Super Han

Han with Predator, VI, or EH.....3p0, MF, Luke

Either z95 headhunters or Corran with upgrades

This was a strong build and showed up in the various forms at the Chicago Regional. Not just from local chicago players but from all sorts of out of towners.

Swarms were few and in between but can make a win difficult if you are not prepared for them.

There was about 50% builds that were based on personal preference and comfortability over what was considered good. This made some of the matches fun to play/watch.

I really think that the game has shifted to a few elite ships over anything else. The synergy for such builds now exists in an effective form for competitive play.

To be ready for nationals you will need the ability to dish out damage AND survive, the things which many of the top squads were doing in a well balanced manner.

Hm, I was under the impression that a piece of general advice was: 'go for more guns', as in, cheap low PS ships like Academy TIEs, was generally preferable to high-value ships?.

Or is that just advice for people new to the game?

Plot twist: there is no defined meta at this point.

I feel bad for major juggler putting all the information together that he has for people to just ignore it. It is PAINFULLY obvious that it is Falcon builds, and even pretty specific ones, plus phantoms that win consistently.

Hm, I was under the impression that a piece of general advice was: 'go for more guns', as in, cheap low PS ships like Academy TIEs, was generally preferable to high-value ships?.

Or is that just advice for people new to the game?

Ya, for the most part, but the op is talking about things in context of wave 4 and the last month or so of regionals. Han with all the tricks he has seems kinda risky, and to some extent can be if you make a grievous error, but each tool in his kit is there to either combat phantoms, or get him to avoid taking an entire volley of shots from all of your opponent's ships in a round. All while making sure he still consistently lands hits.

Plus phantoms that win consistently.

Interestingly enough, that it is very far from what is happening here. (Scandinavia)

Plot twist: there is no defined meta at this point.

I feel bad for major juggler putting all the information together that he has for people to just ignore it. It is PAINFULLY obvious that it is Falcon builds, and even pretty specific ones, plus phantoms that win consistently.

I kind of agree with Ribann.

Yes, Phantoms were all the rage in one or two tournaments. Now we're starting to see tournaments with all turrets and few or no Phantoms. I foresee lots and lots of swarms and wave 3 style XXBB and the likes in the next couple tournaments, because as much as Falcons counter Phantoms, these things can handle Falcons.

And after that, we'll start seeing a meta develop. Some will swing back to Phantoms, others will swing back to Falcons, and local maxima will start to show up among the various rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock configurations, and people will start finding the roles for E-Wings and TIE Defenders.

Just my opinion.

I feel bad for major juggler putting all the information together that he has for people to just ignore it. It is PAINFULLY obvious that it is Falcon builds, and even pretty specific ones, plus phantoms that win consistently.

Hm, I was under the impression that a piece of general advice was: 'go for more guns', as in, cheap low PS ships like Academy TIEs, was generally preferable to high-value ships?.

Or is that just advice for people new to the game?

Ya, for the most part, but the op is talking about things in context of wave 4 and the last month or so of regionals. Han with all the tricks he has seems kinda risky, and to some extent can be if you make a grievous error, but each tool in his kit is there to either combat phantoms, or get him to avoid taking an entire volley of shots from all of your opponent's ships in a round. All while making sure he still consistently lands hits.

I've been looking at MJ's stats. The Phantom was definitely the big hit, and the HSF list is the response to that.

So, the (non-Scandinavian) meta seems to have taken a shock to the system from the Phantom and it shocked back with the HSF. But if it's just a shock to the system, will some equilibrium return, or have we arrived at a 'new normal' that is more rock-paper-scissorsy, in which build-pairings have a greater influence on outcomes than before Wave IV hit?

For my part, sure the Phantom is an annoying little bugger, but it's not the angel of squad death or anything.

Plot twist: there is no defined meta at this point.

I kind of agree with Ribann.

...

And after that, we'll start seeing a meta develop. Some will swing back to Phantoms, others will swing back to Falcons, and local maxima will start to show up among the various rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock configurations, and people will start finding the roles for E-Wings and TIE Defenders.

Could you explain your concept of 'local maxima' a bit further? I'm not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean that 'the meta' has dispersed into local dynamics (such as Keffisch refers to in Scandinavia being different from bobbywhiskey's experience)?

Phantoms will fade (pun intended) more and more as players get more experienced playing against them. I don't have much fear for phantoms to be honest, they are hard to pin down, but that's about it. Asteroid placement and decent squadbuilding withouth resorting to turrets is enough to deal with it imho.

Not like noone will play them, but they will stop to be the "go to" build for imperials.

I feel bad for major juggler putting all the information together that he has for people to just ignore it. It is PAINFULLY obvious that it is Falcon builds, and even pretty specific ones, plus phantoms that win consistently.

Not this weekend. Yeah Falcon (bit of a different one) and Phantom builds won two events and placed highly overall (Falcon especially in GA), but so did other lists. You saw more variety this weekend then you had in previous ones.

If you want to look for trends in MJs data you saw a big Phantom push, followed by the Falcon pushing back, and now you are seeing lists with a decent Falcon match-up pushing back.

Honestly it's a bit predictable. New shiny, reaction to new shiny, reaction to over correction. Now we are at a point that's a bit less predictable. Maybe these last week are just players having the most time to build and experiment with the new releases, where as previous events (especially the first few Wave 4) players had to just go with their gut and get practice in. Rather then experiment a bit. But moving forward to Gencon you now have players that participated in the earlier events getting the time to try out some different stuff as opposed to just go with their first pick.

As far as the meta goes; you can expect Falcons in fair abundance. That's pretty much a given. If you were to build to beat something that be the best bet to build towards. But you can't overdo it and sacrifice your other match-ups because the Falcon builds are neither that ubiquitous or overly effective

Plot twist: there is no defined meta at this point.

Somewhere, Mr. Night Shyamalan shed a tear out of sheer happiness and approval.

Plot twist: there is no defined meta at this point.

Thought: once the meta becomes "defined" or stabilizes, the meta ceases to exist. The meta is the game outside the game of knowing the current state, predicting the changes, and fielding a list that deals with those builds. If the changes stop, the meta stops and there is no longer a game outside the game.

Popular builds are not the meta. The changes and reactions are the meta. So waiting on the meta to "stabilize" does not make sense.

Plot twist: there is no defined meta at this point.

Thought: once the meta becomes "defined" or stabilizes, the meta ceases to exist. The meta is the game outside the game of knowing the current state, predicting the changes, and fielding a list that deals with those builds. If the changes stop, the meta stops and there is no longer a game outside the game.

Popular builds are not the meta. The changes and reactions are the meta. So waiting on the meta to "stabilize" does not make sense.

You can still talk about equilibrium, or at least slow evolution versus fast evolution. What we have right now is a lot of fluctuation; I hate to keep harping on this example, but at the Denver (Broomfield) Regionals, Phantoms were included in about 4% of lists, and there were about as many swarms. That's very different from the other reports I've been reading, even from the same weekend, and it leads me to conclude that (a) people really are worried about running into Phantoms, and (b) there's currently an unoccupied niche in the metagame for a list that specializes in killing Falcons. And viable but unoccupied niches in an ecosystem are typically indicators of instability, and often sets a system up for sudden shifts.

There is already an occupied niche to kill falcons : the Tie swarm.

There is also a big regional factor : the more options you have, the more divergence you will see between separate regions.

Pretty sure wave 4 will be dominating the meta, with either named E-Wing being accompanied by a few Z's, or a missile heavy Z-Swarm being strong for rebels, and Imperials using a mix of phantom builds and Black Squadron w/Predator mini swarms.

There is already an occupied niche to kill falcons : the Tie swarm.

There is also a big regional factor : the more options you have, the more divergence you will see between separate regions.

In my experience, TIE swarms aren't particularly reliable Falcon-killers--it used to be about a 60/40 matchup in favor of the swarm, but with the advent of Z-95 + Assault Missile as an escort fighter, I feel like it's tipped the other way now.

There is already an occupied niche to kill falcons : the Tie swarm.

There is also a big regional factor : the more options you have, the more divergence you will see between separate regions.

In my experience, TIE swarms aren't particularly reliable Falcon-killers--it used to be about a 60/40 matchup in favor of the swarm, but with the advent of Z-95 + Assault Missile as an escort fighter, I feel like it's tipped the other way now.

This. 4x Z95 gives 16 hull/shields and 8 red dice. And half your points for something nasty.

Of this is just more Rebel [scum] propaganda.

Or a brilliant tactic for the glory of the Empire...

"Beware the Falcons," he yells as he packs up his tie swarm for the trip.

-------------------------------------------------------

Players shape the Meta with thier choices... Others use a little gamesmanship to try to warp the meta I thier favor. If this game is as truly balanced as we have all said and quoted and reported then flying what you know best should be your best shot to the top.

That being said, I personally sense a disturbance in the force. Balance has not been achieved. Uncertain the future is.

Plot twist: there is no defined meta at this point.

I kind of agree with Ribann.

...

And after that, we'll start seeing a meta develop. Some will swing back to Phantoms, others will swing back to Falcons, and local maxima will start to show up among the various rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock configurations, and people will start finding the roles for E-Wings and TIE Defenders.

Could you explain your concept of 'local maxima' a bit further? I'm not sure what you mean by that. Do you mean that 'the meta' has dispersed into local dynamics (such as Keffisch refers to in Scandinavia being different from bobbywhiskey's experience)?

"local maxima" in this case does not refer to a geographical location, but rather the peak of a mathematical function:

So, the global maxima (labaled "Big Max" below) is better, but if you are stuck on the local maximum then you won't even know it exists, because small changes result in less than optimal solutions, so you stay optimized locally.

The more information that is present, the meta game should stabilize faster and more efficiently. Hopefully the Regionals thread is helpful in this regard. There is a lot of stuff in wave 4 to digest.

I still hold to my original pre-release predictions that:

1. The Z-95 will be the biggest long-term change to the meta.
2. VI + ACD Phantoms are very good, but can also be hard countered.
3. Generic pilot E-wing and TIE Defender usage will be very low.

THere r a lot of copycat squad builders out there. id be testing squads against super han, super chewie and echo/whisper squads knowing that the swarm is still a decent squad so are BBXX and pretty much any rebel list that has B-Wings. Headhunter Swarms are interesting but i have a feeling most rebel players will go for the security of the falcon and tweek it to beat phantom squads. just my 5c.

The more information that is present, the meta game should stabilize faster and more efficiently. Hopefully the Regionals thread is helpful in this regard. There is a lot of stuff in wave 4 to digest.

I just figured out that you're a logical positivist, and more importantly, that the entailments of that stance underly almost all of our modeling disagreements. This makes me happy, although I suspect no one else cares.

I feel bad for major juggler putting all the information together that he has for people to just ignore it. It is PAINFULLY obvious that it is Falcon builds, and even pretty specific ones, plus phantoms that win consistently.

Not this weekend. Yeah Falcon (bit of a different one) and Phantom builds won two events and placed highly overall (Falcon especially in GA), but so did other lists. You saw more variety this weekend then you had in previous ones.

If you want to look for trends in MJs data you saw a big Phantom push, followed by the Falcon pushing back, and now you are seeing lists with a decent Falcon match-up pushing back.

Honestly it's a bit predictable. New shiny, reaction to new shiny, reaction to over correction. Now we are at a point that's a bit less predictable. Maybe these last week are just players having the most time to build and experiment with the new releases, where as previous events (especially the first few Wave 4) players had to just go with their gut and get practice in. Rather then experiment a bit. But moving forward to Gencon you now have players that participated in the earlier events getting the time to try out some different stuff as opposed to just go with their first pick.

As far as the meta goes; you can expect Falcons in fair abundance. That's pretty much a given. If you were to build to beat something that be the best bet to build towards. But you can't overdo it and sacrifice your other match-ups because the Falcon builds are neither that ubiquitous or overly effective

I guess we'll agree to disagree, and time will tell, but I was the only top 4 build in GA that wasn't a falcon, so I am speaking first hand that I still saw Falcons + phantoms. Yes the phantoms didn't do too well in that case, but the falcons did. And there were many OTHER falcons besides the top 8. Again, almost every regional victory in the past month for events with more than like 12 people were falcon or phantom. Will it stay that way? Idk, probably, but that kinda makes that the meta RIGHT NOW doesn't it?

I'd wager that the % of those events won by one of those two is similar to the % of regionals won in the wave 3 era of may/june by tie swarms.

"local maxima" in this case does not refer to a geographical location, but rather the peak of a mathematical function:

So, the global maxima (labaled "Big Max" below) is better, but if you are stuck on the local maximum then you won't even know it exists, because small changes result in less than optimal solutions, so you stay optimized locally.

The more information that is present, the meta game should stabilize faster and more efficiently. Hopefully the Regionals thread is helpful in this regard. There is a lot of stuff in wave 4 to digest.

Okay, I'm starting to grasp this, though knowing more about your units of analysis and variables (even if they're conceptual rather than discrete) might help.

The more information that is present, the meta game should stabilize faster and more efficiently. Hopefully the Regionals thread is helpful in this regard. There is a lot of stuff in wave 4 to digest.

I just figured out that you're a logical positivist, and more importantly, that the entailments of that stance underly almost all of our modeling disagreements. This makes me happy, although I suspect no one else cares.

No, I care, but before you explain more about how you're MJ's antithesis in this regard, I'm not sure that I'm going to understand you. (That is, unless I start wading into all your old debates, for which I simply don't have enough time.)

By 'logical positivist' do you mean the assumption that agents are rational with full-to-perfect information? Or, do you mean the assumption that the agents and structures of the game can be meaningfully analyzed by applying the scientific method? The former seems to relate to MJ's assumption that his analyses will help agents have that full-to-perfect information, whereas the notion that his thread could help to achieve that would undermine the assumption to begin with.

The more information that is present, the meta game should stabilize faster and more efficiently. Hopefully the Regionals thread is helpful in this regard. There is a lot of stuff in wave 4 to digest.

I just figured out that you're a logical positivist, and more importantly, that the entailments of that stance underly almost all of our modeling disagreements. This makes me happy, although I suspect no one else cares.

Possibly.

The additional feedback from the Regionals thread can also cause the system to be underdamped if there is little resistance in the meta, causing oscillations. Speed vs. stability is a fundamental tradeoff in any feedback system.

But I think what little impact the Regionals thread has on the meta will be positive overall. Ultimately it takes a certain amount of time for the meta to get thoroughly digested, and improved information access can only help speed that process up.

But I think what little impact the Regionals thread has on the meta will be positive overall.

Positive in what regard? Now, I totally dig what you do, but I'm a nerd. However, reading your threads lets me know what the meta is, because without them I wouldn't have the first clue.

Maybe that democratizes knowledge of builds and gives me a few tools to make myself a better player, even though I don't do much in the way of tournaments. I now know what sorts of builds make it to the 'Big Max', if I can use that term liberally. At the same time, it helps to create the intersubjective construction of the meta, rather than the spontaneous emergence of it. (Maybe that's Vorpal Sword's point)

I also want to point out, that at these big 60-70 person regionals, yes there are 10 falcon builds and 6 phantoms or w/e and they get the spotlight, but its not like they are 40 of the lists in the field. More like 15-20%. So it's not like it is all anyone is playing so it wins by default. However they dominate the top 8/top16 for a reason. There are still many people playing all types of builds, be it because of stubborness or familiarity or whatnot. A few have done ok, but that is going to happen here and there. There is no clear 3rd that CONSISTENTLY performs, and people are playing a wide variety of lists at these events. To me, that kinda says the meta pick falcon or phantom.

Now all that being said, I still think the rumors of tie swarm's demise have been greatly exaggerated and it may be the only viable candidate for that 3rd spot. The 8 ties that won french nationals was the ONLY big wave 4 event not won by falcons or phantoms, and he beat 2 phantom lists and 2 falcon lists in the top 16. Even bwing lists that pop up here and there usually do so when they play against falcons all day but not phantoms.

I also managed to get to the top 4 with the tie swarm, and played alright in that match at 2 am, but not particularly well. And I was still about 2 die rolls away from facing another falcon build that the swarm had performed MUCH better against for the final match.