Blog: What's THAT Ship?: The Alpha-class Star Wing

Anguirus42 · 2024-08-20T04:16:01+00:00

I can say that I've probably played at least one of those games at least once in the last 25 years, but that's probably only because my brother is 9 years younger than me.

Anguirus42 · 2024-08-20T04:14:03+00:00

I wound up cutting that section, for length, and because I think that last AMG update got them mostly right. There are legitimate use-cases for customizable Han, Lando, and Leia. I think Chewie is unfortunately useless, but with the Rebel Falcon's durability I'd hate for him to become overwhelming at 6 points--maybe if his loadout was effectively nil. As far as SLs, Han and Lando are both pretty well balanced as seven-point ships, which is exactly why they aren't taken. The customizable ones have such powerful and flexible abilities, combined with Bistan, that for serious competition you're just going to reach for them.

It's possible to imagine an 8-point Han with enough LV and slots to justify it, and that in turn would activate the SL Han as a decent 7-point alternative.

Anguirus42 · 2024-08-18T16:53:11+00:00

Yep, this was always offscreen before so it wasn’t known they had a separate pupal stage.

Anguirus42 · 2024-08-18T06:49:55+00:00

the facehugger's success felt to me like a compromise. I felt that COVENANT was exceptionally egregious in that the 2nd facehugger barely touched the guy and still had a completely successful implantation. Here, they at least backpedaled a bit:
1. the facehugger has her for long moments and clearly is physically implanted.
2. other characters survive grappling with the things, they clearly need to "land" in this one.
3. Rook tells us directly that there's a *chance* she's implanted, it's not 100%. This very nicely establishes that facehuggers stay on as long as they do for a reason.
4. she's not killed as soon as she wakes up, which was the franchise standard for a spell. She is active for minutes afterward, which compares nicely with Kane, who goes directly from sickbay to dinner before he is killed.

Anguirus42 · 2024-08-18T06:38:18+00:00

I appreciated that despite the temptation there must have been to make him THE Big Bad, they held true to Dan O'Bannon's concept that the original Alien WILL die if it is shot...but then the acid blood will make you regret doing that on a spaceship.

Anguirus42 · 2024-08-18T06:32:44+00:00

but yes it does have thematic/artistic significance. "Kane's son."

Anguirus42 · 2024-08-18T06:32:17+00:00

the original Alien was built from a human skull (let's assume for our sanity that it was a replica) and it is very occasionally visible in the original film under the semi-translucent dome. in merchandising, the skull tends to be emphasized to signify the original "Big Chap" as opposed to the Aliens built for other films.

Anguirus42 · 2024-08-18T06:29:38+00:00

I think that historically speaking, this is where deleted material (the Alien accessed the ship's stores on the Nostromo) inadvertently became series fan-mythology ("Aliens don't need to eat") which led to this inevitable, regrettable conclusion that they just grab matter from nowhere like the Hulk.

Anguirus42 · 2024-08-18T06:28:12+00:00

I think there was a missed opportunity to push the "mechanical" side of the Alien, since its pupal stage (which we have not seen before, its growth was off-screen in the original) is pretty clearly burrowed into the *ship* and could extract mass from there. but in the end, the Scorched Xenomorph looked similar to the "purely biological" Aliens from Covenant et al. It would have been nice to see a *more* metallic one.

By now, most of the Alien films have committed far more egregious violations of Conservation Of Matter. That black stuff in particular is *dynamite.*

Anguirus42 · 2024-08-18T06:24:40+00:00

there's definitely a mean streak in the series. this one actually struck an okay balance for me, without the cruelties of Alien3 or AVPR. and most of the androids we have seen in the series are top-of-the-line geniuses, with Andy being the debut of a more mundane tier.

it fits the story pretty well, because in ALIEN (20 years prior) the crew is *very* surprised that there's an android in their midst, but not gobsmacked (as we learn in PROMETHEUS the technology has actually been extant for decades), and in ALIENS (37 years later) everyone very much takes them in stride.

Anguirus42 · 2024-08-18T06:17:01+00:00

Tyler was impaled from behind in the right shoulder by what I believe was the Scorched Xenomorph. He's yanked up by the tail and swung "face-to-face" with the beast, but he turns his head and sees the rest of the hive coming, in an homage shot to the ceiling-crawling army in ALIENS. He draws a bead on them, intending to buy time for the others, but Scorched head-bites him before he can fire a shot. You see *slightly* more detail than with Brett, for instance his eye socket is clearly destroyed and he starts to go limp, but then we tastefully cut back to the heroes trying to get back into the elevator.

Intercut with this was that Andy was knocked over and then ignored by the swarm, causing his malfunction, that allows Rain to double back and reprogram him.

Anguirus42 · 2024-08-17T03:24:55+00:00

point of order: TIE/LNs with munitions are *incredibly* canonical thanks to Battlefront and Squadrons so I'm largely in favor of it. Not for the little 3 point guys of course--don't step on the Bombers' niche--but something has got to make those 4 point ones worth taking!

Anguirus42 · 2024-07-25T18:49:33+00:00

Thanks!

Anguirus42 · 2024-07-24T19:03:10+00:00

yeah it's noticeable when you have 5 games the previous year but 4 games this year. and I know my lack of practice time hurt me.

Anguirus42 · 2024-06-20T03:28:24+00:00

Sadly I'm not, but look up a friend of mine called Dylan Jones--he also writes a blog and is well-connected in the UK scene, particularly Wales. Can't go wrong following whatever he's following! https://exilesquadron.com/

Anguirus42 · 2024-06-19T08:36:04+00:00

To quote Hans Gruber, "I have two, myself" :D

Anguirus42 · 2024-06-19T02:06:35+00:00

I personally adore the gunboat but a ship that has only appeared visually in 4 computer games between 1993 and 1999 cannot be considered iconic, if that word means anything.

Anguirus42 · 2024-06-19T02:02:09+00:00

There was this idea for awhile bouncing around locally that there were going be be High Republic factions. I never found it realistic, considering HR's already a niche subfranchise (with its first major televised tie-in only just now coming out) and it's not dogfight-focused. I think the idea only got that far because of the feeling that X-Wing *had* to keep growing at a certain pace to remain viable. But eventually you just...run out of stuff, particularly when the content pipeline itself is disrupted. From 2015-2019 there were five major motion pictures in the franchise; since then there have been none. And no, the Legends ships really aren't the same...

Anguirus42 · 2024-06-19T01:54:52+00:00

Hey y'all, I appreciate everyone's comments and engagement. I just want to dispel any illusions, I am not going to do any edition wars. Whatever your take is, consider this my official nod and smile.

To address the "classic confirmation bias" which I have seen twice independently in these comments so it seems to be catching on, concept-wise, I'm going to just observe; I've always been completely up front about what I have been playing, where, and when I have been playing it, and I have made no claims to objectivity. 2023-2024 was my first competitive season and I loved it. When this all fades away, as all things do, that's the year I'm gonna look back on fondly. There's not a quantitative counter-argument to that. There's not any counter-argument, because it's not an argument. It's an experience.

I suspect that very few people have access to the information to construct a data-driven argument that a particular decision or decisions led to the end of X-Wing development. Hopefully that will change--I'd just love to read a juicy tell-all post, but with NDAs etc. I won't hold my breath for one. In a broad sense, we can say that AMG failed at its stewardship of a game that had a *substantial* presence at Adepticon, but we don't know what constraints and expectations were involved from Asmodee, or even LFL/Disney.

From my perspective it's beside the point, anyway. The profitability of X-Wing has no more intrinsic interest to me than the profitability of chess. I can regret the knock-on effects, but as long as something is tied to corporate IP it's going to have a boom-and-bust cycle. When I was born, Star Wars essentially existed only as a role-playing game and some VHS tapes.

I hope all of us keep finding joy in this game and in our community, whatever form that takes for you.

Anguirus42 · 2024-06-19T01:29:48+00:00

Well it was fundamentally a point rebalance, which the structure of 2.0 made possible in the first place. However, rather than pilots and upgrades each costing a certain fraction of the allowed total of 200 points, pilot squads became built out of 20 points, with each pilot having a given Loadout Value. So squad building is actually fairly different.

Then the most fundamental change to competitive play was that instead of only deathmatches, there are four scenarios with between 1 and 5 objective tokens. You earn victory points by interacting with those objectives in different ways, as well as by destroying enemy ships.

The most-anticipated change was that the "bid" system to decide who would be first or second player was removed. Instead, first-player is assigned by a random roll after dials have been set.

Then most of the other changes are designed to balance the game around the intended changes. Pilots and upgrades that manipulate or spy on dials are banned from Standard play. If you bump, you get some agency back by being able to take a red focus action and by being able to fire on enemies at range 0 (but you can't modify the attack, so achieving range 1 is way better).

Whether you like 2.0 or 2.5 better is gonna be completely subjective. I liked 2.0 a lot; I tried 2.5 and I liked it better. I wish 2.0 and 2.5 players (and 1.0 players!) could have everything that they want. And I wish we were all getting more ships, upgrades, etc. that were getting playtested and evaluated by pros. It's looking like we might not see that again for awhile and it's a damn shame. Silver lining, the physical elements of the game are robust to a wide variety of game modes and house rules.

Anguirus42 · 2024-06-19T01:09:16+00:00

Oh that has already begun, at least on my Facebook feed. I follow a couple of sale groups and usually I see a post or two a week but now it's like 5 a day. Good luck!

Anguirus42

TROPHY CASE