Vorpal Sword -

I appreciate that you chose your wording very carefully, especially since it does such an excellent job of conveying the substance without the hysteria. I agree with you completely, including your take on upcoming changes. I do believe that the Phantom or something like it was necessary to move the meta away from base line efficiency, as you put it. I also believe it may have gone just a bit too far.

I don't think the Phantom is too powerful by much, but because of its power it has flattened the meta dramatically. I believe the ACD could be worded to simply allow a recloak during the end phase and that would cure most of what ails us, allowing a more significant reward for managing to (finally) get one of those dodgy gits in your sights without altering the substance of what makes the Phantom tick. I actually really enjoy flying them in a general sense, but they just seem to have one advantage too many.

But I also think that the Phantom needs to exist. Or, at least, something needed to be introduced to break players of the habit of running lists based on pure baseline efficiency, and the Phantom accomplished that goal. Maybe upgrades like Predator would have been enough; maybe the effect of cloaking could have been to add +2 Agility or to change position, rather than incorporating both.

As much as I think the phantom could be tuned down a bit, I agree with this. Was the game really more fun when everyone ran 2x2b/Han+2 escorts against 7 tie howlrunner/5 tie shuttle?

I am seeing pilot skill bidding become a powerful choice, and now you might want to run quality of fire over just quantity.

I don't believe Fat Han / Super Chewie or any sort of buffed Falcon offer the same sort of hard counter. While challenging, they all fail when faced with concentrated fire and they are not anywhere near as difficult to get shots at as a Phantom (specifically Echo). I do get sick to death of facing them, however, so at least as far as that goes I understand the QQ. If you want a quick suggestion, take it on with a super tight pinwheel formation, so that all/most of your ships are shooting back whenever any of them take fire from the Falcon. The effectiveness of C3P0/Evade degrades dramatically with even a single additional shot after the first. Third/Fourth shots are pretty much auto-damage. In a Phantomless meta, Fat/Super Falcons would quickly dissipate to a much more reasonable level because there are multiple effective counters to it.

As much as Super Falcon has been buffed by C-3P0, it has also been buffed by the existence of Z-95s. If you suddenly had a 58 point cap on your Falcon and had to fly 2 rookies instead of 3 or 4 Z-95's, then the list would be less effective even with C-3P0. The Z-95 really is the unsung hero of the Fat Falcon builds in the majority of lists. Going from X-wings to B-wings has a pretty obvious cost effectiveness increase, but going from B-wings to Z-95s takes it to a whole new level. Rebels finally have a cost effective filler ship like the Empire has with TIE Fighters, and the meta will never be the same.

Edit: that last part is obvious.... the meta is always changing... but you know what I mean.

...lists have always been what you call 'reactive.'

Every time I flew a squint...

I don't think you understand what I mean by reactive.

You chose your squints first, and were able to consider weakness they might have had, and how to deal with them.

I don't believe you can do that any more. Your starting point MUST be what you expect to face. You don't start with what you want to fly and say "I may face a Phantom with this", because the answer for so many lists is simply "Well, you're boned."

And my last and final caveat is that I expect things to change very substantially by the end of the year. We're getting two more 360 pancakes very soon, which will at least diversify the set of easy/obvious/foolproof Phantom counters; soon after that, we'll be getting the promised upgrade that lets highly maneuverable ships compete against turrets, which ought to really shake things up.

Oh, hooray - three months of nothing but turret builds. Won't THAT be fun. And then it will be silver bullet meta guessing - should I spend 10 points on Autothrusters? How likely are there to be turrets? What happens if I DON'T take them?

And what will the poor Y-wing do when the one meaningful weapon it has gets annihilated?

Silver bullet fixes don't work. They never work.If they DID work, Assault Missiles would have ended the swarm, rather than taking them three more waves and breaking the game in the process (hyperbolic, but after facing Dash a couple of times tonight an honest opinion).

Fly what you enjoy. Don't give me the argument that the game is over before dials are set. The game is over before YOU even hit the tournament floor with that attitude.

EDIT: and do you know what's sad? People were having the exact same argument about 40k 10 years ago. People were ADAMANT that you could take anything and skill > list, and anyone trying to argue otherwise was discredited as a troll or a hater. Today, even the most die hard supporters have conceded that you can't just take anything and have a fair game. I urge everyone to have an objective look at the game mechanics.

I suppose I agree in a way that the Fat Falcon has been aided and abetted by the Z-95, if only because there isn't much else to do with a spare 12 points. However, I don't believe they are really that good. I would far prefer to have Biggs + Falcon over 2 Bandits/Talas + Falcon. The major point of vulnerability for any Super Falcon build is the first pass, when your opponent has good range, all his actions, and concentrated fire. Z-95s do nothing to help you weather that storm, and very little on the next turn either. They only really shine if they last a while, which would mean that your Falcon is taking all the fire, which defeats the purpose of the entire list (getting the Falcon into the endgame).

Any list (well, not A-Wings, lol) with 4 or more ships can pretty consistently beat a Super Falcon just by pouring all its shots into the beast on the first pass. The problem is that the meta favors 3 ship builds in order to service a PS bid, so Super Falcons are inordinately effective at the moment.

Fly what you enjoy. Don't give me the argument that the game is over before dials are set. The game is over before YOU even hit the tournament floor with that attitude.

Well, you go ahead and fly that Biggs + Z95 swarm against an Echo list, i'm sure you'll enjoy it.

EDIT: and do you know what's sad? People were having the exact same argument about 40k 10 years ago. People were ADAMANT that you could take anything and skill > list, and anyone trying to argue otherwise was discredited as a troll or a hater. Today, even the most die hard supporters have conceded that you can't just take anything and have a fair game. I urge everyone to have an objective look at the game mechanics.

10 years ago was also 4 editions ago, so I don't accept that comparison.

No game system will be perfectly balanced, but it will be varying degrees of reasonably balanced. There will always be optimal units and optimal builds. List building will always be a skill.

I would encourage you, though, to look at the winning lists of 40k 5th. Every one that I saw was less a net list and more of a net tweak. Good players understood why army builds were good but always put their own little flair or style into the list they played. These tweaks were not optimal according to the Internet, but the players did well because the tweaks gave them more options they could exploit on the battle field.

As the game gets more ships and gets more complex, there is a higher chance that certain ships will be flat out better than others and worse than others. Unlike 40k, the mechanics of this game are really solid.

IMO Phantoms and the effect on the meta wrecked the game and drained so much fun out of it for me... it's not even funny.

It can and will get worse because FFG refuse to fix things by withdrawing or backtracking. Every mistake they make is with us to stay and their 'two wrongs might make a right' approach is only going to send things spiralling out of control until we have a Rock/Scissors situation... and no Paper.

Did the meta need to be shaken up? Maybe.

Did they need to turn the game into something where I can look at a starting set up and tell you who is going to win before the first move? No.

The fun and fair games of the first couple of waves are long gone now.

10 years ago was also 4 editions ago, so I don't accept that comparison.

10 years ago was a few years into 3rd ed (pretty much a new game on its own), so the comparison with xwing today is very apt.

As much as I think the phantom could be tuned down a bit, I agree with this. Was the game really more fun when everyone ran 2x2b/Han+2 escorts against 7 tie howlrunner/5 tie shuttle?

I am seeing pilot skill bidding become a powerful choice, and now you might want to run quality of fire over just quantity.

At the very least, you listed 4 archetypes there, which is twice what we currently have, so... maybe?

This is largely IMHO, but I think pointing out the swarm highlights one of the other major shifts that we've seen lately. The swarm was undoubtedly the dominant build at the highest levels, but it was also HARD to fly well. This meant that while it was top dog at the top levels, builds tended to diversify quickly as you went down the ladder. When we talked about the swarm, we were saying "You couldn't just slap down 8 TIEs and call it a win, because X-wing's a game about maneuver and piloting skill!" Now, we're arguing over whether the Falcon's dominance is caused by netdecking and mere overuse.

While opinions on how much turrets should count as easy mode vary, is anyone going to actually argue that they're as hard to fly as a swarm?

I'll also disagree that there's any PS bid any more. PS bidding referred to trying to guess how many points you had to spend in order to have a PS advantage. Were Rookies good enough at 2, or did you need to go to Red Squadron and Daggers? Are 4s good enough, or is it worth putting in Night Beast and Gundark just to get that 5?

We no longer have PS bids - we have PS thresholds. There's no "How much is it worth committing?", it's "If I'm not at least an 8 I can't stop Echo, and preferably a 9 for Whisper." The closest thing we have to a PS bid at this point is a decision on whether it's worth trying to push above 9. We have 8 real PS "bids" now - Echo, Whisper, Han, and soon to be Dash, each with and without VI.

That's exactly the sort of reactive requirement I was trying to point out, because if you run into something where you haven't met the threshold, you're going to be in a world of hurt.

Late addition: The more I think about it, the more I think the first point is important. A year ago, the common argument was that netdecking wasn't really even possible in X-wing, or at the very least vert ineffective. Now it's the source of all our woes. That seems like a notable change all by itself.

Before you guys harp too hard on the Phantom,

Think a bit on how the meta would look without it.

Fat-Han would rule supreme...

(Oh wait, he still does.)

I still maintain that the state the game is currently in, is not the Phantom, (or ACD's) fault, it is Fat Han - which was out BEFORE the Phantom arrived.

That, and primarily the people who refuse to adapt and split up their formations; when flying against the Phantom, they are the cause of the monotony-copy-paste-lists we see at Premier events.

Many players on this very forum (and AFM+BGG's) did complain about Soontir; having PS 9, 4 agility dice and 3 actions in the earlier meta, and they spent time trying to come up with a counter for him and the arguments were the same, only now they are more pronounced.

A hyper mobile, high attack ship, that - while fragile - is also hard to hit.

The popular solution then?

Wait for it.

MM Han + Gunner/Luke.

But oh no, that would get chewed up by the swarm!

Where are the swarms now? they are still viable, right?

Not really, not anymore. Because when flown in formation (where they excel due to Howlie) Fat Han can arc dodge them, Phantoms can dance around them, etc. E-Wings can dodge them, Defenders can do the K-Turn circus.

The answer is so simple, Fat-Han counters everything but a Swarm, and there are almost no swarm players left.

FFG seems to be pushing the game towards smaller squadrons consisting of 2-4 ships (which I like). But the game isn't quite there yet and the majority of players in particular seem to be somewhere else entirely.

And Fat Han sits on his throne and reigns supreme, for now.

As much as I think the phantom could be tuned down a bit, I agree with this. Was the game really more fun when everyone ran 2x2b/Han+2 escorts against 7 tie howlrunner/5 tie shuttlle?

You forgot 2b2y and all the builds involving Interceptors. So that's at least 6 builds and practically all the ships available in the game at the time. There was a lot more variety.

You don't take outmaneuver on all your ships because it's not useful. However, one of them with it at endgame IS useful against goldenrod. Vessery is a nice candidate for it.

If Han is still alive at end game, then chances are you ain't taking him out, with or without any particular upgrades.

I've taken Han out first and last with both defenders and interceptors (with and without outmaneuver). His three dice struggle to get through a turtled interceptor for sure, and a defender using an HLC on him has him outgunned.

Great, but the fact is just because you have done it doesn't make it likely to happen.

Speaking personally I didn't feel the Phantom was as game-breaking as some people let on in forums like this. It's a neat tool for the Empire to turn to other than running their TIE swarms or 2 ace + Bounty Hunter builds. When I took Phantoms to the table they never felt like an auto-win button for me. I definitely had to steer them right.

But I am worried about Dash because he does feel like an easy button. I'm the one who ran that list against Buhalin this past evening, taking Jan Ors in a support role, and was slamming out 5 attack dice at chosen targets. In our first game I pegged Farlander with an Ion cannon and then vaporizing him two turns later with the HLC. On our second game I threw Buhalin off completely in turn 2 by essentially going horizontal from where I started, keeping a shot but far out of his arc. Later I blasted a cloaked Whisper out of the sky with 5 hits and we decided to call it there. I felt bad doing it, but I was making the competitive calls to see what this thing can do.

About the only drawbacks for that setup is locking Dash at PS7 and his need to stay stressless after his activation. He's got 42 points of other things to play with after setting up this build.

I'm hoping my local group and the community can develop some not-han counters before the Outrider makes a splash on the competitive scene because I don't want to see us looking like the Attack Wing meta with their Borg epidemic. At worst this Outrider build is going to feel like TIE Swarms all over again... if we don't have some counter-stratgies in mind before it shows up, it's going to be showing up often at local tournaments. X-Wing's survived it before, with the TIE Swarm, but it means a few months of dealing with it before some better counters come along to soften the blow.

So????? Would we be better of with no large ships and no mirror matches at competition . Like that would happen.

Interceptors, that's what took me down when i played Dash. His PS of 7 is his weak point. I had Dash modified up and then had 2 B-wings plain. My friend had PS Interceptors Carnor and Soontir and was able to keep within 1 which once you get there it's so hard to shake them off. I can understand the fear of Dash though. His ability to just get the hell away is pretty terrible with going straight through asteroids if need be.

Silver bullet fixes don't work. They never work.If they DID work, Assault Missiles would have ended the swarm, rather than taking them three more waves and breaking the game in the process (hyperbolic, but after facing Dash a couple of times tonight an honest opinion).

Assault missiles are not proof that the philosophy behind introducing counter doesn't work; they were proof that ordnance was really, really poorly designed for tournament play (where consistency is valued) that even a card that provided a counter to the most dominant list couldn't overcome its lack of cost effectiveness.

I agree with Buhallin on the Silver Bullets but I don't think Autothruster is likely to be a silver bullet. If it's an agility buff when out of arc it forces a change in flight pattern from the Falcon: it suddenly needs to think about aiming its firing arc.

IMO Phantoms and the effect on the meta wrecked the game and drained so much fun out of it for me... it's not even funny.

It can and will get worse because FFG refuse to fix things by withdrawing or backtracking. Every mistake they make is with us to stay and their 'two wrongs might make a right' approach is only going to send things spiralling out of control until we have a Rock/Scissors situation... and no Paper.

Did the meta need to be shaken up? Maybe.

Did they need to turn the game into something where I can look at a starting set up and tell you who is going to win before the first move? No.

The fun and fair games of the first couple of waves are long gone now.

You forgot the last line, "No, you can't have my ships."

What is the ability of Autothruster?

We don't know yet.

Fly what you enjoy. Don't give me the argument that the game is over before dials are set. The game is over before YOU even hit the tournament floor with that attitude.

Well, you go ahead and fly that Biggs + Z95 swarm against an Echo list, i'm sure you'll enjoy it.

EDIT: and do you know what's sad? People were having the exact same argument about 40k 10 years ago. People were ADAMANT that you could take anything and skill > list, and anyone trying to argue otherwise was discredited as a troll or a hater. Today, even the most die hard supporters have conceded that you can't just take anything and have a fair game. I urge everyone to have an objective look at the game mechanics.

Let me ask something. I need to know. What is it that you hope to accomplish by stating that the sky is falling? There are proven counters to the Fat Han build - and Phantoms, and the Tie Swarm, and pretty much any other meta build out there. What is the real issue here? Just because something seems prevalent in today's meta doesn't mean it will be so tomorrow, or the next day, or next week, or when the next wave hits.

Fat Han is boring, both to fly, and to fly against, especially considering how prolific it seems at the moment - I don't think anyone disputes that at all. Is it powerful? Sure, I suppose, though the same has been said of every single wave that's been released - someone, somewhere comes up with the list to beat. And you know what? People do! Sure people bash their heads against the wall in getting to that point, but eventually, the big, scary boogeyman doesn't seem so frightening once you know how to counter it.

The same thing will happen in a couple of weeks when Rebel Aces and Wave 5 start showing up in abundance. We'll start seeing Dash/HLC Combos that will make us want to pull our hair out. We'll start to see A Swarms running proton rockets incessantly. When Scum & Villainy hits, we'll likely see some pretty interesting new things as well - IG-88 will likely be the new boogeyman, especially when paired up with... IG-88! The meta will shift (as it always does). Unfortunately, we're likely to see a metric f%ck-tonne of threads that complain about how OP all these new builds are, and how FFG has nerfed the game (yet again).

So, again, I ask - what is it that you are all scared of? What do you hope to accomplish? I get that it's cathartic to b!tch about the new 'shiny' as MajorJuggler puts it. I get that it feels better to get it off your chest. But to what end? I personally would rather just fly casual and play the game. Does that mean I'll lose a few games to these types of builds? Probably. But the law of averages says that eventually I'll get a few wins in as well (as I have against Fat Han and Phantom builds as they are now.)

FFG isn't likely to go back and start changing the game because a very vocal minority of people are upset. I trust them though to come up with solutions down the pipe (as they have always done.)

From you casual gamer who isnt worried about the meta.

I just play on my kitchen table with my brothers and a few friends. I love Imps, but whenever I fly the phantom it is usually killed fairly quickly. Of course, we usually play with anywhere from 100-300 points. So there are alot for ships, and alot for firing arcs to watch out for. The same would go for the falcon, with so many ships on the table it doesnt take many turns to blow it up.

Im very much a casual flier, but I do understand that these two ships in particular affect the meta. I played 40k and Magic for many years and I know the concept of power creep. But, if you look at it from far enough away, what was powerful a years ago isnt so powerful anymore. This game is really new, I would think the designers understand the concerns people have with the meta, and are probablly trying to find way to fix it. I think EPTs are going to be the answer to many problems, because they can be put on so many ships, and allow for different interactions.....

Hoi papamambo!

Don't worry about innocent, he just thinks that his views and opinions are the only ones that matter. He doesn't concern himself with facts or anything, so don't take it personal. Just let his sky fall along with the other chicken littles.

I suppose I agree in a way that the Fat Falcon has been aided and abetted by the Z-95, if only because there isn't much else to do with a spare 12 points. However, I don't believe they are really that good. I would far prefer to have Biggs + Falcon over 2 Bandits/Talas + Falcon. The major point of vulnerability for any Super Falcon build is the first pass, when your opponent has good range, all his actions, and concentrated fire. Z-95s do nothing to help you weather that storm, and very little on the next turn either. They only really shine if they last a while, which would mean that your Falcon is taking all the fire, which defeats the purpose of the entire list (getting the Falcon into the endgame).

Actually, I bet with 6 A-wings + 10 points to spend (or 5 A-wings + Tarn w/ R7), you might just be able to take down a Falcon squad with that many little bees...