Hello there, fellow dice-thrower!

You and I ahve seen a number of threads around on faction-specific things and attempts to replicate them.

But that makes us wonder: should there always be another faction replicas?

First, let's see the doctrines!

Empire is supposed to be all about swarms of disposeable pilots, nimble and evasive aces and terror doctrine, via stress control. Shields are expensive and inefficient!

Rebel scum are about survivability and synergy. They buff each other and live longer due to excessive shielding and regen capability. Have epic flying pancake turrets.

Scum Mercs are about selfishness, aggression and one-use-wonder abilities. They tend to lean towards dangerous high-yeild tactics and make their enemy lifes miserable.

Now let's see what we have

Empire has swarms, arcdodgers and lacks terror doctrine whatsover.

Stressers are Rebel Captive and Kath Scarlett (who's a pirate, mind you!)

Rebels have it all, and even more, because they got their hands onto arcdoges and have the best control options

Mercs have de-buffers, pilots with fluffy (lore-wise) abilities and all that. Some illicits are one-use wonders that are as dangerous to you as to the enemy. And mostly lack the good pilots, use outdated ships or await theif ™Fixes

I hardly can propose anything, but clearly seen is one thing: rebels got too many toys.

Stress is supposed to be an Empire thing, and Mercs are overcosted in most cases (despite Scyks being cheaper than Ties in lore)

Maybe when X-wing stops being Boostwing things might actually get better

I do feel Rebels and Imperials have drifted too close together, with the Z-95 providing the cheap fodder.

I would like to see a refocusing of the faction flavour. Especially the Rebels should go back into their niche.

I'd say the rebels need to get out of other's niches

and that's not about the Z-95, it has other roles than the swarm. Because it has no damage

Imps need less whiny fanboys

Imps need less whiny fanboys

?

Tie Fighters are much more nimble than Z-95s, both require different playstyles to make them work

The thing is, we're 8 waves in. As the game has grown in age, complexity and expansions, the lines between the factions will increasingly become blurred. You can't really have a thriving and sustainable game without that happening.

Should we go back and ban the Decimator, because turrets are a rebel thing? Should scum not be allowed Y-Wings? I thought bombs were an Imperial thing, maybe we should ban rebels and their K-Wings?

If your point is that the distinctions between the factions are becoming more and more fuzzy, then yes I agree, but that's only natural and not really a problem.

If your point is that this is all a real problem for the game, then I disagree. One thing FFG have done brilliantly is that as the game has aged, they've continually been able to shake up the meta in innovative ways that enable an increasingly wide variety of list types and playstyles.

The thing is, we're 8 waves in. As the game has grown in age, complexity and expansions, the lines between the factions will increasingly become blurred. You can't really have a thriving and sustainable game without that happening.

Nonsense. Starcraft has 3 factions, with varying playstyles. Magic has 5 colours, each with their own distinct flavour. There are tons of games with asymmetrical factions.

The thing is, we're 8 waves in. As the game has grown in age, complexity and expansions, the lines between the factions will increasingly become blurred. You can't really have a thriving and sustainable game without that happening.

Nonsense. Starcraft has 3 factions, with varying playstyles. Magic has 5 colours, each with their own distinct flavour. There are tons of games with asymmetrical factions.

Except starcraft is balanced around each unit having a glaring, exploitable weakness. It works great for that game but wouldn't work for X Wing. Each ship (yes, even the HWK) needs to be a self-contained unit by its nature.

The thing is, we're 8 waves in. As the game has grown in age, complexity and expansions, the lines between the factions will increasingly become blurred. You can't really have a thriving and sustainable game without that happening.

Nonsense. Starcraft has 3 factions, with varying playstyles. Magic has 5 colours, each with their own distinct flavour. There are tons of games with asymmetrical factions.

MTG colors are governed, by the 'color pie' which itself isn't an absolute set of rules. Keywords and abilities get shared throughout all 5 colors.

The thing is, we're 8 waves in. As the game has grown in age, complexity and expansions, the lines between the factions will increasingly become blurred. You can't really have a thriving and sustainable game without that happening.

Nonsense. Starcraft has 3 factions, with varying playstyles. Magic has 5 colours, each with their own distinct flavour. There are tons of games with asymmetrical factions.

Yet in magic there are many overlapping playstyles and some distinct features have shifted from one colour to an other.

Hmmm. I kind of agree. One thing I will say - the bleed certainly feels unilateral: regen, super-synergy and tanking all seem to be rebel only, and are often considered no-no's when we're all spitballing ideas - eg 'defender shouldn't get regen', 'synergy's a rebel word', etc. Bombing, swarming and dodging have long ago ceased to be the exclusive domain of the imperial fleet, however, and it's about to lose cloaking as a usp too.

I'm not sure this is a problem though. Each faction still has its own very obvious flavour, and we're seeing unparralelled diversity in list building, so benefit of the doubt should be given, don't you think? If wave 9 is yet another 2-attack imperial ship I may whimper a little, though.

I'm not sure I agree that the Scum & Villainy faction is all about 1-shot wonders. I think that's a good assessment for the Illicit slot, but not the faction as a whole.

In the Illicit slot, we have the following:

Inertial Dampeners (1-shot)

"Hot Shot" Blaster (1-shot)

Glitterstim (1-shot)

Dead Man's Switch (1-shot)

Feedback Array (multiple -- but finite -- uses)

Cloaking Device (indeterminate uses, but prone to failure)

But you see, the pilot abilities and the ships themselves do not have this one-shot nature to them (well, okay, maybe the Scyks do).

Meanwhile we have ordnance that originated with torpedoes for the Rebels and missiles for the Imperials. Those are 1-shots. Adrenaline Rush also comes to mind, as does Crack Shot (which is a faction-less EPT). Other examples include mines and bombs which are now shared across all factions. Also you have R5-X3 and Chewbacca on the Rebels and Salvaged Astromech with the S&V.

So what is Scum & Villainy's flavor? I'd like it to be hurting themselves for a benefit (like Feedback Array), but the Dark Lord of the Sith has been doing that even better since wave 3.

We can't even say they are that selfish when the same wave that gave us Kaato and Xizor also gave us Serissu who buffs her comrades and IG-88 who shares his ability with all other IG-88s. Granted, IG-88 is just a copy of himself, so it is kind of selfish.

Scum has some nice disruptive abilities, but Palob is just a variation of Jax and Torkhil is an perversion of Roark. Granted, I do like the way they turned out, but it's hard to argue there is anything faction-specific about these abilities. But I think they represent the future of X-Wing: we'll see common strategies, mechanics, and motifs used across factions, but with little twists. Instead of helping a friend like Roark does, Torkhil stymies the enemy. Instead of sacrificing himself like Chewbacca, Jerjerrod throws his subordinates (and sometimes his superiors) out the airlock. IG-88A can regenerate shields, but it takes wanton destruction to do it.

Umm, it's late and I'm rambling, so if you found anything useful in there, congrats!

The idea that each faction needs "niches" and that some things or mechanics shouldn't be available to other factions is dumb.

Yes, Imperial method is "throw 10 times as many ships as they have at them. They're cheap, our pilots are disposable and our resources are endless."

But it's a game, with mechanics. The empire doesn't get 10x the ships. They don't get thousands of Fighters for every Defender. Rare and powerful ships aren't actually rare. They're as common as the players who want to play them are.

I'd say the rebels need to get out of other's niches

Rebels are only just getting a 4 attack ship of their own. The slant towards rebels is not as unilateral as you might think. Rebels dont have a true arc dodging high PS ace like Soontir or EU Vader and lack the pilot movement shenanigans that imps take for granted. While they might have gained swarm ships, the Z95 is not a true swarmer in the TIE vein. Imps have retarded fat turrets too now.

As for super-synergy, I dont think so. Rebel synergy is pretty weak compared to Howlie the super swarm buffer and Kagi for example. Its highly situational and the imp synergies and support characters feel more fleet wide than he rebel stuff does. Bar Biggs's security blanket the Rebel synergies are limited in range and usually to one target. You have to work harder to get value from them.

Regen is probably the one tool that Rebels get uniquely that hasnt been stolen yet.

I dont see much cross over between rebels and imps. rebs have lots of turrets. rebs only have a few aces that arent as all-round as the imperial aces.

Stress is definitely NOT a factor specific thing. Get that out of your head.

Rebels are only just getting a 4 attack ship of their own. The slant towards rebels is not as unilateral as you might think. Rebels dont have a true arc dodging high PS ace like Soontir or EU Vader and lack the pilot movement shenanigans that imps take for granted. While they might have gained swarm ships, the Z95 is not a true swarmer in the TIE vein. Imps have retarded fat turrets too now.

As for super-synergy, I dont think so. Rebel synergy is pretty weak compared to Howlie the super swarm buffer and Kagi for example. Its highly situational and the imp synergies and support characters feel more fleet wide than he rebel stuff does. Bar Biggs's security blanket the Rebel synergies are limited in range and usually to one target. You have to work harder to get value from them.

Regen is probably the one tool that Rebels get uniquely that hasnt been stolen yet.

Rebels have tanks, rebels have arcdodgers, regeneration, stress control, uber-maneuverable turrets,

Rebels can boost each other's attack, spread tokens, share tokens, buff PS, buff attack ability.

Sensor-PTL Horn MURDERS anything below his PS. not PS9? Well, sounds good.

Katarn-PTL-Engine-Dash murders anything PS6 or lower.

Yeah, I DO understand they've won in the story, but it sounds a bit dull.

And one-sided.

I somehow don't see lots of Imps or mercs in the tops of the tournaments...

Stress control and overally stress is an Imperial doctrine idea and centrepiece.

Ask Tarkin

*sigh* ..

So you lost to Rebels once?

I've won 18 tournaments out of 20 (imdaar assaults, store champs, local) over past 2 years, got top 4 at regionals and top 8 at another. All imperial. Imperials have more stress specific cards then rebels, Kath, rebel cap, and Mara. Corn burns and dies under focused fire like any small ship. Nor is he auto win against anything lower PS then him, not by far. Imperial aces usually have better all around pilot abilities and high skill than their rebel counter parts.

There are lots of differences in build type between all three factions. What I see is people getting in a rut of trying to copy a theme from a "netlist" to their particular faction. Stop doing that and your options open up 10 fold.

I'm not sure what this guy is on- rebels, imperials, and scum are pretty different. Corran Horn and Poe Dameron are the best rebel aces but they're more expensive than the best imperial aces(the PTL Corran build you mentioned is extremely expensive). The rebels do have a good arc dodger, by the way(Jake Farrell).

I don't think factions generally all having a way to do things takes from diversity- they all do it differently. Fat Han is different from RAC/Fel and Super Dash, for example. Also, Super Dash isn't the be all and end all and is beatable, either by brobots who have better defense and are more dominant at range 3, swarms who can block him and take away his actions, or even aces that can get and stay in his donut hole.

Rebels are only just getting a 4 attack ship of their own. The slant towards rebels is not as unilateral as you might think. Rebels dont have a true arc dodging high PS ace like Soontir or EU Vader and lack the pilot movement shenanigans that imps take for granted. While they might have gained swarm ships, the Z95 is not a true swarmer in the TIE vein. Imps have retarded fat turrets too now.

As for super-synergy, I dont think so. Rebel synergy is pretty weak compared to Howlie the super swarm buffer and Kagi for example. Its highly situational and the imp synergies and support characters feel more fleet wide than he rebel stuff does. Bar Biggs's security blanket the Rebel synergies are limited in range and usually to one target. You have to work harder to get value from them.

Regen is probably the one tool that Rebels get uniquely that hasnt been stolen yet.

Baffled.

Rebels are only just getting a 4 attack ship of their own. The slant towards rebels is not as unilateral as you might think. Rebels dont have a true arc dodging high PS ace like Soontir or EU Vader and lack the pilot movement shenanigans that imps take for granted. While they might have gained swarm ships, the Z95 is not a true swarmer in the TIE vein. Imps have retarded fat turrets too now.

As for super-synergy, I dont think so. Rebel synergy is pretty weak compared to Howlie the super swarm buffer and Kagi for example. Its highly situational and the imp synergies and support characters feel more fleet wide than he rebel stuff does. Bar Biggs's security blanket the Rebel synergies are limited in range and usually to one target. You have to work harder to get value from them.

Regen is probably the one tool that Rebels get uniquely that hasnt been stolen yet.

Did you really just say that Captain flaming Kagi is a superior synergy ship to any in the rebel fleet??? And that the z95 isn't a swarm ship? And that rebels don't have access to the same pilot movement as imperials? And that rebels don't have any high ps arc dodgers?

Baffled.

The tie fighter flies way differently from the Z-95 and is a bit more action-dependent defensively but is more maneuverable, significantly so. This is an important distinction. The rebels and imperials both have swarm ships, but they work differently. The rebel aces are different in a lot of ways from the imperial aces, though you can get a PS9 arc dodger in both factions. Jake is different from Soontir even though they're in the same category.

Most of the competitive builds don't even use the rebel HWKs or directly synergistic things anyway. All factions have synergy, it's just not always on the cards.

"The tie fighter flies way differently from the Z-95 and is a bit more action-dependent defensively but is more maneuverable, significantly so. This is an important distinction. The rebels and imperials both have swarm ships, but they work differently. The rebel aces are different in a lot of ways from the imperial aces, though you can get a PS9 arc dodger in both factions. Jake is different from Soontir even though they're in the same category."

Sure. I agree on every point. Hard not to.

The showing of ships like Kyle, Biggs, Garvin, etc., at worlds is irrelevant - as is the fact that bombs were almost nonexistant there too. We're talking about unique build characteristics of the three factions aren't we? The design space available to players when list building? Well, in that case, what I said stands: rebels have kept their design space relatively sovereign, imperials haven't. But like I also said, that isn't necessarily a bad thing, the factions are all realy well flavoured, and all viable...

The imperials got a very strong defensive upgrade in Palpatine, where defensive upgrades are generally considered a rebel thing. Also almost all stress generators are faction independent, and imperials do have the unique rebel captive that can inflict with no downside.