As the game continues to progress without pausing and back addressing some ships as MajorJuggler points out, the game is becoming more list based and less skill based. I can walk into a nationals tournament with a Warmachine list that containers almost anything I want, and long as I have practiced with it I have complete confidence in a good showing.

Having played at Gen Con NA champs this year (while also having played since release at Gen Con a few years back), and playing against a VI Whisper + PtL Fel in every opposing list but one, I've fully decided that I didn't have a chance without winning the PS war against Whisper. Either you put your full 100 points at killing whisper and end up losing to the rest of the opposing list, or you kill the rest of your opponents list and end up running against a PS 9 Whisper with 1 or 2 ships that don't stand a chance.

At the current state of the game, I'd place list building at around 75% of your chance of victory - a vast majority of lists aren't going to cut it currently. After you clear the list hurdle, the rest is skill, but you just don't have tons of wiggle room when it comes to your list.

Two words: Autothrusters are going to be awesome. (The phrase "are going to be" is silent)

The same question comes up in all minis games (and in LCGs too).

There is more than just player skill and building skill going on. There's a generic level of player skill, but there is also skill with a particular list. In addition, there is how well the list's playstyle fits the player's playstyle.

In general, the advantage of a good list is only fully realized when you have at least a decent skilled player AND the player is familiar with how to use that list AND the list does not conflict too much with their natural playstyle inclinations. Note that a really good player is often flexible enough to operate lists of different playstyles, but he still needs to understand how the list is intended to be used.

When you are a good player and you're using the sort of list you're familiar with, you will known it very well and that means you can tune it very well. You can look at the various upgrades & modifications and tell what "works" for you and what you wish was different. Trying to build a good list in a vacuum is rather hit & miss. You can copy what someone else says is working well for them, or even what a lot of people agree is good, but it's not yet custom-fit to you. The best lists are built by people who know how the list works and have experience with it, the first cut of a list is seldom as good as after you've tweaked it with the benefit of practice.

Further lists rise and fall with the changing meta. What was a good list at one point might not be so good now with new releases out and changes in what is popular. An Interceptor list might do well against some things, but do poorly against turret-heavy lists and if those are popular in the meta as they are now, that lists's stock has fallen. Maybe it can be tuned up by revising your upgrades, or maybe it will rise again when the meta shifts and turrets become less prevalent someday. Who knows? Alternately, there may be a new ship or upgrade that fits really well with Interceptors that could revive the list.

And then there's the difference between local/casual level competition and high level competition. In casual play, any reasonable well made list flown by a decent player who knows it should be able to do fairly well. You might not win all the time, and there well might be certain lists that cause you trouble, but against a broad cross-section of opponents your skill and experience will compensate for not having a fully tweaked out list very well. It's at the higher levels where you really need both a really good list AND a really good player that people begin to standardize more on established lists. However, there is also still some capacity for someone to come in out of left field with a solid but not commonly known list and do well with it too.

I apologize for posting a bit off topic, but I also think interceptors lost popularity due to being outclassed by Phantoms. Phantom vs Interceptor is tough for the interceptor. Even Soontir will have a hard time, since decloak provides movement options the interceptor cant get into. Also, 4 dice means the Phantom is just more effective on offensw.

Part of the decrease is the Falcon, but Focus + Evade turtling is still pretty good at preventing turret damage. After all, taking a Falcon means you will have less ships to focus fire on the Interceptor with, making it hard to get through the turtle interceptor. My rule of thumb is, if I can dodge all but 1 arc, and still have at least focus or evade, then ive succeeded.

I will also add, it is really only Han + VI and/Gunner that counter the Phantom. Without the PS advantage, or Gunner, there really isn't much of an advantage for thr Falcon, especially if they arc dodge the support ships.

I will also add, it is really only Han + VI and/Gunner that counter the Phantom. Without the PS advantage, or Gunner, there really isn't much of an advantage for thr Falcon, especially if they arc dodge the support ships.

Yeah, absolutely. My MathWing and Regionals observations seem to match that very very closely.

All true. These are all interesting points that will not be immediately obvious to new players, and that much is pertinent to the OP. At least half of it is knowing how to best utilize the list.

As the game continues to progress without pausing and back addressing some ships as MajorJuggler points out, the game is becoming more list based and less skill based.

To your credit, I think that speaks more about the level of competitive play that you have reached. There are still plenty of people out there that I am sure you could beat handily even without having an optimal list. Being a Top 20% (to completely make up a number) X-wing player however requires good list building.

Skill > List

Having said that, I've seen an 11 year old beat a triple store tourney winner. She used a super falcon list against his triple interceptor squad.

It was basically a massacre. Soontir was the last to go down and that took a solid 30 min alone, he just wouldn't drop. But the rest of his squad was finished after about round 3 or so.

Skill beats list. But there is a pretty heavy Rock/Paper/Scissors element here.

Hi Broc27,

It sounds like you're in a similar place where I was just a few months ago. The thing with this game is that your sense of fun changes the longer you play it and with the places/people you play it. Your own personal preferences matter in this as well, of course.

The more you play at your FLGS with your local community, the more you will (probably) get fun out of the social interaction with the local crowd. You'll lose at your local store's tournament and start to build an awareness of your local crowd's relative skill levels. At that point, you'll be able to do things like what EvilEd is doing, knowing who to bring your A-Team to, and who you'll fly your fun list (F-Team?) against. As you gain more experience and new people join the local crowd, you'll find yourself more in the middle than at the bottom. That's when you start to have more fun. You'll also take the 'the meta' with a grain of salt.

I will also add, it is really only Han + VI and/Gunner that counter the Phantom. Without the PS advantage, or Gunner, there really isn't much of an advantage for thr Falcon, especially if they arc dodge the support ships.

YES! I played against a friend of mine for a month leading up to regionals with my Soontir, Royal, Lorrir, Backstabber squad. He loved the Falcon, but really didn't like Gunner or Luke. Knowing there would be other Falcons and B-wings, he thought of them as wasted points. I won basically every game we played, until the week before Regionals. He switched it up and brought Han w/ Luke&C-3PO and 3 Bandit Z-95s. The tables had turned, and I just couldn't get through all the health when I was spending my Focus tokens to try to stay alive.

I've beaten YT-1300's with Gunner or Luke using interceptors a couple of times, but it's always an uphill battle, as has been mentioned before.

@OP: Just curious, what is this "TIE interceptor squad" that you have been running. I'm very interested to see what you're fielding because I am a huge interceptor fan myself.

I am thinking about ditching the interceptors for a few store games and trying my hand at one of those falcon lists. Since I think of myself as a decent player (not good or great yet) I imagine I will win a few games I wouldn't have won otherwise if there are other newbies around.

I will try this. However I feel this is making the game less interesting for me since I love playing interceptors (and bombers) and don't feel interested that much in the falcon (and rebels in general)...

Have you tried playing a Phantom? A lot of what makes the Interceptor fun applies to the Phantom, and using some tougher ships like Bombers to kill the MFs might work out for you.

As the game continues to progress without pausing and back addressing some ships as MajorJuggler points out, the game is becoming more list based and less skill based.

To your credit, I think that speaks more about the level of competitive play that you have reached. There are still plenty of people out there that I am sure you could beat handily even without having an optimal list. Being a Top 20% (to completely make up a number) X-wing player however requires good list building.

This is where X-Wing diverges from Warmachine in my experience. WM is so skill based I can bring sub optimal choices and win through skill, even at high level / top level play.

Top level play in X-Wing certainly requires skill, but a vast number of choices in X-Wing are, or are becoming, obsolete. My very, very well practiced list lead by Lando really didn't stand a chance at the NA Champs. IMO, all it will take is one or two more slightly unbalanced releases or upgrades and the competitive scene will start to be really samey.

As the game continues to progress without pausing and back addressing some ships as MajorJuggler points out, the game is becoming more list based and less skill based.

To your credit, I think that speaks more about the level of competitive play that you have reached. There are still plenty of people out there that I am sure you could beat handily even without having an optimal list. Being a Top 20% (to completely make up a number) X-wing player however requires good list building.

This is where X-Wing diverges from Warmachine in my experience. WM is so skill based I can bring sub optimal choices and win through skill, even at high level / top level play.

Top level play in X-Wing certainly requires skill, but a vast number of choices in X-Wing are, or are becoming, obsolete. My very, very well practiced list lead by Lando really didn't stand a chance at the NA Champs. IMO, all it will take is one or two more slightly unbalanced releases or upgrades and the competitive scene will start to be really samey.

There are hard counters in war machine just like xwing. ugg - no allocating focus/casting spells guy is so stupid. (Edit: maybe that guy is not optimal so he doesn't get played in competitions)

Didn't read all of this but will. The recent national champ took 2 not so popular ships (meta wise) and won. The shuttle has been poo pooed up and down these forums. But it's proving to be a formidable ship in the right hands. The interceptors can be equally devastating. You mentioned formation flying. Something that should never be done with them. They aren't jousters and should be flown that way. It's always better to avoid taking fire than putting yourself in harms way.

Squad>Skill

No matter how good you are at the game, flying 6 HWKs with no upgrades will never win you anything. Your Squad determines probably 60% of the matchup.

Shuttle has been good for a while now, the only people who ever dissed it were probably bad at flying/math.

Skill can both win and lose the game. Squad building can only lose a game

In X-Wing you can just pull your squadrons from the internet if you like. You can also ask for and often receive all kinds of advice on what can be done to improve your squadrons for a particular environment. While you can get all kinds of help with squad building the help you get to improve you FLYING is a lot harder to qualify and really will require your skill to do it right.

To put things another way it wouldn't be too hard to have "the best" squadron available but that may not mean a thing if you can't fly it well. I'll also lump asteroid placement with flying as an underappreciated aspect of the game where you can get some advice but experience will probably play a much bigger role.

Squad>Skill. No matter how good you are at the game, flying 6 HWKs with no upgrades will never win you anything. Your Squad determines probably 60% of the matchup.

There is a difference between taking a sound (but not optimal) squad and taking something that doesn't make any sense.

I love this thread and its responses. =)

For the OP's question I would say flying is much more important. However if you talk to any strategician, they'll tell you that winning the fight before the fight happens is the "most important part". (Disagree for X-wing, I think there's too much power that comes from being able to fly well that its not the most important for x-wing, but my point will still make sense).

Having a good list will help you win in situations where you and your opponent are equal skill. Also, knowing what goes well with what is just good knowledge. Try not to think of it as limiting, but expanding your choice of optimal tools to use. This lets you do quirky things with the rest of the squad.

See, the National champions list was centered around using Gunner on the Phantom (with FCS). This let him take evade actions and also punch through the guaranteed 2 evades of the Falcon. He also knew that having Soontir + PTL was an excellent, mobile ship that he could fly well enough to beat normal people in a regular context. With these two highly efficient tools, he had room for some variation, which he filled with Captain Yorr (instead of the more typical Doomshuttle). Here is where his creativity and understanding of the game came to fruition.

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MajorJuggler: I completely agree with your reasoning on PS 1 3 4 interceptors. They do not benefit as much from their single action. I would lower their cost too in home games.

Your point on the focusing of the game onto better lists when better flying becomes standard is extremely pertinent. Its the exact conclusion I came to also. I really think FFG needs to go back and make revisions to lesser used ships to allow more diversity in the game when it reaches a culminative meta-point. There will always be outliers and funky lists, but those will be few and far between and less viable for the common tournament goer.

I am thinking about ditching the interceptors for a few store games and trying my hand at one of those falcon lists. Since I think of myself as a decent player (not good or great yet) I imagine I will win a few games I wouldn't have won otherwise if there are other newbies around.

I will try this. However I feel this is making the game less interesting for me since I love playing interceptors (and bombers) and don't feel interested that much in the falcon (and rebels in general)...

Don't do it!!! Fly what you love fella. I do .. and I lose a lot! But I love seeing a table full of OT ships blazing each other. The victory is meaningless for me if I use ships that I don't like.

But hey, maybe we are different fellas, I have zero interest in competitive play. I just enjoy the game with my mates.

It's am unfortunate aspect of any game where collecting something and official competition merges. You can't get away from it.

The meta lists are so overwhelmingly better then your everyday experimental list that skill at flying becomes almost irrelevant since competitive lists are numbered crunched.

Part of the problem to is that almost all meta lists have a very specific flight pattern and, do this if that flow.

I think the key to having varied and

Dynamic games is simply to absolutely never play standard dog fights. It's all about scenarios and really to be honest I think the game socks pretty hard as a dog fighting mini game pretty much since they introduced 360 shooting.

Oh, I think I totally disagree.

Two words - TIE Swarm. Its a good list that has been around for basically for ever.

It's am unfortunate aspect of any game where collecting something and official competition merges. You can't get away from it.

The meta lists are so overwhelmingly better then your everyday experimental list that skill at flying becomes almost irrelevant since competitive lists are numbered crunched.

Part of the problem to is that almost all meta lists have a very specific flight pattern and, do this if that flow.

I think the key to having varied and

Dynamic games is simply to absolutely never play standard dog fights. It's all about scenarios and really to be honest I think the game socks pretty hard as a dog fighting mini game pretty much since they introduced 360 shooting.

Oh, I think I totally disagree.

Two words - TIE Swarm. Its a good list that has been around for basically for ever.

Tie swarms strength as a list is very highly based on how well you fly also. Yes you have more ships but of you're a bad tie player they die very fast

Takes a lot of skill to fly that many ps1 ships well

Build a squad thats fun to play.

Learn to fly it as best you can.

Tweak it.

Unless your flying or squad really suck you should see some wins.

Master your favorite ships and remember the words of Char:

"Show them that a superior mobile suit has its limits when matched against a superior pilot" - Char Aznable

Play some "dummy" games against yourself or a friend using your list-of-choice and one of the meta super lists. Learn what you have to do to win with your list, learn what options you have available, learn what options you're likely to see. Keep playing what you like, and learning what you like, and that will help you beat the meta.

That's what I'm doing with my Y-Wings.

I'll make a blanket statement:

Luck > List Match-up > Player Skill > List Build

I'll make a blanket statement:

Luck > List Match-up > Player Skill > List Build

If luck is such a factor for you, you're not rolling enough dice.

Regarding list match-up, it sounds like that's either 'luck' or 'list build', depending on how you conceive of it.

Finally, skill is a composite factor, which includes intellectual realizations and implementations, such as risk management (ie. controlling luck) and anticipating list match-up/list building.

However, it's also about expecting your opponent's moves and fitting your moves to take advantage of that. This latter aspect is, in my view, something more truly about skill, which is about internalizing your intellectual realizations to the subconscious parts of the brain, and doing it by rote.

Clearly, both skills are important. But I think a player with great tactical skill will probably have a better chance of succeeding with a weak squad build against a player with a great netlist but using weak tactics.