How many squad points should a ship cost?
How many squad points should each X-Wing ship cost? That is the age old question that is not new to 2.5, just rests within a different framework. But it has always been a major debate for each ship and each pilot of each ship. How much a pilot costs plays an important role in how often that pilot sees play. If a ship is a great value, its hard to justify NOT taking it. This topic of discussion was inspired by the recent release of Hot Shots and Ace II, and specifically the inclusion of Zay Versio in the T-70 X-Wing at only 4 squad points. As the only T-70 at that price point, when making a Resistance list and looking at T-70’s, the first question becomes why not Zay?
This isn’t a unique situation. Many ships have outlier pilots. Most of the best pilots are outliers on the other end, costing more points than everything else. With those, the question is, “Are they worth paying more for?” But with the cheaper outliers, they force that question onto all other pilots of that ship. Do any other pilots justify their increased cost over the cheap outlier? The answer to that question is always “It depends” as there are a lot of variables to consider there. What I really want to explore is the question of, “Should these cheaper outliers exist?”
If Zay Versio costs 4 squad points, she is establishing that the T-70 chassis itself (ignoring loadout, initiative, and pilot abilities) is only worth 4 squad points. So why is she the only one? She does have less loadout than any other named pilot. But the generics are all 5 points. Now, outside of a few specific cases, TIE Fighters and Vultures, AMG has made clear they do not want to encourage playing with generics. It then follows that generics aren’t going to be priced cheaper than name pilots, and will just cost what the majority cost but with less loadout. But that ignores the question of why Zay is cheaper than everyone else? Is her ability so much worse that she needs to be cheaper to justify it? I wouldn’t say so. It’s not the best certainly but I’d say it’s better than some of the others.
Does having a T-70 that costs 4 points help the Resistance in an important way? Or a 4 point Rogue in the form of Durge or 4 point Fang with Tor Phun for Scum? Certainly, as now there are ways to include these types of ships in more list types. It is possible to make a five ship list which includes a 4 point T-70 into a list with a bunch of 4 point Y-Wings and A-Wings. The trouble, then, is that it becomes that much harder to justify ever taking any of the other ships. If you can get the ship for 4pts, the extra points you pay have to be worth the investment. This pushes players toward the good pilots even more. It was already hard to justify ever taking C’ai Threnalli when Nien Nunb costs the same amount.
Having pilots that are outliers by being cheaper, magnifies the overpriced nature of many other pilots. Why isn’t C’ai Threnalli 4 points? His ability is not good. Maybe it would be okay at 4 points, when you could fly him with more ships, and have more chances to trigger his ability. This question could be asked for all of the T-70 pilots, and all the Rogue pilots, and any other ship that has a one or few, cheaper outliers. Look at what happened to Manaroo in the Jumpmaster. She was cheaper than any others and she saw much more play. So much, that she had to be bumped up to join the others.
What follows then, is how many ships of a particular type are too many? This creates an unfortunate floor for how many ships can be below a certain cost. Would five T-70’s or Rogues be to powerful, regardless of their pilots? Would three TIE Defenders be too powerful? Six TIE Interceptors? Five T-65’s appear to be okay, but only if you take one specific list. Why not more variety? There are several other T-65 pilots that don’t need to cost 5 points.
In some ways, this is only a problem for ships that have a wide range of pilots. When there are only a few, you set the price at what you want the floor to be for that ship and then only go up if you have a real outlier pilot that deserves to cost more. Duchess deserves to cost more than the other Strikers. And Fenn Rau deserves to cost more than the other Fangs. But does Tor Phun deserve to cost less?
Having a single pilot cost less than the others undermines every other pilot. Having them all cost the lower price makes the ship too powerful as you could fit one more on the board than you could fit before. What about splitting the difference and always having a few cheaper, if you’re going to have any? That also runs a risk, see Resistance Y-Wings. They had a few 3 points which saw a lot of play and were recently nerfed up to 4 with the rest.
Unfortunately, there is no easy answer. If there were, point adjustments would never be necessary and we’d have nothing to talk about because everyone would agree with each ship’s cost. Good pilots costing more makes sense and if they still get flown, then players clearly still find value in them. But I do think it is a bad idea to have a small selection of mediocre pilots cost less than other mediocre pilots.
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