Corrently the only ways for the Empire to hunt down Falcon are:

- 7-8x TIE/f swarm

- 4x sigma phantom

- mass bomber swarm

(especialy with cluster missiles and Jonus)

- 1x firespray + 3x lambda

- 3x firespray

THE PROBLEM - there are not cheap builds, requries to buy many ships

didn't a 3 ship imperial list win Gen Con?

There is nothing more obnoxious that comments like that one Kelvan. Specially because i could retort that single statement equally obnoxious, and then, let the flames begin.

That 3 ship imperial list isn't favored against Fat Solo. but the oppossite, and he did face gunnerless Falcons or imperial builds on his way to the finals, if i remember correctly. Which i don't want to take anything about his win, but i am speaking about a hard match up for phantoms, and you are talking as it is a favored match up, when it is not. Of course,l gunnerless falcons are better on falcon vs falcon wars, and players who get to the top, also do by playing the meta, so he is the rightfull winner, but don't make silly claims on match ups please.

Corrently the only ways for the Empire to hunt down Falcon are:

- 7-8x TIE/f swarm

- 4x sigma phantom

- mass bomber swarm

(especialy with cluster missiles and Jonus)

- 1x firespray + 3x lambda

- 3x firespray

THE PROBLEM - there are not cheap builds, requries to buy many ships

didn't a 3 ship imperial list win Gen Con?

Whisper/Soontir/Yorr, with an MSRP of $60, not counting upgrades.

I'm also wondering what mass Bomber list he or she is considering, since it's pretty difficult to fit more than three loaded Bombers in a list. I usually run three and a TIE Fighter or an Interceptor... at a total MSRP of $60, not counting upgrades.

There is nothing more obnoxious that comments like that one Kelvan. Specially because i could retort that single statement equally obnoxious, and then, let the flames begin.

That 3 ship imperial list isn't favored against Fat Solo. but the oppossite, and he did face gunnerless Falcons or imperial builds on his way to the finals, if i remember correctly. Which i don't want to take anything about his win, but i am speaking about a hard match up for phantoms, and you are talking as it is a favored match up, when it is not. Of course,l gunnerless falcons are better on falcon vs falcon wars, and players who get to the top, also do by playing the meta, so he is the rightfull winner, but don't make silly claims on match ups please.

The point, I think, is that Teokrata has a very odd idea about what can and can't win against a Fat Falcon.

You shouldn't take literal statements as such in my opinion. It is more likely that he meant "favored" match ups against a falcon, than just outright "only way to win against falcons". Language isn't perfect and we tend to write in bursts here. Of course, i could be wrong on Teokrata's opinion, but that's how i read "ways to hunt down falcons".

There is nothing more obnoxious that comments like that one Kelvan. Specially because i could retort that single statement equally obnoxious, and then, let the flames begin.

That 3 ship imperial list isn't favored against Fat Solo. but the oppossite, and he did face gunnerless Falcons or imperial builds on his way to the finals, if i remember correctly. Which i don't want to take anything about his win, but i am speaking about a hard match up for phantoms, and you are talking as it is a favored match up, when it is not. Of course,l gunnerless falcons are better on falcon vs falcon wars, and players who get to the top, also do by playing the meta, so he is the rightfull winner, but don't make silly claims on match ups please.

The three ship may not need to counter the falcon. It just needs to be able to win that match with decent flying... which it did.

Don't build your lists to counter the falcon... Build them with the ability to deal with as many lists as possible and have a plan on what to do vs common lists.

Don't build your lists to counter the falcon... Build them with the ability to deal with as many lists as possible and have a plan on what to do vs common lists.

This. So much this.

You play what you want, and you make sure to test it against the stuff that's really popular right now. That's what the metagame is for: it tells you what you're likely to encounter, not what you ought to play. If your build and your play style let you win at least half the time against whatever lists are topping the meta right now, then congratulations! You have a strong list, and now you no longer care about the metagame.

The metagame is an important thing to be aware of; you have to negotiate with it, and you have to stay aware of what it's doing. What you don't have to do is obsess about countering it, or worse, about which currently popular list you ought to play. The person who wins Worlds is not currently polishing up his or her Fat Falcon list, but rather practicing with a list you haven't seen before that can, often enough, beat a Fat Falcon.

If people stopped copying each other's homework and started actually innovating, Fat Falcons would no longer be a problem.

Trying to have any kind of discussion with that kind of arguments is really a futile.

There is nothing more obnoxious that comments like that one Kelvan. Specially because i could retort that single statement equally obnoxious, and then, let the flames begin.

That 3 ship imperial list isn't favored against Fat Solo. but the oppossite, and he did face gunnerless Falcons or imperial builds on his way to the finals, if i remember correctly. Which i don't want to take anything about his win, but i am speaking about a hard match up for phantoms, and you are talking as it is a favored match up, when it is not. Of course,l gunnerless falcons are better on falcon vs falcon wars, and players who get to the top, also do by playing the meta, so he is the rightfull winner, but don't make silly claims on match ups please.

The three ship may not need to counter the falcon. It just needs to be able to win that match with decent flying... which it did.

Don't build your lists to counter the falcon... Build them with the ability to deal with as many lists as possible and have a plan on what to do vs common lists.

No, it didn't. Did you even read the battle reports ? It played different match ups. You can't say a gunnerless Falcon which isn't Han is the same as a Han Luke+VI/predator falcon, because it is a completely different match up, and if you actually played the game you would know it. Whisper + gunner is actually GODLY against gunnerless Falcons which move before him. Godly. Why do i know ? Because i had actually played whisper against a big variety of falcon lists. You can easilly keep range 2-3, use evade token, gain focus, oh you didn't bring gunner ? Guess i can just spend all my tokens on your first attemp with my 4-5 dice roll. And if you have Yorr around, it is even easier (again, why do i know ? because i had actually played that list a lot since two months ago). Hell, in my opinion the list is favored against gunner Falcons which are not Han in general.

The guy just posted lists favored in match up against falcons, and you answered a one liner taking for granted that the guy was complaining. I retort to this, and then you just ignore what i posted and continue with a generic "fly what you want", "you just have to win that match".

I should just stop reading the answers to this threads, because it is impossible to have any kind of discussion in this regard, i already put FTS Gecko in ignore because of the "L2P" stupid flamebaits, which are no better than a rant about Fat Solo. Not a single bit. It is not constructive, and it is just trying to win a discussion for the sake of winning it which really brings the worst of forum posters.

I dont play mega competetive tourny games so can you enlighten me what a 'fat han' build is.

I'm assuming its the titled 'falcon' YT1300 with maxed out slots, c3po being one of them?

Han, Title C3PO, EU, Gunner/Luke and a EPT (VI/Predator/Push the limit/Lone wolf in the future are some common choices).

You can arc dodge with your PS9/11 and engine upgrade or get into R1 if needed, and the turns you can't, you go with an evade. Slight variations are played out differently. Actually while people complain about Fat Falcons, i think between the fat falcon builds there are a lot of variation and nuances to learn making some match ups very different from each other (for example, the one i noted above, you play differently with whisper against a Fat Chewbie than against a Fat Solo).

Let's be honest, the problem isn't really Super Falcons. That is a tough ship, but relatively straightforward to deal with. The problem is Phantoms. The reason everybody and their sister is running a Falcon, is that its turret of some sort is required to deal with Phantoms, all the lists that put Super Falcons at a significant disadvantage are completely and utterly owned by Phantoms, and Phantoms themselves are quite challenging to use. So if you are list building for a tournament, you have to do so fully expecting to see one Phantom and AT LEAST 3 Super-Falcon builds.

I love turret lists, and I don't have any misconceptions of how easy they are to play. But even I am sick to death of having to play so many of the stupid things, followed by the odd Phantom. Yuck.

Admittedly i've only played twice against phantoms but in both games echo was atomised quicly by making sure my fire arcs were sprea out an using target locks with garven and dutch and another y wing and x winbg a piece.

I dont see what's so scary about em. My opponents were not bad players either.

But between having the x wings at right angles to each other so that they covered a lot of the map and the y wings cruising around with ion turrets it forced them to stay cloaked a lot and when they did decloak i usually got some serious damage in.

oh and cheers for the explanation of 'fat han'

I was sure it was something like that.

I've always thought 'gunner' with 'han solo' to be a bit overkill. its rare i miss with the first re-roll let alone needing a second.

I'm gonna not read pages 2 and 3. Yes, Fat Han (and chewie) are good versions of the YT 1300. But to say they don't require skill is incorrect. YT's still have a poor jousting value (look up major juggler's lanchester law post). This means that in a straight fight they will lose often to better ships. They need to utilize their 360 firing arc in a way that minimizes the shots coming their way.

This is done with good maneuvering.

That is all.

Well, there's something about responses like this (and not just yours Kelvan) that come across as discordant.

What I mean is that we have a have a lot of very good players playing falcons and we have falcons doing very well. So either the ship is very good and hard to beat or a lot of very good players are handicapping themselves and able to outfly their opponents despite it.

Personally, I do think it's what someone (Buhallin?) upthread said, that Falcons have elements that make them more forgiving. However, this is X-Wing and simply having cost effective ships isn't enough to win games, but in the hands of a good player, the potential of the falcon can be wielded more effectively.

With due respect to MajorJuggler, I think that the fact that the YT has a low jousting value but is still doing very well says more about the difficulty the calculations have in predicting ships with abilities that go beyond the basic numbers rather than the challenge that YTs are to fly.

So, what's the simplest answer? That good players are outflying everyone with overcosted ship or that good players are flying a very good ship well? I think it's pretty clear it's the latter. It makes me scratch my head a bit when there are these posts that imply flying the falcon is some sort of handicap. If it really were, wouldn't good players play ships that allow them to maximize their own winning potential?

I'm asking this honestly because I really don't understand the dissonance between them having success and some players (top players, imo) saying they're actually harder to fly. I get that topics started like this can be frustrating and certainly needs to be contradicted, but it just seems odd to me to try and actually argue the opposite.

All that said, I liked Vorpal's post upthread because posts like the OPs are way off base when you consider the variety of options and balance in this game. I myself have had a lot of success against falcons (and I often fly interceptors, defenders, and occasionally a shuttle), but that is because they are my first priority when building a list since I know I'll likely face them in multiple games in a tournament setting. So, my lists consider them first and then I adjust them to give me at least a fighting chance (or better) against other lists, including the phantom.

AlexW:

I believe the discordance comes from conflating the words "good" and "easy". The negative responses from players including myself come when comments about turrets revolve around claiming they are "easy mode", or require no/little skill to utilize effectively. That is just not true, and it doesn't help players just getting into this game when they hear them. If an inexperienced player picks up a Falcon and just throws maneuvers down without any more thought than avoiding reds and asteroids, they will be crushed in short order. If they were led to expect that they will do well with that tactic, they quickly become discouraged because they aren't aware of the subtle reasons they are losing and will chalk it up to bad luck or poor game design.

Similarly, if an inexperienced player is facing well-flown turrets and losing it is easy to believe that the issue is a no-thought-necessary turret will win simply because non-turrets require skill and turrets do not.

The reason I try to respond to these threads from time to time is to correct the misconception that turrets are thoughtless "easy mode" ships to use so that new players lurking and reading this forum for pointers are able to see what is going on and improve their game play.

Falcons are good ships, and flown well they win tournaments. That is not the same thing as saying they are easy, or that they require little to no thought to use.

Which unfourtately is where the OP decided to start the thread off. I do have quite the poor opinion of people that start inflammatory threads and never post in this them.

The reason I try to respond to these threads from time to time is to correct the misconception that turrets are thoughtless "easy mode" ships to use so that new players lurking and reading this forum for pointers are able to see what is going on and improve their game play.

You are succeeding in this regard. Cheers, New Player Who Listens To Quality Tips and Not Meta-Based Histeria™

Thanks.. I see all sorts of lists here there and everywhere, but putting a name to them at times can be confusing. Besides the obvious HSF list, and maybe Scarlett Cowgirl, I'm usually behind the times when it comes to list names. And I'm not a big Falcon flyer, and don't own a Tantive yet, so just haven't had the chance to build one of these.

Any list that includes Han and a card that allows you to gamble on the outcome of evade rolls - namely C-3PO - can only ever have one name.

Never Tell Me the Odds

Corrently the only ways for the Empire to hunt down Falcon are:

- 7-8x TIE/f swarm

- 4x sigma phantom

- mass bomber swarm

(especialy with cluster missiles and Jonus)

- 1x firespray + 3x lambda

- 3x firespray

THE PROBLEM - there are not cheap builds, requries to buy many ships

didn't a 3 ship imperial list win Gen Con?

yeah becouse flight against 2 ships not 4 like PS11 fat Han + 3x Z-95

I'm also wondering what mass Bomber list he or she is considering, since it's pretty difficult to fit more than three loaded Bombers in a list. I usually run three and a TIE Fighter or an Interceptor... at a total MSRP of $60, not counting upgrades.

for example:

3x scimitar + cluster missiles (3x20)

1x cpt jonus (22)

1x howlrunner (18)

You shouldn't take literal statements as such in my opinion. It is more likely that he meant "favored" match ups against a falcon, than just outright "only way to win against falcons". Language isn't perfect and we tend to write in bursts here. Of course, i could be wrong on Teokrata's opinion, but that's how i read "ways to hunt down falcons".

that was exacly what I mean no dogmatic statement

oh and cheers for the explanation of 'fat han'

I was sure it was something like that.

I've always thought 'gunner' with 'han solo' to be a bit overkill. its rare i miss with the first re-roll let alone needing a second.

Thing is miss also includes when your target evades so if you roll hit focus and a blank, re-roll the blank and focus to get a hit and another blank only to have the target roll two evades you've missed and gunner kicks and you hope he used any defensive tokens the first time around.

When a ship's 60% of your points you really need it to do some damage each turn.

Thanks.. I see all sorts of lists here there and everywhere, but putting a name to them at times can be confusing. Besides the obvious HSF list, and maybe Scarlett Cowgirl, I'm usually behind the times when it comes to list names. And I'm not a big Falcon flyer, and don't own a Tantive yet, so just haven't had the chance to build one of these.

Any list that includes Han and a card that allows you to gamble on the outcome of evade rolls - namely C-3PO - can only ever have one name.

Never Tell Me the Odds

Except you don't gamble at all... you guess 0 for a certainty of 100%.

You know what's more obnoxious than Fat Han? Fat Han and Biggs.

People who fly Biggs have a special place reserved for them in the hot place.

Thank goodness for Ruthlessness.

Except you don't gamble at all... you guess 0 for a certainty of 100%.

One guaranteed evade. Once per round.

You know what's more obnoxious than Fat Han? Fat Han and Biggs.

Yeah, because nothing says obnoxious more than a two ship list where the sole objective of one ship is to be the first to die.