I was speaking with an Italian X-Winger who told me his regionals will only be 50 minutes rounds. Crazy!

Yay, that was me.

I'll tell you about my regional (next sunday in northern Italy) as soon as possible

Instead of preaching "fly better" it should be preached "fly better with a fat turret."

I would say fly more cheap ships.

Instead of preaching "fly better" it should be preached "fly better with a fat turret."

I would say fly more cheap ships.

And lose MOV handily.

MoV isn't what keeps most people out of elimination rounds. I would argue my low MoV got me into elimination rounds more than once.

And hey, if you win every round MOV doesn't matter at all.

And lose MOV handily.

I feel like there is way too much focus on MoV. People have forgotten that MoV is a tiebreaker; a way to rank people with the same number of wins (modified wins notwithstanding). If you have more wins than other players, your MoV is kind of irrelevant.

I used to see the same thing back when playing Decipher's SWCCG; people fixated on their differential (how much they won the game by) and lost sight of the fact that before differential was relevant you had to actually win the game.

I was speaking with an Italian X-Winger who told me his regionals will only be 50 minutes rounds. Crazy!

This is probably a false rumor, as FFG is requiring 75 minute rounds for Regionals this year. If this is actually true, this store will likely lose its ability to host formal FFG events in the future.

I was speaking with an Italian X-Winger who told me his regionals will only be 50 minutes rounds. Crazy!

This is probably a false rumor, as FFG is requiring 75 minute rounds for Regionals this year. If this is actually true, this store will likely lose its ability to host formal FFG events in the future.

Straight from the informer...

I feel like there is way too much focus on MoV. People have forgotten that MoV is a tiebreaker; a way to rank people with the same number of wins (modified wins notwithstanding). If you have more wins than other players, your MoV is kind of irrelevant.

MoV also determines who wins the game outright. You don't score points for a ship until it is entirely dead. If you are flying a Point Fortress it puts your opponent in the position of needing to kill that ship. This limits their tactical options. A smart opponent will then use that against them to get a preferential tactical engagement.

I went to a spring tournament this weekend with 15 players. Only 4 didn't take a big, turreted ship. 1 bro bot (who won), BBBBZ (won 1 game), XXA (new guy - last place), and my Xizor list (fought at top table in last game and lost).

Big Turreted Ships will dominate the tournament meta until you bring out half points for half damage. It's not the turrets that break them. It's the maneuverability and ability to take damage without giving up a single point (unless they die) that makes them powerful in a timed match. It's just an advantage you can't get rid of without offering half points. And for those that say it's complicated, I say just divide one number by 2. It's not rocket science.

MoV also determines who wins the game outright. You don't score points for a ship until it is entirely dead. If you are flying a Point Fortress it puts your opponent in the position of needing to kill that ship. This limits their tactical options. A smart opponent will then use that against them to get a preferential tactical engagement.

Of course. A question, however, since I have only been playing the game competitively about 3 months: how is this different than in the strength of schedule era?

I went to a spring tournament this weekend with 15 players. Only 4 didn't take a big, turreted ship. 1 bro bot (who won), BBBBZ (won 1 game), XXA (new guy - last place), and my Xizor list (fought at top table in last game and lost).

Big Turreted Ships will dominate the tournament meta until you bring out half points for half damage. It's not the turrets that break them. It's the maneuverability and ability to take damage without giving up a single point (unless they die) that makes them powerful in a timed match. It's just an advantage you can't get rid of without offering half points. And for those that say it's complicated, I say just divide one number by 2. It's not rocket science.

There were actually a few more of us who didn't bring the big boys I finished 3rd with 5 Talas and 2 Greens w/refit. My brother brought Rexlar and 5 Academies and I know one other person brought Soontir and 5 Obsidians I think.

Initially I was kind of against the whole "half points" thing because, as someone who has run many tournaments and seen how, shall we say, unorganized some players can be, I was afraid the score keeping process would be too much. Apparently FFG's new app isn't going to help either. However, I'm starting to come around that the MOV issue with "fat" ships probably needs to be addressed. That being said I do still think that player skill can and does trump certain lists however, boosting fat large ships makes that more difficult.

MoV also determines who wins the game outright. You don't score points for a ship until it is entirely dead. If you are flying a Point Fortress it puts your opponent in the position of needing to kill that ship. This limits their tactical options. A smart opponent will then use that against them to get a preferential tactical engagement.

Of course. A question, however, since I have only been playing the game competitively about 3 months: how is this different than in the strength of schedule era?

For outright victory conditions, the only change is that a full win is now only 12 points instead of (I think it was) 33 points back in the SoS era. I think as the player base has been evolving, the meta game tactics have now shifted to better take advantage of the Point Fortresses. Of course for tiebreakers MoV is now king, and Point Fortresses give a significant advantage there even in untimed games.

MoV also determines who wins the game outright. You don't score points for a ship until it is entirely dead. If you are flying a Point Fortress it puts your opponent in the position of needing to kill that ship. This limits their tactical options. A smart opponent will then use that against them to get a preferential tactical engagement.

Of course. A question, however, since I have only been playing the game competitively about 3 months: how is this different than in the strength of schedule era?

The biggest difference, and the reason guys like myself advocated for the change, is that with SoS a single first round loss would effectively eliminate a player from contention (barring extremely rare circumstances). Because of this, people would show up for a day of X-Wing and within an hour half of the people would be out of the running. Many of these folks would drive quite a distance, and we all came because we wanted to play X-Wing, so that was a seriously negative experience. Two early losses was guaranteed elimination, compared to a late 2 loss player who would be in the running. In addition, having one of your opponents drop out (which was common, since an early loss meant elimination from the running) was absolutely devastating to your SoS, and dramatically altered the standings. MoV eliminates that problem entirely, whether or not one of your opponents subsequently drops has no bearing on your standings.

A format where half of the people didn't have a reason to stay past noon just didn't work. MoV is not a perfect system either, but it does mean that every game you play has roughly the same impact no matter when you play it, so you are never really out of the running until your third loss. It keeps people playing the game they came for.

MoV also determines who wins the game outright. You don't score points for a ship until it is entirely dead. If you are flying a Point Fortress it puts your opponent in the position of needing to kill that ship. This limits their tactical options. A smart opponent will then use that against them to get a preferential tactical engagement.

Of course. A question, however, since I have only been playing the game competitively about 3 months: how is this different than in the strength of schedule era?

Speaking of which...

That's a lot less complicated way to address ships that prey on margin wins. If Han has to come back at my 2 B's to get a full win I think I'd have a better shot..

I went to a spring tournament this weekend with 15 players. Only 4 didn't take a big, turreted ship. 1 bro bot (who won), BBBBZ (won 1 game), XXA (new guy - last place), and my Xizor list (fought at top table in last game and lost).

Big Turreted Ships will dominate the tournament meta until you bring out half points for half damage. It's not the turrets that break them. It's the maneuverability and ability to take damage without giving up a single point (unless they die) that makes them powerful in a timed match. It's just an advantage you can't get rid of without offering half points. And for those that say it's complicated, I say just divide one number by 2. It's not rocket science.

There were actually a few more of us who didn't bring the big boys I finished 3rd with 5 Talas and 2 Greens w/refit. My brother brought Rexlar and 5 Academies and I know one other person brought Soontir and 5 Obsidians I think.

Initially I was kind of against the whole "half points" thing because, as someone who has run many tournaments and seen how, shall we say, unorganized some players can be, I was afraid the score keeping process would be too much. Apparently FFG's new app isn't going to help either. However, I'm starting to come around that the MOV issue with "fat" ships probably needs to be addressed. That being said I do still think that player skill can and does trump certain lists however, boosting fat large ships makes that more difficult.

Thanks for the correction! I did forget them. Please let me know when they get up on List Juggler.

I also believe that a skilled player can win vs fat large ships. I did win two games at the event. I also think that it does give them an advantage, though. It's not terrible, but serious tournament players will take EVERY advantage they can. I'm also not just saying that b/c I would've had a full victory that day if I got half points!

I went to a spring tournament this weekend with 15 players. Only 4 didn't take a big, turreted ship. 1 bro bot (who won), BBBBZ (won 1 game), XXA (new guy - last place), and my Xizor list (fought at top table in last game and lost).

Big Turreted Ships will dominate the tournament meta until you bring out half points for half damage. It's not the turrets that break them. It's the maneuverability and ability to take damage without giving up a single point (unless they die) that makes them powerful in a timed match. It's just an advantage you can't get rid of without offering half points. And for those that say it's complicated, I say just divide one number by 2. It's not rocket science.

There were actually a few more of us who didn't bring the big boys I finished 3rd with 5 Talas and 2 Greens w/refit. My brother brought Rexlar and 5 Academies and I know one other person brought Soontir and 5 Obsidians I think.

Initially I was kind of against the whole "half points" thing because, as someone who has run many tournaments and seen how, shall we say, unorganized some players can be, I was afraid the score keeping process would be too much. Apparently FFG's new app isn't going to help either. However, I'm starting to come around that the MOV issue with "fat" ships probably needs to be addressed. That being said I do still think that player skill can and does trump certain lists however, boosting fat large ships makes that more difficult.

Thanks for the correction! I did forget them. Please let me know when they get up on List Juggler.

I also believe that a skilled player can win vs fat large ships. I did win two games at the event. I also think that it does give them an advantage, though. It's not terrible, but serious tournament players will take EVERY advantage they can. I'm also not just saying that b/c I would've had a full victory that day if I got half points!

I'm all for the modification as long as FFG does it elegantly with the scoring/recording. I've run somewhere around 12 tournaments, with anywhere from 12 to 26 people and the thought of some of them having to do math after each round can be a little scary, lol. Sad but true

MoV is certainly better than SoS, especially for determining tiebreakers. With the current scoring system of MoV it has the unfortunate side-effect of making the meta heavily skewed towards Point Fortresses.

Back on Regionals Results, I'm trying to ping everyone to get results up. Only being partially successful... if you have details or reliable contact info please post here. The Lithuania Regionals was moved to May 30th, so I know of 5 Regionals that happened this last weekend.

Week 4: May 16-17

Note: Orphaned list: winner of one of the two UK Regionals was:

RAC + PTL + Engine + Ysanne + Rebel Captive; Whisper + VI + FCS + ACD

Brussels, Belgium

Bydgoszcz, Poland

Bangor, UK

West Berlin, New Jersey, US

Stockton, UK

For outright victory conditions, the only change is that a full win is now only 12 points instead of (I think it was) 33 points back in the SoS era. I think as the player base has been evolving, the meta game tactics have now shifted to better take advantage of the Point Fortresses. Of course for tiebreakers MoV is now king, and Point Fortresses give a significant advantage there even in untimed games.

This much I understand. I think I need to phrase my question better:

Please help me understand the assertion that MoV favors fat turrets more than SoS did as a tiebreaker.

My first goal in any game is to destroy all my opponent's ships; that's the outcome I want to engineer. I understand that the game now works in such a way that if my opponent gets far enough ahead on points it is not to his advantage to engage me, but that was the case under SoS as well, wasn't it? I don't see a change there.

The MoV system encourages players to keep playing (as KineticOperator points out), as an early loss is not devastating. Like him, I feel like this makes it a far superior system.

Back in my old days of card gaming I used to play a Light Side deck that won consistently, but did so by very low margins. I continued to play it because it won, and wins were what mattered. I can appreciate that target priority versus certain lists might be impacted by the MoV scoring system, but MoV itself does not invalidate entire list concepts (like swarm) the way some folks seem to assert. The swarm player who goes 6-0 with an MoV of only a couple hundred points still finishes ahead of a fat turret player who goes 5-1 with 800 MoV.

The swarm player who goes 6-0 with an MoV of only a couple hundred points still finishes ahead of a fat turret player who goes 5-1 with 800 MoV.

...but the Swarm player who also goes 5-1 loses out to the fat turret player who goes 5-1. That's the problem.

For outright victory conditions, the only change is that a full win is now only 12 points instead of (I think it was) 33 points back in the SoS era. I think as the player base has been evolving, the meta game tactics have now shifted to better take advantage of the Point Fortresses. Of course for tiebreakers MoV is now king, and Point Fortresses give a significant advantage there even in untimed games.

This much I understand. I think I need to phrase my question better:

Please help me understand the assertion that MoV favors fat turrets more than SoS did as a tiebreaker.

As a tiebreaker, the current MoV scoring system (no partial points) still favors the Point Fortresses even in untimed games. You can do some quick napkin math to prove this, or do something more rigorous like collecting large amounts of data, but the conclusion is the same: a Point Fortress will statistically preserve more MoV points than having lots of cheap ships will. It's an academic exercise to demonstrate this; for example if you have a 64 point ship that ends on 1/3 health half the time, you're preserving, on average, 64*0.5*2/3 = 21 points per game. A 7 TIE Swarm player will see a significantly smaller benefit assuming his opponent reasonably focus fires his TIEs down.

For outright victory conditions, nothing has changed except for making a full win only 12 points now. What has changed are:

1. Better support options since wave 4 for the Point Fortresses (Z-95's and Corran).
2. C-3P0 making Fat Falcons far more point efficient.
3. Autothrusters making VT-49 + Soontir Fel far more point efficient.
4. Increased widespread knowledge on how Point Fortresses win at MoV.

1) Is important because even with a Point Fortress, if the rest of your list is two X-wings, your list as a whole is less efficient so you still have an uphill climb. Before wave 4 released, I predicted that the Z-95 would have the biggest long-term impact on the game out of any of the ships released in wave 4, because it would finally give Rebels a ship with TIE-Fighter level efficiency that could be used as filler. I didn't specifically anticipate the rise of Point Fortresses (I'm not sure that anyone did, really), but obviously Fat Falcon + 3Z has been dominant or at least very good since then.

Points 2 and 3 seemed pretty obvious as soon as the cards were spoiled because they really help their respective ships: C-3P0 directly, and Soontir Fel indirectly. In the case of VT-49, it's VT-49 + "next man up". In wave 5 that was pre-nerf Whisper. In wave 6 post-nerf Phantom it's Fel instead. After the Raider releases you can add Vader+ATC to the list. The common theme here is "Efficient Point Fortress + solid ace support ship", so the VT-49 is here to stay.

Point 4 is purely psychological but still important. The secret is out, and everyone and their grandmother is now playing Point Fortresses, yours truly included. I'm still flying something of a dark horse because Brobots have significant problems with PS7+ turrets, but at 50/50 or 50/49 it definitely still qualifies as a point fortress list.

Would switching back to 33 points needed for full wins nerf fat ships? Would it hurt swarms again?

I think half points for big ships would do the trick. It would put it on par with swarms and other lists. It wouldn't ruin them, either. Just level the playing field.

I think all the web lists can easily be made to display total points and then half points for big ships when you print it out. Saves people like me from doing actual math. Just total it up like that. Not that challenging.

I am firmly of the opinion that the best thing to do is just wait. The list variety is significantly greater than it was even a month ago, and as people have more time to refine lists and strategies it will continue to expand. Every wave has the same result. The first tournaments after release see the "new hotness" out in force but old archetypes still holding the top spots, then over time the meta will shift towards the most powerful builds. Wave 4 saw the advent of the fat ships, wave 5 cemented them firmly in the #1 spot with Phantoms in the second spot and everything else way, way, way down below those two. Wave 6 is seeing several new archetypes emerge, without completely eliminating either Phantoms or Fat Turrets. Given time those archetypes will continue to gain popularity.

If your desire was to see fat turrets nerfed into oblivion you will be disappointed. If your desire was to see them become just one (even the top one) of a variety of top builds then wave 6 is a welcome breath of fresh air. Too many people are so emotionally invested in destroying fat turrets as an effective archetype that they are unwilling to enjoy the introduction of alternatives as long as fat turrets are still effective.

JMOYMMV

I am firmly of the opinion that the best thing to do is just wait. The list variety is significantly greater than it was even a month ago, and as people have more time to refine lists and strategies it will continue to expand.

Yeah, we have plenty more weeks to wait and see how the overall meta ends up unfolding. I think trying to directly nerf turrets before addressing MoV would be a huge mistake, because it doesn't fix the underlying issue. Unless and until the scoring system is changed though, Point Fortresses are going to remain the New Normal. I think we are well past the point of "wait and see".

It's extremely peculiar that Turrets are doing so well even within elimination rounds. 14/17 winners are Fat Turrets, which is a much higher representation than Fat Turrets in Top 8. After 17 Regional winners we are starting to get a statistically significant data set, but I wonder if we'll start seeing more variety break through into the winners by the time we hit the mid point of the Regionals season.

Point Fortresses doing well is not a surprise at all though. 16/17 either have a Fat Ship or something pretty close that I would call "moderately obese" (i.e. 40+ point regenerating Horn). It would have been nice if your 3 Ace list managed to sneak out a win to make the numbers look less bleak.

I'll do more thorough data analysis later after we get everything into List Juggler. It might not be until after the Regionals season is over though.

I'm really curious about the Top 8 and winners in this weekend's other Regionals that we haven't hard from yet.