At a tournament yesterday

People were discussing if R2D2 is too powerful because Corran kept regening shields. There was also a few players who were thinking of getting out of xwing because of the large turreted ship meta.

Why would someone quit playing a game that they enjoy? If the current Meta is the problem... simply stop playing tournaments and play casual games for the enjoyment, instead. Maybe even just until the Meta changes... which it will.

I missed 8th place by 1 hull on Chiraneau (he had 1 hull left, and the MoV from killing him would have put me ahead of the guy that came in 8th) in a 46 person tourney last week, and won a 14 person SC this week with Corran Tycho and a Prototype. Meta be damned. I've been flying A wings since W2 released them, I didn't particularly think they were overcosted then, and I surely don't think that now.

So, I didn't realize that ion cancels de-cloaks...

a new adventure begins (but because I need to hit 4 agility, I already sense my nememis already waiting on the path ahead)

I've been having fun with this Echo in various builds.. thought she was unpredictable before...

"Echo" — TIE Phantom 30
Push the Limit 3
Advanced Sensors 3
Intelligence Agent 1
Engine Upgrade 4

AdvS and Decloak are simultaneous events. BR, Boost, Decloak then Green. Toss in the occasional times PTL might be safe after Decloaking (which is why IA) and she'll Mind F*** anyone trying to predict her.

It's pricey compared to the standard VI + ACD + FCS. But change of scenery is nice every once in a while.

How was Keyan pulling off six dice? Opportunist plus Jan? Homemade Death Star cannon upgrade?

Range 1, Jan, and Expose would do the trick.

How was Keyan pulling off six dice? Opportunist plus Jan? Homemade Death Star cannon upgrade?

The list was:

Keyan Farlander + HLC + Opportunist + Fire Control System

Jan Ors + Swarm Tactics + Ion Cannon Turret

Biggs + R4D6

Range 1: Base 3 + 1 for range + Opportunist + Jan Ors for 6

Range 2-3: HLC 4 + Opportunist + Jan Orcs for 6

Between Farlanders pilot ability and the FCS he quite often gets 4-6 hits on follow up attacks and quite often 3-5 on first attacks.

I will honestly say this is the most effective big ship / phantom killer list I've seen in play. PS may not be the best, but Farlanders brute force will crack a cloaked phantom fairly quick and if Biggs survives a few turns the other guy is in serious trouble since that usually means farlander is still full health.

It is definitely worth going against the meta, especially if they are ships you really enjoy flying. I had 3 wins and 1 loss at a store championship last Saturday and ended up placing 5th with:

Soontir, PTL, Stealth, Hull, RGT

Turr, VI, Stealth

Carnor, PTL, Stealth Hull, RGT

I love interceptors, so it was a blast and quite a challenge. The room was crawling with decimators, falcons and YT-2400's. So there was plenty of turret risk and hull points to eat through. The champion had Tycho, Corran and another a-wing - so quite impressive flying there too!

I played in the same tourney as theDestroyer00 and took Rex VI+HLC, Shuttle with Vader and Fleet Officer, and 2 academies. Went 3/2, lost to 1st and 4th place.

Really liked Fleet Officer and Rex pairing, but didn't use Vader that much. I think the meta is a bit turret heavy but I still enjoyed myself.

It's nice to know that my local players at least are not interested in flying things that are perceived "overpowered" in "the meta". That's four of us that are avoiding running Phantoms, Decimators, and overpowered Falcons. The more interesting matches are those without them, we feel.

Thing is we're going to have the store championships next week, bringing in players from outside of our local group who may not feel the same way. So, while us locals are casual enough that we don't use these ships, we are still preparing for their appearance when the "guests" bring them. Nrgf.

Came 15/22 at the local Store Championships on Saturday.

Ran 3 Deltas with Ion Cannons. Won 2 and Lost 3.

Off the top of my head I won against a Dash/2 Tala/2 Bandit and a Decimator/Lambda/2xAP.

Lost to Deci/Phantom (Phantom ripped me apart whilst I focusing on the Deci), Fat Han/4xTala (Time ran out with the Falcon and 1 Defender on the table) and AABX (Lasted 30 minutes. Flew terribly. At least it was my brother!).

Quite the mixed bag! I'd had enough of 'the meta', so I decided to to run with a ship I liked. I'd never used my 3 Defenders together so thought I'd give it a punt. I haven't got much experience with Ion so it turned out a bit useless. I always chose to do the damage instead. Didn't really play to the weapons strengths there. But I flew OK and made judicious use of the 4K.

Han loaded up to the gills with C3P0 proved to me why I hate them. Ah well. I'm looking forward to some Autothruster action. Shame I can't get EPTs on the lower Defenders. Love that ship.

The guy who won (with Deci/Phantom I believe) has been playing for a grand total of 1 week.

I've not gotten to an event since mid December. I've been working on a list purely to beat the meta. It's great vs. large ships, but just OK vs. others. I haven't had the pleasure to attend any of the events lately. I was going to go to one two weekends ago, but family issues prevented me. Too bad as it was 5/8 large ships.

There is a big event on the 21st that I am ready for. The last one had 20+ people, which is good for us here in Charlotte, NC. I'm hoping S&V doesn't come out until after that so I can face the most BTS (Big Turreted Ship). There was an event in Asheville, NC that had 25 or so and they had non-meta lists winning. I'm not sure what I will face on the 21st. I will say that if I go and win every game vs. BTS and lose every game against non-BTS, I'll be happy.

I'm using My Name is Jonus (4 Tie Bombers w/ ordnance and bombs).

Came 15/22 at the local Store Championships on Saturday.

Ran 3 Deltas with Ion Cannons. Won 2 and Lost 3.

Off the top of my head I won against a Dash/2 Tala/2 Bandit and a Decimator/Lambda/2xAP.

Lost to Deci/Phantom (Phantom ripped me apart whilst I focusing on the Deci), Fat Han/4xTala (Time ran out with the Falcon and 1 Defender on the table) and AABX (Lasted 30 minutes. Flew terribly. At least it was my brother!).

Quite the mixed bag! I'd had enough of 'the meta', so I decided to to run with a ship I liked. I'd never used my 3 Defenders together so thought I'd give it a punt. I haven't got much experience with Ion so it turned out a bit useless. I always chose to do the damage instead. Didn't really play to the weapons strengths there. But I flew OK and made judicious use of the 4K.

Han loaded up to the gills with C3P0 proved to me why I hate them. Ah well. I'm looking forward to some Autothruster action. Shame I can't get EPTs on the lower Defenders. Love that ship.

The guy who won (with Deci/Phantom I believe) has been playing for a grand total of 1 week.

I've always been curious to see how that list would do. I wonder if it's worth it to try to ion one of the big ships off of the board or at least onto asteroids. It's a list I've been considering using for the next store tournament. I've practiced with it a bit.

To me, flying a two ship build with a fat turret ship should be riskier than it actually is, but, ironically, it's the most consistent thing to fly in the current meta. With Phantom/Decimator, only the Phantom requires more than an ounce of thought. I used it to stress-test a friend's Jan/Keyan/Biggs build last night and it felt so dirty to boost just outside of Keyan's firing arc with the Decimator and have an out-of-arc range one shot. I'm pretty confident between two equally skilled players, it's easier just to take the fat turret ship. It's more work on your opponent to make sure he has a shot every turn while yours is guaranteed. It's absolutely crazy how far a large base ship will move with a 3-bank or 4-forward + engine upgrade, making it very feasible to arc dodge, despite being a much larger target. Regardless of whether or not it's appropriately costed, it's boring to play and play against.

I'm having some pretty good success with a three ship imperial build:

Soontir Fel -

Push the Limit

Hull Upgrade

Carnor Jax -

Push the Limit

Hull Upgrade

Echo -

Advanced Cloaking Device

Veteran Instincts

In the current meta this list seems like it might get blow out of the sky but so far I haven't had as much trouble with turrets as I would have expected. This is mainly because Jax is such a huge help and no one remembers just how great his ability really is. Fat Han is still a pain but he isn't quite as invulnerable when he can't spend a single Evade Token. Also, stealth devices are nice and all but Hull Upgrade has kept my Squints fighting way more often.

Came 15/22 at the local Store Championships on Saturday.

Ran 3 Deltas with Ion Cannons. Won 2 and Lost 3.

Off the top of my head I won against a Dash/2 Tala/2 Bandit and a Decimator/Lambda/2xAP.

Lost to Deci/Phantom (Phantom ripped me apart whilst I focusing on the Deci), Fat Han/4xTala (Time ran out with the Falcon and 1 Defender on the table) and AABX (Lasted 30 minutes. Flew terribly. At least it was my brother!).

Quite the mixed bag! I'd had enough of 'the meta', so I decided to to run with a ship I liked. I'd never used my 3 Defenders together so thought I'd give it a punt. I haven't got much experience with Ion so it turned out a bit useless. I always chose to do the damage instead. Didn't really play to the weapons strengths there. But I flew OK and made judicious use of the 4K.

Han loaded up to the gills with C3P0 proved to me why I hate them. Ah well. I'm looking forward to some Autothruster action. Shame I can't get EPTs on the lower Defenders. Love that ship.

The guy who won (with Deci/Phantom I believe) has been playing for a grand total of 1 week.

I've always been curious to see how that list would do. I wonder if it's worth it to try to ion one of the big ships off of the board or at least onto asteroids. It's a list I've been considering using for the next store tournament. I've practiced with it a bit.

To me, flying a two ship build with a fat turret ship should be riskier than it actually is, but, ironically, it's the most consistent thing to fly in the current meta. With Phantom/Decimator, only the Phantom requires more than an ounce of thought. I used it to stress-test a friend's Jan/Keyan/Biggs build last night and it felt so dirty to boost just outside of Keyan's firing arc with the Decimator and have an out-of-arc range one shot. I'm pretty confident between two equally skilled players, it's easier just to take the fat turret ship. It's more work on your opponent to make sure he has a shot every turn while yours is guaranteed. It's absolutely crazy how far a large base ship will move with a 3-bank or 4-forward + engine upgrade, making it very feasible to arc dodge, despite being a much larger target. Regardless of whether or not it's appropriately costed, it's boring to play and play against.

I'm very anti-turret and Phantom at the moment. Not because I lost badly to one but because it's so boring! So many people just rock up with turret+something.

There were a few guys who like me turned up with builds they thought were interesting or cool and did better than me. I'd just like to see variation and it seemed that in the local meta people are more than happy to use a YT or a Deci and not worry about positioning. It takes away a cool aspect of the game - positional awareness.

OK moan over. S&V will shake it up. Now I just need an EPT slot for Deltas and I'll be a happy chap

Looking back I should have got behind with 2 Deltas and kept the Deci ioned whilst the third provided something for the Phantom to think about. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. I've got a tournament coming up in March so I'll try something else. Defenders and a Firespray perhaps.

I'm having some pretty good success with a three ship imperial build:

Soontir Fel -

Push the Limit

Hull Upgrade

Carnor Jax -

Push the Limit

Hull Upgrade

Echo -

Advanced Cloaking Device

Veteran Instincts

In the current meta this list seems like it might get blow out of the sky but so far I haven't had as much trouble with turrets as I would have expected. This is mainly because Jax is such a huge help and no one remembers just how great his ability really is. Fat Han is still a pain but he isn't quite as invulnerable when he can't spend a single Evade Token. Also, stealth devices are nice and all but Hull Upgrade has kept my Squints fighting way more often.

Jax is such a pain! It's easy to caught up in the Fel love (the baron is awesome). But not being able to defend decently completely cripples things.

At the store champ I was at, I played 4 X's, and did ok. Not as well as I'd like to of, but most of it was mistakes I made flying or really good play by the other guy and not my list.

There were a lot of YT's and VT's there, out of 14 people 6 had a YT or VT. But there were few fat hans or super dashes, and only one phantom.

Only 6 out of 14 is not bad at all! That's not even half! The last event my store had was 5/8 having a BTG (big turreted ship).

I always use two X-Wings and an E-Wing. E-Wing is always Corran and X is always Wedge with the other being swapped around. When I reduce my wins/losses with that list I get 3/2

Well, I have been playing 4 xwings lately.

Cool, even though I'm an Imperial player, there's just something nice about 4X builds. It feels like X-Wing the way it's supposed to be.

Regarding the match against the Whisper list, how did you prevent Whisper from arc dodging you? Just playing slow, and then hitting the afterburners (4 or 4k) once Whisper got too close?

Well, you have 4 arcs, and that covers a lot of territory. I sort of fly them like a pawn wall, staggered in pairs of 2, with the rookie in front and garvin or tarn off to one side and behind them by 2-4 bases. I set up in the middle of the map, I had to set up first and that gives the most flexibility plus it's in the middle of the rocks, which cramps the phantom's style somewhat. So I made a desicion to go after the phantom, and broght 2 staggered columns in. one at more or less 30 degrees and the other 2 xwings at 90 degrees, but i brought them in slow, like a dragnet, moving one or two foward most turns. Once we got within range 1-2, i would have at least 1 ship, if not 1 ship from each pair K-turn. Someone is going to have a shot, usually at least 2 Xwings are. And if one of them happens to be the rookie, then the phantom gets stressed. now he was in the rocks and stressed, and sort of in a furball with 2 xwings. his other ships were trying to hammer me with moderate success, but they were further away (het set up the phantom as a flanker, with the rest of his force as the other half of a pincer,) but my desicion to go for the phantom threw his plan off a bit i think, and that allowed me 2 turns to moslty gang up on the phantom, and 2 turns was all it took.

time will tell if the list fares well in other scenarios with a phantom, but I have found that that "dragnet" style seems to do well for me so far, but i can still bring them all together to hit something heavy. the action passing and free TL help when the Kturns start, so garvin can pass a focus to his rookie who is almost passing him going the other way.

I certainly don't think it's invincible, I've just been surprised by how well it has done

I fly 7 z's and a refit a wing for 99 points and hope I don't face double phantom. If I face a single phantom I kill the thing that's not the phantom and try to win on time.

*shrugs* Dumb meta in my area is like 60% fat turret, 30% phantom, 10% non-swarm other. Since 60% of people are flying rock, I blow them away with paper.

So, I didn't realize that ion cancels de-cloaks...

a new adventure begins (but because I need to hit 4 agility, I already sense my nememis already waiting on the path ahead)

Against a Phantom with a focus or evade token, a shot with an Ion Cannon Turret and either a focus token or an evade token divides its possible results as follows: 27% of the time you hit regardless of your opponent's action, 33% of the time you miss but force your opponent to spend a token, and 40% of the time you miss regardless of your opponent's action.

One viable option is to push your ICT to PS9+, which is easy with Jan Ors since she doesn't have a pressing need to do with her EPT slot anyway, and which is at least possible with Horton Salm (R2-D6 + Veteran Instincts is 2 points). You can also easily modify any ship's PS up to 12 using Roark.

Another approach is to simply double up on the ion cannons, since two focused shots in a round have a 58% chance of resulting in at least one ion token. One of the lists I'm practicing with for store championships does both:

Well, my bomber list and I got our rear ends handed to us yesterday. It was a nice friendly little Store Championship of 13 participants. I won the first match, and then lost the next two matches. All three of my opponents had been trounced before with my bomber list in casual games, so I didn't have the benefit of being underestimated by them.

That's the thing, I think, about non-meta lists. Their benefit is that people are less likely to be able to anticipate what they can do and what their weaknesses are. All my opponents were able to do so. That's a drawback of really getting to know your list in a smaller community of players: they get to learn your list too. The benefit is that you're playing a tournament with friends, and it's an affable affair.

Other news about the tournament is that there wasn't a single TIE Phantom to be had. There were a TON of YT-2400s, though.

For my part, it's been going good against the current meta. My latest list is currently 4-1 and the only defeat I got was against a rebel swarm and because my opponent Zs were secretly piloted by elite snipers. At one point, one of my bombers had 3 hit, all 3 were critical hit and two of those were direct hit, Vessery got one damage pass his shield before dying and you guessed it, it was a direct hit. Soontir got 2 damage by a Z at range 3 and the last one again at range 3 by a Z. When the green dice fails you and your opponent dice are hot, there is not much you can do. Very entertaining game though.