Look, it's mirrored!
One of the most frequent discussions I've had with X-Wing players is about Phantoms: are they balanced; will the meta ever move past their influence? So I've decided to take a stab at the debate.
The Base Chassis and Upgrades
Before we discuss anything regarding meta and the way Phantoms shape it, let's take a look at their base stats.
I will say, she is quite pretty.
The main feature is obvious: dat phat 4 attack dice. That's an immediate red flag with the Phantom's design - it shoved the standard of attack dice in the game by one. The 2 evade is fairly deceptive - with cloak it bumps to 4, also breaking the law of averages held by the game's other ships. The only issue with the base 2 evade stat is that without cloak, it leaves the 2 hull and 2 shields with much to desire - especially at the high base cost of 25 for the PS 3 Sigma. Everything revolves around being cloaked while shot, and without it the chassis folds up.
Overall, the Phantom chassis is a high risk, high reward ship. It emphasis raw offensive output while relying on outmaneuvering opponents in order to keep itself flying. That might've been the case, but there are still upgrades to take into account. We'll leave the EPT slot alone for now - you can always assume that a Phantom will take Veteran Instincts (VI) to win the Pilot Skill (PS) bid, and I'm going to discuss Veteran Instincts in depth to discuss my gripes with it. Let's move to the system upgrade slot. With Fire-Control System (FCS), the Phantom gains a substantial boost to its already impressive firepower.
Pew-pew.
Following that is the Crew upgrade slot, another extremely powerful slot with a wealth of options. Popular Whisper builds include Gunner in order to ensure she triggers her Pilot Trait, and the upgrade has great synergy with FCS. It also allows for other tech options, such as Tactician for control and Recon Specialist for defensive builds on Echo. Speaking of defensive builds...
Zoom-zoom.
...this is where most people believe Phantoms went all wrong. The common argument is that the upgrade provides too much in terms of action economy - and let me explain what I mean by that.
Action Economy, ACD, and its Outcomes
Disclaimer!: Before I start this section, I want to link Theorist's post on Phantoms. I in no way intend to manipulate or mismanage his ideas, so read this before I comment on it below. My main goal is have a foil for me to write against (luckily, it does differ from my own opinion). He's probably a better pilot than me, so I'd take my writings with more salt than his.
http://teamcovenant.com/theorist/2015/01/01/wave-after-wave-does-phantom-haunt-the-game/comment-page-1/#comments
When I use the term "action economy," I refer to the number of actions or action-like effects generated by a ship during a turn. Examples: a base line Gold Squadron Y-Wing with no upgrades has an action economy of 1, as it can take no more than 1 action per turn.
Autothrusters pls.
On the other hand, Soontir Fel with Push the Limit has an action economy of 3(-), as Soontir will perform two actions using his base action + PTL and is assigned a focus and a stress (hence the -). In Soontir's case, the (-) stress is largely mitigated by the strong green maneuvers on the dial. For other ships, a (-) would restrict far more mobility. The better the action economy, the better the ship. So now let's take a look at the action economy of a standard Whisper build.
Whisper (32) + VI (1) + ACD (4) + FCS (2) = 39
This build, assuming optimal conditions, has an action economy of 4(+) or 5(+). 1. Base action. 2. FCS target lock. 3. Cloak from ACD. 4. Whisper's pilot ability. 5. If Whisper decloaked, consider the movement as a barrel roll or a boost action. The (+) is in recognition of the cloak's additional benefit of adding evade dice, as well as its additional benefit for next turn's movement. In optimal circumstances, Whisper is the most action efficient ship in the game, and ACD has a large hand in this laudable title. Admittedly, ACD essentially grants 2(+) actions with no downside other than its moderately expensive points cost. Theorist of Team Covenant largely believes the combination of high maneuverability, high damage, and high evasion combines to create "an almost broken ship."
My issue with Theorist's critique is that the meta is currently dominated by ships that have high maneuverability, high damage, and high evasion: the large ship brigade with Fat Han, RAC City (Rear Admiral Chiraneau), and Super Dash. To say that those ships don't also create frustrating decisions for small ship squadrons would be hypocrisy. If anything else has helped in pushing out swarms and 4 ship rebel squadrons out of the meta, the release of the YT-2400 and the Decimator must be taken into account as well. In fact, the listed ships play into PS bidding better than Phantoms can, sacrificing a small portion of damage to increase their hull, shields, and a turret - increasing ease of play by great margins. They can largely be considered the natural counter to Phantoms while still being largely playable against a majority of the squadrons in the game. At the very least, the Phantom requires continuous thought and effort in its play - a good Phantom pilot is thinking at least a turn ahead for the purposes of decloaking and facing.
So while I'm inclined to agree that the Phantom undoubtedly shattered the metas previous to it while currently molding the meta into high PS turrets for safety against its predations, I definitely disagree with Theorist's belief that the Phantom is the most "severely predatory." I also disagree that ACD needs to be changed or attacked directly by some new modification or upgrade. Phantoms already have a natural counter that is rapidly gaining (or regaining, in Fat Han's case) traction in the meta: high PS large ships with turrets. If I were to change the Phantom, I would look to two areas: the Cloak mechanic and PS bidding. I believe Fantasy Flight Games took the idea of "PS matters" and executed it quite poorly, resulting in the large ship dominated meta we're currently experiencing. The Cloak mechanic was designed with this mission in mind, and it suffers on whole because of it.
Cloak
Still better than Star Trek: Attack Wing.
Way better than the Proximity Mine/Proton bomb pack.
The cloak mechanic is defunct in two ways. First, the in-game cloak mechanic creates negative player experiences (NPEs) for both players. The ability for a seasoned Phantom player to outmaneuver and destroy a low PS squadron leaves little room for meaningful interaction for an opponent. And even if the opponent manages to take down the Phantom while it's cloaked and has focus/evade tokens, the Phantom player receives the short stick of poor evade dice rolls. The mechanic cheapens the decision making on both sides. The Phantom player should easily outmaneuver the other ships, and just needs to focus fire. The other player is forced to make sub-optimal movement decisions in order to get shots, which will largely be ineffective against the raw power of 4 evade dice.
Now let's look at the other side of this - what happens when the Phantom player doesn't have the higher PS. Let's take two common examples of high PS ships that the Phantom traditionally has trouble against: PS 11 Fat Han and PS 10 RAC, both of which have VI, engine upgrades, and Luke Skywalker/Gunner (respectively). A Phantom player running Whisper at PS 9 and ACD must move before the two ships and fire after them. On average, the Phantom takes 1-2 damage a turn, granting that the Phantom took an evade action. There's also no guarantee of a shot, as the large ships may have been able to dodge the arc of the Phantom. This means that almost every upgrade the Phantom player purchased is rendered useless by lower PS. And without cloak to supplement its defense, the Phantom falls woefully short of expectations. Even when the Phantom gets a shot, the high shield and hull (not to mention defensive upgrades like C3P0 and Ysanne Isard) renders the overall impact of the shot to a minimum. Overall, the Phantom player receives few meaningful choices in the game - probability dictates that the Phantom dies in 2-3 turns of shooting, with 2 being on the more likely end of the spectrum.
Essentially, cloak is unbalanced at its core when it comes to game play purposes. When a Phantom gets the PS advantage with Cloak and ACD, it becomes a ship more powerful than its points total. When a a Phantom doesn't get the PS advantage, it becomes a ship far less powerful than its points total. What mostly concerns me is that the biggest factor that dictates the Phantom's strength doesn't come from game play - it comes from list building.
Pilot Skill Bidding (or, why Veteran Instincts was a terrible mistake of a card)
It's always the simple things.
Having established the unbalanced qualities of the Phantom's base statline, and having established the unbalanced qualities of cloak, we've finally arrived at what is my biggest concern for the game: Pilot Skill. In the above examples, we've seen how much the PS dictates the efficacy of a Phantom. What the above examples fail to show are the ways Phantoms (and the collective concern over Pilot Skill) affects the choices players make before they even start playing. Actually, affects poorly reflects how I feel about this. Strangles. That's the word.
So before you say, "Brandon, k-dramas have made you a bit too melodramatic," let me explain it. Pre-Phantom era, the number of ships running VI was fairly low. The number of squadrons comprised of character ships was also low. But PS still mattered. The number of relevant PS "brackets" settled in around 4: PS 1-2, 3-5, 6-8, and 9+. There would be Academy Pilot TIE Fighters at PS 1, Blue Squadron B-Wings at PS 2, Dagger Squadron, Obsidian Squadron TIE Fighters meta'd against the former two at PS 3, B-Wings meta'd against other rebel squadrons and Obsidians at PS 4, Biggs sitting pretty with his moustache at PS 5, and so on and so forth. Then you had the special picks players wanted to fly out of personal preference sitting at PS 6-8, ranging from Luke Skywalker and Chewbacca to Howlrunner and Boba Fett. Finally, you had the biggest ballers on the block sitting at PS 9: Soontir Fel always arc dodging when moving last, and we all knew that Han shot first, in the movies or on the table.
Phantoms changed all of that. Today, there's only one bracket of pilot skills - 8, 9, and 10+. PS 8 only remains on that list because it beats out Super Dash builds without VI. PS 9 is the key number, as it's where Phantoms cap out on PS (Whisper + VI). This is the Eye of Terror, the hurricane's eyewall, the epicenter of the PS quake. Anything below this suffers huge disadvantages against Phantoms. Anything tied with this has to play an extremely difficult game of cat and mouse against or with the Phantom. Anything above this has a massive advantage over the Phantom, dictating the course of the game and forcing the Phantom player into a submissive position where they take evades and skirt the edge of engagement, waiting for the turn they need the 4 attack dice to make a difference.
So why is this massive shift towards the upper end of the PS bracket so pernicious to the health of the meta? The first thing it does is immediately restrict the number of playable ships. Lower PS ships like Garven Dreis, Tarn Mison, Nera Dantels, Dutch, Leebo (is my point made yet?), Blount, Colonel Vessery , and the whole slew of assorted TIE Intercepters go from marginal competitive play-ability to nearly zero. Then we look at the upper end of the spectrum. Baseline PS 7, 8, and 9 ships then have their options reduced greatly because of the existence of Veteran Instincts. When list building, looming threat of Phantoms encourages players to take the safe option of VI over most other EPTs. This means that ships that are on the periphery of playable (say, for example, Rexlar Brath at PS 8), whose Pilot Abilities require a little nudge from an upgrade (say, an offensive upgrade like predator so that Rexlar doesn't have to spend his focus to hit so that he can use it for his ability) become immediately unplayable because they can't operate without VI to jump the Phantom threat. It also pushes the meta towards high PS ships with built in offensive Pilot Abilities, such as RAC and Fat Han. RAC's inherent marksmanship at PS10 (w/VI) makes him a natural Phantom hunter. And though Han's ability doesn't technically increase the raw output of his attacks, it does allow a player to mitigate outliers or shoot for them, overall increasing the quality of attacks over the course of a game. The maneuverability of Phantoms also lends itself towards a more turret oriented meta, and I'll eventually post about that subject altogether.
This has even further repercussions. The EPT slot has a wide range of interesting and powerful choices. But because of Phantoms and the existence of VI, the list of playable EPTs also becomes limited. Players not only lose options in terms of playable ships, but lose many viable builds in the EPT. The issue emphasizes itself when strong X-Wing players in my meta have to ask whether or not taking Predator Fat Han is too greedy of a choice. Many times the discussion ends with a nod towards a VI Fat Han build, as the risk of losing initiative to a competent Whisper player would be too great. This creates a double bind for FFG's design teams. Either they have to make EPT options so strong as to be worth the risk over VI, or they lock themselves out of EPT's and are forced to look elsewhere for further design space.
But what makes this entire part of the article so frustrating is that every problem above lacks any direct strategy or tactics related to actual in game play. This is a problem that's largely decided and created during the squadron building process. This means that it's a mechanic that forcibly alters the list of things players should play for a competitive environment, while being a generally negative player experience when played optimally with and against.
Solutions
Yes, this article does end.
So now that I've spent a decent amount of time ranting, here's what I would propose on how to fix the problem. I don't like the one-upsmanship of releasing cards to directly counter other cards, so I believe Errata should be the way to change Phantoms.
1. Remove Veteran instincts from the game. [greatly weakens Phantoms by expanding the roster of ships that can move after them and fire before them]
I believe this would create a massive change in the meta. First, it alleviates the current stranglehold Phantoms have on the upper half of the Pilots in the game by making their PS cap a hard 7. Second, it alleviates the current stranglehold VI has on the EPT slot, affording players a wider diversity of options in the squad building process. It also means that when you pay for a pilot's PS, you know exactly what you're getting, and how it'll match up against other pilots. It's also quite easy to do: ban the damn card and be done with it.
2. Change the Cloak mechanic by releasing an updated Reference Card. Remove the +2 evade dice. Bump down the base attack value of a Phantom to 3. Bump up the base agility value of a Phantom to 3. Alter points on ACD to reflect that it only establishes a movement bonus.
This would allow the Phantom to survive as a competitive choice without the extremely overbearing position it has on the meta right now. Granted, this is the least likely of any Phantom fix to ever occur, as this would require either the reprinting of numerous cards or the largest non-card printed errata block I've ever seen in a game.
So here we are at the end of a massive block of text. For those who journeyed through it, thanks for reading. For those who TL;DR'd, I don't blame you. But please, let me know what you think on the topic by commenting.
Till next time,
Brandon
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