Yup. I am wrong. And the top players bringing Falcons too.

You just showed us the error of our ways.

All there is is people jumping the bandwagon and by sheer luck win a lot.

Less QQ, more pew pew Elkerlyc.

Doh. I stand corrected by your tactical brilliance AGAIN.

Your well thought-out arguments backed up by evidence and lots of data are compelling!

But a nice counter to 'Fat' ships would be appreciated.

If you mean Falcon turretships, you outgun it. Keep it in arc (this is why maneuvering seriously matters for the Falcon pilot) and focus it down.

Sure. Easy answer. Alas not as easy to actually accomplish.

Which is why I suspect more than a few good players pick the Fat Falcon to begin with.

It's a nightmare to keep in all your arcs with a very good player at the helm. You've got to be good to pull it off reliably.

And there we have a skill contest. The better (and luckier) pilot wins in this situation.

While I do agree that there is a skill contest it is one skewed in favour of the Fat Falcon player. (as always; IMO)

Providing both players are equally skilled that is.

On top of the fact that the Falcon gets better and better as the game progresses.

Less opposing ships to 'get past' the in-built- evades (title/C3PO)

The Falcon winning tournaments isn't MathWing, it's everybody copying it because everyone claims it's unstoppable. Falcons are winning because there's so many of them.

To some extent yes.

Some data points on ship effectiveness:

• The effectiveness YT-1300 is doing slightly better than average (110%)
• The Z-95 effectiveness is even higher (125%)
• TIE Phantom effectiveness is around 107%.

Some squad archetype effectiveness:

• TIE Phantom + mini-swarm: 158%
• TIE Phantom + anything other than a mini-swarm: 68%
• 1 large rebel ship + support: 120%
• 1 YT-1300 + 3Z's: 153%
• 5+ Rebel ships: 112%
• 4 small rebel ships: 70%

Check the Regionals thread for more info. It's all in there.

As a separate comment, and this has been stated many times before, a large part of the issue is the games being timed to ~60 minutes, and having a not-quite-dead Falcon counting for full points. If games were 15-25 minutes longer then this would not be an issue. The problem is obviously getting longer game rounds with tournament attendance frequently being so high.

I don't want to ban it, but I agree it is very strong. It also presents some un-fun situations for your opponent. It does some good stuff and some bad stuff dor the game.

The Bad:

Han is brought down to 1 HP just before killing off every ship except 1 full HP Tie Fighter.

In some sense, Han has about 12 pts or less worth of HP left, which is roughly equivalent to the Tie's 12 pts worth of HP. So, they are sort of on equal footing in terms of hits left.

Before C3PO, the Tie had a fair chance of winning this engagement. Now, with 2 free evades, it is literally impossible for the Tie to even put 1 damage on Han at Range 2 or 3. Only chance is a Range 1 engagement, and the Tie has to survive a Range 1 Han shot first, THEN roll 3 hits, barring Han doesn't have Engine Upgrade. This absolute impossibility at Range 2/3 does hurt the game in some sense, as now lucky dice chance cant even net you a win. Even the Phantom can lose in this situation with a lucky attack from the Tie.

Of course, the solution is to always have 2 or more ships able to shoot at the 3PO ship at all times. So, there IS counter play, but it DOES suck that I can't have epic come backs with my Academy Tie any more.

Also, if the Han player is capable and smart enough to dodge all but 1 arc a round, which is very possible with the turret and engine/EH, the game can get very hard.

The Good:

Now that I've talked about bad things, there is 1 good thing about C3PO, which is, the card better rewards good flying and arc dodging. Before C3PO, you could dodge all but 1 arc, and still come out behind as you are now shooting 1 shot vs 1 shot. This didnt reward the good movement of the Falcon player as much, which showed in thr pre Wave 3 tournament results.

I also think the Phantom is one of those ships that better rewards you for smart playing, sort of making up for the Interceptor, which fell short of the mark for a lot of people. The 4 attack dice means your wiley antics mean much more, and ACD means you can continue to be more unpredictable. This is exactly how many people felt the Interceptor should have turned out, but obviously it became more of a PTL turtle, occasionally arc dodge sort of ship.

I think FFG is moving in the right direction with these cards, better rewarding smart plays and better upgrade choices, instead of mass hp and attack dice being the end all be all. What we are probably seeing is a larger increase in the skill gap of experienced and new players, as well as a shifting of squad build mentality. We all have lost games to new players with swarms, who just line up the joust (which we oe them do for some reason) and won with awesome red dice. It is now harder for new players to do this, as there are actual answers to the swarm joust that actually work against other squads.

I was against it at first, but we as players have to keep evolving our squads to meet the new metas that each new Wave of releases brings about.

Some data points on ship effectiveness:

• The effectiveness YT-1300 is doing slightly better than average (110%)
• The Z-95 effectiveness is even higher (125%)
• TIE Phantom effectiveness is around 107%.

Check the Regionals thread for more info. It's all in there.

How odd. According to some posters in this very thread 'more pew pew' would solve the effectiveness of the YT easily.

/irony

But on the other hand, yes people do tend to play what ever won the last major tournament, because it's typically a good list. After the XXBB won, you saw a lot of those being played. Because it was a solid list. But the difference in X-Wing is, the best list will only do so much to cover bad flying. So even if the Fat Han is a bit too good, it's not like I'm going to beat Paul or any other world chap with it, just because it's that good of a list.

Sure, I agree that many will play whatever won the last tournament.

My point is not however how many people play a certain list or ship.

My point is how many out of those people end up in the top 4.

And looking at the numbers it seems to me that Fat Falcons are a very very good choice to take all comers.

But yes; you still need to play it very well. No one can dispute that. (well; reading this thread some could it seems...)

If you see the very best players taking Fat Falcons and doing very well in it odds are Fat Falcons are among the best choices your points can buy in order to compete at the top.

At least; that is what *I* make of it at the moment.

I would like to add, from the many Regionals, Store Champs, local tourneys that I've been to, also Gencon this year, I definitely feel that good players will make the top cut or around the top cut irregardless of whether they are running the cookie cutter top meta squad. As long as the squad has some way to out play the top lists in some fashion, the same good players will consistently make it to the top. Most of the players who made the top 32 cut on Thursday of Gencon were players I've seen do well in other events, and ones I expected to see in the top.

I just think Fat Han fit the current meta well. If we went back to Howlrunner Swarm dominant meta, Fat Han will have a much harder time getting to the top tables, imo.

It seems like if people can't win with their favorite list they start to cry "broken" and "OP". Fat falcons are tough to beat, but far from impossible. So, just like with dice criers, and the various other chicken littles that seem to populate this forum these days, the opinion that C3-PO is broken is simply factually incorrect. The reason people don't want to cop to the truth is because it exposes them as mediocre players at best, and cry-babies at worst. So suck it up and get better or just keep crying while better players keep schooling you. A 'game breaking' instance would be a card that stops your opponent from firing at you at any point. A 3 point crew upgrade that gives you an extra evade per turn is not.

At least half the story here is not C-3P0, but Z-95's. Z-95's are absurdly cost effective compared to X-wings, and are even better than B-wings by a wide margin.

• Lambda 113.8% (+3.6% / -5.6%)
• Z-95 106.6% (+0.8% / -1.9%)
• TIE Phantom + Perma cloak 105.4% (+4.6% / -3%)
• TIE Fighter 100% (+0% / -0%)
• B-wing 97.2% (+3.1% / -4.8%)
• A-wing + Refit 96.5% (+0% / -0.1%)
• X-wing 91.8% (+2.2% / -2.8%)
• TIE Interceptor 89.5% (+1.5% / -1.2%)
• TIE Phantom 88.2% (+3.2% / -3.6%)
• Y-wing 88.1% (+1.3% / -3.2%)
• A-wing 85.1% (+0% / -0%)
• Firespray 84.9% (+2.1% / -2.6%)
• E-wing 81.4% (+1.4% / -1.2%)
• TIE Advanced 80.7% (+0% / -0%)
• TIE Defender 79.9% (+1.4% / -1.1%)
• Named YT-1300 70% (+2.2% / -3.5%)
• YT-2400 68.1% (+0.5% / -1.2%)
• VT-49 66% (+2.6% / -4.4%)
• ORS 62.4% (+0.9% / -2.3%)

• 3 Z-95s are flat-out just as powerful as 2 X-wings. (Slightly more so, actually). So it's like getting 6 free points.
• Howlrunner increases cost effectiveness of the ships around her by about 17%. Going from Z's to X's is like getting Howlrunner rerolls on those ships for free, and the buff never goes away.

I would like to add, from the many Regionals, Store Champs, local tourneys that I've been to, also Gencon this year, I definitely feel that good players will make the top cut or around the top cut irregardless of whether they are running the cookie cutter top meta squad. As long as the squad has some way to out play the top lists in some fashion, the same good players will consistently make it to the top. Most of the players who made the top 32 cut on Thursday of Gencon were players I've seen do well in other events, and ones I expected to see in the top.

I just think Fat Han fit the current meta well. If we went back to Howlrunner Swarm dominant meta, Fat Han will have a much harder time getting to the top tables, imo.

Yeah. Fat Falcons always have been solid performers. Which tends to be what tournament winners gravitate to; 'solid performers'.

Add to this the fact that it fits the current meta very well and you see top tables swarming ( ) with Fat Falcons.

lol'd

If you think 3po is op, you might as well save yourself a lot of time and crying; don't play2win just play4fun.

What exactly do you mean don't play to win?

I never knew winning and playing for fun was mutually exclusive.

I never knew winning and playing for fun was mutually exclusive.

Well, when you're incapable of doing anything but crying about 3po, they are.

You know what, I'm just going to change my sig. Whiner's gotta whine.

Well, when you're incapable of doing anything but crying about 3po, they are.

Expect that he's not even really crying about 3-CPO, not like the OP is anyway. Even then, not being a fan of Fat Han's with 3-CPO doesn't mean you can't play for fun, win or lose. Just that you don't find playing against that list fun, again win or lose.

I never knew winning and playing for fun was mutually exclusive.

Well, when you're incapable of doing anything but crying about 3po, they are.

Time for you to learn some new words.

"Ad hominem"

If you PM me I will explain it to you. -s-l-o-w-l-y.

I never knew winning and playing for fun was mutually exclusive.

Well, when you're incapable of doing anything but crying about 3po, they are.

Time for you to learn some new words.

"Ad hominem"

If you PM me I will explain it to you. -s-l-o-w-l-y.

I'll PM you right after you learn basic english grammar.

Well, when you're incapable of doing anything but crying about 3po, they are.

Expect that he's not even really crying about 3-CPO, not like the OP is anyway. Even then, not being a fan of Fat Han's with 3-CPO doesn't mean you can't play for fun, win or lose. Just that you don't find playing against that list fun, again win or lose.

I am not a fan of Fat Falcons indeed.

But judging by the numbers/data MajorJuggler posted I might have to aim for Z95's as the 'ship which is a bit too good for the points'

My main gripe against Fat Falcons is that you see those a bit too often.*

And diversity is the spice of life. (and gaming)

(*=and you them too often because they are just that bit too effective for their points.)

I never knew winning and playing for fun was mutually exclusive.

Well, when you're incapable of doing anything but crying about 3po, they are.

Time for you to learn some new words.

"Ad hominem"

If you PM me I will explain it to you. -s-l-o-w-l-y.

I'll PM you right after you learn basic english grammar.

I speak English, Dutch and German. (plus fluent bollocks)

You?

I'll PM you right after you learn basic english grammar.

Also funny; did you know you are supposed to spell 'English" with a capital "E" ?

But hey; what do I know. English is not my first language.

I'll PM you right after you learn basic english grammar.

Sorry but yeah, trying to play the grammar Nazi and not using proper grammar never works.

It seems to be a throwaway account just for trashposting to be completely honest.

At least half the story here is not C-3P0, but Z-95's. Z-95's are absurdly cost effective compared to X-wings, and are even better than B-wings by a wide margin.

Raw jousting efficiency:

• Lambda 113.8% (+3.6% / -5.6%)
• Z-95 106.6% (+0.8% / -1.9%)
• TIE Phantom + Perma cloak 105.4% (+4.6% / -3%)
• TIE Fighter 100% (+0% / -0%)
• B-wing 97.2% (+3.1% / -4.8%)
• A-wing + Refit 96.5% (+0% / -0.1%)
• X-wing 91.8% (+2.2% / -2.8%)
• TIE Interceptor 89.5% (+1.5% / -1.2%)
• TIE Phantom 88.2% (+3.2% / -3.6%)
• Y-wing 88.1% (+1.3% / -3.2%)
• A-wing 85.1% (+0% / -0%)
• Firespray 84.9% (+2.1% / -2.6%)
• E-wing 81.4% (+1.4% / -1.2%)
• TIE Advanced 80.7% (+0% / -0%)
• TIE Defender 79.9% (+1.4% / -1.1%)
• Named YT-1300 70% (+2.2% / -3.5%)
• YT-2400 68.1% (+0.5% / -1.2%)
• VT-49 66% (+2.6% / -4.4%)
• ORS 62.4% (+0.9% / -2.3%)

Going from X-wings (~92%) to Z-95's (~107%) is a 16% increase in efficiency. To put this in perspective:

• 3 Z-95s are flat-out just as powerful as 2 X-wings. (Slightly more so, actually). So it's like getting 6 free points.
• Howlrunner increases cost effectiveness of the ships around her by about 17%. Going from Z's to X's is like getting Howlrunner rerolls on those ships for free, and the buff never goes away.

I predicted waaaaaay back before wave 4 was released, that the Z-95 cost effectiveness was going to be the biggest long-term meta-changer in wave 4. I think that's what we are seeing here. Even after the Phantoms start seeing less play post wave 5 (turrets), the C-3P0 Falcon + Z-95's will continue to be a powerful list, and at least half of that is due to the Z-95's.

Does this mean we can reasonably expect to see Decimator + Shuttle(s) lists dominating in the near future?