Are Scenarios Too Impactful?
Since being able to play the 2.5 rules, hearing local thoughts, and a few heated discussions here on reddit, I've been on a bit of a roller coaster of emotions towards the new rules. And I think I've been able to consolidate my thoughts into one simple statement:
**"Scenarios Are Too Impactful**
I was always skeptical of scenario play, but I figured if done well, it could be good. Pushing for engagements is a good thing for the early and late stages of an X-Wing game when not a lot of action happens because everyone is timid for one reason or another. But, those phases are still important to the game, and scenarios have basically cut them out entirely.
A major part of this is that too many points are being scored on objective play in scenarios that aren't Chance Encounter. 5 points are up for grabs every round, and both players are likely to pick up 2 per turn. This means the game is halfway over at round 5 on mission points alone, and each list has probably been hit fairly roughly by each other's respecive alpha strikes. In essence; the game is probably over by round 5 or 6.
Chance Encounter lasts much longer as it's a 0-1 point per round scenario. But it has other problems. For one, mission points can be scored turn one if only one player makes it to the ring of honorable fisticuffs. If both players send everything to the middle, one player is immediately at a disadvantage because they're walking straight into the other player's murder zone. But you can't dwadle outside that range for long, otherwise you give up a lot of mission points. A mere three rounds is not a wealth of time to jockey for position, but you have already given up an entire ship's worth of points trying to avoid the absolute pounding that awaits in the opponent's alpha strike. In essence, this makes expensive pilots like Poe, Fenn, and Vader extremely tough to justify. They don't fare better in the 5-point scenarios either, because those prioritize ship count and early control as well. But this also makes big ships like the Falcon, VCX, and Decimator hard sells as well, because of the loss of area control and they suffer hardest when they walk into the kill zones of more concentrated lists, which have gotten more lethal with the advent of loadout points and objective pressure.
Thankfully, I think a fix for each scenario is pretty easy.
* Universally: Can't score points turn 1. Rushing objectives is too good for the player with the better joust capability.
* Chance Encounter: Extend the range of control to R3. R2 is too tight, giving too much strength to jousting lists making dense kill zones.
* Assault the Satellite Array: 1 point to whoever controls **more** satellites. This will turn the clock back substantially so games are more about the dogfight than the objectives.
* Salvage Mission: 1 point to whomever has more cargo. Same as Assault, but also makes it so you can't ditch combat to run away with a cargo piece and win through mission point inevitability.
* Scramble the Transmissions: 1 point to whoever has more satellites controlled. As Assault, but has the added benefit of making a bad dice roll feel better as removing a control token can still help you score the objective instead of merely denying your opponent a point.
But, that's not the only part scenarios have impacted. It's also had a major impact on how points are distributed. High squad point ships often have everything they want and because of loadout points, and yet aren't being seen favorably in scenario play. This is because they need all of it to have a chance compared to Vulture/Hyena Swarms, TrageB's, and other swarmy killbox lists. The demand for lethality on ships has gone up considerably to match the shorter rounds played per game. If/when scenarios are nerfed, we'll have a problem where aces become too strong because they're overflowing with free upgrades. While that can be adjusted, I have a more drastic solution that could satisfy both the 2.0 and 2.5 crowds:
* Go back to 200 point lists. Objectives reward 10 points instead of 1 for easy maths.
* Keep loadout points, but lower the points any ship gets from 0-5 or so, but ships can have loadouts beyond their loadout points limit by spending squad points. For example, Joy Rekkoff. A ship that got sidelined for the generic 100% of the time until she had her points lowered to the same points as the generic. Now, she could appropriately cost more than a generic, but have just enough loadout points to equip the torpedo needed to use her ability.