Would someone kindly explain to this rookie what is meant by:

- Meta-Play

- Meta-Cards

- Meta-Build

- "the game's meta"

These phrases are thrown around a lot, but I am not exactly sure what they refer to in the context of the game.

They're meaningless phrases. Best to just ignore them.

...although, if you REALLY want to go down that rabbit hole, the best definition is probably "the stuff that people have seen do well elsewhere and latch on to in the hope that it will win them games as well".

In general 'meta' refers to what is commonly played in competitive environmental. If a certain list is popular in tournaments with minimal variations (for example last year a list with 4x blue squadron bwings and 1x bandit squadron z95 was very popular in that exact incarnation always) then it is said to be a 'meta list'.

They're meaningless phrases.

No they're not.

When someone uses the term meta, they normally mean things that the X-Wing community as a whole have decided are good or bad.

So when someone talks about meta lists, they typically mean lists that the community as a whole have decided are effective against almost any other list you might see playing the game.

Meta is a word generally used for one level deeper thinking. A meta play is taking a list that may not be the best, but counters what you think everyone else will bring. Meta cards are cards that are frequently used, and "the Meta" is what you think the state of the game is when thinking about what lists you expect to fly against.

For example: The wave seven meta was concentrated on 4 TLT Y-wings and how to counter them, specifically autothrusters. Options included Poe Stresshog lists, and Palp + 2 aces. These were "The Meta".

Now, with a week of wave 8, people are thinking of the "new Meta" with what people will be using now that there are new upgrades to use.

Meta?

well-done, with a side of chips please

hold the PWTs

When someone uses the term meta, they normally mean things that the X-Wing community as a whole have decided are good or bad.

...like I said. Meaningless.

- Meta-Play

- Meta-Cards

- Meta-Build

- "the game's meta"

The Metagame (game about the game/game outside the game) is the squad building element. It's predicting what you'll face and building to counter it.

The "local meta" is the general distribution of squads in your area, what's used heavily and what isn't.

"Meta-play" isn't one I've heard before, but I'd assume it's a widely used tactic.

"Meta-cards" and "meta-builds" are upgrade cards and ship builds that are used widely. If you don't know what a build is, it's an upgrade configuration for a ship (Luke Skywalker with Crackshot, R3-A2 and Integrated Astromech is a build for an X-wing, for example).

"The game's meta" is the metagame applied to the entirety of X-wing.

When someone uses the term meta, they normally mean things that the X-Wing community as a whole have decided are good or bad.

...like I said. Meaningless.

I think this is a dangerous opinion to have if you ever plan on playing in a tournament. Disagreeing with the meta's opinion on a ship's viability is fine but pretending there isn't a group of lists that the community as a whole values highly is turning your eye to a preview of what you're likely to fight in any competitive situation. The meta is what you are likely to see people flying, even if it doesn't always actually showcase all powerful or viable ships and strategies.

Metagame is where it comes from. It's basically the "game of the game". So....those that play a lot and spend time on forums and listening to podcasts have come up with ships that are preferred and ones that are considered second rate. So, if there is someone who is really into the game, they are researching and chatting with other experienced players. Many of them share list ideas and you see common list types. These list types are generally talked of as being "the meta".

4 x TLT Y-wings is being played a lot and talked about when people are discussing the game. People are building lists that can defeat this type of a list. Talking about and strategizing your list is metagaming. It's the game of the game. Thinking about what other people are going to take and how to beat it. That's what it means.

...like I said. Meaningless.

And like I said you're wrong. If you're going to play at a tournament, you have to understand what the current meta is, or else you will be playing with a serious handicap.

The meta lists may not be the best lists, they may be something some people don't consider fun. But they are what you're likely to see at store championships and beyond.

Also the term has a very clear meaning so you are are also quite simply factually wrong.

Even if you don't play in tournaments, just the mere fact that you you bring a given list because you know it's a good counter to what someone else is likely to play, you're involved in the metagame.

Thug Life tried to destroy the meta, but Thug Life was proven A LIE.

META!

Wow, I am glad I asked! Honestly, I am not trolling, and this is all helpful.

And even if a player is (for some reason) committed to ignoring -- or even building specifically counter to -- the metagame, the player still needs to be familiar with the metagame. You can't ignore something you're not aware of ... "ignore" is an active verb.

Saying "metagame is a useless term" is just bad advice. Instead, I'd suggest saying, "Your comfort level with ships, based on your playing style, is at least as important as consideration of the metagame." I don't think many X-Wing players would take issue with that as inaccurate or bad advice.

The general consensus isn't always accurate, though. I'll offer up the humble Tie Defender. It was considered bad when it first game out. People didn't think much of it at all. The podcasts panned it. Tournament enthusiasts said it was too expensive for what you get. Biophysical played it a lot and his whole list was 2 named Defenders, but didn't get too much of a chance to play at big tournaments. He finally took it and won a few really big events. He was the only person to really bring them to big events. People called it a fluke or an outlier. It's a quirk and only Biophysical could fly it. Well....since then, there have been a number of people that have started to fly it and done well with it. There have been several Tie Defenders listed in the top tables of the latest batch of Store Championships. This is all before a new expansion pack has been announced called "Imperial Vets" that improves the Tie Defender in a few ways.

Another example is people saying Tie Bombers are "not competitive". I've developed a few lists that is nothing but Tie Bombers and done very well at tournaments with them. I've learned quite a bit. I did just decide to not bother with Store Championships lately or else I would've seen how well my lists would do at a big event.

In other words, there is general ideas about how good or bad certain things are, but don't always listen to them. Try things out for yourself. I think too many people look to see what else is good instead of just making up their own list. It creates a stale tournament scene were you only see a few list types ever flown.

Don't forget that there is more to X-wing than 100 pt tournament death match. This is the most common game play, but not the only one. There are missions, campaigns, and all sorts of stuff. It's great when things that are normally not considered good in regular game play turn out to be great in other styles. The humble T-65 X-wing is considered not that good currently. A B-wing is close to the same points and will last longer in a regular game. If you play a mission that requires you to zip around the board pretty fast or a game of Epic, then the X-wing is fantastic where the B-wing is too slow.

I'm So Meta Even This Acronym.

Mostly though, think of it like -- the flavor of the month? What is everyone running that seems to be most popular and strong at the moment. People tend to optimize completely, and eventually end up with a set of core lists that do well.

I would say the most useful part of knowing the meta, is if you compete, you'll know what other lists you are most likely to see. So you can get practice against knowns. It's always fun when someone brings an unknown list to a tourney and takes away the practice advantage people get. X-wing isn't only about the list -- still gotta fly it!

The prefix meta just means about itself.

As others have mentioned it comes from the metagame which is simply the game played within the game. Any game that has a composition phase (i.e. squad building) has one. The idea being if you can "win" the metagame the 'real' game is easy.

However, this has been somewhat bastardized to be the most common ways to build. So, for X-wing, the meta is just what is the "best" squad composition(s) available in the given area (local, competitive, etc). This leads to 'evolving metas', so when squad X gets popular then squad Y is now better making it the new meta and so on and so forth.

Yes, I knot the meaning of the prefix "meta" itself, but that was not too helpful in trying to guess what some people on this forum were talking about! :-)

Meta is the lists you lose to and then complain about on these forums because it needs to be nerfed.

If you're going to play at a tournament, you have to understand what the current meta is, or else you will be playing with a serious handicap.

If you're going to play at a tournament, you have to understand how to actually use the list and ships you're fielding, or else you'll be playing with a serious handicap as well. That comes from first-hand experience, not from looking at what list won the last regional and simply copying it.

Is it useful to have an understanding of what other people might potentially be fielding in a local tournament? Of course. But that knowledge comes a far distant second place to knowing what you're doing with the list you're taking and having a clear idea of how to use it to grind out results, and that knowledge is also something which becomes much more useful when you have gained it first hand. Learning your "local meta" and how to play against it is something that will come from experience, at which point you may as well drop the ridiculous "meta" tag entirely and just say that you benefit from "experience, be it your own or others"

I took three Cartel Marauders and two Cartel Spacers to a store championship and won. The only attention I paid to the "meta" when deciding on the list was having a vague idea that other players would likely be taking 2-3 ship builds based on my own recent experience. If I'd paid the kind of regard to the "meta" that some people ascribe to it, I probably wouldn't have been taking that list in the first place.

Again, you say:

So when someone talks about meta lists, they typically mean lists that the community as a whole have decided are effective against almost any other list you might see playing the game.

...and I say all that leads to is the community artificially stymying creativity and variety within the game. The "meta" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Better to learn what is right and wrong for yourself than to be told and not understand why. If everyone played it safe and followed the perceived "meta" that blindly, we never would have had the delight of seeing a triple K-Wing list make it to the finals at Worlds.

I will echo what others have said, and hopefully add a little to it. "Meta" is short for "metagame", the information that exists outside the game itself. For example, the game is pushing spaceships around and rolling dice. The metagame is list building, research, testing builds on vassal, etc. A lot of times (actually most of the time here) meta is narrowed further and is essentially a synonym for "viable in competitive settings (official tournaments)".

Effective and efficient ships, squads, and upgrades are often referred to as meta and represent one of two things: either a list to mimic or a list to recognize is a very competitive list and prepare to face. Examples of meta upgrades includes almost anything that grants action economy (push the limit, fire control system), enhance your PS (veteran instincts), grant new abilities (engine upgrade), or are just considered "best in slot." Meta ships include Soontir, Gold Squadron or Syndicate Thug Y-Wings, Darth Vader, Poe Dameron, Corran Horn, Miranda, Dash. This list tends to fluctuate as new upgrades are released than unlock previously unknown potential in older pilots (such as Vader's revival with the TIE advanced fix that came with the Raider). Meta lists are where it is most often talked about (in my experience) but it is where all the other meta concepts come together. Examples are Brobots (two IG-88s), Thug Life (4 syndicate thugs with twin laser turret and unhinged astromech), Palp-Aces (a lambda shuttle with emperor Palpatine on board, plus 2 ace pilots - usually Soontir and Vader). If you have experience with CCGs or LCGs, think of these as your standard deck archetypes, the ones you can guarantee you will see in a tournament.

Often times when a new wave is out, a few cards or combinations are discovered that shake up the "meta," meaning that these cards or combinations appear to be strong enough to do very well in tournament settings because they do well against existing competitive builds and cannot be easily countered by those builds. For example, there is a lot of talk about "triple U-Boats," which is based on taking 3 of the generic pilot from the new Jumpmaster expansion and loading them with torpedos and upgrades to make those torpedos more reliable and powerful. Few of the current "meta" lists have easy answers to this combo, but the ship has been available for only 6 days, so it remains to be seen if it will dominate as much as some fear it will. On the flip side are upgrades, ships and lists that are not "meta," meaning they are inefficient, less effective, or (more rarely) just bad (old rim smuggler, I'm looking at you). A lot of the upgrades that require an action fall I this category, but here's the kicker, on some ships and in some lists, those cards are excellent. That's why the "why" matters as much as the "what."

So that's the what. Now onto the why, specifically why should you care? First of all, you should care. I'm not saying you should "netdeck" a list. If you do that without a grounding in how the game operates and what makes the list so good, you will lose, and if you lose using a "meta" list you may think you are just bad at the game. This isn't true at all, you are just new. Looking over "meta" lists can give you a lot of insight into how the game works and some basic things that form the basis for these lists (red dice are more reliable than green dice, the best defense is not getting shot at, always strongly consider a basic focus action), but you still want to learn some things for yourself. At the same time, be aware that someone is going to throw Palp-Aces or Thug Life at you, and knowing what to expect in those situations will save you a lot of heartache. And as you learn and grow as a player you will instinctively know what works well with the ships you like. And trust me, nothing in the world is as satisfying as creating a list that is powerful and "meta" without finding it online first. I created a Miranda Dash list shortly after the K-Wing came out at GenCon, played it, tinkered with it, loved it and won with it a lot, only to find out later that a similar list was used to win the Italian Nationals.

Bottom line, play with the ships you love, but be aware of the meta so it doesn't surprise you and scare you out of the game. And if you build up yourself, you will beat netdeck players regularly, even with a less optimal list (probably not with a truly bad list, and yes, there are truly bad lists - you will make some, and you will learn). Using my Miranda Dash list as an example again, that is by far the list I am most comfortable flying. In the "current" meta, popular competitive lists have the potential to punish this list very badly. Twin Laser Turrets, for example, are best used at the range dash lines to be at, and they brutally punish large base ships with 2 evade dice...like dash. The C-3PO on Miranda is utterly useless against twin laser turrets, and against a Palp-Aces list, Soontir Fel with 4 evade dice, emperor Palpatine, 2 focus tokens, an evade and autothrusters just laughs as Dash impotently tries to scratch his paint. But guess what? Against players who haven't forged that list through constant games and tweaking? They don't know the best way to fly it. That player with 4 TLTs? Was used to flying brobots. The dial kept frustrating him, he kept

Bumping, and Miranda at range 1 shredded them while Dash circled the battlefield taking potshots. The Palp-Aces pilot? Also not used to the list. He landed Vader on an asteroid and rolled poorly. Dead Vader, and rather than chase Soontir around, I just merciless pounded the shuttle Palpatine was sitting in.

So, this turned into a novel. TL;DR, the meta is important, but not as important as learning from your own lists, flying what you like, keeping track of what's popular to be ready for it, and most of all, having fun.

The general consensus isn't always accurate, though.

That's true, but it doesn't change what the general consensus is. Groupthink is a powerful thing and if 'everyone knows that defenders are bad' then you can count on not seeing many of them at most tournaments.

Whether or not they are bad doesn't actually change anything until the general consensus starts to change. Back around wave 2, the general consensus was that the Tie Swarm was unbeatable... Until Hothie did so with a BBXX list.

If you're going to play at a tournament, you have to understand how to actually use the list and ships you're fielding, or else you'll be playing with a serious handicap as well.

Yes, and next will you tell me water is wet and it's dark when there's no light? Because those are both painfully obvious statements, but actually add nothing to this discussion.

Is it useful to have an understanding of what other people might potentially be fielding in a local tournament? Of course.

So you admit the meta does have a meaning and is useful.

But the metagame is more than what other's are playing. It's anything outside the actual game that involves the game. So posting here, discussing tactics and list building, or just comparing different upgrades to see which will do the job better is part of the meta game.

Anyone who thinks the meta is nothing more then what lists are considered competitive by people on a message board, really don't understand what the term means in the first place.

Edit: Just thought of an example. One of the guys I play with likes playing Imperials, and really likes Defenders. Another guy really likes B-Wings. So when I'm designing a list for that night, I may try to design a list that can deal with both B-Wings and Defenders, because I'll likely play one of them if not both. That means I have engaged in the metagame.

Blimey, there are some pointy opinions about something I had no idea was contentious! I think the ire directed towards "The Meta" might be slightly misplaced.

Meta-gaming, as said previously, is anything you deliberately do outside of the game to assist inside the game. You know your friend has just bought a JumpMaster and is dying to play the PTL Dengar list he's been cooking up for weeks, so you decide to load up on a Stresshog and PS 10 aces? That's meta-gaming. You're going to a tournament with a mate who always beats you with their favoured list, and you innocently suggest he would enjoy it more if he mixed things up a bit so you don't have to face your nemesis list? That's meta-gaming. Both of these examples would make you a less than perfect friend, btw, and I wouldn't advocate them, but they're easy examples I can think of.

Unless you're writing lists in a total bubble or isolation, you will probably be meta-gaming. You'll be considering what you think is likely to turn up, which *isn't* just experience. If there have been any new releases since you last played regularly, then you will need to either have a think about what is likely to be the early starters from the new releases, or have a look at forums like these to see what people are thinking about trying out. Experience plays a massive part in this, but you know what, experience plays a massive part in gaming! Of course it plays a massive part in meta-gaming *well*.

Where meta-gaming may be getting a bad rep is where it starts entwining itself into net-decking, a VERY divisive topic that has been covered extensively elsewhere. This is a direct result of "The Meta" which is shorthand for what is popular, successful and *perceived* to be the best lists/builds/ships/upgrades available. If you want to compete seriously in a tournament, it pays to anticipate what will be there. It also pays to eat properly, stay hydrated, get a decent night's sleep beforehand, and practice, practice, practice with your chosen list. Nobody here is saying turn up with a netlist and you'll ace it!

I'm not a fan of netlisting myself, it leads to boring tournaments, and stagnant meta-gaming. BUT, if you're starting out, you don't want to turn up to a tournament with an awful list that you think looks fun, because it definitely ain't fun to get ROFL-stomped every round. A new player looking at the meta may not understand why those lists are popular, but at least they'll have an idea of what not to bring.

An experienced player looking at the meta can understand why those lists work, and can potentially come up with a list that counters the most likely candidates. It is when brave, pioneering souls seek to beat what is popular with something only they have spotted that the meta shifts, and new possibilities are bought to light.

TL:DR; Meta-gaming can suggest to a first time tournament goer that he shouldn't bring 5 Cartel Spacers. Meta-gaming for an excellent player might just suggest when the time for the 5 Cartel Spacers has finally arrived!

Apologies, that was quite long, wasn't it...

One more term to add to the list that's widespread on these forums:

Meta-bating

The continuous talk and obsession about said Meta. Often leads to lack of creativity and feelings of worthlessness toward ships/lists not currently in the forefront of the meta. Other side effects include not recognizing that most players are "casual" and may lead to impulsive forum posts containing meta list info without reading the original post.

Heavy meta-bating may cause long lapses of time, anger, and may affect your ability to use math and statistics correctly.