There are good and bad matches. But no auto-wins/auto-losses. Especially seeing how some Phantoms emerged on top against the Falcon.

iPeregrine, was it really necessary to bring up the National Championship game in this thread. Your insinuations are extremely insulting.

I really liked Stygian + Advanced for the mobility it offered before the nerf but at 5pts and the opportunity cost of the sensor slot I can't often justify only getting mobility every other round at a point more. I do like a generic with Sensor Jammer and Stigian... great distractor that hits REALLY hard if ignored.

Sorry, I've been under the impression that Rock Paper Scissors meta game meant unwinnable matchup.

There's no such thing as "unwinnable" in a game with random dice. No matter how unbalanced a matchup is it's always possible (though incredibly unlikely) that the player with the stronger list could roll nothing but blanks. What a R/P/S metagame really means is a metagame where matchups overwhelmingly favor one list in a R/P/S-like cycle where each list has both good and bad matchups. It's called a R/P/S metagame because the dominant factor in who wins isn't player skill, it's which opponent you get randomly assigned to face.

iPeregrine, was it really necessary to bring up the National Championship game in this thread. Your insinuations are extremely insulting.

What's insulting about it? The winner openly admits that he made a mistake and his opponent allowed him to go back and fix it instead of enforcing the "no going back" rule as they were entitled to do. And this is a potentially game-changing mistake given how much the ACD phantom depends on being able to re-cloak every turn. If the opponent hadn't been so generous it could easily have swung the match the other way, and now we'd be talking about how a Falcon list won gencon exactly as the rock vs. scissors theory predicted.

The point here is not whether the winner was right or wrong (I have my opinions about that, but they're not relevant here), it's that the final match at gencon is a sample size of one and not a very significant comment on the overall metagame.

Ignoring at least one Regional where a Phantom squad also overcame Falcons...

Of course, there would've been the question of how the game would've gone if the obvious mistakes weren't corrected.

And really, the final game is really not the big issue. The mere fact that the Phantom got past all the cuts speaks volumes by itself. The top 8 of Gencon are top squads, no matter what their final placements.

Your mention comes off as insulting for two reasons.

1. There is nothing against the rules about getting/giving a take-back on a missed opportunity. The rules expressly address that such things can be granted at the sole discretion of the opponent. In this case this is exactly what happened, as such the rules were completely satisfied on the subject.

2. Do we have any information to support the insinuation that any persuading was actually done beyond simply noting the error was made?

Also, aren't you the same poster that said you'd get physical if an opponent insisted you execute your ships movement activations by the book?

@Slugrage, so you do not see anything wrong with being forced to pack specific cards just to have a fighting chance against other specific cards?

Yes, i willingly admit that I missed the days of pre-wave4 where honestly every single reasonably-built list has a fighting chance against every other similar list, which is currently gone

I would see a problem with this. I just don't see it happening in X-Wing. Any list can beat any other list. You show me a combo, I can show you any number of solutions to it, that can come from a wide range of lists and play-styles.

You might be able to easily counter a single list in a one on one situation but your counter list could also lose horrendously (read: have a much harder chance to beat and requires serious over-flying of the opponent) to a majority of the metagame, which means its unviable.

More to the point, lists are simply harder to play than others. While I don't really agree with this type of whine being used casually, I can now definitely see where its coming from. I used to play Protoss in Sc2. I kept hearing that Terran vs Protoss was much harder (indefinite amounts of whine about how much harder it was to control). So I tried it for a few months... and yes. It is harder. Not by the amount most whiners wanted you to believe, but there was a noticeable increase in reaction time and control issues.

Now let's take a look at X-wing. I'd agree, in Wave 3, any list was pretty much good. If you could fly it well. Anything really was fine.

Nowadays, brew lists are going to be harder. Say 5 Gammas with Seismic vs Phantom 5 ties. not so easy.

... Then again... 5 Gammas with Flechettes, might work out a little better. (a little, might be still only one shot of the stress attacks).