New player here.

I have been reading the various reports on Gen Con and Worlds, and X-Wing has no doubt impress upon me as a skill-based miniature game.

However with regards to the current meta, it seems that "Whisper" and "Fat Han" seemed to be the dominating builds.

As much as winning may be important for some, having fun and seeing diversity are aspects that I look out for in a well-designed game.

What are your views on the current meta and balance of the game?

Thank you.

What happens at extremely high level play will have a lot less of an effect on low level games. What the guys who are competing to win at worlds are doing will not have much of an effect on you or your games, since you don't play at their level.

X-wing tmg is not the NFL

For those of us who don't play competitively much, the meta is no big deal. Every game, we all use new lists. No repeats. It ensures there's always a new game, and it doesn't get stale

For those of us who don't play competitively much, the meta is no big deal. Every game, we all use new lists. No repeats. It ensures there's always a new game, and it doesn't get stale

Even for those of us who do play competitively, you go to a local tournament and one out of every 5 players or so is an actual competitor, everyone else just showed up for some games with whatever they felt like playing. The game is super laid back.

I play competitively at tournaments, but outside of tournaments I still run a different list pretty much every game. At a competitive level it is more important to optimise your build, but lower tier builds are not unplayable in this game like they are in many other miniatures games. Outside of really extreme builds like 6 HWKs, the vast majority of builds are still fun in a casual game without being "auto-lose".

Any list can beat any list, given sufficient differences in player skill and luck.

That being said, Phantoms really shook the metagame once they were released. Falcons had the best defense against them. TIE Swarms came up against the Falcons. Phantoms still ate the Swarms, and a tenative rock-paper-scissors thing took over.

The term rock-paper-scissors gets thrown around a lot when referring to Phantoms, Falcons, and Swarms. While it is kind of a valid comparison, it isn't a perfect analogue. Phantoms can and do beat Falcons, Falcons beat Swarms, and so on. They are bad match ups where one side has an advantage but they are not instant wins.

In most local tournaments I don't usually see any lists with those main archetypes in them. And even if they did bring one of those it isn't World's. You can still do really well with any decent list in most places.

New player here.

I have been reading the various reports on Gen Con and Worlds, and X-Wing has no doubt impress upon me as a skill-based miniature game.

However with regards to the current meta, it seems that "Whisper" and "Fat Han" seemed to be the dominating builds.

As much as winning may be important for some, having fun and seeing diversity are aspects that I look out for in a well-designed game.

What are your views on the current meta and balance of the game?

Thank you.

The meta has been stagnant and boring for most of 2014.

It was a huge disappointment that Wave 5 didn't make it out in time to be legal for Worlds.

It's hard to complain too much. I believe we'll have all the diversity we can handle once Scum & Villainy hits the table.

Having faced Phantoms almost constantly, I have to say they're not really a problem.

Whisper (the 99% played variant) is surprisingly predictable and about as easy to shoot out of the space sky as a 38+ point ship should be. The only problem comes in if you have nothing but two dice to throw at a cloaked phantom

Fat Falcons strike me as unbeatably stupid, but I havn't played against them yet

While I agree with the above posts that "the meta" isn't a big deal for most players, it should be pointed out that the designers have promised us a (at least partial) solution to turrets in wave 6, so if that sort of thing is a concern for you, the issue should be addressed in the not too distant future.

I agree with Forgottenlore right above me. I do think the meta filters down because people read forums like this one, where all of us bellyache about it.

For my part, I think the meta is a fascinating dynamic. I do think it's about to change a little at least with even more turrets out there to deterr Whisper-centric builds even more than Fat Han already has, but I don't know to what degree it will really revolutionize the meta. I have no idea what Scum is going to mean for it either.

So, in other words, yes, the meta of late 2014 has been about the Phantom Menace and Fat Han. That shook up the previous B-list vs. Swarms meta. We'll see what's next.

I agree with Forgottenlore right above me. I do think the meta filters down because people read forums like this one, where all of us bellyache about it.

For my part, I think the meta is a fascinating dynamic. I do think it's about to change a little at least with even more turrets out there to deterr Whisper-centric builds even more than Fat Han already has, but I don't know to what degree it will really revolutionize the meta. I have no idea what Scum is going to mean for it either.

So, in other words, yes, the meta of late 2014 has been about the Phantom Menace and Fat Han. That shook up the previous B-list vs. Swarms meta. We'll see what's next.

I think the effect of wave 5 on Whisper has the possibility of going either way. If the triple action Outrider becomes the build to beat Whisper should be a strong counter because she's high PS and can close a lot of ground quickly with decloaks. If the Falcon's popularity remains high and we see a lot of VT-49s hitting the tables, Whisper is going to have some rough times ahead.

It's nowhere near as bad as it's made out to be. The high success of the Falcon is a combination of many things (counters to the Falcon being played less because they're very ineffective against TIE phantom lists, Falcon's advantage in the Margin of Victory tiebreaker system due to being a high point ship, consistency of the Falcon combined with tournament scoring system .etc) but it's not a broken ship by any means. FFG are also pretty tight on fixing things: the Falcon, for example, has a card intended to power it down (by allowing the ship it hard counters, the TIE interceptor, to compete with it) in Wave 6. FFG have also said that if a ship does dominate to the detriment of the game for any length of time they're willing to take other measures to balance things.

I think ffg should fix the victory system. Implement half points for ships below half hp or something.

I would really, really rather they keep the math for tie breakers simple. SWLCG is a nightmare.