I keep seeing people refer to the 'current metagame' but being a noob, I have no idea what this is.

I mean, I know what it stands for, but what combos are currently considered meta?

A good look into the current meta would be taking a look at the Regionals results thread. A lot of Chiraneau + Soontir.

To be honest, I prefer the ortho. It's closer to home. That being said, a lot of the stuff you see on the forums is less meta and more para.

Still fat turrets. Loaded Han, loaded chirnau, some dash, a little bit of ig88. But generally turrets or bust.

A significant fraction of people are making top 8 regionals without turrets. If you plan on being near top tables you do need a plan to deal with them, but you don't necessarily need to have one to do well.

A significant fraction of people are making top 8 regionals without turrets. If you plan on being near top tables you do need a plan to deal with them, but you don't necessarily need to have one to do well.

To win though, to win you pretty much do

Small sample. I suspect the fact that most of those turret lists have been around 4 months gives their fliers a slight edge in really close matches. Most of the non-turret stuff is fairly new by comparison.

Also, someone who is asking about the meta isn't gunning to win a regional.

Well there is 2 parts of the meta.

First is the swiss round, now this is generally for large tournaments which has too many people to have everyone face everyone. So for the swiss/eliminations they go to time basically 60 minuets. Under those time constraints there are many matches that don't finish 1 players squadron by the time limit so it results into MOV as in who destroyed the most points wins. Under those conditions many players have built "point fortresses) in which over 50 points are spent in a tough ship escorted by a lower point flanker or filler escorts in which to absorb damage and tie up or destroy threats to the big ship before it goes.

The second half is the final match (or semifinal depending on the tournament) which often are un-timed so they can take hours if need be. Now while those match do not give favorable preferences to "point fortress" builds like the swiss/elimination matches you still have to clear the swiss/elimination to get to there.

So the first part of the meta is how to clear the elimination matches (not too difficult if you net list)[/darkside]

The second part is tabling all the other lists that clear the elimination matches.

WV and NJ regionals were won by Fat Dash and Fat Han, respectively.

according to recent regionals, primary weapon fatties are consistently top dog (phantoms are largely absent though, having been replaced with Soontir)

many have brought up valid reasons for why this is the case (other countries took longer to get their wave 6 goodies, we're still used to competitive wave 5 and not sure how to play non-2 ship builds etc.)

regardless of the reason, though, you'll still be seeing plenty of fat turrets sadly and your builds have to be able to take them on.

this basically means you either compete with your own 2-ship lists with similar damage mitigation (S&V large ships are particularly capable here, especially auto-thruster IGs), or you slap auto-thrusters on anything that can take it (imo, apart from most A-wings since they're damage inefficient enough and pretty defensive as is), and/or you bring enough dice so that you can not statistically auto-lose the inevitable dice-off

Regional's Top 8s has been painting a FAR better picture of an idealic meta thankfully removed from the putrid stagnation of Wave 5. We're seeing a lot of mini-swarms out there to have a prayer against turrets, including soontir + ties, Xizor + headhunters, and even crazy awesome **** like E'athn + Tarn + 3 Z-95s. Corran is coming out strong as a decided counter to most 2-ship builds, which find his evade + r2-d2 regains incredibly irritatingly difficult to punch through with only 2 attacks. Shield regaining E-wings are one of maybe 2 (Soontir?) small ships that can tango with fatties 1v1 and not automatically lose the dice off.

Until the next round of competitive events prove otherwise, though, primary weapon fatties remain the list to beat (and regardless, they remain the most aggravatingly boring match-ups in the game)

Actually, Phantoms were pretty absent at WV but all the rage at the NJ regional. I faced 3 separate phantom lists, two of which made top 4. People may have shy'd away from them for a while but they are coming back in a big annoying way.

I definitely wouldn't say "big" at all

their presence is still significantly dwarfed by soontir

not that they don't deserve to be used anymore, far from it (unless you're trying to get the poor generics to work, because the presence of turrets still necessitates ACD or something like sensor jammer to not automatically die) but this set of regionals has definitely not been any kind of big comeback for them.

Thanks folks.

Regionals for me are a long way off lol

So im reading either lots of pew pew (to tackle heavy shields) or bring heavy shields (to handle lots of pew pew).

Sound about right?

Thanks folks.

Regionals for me are a long way off lol

So im reading either lots of pew pew (to tackle heavy shields) or bring heavy shields (to handle lots of pew pew).

Sound about right?

Get it right from the horse's mouth here:

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/174268-2015-regionals-results/

Thanks folks.

Regionals for me are a long way off lol

So im reading either lots of pew pew (to tackle heavy shields) or bring heavy shields (to handle lots of pew pew).

Sound about right?

What are you looking for? What's going on at the big tables for events? Or what are local players bringing? Not everyone locally brings the filth. Not what everyone is bringing to events is what's winning. For example, you will see BBBBZ on tables, even though it's not winning.

I say play what you will enjoy playing and **** the meta.

Interesting to me that Corran lists have not won many regionals this year. It still seemed like the thing to have to beat but Corran isn't seeing much more play than phantoms are.
I count in top 8 and above:

11 Whispers with 1 win

1 echo

2 sigma

2 shadow

19 Corrans with 2 wins
15 Soontirs with 5 wins

11 Cheerios with 4 wins

13 Dash with 3 wins
10 Han with 4 wins

3 Oicunn's with 2 wins (that's interesting)

I got a little sidetracked there.Mostly bringing up the fact that Phantoms are definitely not out of the meta nor are Corrans but neither seem to be very successful right now. Top 4/8 is impressive but only one win for Phantoms and two for Corrans.

What are you looking for? What's going on at the big tables for events? Or what are local players bringing? Not everyone locally brings the filth. Not what everyone is bringing to events is what's winning. For example, you will see BBBBZ on tables, even though it's not winning.

I say play what you will enjoy playing and **** the meta.

I don't care about winning, but I'd prefer not to spend all that for 3 hours of having my butt handed to me

Is there any way to contact the local group that plays? I'm sure people there would be happy to discuss what the local player base is like. I know that my local store is really laid back. They tend to roll their eyes at hyper competitive lists. If your local group is like that, you might alienate the local players. Without contacting the local player base, I might suggest getting some of the Regional winners' lists. Then, look at some other lists that you think could be interesting to play and bring some of those. Just go open minded and see what people want to play.

I understand, though, that you need to know what is hyper competitive and what is not. The 2015 Regionals thread has all the winners listed in it, but it is a big rambling at this point.

By the way, I took the latest list of Regional winners and am posting here for ease of finding it.

A significant fraction of people are making top 8 regionals without turrets. If you plan on being near top tables you do need a plan to deal with them, but you don't necessarily need to have one to do well.

To win though, to win you pretty much do

I think that fat turrets just have greater redundancy than any other ship type and that gives them an advantage. For one, they are incredibly mobile. There are few moves they can't pull off. You want to go somewhere, you can do it. You aren't limited by your dial. They also don't have to worry about getting people into firing arc. That's huge and also works well with the first part. Maybe you messed up and guessed wrong where someone was going to be. It's still OK. You can still fire at them (in range and if you didn't bump). Next, they are highly durable. They don't give away points until they are dead dead. If you want to run from the fight to preserve points, you have a great chance of doing that. In fact, you can run very well and still fire at them!

It's not that they can't be beat or that there aren't other good lists out there. It's that you can recover from mistakes much easier than any other ship. So, even if you screw up, you can probably recover faster and better than other ship types. That's the advantage that fat turrets have. Also...these lists can put up a fight against all opponents. Things that defeat fat turrets usually don't do well vs. other types of lists. You might not make it through the early tables to fight the fat turrets if you go with a strong fat turret counter. A fat turret list usually has a decent chance against every other list type.

I think the concerning part of Ninja's statement there is that he really believes that once there is a turret in the top 8 its eventual win is inevitable. That's nonsense, but a lot of the more vocal anti-turret crowd seem to actually believe it.

If you ran all those top 8 regionals again the outcome would probably change. If you shuffled pairings they definitely would.

I really wanted to bring my 4 Tie Bomber list to Regionals, except that bro bots eats them up. The high green dice is what does it. I can nerf the fattest turrets all day long, but arc dodgers and bro bots beat me in the current meta.

Yea bombers need help. I believe it is on the way.