separatist swarms. But through it all, the Empire has been there, submarining just enough to avoid a hammering. But still incredibly strong. I was hoping that this would be the points change to take them down just a notch or two. But it was not.

What were you most surprised by?

E. R.: I was surprised to see Trajectory Simulator go down to 6 in addition to the sharp decrease in Resistance bomber price. But, I guess it’s not unreasonable to push bombing a little since it’s probably the archetype we’ve seen the least of in Second Edition.

M. C.: I can honestly say I did not expect all the drops on so many of the low initiative generics. I fear that this will lead to more joust-wing than I care to see, but I am interested to see if it tamps down force use as Jedi, Inqs, and the like cannot survive under sustained fire. FFG’s choice to allow for super cheap generics made more sense after I heard that they were scaling back reprints of First Edition ships. Players wanting to spam 5 X-Wings, 8 Scyks, 8 TIE/fo, or whatever will be buying up the stock of all those ships getting dusty on your friendly local game store’s shelf.

C. H.: Points-wise I was a little surprised to see Leia go up a point; not a bad change, but maybe unnecessary. (Maybe not with generics going down, idk.) This is not points-related, but I don’t know why Goji got yet another nerf: now his ability only works with bombs. The prox mine stack theoretical-magic-Christmas-land game that no one ever did is now not even possible.

D. P.: I was really surprised to see the Firespray title “Slave 1” drop down to 1 point. I thought it was a steal at 3 points, and I actually expected to see it go up in this change. I think it was a bad decision to drop it, but I’m fully prepared to take advantage of that mistake until it gets corrected in the future.

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