No lie, I think R2 got activated at least a half dozen times that game

Granted, they have many greens - but you couldn't predict at least some of them to line up R1 shots or block him?

I am becoming seriously worried by the trend on this board of interpreting "I'm struggling against Game Element X" as "Game Element X is overpowered."

OP, I'm sorry you've lost to Corran + R2-D2, but what makes you arrive at the conclusion that it means the combination is broken?

Just to add on a little bit to my comment--I'm not being sarcastic when I say it sucks to lose to the same thing over and over. But I've had a fair amount of experience with various games, and the most likely hypothesis in any game that's been professionally designed (and playtested) is not that a game element is overpowered but that you're making a mistake and/or you have a blind spot that's preventing you from dealing with it properly.

But here I'm not even sure that's the case. As someone noted upthread, Corran Horn + R2-D2 is 39 points; adding (e.g.) Marksmanship + Fire Control System bumps that up to 44 points. In order to justify that price, Corran + upgrades should literally be as hard to kill, and do about as much damage over the course of a game, as two Blue Squadron Pilots.

I can't give you list advice because (a) it's a tourney, so you're locked in, and (b) I don't know what you're running. I can't give you tactical advice because (a) I don't know what you're running and (b) I don't know what your particular strengths and weaknesses at the table are. All I can say is that I really don't think Corran + R2-D2 is overpowered so much as it is appropriately powerful for its cost, and urge you to keep treating this as a problem that can be solved rather than concluding that the game is at fault.

When I started playing X-wing, the meta as it were was largely on TIE swarms and low PS Academy pilots.

Now it seems to be on expensive supermobile or turreted aces.

I am ok with this. Some things are harder to beat with others, and some lists do better against other lists. But even so, a lot of it comes down to raw skill. I've had a 30 point ship blocked and forced off the table. I've ioned an entire squadron off of the table with y-wings. I've yet to see a hard "cannot be beaten" list. The game is called X-wing miniatures, not x-wing list builder!

All I hear right now is fat han fat han fat han. Well, aside from bringing him once (and giving my opponent a huge warning by telling him all the pies in the sector had disappeared pre game) i've not really used him. But what will happen to fatso when he encounters a decimator that keeps ramming him? Maybe said decimator with a few bombers with ion torps? Suddenly. OMG Decimators are overpowered! they beat Fat Han!!! No, decimators will probably suck as B-wings with HLCs will.... decimate them. Then OMG are B-wings ever OP.

Cheese exists, but at least X-wings flavour is a fine old cheddar to be taken with a good glass of red, not other game systems where it's stinky stilon.

One of our locals runs it with R2+Shield upgrade and he will add Lone Wolf when it is available!

Predator is a better upgrade in every way. Plus you are now looking at 46 point ship, the same cost as as Han with no upgrades or Chewie with Gunner for 1 more.

I am becoming seriously worried by the trend on this board of interpreting "I'm struggling against Game Element X" as "Game Element X is overpowered."

Not to make this sound like a shot against the OP, but mostly it's ego. A lot of people see something they have trouble beating and they assume it's because something is wrong, rather then them lacking in skill or tactical ability.

It's not like it's unique to this board, pretty much every game has the same thing, if there's a competitive portion to the game. For example in MMO's you constantly see people who play PvP stuff crying out for ability or class X to be nerfed because they're OP'ed. The first knee-jerk reaction is that something is overpowered, rather then getting beat because you made a mistake or the other guy was just better...

Cheese exists, but at least X-wings flavour is a fine old cheddar to be taken with a good glass of red, not other game systems where it's stinky stilon.

Great now I'm hungry for cheese and wine...

If you think vorpal is OP, wait until you have to go up against FatVorp!

Cheese exists, but at least X-wings flavour is a fine old cheddar to be taken with a good glass of red, not other game systems where it's stinky stilon.

Seriously? Of all the cheeses to have with a nice glass of red (I'm thinking Rioja) you'd have cheddar?! OK, I can understand not liking blue Stilton, but Wensleydale? Feta? White Stilton? Halloumi?

Cheese exists, but at least X-wings flavour is a fine old cheddar to be taken with a good glass of red, not other game systems where it's stinky stilon.

Seriously? Of all the cheeses to have with a nice glass of red (I'm thinking Rioja) you'd have cheddar?! OK, I can understand not liking blue Stilton, but Wensleydale? Feta? White Stilton? Halloumi?

Fine X-wing is more of an applewood, with crackers.

One of our locals runs it with R2+Shield upgrade and he will add Lone Wolf when it is available!

Predator is a better upgrade in every way. Plus you are now looking at 46 point ship, the same cost as as Han with no upgrades or Chewie with Gunner for 1 more

The problem is the corran + r2d2 combo is often being used lately with a fat falcon or hlc dash. Means whoever you try to kill first, you're still screwed in the end game.

In my TC tourney game example, it was corran with dash I faced. I actually killed dash super quick, but then the rest of the game I couldn't do enough damage against corran, granted my red dice kinda failed me, but it's still hard to crack. He kept taking evade each turn while getting back shields, and using his fcs to slowly whittle down my ships.

In my TC tourney game example, it was corran with dash I faced. I actually killed dash super quick, but then the rest of the game I couldn't do enough damage against corran, granted my red dice kinda failed me, but it's still hard to crack.

Like I said upthread, in order to justify his cost, Corran ought to be comparable to a pair of B-wings (and in fact he should probably be tougher, given that they'll initially do better damage). Given the same dice rolls you had in the match in question, would you have been able to kill a pair of B-wings before one of them finished you off?

Again, I'm not arguing that Corran + R2-D2 isn't a powerful combination, but rather that it's not an overpowered one.

To turn things around, you have two pieces of evidence that the combination is overpowered: you lost one game against it, with a bad string of rolls thrown in, and lots of people are taking it. Do you feel like that's enough to call something broken? Have you eliminated plausible alternatives, or are you just going with the hypothesis that feels right to you?

I've ran the E-Wings the most before wave 4 hit the stores (since I won one at my Imdaar Alpha event) and then onward during the summer. Corrran was the obvious go-to choice in many of my squads. It has flaws and made some games very hard for me:

-fighting against TIE fighter or TIE bomber swarms: even with a FCS + Engine + PTL + R2-D2 (offensive variant) Corran, those ships can keep up with you no problem and I find that the E-Wing forces you to use bank 2 or forward 3 very often. The problem it creates is that you have the impression you're just endlessly fleeing the scene with no easy way to get back to the fight. If you take the gamble of bluntly facing back your pursuing opponents, you have to accept the action-less state and your ship feels too frail to do it most of the time. Because this E-Wing is naturally expensive, you face a guaranteed uphill battle against most lists that will beat you in ship count.

-To reduce the effect of stress, I also tried R2 Astromech equipped Corran, but it feels like your ship just becomes much more fragile, putting much more responsability on your flying out of arcs. PTL is used every turn and makes you prone to flechette torps or other stress dealing mechanisms. Your opponent can catch on and give you no safe zones to fly into, even if you use both actions to maneuver (BR and Boost).

-against phantoms, the same problem can be had even if you go the route of not using a Veteran Instinct and praying for advantageous 3v4 shots. The phantom will usually have an easy time of being behind you, forcing a risky k-turn that might not even land a shot. In this matchup, I was so flustered that I considered trying an Adrenaline Rush Corran build just to be able to finally turn around like I've always wanted, possible barrel rolling to my advantage in a field of asteroids, trapping a phantom at the right moment.

-The worst time to lose the E-Wing is in the first rounds of combat. R2-D2 couldn't save any X-Wing under focused fire and the same thing applies to this ship.

I can't wait until the promised love for the TIE Advanced is revealed, so that I can claim it is even more OP than now ...

The TIE Advanced is the only ship that gives you a huge heap of bragging rights when you win with it.

What ship will take its place after this promised love?

The TIE Advanced is the only ship that gives you a huge heap of bragging rights when you win with it.

What ship will take its place after this promised love?

The TIE Advanced is the only ship that gives you a huge heap of bragging rights when you win with it.

What ship will take its place after this promised love?

Generic E-wings.

Which, with some irony, can run the same combo that frustrated the OP: Knave + FCS + R2-D2 is just 33 points.

Indeed. On the first two pages we have a thread calling E-wings all garbage and another claiming they're broken. I think people enjoy games more when they always stick to this one near-universal truth:

"I could have won that game if I had played better."

See Vorpal has quoted the combo I find interesting with R2-D2 and E-Wings as it is relatively cheap and usually gets ignored early game in favor of blasting folks like Wedge etc but is an endgame menace.

The TIE Advanced is the only ship that gives you a huge heap of bragging rights when you win with it.

What ship will take its place after this promised love?

Generic E-wings.

Which, with some irony, can run the same combo that frustrated the OP: Knave + FCS + R2-D2 is just 33 points.

I, too, find almost 50 pt small base ships to be hopelessly OP

I am becoming seriously worried by the trend on this board of interpreting "I'm struggling against Game Element X" as "Game Element X is overpowered."

OP, I'm sorry you've lost to Corran + R2-D2, but what makes you arrive at the conclusion that it means the combination is broken?

But here I'm not even sure that's the case. As someone noted upthread, Corran Horn + R2-D2 is 39 points; adding (e.g.) Marksmanship + Fire Control System bumps that up to 44 points. In order to justify that price, Corran + upgrades should literally be as hard to kill, and do about as much damage over the course of a game, as two Blue Squadron Pilots.

As I'm fond of doing, I'm wondering how many shields you need to regen with R2-D2 on an E-Wing to equate 2 B-Wings. I'll have neither with focus, for simplicity, and both are facing focused 3-dice attacks.

The expectation for a focused 3-dice attack is (from xwingdice.com):

Against the unfocused B-Wing, 1.88 damage vs shields and 1.97 damage vs hull, so the B-Wings with 10 shields and 6 hull last 8.36 rounds of fire.

Against the unfocused E-Wing, 1.22 damage vs shields and 1.28 damage vs hull, so the 3 shields and 2 hull last 4.80 rounds of fire.

It's simple algebra to determine the number of shields the E-Wing has to have to get to 8.36 rounds, the number comes out to 8.29-- so as long as you survive long enough to use R2-D2 5 times in a game, you got your points' worth out of it.

We should also note a couple of things: defensive actions versus number of attacks has a really big impact.

Having a focus on defense for a B-Wing doesn't change the expected damage very much (1.63/1.71 vs 1.88/1.91), but it plays a major role for the E-Wing (0.64/0.68 vs 1.22/1.28), and it's even better if the E-Wing puts up an evade (0.49/0.53), but those tokens are spent after one attack. So limiting the number of attacks the E-Wing faces, and using defensive actions, can net the same numbers survivability-wise that you get from 2 B-Wings without having to use R2-D2 more than twice to get your money's worth.

As I'm fond of doing, I'm wondering how many shields you need to regen with R2-D2 on an E-Wing to equate 2 B-Wings. I'll have neither with focus, for simplicity, and both are facing focused 3-dice attacks.

This is an interesting point. I have scripts to calculate this, I'll modify them tonight. The question is simply:

Find N such that the durability of x/3/2/N = 2 times the durability of x/1/3/5.

I already calculate the "shots to kill" probability density function (given meta and action economy assumptions) for all the given stat lines, so I could just make a couple more stat lines until I find one that is the closest to solving the above equation.

Good attempt above, but you need to consider a variety of ranges and attack types, and action economies in order to get a more accurate picture of damage done. The defensive coefficient for 1 agility relative to 3 agility is ~0.54, so the answer should be roughly on the order of:

2*0.54*8 = 2 + N

N = 6.64

The E-wing already has 3 shields, so you need to use R2-D2 to regenerate 3-4 shields to break even. It's actually more than that, since doubling a ship's hit points does NOT quite double its durability. You still only need one "kill shot" vs 2 kill shots for 2 separate ships, and this affects the actual number of shots to kill vs what you would compute using only the average damage numbers (as above).

I can get a more exact number tonight, but the answer should be about 4. So, pretty close to your estimate of 5.

Edit: I would add, that doubling a ship's durability does not mean doubling its value. The 2x B-wings will do more damage than the one E-wing, so your 1 E-wing will still output far less damage than the equivalent cost of 2 B-wings. All else being equal, increasing durability by a factor of x without changing anything else only increases value by roughly the square root of x, or in this case ~41%. Again with Corran your mileage may vary.

Related to the OP, the generic E-wing has a stat line jousting efficiency about the same as the TIE Advanced. Actually, it's a hair lower. Even with all of its upgrade slots and nice dial, there is absolutely no way that the generic E-wings are priced correctly, let alone are overpowered. You hardly even see them taken at tournaments because they are so expensive. Corran is obviously a different animal because of his double-tap ability, and the combination of EPT choices and upgrades will non-linearly increase his durability.

Generally in X-wing even though the list does have a part in it, a wrong decision or a good play can make a massive difference. I've yet to have a game of X-wing where i can say one ship or build ruined me - except for the CR90 with navigator once, but even in that game I was misruling the ship, thinking all of its guns had turret fire arcs - also it had navigator and gunner, so is not tournament legal. It's why I play X-wing and not 40k( I've played perfectly against broken lists to the point of near winning, holding all objectives, but for the game to continue for 2 more rounds and me to be tabled - the trick to fighting broken lists there being go for objectives stay away from the broken unit as best you can and hold on to dear life).

Forgot to mention the barrel roll as well. X-wings (without expert handling) can't barrel roll out of arcs after regenerating a shield, but e-wings can.

As others have said, the ship you are talking about is a 39 point investment at minimum. It is (quite rightly) going to be rather hard to kill, and if you let it reach the endgame where it can go one-on-one (or even one-on-two, depending on your ships) it will destroy you. Thus the answer is to not let it reach the endgame; gang up on it in the early game when you have the most firepower at your disposal and kill it quickly.

The downside is, if you shoot at the Corran and his dice are hot, you might end up wasting shots that could've gone into destroying another ship. It really blows when you get Corran low, only to have him run away and regen shields.

R2D2 Corran certainly fits well into the new meta of less ships, as you generally need multiple shots on him to get passed R2D2.

The easy answer to that is just kill it first before it even gets to do a green and regen the sheild, I've done it before.

Or stress it and fly past it and watch as it wastes two turns getting back into the fight.

It's not even in the league of fat Hans and phantoms.

I don't think that this game necessarily has overpowered combinations. There are several powerful builds a player can turn to, and there's no one list that's become so all-powerful that any other list flown against it is useless and futile.

Fat Falcons, Phantoms, E-Wings, HLC Dash, TIE Swarms... these are all very powerful list options that players have struggled against but there are several to choose from. And that's not even considering piloting skill from the player.

Now if the world of X-Wing was similar to Attack Wing, where competitive selection means taking nothing but the same captain with the best ship in the game (Picard/Cube combos usually) then we have an issue. But as long as, heh, there are several threads harping about balance over different builds I think the game state is fine. I would like to see less turrets, but having turrets doesn't automatically make forward-shooters obsolete.