Just a fun little ditty about an idiot, me, who tried to play winning lists from past tournaments. Beware, you simply can't just pick up a squad and play it. You have to learn it, feel it, fly it. Both times a Whisper and Han build, both successful at regionals, escaped me to noobs at our local Monday night. Lesson learned ... Play your own game. Fly what you know. Meta be damned.

I'm having a hard time building a list that feels like it takes on the meta well.

That said, I do like having a brew list with unexpected tactics that makes it so that your opponent cannot just rely on familiarity and training for fighting known lists.

Yeah, some of us have been saying that for ages now. Someone else's winning squadron doesn't make someone else a winner too.

Play it.

Learn it.
Live it.
Win it.

Oh yeah. A 2nd rate squad in the hands of someone well familiar with it should beat the hell out of a 1st rate squad in the hands of someone who doesn't know how to fly a list they haven't practiced on.

As a real-world example: during the Napoleonic wars, the French-built ships were actually considered better than English built ones. And the French navy consistently had more ships at the key battles. So how did England win the naval war? Practice. Lots of practice. All the practice in the world. The English navy spent every spare moment doing gunnery drills, sailing drills, navigation exercises, and every other kind of practice they could think of. As a result, during battles, English ships and crews were routinely able to fire 2 shells per cannon for every 1 shell per cannon the French were able to put out. Practice matters.

(Along those lines, in the War of 1812, the American navy drilled its sailors to the same high standards of the British navy. But the American Navy had the best Frigates that had ever been built. The few 1 on 1 Frigate duels fought between the 2 nations saw American victories. This scared the British enough to station Ships of the Line in the theater. And America couldn't go toe-to-toe with 1st rate ships.)

That having been said, there are bad lists. Running 6 Rebel Operatives (say you give one an Engine Upgrade) would be incredibly silly. It doesn't matter how well you know that list, your opponent has to be having the worst day ever to not beat it.

Wow good to see someone really get to grips with history!

For everyone else, read a book called the Wooden World by NAM Rogers. Its a genuinely fun history book about naval warfare in the age of sail and explores why the royal navy totally whupped the French at every opportunity. (I mean totally demolished them! )

As for the US Navy, well once they put huge guns in a frigate and took the Brits by surprise. But the Peace treaty after the war of 1812 was possibly the greatest treaty ever written. We've been allies ever since. As it should be. Not many yanks know that the opposition party in the UK parliament was on the US side during the war of independence for example.

And then there are the true I win lists that pawn face even in the hands a complete gamer gimp. A 40k playing friend of mine will forever use the reference, "Necrons, man. To win with them, all you have to do is push models forward and roll dice."

I sometimes feel the same way about dualie YT's.

It's true that the meta is usually overhyped since the winning lists are being used by players that developed those lists and know them better than anyone else. But some ships/builds/pilots really are the darlings of the meta and will standout until something comes along to squash them back into irrelevance. It's that grey area where most battles are fought between players, since everyone is (and should be) looking for that tiny edge over the other guy.

So viva the meta! The meta is the foundry of the game from which our strength flows!

The biggest issue I see with a lot of groups is not remembering special pilot abilities. I've been guilty of it a couple times myself, and is even more prevalent if you're used to playing squads without high-level pilots or upgrades.

No point in B-wings with FCS if you forget your TL every time. Ergh.

I honestly disagree on the "List Practice" thing. Enough experience with the game and you know how to fly every ship, and how they interact with other ships. A lot of this game is relatively intuitive strategically speaking.

And I'll go one further with Aminar - A LOT of this game is about spatial awareness. I don't know how many times I've seen people who fly the swarm or some other meta list, but honestly have no clue where their ships will end up.

I may take a while during maneuver selection when setting my dials, but that's because I've learned the hard way that I need to visualize where my ships will end up. Too many times I've bumped unintentionally, or hit an asteroid, and it's been those small errors that create big losses for me.

Now, I've gotten used to flying everything, and have a much better idea as to where I'll end up, how best to get in/out of arc, etc. This allows me to further plan 2-3 turns in advance. I'm not always successful, and certain things still throw me for a loop on occasion (I'm still getting used to flying Echo for example - that decloak can be a mess), but practice can make you better with most everything. And practicing using the individual ships helps prepare you for the meta - figuring out which ship and upgrades combo best is easy with practice.

The shift to more three ship 100 points builds is the thing that makes me happy when I'm playing against someone with borderline Analysis Paralysis.

Knowing the ships -- all the ships -- inside and out, makes specific list knowledge obsolete. And it is a hell of a teacher for defensive flight too.

This is what I love about the game. Winning lists still require skill. There is no I win list, ans taking something left field can punch above it's weight if you know how to fly it against "superior" lists.

Agreed wholeheartedly.

Give a really good, experienced player pretty much a random hundred point pile of pilot and upgrade cards dealt off the top of a deck, and give some armchair authority That-List-Off-The-Internet and I'll put good odds on who'll be going home with their ships on fire...

Any list can be dangerous in the hands of a good player; yes, Stay On Target, for example, lets me adapt to what manouvre you've done.....but if you're confident you guessed right in the first place, you could have spent that slot and those points on something else to make your ship more powerful instead.

There is no meta, there is only the game.

"Meta" suggests there are ships/squads/play styles in the game that trump all else and invalidate other squad builds. That there is a game within the game you have to play to be succesfull at a higher level.

This is simply not true, almost every ship/squad style is viable and winning or losing comes down to player skill. Sure you can make inefficient or downright dumb choices while building your squad, but squad building is as much of a skill as flying it is. (When building a squad it should be able to handle all play styles in the game or you will meet the paper to your rock at some point.)

When the meta envelops the entire game there is no meta. There might be popular ships/squad builds in your local area, but that doesn't mean you won't face the polar opposite of those squads in a tournament.

It's a dice game.

You can take whatever build you want, fly it like a seasoned veteran, but it's not going to help if you if you keep rolling four blanks when it matters.

It's a dice game.

You can take whatever build you want, fly it like a seasoned veteran, but it's not going to help if you if you keep rolling four blanks when it matters.

The dice win you maybe one game in twenty, and lose you one in twenty.

I played a noobie player once. In the first engagement he rolled 12 hits on 12 dice. In the next he rolled 10 out of 9(direct hit) In three rounds of fire he lost Biggs, while I lost Kath and a Shuttle.

Night Beast and an Academy tie went on to take out Wedge and Two B-Wings because he barely got to roll attack dice through blocking, Night Beasts ability, and good manuevering. Despite his dice saying hot and mine being average. Skill matters. Knowledge matters. Dice manipulation matters.

Saying this is a dice game is an excuse, and a poor one. It's an easy trap to fall in. But dice do not decide most games.

Please stop spreading this nonsense logic around. The dice matter. But only as much as the list, which can be built to minimize the damage dice can do, and the strategy of the player.

The dice win you maybe one game in twenty, and lose you one in twenty.

I played a noobie player once. In the first engagement he rolled 12 hits on 12 dice. In the next he rolled 10 out of 9(direct hit) In three rounds of fire he lost Biggs, while I lost Kath and a Shuttle.

Night Beast and an Academy tie went on to take out Wedge and Two B-Wings because he barely got to roll attack dice through blocking, Night Beasts ability, and good manuevering. Despite his dice saying hot and mine being average. Skill matters. Knowledge matters. Dice manipulation matters.

Saying this is a dice game is an excuse, and a poor one. It's an easy trap to fall in. But dice do not decide most games.

Hit a nerve, I did.

It's a dice name Aminar. The only way you can win is by rolling dice. Now you can attempt to influence the dice - by making sure you have as many to roll as possible, or as many ways to modify them as possible, but your success or failure will ultimately be decided by what you roll and what your opponent rolls, and when.

Please stop spreading this nonsense logic around. The dice matter. But only as much as the list, which can be built to minimize the damage dice can do, and the strategy of the player.

The dice win you maybe one game in twenty, and lose you one in twenty.

I played a noobie player once. In the first engagement he rolled 12 hits on 12 dice. In the next he rolled 10 out of 9(direct hit) In three rounds of fire he lost Biggs, while I lost Kath and a Shuttle.

Night Beast and an Academy tie went on to take out Wedge and Two B-Wings because he barely got to roll attack dice through blocking, Night Beasts ability, and good manuevering. Despite his dice saying hot and mine being average. Skill matters. Knowledge matters. Dice manipulation matters.

Saying this is a dice game is an excuse, and a poor one. It's an easy trap to fall in. But dice do not decide most games.

Hit a nerve, I did.

It's a dice name Aminar. The only way you can win is by rolling dice. Now you can attempt to influence the dice - by making sure you have as many to roll as possible, or as many ways to modify them as possible, but your success or failure will ultimately be decided by what you roll and what your opponent rolls, and when.

Semantics. A "dice mitigation game" is still a dice game, however you choose to word it. Whatever list you field, whatever upgrades you take, however well you fly you are still entirely reliant on rolling dice to determine the outcome. As such, you will never completely eliminate or be able to account for the random nature of dice rolling.

Semantics. A "dice mitigation game" is still a dice game, however you choose to word it. Whatever list you field, whatever upgrades you take, however well you fly you are still entirely reliant on rolling dice to determine the outcome. As such, you will never completely eliminate or be able to account for the random nature of dice rolling.

It's not semantics. It's about how people think about the game. Calling it a Dice game implies that all there is is the dice. I do not play dice games. They hold 0 interest for me. I play games that require thought, planning, spacial awareness, and skill. The only people who call this a dice game are players who cannot hand their losses and balme them on the dice rather than the 6 or 7 other incredibly influential factors that make up 90% of the game. The dice don't decide the game. The players do.

If it was just a strict dice game, where they decided everything, then just pick your squad with upgrades, I'll pick mine. Then we'll just look at a few spreadsheets and decide, statistically, who'd probably win.

Yay! You won!

Because there's nothing more to it than that, right?

The way to determine if it's a dice game or not is if Qui-Gon always wins.

I have a hard time calling it a dice game, since they are one of the last things you take into account when resolving a turn.

Angles, range, arcs, actions, bumping, asteroids, PS, etc. All of these things come into play before you even find out if you get to roll any dice at all .

It isn't STRICTLY a dice game, but that being said, the dice are definitely a huge part of the game.

The dice add the randomness that sometimes (unfortunately) defeats fancy maneuvers and other forms of "dice mitigation". I've been on both ends of this axiom. I've had incredibly 'hot' dice, and I've had dice that have given me frostbite - try rolling 6 dice for defense (Interceptor with Stealth, behind 2 asteroids) coming up all blanks against an opponent who rolls 3 crits, and just happens to one-shot you, and then tell me the dice aren't a factor.

In the end, this game may be about maneuvers, and strategy, but those dice are the deciding factor. As much as I may hope that my fancy flying and upgrades will win the day, one bad roll ends it all for me.