We just had the HOTH tourney, which was a wild success and featured a tremendous caliber of players (world champ, galactic cup champ, too many regional players who made the cut to even count..) and I got to see a lot of fantastic players flying ships. I learned more this last weekend than I ever have about how certain players think.

I learned the following paragraph more than anything, which is somewhat of a direct response to a lot of the threads I see on this forum.

1) Your understanding of a ship and your experience flying the list is incredibly important. I saw quite a few people fly ships that they determined to be "overpowered" or lists that had seen success, without a lot of experience flying them, or understanding of how they work. These pilots were chewed up and spit out by some of the world class competition that was there. Why? Because the world class guys can outfly you using a whole variety of ships, and they're going to CRUSH you if they have a lot of experience with something they feel comfortable with.

It's the reason that tie swarms are still here. Tie swarm pilots have flown swarms a billion times. They know those little tiny details of situations they don't want to get in because they've been there before. It's almost intuitive. See: Hothie making the finals with a swarm.

You can argue that some ships are simply better than others. What I would argue is that some ships, if flown correctly, have a higher ceiling of competitiveness. Combine that with flying them correctly and creatively within a complimentary list, and now you're talking.

After watching some of these guys fly, I think it's fair to say that "Pilot X with upgrade Y is OP" threads are dead in my mind. Understanding, and more importantly practice, is OP.

Wanna see caliber?

Dom (galactic cup champ) v. Hothie (2012 world champ) at the feature table

Wanna see caliber?

Dom (galactic cup champ) v. Hothie (2012 world champ) at the feature table

Oh wow, going to have to watch that later! Yay something to play in the background while painting walls!

Yeah. I know this has already been posted, but here's the news piece on it.

http://www.kcrg.com/subject/news/star-wars-table-game-raises-funds-for-ui-childrens-hospital-20141005

Agedsuperdave was supposed to stream it, but we had some bandwidth issues so he recorded all the feature table matches and is releasing them.Also

Also, since xwingtoman (sean dorcy) ran the tourney, I believe he has stuff for the mathwing department regarding lists played. I have some paper lists to fill in the gaps as well if you want them.

Also, since xwingtoman (sean dorcy) ran the tourney, I believe he has stuff for the mathwing department regarding lists played. I have some paper lists to fill in the gaps as well if you want them.

Absolutely, I would be happy to put all the results in the 2014 Miscellaneous Large Tournament Results thread.

Any idea on what lists were being run?

Doug not running a Firespray, Dom not running a Shuttle? What sort of crazy, backwards tournament was this???

Hothie ran howl with Swarm Tactics, black with DTF, two obsidians and two academies I believe? Maybe one more academy or obsidian.

I didn't ever face Dom, so I don't know. It was a 2 list tourney. You could abandon your first list and permanently move to your second if you decided to mid tourney. You couldn't go back though.

Dom was running BSP+FCSx3 with Roark+Ion+Chewbacca

I think there were 3 Academies in Hothie's swarm*...so a hull upgrade on Howlrunner makes sense because I know he had ST in her EPT slot (that kinda sounds dirty).

I ran RGP+PTLx4 as my first list and then Howlrunner+PTL, BSP+Wingman, BSP+DTF, APx4 as my second. I finished the day at 2-2-1 and 13th place, I believe.

It was a great time with some great competition, like Sunny mentioned already. And congrats on the win, BTW!

*I stand corrected. 2 Academies, 3 Obsidians.

I had howl/swarm, black m/dtf, X3 Obsidian, and X2 AP.

Funny thing is I think my game against Dom was my worst flying game of the tourney.

It's really too bad we couldn't get the death blossom on video. We've got plenty of pictures of it though. Truly one of the most innovative moves I've ever seen.

Doug not running a Firespray, Dom not running a Shuttle? What sort of crazy, backwards tournament was this???

I can't speak for Dom, but I'm currently evolving the shark. More on that in a few weeks....

It's really too bad we couldn't get the death blossom on video. We've got plenty of pictures of it though. Truly one of the most innovative moves I've ever seen.

I would love to see more in-game pictures of the Death Blossom!

For those unaware, Doug has an excellent piece on this maneuver that he devised, over on Team Covenant here:

http://teamcovenant.com/hothie/2014/10/05/the-death-blossom/

I didn't realize he made that post. I left a lengthy comment on my thoughts.

Funny, I had been tinkering with a similar move, but mostly a "wagon circle of death" where the formation could take sharp turns to overlap fields of fire. I think I prefer his.

I was hoping to stream the games for the HOTH event live on twitch.tv but the internet at the venue just wasn't up to it.

I am slowly getting all the games that were recorded at the event posted onto Youtube. I hope to have them all posted and ships lists posted with the video by the end of the day.

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsy8amPvj1-2uJcjCDXHSeQ

As a side note I'm thinking of recording more games in the future. Please leave feedback if this is something that the community would like to watch. Thanks!!

Nice to be able to get all the matches at the feature table in one place. Some serious study to be had watching those games. Thanks Dave. Nice job.

That Death Blossom move...

Can anyone describe the death blossom on this forum? I haven't seen anything about it and can't get on team covenant or a few maneuvers to see it for myself.

picture a column formation where the ships on the left turn right, the ships on the right turn left, and the last two come up the middle.

Yea i tried to share a pic......didn't work.

sunny raven court explained it pretty well

You talked about ships having a high skill ceiling. I'd agree. Put any ship in the hands of a great player and he will make it do things other people haven't considered. This isn't seen all that often by the average player though. The majority of players of this game don't watch competitions, or attend high level competitions. They play at local clubs, and play only with friends/family. They too have beliefs of OP ships, but it's not coming from competitive play.

Ships also have a base line ability. This is often where the OP complaints come in.

A fat falcon can be flown incompetantly, and still be effective. 360 arc, solid sustainability. You have to be particularly bad to not be somewhat effective in this ship.

A swarm of Ties though is a relatively hard build to fly. You have to know how to manuever to avoid runing into your own ships. You have to know how to avoid obstacles. You need to know how to block, flank, and concentrate your fire. A swarm flown poorly will be chewed up by a rookie player with some more dependable lower skilled ships.

This is the issue at hand. The OP complaints usually don't come from the highly competitive crowd, but from the casual crowd. Something that is easy to fly and does well just by being on the board comes across as OP. While other ships that are much more impressive on the competitive scene come across as weak or overcosted because they don't understand what upgrades to stick on it and how to fly it in a way that is anticipating moves a turn or 2 ahead of time.

That only highlights the problem with threads like this. They're being constantly thrust on the forums and give new players the perception that certain ships are out of balance. The reality is that with relatively few exceptions (tie advanced, formerly A-wings) there are almost no ships that are out of balance.

That was my point of the thread. I saw more skilled pilots that weekend than I ever have. What I learned is that the ceiling is laughably so far past the OP threads it's ridiculous. Some of these guys will let you have whatever OP ship you want, and then beat the pants off you with a ship that you think is worthless. Then I'm sure they'd let you swap builds with them and do it again. The skill of the player is a tremendous aspect of this game, equal only to the amount of practice they've had flying that list.

The very fact that we can have OP complaints actually imply that this is a imply that this is a balanced skill based game. You don't get these arguments with Attack Wing. Ships in that game aren't OP. OP translates into a good build.

When casual gamers complain about a ship being OP it usually comes from a player who thought they flew with great skill and yet it was not enough to defeat their opponent. Or, more likely, a player who just couldn't see an effective way to fly his/her list against someone else's list. That implies that their should be an effective way to fly every list.

Not that agree with most of the OP complaining, but I have come to a realization that the fact that we have it is an indication that we are playing a good game.

Thanks for the vids!

Really wanted to see Dom's 3x Blue Squadron + Roark -squad win, as im a big fan of those ships and im planning to fly a quite similar list at a tournament this weekend. But, oh well...

How well did he do in other games? Just curious.