For fluff reason alone, we kick off ever League Season with a massive 'Endor-like' battle to get everyone all geared up for playing X-Wing. There is no score, not really, and it is an event to just roll some dice and have some fun.
We will be having our next one in a couple of weeks and I am really looking forward to it!
That actually sounds really really fun.
Its one persons view and a rather negative one but he has a valid argument in terms of power creep. why isnt the standard x-wing and academy tie-fighter seeing as much play at tournament level anymore? Because there are far more option now and many of them are superior in terms of firepower. The B-Wing has sort of replaced the X-Wing in rebel fleets and Headhunters are just cheaper and give better bang for their squad points. FatHan lists are dangerous and although they are not unbeatable they beat most lists that contain x-wings so that could be where the guy is coming from?
I like this comment "I do think you have a very valid point and it’s one that FFG should address if they want the game to have a long-term tournament future once the novelty wears off. X-Wing works very well as a casual game, but not enough thought has gone into fleet construction and the interactions between certain ships and upgrades, so consequently it rewards extreme builds."
I didn't realize that a two year old game was still considered to be a novelty.
Seriously? Two years? The author there is coming from a background on a game that's been around for more than 25 years. Warmahordes, Flames of War, and Infinity are all at least 10. Malifaux is 5 years. Two years is absolutely nothing when you're talking game life cycles. Honestly, if it weren't for the Star Wars brand, it wouldn't even be enough to qualify as a novelty yet.
Let's talk at the five year mark and see if the game's still around. The comment is actually very dead-on, although I'll add that the rules aren't tight enough to handle five years of development without collapsing under the weight of the ability bloat.
But I could see where some FGS or tourneys have players that absolutely must WAAC and piss off casual players.
Its one persons view and a rather negative one but he has a valid argument in terms of power creep.
No, he doesn't.
why isnt the standard x-wing and academy tie-fighter seeing as much play at tournament level anymore? Because there are far more option now and many of them are superior in terms of firepower.
That's an assumption, or rather a set of them. The TIE fighter does see a fair amount of play; although it's not really a headliner these days, it's still excellent filler. And I'll grant you that the X-wing has a problem in that the Headhunter is better filler and the B-Wing is a better tough striker, but several of the named X-wing pilots are still more than worth taking.
Wave 1 content is genuinely still competitive, and that's a really cool thing.
To the post in question, I think it's largely correct. We've seen a general shift towards smaller builds with more upgrades, which has peaked with Wave 5. Two-ship builds are now perfectly common, and the only reason we're getting above 3 is the Z-95.
This honestly isn't surprising. As the upgrade pool increases, the number of upgrades which accomplish a given thing is going to increase. Sure, there are many flavors, but most are going to come in a few varieties: improved offense, improved defense, improved maneuver (which can support either). Ships that can and do stack those things are going to see big improvements in effectiveness - that's why Paul's Fat Han beat the others, he stacked more defense, while his build rendered their offensive improvements (usually Gunner) useless. This is also why crew, modification, and system slots are far better than, say, torpedo slots - flexibility. Ships that have a lot of (good) upgrade slots can stack to the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.
Its one persons view and a rather negative one but he has a valid argument in terms of power creep. why isnt the standard x-wing and academy tie-fighter seeing as much play at tournament level anymore? Because there are far more option now and many of them are superior in terms of firepower. The B-Wing has sort of replaced the X-Wing in rebel fleets and Headhunters are just cheaper and give better bang for their squad points. FatHan lists are dangerous and although they are not unbeatable they beat most lists that contain x-wings so that could be where the guy is coming from?
I'm watching the 2014 world champion ship match on youtube and you know what i'm seeing, ties flying alongside a phantom.
I don't know why everyone gets worked up about power creep. It is almost unavoidable in design if you want new ships and products. No, I'm not saying new ships need to be more powerful to be viable, but here is how it is going to work out:
You try to design 10 new ships at "power level 100", inevitably some will be a smidge lower and some a smidge higher. The higher ones are your power creep. Companies are going to try to avoid the lower ones if at all possible because they don't want product Dead on Arrival, so there is a large incentive to aim for as close to "power level 100" as possible, but not below.
What we should be impressed by with X-Wing is that they keep this inevitable slip super tight. The power seems to creep at most only a couple percent with each cycle. Even to the point that they sometimes release a ship that is underpowered. Other companies might just make sure the new ships are 10% better so they sell, but FFG seems to really be attempting to limit it as much as one is able rather than just embracing it as the lazy might.
Edited by GiraffeandZebra
I don't know, his argument seems to be just that the top meta isn't what he wants it to be.
I mean, the Han+C3PO+Luke combo is actually super thematic and just about the epitome of Star Wars.
I loved 40K until GW started ramping up the price for minis, and the rules just got whacked out. That and the whole shooty/tank build just killed my Black Templar army.
Hahaha, that IS funny. That is the exact same reason why I stopped.
I played Black Templars as well. I still have +/- 6000 points of them stored away 
Everyone has their opinion on the game. It is such a popular game that we are not the only ones talking about it on an internet forum. Also many people that get into it already play some sort of miniatures games before they started X-wing. Not to say that there are not a few players who this is their first "build your own army" table top miniatures game but that percentage would be low.
I think you can make the comparisson with Magic the Gathering. The developers made 3 player profile: Spike, Timmy, Johnny. In short Spike is the tournament player, min/max his deck, plays the metagame as best as he can. He wants to win tournaments.
Timmy wants to play big creatures, he wants to win by overkill.
Johnny is the player that wants to win with cards nobody plays as a challenge to make the cards work.
Of course there are hybrids between these types.
I think this applies to X-Wing aswell (any game for that matter) some people enjoy min/maxing the best list, some enjoy thematic epic battles, some play only the ships in the movies.
I mean, hey, let’s put Darth Vader into every ship we can except the ship he actually flew.
But you can't move pilots between ships...
I think you can make the comparisson with Magic the Gathering. The developers made 3 player profile: Spike, Timmy, Johnny. In short Spike is the tournament player, min/max his deck, plays the metagame as best as he can. He wants to win tournaments.
Timmy wants to play big creatures, he wants to win by overkill.
Johnny is the player that wants to win with cards nobody plays as a challenge to make the cards work.
Of course there are hybrids between these types.
I think this applies to X-Wing aswell (any game for that matter) some people enjoy min/maxing the best list, some enjoy thematic epic battles, some play only the ships in the movies.
If I play competitively I play my A-game, using proven tactics.
If I want to test a build, I play experimental combos.
If i'm f**king around I bring my B-game, rarely using the same combo twice.
If I am playing to lose, such as when DMing a D20 game with an x-wing component, then I have fun with it.
My current set up in the latter is based on players repair skill, they can add more than one modification, and based on how the players allied squadron (the players themselves don't fly, keep them separate!) survives/wins etc then multiple EPTs are possible. But really, this is my own system. Once it's been put through paces i can post it here I am sure.
Do not trust an active 40K player, for she/he has yet to see the wonderful games (including this one) that are out there and make the change.
I never knew that a tactical "wargame" could be this cheap, fun, good looking, and easy to play (in terms of model prep), before I changed from 40K to X-Wing.
Not a fair comment; I play 40k and X-wing (and a hell of a lot of others, too).
40k has a lot going for it, but it's a fundamentally different game to X-wing.
X-wing neither needs nor wants a force organisation. 40k does, because it's been designed into the game from it's basic level - as noted, a 'special character' is fundamentally different to a line squad member, and can be made nigh invulnerable for relatively little effort. By comparison, just last night we saw a named Interceptor ace successfully roll 4 blanks on his evade dice and explode in a single volley of fire, shield upgrade and all...
Yes, certain combinations are powerful, but for the most part, a degree of intelligence on the part of FFG has stopped it being overpowering. Splitting upgrades between the various slots and faction-specific has avoided most of the truly atrocious combinations, and you can still put up a credible fight with pilots from wave 1.
To the post in question, I think it's largely correct. We've seen a general shift towards smaller builds with more upgrades, which has peaked with Wave 5. Two-ship builds are now perfectly common, and the only reason we're getting above 3 is the Z-95.
This honestly isn't surprising. As the upgrade pool increases, the number of upgrades which accomplish a given thing is going to increase. Sure, there are many flavors, but most are going to come in a few varieties: improved offense, improved defense, improved maneuver (which can support either). Ships that can and do stack those things are going to see big improvements in effectiveness - that's why Paul's Fat Han beat the others, he stacked more defense, while his build rendered their offensive improvements (usually Gunner) useless. This is also why crew, modification, and system slots are far better than, say, torpedo slots - flexibility. Ships that have a lot of (good) upgrade slots can stack to the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.
Agreed.
The ship that most jumps out at me in this respect is the E-wing*. A generic E-wing pilot isn't much better off than his X-wing equivalent (arguably worse since he loses out on pilot skill) - but the ability for the named pilots to stack Push The Limit, Advanced Sensors, Engine Upgrade and an R2 Astromech turns a medium fighter into something that gives TIE interceptors conniptions....
* Although there are plenty. Big ships with multiple crew slots are the other good one.
One thought just occurred to me:
I still love killteam, necromunda and mordheim.
Not just because Skirmish is fantastic, but in these games it's way way harder to have stupid combinations.
In X-wing generally speaking there aren't many stupid combinations. Fat Han is probably the closest you will see.
I think that what hte author doesn't realize is that "the meta" isn't as rigid and all-encompassing as people think. The rock/paper/scissors analogy particularly irks me since it implies that only three builds are viable.
In reality, the state of the game allows for a lot of variation while remaining competitive. There are also a TON of great list builds out there that have yet to be discovered.
It's one of those guys that sucks at games with options. Everything he's said is a dressed-up version of "Things are complicated and I don't like that" but since he can't just admit that he doesn't like things that are complex because that would make him look stupid, he tries to mask his generic skilled player bashing as some sort of legitimate attack on the game of today vs. the glorious X-wing of yore.
"It was with unbridled delight that I looked at the X-Wing game that came out back during the first phase of the release."
Seriously from the first sentence you know it's going to be complete garbage.
I strongly disagree with the post in question.
What makes X-Wing such a great game is the community and amazing customization of lists. Every player can build a list and have a chance against some of the "best" meta lists. I am a strong believer in any 100 point list can beat another 100 point list as long as there is logic behind the list, Don't expect to win a game with a hwk swarm and blame the mechanics of the game for not letting you do that. I think every ship has a place (Except the Tie Adv. but recent changes look promising) and you learn that through experience. Nobody should expect to just jump into the game and understand list building mechanics right away, I miss the days where I could run lists that would not fly in the competitive scene and had a blast getting ripped apart because I built my own list that I thought was cool, and guess what?That game is still there you can still do that. People need to understand the point of competitive games, not only are they fun and challenging, we participate in them because we want to see how far our cool list can go and maybe win something.
As for the discussion on Special Character lists vs generic lists, each have their strengths and weaknesses as do all lists. Fat Han is not unstoppable. There are so many variables to this game that makes X wing far more complex than Rock/Paper/Scissors game play. Every tournament I go to I see different lists and combinations. The fact that people still run lists that aren't with the meta shows that this game has a complex list building process and doesn't need a force org. I have seen special characters lists do really well and i have seem them fall flat on their face, it all comes down to who is piloting the list what its optimized for and what they face in tournaments. The one thing i love about about the competitive scene is you have no idea what you'll play against, its completely random, You could have a rough match up of facing 3 phantom lists in a row or 3 Fat Han lists and it happens. Or you'll have perfect match ups to what your list is tooled to face against. I think people tend to forget that. I came in second even though I lost my first game in a tournament because my other matches I completely countered and got **** lucky.
I am a huge advocate for the under dogs in X wing. I will try to make any ship or pilot that is regarded as being the worst or unusable. People at my LGS can attest to this. I ran Arvel in the Canadian Nationals in Hamilton and came in 9th out of 60 people. It really irks me when people sit there and complain about the tournament scene being a bunch of munchkins trying to WAAC and exploit game mechanics when they either, Haven't been to a tournament or had a bad experience at one. Every single one of my games at nationals was down to the wire, None of my wins felt like guarantee wins I played my ass off and had some really amazing rolls and maneuvers. If the competitive scene isn't for you and you enjoy playing the game casually there's nothing stopping you from doing that. But stating that all competitive players are taking the fun out of the game for you than you are sorrily mistaken. It saddens me that people have had poor experiences playing this game because I love it. I think it is one of thee most balanced and enjoyable games out there. And i would love to play anyone who feels the same way about the game or feels that it is gone to the munchkins because i'd love to be able to change your mind.
My thoughts are that the author of that post is comparing a weekend of casual play to... well, he or she doesn't actually make it clear what "I looked back into X-wing" means, but given the note about Fat Han it seems like it was a conversation in or at least around the late Wave 4 competitive game.
The follow-up posts are just as bad, with accusations of "pay to win" and descriptions of the game as catering to power gamers with "extreme builds"--coming mainly from posters who admit they have little or no knowledge of the game.
(Kovutalli, whose handle I recognize from here, is doing an excellent job of pushing back politely but firmly.)
Thanks Vorpal, Yeah, I'm doing my best to fight the good fight, but without being overly obnoxious or "fanboy" like. They seem to just want to argue about Build X Beats build Y every time. Which in itself is an invalid arguement as X-wing is mostly about player skill and predicting your opponent, a little bit of dice luck and then your list - at least in my opinion. Sure there are some "bad" match ups for your list, but that list that "counters" yours also has bad match ups.
Also the Thread seems to of calmed down and the OP has sort of "admitted" that what he is after is a Wargame, and X-wing is not a Wargame it's more of a tactical skirmish.
Edited by KovuTalliIndeed. One thing that X-wing really has going for it compared to a lot of games is the combination of restricted manouvre and restricted fire arcs. That pops up a lot (give or take) in most naval wargames and is one reason that you can often see levels of player skill more noticably than in a 'free-fire' skirmish like 40k, where anything can fire on anything else.
The part poker, part chess element of manouvre dials really makes the game feel challenging, no matter how good a list you might have found on the internet - and there's something very satisfying when you feel a win is mostly down to your flying.
I played 40k for 20 years from 2nd ed up to sixth and it's never really required skill the way x-wing does, you need to make a decent list but once you have that it's largely about who can roll the most dice.
Most games of sixth it was over after the first turn because whoever went first would just deal so much damage the other guy never gets to recover and just keeps removing models.
X-wing very rarely sees a first turn where the games decided and even when your on the ropes if you fly well there's a chance.
Edited by Grave13I played 40k for 20 years from 2nd ed up to sixth and it's never really required skill the way x-wing does, you need to make a decent list but once you have that it's largely about who can roll the most dice.
Most games of sixth it was over after the first turn because whoever went first would just deal so much damage the other guy never gets to recover and just keeps removing models.
X-wing very rarely sees a first turn where the games decided and even when your on the ropes if you fly well there's a chance.
The above: which is why I've been saying 40K needs a true overhaul to get it away from igoyougo and stupid combinations...
The above: which is why I've been saying 40K needs a true overhaul to get it away from igoyougo and stupid combinations...
Problem is it's a skirmish game not a system designed for large battles, where 30 guys didn't have the weight of fire to decide a game in a turn 70-100 do.
The game works for kill team really well just not for the bloated corpse 40K has become.