It IS another super turret, but it plays completely differently and has different strengths and counters. For one, it doesn't have the non linear damage mitigation of Fat Han. But it is far more mobile and FAR more cost efficient.

Counters are post PS 7 dial reveal movement. Engine Upgrade, Echo. Otherwise if you don't get in range 1 it has absurd efficiency for a turret. As in on par with the TIE Advanced, Ewing, and Defender - but with a R2-3 turret.

Already doing stats for Worlds!

No A wings, Defenders, TIE Bombers, TIE Advanced, or Firesprays in Top 32. No generic E-wings, HWK (no surprise there) or Interceptors either.

Turret usage is at an all-time high by any metric.

MJ, what do you mean when you say the "efficiency" is on par with TIE Advanced? The survivability of the Advance? surely you don't mean the offense efficiency, right?

Didn't Typo use Jan Ors and Han in the Top 32 match? I watched him and Aaron Bonar live.

At least Aaron represented with 1 Echo in the Top 32, woot!

Any intercept-class maneuverable ship at higher PS hurts dash a ton. As do all manner of stressing him out. I've been flying mine since gen-con and have racked two tourney wins with him. Real joy to fly. Real pain to see how much my opponents don't want to see him.

Scum has two intercept-class coming already with an upgrade that apparently helps the Imps interceptor-class as well and hopefully the pseud rebel interceptor. By regionals there will still be Dash's but they could be in for real trouble with whatever else gets released over the coming year.

As I see it from this moment in time. We'll not be rid of the phantom any time soon which, personally, sucks. But the large turreted ships are probably not hanging around much longer. Not in their current high cost form anyway

That turret fix better be really **** good. I'm really starting to hate this meta. Like. I'm starting to lose enjoyment for this game.

Falcon and turret usage at all time high. No presence of most ships in the top 32. And you're still going to have people who tell you the meta is fine and Falcons are fine.

I'm feeling done

If the Meta is Fat Han, so why dont people use more Fat Han Counters then?

I haven't played many games yet and am fairly new, but imho a good counter for Fat Han lists should include Wedge, he reduces Falcons Agi to 0, and therefore not triggering 3Po at Range 1-2, further you could take corran horn with or without Outmaneuver and soak up the falcons defensive action tokens and deal massive damage. Generally i think Outmaneuver should be included on Counterlists for Large tourret ships, since it should be fairly easy to get on their flanks with more agile ships...

Either of those named pilots should also work good against phantoms eventhough you need to include maybe VI to make sure he isnt cloaked. But the hard part here is to really get the Phantoms inside your firing arc, so it might be a lot harder.

But against Falcons i think a list with either Wedge or Corran with outmaneuver or both should work just fine...

There are none. Go ask what reliably can counter falcon. Swarm is being killed now by good players. It was also highly variable in the first place.

Four rebel might work. It has other problems though

The issue that makes Fat Hans broken isn't the durability of them, it is the mechanic of being able to boost them. A 360 turret ship that has equal or better manoeuvrability than the A-wing, the fastest and most mobile ship ever.

Rebel squads would be turreted freighters instead of fighter support at this point. Fighters are becoming obsolete. I watched Sable Gryphons match against a Fat Han and Jan. He could not catch the ship. Large base turreted ships are simply able to boost too far to be caught in arc. The new BR ruling reflects this problem.

So the counter is to swarm it up, which plays into Fat Han's build type. Trade shots and damage to kill a couple of ships then break for the sweep around. If Han loses his escorts, as long as Han has killed as many of his opponents ships, he doesn't need to engage any more, and by boosting, can limit those who can target Han by only a ship or two, which his defences nerf.

Yup. Also margin of victory favors Han a lot.

Ok so I see, so the issue is more that the ship doesn't play like it is supposed to. Of course this is upsetting, but i don't think that ffg will change that in any way. only way i see is to ban EU on large ships, but i don't think that's going to happen... or recreate the movement dial for the falcon, a large ship like that shouldn't be able to do 1 turns either then :-)

Anyway, I have a question more related to the topic. Does anyone of you know, if you are allowed to use german cards at the ffg worlds tournament, or do they have to be in english?

Maybe. But the meta is about to get completely nuked with wave 5. There will be a 4th pillar: Mad Dash. Dash with upgrades, the pinnacle of which is 58 Dash: Dash + PtL + HLC + Outrider + Kyle + EU.

How is this not just another super-turret?

It IS another super turret, but it plays completely differently and has different strengths and counters. For one, it doesn't have the non linear damage mitigation of Fat Han. But it is far more mobile and FAR more cost efficient.

Counters are post PS 7 dial reveal movement. Engine Upgrade, Echo. Otherwise if you don't get in range 1 it has absurd efficiency for a turret. As in on par with the TIE Advanced, Ewing, and Defender - but with a R2-3 turret.

Is it correct that not a single A-Wing made the top 32 or did I miss one? A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that in the current meta, the refit might not be a big enough improvement even if it looked really good when it was first announced. In fact, it looks like the only thing represented by aces expansions (either one) were some upgrade cards.

Already doing stats for Worlds!

No A wings, Defenders, TIE Bombers, TIE Advanced, or Firesprays in Top 32. No generic E-wings, HWK (no surprise there) or Interceptors either.

Turret usage is at an all-time high by any metric.

Interesting. Imperials had four ships (half?) from their fleet not represented at all while rebels had just one. Bombers and Advanced aren't surprise as much as Defender and Firespray, but the A-wing with a new fix and pilots not appearing doesn't bode well for that ship.

I'm curious, how many people complaining about the meta actually played at World's? How many played in Regionals/Nationals?

The reason I'm asking is if you haven't played this year, the meta is going to be totally different next year anyway. So, why would it matter about who did/didn't bring a Falcon?

Personally, I'll never play at that level of tournament. Just not interested. I like our local tournaments just fine. Our local meta is also totally different from Regionals/World's meta. In the last 4 months I've seen a Falcon about 3 times at a local tournament. I've played against a Falcon once in the last 6 months.

Even after Paul's win, I doubt our local meta is going to change really. I DO foresee a lot of Decimators though as we have a lot of Imperial players around here...

Yup. Also margin of victory favors Han a lot.

Not as much as you'd think, as you still need to destroy a lot of ships and you are reducing your # of attacks by fielding the Falcon. (and often upgrading the quality of attacks instead).

i,e, I've seen a nasty Fat Han list end up at 627 MoV, against an 800+ something Echo swarm that just wrecked ships like nobody's business.

There are none. Go ask what reliably can counter falcon. Swarm is being killed now by good players. It was also highly variable in the first place.

Four rebel might work. It has other problems though

If you have a local who always predictably brings Han and you can't beat him knowing that then I think maybe the problem isn't with balance.

Anyway, I have a question more related to the topic. Does anyone of you know, if you are allowed to use german cards at the ffg worlds tournament, or do they have to be in english?

I posted this over at BGG, but its relevant so I'll crosspost here. In general, if the TCO helps predict the future meta any, we're going to see a lot of two big ship turrets (falcons, decimators, and yt2400s) versus two big ship turrets.

I'm not sure what I feel about the top 8, or top 16, but the top 32 had some decent diversity on the Rebel side. Two Crackens and two hawks, but then my list accounted for 50% of them :-) I'm a little surprised we didn't see any Super Jakes or Super Keyans, and only one Corran. On the Imperial side, it is becoming clear to me at least that the Firespray, Bomber, Defender, and Advanced need some care and feeding to come back to the meta. Hopefully the Firespray will be rejuvenated by the new Scum pilots, and the Advanced will be made awesome by whatever FFG is planning, but it isn't clear to me how the Defender and Bomber are going to be brought back into the meta fore. Combine these meh qualities with some very powerful incentives to fly a swarm or a phantom swarm - hell, I almost brought a swarm myself this year - and you've got an Imperial meta that skews really hard towards those to list types. (Props to Sunny McDonald and National Champ Rick for bucking that and bringing Lambdas & Interceptors to the table; Rick was one game away from qualifying for this years top 32 with a Vader Tie Advanced).

On the Rebel side, the fact that all those Fat Hans are out there means that people are going to have to bring B-wings to the table to have a shot at spiking damage through all that damage resistance. A Han with C3P0 and R2D2 (yes, hi Paul) can shrug off 2-3 damage per round before get through the DR! You need big guns to chew through that thing and A-Wings don't have 'em, E-Wings other than Corran (who counts as two ships) are too expensive, unnamed X-Wings compare poorly with their B-Wing counterparts, and Y-Wings don't have enough attack dice (although I LOVE Gomes and Williams' "Panic Attack" list -- Y-wing + stress droid + ICT, Blue + Tactician x3).

A lot of this comes down to the fact that Fat Falcons have exhibited significant gravitational distortion to the meta, and that the Imperial Swarms, Rebel Swarms, and Phantom Swarms have been pulled in with it. The field is probably going to become stronger due to Paul winning the WC with a Fat Han list. Good tournament players -- the type that go to Worlds - are sensitive to this and plan their lists a bit more conservatively. I bet if you catch that same set of guys at their FLGS you'd see a lot more inventive/fun lists on the table.

I'm looking forward to Scum to shake all of this up and let us start from a new blank state :-)

That turret fix better be really **** good. I'm really starting to hate this meta. Like. I'm starting to lose enjoyment for this game.

Falcon and turret usage at all time high. No presence of most ships in the top 32. And you're still going to have people who tell you the meta is fine and Falcons are fine.

I'm feeling done

I prefer the current Fat Han plus filler over the prevalence of double Falcon last year. I look at the top 32, and yes, there is a prevalence of Falcons. But, there also some really, really cool variations and neat odd squads out. And, looking at the finals, I am willing to be it was more Paul's skill than any imbalance of the Falcon that got him to where he was.

Sure, Wave 5 will exacerbate the annoyance of turrets. But there will be some fun variation as well. But, Scum is on the horizon as well. Plus, who knows what the next release will be, or when.

MJ, what do you mean when you say the "efficiency" is on par with TIE Advanced? The survivability of the Advance? surely you don't mean the offense efficiency, right?

Basically what WWHSD said. Specifically, the "jousting" efficiency which only looks at attack, durability, and ship cost. As WWHSD said, it's basically multiplying the attack and durability together, taking the square root, and then normalizing to a 12 point TIE Fighter. The specifics are more complicated, you can read about the method here , and can see the most recent numbers through wave 6 here .

Back on topic with wave 4 though, I think that having Worlds not include wave 5, is good for really getting a feel for how the wave 4 meta has stabilized. It took a while, but I think we are finally about there.

Enjoy it, because we might not have such a stabilization time next year.

Will there be enough data to look at how MoV affects pairings? Anecdotally, I heard a lot of people talking about facing lists that looked a lot like their own after the first round.

Will there be enough data to look at how MoV affects pairings? Anecdotally, I heard a lot of people talking about facing lists that looked a lot like their own after the first round.

Yes, but it will be a while before I can analyze all that data. I should however have all of the pairings and results (with MoV) up this week, with any luck. So if I don't get to it first, someone else can.

The meta here was Falcon heavy before wave 4, I see it just being turret heavy after wave 5. You don't need to fly ships that hard counter them to win. You do need to figure out a strategy for beating them though with whatever list you are flying and depending on the lists you like to fly you may need to change them a little. I like flying interceptors I can't field a list full of them (mostly because green dice are too fickle) but one or two still works wonders.

As for wave 6 its hard to tell without seeing the rest of the cards, so far though scum have some very interesting options. Though as of right now its mostly a lot of different takes on swarm. Though there should be some 4 ship builds and 2 largeships + a small

With all the Fat Han talk, for some reason I only saw 1 Falcon list per day in Flight 1 and 2. Might be my MOV since I brought the almost naked Bounty Hunter, Doom shuttle, and Echo. I usually lose the shuttle and sometimes the BH.

Not sure why people don't use the Firespray as much, as mine single handedly saved me a few times by killing a bunch of ships after Echo got one-shot.

I was gladdened that there were a lot of variety in the flights, looking around and playing different builds. I did play a lot of Whisper swarms and Whisper/Soontir combos, but ultimately, when you look at the top 32, it was painfully too many Falcons.

With all the Fat Han talk, for some reason I only saw 1 Falcon list per day in Flight 1 and 2. Might be my MOV since I brought the almost naked Bounty Hunter, Doom shuttle, and Echo. I usually lose the shuttle and sometimes the BH.

Not sure why people don't use the Firespray as much, as mine single handedly saved me a few times by killing a bunch of ships after Echo got one-shot.

I was gladdened that there were a lot of variety in the flights, looking around and playing different builds. I did play a lot of Whisper swarms and Whisper/Soontir combos, but ultimately, when you look at the top 32, it was painfully too many Falcons.

Well, I haven't looked at all the squads that did NOT make the Top 32 yet, so it could be that there were more Fat Hans within the Top 32 than in the tournament in general. Won't know until I pull in all the data.

Did any of the top 32 have ordnance?

Did any of the top 32 have ordnance?

You can check yourself! Just open the Top 32 spoiler tab (edit: on the first post, obviously), and string search for missile or torpedo -- I believe that Landon Otis in the Top 16 was the only one, with an Assault Missile.