It's pretty clear this had turned into a debate between the people want to keep the game fun for everyone, and the people primarily concerned with winning. Neither side will convert the other.

Its people that want to keep the game fun for themselves at the expense of others and people concerned with playing to the best of their abilities within the rules.

I agree that neither side will convert the other, but the two sides can at least cooperate and be civil and rational and not call for people to be banned from gaming venues for a move they pulled while not nice, was perfectly legal. The best we can hope for is that both sides can both agree the game is awesome, and we each enjoy it in our own ways

It's pretty clear this had turned into a debate between the people want to keep the game fun for everyone, and the people primarily concerned with winning. Neither side will convert the other.

Yeah because that's exactly peoples stance

Seriously, that post (and others like it) is exactly why you are called a troll.

I'd imagine you also think the player with the Y-wing is being super unsportsmanlike because plenty of players don't think it's fun to deal with that many turrets or ion tokens.

If something is harming the spirit of the game, it should be addressed. Maybe they should limit the number of turrets one can bring in their fleet if as many people as you say are upset.

I liked the statement that "if you can play sub-optimally and still win you should" and am reminded of a post I saw a while back. In it one player was beating up the other play so badly he all but resigned saying "there's no way I can win this but I've got nothing better to do so lets just play things out." As you can guess the "I can't win" turned into a WIN.

Maybe FFG went too far in how many points you need to lead by to claim a full win (I believe there should be a close win/loss) but 33 points was definitely too much although I can see 12 not being nearly enough.

IPeregrine, you are not a reasonable person on this topic. The post describes evasive flying as more tactical than trying to kill everything and specifically invalidates your claim that the goal is to kill everything. The goal is to have 12 or more points more than your opponent, or kill everything within 60 to 90 minutes, usually 75.

Write PGI for a clarification and post their response, if you dare, until then you have been proven wrong.

Double post but I'll change this one.

Legally, and perhaps even logical, tactics that some say violate the rules:

1. Hit and Fade: Hit them hard to get a lead then make them come to you. = STALLING

2. Causing Deliberate Overlap: The Fortress strategies. = INFINITE COMBO ABUSE or STALLING, take your pick.

3. Turret heavy squadron: Unsportsmanlike play. This game REQUIRES maneuvering but Turrets remove that aspect of the game.

I'm sure I'm missing a bunch more.

If something is harming the spirit of the game, it should be addressed. Maybe they should limit the number of turrets one can bring in their fleet if as many people as you say are upset.

How do we address someone harming the spirit of the forums?

4. TiE Swarm Action Denial: Unsportsmanlike to deny an opponent actions as a strategy.

Legally, and perhaps even logical, tactics that some say violate the rules:

1. Hit and Fade: Hit them hard to get a lead then make them come to you. = STALLING

2. Causing Deliberate Overlap: The Fortress strategies. = INFINITE COMBO ABUSE or STALLING, take your pick.

3. Turret heavy squadron: Unsportsmanlike play. This game REQUIRES maneuvering but Turrets remove that aspect of the game.

I'm sure I'm missing a bunch more.

4. TiE Swarm Action Denial: Unsportsmanlike to deny an opponent actions as a strategy.

Knew I needed something in there about Swarms. It certainly seems unsporting when someone purposefully keeps running into MY ships preventing me from using actions or attacking them.

5. Bombs. They're unsporting because they don't require any attack to use and hit multiple ships. When they're "Empire Only" that also seems unfair.

There is no reason you should be continuing to debate this. The developers have been very clear, get 12 points and fly strategically is an ENCOURAGED strategy.

You are assuming way too much from that statement. I, and any reasonable person, would read that as "don't worry about being unable to get a full win if you ever take evade actions instead of target locks, or don't joust every turn", not "get a 12 point advantage and stall until you reach the time limit".

So you acknowledge that trying not to get your ships blown up is a viable strategy, and is what is being encouraged. Now the disagreement is whether flying out of arc(in this case range, because of the turrets) is an acceptable way to not be destroyed.

Myself and numerous others think it is because it is more sure than relying on dice.

You and Huntereste,(from what I gather) seem to feel this is not strategy but a rules exploit that is unfair because it relies on an external condition(a clock) and does not allow "fair" gameplay

Our response to this has been it was a tournament, thus the artificial restrictions of the clock are as good as core rules. As well as this "stalling" tactic of not being in range is one easily defeated and that someone unwilling to adapt in order to beat this deserves to lose, because in order to win a strategy game one needs to be flexible.

right, speaking of TIE swarms, does anyone here remember how deliberate blocking for action denial and screwing up your opponent's formation was heavily frowned upon back during the good old days of '12, but now it's a valid viable strategy that's even encouraged depending on what you have in your list

wow, really starting to rethink my interest in the game. been very informative

Oddly, our statements aren't really at odds. You talk about making your opponent make some tough choices. How does that preclude from making sure your opponent has some fun in a game you are playing together? As stated in my original post on this matter, its odd to think its okay to just refuse to acknowledge your opponents feelings at all and play him in a way where you give absolutely no thought to their enjoyment.

If we take a look at your statement further, you infer and assume what your opponent should be given excessively hard tactical decisions because you believe to do otherwise would be a "sign of disrespect." In a roundabout way you are caring about his enjoyment and how he feels about the game because you don't want to disrespect him. You just assume fun means mental tactical sparring to the highest degree but that comes from your own personal assumption of what this game is about and what your opponent should be doing. In reality, this thread is full of people pushing their views of the game on each other, but no matter whether you're a strict rules person, or a laid back casual rules person, the idea of sportsmanship is tied to how you interact with people. The only universal value is that the game should be fun and since two people play the game, it should be fun for both of them.

I disagree, or at least I'm not quite understanding what you mean. Neither player should be expected to play sub-optimally to cover for his opponent's mistakes, whether those mistakes be in maneuvering, target selection, or squad building. Nor should either player be expected to change his view on what's fun in the game to suit his opponent. Just play to the best of your ability, and the rest should take care of itself.

You can't hold the rulebook up as a shield for bad sportsmanship. One person thinks you aren't fun to play it might be a fluke. If the majority of people at a flgs think you are a bad sport and no fun to play, it doesn't matter how many rules you can quote or whether you follow them to the letter, the reality is, in that flgs, you are a bad sport.

And you can't hold up sportsmanship as a shield to rules you don't like. There's no connection at all between what tactics you employ in the game and how good a sport you are. I can provide my opponent with no chance for victory, send his ships flying off the edge when he reveals an illegal red turn, and force him into horrible tactical situations, and still be a good sport all the while. If my opponent reacts to my tactics by attacking my character, that says more about his level of sportsmanship than mine.

As I stated before we are oddly not disagreeing as to the fun aspect. In your original post I pointed to your "disrespect" statement that in your mind it wouldn't be fun to you or your opponent if you played sub-optimally. We agree that the game should be fun, just as to how the idea of fun should be applied. The reason why I addressed it is that your thought tends to be kind of put forward as a bright line rule, but even the idea of playing "optimally" is relative. Each opponent plays differently and values different aspects of the game. Heck, some people just love rolling dice while others spend hours practicing maneuvers. Neither or wrong and both can be fun to play.

As to your second "counter" your absolutely right and I actually pointed this out in one of my earlier posts about sportsmanship has more to do with how you interact with your opponent. The game is just the framework because ultimately when you talk about sportsmanship you are talking about the person. Within the framework of this thread, I brought up the "rulebook as a shield" point because the original question seems to be revolving around whether playing by the rules can mean you are being a bad sport. The answer to that is a definite affirmative. Sportsmanship is a social construct determined by the people you are playing and its inherently flawed to fall back on a piece of paper to determine how people should view your actions. The people you are playing are the ultimate decider of sportsmanship.

You can also break all of the rules and be a good sport as well. The real important factor is fun. Take the OP's example and change it up bit. Lets say that someone just wants to play for ties because they hate losing (luckily haven't seen this yet in X-Wing but I have seen it in Warhammer -unlimited zombie horde). So instead of destroying that first Y-Wing they spend the whole game flying away from the opponent and after an hour no one dies. Seems like a pretty clear example of no one having a really good time with a game that supposed to bring enjoyment. Ultimately you should worry about sportmanship because you may find yourself without anyone to play and maybe instead of everyone "attacking your character" its really because your style of play was offensive (strong word; please do not read to much into it as I can't seem to think of a better one). When it comes down to it, how your conduct in game is viewed really comes down to which side of the fence you fall on and how many people are with you. If you end up on the wrong side at your flgs you may have to accept that they aren't attacking you but you just aren't any fun to play.

Isn't this a war simulation game? Isn't denial of enemies actions a tenant of the precepts of strategy? Many wars have been fought, but honor goes out the window when in order to be honorable you'll have to lose. True, it's just a game, but this is a strategy game simulating war - and war is not fair, never has been, never will be.

So you acknowledge that trying not to get your ships blown up is a viable strategy, and is what is being encouraged. Now the disagreement is whether flying out of arc(in this case range, because of the turrets) is an acceptable way to not be destroyed.

No, the point you keep missing is that taking defensive actions while killing your opponent's ships is a viable way to win the game without stalling. It might be slower than going all-out on offense, but it can still win the game. This is clearly not even close to the same thing as deliberately stalling to reach the time limit with a strategy that has no hope of ever winning the game without the time limit.

Our response to this has been it was a tournament, thus the artificial restrictions of the clock are as good as core rules.

The fact that you found a way to abuse the rules doesn't make it a legitimate strategy.

As well as this "stalling" tactic of not being in range is one easily defeated and that someone unwilling to adapt in order to beat this deserves to lose, because in order to win a strategy game one needs to be flexible.

Obviously it's easily defeated if you have sufficient time . Cornering a fleeing ship and forcing them to fight can take several turns, which means that all the stalling player has to do is make those turns take long enough that they reach the time limit before you can finish catching them. That's not a viable strategy for winning the game, it's just a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable long enough that the time limit saves you from your bad decisions.

It's pretty clear this had turned into a debate between the people want to keep the game fun for everyone, and the people primarily concerned with winning. Neither side will convert the other.

Back when I used to play Wizards' Star Wars TCG, there was a guy at my LGS who was the single most competitive player you could find. His decks were always as optimal as he could make them, he never pulled punches in-game, knew the rules like the back of his hand and always insisted they were followed. He was also the first to congratulate anyone who beat him, could always be found helping others with their deckbuilding, especially in the lead-up to a tournament, and generally did all he could to further the game until it was cancelled and the player pool dried up.

So forgive me for declaring your assertion that playing to win and making the game fun are mutually exclusive to be complete garbage.

Isn't this a war simulation game? Isn't denial of enemies actions a tenant of the precepts of strategy? Many wars have been fought, but honor goes out the window when in order to be honorable you'll have to lose. True, it's just a game, but this is a strategy game simulating war - and war is not fair, never has been, never will be.

This is a terrible argument because the time limit is not an in-universe thing. The "simulation" version would be a mission in which you play X turns and then the game ends, with the fixed turn limit representing how long the ships are allowed to spend in combat before being ordered to retreat/running out of fuel/whatever. A time limit makes no sense in this context because it's not something happening in-universe. The ships aren't flying slower just because you sit there spinning your dial for half an hour until the clock runs out.

Come on guys, stay civil. We all like toys of space ships. Anyway its better to get a good understanding of those who have a different viewpoint than you.

Good Night All! Peace!

Isn't this a war simulation game? Isn't denial of enemies actions a tenant of the precepts of strategy? Many wars have been fought, but honor goes out the window when in order to be honorable you'll have to lose. True, it's just a game, but this is a strategy game simulating war - and war is not fair, never has been, never will be.

This is a terrible argument because the time limit is not an in-universe thing. The "simulation" version would be a mission in which you play X turns and then the game ends, with the fixed turn limit representing how long the ships are allowed to spend in combat before being ordered to retreat/running out of fuel/whatever. A time limit makes no sense in this context because it's not something happening in-universe. The ships aren't flying slower just because you sit there spinning your dial for half an hour until the clock runs out.

This is the very embodiment of the Special Pleading fallacy. You would also need to rail against the edges of the play surface, which you don't, for your point not to be SP.

Guess what guys, running away is no longer a viable strategy. From now on you don't lose points if a ship accidentally runs off the edge of the map, because that isn't in the "spirit" of a dog fighting game. We all know that if the game went on long enough that ship would fly back to finish the enemy.

Edit: this post broke four digits. Hooray.

Not at all - time limits? What about holding out for reinforcements, stalling until another guy hits bingo fuel and has to break off. Keeping a force occupied to allow other forces to move around to flank... Literally so many applications in tactics and strategy using time...

Also, as an enemy playing from behind with nothing to lose, you're automatically less risk adverse and can attempt things the leading player won't. That risk paradigm will affect his decisions making him more easy to predict.

I'm glad old George Washington didn't give up even though he was losing his war. 'Merica - these colors don't run - back to back world war champs.

Annnnd - bit of advice iPeregrine - I recommend instead of just saying someone else's argument is terrible, just make your own better. It's much stronger and more respectful that way. If you're right, people will see your point. I don't recommend defining your platform based upon how weak your opponent's is, it's bad form and confrontational where not necessary. Let's all get along and discuss this like ladies and gentlemen.

So you acknowledge that trying not to get your ships blown up is a viable strategy, and is what is being encouraged. Now the disagreement is whether flying out of arc(in this case range, because of the turrets) is an acceptable way to not be destroyed.

No, the point you keep missing is that taking defensive actions while killing your opponent's ships is a viable way to win the game without stalling. It might be slower than going all-out on offense, but it can still win the game. This is clearly not even close to the same thing as deliberately stalling to reach the time limit with a strategy that has no hope of ever winning the game without the time limit.

Our response to this has been it was a tournament, thus the artificial restrictions of the clock are as good as core rules.

The fact that you found a way to abuse the rules doesn't make it a legitimate strategy.

As well as this "stalling" tactic of not being in range is one easily defeated and that someone unwilling to adapt in order to beat this deserves to lose, because in order to win a strategy game one needs to be flexible.

Obviously it's easily defeated if you have sufficient time . Cornering a fleeing ship and forcing them to fight can take several turns, which means that all the stalling player has to do is make those turns take long enough that they reach the time limit before you can finish catching them. That's not a viable strategy for winning the game, it's just a desperate attempt to delay the inevitable long enough that the time limit saves you from your bad decisions.

I completely agree with this. This might be way off but I liken it to baseball. If a team is up by 1 or 2 runs they could technically never step into the batters box and win. However in order to eliminate this problem the league made the rule that if you refuse to step into the batters box the pitcher can pitch and have it called a strike. So in the same sense someone could be up the 12 pints needed and fly around and around the board till time expires. Granted there are certain situations where you can counter this but say you had a single ywing chasing a single decked out awing. The awing could easily boost out of range and stay that way for the entire game if he wanted and win. Then the opposite is true you could flip things and have a prototype awing chasing a decked out ywing and the awing could easily catch up to the ywing. The point is there will be certain circumstances where someone could abuse the rules with a timed event IMO. Others will have their opinion but why play in a tourney if your just going to fly away from me the whole time. To me that's not outmaneuvering someone that's fleeing cuz your scared. Just face it like a man, I outmaneuvered you and you lost period. Just my thoughts, however fleeing from someone is legal and as such while I may not like it it is a legal thing to do until/if ffg changes it.

Also valuable lesson on homogeneous force types. That y wing flier probably thought twice on making all his ships have the exact same weaknesses. Can't invade a country with submarines

Just face it like a man, I outmaneuvered you and you lost period.

Just face it like a man, I outmaneuvered you and you lost period.

Ironically, this is exactly what the evasive player could say at the end of the game.

To me that's not outmaneuvering someone that's fleeing cuz your scared. Just face it like a man, I outmaneuvered you and you lost period

Yeah, a downright paragon of sportsmanship you are.

This entire argument has flipped tight into Bizarro world.