So I am very new to the game but so far have been enjoying the every aspect of the game. A friend of mine played a few demo games with me when we weren't in the mood for the number crunching game of Infinity (we were both very hungover and numbers sounded terrible) my local store has a huge base of x wing players which I was really excited about. After two weeks of going there I realized everyone was taking the same list, lists that you see in nationals and worlds. Don't get me wrong, being competitive is fun and winning is cool too. I am only speaking for my local meta, but it seems everyone's list is very cookie cutter. Literally copied and pasted from the major tournament winners. Is your meta like this? I like playing with new things, I like trying new stuff out. I thought casual play was supposed to be just that, casual.

At the store I play at we see a few meta build, but most are just things we think will be fun. Like at my next opportunity I'll be using 3 Khiraxz and 2 ion cannon M3-A's just to see how it goes.

At my LGS - 1 guy super hardcore comp builds, 1 guy only triple A wing, 1 guy homebrew "super comp" builds, everyone else - throws something on the table equaling 100 points and hopes it works.

I just fly whatever ship tickles my fancy on the way to the LGS, you can build a decent list around most ships ^.^

Obviously some groups are more competitive than others and it could also be that yours has been playing for longer since mine just started earlier this year.

I am VERY happy to have a store that does not play the latest "meta". We have a bunch of guys that like to play for fun. Oh, occasionally you see someone who comes out with one of "those" lists and it's OK. I really enjoy the locals I play with.

I'm the guy that's always wanting to play something different. I have a lot of minis and pull out Epic all the time. I also love the Trench Run scenario by Dagobah Dave. That draws in a lot of players when I pull that off. If I see an odd player out, I'll throw together a 3 person game. I'll also pull out scenarios from FFG's Flight Deck (that's what it's called right?) that have been highly rated or by Babaganoosh. I get a lot of players who join in for those games. Sometimes it just takes someone willing to try something different. There are some players that just don't want to play games like that, but at least there is a big enough player base that it's all good.

I also tend to like finding lists that work that are generally not considered good and playing them with those meta lists. With enough practice, you can do well. My 4 Tie Bomber list has forced a lot of players to respect Tie Bombers....all before the Wave 7 stuff came out! I'll go to tournaments in other towns and take things like Xizor w/ 5 Z-95's and love my opponent's faces when I beat them with it. I love the underdog and finding ways to take "bad" things and win. It's one of the little joys in life.

Oh, and try to find someone to play a game with just generics. It's a lot of fun! It's a different version of the same game. It's pretty refreshing every once in a while.

Our league night meta is pretty diverse. You'll see all kinds of things including the more general meta lists as well as some interesting variations on the typical meta builds.

Not sure about the local tourney meta. I haven't played in a ton of tourneys yet. Played in regionals back when that happened, mostly pretty typical tourney builds though some exceptional lists made top 8.

I will say that the latest meta is pretty wide open. It used to be all 2 ship builds, but with TLT's out there and tournament rules changing for big ships, it's opened up the field considerably. That and a lot of ships in a short time. I think now is one of the most diverse times to play X-wing in all the time the game has been out.

Well you would expect to see people running meta lists in official games with prize pools since most that enter are playing to win and those lists increase their chances.

In our group, we currently have one guy preparing a build for worlds and we are running different lists to test him.

Normally we see a mix of lists, and one guy who really likes Brobots.

I like to experiment, so will typically run something nobody has seen or tried. A lot of times it fails either due to me being inexperienced with flying the ship or just a poor list against a tournament worthy list, but it is typically a lot of fun.

Most of the popular lists are pretty fun to play a few times. They're also fun to build against as opposed to just bringing random uncompetitive lists. If you're not playing for the competitive aspect then you might feel different, but a lot of us enjoy competition. It's just more fun.

TLT spam ,brobots, Gloom Shuttle lists abound.

It sucks.

My meta is usually hardcore Fat Turretwing with the insistence that it's not obnoxious or game ruining, but lately I've been seeing a lot of triple ace lists, like ones with Super Wedges and Super Poes.

Always a lot of Soontir.

Lists with 3-4 TIE Advanceds are a thing here, and 1-2 players are BBBB(Z) guys on occasion.

Not enough players have enough Y's/TLT's to run quad TLT, so I'm the only quad TLT guy. I'm also the only swarm guy.

Generally everyone in my group will see a ship immediately load it with as many obnoxious power upgrades as possible, so not many builds that prominently feature generics outside of the occasional 3x AC Tempest and Soontir or occasional BBBB(Z) player.

Local meta is very Imperial, always has been. Havent played against a TLT list yet, and we see a lot of Advanceds and Interceptors here. Firesprays, even. Not many people are particularly super competitive, the general consensus seems to be to run anti-meta lists, which on a moral level i really appreciate. It basically means that the meta is exactly what you don't want to run, because everyone is running what can beat it. Local meta is interesting around here, for sure.

I'm lucky that the list I actually like to run is fairly good in the meta at the moment. So many Advanced pilots that would completely suck if the Raider hadn't just come out.

My local community is pretty competitive. We do occasionally like to fool around,but most lists are designed to at least give a decent account of themselves vs. tournamemt level lists.

Unless you let your opponent know you're in for a casual game, the default expectation is you want a competitive one.

Right now it's all over the place. The Wave 5-6 meta was a bit stale; mostly two ship builds with Han/Chewbacca/Leebo/Dash/Soontir/Corran/Chiraneau/Whisper. With the release of the Raider, Wave 7 and the new starter it's definitely changed for the better.

My local meta is very generalised so I will split it into the factions for ease.

Imperial:
Lots of advances and tie swarms with a lot of love for the decimator, we have a couple of players who love to fly interceptors. One player runs double firespray (don't know if they have switched to scum for this yet, they hadn't for the last tourney we ran.)

I always run Vessery and co and try to go as defender heavy as possible (still haven't quite got the hang of flying the D's bar vessery yet )

Rebel:
One player flies ONLY T-65's, another loves running mixed with a high b wing count. I love A wings and mixed aces lists and Y wings.

Scum:
One player regularly fields their own version of the brobot list, other than that I haven't seen many scum games yet although a few of us have the ships to do so. Hounds tooth is spoken highly of and several people are chomping at the bit for dengar.

Our local meta is pretty random.. List variety is huge. Every week is different. Lists are somewhat competitive though. Of course there are some top tier lists played, but mainly fun lists that can compete with "meta" lists out there.

For example I play all factions pretty regularly.. trying different ships with different combinations with clear synergies and strengths in mind.

I am happy of our situtation here in Finland as it would be boring to play same lists all over again every week.

It's different when Regionals/Nationals etc start running again..

A couple of folks at my local store play heavily into the competitive meta, a couple build close to the meta but try toying with different ships and upgrades that they haven't seen used in those builds before, I'm a nostalgic sucker, so I play lots of wave 1 and 2 lists (the game is called X-wing, I'm going to run some **** X-wings), and a few folks just throw something together and see what works for them. I think we're running the Raider scenarios next week though, so that's going to be awesome. Overall the competitive meta isn't dominant at this particular store.

Right now it's all over the place. The Wave 5-6 meta was a bit stale; mostly two ship builds with Han/Chewbacca/Leebo/Dash/Soontir/Corran/Chiraneau/Whisper. With the release of the Raider, Wave 7 and the new starter it's definitely changed for the better.

The last Store Championship at our FLGS had 2 Falcon+2400 lists, and two Corran Falcon lists at the top table. That

One of the Corran Falcon lists I did genuinely think was intriguing had Lando passing off actions to VI Corran, and had Weapons Engineer on Lando. But the games were super meh.

Our local area is just getting started. Most everyone doesn't have the collections yet to field all the top builds, so people are playing what they like and have, rather than the top tournament meta. They are slowly getting up to speed, though, so we are all growing together learning to fly better and better.

My local meta is very good. Or at least I like it. The "Meta" lists generally aren't seen outside of tournaments or tournament practice, and people are willing to try different combinations of upgrades and pilots on league nights. The squads do tend to be decent at worst, though, so utter rubbish will get roflstomped. But I like that; it means there's not a huge step up from the league nights to tournament play, which means we have a lot of good competition when the tournaments start.

The one thing that often puzzles me is how few swarms there are. A few players straight up don't have the resources to run one, but it seems that most of those that do have the resources don't seem to find the swarm archetype appealing. There's only one player who runs any kind of swarm list with any regularity; apart from him the most you'll usually see is a mini-swarm supporting an ace of some kind (which is fast becoming the "in thing" at the moment).

As a swarm player, I can think of a few reasons.

The meta has been so fat turret and high PS ace dependent for so long that the prospect of playing a list composed of TIE Fighters seems icky. Not icky even, perhaps it just doesn't enter their minds. When I look at the Kirahxz, I think "Hmm, I can run 5 of these, is that better than 4 with upgrades?", and another player immediately slaps Engine Upgrade and PtL on Talonbane and runs him with Fat Bossk.

Even the best played Swarm bleeds MoV.

You really need to have 7-8 TIE Fighters. Some players have enough, but not many. Even less so of the various Scum and Rebel variants. You can fly various Swarm+'s with less filler ships, but besides for the Tarnation build and one other guy that runs 6 Academies and an OGP with Gunner and FCS on this forum, the Swarm+ concept hasn't crossed most players' minds.

Even though you have 7-8 ships you're still vulnerable to large ship boost shenanigans and Corran skating by with 1 health just to fully regenerate and other obnoxious crap. When you play any other type of normal list against a Fat Turretwing list and you lose because of shenanigans, it's to be expected. When you play a swarm, perceived as the KING of normal ship builds and supposedly the 'paper' part of the Turret, Swarm, Phantom Triangle and STILL lose hard to shenanigans, it's more frustrating. Swarms vs. say, Chewy Corran are about a coin flip (against Chewy Corran I'd argue Chewy Corran has the advantage haha). There isn't some magic hard counter upgrade (Veteran Instincts or Rebel Captive, for example) you can slap into a swarm list to gain a leg up on the competition like you can with Fat Turretwing lists.

Swarms/other normal builds haven't been viable for a while now, so not many players have experience with them. So someone will throw together some terrible 6 ship TIE Fighter swarm with a bunch of Intimidation upgrades and lose once and never play a swarm again.

Everyone incessantly calling 5 or even 4 ship lists swarms. And then never playing an actual swarm. More of a pet peeve of mine. Saw someone on here call Quad Sigma the 'Phantom Swarm'. >_>

I think mostly it's just the cost associated with having to acquire 7-8 TIE Fighters or 7-8 Z-95's, and the general mindset of power stacking upgrades on named pilots. I have a complete set of all the ships in the game besides for the HWK pretty much so that is no longer a problem, and I have a fetish for traditional generic spam builds. I like 5x Autothruster Alpha a lot. But not every player is like that.

Whenever I ask players why they don't fly swarm, I usually get an answer about how it's a pain to have to think about 8 ships, that's also a major factor.

I used to play swarms a lot, but lately I've been trying out some other stuff.