Anyone else wanna take this? Even I'm getting fed up of 'just because everything disagrees with me, doesn't mean I'm wrong' threads.

Well if it's an opinion then it can't really be wrong, you can have two different opinions about something and have both of them be right from a given point of view.

It is fascinating to me how many participants of this forum utilize the word "opinion" when they are discussing something that is a "fact".

I've seen this list table meta lists on a few different occasions. The problem with the x wing according to the math is it needs another hull. But if you can only for four x wings (if you are flying only x wings) in a single list anyway why not just spend the extra points on the hull upgrade? Fly in formation and focus fire one enemy at a time and they pop like 8th grade zits. While I do see the problem with the x wing stat line I do enjoy it and I have had a lot of success with them.

X-WING: Rookie Pilot (21)

· R2-D2 (4)

Hull Upgrade (3)

X-WING: Rookie Pilot (21)

Hull Upgrade (3)

X-WING: Rookie Pilot (21)

Hull Upgrade (3)

X-WING: Rookie Pilot (21)

Hull Upgrade (3)

Why? because you are spending 3 points on an upgrade which it should already have for free. In a 4 X list thats 12 points which you could have used elsewhere. Why not just give your opponent a 10% increase to his squad points.

I have flown a similar list; 4 Rookies, w/ Hull upgrade and R2 each and have a lot of experience with it. Whilst it CAN be effective against some meta lists (I have tabled Chiraneau/Fell and 2 Iggy lists with this), it can also can suffer very heavily against the same lists. It tends to do better when facing small ships with lots of room to maneuver, where 3 red dice, a decent dial and good selection of greens (with R2) can come into their own.

At least a few games lost recently with the 4 X list were purely through to dice luck; such as 4 Xs, having made Fell go pop, chasing Chiraneau round the board and being ground down by his endless gunner + predator attacks. Skill doesnt come into that equation much. If you can get all your ships consistently in arc and range of a fat turret and you. just. cant. kill. it. Granted, consistently rolling 1 or 2 hits each attack, even with 4 dice with focus/TL doesn't help (Eat a d**k red dice!) .

Even with Hull Upgrade, the list does not have enough hull to truly tank hits against something like Gunner + Predator Chiraneau, nor enough greens without significant luck to survive against high numbers of red dice from other lists. Against 2 dice attacks I have found it fares better. Its action economy is unremarkable too, with only focus or target lock and little in the way of tricks to improve your options.

By contrast I have played exactly the same Fell/Chiraneau and Iggy lists using 4 FCS Bs and the difference is striking. It makes playing 4 Xs feels like an uphill struggle. Much as I love seeing Xs on the table the generics just dont cut it for their points and most of the uniques should probably be cheaper for what they offer, not that their abilities are bad.

Points aside, I think the Xs stats are a reasonable approximation of what the X is meant to be; a mid-weight, multi role superiority fighter. Good at most things, but not excellent at any. However this is not how the ship functions in the game at the moment. This isnt me being uber-competitive, I love the X Wing, I love this game (casual or competitive), but as has been said before; the X is just too expensive for what it offers.

for me, it happened a bit later

specifically: wave 5 (not counting the stress wing; **** things ate phantoms before we've even dreamed of an errata )

nowadays, I look across the table and see one of four things

Yt-1300

Decimator

Yt-2400 w/HLC

Aggressor w/HLC

Now, if you're an x-wing pilot against one of those, your first course of action should be to pop open the cockpit and hope your exposure to the vacuum of space unlocks some long dormant human potential and triggers a spontaneuous leap in evolution that allows to ascend into near-godhod

you do this because, unless you're Tarn motherloving liam Mison, it's the best chance you have of surviving against those things

Wave V is when I noticed too. Specifically, the Decimators. It is just too much ship for X-wing centered squads to chew through consistently, depending on the escorts for the Decimator. Fel or Whisper? Cake walk for me personally. 4x Academy? I'm Still 0-6 vs that garbage using XXX and XXXZ. And those squads had really great records vs everything else. After Wave VI and the automatic damage and prevalence of ships that could now push 4+attack dice per turn, I found my 2 agility X-wings were dying faster than I could put any damage out. Range 3 is no longer safe either, as the prevalence of Mangler+Autothrusters makes it nearly impossible to stick damage on an aggressor, while they can roll hits, no problem, thanks to IG-88B's ability. Sure, Autothrusters was a great call for small ships defending against turrets, but the whole application of the free evade result at range 3 while in arc thing, I feel, was too much.

Autothrusters needed at least a limited broader application (especially because of the increase of cannons where R3 hurts agility reliant ships.) They are brutal agains two attack dice ships at R3, but I don't think that them only working outside of arc would have been enough exactly because of the increased firepower you mention.

It is especially brutal vs two attack dice ships. Personally I feel if they wanted to nerf the effect on cannons, it should have been specified in the text. Making it an almost impossible shot was fairly silly. It's almost as if they just want you to skip your shots on Squints because you know that it will not do damage. It's yet another frustrating aspect that I have when Flying X-wings in particular. They don't have cannons, they don't take away the R3 agility bonus, so why punish them for setting up good shots?

Sorry man, I guess I tire of people propping up beliefs with bad statistics just as much that do from a single day of play.

It's not just from List Juggler, it's also from his Jousting Efficiency thread. Rather than bash the math, how about you actually visit the thread and start a discussion? Or talk to him about it? The X-Wing is overcosted, and the math says it just could really use a free hull upgrade to be good.

I have and I've gone around in circles with MJ on it. His math is fine but his inferences can at times be flawed. The statistical analysis of tournament data has been misleading and actually has very little to do with actual statistics. I guess what bothers me the most is how people are drawing religious conclusions from it and forcing it onto others like it is the gospel.

With just straight Attack/Defense values a X-wing is weaker than a B-wing, but there's more to a ship than that. I still say the X-wing could use a little help, I won't deny that, but the difference is much smaller than the loud voices on this forum like to proclaim.

The tournament data in List Juggler show that X-wings are chosen fairly infrequently by successful players (those that make it into tournament elimination rounds). They also show that the proportion of X-wings in elimination rounds is much lower than the proportion of X-wings in Swiss rounds. There are a number of feasible alternative hypotheses for the former,mbut it's very hard to explain the latter unless there's something wrong with the ship.

And what degree of statistical certainty can you say that? I can't say one way or the other personally since it's currently a statistical mess. But even looking at the charts that are present, it shows that the Rookie pilot (this is the one we're harping on here right?) is in the top 10 chosen pilots for both "all" lists and elimination round lists. The percentage doesn't change much between the two, although the sampling isn't likely to be statistically significant and has confounds.

How often a pilot or ship is chosen simply states how popular it is and not directly causally related to its effectiveness. Yes, sometimes they are popular because they are an effective ship, but sometimes they are popular because they provide a counter to another ship, sometimes they are popular because they are new, sometimes they are popular because they fill point gaps, sometimes they are popular because they are cool. A "successful" player doesn't choose ships purely based on effectiveness, they choose ships that will help them win against the current popular lists. Effectiveness of a ship is a factor but not the only factor. The meta history has a number of cases of effective ships that have been ignored, only to become popular later with little reason other than list popularity.

It's not solely about popularity. Vorpal's point was about how often a ship is chosen vs. how often it makes the elimination rounds. Sure, there are a lot of reasons you can hypothesize for why ships are or aren't successful, but there are ships that have been consistently poor or good even as new Waves have come in and the meta shifted and I think List Juggler has a good amount of data to show that. Edit: when I look at it both the Overall usage of the X-wing and the rookie drop off once elimination rounds hit.

Anyone else wanna take this? Even I'm getting fed up of 'just because everything disagrees with me, doesn't mean I'm wrong' threads.

Well if it's an opinion then it can't really be wrong, you can have two different opinions about something and have both of them be right from a given point of view.

It is fascinating to me how many participants of this forum utilize the word "opinion" when they are discussing something that is a "fact".

And the opposite is also true

for me, it happened a bit later

specifically: wave 5 (not counting the stress wing; **** things ate phantoms before we've even dreamed of an errata )

nowadays, I look across the table and see one of four things

Yt-1300

Decimator

Yt-2400 w/HLC

Aggressor w/HLC

Now, if you're an x-wing pilot against one of those, your first course of action should be to pop open the cockpit and hope your exposure to the vacuum of space unlocks some long dormant human potential and triggers a spontaneuous leap in evolution that allows to ascend into near-godhod

you do this because, unless you're Tarn motherloving liam Mison, it's the best chance you have of surviving against those things

Wave V is when I noticed too. Specifically, the Decimators. It is just too much ship for X-wing centered squads to chew through consistently, depending on the escorts for the Decimator. Fel or Whisper? Cake walk for me personally. 4x Academy? I'm Still 0-6 vs that garbage using XXX and XXXZ. And those squads had really great records vs everything else. After Wave VI and the automatic damage and prevalence of ships that could now push 4+attack dice per turn, I found my 2 agility X-wings were dying faster than I could put any damage out. Range 3 is no longer safe either, as the prevalence of Mangler+Autothrusters makes it nearly impossible to stick damage on an aggressor, while they can roll hits, no problem, thanks to IG-88B's ability. Sure, Autothrusters was a great call for small ships defending against turrets, but the whole application of the free evade result at range 3 while in arc thing, I feel, was too much.

Autothrusters needed at least a limited broader application (especially because of the increase of cannons where R3 hurts agility reliant ships.) They are brutal agains two attack dice ships at R3, but I don't think that them only working outside of arc would have been enough exactly because of the increased firepower you mention.

It is especially brutal vs two attack dice ships. Personally I feel if they wanted to nerf the effect on cannons, it should have been specified in the text. Making it an almost impossible shot was fairly silly. It's almost as if they just want you to skip your shots on Squints because you know that it will not do damage. It's yet another frustrating aspect that I have when Flying X-wings in particular. They don't have cannons, they don't take away the R3 agility bonus, so why punish them for setting up good shots?

for me, it happened a bit later

specifically: wave 5 (not counting the stress wing; **** things ate phantoms before we've even dreamed of an errata )

nowadays, I look across the table and see one of four things

Yt-1300

Decimator

Yt-2400 w/HLC

Aggressor w/HLC

Now, if you're an x-wing pilot against one of those, your first course of action should be to pop open the cockpit and hope your exposure to the vacuum of space unlocks some long dormant human potential and triggers a spontaneuous leap in evolution that allows to ascend into near-godhod

you do this because, unless you're Tarn motherloving liam Mison, it's the best chance you have of surviving against those things

Wave V is when I noticed too. Specifically, the Decimators. It is just too much ship for X-wing centered squads to chew through consistently, depending on the escorts for the Decimator. Fel or Whisper? Cake walk for me personally. 4x Academy? I'm Still 0-6 vs that garbage using XXX and XXXZ. And those squads had really great records vs everything else. After Wave VI and the automatic damage and prevalence of ships that could now push 4+attack dice per turn, I found my 2 agility X-wings were dying faster than I could put any damage out. Range 3 is no longer safe either, as the prevalence of Mangler+Autothrusters makes it nearly impossible to stick damage on an aggressor, while they can roll hits, no problem, thanks to IG-88B's ability. Sure, Autothrusters was a great call for small ships defending against turrets, but the whole application of the free evade result at range 3 while in arc thing, I feel, was too much.

Autothrusters needed at least a limited broader application (especially because of the increase of cannons where R3 hurts agility reliant ships.) They are brutal agains two attack dice ships at R3, but I don't think that them only working outside of arc would have been enough exactly because of the increased firepower you mention.

It is especially brutal vs two attack dice ships. Personally I feel if they wanted to nerf the effect on cannons, it should have been specified in the text. Making it an almost impossible shot was fairly silly. It's almost as if they just want you to skip your shots on Squints because you know that it will not do damage. It's yet another frustrating aspect that I have when Flying X-wings in particular. They don't have cannons, they don't take away the R3 agility bonus, so why punish them for setting up good shots?

I said especially because of cannons, but there are other elements that have increased damage output in the game, too. I'm not sure what to say about the X-wing and R3, but they needed help long before Autothrusters. Autothrusters made squints playable again.

for me, it happened a bit later

specifically: wave 5 (not counting the stress wing; **** things ate phantoms before we've even dreamed of an errata )

nowadays, I look across the table and see one of four things

Yt-1300

Decimator

Yt-2400 w/HLC

Aggressor w/HLC

Now, if you're an x-wing pilot against one of those, your first course of action should be to pop open the cockpit and hope your exposure to the vacuum of space unlocks some long dormant human potential and triggers a spontaneuous leap in evolution that allows to ascend into near-godhod

you do this because, unless you're Tarn motherloving liam Mison, it's the best chance you have of surviving against those things

Wave V is when I noticed too. Specifically, the Decimators. It is just too much ship for X-wing centered squads to chew through consistently, depending on the escorts for the Decimator. Fel or Whisper? Cake walk for me personally. 4x Academy? I'm Still 0-6 vs that garbage using XXX and XXXZ. And those squads had really great records vs everything else. After Wave VI and the automatic damage and prevalence of ships that could now push 4+attack dice per turn, I found my 2 agility X-wings were dying faster than I could put any damage out. Range 3 is no longer safe either, as the prevalence of Mangler+Autothrusters makes it nearly impossible to stick damage on an aggressor, while they can roll hits, no problem, thanks to IG-88B's ability. Sure, Autothrusters was a great call for small ships defending against turrets, but the whole application of the free evade result at range 3 while in arc thing, I feel, was too much.

Autothrusters needed at least a limited broader application (especially because of the increase of cannons where R3 hurts agility reliant ships.) They are brutal agains two attack dice ships at R3, but I don't think that them only working outside of arc would have been enough exactly because of the increased firepower you mention.

It is especially brutal vs two attack dice ships. Personally I feel if they wanted to nerf the effect on cannons, it should have been specified in the text. Making it an almost impossible shot was fairly silly. It's almost as if they just want you to skip your shots on Squints because you know that it will not do damage. It's yet another frustrating aspect that I have when Flying X-wings in particular. They don't have cannons, they don't take away the R3 agility bonus, so why punish them for setting up good shots?

Sorry man, I guess I tire of people propping up beliefs with bad statistics just as much that do from a single day of play.

It's not just from List Juggler, it's also from his Jousting Efficiency thread. Rather than bash the math, how about you actually visit the thread and start a discussion? Or talk to him about it? The X-Wing is overcosted, and the math says it just could really use a free hull upgrade to be good.

I have and I've gone around in circles with MJ on it. His math is fine but his inferences can at times be flawed. The statistical analysis of tournament data has been misleading and actually has very little to do with actual statistics. I guess what bothers me the most is how people are drawing religious conclusions from it and forcing it onto others like it is the gospel.

With just straight Attack/Defense values a X-wing is weaker than a B-wing, but there's more to a ship than that. I still say the X-wing could use a little help, I won't deny that, but the difference is much smaller than the loud voices on this forum like to proclaim.

The tournament data in List Juggler show that X-wings are chosen fairly infrequently by successful players (those that make it into tournament elimination rounds). They also show that the proportion of X-wings in elimination rounds is much lower than the proportion of X-wings in Swiss rounds. There are a number of feasible alternative hypotheses for the former,mbut it's very hard to explain the latter unless there's something wrong with the ship.

And what degree of statistical certainty can you say that? I can't say one way or the other personally since it's currently a statistical mess. But even looking at the charts that are present, it shows that the Rookie pilot (this is the one we're harping on here right?) is in the top 10 chosen pilots for both "all" lists and elimination round lists. The percentage doesn't change much between the two, although the sampling isn't likely to be statistically significant and has confounds.

How often a pilot or ship is chosen simply states how popular it is and not directly causally related to its effectiveness. Yes, sometimes they are popular because they are an effective ship, but sometimes they are popular because they provide a counter to another ship, sometimes they are popular because they are new, sometimes they are popular because they fill point gaps, sometimes they are popular because they are cool. A "successful" player doesn't choose ships purely based on effectiveness, they choose ships that will help them win against the current popular lists. Effectiveness of a ship is a factor but not the only factor. The meta history has a number of cases of effective ships that have been ignored, only to become popular later with little reason other than list popularity.

Which cases, specifically are you referring to? And, do you have information to support that?

It's not solely about popularity. Vorpal's point was about how often a ship is chosen vs. how often it makes the elimination rounds. Sure, there are a lot of reasons you can hypothesize for why ships are or aren't successful, but there are ships that have been consistently poor or good even as new Waves have come in and the meta shifted and I think List Juggler has a good amount of data to show that. Edit: when I look at it both the Overall usage of the X-wing and the rookie drop off once elimination rounds hit.

So are you saying the Rookie dropping from 1.49% to 1.26% in elimination rounds of 2800 total lists is statistically significant? Even if the data wasn't skewed that would probably amount to 1-2 lists deciding the effectiveness of the Rookie. That doesn't sound like a strong degree of statistical certainty to me.

Again, not saying the X-wing couldn't use a little help to carve out its role, but don't like garbage statistical assessments blowing things out of proportion.

for me, it happened a bit later

specifically: wave 5 (not counting the stress wing; **** things ate phantoms before we've even dreamed of an errata )

nowadays, I look across the table and see one of four things

Yt-1300

Decimator

Yt-2400 w/HLC

Aggressor w/HLC

Now, if you're an x-wing pilot against one of those, your first course of action should be to pop open the cockpit and hope your exposure to the vacuum of space unlocks some long dormant human potential and triggers a spontaneuous leap in evolution that allows to ascend into near-godhod

you do this because, unless you're Tarn motherloving liam Mison, it's the best chance you have of surviving against those things

Wave V is when I noticed too. Specifically, the Decimators. It is just too much ship for X-wing centered squads to chew through consistently, depending on the escorts for the Decimator. Fel or Whisper? Cake walk for me personally. 4x Academy? I'm Still 0-6 vs that garbage using XXX and XXXZ. And those squads had really great records vs everything else. After Wave VI and the automatic damage and prevalence of ships that could now push 4+attack dice per turn, I found my 2 agility X-wings were dying faster than I could put any damage out. Range 3 is no longer safe either, as the prevalence of Mangler+Autothrusters makes it nearly impossible to stick damage on an aggressor, while they can roll hits, no problem, thanks to IG-88B's ability. Sure, Autothrusters was a great call for small ships defending against turrets, but the whole application of the free evade result at range 3 while in arc thing, I feel, was too much.

Autothrusters needed at least a limited broader application (especially because of the increase of cannons where R3 hurts agility reliant ships.) They are brutal agains two attack dice ships at R3, but I don't think that them only working outside of arc would have been enough exactly because of the increased firepower you mention.

It is especially brutal vs two attack dice ships. Personally I feel if they wanted to nerf the effect on cannons, it should have been specified in the text. Making it an almost impossible shot was fairly silly. It's almost as if they just want you to skip your shots on Squints because you know that it will not do damage. It's yet another frustrating aspect that I have when Flying X-wings in particular. They don't have cannons, they don't take away the R3 agility bonus, so why punish them for setting up good shots?

Sorry man, I guess I tire of people propping up beliefs with bad statistics just as much that do from a single day of play.

It's not just from List Juggler, it's also from his Jousting Efficiency thread. Rather than bash the math, how about you actually visit the thread and start a discussion? Or talk to him about it? The X-Wing is overcosted, and the math says it just could really use a free hull upgrade to be good.

I have and I've gone around in circles with MJ on it. His math is fine but his inferences can at times be flawed. The statistical analysis of tournament data has been misleading and actually has very little to do with actual statistics. I guess what bothers me the most is how people are drawing religious conclusions from it and forcing it onto others like it is the gospel.

With just straight Attack/Defense values a X-wing is weaker than a B-wing, but there's more to a ship than that. I still say the X-wing could use a little help, I won't deny that, but the difference is much smaller than the loud voices on this forum like to proclaim.

The tournament data in List Juggler show that X-wings are chosen fairly infrequently by successful players (those that make it into tournament elimination rounds). They also show that the proportion of X-wings in elimination rounds is much lower than the proportion of X-wings in Swiss rounds. There are a number of feasible alternative hypotheses for the former,mbut it's very hard to explain the latter unless there's something wrong with the ship.

And what degree of statistical certainty can you say that? I can't say one way or the other personally since it's currently a statistical mess. But even looking at the charts that are present, it shows that the Rookie pilot (this is the one we're harping on here right?) is in the top 10 chosen pilots for both "all" lists and elimination round lists. The percentage doesn't change much between the two, although the sampling isn't likely to be statistically significant and has confounds.

How often a pilot or ship is chosen simply states how popular it is and not directly causally related to its effectiveness. Yes, sometimes they are popular because they are an effective ship, but sometimes they are popular because they provide a counter to another ship, sometimes they are popular because they are new, sometimes they are popular because they fill point gaps, sometimes they are popular because they are cool. A "successful" player doesn't choose ships purely based on effectiveness, they choose ships that will help them win against the current popular lists. Effectiveness of a ship is a factor but not the only factor. The meta history has a number of cases of effective ships that have been ignored, only to become popular later with little reason other than list popularity.

Which cases, specifically are you referring to? And, do you have information to support that?

It's not solely about popularity. Vorpal's point was about how often a ship is chosen vs. how often it makes the elimination rounds. Sure, there are a lot of reasons you can hypothesize for why ships are or aren't successful, but there are ships that have been consistently poor or good even as new Waves have come in and the meta shifted and I think List Juggler has a good amount of data to show that. Edit: when I look at it both the Overall usage of the X-wing and the rookie drop off once elimination rounds hit.

So are you saying the Rookie dropping from 1.49% to 1.26% in elimination rounds of 2800 total lists is statistically significant? Even if the data wasn't skewed that would probably amount to 1-2 lists deciding the effectiveness of the Rookie. That doesn't sound like a strong degree of statistical certainty to me.

Again, not saying the X-wing couldn't use a little help to carve out its role, but don't like garbage statistical assessments blowing things out of proportion.

I won't disagree or debate the level of "statistical certainty" but it lines up with other analysis (especially when examined with x-wing at large) and, at least in this case, it's far better than nothing. So while I won't disagree that more information and analysis would be better (but very challenging to get), hand-waving it as useless or garbage doesn't strike me as particularly convincing either.

solution #2, play the X-wing mark 2.0

it learned very well from the B-wing, even stole its dial

I wouldn't consider that the S&V equivalent of an X-wing or a B-wing. It is more of the equivalent of a Rebel E-wing or Tie Defender based on characteristics. High Firepower, High Agility, moderate number of hit points for a small ship (5-6), high point cost for a small ship, dial not to impressive but comes with a trick (green 3 straight for E-wing, White 4 K-turn for Defender, S-loops for Star Vipers.)

solution #2, play the X-wing mark 2.0

it learned very well from the B-wing, even stole its dial

I wouldn't consider that the S&V equivalent of an X-wing or a B-wing. It is more of the equivalent of a Rebel E-wing or Tie Defender based on characteristics. High Firepower, High Agility, moderate number of hit points for a small ship (5-6), high point cost for a small ship, dial not to impressive but comes with a trick (green 3 straight for E-wing, White 4 K-turn for Defender, S-loops for Star Vipers.)

am I the only one who sees the big giant "X" shape?

I think the xwing may have remained well used for longer, until hull sponges became a thing. Even back in the day, there was no way a lists weight in swings could chew through double flacon. The final hammer came in the form of cannons and 4dicers, which made the average of 2 dice largely inadequate compared to the reliability of more ships (tie, z95) arc dodging or reliability of shields /hull (b-wing)

I think it could do with a spruce up, because it doesn't preform the all rounder role well enough. It doesn't need to be an out and out arc dodger, but barrel roll would allow it to preform its general fighter quota better.

solution #2, play the X-wing mark 2.0

it learned very well from the B-wing, even stole its dial

I wouldn't consider that the S&V equivalent of an X-wing or a B-wing. It is more of the equivalent of a Rebel E-wing or Tie Defender based on characteristics. High Firepower, High Agility, moderate number of hit points for a small ship (5-6), high point cost for a small ship, dial not to impressive but comes with a trick (green 3 straight for E-wing, White 4 K-turn for Defender, S-loops for Star Vipers.)

am I the only one who sees the big giant "X" shape?

lol, well gameplay wise it is not an X-wing but yeah it is a giant X shape target.

I won't disagree or debate the level of "statistical certainty" but it lines up with other analysis (especially when examined with x-wing at large) and, at least in this case, it's far better than nothing. So while I won't disagree that more information and analysis would be better (but very challenging to get), hand-waving it as useless or garbage doesn't strike me as particularly convincing either.

I don't understand what analysis you're drawing from the data. At most it says there are slightly less Rookies in elimination rounds than there are across all lists. Okay, given those stats:

• IG88-B has pretty much the same set of scores (slightly worse before and after actually) across all lists to elimination rounds 1.55% -> 1.26% so the Rookie must be as equally bad or slightly better than that pilot...
• Also, let's look at it this way: the Rookie is the 10th most taken pilot across all lists. In elimination rounds, it is still the 10th most taken pilot. No change in position. What does that statistic say about the Rookie?

the X isn't "garbage". It needs a 1-2 point buff/decrease. That's all. Expected value around 19.5. FFG doesn't seem to want us to get 5Xs in a list, so going down to 20pts isn't going to be it.

MJ gives his an extra hull or something like a free 3 points off an upgrade. Hull being 3 points is the cost to add. A true hull is probably only worth about 2 points. (Just like a focus is only worth about that much, or an action.) (PTL costs 3 for ANOTHER action.)

Basically: Its still decent. ITs still a good option for getting 3 red dice in a packet if you don't want Bs. XXXZZZ or BXXZZZ.

What other competitive lists use rookies? Maybe some people still use old Han Shoots First??

Actually, it is much worse than a 1-2 point buff would compensate for. That is the bare minimum needed in order to make it efficient in a theoretical joust sans obstacles and maneuvering, which doesn't actually map across to real games. The X-Wing with a free hull upgrade would give it parity as a jousting ship in a theoretical vacuum, but the drawbacks of the X-Wing don't stop there. The X is also an inferior close fighter, lacking any sort of positioning action (boost, barrel roll), a 1 turn, or access to sensors, as well as having a stat line that doesn't hold up well to close range shooting where pure health is an advantage. If you (for example) were to face Dash Rendar, you will be drawn into the rocks in order to get shots on him. With no barrel roll to avoid running them over or sensors to give you actions when you do, those rocks will play merry hell on your ships, disrupting your formation and costing you actions.

There is a lot more going on than a simple stat line deficiency. There IS a stat line deficiency, but not only is that not the only drawback I doubt it is the biggest one. I'm not totally down on X-Wings in general, but they have some major weaknesses as-is, and aside from some pretty powerful pilot abilities there isn't much there to compensate for them.

I won't disagree or debate the level of "statistical certainty" but it lines up with other analysis (especially when examined with x-wing at large) and, at least in this case, it's far better than nothing. So while I won't disagree that more information and analysis would be better (but very challenging to get), hand-waving it as useless or garbage doesn't strike me as particularly convincing either.

I don't understand what analysis you're drawing from the data. At most it says there are slightly less Rookies in elimination rounds than there are across all lists. Okay, given those stats:

• IG88-B has pretty much the same set of scores (slightly worse before and after actually) across all lists to elimination rounds 1.55% -> 1.26% so the Rookie must be as equally bad or slightly better than that pilot...
• Also, let's look at it this way: the Rookie is the 10th most taken pilot across all lists. In elimination rounds, it is still the 10th most taken pilot. No change in position. What does that statistic say about the Rookie?

First of all, I'm not using ship counts but points invested and it seems you're using ship counts. I'm a bit surprised that you'd be using ship counts over points spent, which I'd agree are the much lesser telling statistic in terms of ship value for a lot of reasons. It also seems odd to compare a individual named pilot to a generic since you could only take one IG-88B in a list.

But despite this, let's look at it closer. First, it's not surprising that IG-88s don't see the same or more frequency in elimination as they appear swiss. They're a new, popular ship that is very tough to fly and has have some very, very challenging match-ups. Of course, it's not surprising that their ship count is similar to Rookie X-wings since they are usually at least double the cost of a rookie. So, if they were equal, we'd be seeing about double the rookies in terms of ship count. This is of course, an even more odd comparison when you realize Wave 6 was only out for some of the store championships and the Rookie has been in the system since November (so there are a lot more opportunities for it to show) and IG 88B has both a comparable number of appearance to the rookie over the total of all tourneys since November and has seen elimination rounds just as much (and in terms of points spent, more) despite their late appearance.

Also, in terms of the Rookie's 10th position in ship count (and I still don't see the value of using that, but we'll go with it), I think it's 10th and only if you look at rebels. In terms of rebel small base generics, it's only ahead of the E-wing while every other generic has at least one ship represented (Zs have two) -- Oh, and the HWK. Every other rebel generic is essentially a better choice, and the two options that are closest in terms of role, (2x bandits or a blue). It's really only above the E-Wing/HWKs in terms of which generics, both of which people agree are in even worse shape. So, in terms of of the concerns people have, I think that the statistics we're talking about put it about where you think it should be -- not in need of a huge fix, but in need of one.

The X cannot arc dodge. It cannot stack FCS and Predator and an HLC and Gunner or whatever other broken combo. It does not have much health, it does not move half way across the map when you slap an engine upgrade on it. It cannot use advanced sensors to break action economy. If you make it run away from something it doesn't also get to shoot anyways because it's not a turret. It does not have 8 or more health or 4 agility.

The X wing only moves once, does one action, and only attacks once a turn. That's it.

Like the Defender, it's not a bad ship per se, but compared to the insane heights that action economy is at right now you just can't play a normal ship unless it's a B Wing spam list or a swarm or Soontir.

What could an X Wing possibly do against an HLC FCS IG 88B? Let's say it gets to fire first, it scores 3/3 hits. IG blanks out but gets autothrusters and takes 2 damage. IG fires back with its HLC, gets 1 hit and 2 focuses. IG player decides to not use his focus to try and trigger gunner for his totally not OP freebie Target Lock upgrade. Your X Wing rolls 1 evade, one blank, great. Gunner triggers, he rolls 2 hits, a blank, and a focus. He "spends" his target lock he got for free and has no consequence to spending to reroll his one blank. It's 3 hits and a focus, which turn to 4 hits. Your X wing rolls one evade again this time.

That happens to a TIE Fighter that's 12 points. That happens to something that's at least 1/4 of your list it's a big deal.

I have and I've gone around in circles with MJ on it. His math is fine but his inferences can at times be flawed.

Inferences such as what? The math fundamentally dictates the required efficiency that a given ship needs to have to break even. Quantifying that on a per-ship basis (generally) goes well beyond MathWing 2.0.

So are you saying the Rookie dropping from 1.49% to 1.26% in elimination rounds of 2800 total lists is statistically significant? Even if the data wasn't skewed that would probably amount to 1-2 lists deciding the effectiveness of the Rookie. That doesn't sound like a strong degree of statistical certainty to me.

Math check: 2800*(0.0149 - 0.0126) = 6.4.

Not going to debate the particulars of whether or not it is statistically significant or not. Rather, rather making the observation that you lose all technical credibility of discussing/attacking higher level statistical analysis when you fail much simpler math yourself, either by lack of rigor or lack of understanding.

[Edit]: Egg on face, math fail myself, this is what I get for posting late at night. Since the elimination round subset is much smaller, it probably does in fact amount to only a couple of lists. {elimination lists}*(0.0149 - 0.0126) = ???. Formal apologies for being stupid myself!

That said, the trends have been going back since 2014 using wave 3 data, and especially if you weight the lists by how far they progress, and not just a flat weighting for making Final Cut or not, the evidence is much more compelling.

[/Edit]

As a separate aside, the bigger issue with the game right now is the Fat Turret Insanity. Scoring 0 points for a Fat Ship until it's dead virtually ensures that cheaper ships that would otherwise be perfectly balanced will be driven closer to extinction in a timed competitive meta game. So even if the X-wing were fixed it might be hard to really gauge the results at Regionals / Nationals / Worlds until the distortion from the scoring system is resolved.

Also, KineticOperator has some excellent thoughts in this thread, highly recommended reading. Except for upping the X-wing to 4 attack dice, that would make the X-wing a jousting monster. Without an associated cost increase, quick napkin math says it would bump jousting efficiency from ~91% to ~110%.

Not everything needs 4 attack dice please.

that's what he said

4 attack dice would be stupid because it'd make the x-wing uber efficient and we'd have the opposite problem

For all you ex 40K players: The X-Wing is the bog standard Space Marine. Great at shaking off hits and laying down massed fire, but kinda slow and pokey and hate getting into CC with clawed gribblies. Maybe what they need is rapid fire at 12"...or an objective with cover to park themselves on.

Seriously though, it wont break the game to let players field 5 of them at this stage of the game.

For all you ex 40K players: The X-Wing is the bog standard Space Marine. Great at shaking off hits and laying down massed fire, but kinda slow and pokey and hate getting into CC with clawed gribblies. Maybe what they need is rapid fire at 12"...or an objective with cover to park themselves on.

Seriously though, it wont break the game to let players field 5 of them at this stage of the game.

I wouldn't call the X-wing the space Marine on any accounts. For one you can take a lot of space marines in a standard competitive game of 40K. Now is it the x-wing the tactical squad of 40K, I'd still say no. Tactical squads do have good stats all around and for a reasonable point cost, they are very versatile, however are rather efficient in their points compared to other units of the same position. I don't think X-wing has an equivalent for a 40K tactical squad.

However I will say 40K and X-wing are suffering from a rather similar problem in terms of meta balance. I remember when 40K went from victory points to kill points thus favoring high point cost units that can kill a few cheap units and survive until the end of 7th round. Often if you were a horde player and the mission was kill points you end up bringing 4 times as many kill points than your opponent which had the end result of having to no less than table your opponent to win the match. With the MOV system the way it is we are starting to see point heavy fortresses in the game which are design to survive on the table and kill enough while keeping over half of the points to themselves.

that's what he said

4 attack dice would be stupid because it'd make the x-wing uber efficient and we'd have the opposite problem

Ironically, the X-wing would probably be balanced with 4 attack. No one calls the Sigma phantom OP at 25 points with cloak, barrel roll, and an arguably better dial. Would an X-wing with EU be unbalanced at 25 points? It only has one more HP, the TL action, and droid to compensate for less pilot skill, no barrel roll, no evade, no systems, no cloak, no crew, and an arguably worse dial.

edit: specifically I'm talking about the ROOKIE pilot here, and not named pilots

Also, KineticOperator has some excellent thoughts in this thread, highly recommended reading. Except for upping the X-wing to 4 attack dice, that would make the X-wing a jousting monster. Without an associated cost increase, quick napkin math says it would bump jousting efficiency from ~91% to ~110%.

Thank you. I realize that my 4 attack suggestion seems quite off the cuff, but IMO for the X-Wing (or really any ship) to be successful it needs one of two things.

1 - Some mechanism by which it can realistically accomplish greater damage output than its efficiency. In other words, if it needs to deal 110% damage in order to break even then it needs some sort of trick (White K-Turn, S-Loop, turret, control) or repositioning (barrel roll, boost, spectacular dial) in order to accomplish this.

2 - If it is going to continue to lack any sort of method to accomplish (1) above, then it needs to have an advantage in its raw joust values when compared to ships that do have some sort of trick/repositioning abilities.

The TIE fighter as the defined standard has 2 different K-Turns, 3 white hard turns (including the all important 1 turn), AND the more powerful of the two repositioning abilities in the Barrel Roll. Between the two ships, the TIE fighter is the one equipped to achieve greater damage than its raw efficiency. To compete, then, the X-WIng would need to have a jousting efficiency significantly greater than the TIE fighters 100% in order to compensate for its complete lack of positional control.

If the X-Wing at 4 attack with no other changes is too powerful, a small point increase and/or opportunity cost (giving up the droid or modification slot) could bring it back in line. In the end, however, the combination of relative fragility and total lack of positional control would make the X-Wing a much, much easier to eliminate glass cannon than any other high-attack ship in the game so as quasistellar points out it is likely balanced at 4 attack even if there were no other changes made.

An interesting direction to take the X-wing would be a proton torpedo upgrade (similar to Chardaan Refit) that gives a heavily discounted cannon upgrade.