They suck.

That’s it.

Roll Credits.

When we all started X-Wing, we learned that hitting obstacles was bad. Some of us placed all our asteroids and debris on a table and practiced flying ships through the obstacles by ourselves while, others of us got our practice in the heat of battle where poor maneuvers were hard lessons. Obstacles were to be avoided unless you were making a conscious choice to drive through them and accept the consequences (or you were Dash Rendar).

Second Edition came along and changed the game a bit with Qi’ra, allowing conditional consequence-less obstacles. But that was no big deal, you had to have the obstacle locked and could only ignore one obstacle at a time. One well placed jam token, and your brilliant maneuver onto a rock for a range 1 trick shot just became a 50% chance of damage with no shots for you. Qi’ra had limitations and counterplay.

Wave 2 gave us the Mining Guild TIE which could drive onto asteroids without taking damage or losing an action like a bunch of mini-Dash’s. They wouldn’t be able to shoot from on top of a rock, but they could barrel roll off or just token up if they weren’t going to get a shot anyway. With their ability limited to asteroids only and movement only (not engagement phase) they were not overpowered in anyway.

But then Wave 3 came along with its gas clouds with it’s unique ability to change a blank to an evade when obstructing an attack. Autothrusters was back (kinda, sort of). We also learned that they denied your action when you moved through them, much like the other obstacles did in one way or another. But with the mysterious strain token showing up in the Wave 3 expansion packs, many of us theorized that passing over or through a cloud would give you a strain token. After it was revealed that strain would reduce your defense dice by one for an attack, it seemed like that would be a solid balance for the pseudo-autothruster bonus you could receive. You roll one less die, but if it was an obstructed shot it would just balance out with the bonus obstructed die and you can turn a blank to an evade. If you didn’t happen to get behind that cloud, your punishment would be rolling fewer dice. Seems fairly balanced, and it gives more play space for 0 agility ships as they don’t care about strain tokens. But then we learned the odd truth: gas clouds’ only negative consequence for passing over or through them was losing your action. While losing your action is bad, the lack of any other consequence seems lacking.

And by lacking, we mean it sucks.

Gas clouds suck.

Roll credits.



I suppose I should say what I am not complaining about. I am not complaining about the Autothrusters-esque changing of a blank to an evade. It’s quirky, adds some strategy to ace-play and works as a bit of variance protection as far too many times we have all had that range 3 through an obstacle shot come at us only to blank out on your plethora of green dice, sending us and our useless focus token home to cry on our pillows. That part of the gas clouds I am not complaining about. What I am complaining about is the relative lack of consequences for landing on or flying through a gas cloud. As Dee Yun put it on the Fly Better Podcast when talking about flying a TIE Swarm to win a Hyperspace Trial in Cheyenne with gas clouds:

Gas Clouds: I lose an action, but I take no damage, no stress, I still get to shoot, and maybe receive the best defensive bonus in the game. Yes, please! …moreover, what they permitted me to do is just send my whole formation where ever I deemed was the optimal tactical position with impunity. I never had to break up the formation, I could K-turn over them, and cross right back over, you name it. Just the options, the sky’s the limit. They made the game easy. …it wasn’t skill, it was easy mode.

For swarms, especially those with passive modifications like Howlrunner, Sinker, or Drea Renthal rerolls, they can ignore these obstacles with small consequence. But even without passive rerolls, the strength of the swarm is getting multiple shots on target which debris and asteroids make more difficult while gas clouds do not. Not only can a swarm pass through or land on the gas cloud, the choice of K-turning onto a gas cloud is forgone, as there is no consequence as the stress from the maneuver would have negated your action anyway. An asteroid could do damage and would remove both your action and your shot. A debris cloud could do damage and would double up your stress.

But with the gas cloud there is no consequence outside of the stress from the turn. Outside of swarms, however, there are still plenty of abuses that this obstacle permits. Collision Detector pretends that almost don’t exist altogether even without spending a charge. SLAM and Advanced SLAM are unaffected by it. But the biggest allowance by the this obstacle is the “After fully executing a maneuver” clause.

Here is a list (as many as I could remember) of ship abilities, pilots, and upgrades that trigger off of that wording:

Full Throttle (TIE Defender and N1 Starfighter), Fine-Tuned Controls (Delta 7 Aethersprite), Greer Sonnel, Edon Kappehl, Odd Ball, Mace Windu, Anakin Skywalker, Lando Calrissian (Rebel), Night Beast, Ahsoka Tano, Kad Solus, 4-LOM, Temmin Wexley, Elusive, Afterburners, “Genius”, R4-P17, R4-P44, Dauntless, Unkar Plutt (crew), Kor Sella, and Pattern Analyzer.

NOTE: Now with Wave 5, both the Nantex’s Pinpoint Tractor Array, Ahsoka Tano gunner, and the C1-10P astromech have a “after executing a maneuver” terminology, omitting the “fully” that the other listed cards have, allowing for even more abuse.

That is no small list. Most of those are not bad, but many of them allow an action (or token gain) after passing through an obstacle (Full Throttle, Fine-Tuned Controls, Greer, Odd Ball, Lando, Night Beast, Ahsoka, Kad, 4-LOM, Temmin, R4-P17, R4-P44, Dauntless, Unkar Plutt, and Pattern Analyzer). With asteroids and debris, this is less of an issue, as debris add stress preventing most of these abilities and asteroids have a 50% chance to damage you and landing on them prevents you from shooting. But with gas clouds, the one negative consequence of this obstacle is removed: negating the action. Unlike Dash, Qi’ra, and the Mining Guild TIE, this exploit is not limited to one pilot, one upgrade, or one chassis. This obstacle can be exploited by many pilots, upgrades, and at least three different chassis abilities.

The named Jedi with the Aethersprite’s Fine-Tuned Controls ship ability seems the most egregious at this point in the game, as they can reposition off of the cloud and still have their force to assist them on offense or defense. This makes gas clouds largely irrelevant for them. A Jedi with an R2 astromech could potentially regen a shield, 5 straight through the gas cloud, and then spend a force charge to boost or barrel roll to get even farther away. With little consequence, that is very dirty.

So why not add some consequence to this obstacle? Because even without the all the “fully executing a maneuver” shenanigans, it’s X-Wing on easy mode. I propose either adding a strain for passing through as we originally thought would happen, or at the very least make it a roll to gain strain. No strain on a blank result, 1 strain on a eyeball or hit result, and 2 strain on a crit result. Changing gas clouds would also be a simple as putting an errata in the rules reference.

Now, are gas clouds truly bad for the game? Maybe. Can the game be made better by adding some consequence to them? Definitely, yes. What do you think? Are gas clouds fine as they are? DO they actually suck like I believe? Or do they need to be changed? If you would change them, what alterations would you make?

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