For me, it is the ships. I like all the toys and want to cram in the fanciest upgrades. I even played a Rhymer Redline cutlass build the other day.

Here is my example of what I'm getting at. Rhymer is goofy and frankly does not work in squad building. I looked at advanced homers and wanted to give him a go. So instead of doing what I assume is the "correct" thing, and picking efficient ships to add to Rhymer, I pick another ship I want to fly. Redline, now I know Redline and Rhymer together can't possibly work well together, but I wanted to fly the both of them so... I pick another ship. The cutlass with accuracy corrector.

I see this squad building method as basically inefficient. Rhymer should probably have very efficient squad mates if there can be any hope for him. But... There you go. That's how I end up putting squads together. They are not all this bad I swear!

Ain't no problem with that. The game's supposed to be fun - fly who you want to fly, and what you want to fly.

So Rhymer and Redline may not be the most statistically "efficient" options. That doesn't mean that they can't potentially give an "efficient" list a nasty surprise with the right load out, deployment and cunning tricks. You just need to know what you want to do with your ships, form a plan, prioritise your targets and off you go.

[anecdotal evidence] I faced a 40+ point Kavil the other week in a local tournament. Literally loaded for bear with pretty much every upgrade slot filled. That's probably far from the most efficient option, but it did really well. I faced him on the top table in the last round, and you know what? Not only was it a nail bitingly close final, it was also probably one of the most enjoyable games I'd had all day. [/anecdotal evidence]

Would love to give our ordnance-aces a spin myself sometime soon! I always liked Rhymer, as we often used him when my collection was still small and there weren't many options.

Thats the beauty of the game. You can pretty much do whatever and as long as you and your opponent are kind of on the same page you will still have a blast.

In my local meta we start the night off with super meta lists or attempts to counter the meta, and as the night goes on by game 4 it is single IG and Kath, or Pope shuttle and a defender. Play to have fun if someone is testing a list for a event play meta for him. if it is just a game for fun fly the M3A with HLC swarm. it is your Toy and no one can tell you how not to play with it.

I fly Soontir, Juno and Maarek together cause they're my 3 favorite pilots in the lore.

I'm just lucky that they're all also rather good at the moment.

When I'm building my tourney squads I usually run into funny list building spots. I will pick a ship or two i really want to fly then quickly get stuck on the last ship. I think this is why the rebel 3 aces has been behind the meta for so long. It's hard to list build a piece at a time and end up with a big picture kind kf squad. This same type of squad building has kept me away from 4 ship rebels and mini swarms.