Well, I've done so, but at this point, I just can't even listen any more. I just get frustrated with it. I think it was the discussion of Porkins that was disappointing. If you use him with R5-D8, he only has an 11% chance of taking damage. Even then, you can use another action to remove it. Give him Expert Handling, or Stay On Target and you see a pretty maneuverable X-wing. He's not that many points, but he falls short of PS9, which seems to be a threshold for you to actually ever consider using.

I think that you are primarily geared towards top table, highly competitive play and there are some things that are just not economical enough to ever be used. That's a shame as I think there is a lot more to X-wing than top tier tournament play.

Don't mean to diss you guys or anything. I like the show, but just disagree with the assessment of the various ships.

Pretty sure the show advertises as being mostly about the competitive game.

Which is limiting the whole thing... as it stands now.

Some people like talking about x wing in those competitive limits

Count me in that group... I love knowing the why of it all. But imagine how much more fun it would be if the show also went into: "Now we are going to talk about fun story-driven battle stuff that makes your games more interesting."

You know how the ships work, but now take this challenge in this scenario because it is cool...

In today's story: a Hawk and three Z's are being chased by ten Tie Fighters...

I assume if a podcast like that was viable we'll get one eventually. Wouldn't appeal to a lot of us though.

I assume if a podcast like that was viable we'll get one eventually. Wouldn't appeal to a lot of us though.

Nothing but clean air, water, and food appeals to everyone...

But most will agree that verity is the spice of everything, I think.

I agree verity is the spice of life. I doubt most would agree.

Assume you meant variety.

Man I want a bumper sticker that says that now.

I agree verity is the spice of life. I doubt most would agree.

Assume you meant variety.

Man I want a bumper sticker that says that now.

Clones...

Well, I've done so, but at this point, I just can't even listen any more. I just get frustrated with it. I think it was the discussion of Porkins that was disappointing. If you use him with R5-D8, he only has an 11% chance of taking damage. Even then, you can use another action to remove it. Give him Expert Handling, or Stay On Target and you see a pretty maneuverable X-wing. He's not that many points, but he falls short of PS9, which seems to be a threshold for you to actually ever consider using.

I think that you are primarily geared towards top table, highly competitive play and there are some things that are just not economical enough to ever be used. That's a shame as I think there is a lot more to X-wing than top tier tournament play.

Don't mean to diss you guys or anything. I like the show, but just disagree with the assessment of the various ships.

Pretty sure the show advertises as being mostly about the competitive game.

Which is limiting the whole thing... as it stands now.

Some people like talking about x wing in those competitive limits

Count me in that group... I love knowing the why of it all. But imagine how much more fun it would be if the show also went into: "Now we are going to talk about fun story-driven battle stuff that makes your games more interesting."

You know how the ships work, but now take this challenge in this scenario because it is cool...

In today's story: a Hawk and three Z's are being chased by ten Tie Fighters...

I would like to address the issue of the show's competitive feel...

While we all play this game for fun and I truly believe in and practice Doug Kinney's Fly Casual mentality to the game, the show in it's present form is geared more toward the competitive and tournament level play of the game of X-Wing. We pride ourselves in our in our evaluations of the ships, upgrades, meta and math in the game at the competitive level. Which is why we have had big tournament winners on the show like Paul Heaver, Doug Kinney, and Nationals and Regional champions, and why we evaluate every ship and upgrade in the game with such a competitively centered eye. Why 'meta' seems to be my favorite word on the show (poking fun at myself here). But I do not think we have ever misrepresented ourselves in any way. In the intro to the show itself we call ourselves '...your home for tactical and competitive discussion on the X-Wing miniatures game...' It also state this in my signature here in the forums. I believe we have been that kind of show from the very beginning.

I find nothing wrong at all with playing this game at the casual level and strongly encourage it. Its a great game and a lot of fun can be had with suboptimal ships and upgrades. I play plenty of games that are non-competitive and just for fun and it is greatly enjoyable to hang out with your friends, roll dice and share some laughs. I love reading about themed lists or lists that match the EU fluff for Black Squadron or Rouge Squadron or whatever, I am a Star Wars nerd after all! I know that we have stated several times on the show something to the effect of, 'I would play this in a causal game, its fun, but at the competitive level...' I can understand how you feel, and respect your thoughts and ideas, even those that differ from my own.

My point being, way back in Episode 0 I believe we set our level of expectations for ourselves and the show. That we would be your home for competitive and tactical discussion on the X-Wing Miniatures game. That we would promote this great game and support it and the community. And I believe that we have done a fine job thus far at this, almost a year later. We wanted to be the 'Tactics' show out there, we wanted to fill that niche for the competitive players out there, we wanted to cater to the competitively minded players, because that's who we are mostly.

A great man once said, you can please all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time, but you'll never please all of the people all of the time. It would be impossible for me to say that we were capable of pleasing every X-Wing fan out there, it is just not realistic. I get that our show is not geared toward the casual player, and I am ok with that. I am sure someone else out there can do a much better job at the casual side of this great game then we can. And being an X-Wing and podcast fan, I'll probably listen to them too!

In closing, I have to say that as our one year anniversary quickly approaches, I am proud of our work thus far and I am truly excited for what is yet to come, with another Regionals season upon us and Nationals and Worlds just around the corner. It has taken a lot of hard work to get us where we are and I wouldn't change any of it. We greatly appreciate all of our fans and hope that even the casual players can find something on the show to latch on to. We will continue to bring you our brand of competitive X-Wing discussion for years to come. Well, as long as my wife lets me that is.

One of the main reason's I like your show so much is because of the competitive discussion. Your show really looks at the in's and out's of the tournament scene and meta. I think the majority of us feel that way, but as you know in the world you can't please everyone and you shouldn't bother trying too. Focus on what you know and keep doing it. You guys do a great job!

Eagletsi

Love the fact that you guys brought up the 20 mission for pilots in a Tie before getting an Defender. I have been barking about this for a while now.

I think all Defenders should have EPT's. It just makes sense.

Also I think we may see a title which does that and adds a system slot too.

Title: Enhanced Systems

Defender Only

1 pt for an EPT and System Slot

Plus I'm hoping for a Tractor Beam System Card, for Defender Only

I like the show. Its free and I get a ton of ideas for lists. Keep up the good work.

I like the competitive discussion, as do a lot of people, but I do think it leans a little too heavily on MajorJuggler's jousting math and less on a ships other capabilities. I would be pretty interested to see more discussion on these abilities other than "Fel/Whisper can go anywhere, and are awesome, so is Dash but he has a doughnut hole". Talk about obstruction placement and opening moves to maximize certain ships or counter others. Talk about different common squad archetypes and how they play differently based on opponents. In my limited experience, once a decent list is in place, winning is more about strategy and execution than tweaking the exact right upgrades on stuff. I think there's also an interesting podcast to considered where you talk about sub-optimal ships and talk about what advantages they have against the meta powerhouses (because there's always some, even if the disadvantages outweigh them), and how you'd use it in a game if you wanted to use a mathematically sub-optimal ship in a competitive setting, whether just for fun, or to fill a certain weakness in your squad for a certain number of points, or for the surprise advantage of people not knowing how to fly against it. I mean, at a certain level, there's only so many times you can talk about the mainstays.

I know, easy for me to say.

I know we addressed rock placement way back in the first few episodes and as we progress with the show now that debris is legal we will revisit that and the common archetype builds again. We will have a Regionals preview show right after Wave 5 and that would be a perfect time to discuss these matters.

Thanks for the idea, we will most certainly hit on this points in the future!

I know we addressed rock placement way back in the first few episodes and as we progress with the show now that debris is legal we will revisit that and the common archetype builds again. We will have a Regionals preview show right after Wave 5 and that would be a perfect time to discuss these matters.

Thanks for the idea, we will most certainly hit on this points in the future!

I like this idea too, I was thinking about this the other day. If you play a squad a lot competitively then you want to have some opening moves and rock placement to feed into that.

MY concern is how this will translate into an audio only format. I was thinking of taking some shots in vassal and including a zip file with them in there for the fans to look at while we talk. We can do our best to describe the scene, but in the end the visual will be best for this.

MY concern is how this will translate into an audio only format. I was thinking of taking some shots in vassal and including a zip file with them in there for the fans to look at while we talk. We can do our best to describe the scene, but in the end the visual will be best for this.

Yeah, I thought of that after I posted. A lot of really important concepts in this game are much easier to discuss with visuals. I suppose even something as simple as clustered vs open, your side vs opponent's side, strong side (where most of your points are) vs weak side vs symmetric could be pretty useful.

I think the defender buff card Alex Davy was thinking about was proton rockets.

I think the defender buff card Alex Davy was thinking about was proton rockets.

Wasn't that already announced though? Those were spoiled in the Rebel Aces pack.

Prockets are a waste of 3 points on a Defender. 1 extra die one time at range 1 for 3 points? No Thanks.

I'd rather run IPMs and be able to lock down a large base ship.

One thing that also kills the generic Defenders is their action economy sucks for the points invested. If you look at other ships around the 30 point range, they have a lot better action economy.

At some point we have to realize not every ship has to be made ready for competitive play, Some ships just need to be fun. We don't need one ships that rules the scene in competitive play and the more ships we get to that status the better. If we try to run every ship up to competitive play we will eventually break something.

With that said, The X-Wing is the only ship I currently see as "needs a fix" since it's the name sack of the game.

At some point we have to realize not every ship has to be made ready for competitive play, Some ships just need to be fun. We don't need one ships that rules the scene in competitive play and the more ships we get to that status the better. If we try to run every ship up to competitive play we will eventually break something.

With that said, The X-Wing is the only ship I currently see as "needs a fix" since it's the name sack of the game.

I think in the ideal world, all ships would be viable for competitive play, and they would be fun! Generally I think the two go hand in hand as well, most people still don't play 4x TIE Advanced for fun. The difficulty is in getting to that "sweet spot" on the first go-around. If you're not careful, then yes something will break the "best ship" barrier and then that will become the new standard instead. Then you are back to square one of having some ships noticeably better than others. But it does not have to be this way. If you can do a good job at getting a tight cluster of well balanced ships (even if they have all very different functions), then all it does is bring more variety to the game.

Imagine if people were bringing generic E-wings, TIE Defenders, TIE Advanced, TIE Bombers, Y-wings with Torpedoes instead of turrets, Outer Rim Smugglers, and actually doing as well with them as with other ships. I think that would be cool. FFG/Alex's approach lately seems to be to try and "patch" the game to level things out, but it will take a long time, and we'll probably never quite get there anyway.

I'd settle for one somewhat-competitive pilot for each ship.

I'd settle for one somewhat-competitive pilot for each ship.

We're probably there now, right?

X-wing has Biggs, Wedge, Luke, Wes

Y-wing has Horton and Kavil

E-wings have Corran Horn

Defenders have Vessery

Maybe we're missing a bomber pilot, but the mess of bombers + Prox Mines has had some success, if I remember correctly.

But the game is called X-Wing! X-Wings should RULE! Why are they the only Wave 1 ship that hasn't seen any love?

I really feel like when the developers started this game they didn't realize what they had. They made some missteps with the point costs for the TIE Advanced (fixed through a title card), the points of the baseline X-Wing, and did not give EPTs to the Y-Wing named pilots (fixed through a droid and a Title card to make them even better, warthogs y'all!). The only one they seem to have gotten right that has been able to stand the test of 6 Waves now is the TIE Fighter. As each expansion has come out to this game, it has pushed the poor X-Wing further and further down the power-scale to the point that, competitively speaking mind you, aside from Biggs it is not seen on the top tables at all. That is a crying shame.

This is why I feel an X-Wing 2.0 is inevitable at this this point, to fix older ships and broken mechanics like ordinance. Though we will not see it for a couple of years. So, in light of that, I can see more 'fix' cards along the way, and the X-Wing is a prime target to get a fix, being the only ship from wave one that no longer has relevance in the modern game. Even HWKs found new life in Scum! Point being, point for point, the X-Wing is probably one of the worst ships in the game to fly competitively today, save for Biggs. And that's just not right!

With all the talk of the super tie defender having tractor beams I looked up the attack wing tractor beam. "Action: Target a ship at range 1 and roll 2 attack dice. For every <hit> result, that ship rolls 1 less defense die against your next attack."

Just thought I would throw that out there.

I feel X-Wings got left behind as the Pilot Skill race moved forward and the preference for maneuverable ships became the norm. X-Wings are fine as long as other ships around them are not moving post the revealed dial. Boost and Barrel Roll are what keep the X-Wing from getting into the fight. It's almost as if the X-Wing has a weight tied around it's feet and can't move. The only option is to toss on an Engine Upgrade but this comes at a steep cost to an already higher then should be cost of the X-Wing.

The quick and dirty fix is to move the X-Wing into the arc dodging category of the game by giving this ship some activation phase movement. A title card solves this very effectively as you can make an adjustment in cost to bring the X-Wing back into the fold. The challenge is, if you do this you will push down another ship ( perhaps the A-Wing ) in favorability for the Rebels. The A-Wing is loosely competitive at this point as the rebels don't have many options for arc dodging and relied on turrets to stay in the fight. This was the balance to the arc dodgers, being able to erase the dancing and just shoot them. Autothrusters was the fix to allow the A-Wing and Interceptor to be "Competitive".

By introducing a counter to turrets you've all but kicked the last leg on the stool the Rebels were standing on. Yes, I know turrets are still good and will remain a major part of the game. The truth is the answer to these large ship turrets was always there in swarms. The Phantom (mostly Whisper) caused the swarm to be less competitive and players had to move on. This lifted the thumb of the large base turrets and allowed them to survive.