The Q-ship rule on the Claudius says the upgrade is secret, and the rest of the wording makes it very clear that you don't select which ship in a multi-ship unit is the actual Q-ship in advance. The other restrictions (just one per unit, has to be Battle Ready, start of the unit's activation) really limit the effectiveness of the ploy. You're essentially paying 120 points to disguise a combat cruiser as a merchant, and if you don't drop another 70-140 points on actual merchants in the unit odds are excellent that the enemy will reduce your one Q-ship to Crippled and prevent a transformation, wasting that 50 points for the camo. Even a full 260 point Claudius unit might occasionally get focused on enough to prevent the Q-ship from popping out before everything's crippled or sunk, but it's got the best odds of working as intended. Whether that's good enough for the cost I don't know, but watching your opponent shoot at 70 point merchants instead of actual warships because one of them *might* be a Q-ship has some humor value of its own. The fact that your transformation *might* get blocked explains why you get such a large (10-27 point) discount on the base cost of the ship classes you can make into Q-ships. At 120 points a Plinny is pretty darn cheap, and it's hard to stop it or the bombard cruiser from popping out early. Makes me wonder if they'll alter the rule to delay the reveal, or penalize your actions the turn you pop out or something.
I'll try to keep that mind for the next deep dives. This enlightened one is one that I do know a lot about by heart, as it's one of the 2 factions I main in this game.
The Newton Void Engine rules are clunky as hell, but I'm not sold on them being anywhere near as bad as you say. Stop looking at it as a ship you want to take in squadrons rather than solos and consider what that 136 points is buying you. The extra range for a big unit is sort of helpful, but a few more inches of movement on 1/3rd of the die results is a complete waste. Singletons only here. You'll have an easier time getting at least one singleton into position to shoot something juicy at 15" than a whole squadron at 19". First off, can that action die be rerolled? If it can, the rule is enormously better right away. Only a 1/9 chance of a total dud then. 3/4 chance of a really nasty result. Second, look what's really happening here. You pick enemy unit (mass 3 or less) within range 15" - don't do friendlies unless you're desperate to pull off some wonky shenanigans, unless that AD can be rerolled, and probably not even then. Roll die: 1: Sturginium Flare sans Crit marker on both you *and* the target unit. Emphasis on *unit*. There should only be one of you, and you should be positioned to minimize any drawbacks if you roll this. Aim at things that do not want a Flare going off, like ships with a bunch of SRS tokens in contact - or within 5" of ones who do. Or anyone dumb or unlucky enough to be within 1" of an unfavorable collision. This is actually halfway decent, and could really screw over the enemy SRS game although it's too unreliable to count on for that. 2,3: Dud shot. OK, that's bad, granted. 4,5: You're picking up every model in the target unit, including ones that are way out of 15" range, and putting them down again in coherency up to 5" away from their starting point, with some restriction so you can't drop them on a beach or at the table edge. Beyond that, you're choosing their facing and positions. At a minimum, set them up so their best guns are pointing the wrong way. Better, put them in "drunken idiot" formations where they can't all move without colliding with each other, or where they block their own allies, or both. Pretty sure you can drop them in minefields too by the wording of the Open Water rules. Move them away from objectives and point them so they'll never get on them while you're at it. Force them to spend their activations for turns to come trying to get back into some semblance of order - and then do it to them again. This is amazing when it goes off. 6: Okay, off to Reserves it is. You just a removed a whole unit from the game, at least briefly. Odds are they aren't going to come back anyplace ideal either, and they sure aren't taking any mid-table objectives any time soon. How often does 136 points of anything impact the game this heavily? This is great, but it might actually screw up the enemy slightly less than the 4,5 results. That Mass 3 ship or squadron of Mass 2 ones you just exiled isn't going to be sitting there waiting for the rest of your fleet to murder them, unlike the poor saps in a 4,5 roll. OTOH, the exiles aren't going to shooting back either, so it's a bit of a wash. At worst, a 3/6 chance of a really game-changing effect, a 1/6 chance of minor damage and repositioning that actually hurts big groups of small ships rather badly, and a 2/6 chance of a dud. If it weren't for the 15" range meaning you'll often struggle to reach optimal targets for abuse, this would be very good. And that's not even taking into account the super risky BS you can try for by firing at friendlies. That sort of "pray for luck" things isn't my style, but a 1/3rd chance of suddenly taking a whole squadron and changing them to an optimal facing with 5" extra movement to boost? Some people are going to love that stuff.
The Q-ship rule on the Claudius says the upgrade is secret, and the rest of the wording makes it very clear that you don't select which ship in a multi-ship unit is the actual Q-ship in advance. The other restrictions (just one per unit, has to be Battle Ready, start of the unit's activation) really limit the effectiveness of the ploy. You're essentially paying 120 points to disguise a combat cruiser as a merchant, and if you don't drop another 70-140 points on actual merchants in the unit odds are excellent that the enemy will reduce your one Q-ship to Crippled and prevent a transformation, wasting that 50 points for the camo. Even a full 260 point Claudius unit might occasionally get focused on enough to prevent the Q-ship from popping out before everything's crippled or sunk, but it's got the best odds of working as intended. Whether that's good enough for the cost I don't know, but watching your opponent shoot at 70 point merchants instead of actual warships because one of them *might* be a Q-ship has some humor value of its own.
The fact that your transformation *might* get blocked explains why you get such a large (10-27 point) discount on the base cost of the ship classes you can make into Q-ships. At 120 points a Plinny is pretty darn cheap, and it's hard to stop it or the bombard cruiser from popping out early. Makes me wonder if they'll alter the rule to delay the reveal, or penalize your actions the turn you pop out or something.
You read text, wich you haven't scrolled to. That makes it hard to follow your thoughts.
best regards, thanks for you insight and ideas
I'll try to keep that mind for the next deep dives. This enlightened one is one that I do know a lot about by heart, as it's one of the 2 factions I main in this game.
@@speeddemonpainting7050 You can main only 2 factions in this game? :D
The Newton Void Engine rules are clunky as hell, but I'm not sold on them being anywhere near as bad as you say. Stop looking at it as a ship you want to take in squadrons rather than solos and consider what that 136 points is buying you. The extra range for a big unit is sort of helpful, but a few more inches of movement on 1/3rd of the die results is a complete waste. Singletons only here. You'll have an easier time getting at least one singleton into position to shoot something juicy at 15" than a whole squadron at 19".
First off, can that action die be rerolled? If it can, the rule is enormously better right away. Only a 1/9 chance of a total dud then. 3/4 chance of a really nasty result.
Second, look what's really happening here. You pick enemy unit (mass 3 or less) within range 15" - don't do friendlies unless you're desperate to pull off some wonky shenanigans, unless that AD can be rerolled, and probably not even then. Roll die:
1: Sturginium Flare sans Crit marker on both you *and* the target unit. Emphasis on *unit*. There should only be one of you, and you should be positioned to minimize any drawbacks if you roll this. Aim at things that do not want a Flare going off, like ships with a bunch of SRS tokens in contact - or within 5" of ones who do. Or anyone dumb or unlucky enough to be within 1" of an unfavorable collision. This is actually halfway decent, and could really screw over the enemy SRS game although it's too unreliable to count on for that.
2,3: Dud shot. OK, that's bad, granted.
4,5: You're picking up every model in the target unit, including ones that are way out of 15" range, and putting them down again in coherency up to 5" away from their starting point, with some restriction so you can't drop them on a beach or at the table edge. Beyond that, you're choosing their facing and positions. At a minimum, set them up so their best guns are pointing the wrong way. Better, put them in "drunken idiot" formations where they can't all move without colliding with each other, or where they block their own allies, or both. Pretty sure you can drop them in minefields too by the wording of the Open Water rules. Move them away from objectives and point them so they'll never get on them while you're at it. Force them to spend their activations for turns to come trying to get back into some semblance of order - and then do it to them again. This is amazing when it goes off.
6: Okay, off to Reserves it is. You just a removed a whole unit from the game, at least briefly. Odds are they aren't going to come back anyplace ideal either, and they sure aren't taking any mid-table objectives any time soon. How often does 136 points of anything impact the game this heavily? This is great, but it might actually screw up the enemy slightly less than the 4,5 results. That Mass 3 ship or squadron of Mass 2 ones you just exiled isn't going to be sitting there waiting for the rest of your fleet to murder them, unlike the poor saps in a 4,5 roll. OTOH, the exiles aren't going to shooting back either, so it's a bit of a wash.
At worst, a 3/6 chance of a really game-changing effect, a 1/6 chance of minor damage and repositioning that actually hurts big groups of small ships rather badly, and a 2/6 chance of a dud. If it weren't for the 15" range meaning you'll often struggle to reach optimal targets for abuse, this would be very good. And that's not even taking into account the super risky BS you can try for by firing at friendlies. That sort of "pray for luck" things isn't my style, but a 1/3rd chance of suddenly taking a whole squadron and changing them to an optimal facing with 5" extra movement to boost? Some people are going to love that stuff.