Most people talking about TLTs right now are reasoning based on limited experience in a metagame that (as it was with the release of the Phantom) is not only unprepared for TLT but is specifically countered by it. People like KineticOperator who have more experience with it are confident that it's balanced.

In fact, and interestingly, I think he did raise the alarm originally about the phantom.

I think you may be grouping up all TLT lists together. Which, while somewhat understandable when talking about a specific ship, is not necessarily something that should be done with a specific upgrade. The squad that won the Nova Open is very, very different than the 4x TLT Y-wing squad being complained about here.

It is a strong, squad, No one is denying it. I just look at the available counters that you can build with it, some of them already pretty popular (Autothrusters), and compare to the counters available to the Phantom, which was turret or adapt flying style.

And again, there is a difference between a squad winning vs a squad dominating. One isn't necesarily a problem. The other tends to be a bad sigh.

Good point. Richard Hsu mentions on the NOVA squadron podcast that he took this list to a tournament and at least lost a couple of games, so that's a good player not outright dominating with TLTs.

TLT when brought do well in the 3 major tournaments recently. Nova open, Polish Nationals, and Spanish Nationals. Not everyone neccesarily had access to TLT, but the ones that made the cut did well.

Plus the other tournament mentioned just up thread that had several TLT placing in elimination.

Ok, well, I'll mention that I've both seen and heard of several not making the top half in tournaments, too.

I don't use octopus to predict x wing. ;-)

ACD Whisper's pre nerf success was enterily predictable by mathematical models. She has a (PS derated) jousting efficiency > 100%. That by itself is not neccesarily broken, but when combined with unique arc dodging capabilities it simultaneously became 2 of the 3 pillars overnight. (Efficient, dodgey, no turret).

Many different people have many different opinions. Many or most of them carry little weight. Even as recently as several months ago, in a BGG poll a majority of people did not think the X-wing needed a fix.

The fundamental mathematics however has never been wrong about predicting how ships will do. TLT scores very well in 2 pillars at once: cost effiency (scores slightly lower than reference TIE Fighter or ACD Phantom), and turret (scores slightly lower than reference full turret).

Based on this, it will have a slightly smaller effect on the meta than ACD phantom. Unfortunately that isn't saying much given how polarizing the phantom was.

There are also some specifics of TLT mechanics that I still haven't finished analyzing, that will provide some further mathematical insight / prediction. I'm not getting paid to do FFG's design job post release. When I do finish the analysis I will probably wait to publish it until after Worlds at this point.

Shadow - player skill is the dominant factor, so without knowing player skill it is only meaningful to look at the top results. Although, this can be used to demonstrate that flying 4 TLT is still a skill game.

I understand Mathematics. The language of the universe. You should learn it.

Plus I've been a game player since 1979.

Take a step back. I haven't been playing games since 1979, but I have been playing X-wing since launch, and I've also done a little bit of math.

I still disagree with you. 4 TLTs currently appear to be a very strong list, but that's in part because the metagame hasn't come to terms with them yet. A lot of people are still building and flying lists rooted in the Wave 5-6 metagame, and many of those lists--especially two-ship lists--are not particularly functional in a metagame that also includes TLT.

Not going to lie, I am having some of the most fun in experimenting with the counters than anything else. StarVipers w/Authothrusters are fun. I want to test out generic Phantoms with Sensor Jammer. Palpatine in general. Poe Dameron, the boss. Luke. Tempests w/Cluster Missiles. I mean, that is in general, the state of the game right now, that is so much interesting things to try out. That is where the benefit of TLT comes. It opens things up, since Big Turret w/aces isn't as prominent.

Of course, I may be weird. I don't get overally attached to squads, so I love experimenting.

This is the attitude my friend and I have. We've tried different counters to the 4Y build. The first 5 were failures though 4BZ came the closet till last nite. IG B and C beat them badly. Twice. I played IGs once before maybe 5 or 6 months ago and I'm not a strong player.

The 4Y + TLT is not invincible. It's just very different from what you have played against. As mentioned elsewhere your tactics and squads need to adapt.

Also, I don't understand the reaction to bringing a tournament level build to a casual game. How are you supposed to get better flying a list if you can't play it outside of a tourney? That's definitely a Catch 22.

Why is playing to win, in casual games bad? Don't you (editorial you) bring your A game when you play. Even if you're trying out a new build don't you fly it the best you can? My friend and I are pretty evenly matched meaning our win-loss ratio against each other is about 50%. At our flgs I'm 0-4. One of the guys I've played against finished in the top 8 at a tourney in either Chicago or Indianapolis. He's no slouch when it comes to X-wing. I don't mind losing to a better player. That's how you improve your game. That's why you play different squads. You want to be able to understand the interaction between ships in your build.

If you get upset over a game, don't play it. It's obviously no fun for you and probably no fun for your opponent either.

This started out as an agreement to experimenting with builds. I let it go on because I was too lazy to start a new reply.

It may turn out that the people raising red flags about the TLT have the right answer, but right they're in the position of someone betting on the World Cup based on the predictions of an octopus. Being right is good, but knowing why you're right is a lot more important, and one or two games is not enough to come to a well-supported conclusion.

With regards to the TLT, I mostly agree with you, but the analogy with the octopus is a terrible one. The claim that the 4TLT list is too powerful (or related) is very different from the claim that the octopus can predict footballmatches.

I have yet to see an example of TLT doing poorly in a large tournament since wave 7 was released.

Could you clarify this statement? Do you mean that all TLT lists do well or that in every large tournament since its release, we've seen at least one TLT list make the top cut? I assume it is the latter.

Time will tell, but if all we see are TLT lists or their counters in the top 8, then that would be a bad thing for the game and what we saw with the phantom. I don't think we'll see quite that dichotomy with TLTs.

I'll add that simply having to consider a list in the meta is not a sign of it being meta-warping, it's simply a sign of a competitive list. It can be more than that, but not necessarily.

TLT is only a near autowin against 2-Ship squads because they usually lack the firepower to deal with 32 hp fast enough and take a nearly fixed amount of 7-8 damage on their large ship. Most other competitive Squadrons are very well able to beat TLT.

It's also good against semi-durable expensive arc-dodgers, but against really tanky stuff like Corran with sensor jammer, R2-D2, PTL the limits of TLT show. I tried it and took only 3 damage over 2 full turns with focus/evade. While the rest of my list killed the Y's. And Corran did recharge 2 of those 3 on top of that. This is no mathematical evidence of course, but it gives you an idea that stuff exists that hard-counters TLT

And you don't even meed 100% hard counters like you needed against Phantoms. If you had no HLC 360 or PS10-11 ship, you lost. Here you have a bit more leeway in listbuilding at least!

Shadow - player skill is the dominant factor, so without knowing player skill it is only meaningful to look at the top results. Although, this can be used to demonstrate that flying 4 TLT is still a skill game.

So, what you were getting at with the statement I originally quoted is that once those lists make the final cut so far, they do very well. Fair enough.

I don't use octopus to predict x wing. ;-)

ACD Whisper's pre nerf success was enterily predictable by mathematical models...

The fundamental mathematics however has never been wrong about predicting how ships will do. TLT scores very well in 2 pillars at once: cost effiency (scores slightly lower than reference TIE Fighter or ACD Phantom), and turret (scores slightly lower than reference full turret).

Based on this, it will have a slightly smaller effect on the meta than ACD phantom. Unfortunately that isn't saying much given how polarizing the phantom was.

I understand and agree with all of that. TLT is a very strong upgrade, and TLT Y-wings are efficient and effective ships.

But most people aren't using the tools you are. Someone upthread won three games with 4Y TLT against Han/Dash, Luke/Biggs/Kyle, and Vader/Soontir/Kir Kanos, and on that basis concluded that TLT was too strong. The implied counterfactual is that other competitive lists would have lost at least one of those matches, which... would require some demonstration for me.

The tournament results are more persuasive, but even in those cases there are enough asterisks to go around. In general, TLT appears to be quite successful; but the TLT spam list in particular, while certainly winning games, also appears to be losing to other top-tier lists in a way Phantoms really didn't.

It may turn out that the people raising red flags about the TLT have the right answer, but right they're in the position of someone betting on the World Cup based on the predictions of an octopus. Being right is good, but knowing why you're right is a lot more important, and one or two games is not enough to come to a well-supported conclusion.

With regards to the TLT, I mostly agree with you, but the analogy with the octopus is a terrible one. The claim that the 4TLT list is too powerful (or related) is very different from the claim that the octopus can predict footballmatches.

I was going for funny rather than accurate.

The point of the comparison was that if I bet money based on the octopus, and I win, that doesn't mean the octopus is actually doing some kind of sophisticated prediction--and, more to the point, it doesn't mean relying on the octopus was a good idea.

The pre-nerf phantom warped the meta because you had to build your competitive list taking it into account.

Likewise, TLT Y-wings are warping the meta because you have to build your competitive list taking it into account.

Both are/were overwhelmingly strong archetypes relative to other meta archetypes, and merely "flying better" is insufficient to counter it at the competitive level. This inherently lowers build diversity in the competitive meta, as people are forced into the straight-jacket of either flying it, or trying to fly its counter.

I have yet to see an example of TLT doing poorly in a large tournament since wave 7 was released.

The point of the comparison was that if I bet money based on the octopus, and I win, that doesn't mean the octopus is actually doing some kind of sophisticated prediction--and, more to the point, it doesn't mean relying on the octopus was a good idea.

Sorry for bringing this up, but this is a subject that interests me, so bear with me. Using Bayesian formulae, you can calculate the probability that the claim 'the octopus can predict footballmatches' is right. However, logically, this probability will always turn out to be zero, because the a priori probability with which you multiply is zero. So no matter how many times the octopus has it right, it will never be proven that it knows anything about football. Inductively, that is (a very important caveat here!)

But in the case of X-Wing players who complain about the 4TLT list, the process is somewhat different. These players don't just pick a list and see how well the hypothesis "this list is overpowered" holds up. They are prejudiced against it - for obvious reasons. Let's face it - the list looks dangerous when you think about it for a few minutes. Without ever playing it, you have some idea about how powerful it can be. Is this the correct idea? Meh. You and I probably think the same about this.

Prejudiced players will tend to view a game with The List as a test of their presuppositions. And quite often, they will see that presupposition confirmed, or more formally, corroborated. Does this lead to truth? Often not. Is it justified? Corroboration is tricky because we often rely on it even though it's basically fallacious. But what it does mean is that statistics are for the large part irrelevant, because games are seen as experiments rather than tests of unknown probabilities. The "overpowered!" cry comes from looking at the list, the results from tournaments are seen as either defeating or corroborating that hypothesis. This can be very subjective, but it can also be entirely rational. The difference is that the starting hypothesis is something that actually makes reasonable sense, to some degree. Call it a conjecture, if you will. A bold one, perhaps, but testable, and not plucked out of thin air. The fact that we have reasons for our conjectures makes that we don't treat them in a pure statistical manner, but rather in a 'falsificationist' way.

Simply put, when I look at an octopus I do not think "he sure looks like he knows his football." But when I look at 4 TLT-carrying Y-Wings I think "Yikes!". This matters a lot for dealing with these cases.

The point of the comparison was that if I bet money based on the octopus, and I win, that doesn't mean the octopus is actually doing some kind of sophisticated prediction--and, more to the point, it doesn't mean relying on the octopus was a good idea.

Sorry for bringing this up, but this is a subject that interests me, so bear with me. Using Bayesian formulae, you can calculate the probability that the claim 'the octopus can predict footballmatches' is right. However, logically, this probability will always turn out to be zero, because the a priori probability with which you multiply is zero. So no matter how many times the octopus has it right, it will never be proven that it knows anything about football. Inductively, that is (a very important caveat here!)

But in the case of X-Wing players who complain about the 4TLT list, the process is somewhat different. These players don't just pick a list and see how well the hypothesis "this list is overpowered" holds up. They are prejudiced against it - for obvious reasons. Let's face it - the list looks dangerous when you think about it for a few minutes. Without ever playing it, you have some idea about how powerful it can be. Is this the correct idea? Meh. You and I probably think the same about this.

Prejudiced players will tend to view a game with The List as a test of their presuppositions. And quite often, they will see that presupposition confirmed, or more formally, corroborated. Does this lead to truth? Often not. Is it justified? Corroboration is tricky because we often rely on it even though it's basically fallacious. But what it does mean is that statistics are for the large part irrelevant, because games are seen as experiments rather than tests of unknown probabilities. The "overpowered!" cry comes from looking at the list, the results from tournaments are seen as either defeating or corroborating that hypothesis. This can be very subjective, but it can also be entirely rational. The difference is that the starting hypothesis is something that actually makes reasonable sense, to some degree. Call it a conjecture, if you will. A bold one, perhaps, but testable, and not plucked out of thin air. The fact that we have reasons for our conjectures makes that we don't treat them in a pure statistical manner, but rather in a 'falsificationist' way.

Simply put, when I look at an octopus I do not think "he sure looks like he knows his football." But when I look at 4 TLT-carrying Y-Wings I think "Yikes!". This matters a lot for dealing with these cases.

Someone's a math major!

Someone's a math major!

No, geology in fact. I like philosophy though.

After sleeping on this, I wanted to come back and try to clarify one more time.

I personally believe the TLT is a little bit underpriced at 6 points. I also believe the TLT would have been too expensive to be really useful at 8 points. I have no firm, objective basis for that belief other than my personal experience playing over a dozen games with them (on both sides). However, MajorJuggler's work points in the same direction: TLT is noticeably more efficient than other turrets, although still not as efficient as the game's top-tier jousters.

Neither of those things imply, however, that the TLT is too powerful. I'm a smart person but I'm wrong all the time. MJ's work has a lot of empirical success in predicting the metagame, but it can't answer every possible question about the game.

A number of other people appear to have concluded that TLTs are some combination of :

• drastically overpowered,
• too easy to play,
• not fun to play,
• not fun to play against, or
• going to drastically narrow the metagame.

It may turn out that those people are right, but if they are it's a "type III error"--coming to the correct conclusion, but for the wrong reasons. The only way to reach such a dramatic conclusion would be if emerging evidence from a large number of games indicates that lists with TLTs, or TLT spam in particular, wins games and places at tournaments at a substantially higher rate than its rate of participation.

***

@Lingula: I don't think the falsificationist framework is a particular problem here. You definitely can compose a list and play it with the objective of discovering whether the match provides support for the hypothesis that the list is too powerful.

The problem is confirmation bias. People look at a list, think "hey, that looks really powerful". Then they win a game (or three) with it, and that looks like conclusive evidence: I was right! It's too powerful! But "I was right!" is a conclusion everybody needs to guard against all the time, because it's really attractive. What else was going on during that test? Are there other plausible alternative explanations for the outcome, besides my hypothesis? If so, you're going to need another test.

But a plausible hypothesis with limited evidence is still just a hypothesis... and the more extreme the hypothesis (e.g., "Y-wings with TLT seem to have higher efficiency against typical targets than other turrets" versus "TLT spam is completely broken!") the stronger the evidence you need.

I don't understand the complaints about having to consider TLT's in the meta. It's not as dominating as the pre-nerf Phantom meta, and isn't as dominating as the Fat Turretwing one. Unless of course you think your fat turret being easily killed for once is OP.

I don't really care that 60 point ships won't be a thing anymore. Dash will still be viable, just not with 22 points of power upgrades stacked on it. Why not throw a Mangler and Determination on Leebo and call it a day? Why not a generic or Vrill with Outrider and HLC? These ships will still be playable, just with lighter builds. 16 health even at 0 agility takes a few TLT volleys to kill, boost in with your PS 3(!) Patrol Leader and get in a croissant or two. The Hound's Tooth is similarly good at closing with quad TLT and with cheap ways to super modify your attacks with Bossk Gunner Tactician you should have an easy time pouring on the damage.

4TLT is having such a competitive success because the current ecosystem is dominated by lists that have virtually extinguished 4TLT's natural predators. And it happens that 4TLT is a natural predator to these dominant lists.

I don't really care that 60 point ships won't be a thing anymore.

And once again, looking at what's coming, I think you are very much mistaken. The Ghost is going easily crack that, and I doubt they are making such a popular ship unviable.

Ah, this last page. Reminds me of the summer of 2010.

Early morning flight out from Manchester to Dusseldorf, taking the Eurobahn to Oberhausen (home of the world-famous Paul) and getting roaringly drunk with the locals while watching Germany absolutely dominate Argentina in the World Cup, followed by grown men in spandex pretending to kick several shades out of each other.

Good times.

I don't really care that 60 point ships won't be a thing anymore.

And once again, looking at what's coming, I think you are very much mistaken. The Ghost is going easily crack that, and I doubt they are making such a popular ship unviable.

How much is the highest PS pilot? What is it, like high 30's, low 40's? Just don't stick 50 points of upgrades on the **** thing.

I don't consider the shippette to be part of its cost.

I don't really care that 60 point ships won't be a thing anymore.

And once again, looking at what's coming, I think you are very much mistaken. The Ghost is going easily crack that, and I doubt they are making such a popular ship unviable.

How much is the highest PS pilot? What is it, like high 30's, low 40's? Just don't stick 50 points of upgrades on the **** thing.

I don't consider the shippette to be part of its cost.

Then you aren't really building a Ghost, then. The Phantom is essentially a 18+ upgrade. That puts the base potential of a Ghost around 52. But, to truly use the title, you need to add a turret upgrade. So, more points. The thing is going to be a major point sink. I somehow doubt that the thing is an Agressor. I just don't see the advantage of not using the title, since it essentially cuts off your rear arc. Can it work, sure. But I am willing to bet that the designers worked pretty hard to make a fully upgraded Ghost viable.

From what I can see, the TLT list is great at kicking the butt of pre-Wave 7 meta. That means Fat Turrets and 2-3 ship lists. Therefore, people are decrying it as overpowered. What was once considered powerful is now no longer so.

I'm thinking that it will take a different approach to beat TLT's than what has commonly been considered successful. One method I can think of is a powerful alpha strike to knock out one or two Y-wings very quickly. One way to do this is with something like ordnance. Ordnance is considered bad and uncompetitive right now, even though there have been numerous minor tweaks to ordnance. Perhaps if competitive people considered options that were previously considered not good options, they might have more success against TLT's. The meta is shifting.

There are other options, as well. Mid-PS ships to shoot first are now popping up all over the place. This also helps against Predator. Pre-wave 7 was all about going as high as you can, or as low as you can. 2nd tier generics are considered better nowadays.

There are some pilots such as Laetin or Graz the Hunter that were scoffed at before, but could potentially be very useful against TLT's. It's possible that people's previous opinions of these ships (and others like them) could exclude them from considering viable ships to use against TLT's.

When the meta is in such a state of flux as it is now, it's best to re-evaluate what is out there. There can be new combos with old ships that improve them against new threats like never before. If you get stuck in the old way of thinking, you will surely decry TLT's as unbeatable.

The point of the comparison was that if I bet money based on the octopus, and I win, that doesn't mean the octopus is actually doing some kind of sophisticated prediction--and, more to the point, it doesn't mean relying on the octopus was a good idea.

Sorry for bringing this up, but this is a subject that interests me, so bear with me. Using Bayesian formulae, you can calculate the probability that the claim 'the octopus can predict footballmatches' is right. However, logically, this probability will always turn out to be zero, because the a priori probability with which you multiply is zero. So no matter how many times the octopus has it right, it will never be proven that it knows anything about football. Inductively, that is (a very important caveat here!)

I'm confused. Why wouldn't you use an equally weighted flat prior for all outcomes?

I'm confused. Why wouldn't you use an equally weighted flat prior for all outcomes?

T0: The octopus can predict no matches.

T1: The octopus can predict Iceland vs. The Netherlands, but no others.

T2: The octopus can predict Iceland vs. The Netherlands, and the return, but no other matches.

Etcetera. Or you can put it like this:

T0,1,2,3...n: The octopus can predict 0,1,2,3...n matches.

What value can n have? Any between 0 and infinity, because a perfect predictor will result in all matches being predicted, no matter how many are played. This means that there is an infinite amount of possible theories. The flat probability that a single theory is correct, is therefore 1 divided by infinity, or zero.

Does this change when the octopus has been correct a few or many times? No.

To see this you have to look at Bayes' theorem, which is used for conditional chance (I call that likelihood, which may or may not be formally correct). This formula multiplies among other things by the probability that something occurs of itself, i.e. the (prior) probability. One way to illustrate this is that if you hear a great noise upstairs, it is possible that there are butterflies flying there, or it is possible that some gremlins are bowling. Now, the butterflies have a much greater prior probability because butterflies exist and gremlins (probably) do not...but gremlins would make much more noise! *If* they really are there, you will hear that noise, but you won't hear the butterflies. So to see which scenario is more likely to occur, you have to calculate be the probability that either creatures are in your attic regardless of the noise, as well as the probability that, given that they are there, they would be making such a noise. This way, you can compare the two theories, by inserting the different conditional and unconditional values into the formula.

But if you multiply by zero, you still end up with zero. Therefore, the likelihood that the theory 'the octopus cen predict football matches' is correct, does not increase with more observations, just like the fact that no matter how much noise you hear, you will not have gremlins in your house.

so we have two victories at nationals to 4 TLTs, and one where they placed 3rd @ the highest

Doesn't one of those have an asterisk beside it, in that the TLT list was eliminated in the first round of brackets, but the other list was DQed because ... something like it didn't have an official obstacles-set selected?

Put me in the (supposedly non-existent) camp that fully recognized the brokenness of the Phantom, and doesn't see a problem (aside from cheesiness) with TLT spam. I have neither flown it -- doesn't appeal -- nor lost to it (in five or six games) since its release.