Negative, although rumor has it that it may be out and enforced for the Regionals season. There has been no open beta yet.

Maybe later in the regionals season, but I have a hard time imagining a scenario where it would be out and used starting next weekend.

The meta is a mess in my area and people have a hard time settling on any one list for the regionals. Out of roughly 20 + regular players, I know of only 2 (myself included) who have settled on their list and have been actively practicing and winning with them. Since wave 6 and the decloak rule change, there is no clear cut winning lists, but rather a lot of lists that can be good, but require forethought and practice to truly master. That last part is where a lot of players have had difficulty with.

The meta is a mess in my area and people have a hard time settling on any one list for the regionals. Out of roughly 20 + regular players, I know of only 2 (myself included) who have settled on their list and have been actively practicing and winning with them. Since wave 6 and the decloak rule change, there is no clear cut winning lists, but rather a lot of lists that can be good, but require forethought and practice to truly master. That last part is where a lot of players have had difficulty with.

This is exactly right...

My favorite squad that I had tons of hours of practice with and that I just loved playing died on April 15. I am frantically scrambling for a replacement for our local Regional in a couple weeks. Whatever I choose I am not going to have had much practice with...

The meta is a mess in my area and people have a hard time settling on any one list for the regionals. Out of roughly 20 + regular players, I know of only 2 (myself included) who have settled on their list and have been actively practicing and winning with them. Since wave 6 and the decloak rule change, there is no clear cut winning lists, but rather a lot of lists that can be good, but require forethought and practice to truly master. That last part is where a lot of players have had difficulty with.

Things being a bit of a mess is not unexpected so soon after a major FAQ update and a new influx of ships and upgrades; that's one reason I think that we're seeing a lot of Wave 5 stuff around for Rebels and Imperials. I'm confident that more than one player is thinking: "This was good a few months ago and now that Phantom got nerfed a little, it's probably still good." As fun as Scum is to play, it hasn't seemingly brought anything earthshaking into the established thinking of what is and isn't competitive. There are definitely some super-creative lists out there that have made a name for themselves - like the 5x Thugs with Autoblaster Turrets - but nothing truly "proven" yet.

Probably the closest thing you could put on that list that we didn't have before Scum is Brobots, which MJ indicates the podcast team lumped into a Tier 1.5 category (which I take to mean "right on the cusp of being good just as soon as someone proves it is by beating a large field of solid players with it"). Ultimately, though, Brobots is merely a different take on the 2-ship meta that launched a thousand store championship wins with Dash/Corran and Chiraneau/Whisper.

Adapt or die.

My prediction is that Double-Droid Han with various support will make a comeback once stakes get higher.

Brobots are really hard on Han though. I don't think he'll be able to make it through the elims if he sees them.

Oddly, no one is flying 4BZ (in any variation) in Southern New England.

The rest of MJs list is spot on for our meta though.

Same here in Oklahoma. I've never seen it played : /

Come on down to North Texas; we've got a couple players who run that fairly frequently.

RAC + Fel may not be much better than RAC + Whisper, but at the moment it is more prevalent. I personally think that the Phantom players have run away from Whisper for now, but the pendulum will swing back the other way somewhat once they realize that it is still a solid ship as long as it wins the PS war.

Strictly, speaking of the head to head of these two builds. I'm on the side of Soontir Fel over Whisper. Soontir was always a better ship at ps 9 then Whisper, but suffered under the turret heavy meta. Autothrusters have let the beats loose. When building the Admiral + Fel combo you have to build to give away that Initiative. If Whisper is moving before Fel and Admiral has a rebel captive it's a long hill to climb for the poor little Phantom (even before the rule change). I've done this match up more then a dozen times and have never lost Fel and maybe lost Admiral 4 times. It's as close to an auto win I've ever seen in X-Wing.

I'm a big admirer of the data. If I weren't neck deep in grading and trying to get a publication out, as well as sundry other projects, there'd be a ton of notions that I'd want to explore with it. Some of the questions I'd have would be:

- Is the meta narrower and/or broader (ie. more likely to copy-cat the Tier 1-2 lists) in certain geographical areas more than in others?

- Aside from breadth (the notion above), are there other structures in the meta that show up in certain locales and not in others?

- If the answer to the above questions is "no", how much does local meta really matter, or do we have a truly global meta?

- How quickly does it coalesce around a dominant paradigm after an exogenous shock (the release of new ships)?

- What's more likely to predict a win at any given tournament, the build or the name of the participant (in comparison to previous tournaments within that participant's range?

- when certain participants from certain locales cross into other locales, do they fare markedly better or worse than they do at home? (Compared to other top players?)

Decimator + Brath FTW

We have a soontir player at my store. Phantoms worried me under the old rules but were defeatable, Soontir Fel with autothrusters consistantly, but slowly, defeats everything I throw at it if untimed. In timed matches I can eek out wins against it. But man with a 2 ship or 3 or 4 ship Rebel build its a climb. So here I think Fel has a solid place in the meta, the rest of it was tossed in a blender with autothrusters and the last faq though.

On a personal note, I seem to have a particular revulsion towards playing top-tier lists, or anything that I didn't come up with. It's clear (to me) that my own builds are not particularly winning, and those who score better at the tournaments that I attend do not seem to have a hangup about using a squad they read online.

Should I just get over myself?

We have a soontir player at my store. Phantoms worried me under the old rules but were defeatable, Soontir Fel with autothrusters consistantly, but slowly, defeats everything I throw at it if untimed. In timed matches I can eek out wins against it. But man with a 2 ship or 3 or 4 ship Rebel build its a climb. So here I think Fel has a solid place in the meta, the rest of it was tossed in a blender with autothrusters and the last faq though.

At the same time, Soontir and his other squint buddies are not particularly forgiving of mistakes. As such, a squint player needs to have a pretty good idea of what you're going to do to make their plans work.

I've had a much harder time playing Soontir than I ever did when I was playing loaded TIE Bombers.

Don't know. The Phantom change throws things into flux. We don't exactly have tournaments of the post Decloak change yet.

Is it just me who is happy that a lot of people are having to think and choose their own list instead of just grabbing what they hear is strong on the net.....

Are the named X-Wing 3-4 ship builds no longer making an appearance?

They used to be okay. Ish.

X-wing has no way to reposition so it was not doing well against phantoms but they'll probably make a comeback now scums out.

I won't miss the turret heavy meta made watching matches from last year pretty dull.

On a personal note, I seem to have a particular revulsion towards playing top-tier lists, or anything that I didn't come up with. It's clear (to me) that my own builds are not particularly winning, and those who score better at the tournaments that I attend do not seem to have a hangup about using a squad they read online.

Should I just get over myself?

I'm a big admirer of the data. If I weren't neck deep in grading and trying to get a publication out, as well as sundry other projects, there'd be a ton of notions that I'd want to explore with it.

I like your analysis of the need for closer scrutiny of the data. What's your field?

On a personal note, I seem to have a particular revulsion towards playing top-tier lists, or anything that I didn't come up with. It's clear (to me) that my own builds are not particularly winning, and those who score better at the tournaments that I attend do not seem to have a hangup about using a squad they read online.

Should I just get over myself?

Even if you lift a list card-for-card off the net it isn't going to hand you a regional win. There's nothing wrong with it.

Even if you lift a list card-for-card off the net it isn't going to hand you a regional win. There's nothing wrong with it.

I don't think there is anything wrong with it, and I begrudge no one who goes that route. It's not easy to win a major event, no matter the list, and there's something to be said for running a list that has a target on its back.

It's just something I have zero desire to do, mostly for stupid egotistical reasons.

Even if you lift a list card-for-card off the net it isn't going to hand you a regional win. There's nothing wrong with it.

Often referred to as net-decking in other games, copying a deck, squad or army from winners. This seems to be less of a problem in X-Wing then other competitive games. This is where "fly casual" has really succeeded. You will find builds that hold similar ships and pilots but rarely the exact same squad. Most players will add upgrade cards to thier preferences, salt to flavor if you will. A good example of this is the duel IG-88 builds. I can think of many different versions of just this one ship.

Even if you lift a list card-for-card off the net it isn't going to hand you a regional win. There's nothing wrong with it.

Not individually. By your second or third mirror match you may be wishing you built to counter the meta rather than duplicate it.

What you should do is take a list you find fun, you have zero clue going in what the meta is so fudge it just take your favourite ship and do your best.

Even if you lift a list card-for-card off the net it isn't going to hand you a regional win. There's nothing wrong with it.

Not individually. By your second or third mirror match you may be wishing you built to counter the meta rather than duplicate it.

Not to mention that if I am losing mirror matches there's really only one guy to blame!