This four ship Rebel build can compete if you practice with it. It has beaten Fat Hans and the Deci/Echo builds before. It's one of my favorites. It's just so simple... give PS12 to whoever needs it; Wedge swarms PS 9 to someone else in good position. Or if you need that Ion Cannon Turret to fire off first to catch a Phantom, Roark can give Wedge PS12 and he swarms it right back to Roark.

Roark w/Ion Cannon Turret

Wedge w/Swarm Tactics

Blue Squadron Pilot w/FCS

Rookie Pilot

I'll also add that you shouldn't worry about being seen as "conforming". If you like to use turreted ships or phantoms, just go ahead with it.

Own it, baby. I love my Decimator, and I'm not afraid to shout it to the sky! Chi-Boi for the win!

The problem with the meta in general is that it mostly comes from people copying winning list to win. In a mediocre players hands, a fat turret or phantom can swing the shift to winning more than losing. In a good/great players hands, it is a force of nature that without dice help is nigh impossible to stop. Too many people get beat with a meta list and then change to said meta list, like a snowball rolling downhill.

So to answer your question OP, the best list you can take is the one that you can fly the best. In my personal experience, truly great players are few and far between and being aces with your own list will always trump ok with a champion's list. As most of the posts in this thread have shown, any decent squad flown competently has a chance to win. And it is always helpful to remember that lists do not win games. They are part of the equation, but flying well and mitigating dice is what wins games.

Find a list that you have lots of experience and fun flying. Then sit down and think of what you're supposed to do (asteroids, initial deployment and first 2 rounds of play) with what you have when you face popular elements of your local meta: Han, Whisper, Echo, decimator, Outrirder, etc.

For example, if I use Soontir with push the limit, I know that if I place him in front of the enemy, but offset and my enemy does a 3 or 4 forward, I can do a 5 forward, curved boost and barrel roll to get a shot on the first round while being outside of his firing arc. If he creeps forward, I can just barrel roll and stay out of range.

If you do this, you will not only have fun, but win more often and make your own "meta" instead of simply going along with it

Play what you enjoy.

I will grant that if you net list something powerful just for the sake of power, you might be slightly more likely to win. Which means 6+ hours of playing something you don't really enjoy for the possibility of a win you will enjoy.

Or play something you like. Which means 6+ hours of enjoyment followed by the slightly reduced possibility of winning anyway.

Do the math. Would you rather enjoy the whole day regardless, with a possibility of capping it off with a win, or would you rather crap on your whole day for the slightly increased chance of winning? Full Day Enjoyment > Full Day Bored in my book every single time, winning is just gravy.

I always play my own lists, because I can't stomach the idea of a full day of being half-engaged. I play X-Wing because I really enjoy playing the game itself, if I just wanted to "win something" I would start challenging 10 year olds at a local Pokemon tournament. Of course, I very well might lose there anyway.... :-)

In every competitive game people will copy winning lists/decks/whatever. I play a Fat Han and have tried building it every way possible. It's annoying that I might get scoffs, but I'm not playing the game to get high fives for playing an original squad.

I will try squads that have done well or modify them and anyone who has spent any time with one of the many squad building sites or apps has probably built almost every squad combination. I don't see any shame in copying something as long as you are owning it and enjoying it.

If you just copy the last squad that did well and you lose with it every time, then yes that sucks, but it's your choice or that guys choice. I know I have weighed pros and cons and play tested a ton to come to my ideal current Fat Han which is in fact the same as Heaver's. I now have a more ideal wingmate than 3 Talas, because the meta changed. Players scoff at the Han, but not because it's a copied net build, but rather because it's a scary ship that they don't want to face. If you have fun trying to beat the scary ships then go for it. I have fun determining what the squad with the least weaknesses is and that is how I have fun.

We've got store championships coming up. It's time to build a list.

I'm not concerned with winning the tournament so much as I am placing high enough to get some of the goodies (the dice bag particularly), and getting within the top 32 for the fel card. So I need to build a list not just for fun, but is reasonable enough to compete in the meta.

Thing is, I wonder if this means I must fly some combination of fat-han / Decimator-Phantom / Phantom spam simply to be competitive. I'm not flying TIE swarms anymore, and I have the feeling if I take a B-Wing Z-swarm idea I cooked up last week I'm going to be eaten for breakfast either by the phantoms or the Decimator shooting stress and vader crits. Or something.

I suppose I could fly Alex D's 6 A-Wing list, but given my dice luck I could only trust my green dice to flat-line through the entire tournament.

So... how mandatory is it for competitive play to fly a Decimator-Phantom-FatHan? One of our local tournaments around here apparently finished out with a Decimator/Whisper mirror match, which goes to show that yes to place high you need to fly with these things. Is this true?

All bombers with flechette,mines,assault and clusters...

The annoying thing about the stale Wave meta is that they skew in completely different directions.

Control can shut down phantoms hard by denying re-cloaks or de-cloaks, but they don't work as well against big ships (flechettes don't do diddly, need double the ion)

Big ships can be slaughtered by more stats per points ala 3 blue squadrons to someone's fat han, but the phantom's four dice or Corran's double tap chews through them right quick.

Obviously, you're going to ideally want a list that can handle both.

Swarms still kick all sorts of ass by bringing the damage required and their own form of "control" by blocking, they just have a crazy high skill requirement.

Stress Wes is expensive, but he still has a 3 red die damage output (as opposed to ion ships doing a max of 1) and inordinately punishes lists that rely on two attacking ships by sharply cutting down their damage output with his ability to remove target-locks and focus.

Ion HWKs (Roark or Jan) have been getting some traction, locally. The Ions are pretty spectacular and messing with phantoms (esp V.I Jan) or mini-swarms, and they give increased damage through their abilities (Jan does it straight up, Roark does it by letting low PS get off shots before they receive a blow that would otherwise kill them first).

B-wings and Tie Defenders have a native 3 die offense and the ability to take ion cannons for control.

these are just some non-meta idea that can survive in the current repetitive and cancerous environment