I was having a really hard time with this before Wave 8 released and am having an even harder time now that triple scouts had a very good showing at the Hoth Open, in addition to the slew of Palp Aces builds. Regionals are the end of the line for me - I'm not going any further in the tournament progression than regionals, so this is the peak of my year for X-Wing. Personally, I'd have a huge burden of guilt if I ran triple scouts at any event. I'm of the belief that it's beatable with certain builds, but the difficulty bar of picking it up, playing with it, and doing fairly well with it is set so low it's kind of disgusting. I'm afraid that the players that have no shame copying the Jumpmaster meta builds will crush better players' chance at a cut. On the other hand, regionals is a competition and I'd be joking if I was just there to have a fun day of X-Wing; people go to regionals with the hopes of making the cut and possibly winning.

I know I've rambled a bit here, but the question (that doesn't have a definite answer) is what can I fly that would allow me to keep my pride? In addition, if I really want to be competitive, is it even an option to not go with a copy or slight variation of the meta at, for example, the Hoth Open?

I know it's not what you want to hear, but having seen new players show up to tournaments with 3 Scouts and have a miserable time managing 3 large bases, my advice is to fly something that (1) you're good at flying and (2) will enjoy flying no matter the outcome.

But in terms of competitiveness, you can't go wrong with Swarms or Aces right now. I'd stay away from Fat Turrets due to all the ordnance thrown around.

Low PS generics have a lot of mileage right now with the Ace/Scout meta.

When is your regionals? Assuming it's not this weekend coming up, pay attention to the regionals that come before. The meta shifts pretty quickly in the weeks after a release, so you might get some ideas from that.

But yes, don't show up to regionals with a list you have only been playing for a week or less. That just won't work!

Your assesment of the Triple Scouts is wrong. Badly flown they will crash. A lot of people picked up the list because they heard its an easy win list, but many of those don't understand it and won't find success.

I like diversity and it appears that one of two things are happening.

The best players stick primarily to Palp builds and the Wolfpack (what I am calling 3 U-Boats) with a smattering of Imperial A-holes

OR

those are the BEST and only truly Competitive builds.

I refuse to play an identical build so I know going in with my lack of skill and build I will lose many games (goal is now to get to .500 or better). Debating about bringing back my B-Wings (NOT BBBBZ) crap or sticking with A-Wings that I hate but usually fair success.

Areas I will try to look at with my crazy busy schedule.

How to bump or mitigate the bumpmasters (Contracted Scout used to bump)

How to mitigate or push through Palp (example, can Bobba Fett crew card be used effictively?) Figure this one out and your tourney journey just became easier to manage.

How to mitigate the Wolfpack missile barrage (example, Carnor?)

Next will be understanding and utilizing Tractor Beam which for me is the big unknown (tactics, triggers, protection)

The rest, just improving to fly better and take no rebel captives (except I do play a lot of rebel).

Excited to go to my first Regionals this year.

There was many,many triple Jumpmaster lists at Hoth Open. Only two made the top cut. They are not the bogeyman people are making them out to be. The sky continues to not fall.

There was many,many triple Jumpmaster lists at Hoth Open. Only two made the top cut. They are not the bogeyman people are making them out to be. The sky continues to not fall.

There will be lots of JM15K lists run by people not experienced with them (although that will decrease as time goes on) or who are not highly skilled at the game in general. But those conditions do not dismiss the potential for the list to be dominant in the hands of skilled players. It's also about how it shapes the meta diversity around it. If only a handful of lists have a shot at taking down a well flown JM15K list and still hold up against other lists that is not a good thing.

We'll see. It's obviously too early to tell right now since SCs have wrapped up. Regional results will be the test.

So I have the same question as you - how do I best prepare for regionals (don't we all have this question though). In the past I've had plenty of time to play a myriad number of games on vassal, so I get a good glimpse of what people are playing. I try to avoid random pick up games though because there's a good number of people that 1) play incredibly slow and 2) aren't top tier competition. Hopefully this time around ELO rankings will help sort that out some.

But this year I don't have anywhere near the same amount of time. And at the same time, there's no longer a handful of lists that 95% of the meta fall into. Sure, there are dominate lists (palp + aces and toilet bowls come to mind) but back in W4-W6, it was basically EVERYONE was running Fat Han + Escorts, 58 Dash, or Whisper. If you had a good chance at beating all three of those lists, you had a good chance at doing well. Go figure though - the things that did well against two of them typically fell hard against the third.

Now you probably have 60% of the meta made up by 2 lists, but the other 40% is all over the place. And I'm not just referring to the "Fun" stuff that the non-competitive folks bring, I'm referring to the top half of the field that you're likely to be matched up against as you make it to 3-0 and 4-1 etc. So - how does one think through the best way to utilize the minimum amount of time?

Well, for me, I'm picking a motif. Per usual, I want to come up with my own list and is totally unique from what everyone else is playing. W2-3 I wasn't competitive. W4 I ran Roark Dagger Blackmoon and a Bandit against Phantoms and Han, and W5-6 (5 was very short, let's be honest) I ran 38pt Psycho Tycho, 46pt Corran and a Prototype. W7 that list replaced Tycho with Poe... And I consistently got accused of stealing the kid's list, which pissed me off a bit, but no one else was running it anyways.

So for W8, I'm thinking I want to work with Sabine. From what I've seen thus far, she seems to make bombs actually good again. Furthermore, in theory that should work well against both of the above meta lists. If I can drop a conners net on an ace, do two damage, ion him and deny him actions - he's a sitting duck for the next two turns and either has 1 or 2 health left (depending on the ace)... Nothing Palpy can do about that. Meanwhile, being able to do a 7 straight and close from out of range to forcing a collision means I can theoretically avoid at least some of the wolfpack's opening salvo.

There are plenty of questions remaining though - Besides Conners Net, Sabine, AdvSlam, and EM, What do I put on the K wing? I've been thinking Seismics and a TLT, but that gets to be expensive. Perhaps I make it a dedicated bomber and put on a Cluster mine (since that can theoretically trigger Sabine multiple turns) or prox mine and drop the TLT completely. Maybe I leave the bombs alone and drop the TLT. Or do I want to upgrade to a named pilot? Miranda is dangerous as we all know, perhaps she would be worth her points.

And then what the heck do I pair with it? I could go with Blount (w/ Tracers and Adaptability) and two Bandits w/ Concussions, but that doesn't pair out well with points. I could drop the TLT and get a third with an IPM though which might not be a bad way to go. Or I could go with 59 points of aces - that should be enough to get a Ghost and Phantom, nothing says power like 4 dice primaries... I could fit in Chopper w/ FCS, Hera, and an ABT along with Ezra w/ PTL... That might not be too bad.

Who knows what direction I will end up going. But by starting with a motif of a bombing K with Sabine, it greatly restricts the options that I have to try out. I would suggest doing the same.

So 1/4 of the top cut were 3 jumpmaster lists and they both madr top 4. Seems to me like these were just good players playing a good list. Hardly the sky is falling, more like there are shiny toys.

The same thing happened when Brobots was released. They're good but they don't dominate like everyone thought they would.

If I was going to run a K wing competetively, I would run Miranda with TLT and Tactician. It makes her a pretty tanky ship, as you don't mind dropping one of your TLT shots down to 2 dice to regen a shield, plus it gives you a bit of a control element. If you want to add to your Alpha with her, you can always take Extra MUnitions, Homing Missiles and Guidance Chips. Miranda can fire off a 5 dice Homing MIssile, which has a pretty good shot of dealing some serious damage to anything foolish enough to get in arc of her. That does put her at 44 points though, which is a hefty chunk of your list, so I would probably keep her cheap, unless you wanted to run her alongside a fat Falcon, Maybe Chewie with Lone Wolf, C3P0, R2D2, Title and engine, but that would leave you without a lot of punch on your second ship.

I had a lot of success running MIranda, Poe and the stresshog at the beginning of the year, but with the advent of the high damage dealign Alpha strike lists like Crack Swarm and JM15K, it may be wise to either drop the stresshog, or actually spring for the bump up to the PS4 Grey Squardon Pilot. That would leave you with 35 points to play with If you take MIranda, TLT and Tactician, which could give you 2 Tala Squadron Z95s with concussion missiles.

So my advice is either run her at the mid-high 30 point mark with another 2 or 3 ships, or run her in the mid 40s with a large based ship accompanying her.

Pray.

Please run 3Us against someone that knows what to expect. Trust me it will go differently than you might think. If you don't wanna run you boats straight, try a hybrid, it will help shore up your weaknesses. Otherwise, there are many different things to try. A triple A wing list was one game away from the cut, so we're a few other unique lists. So in all reality, it comes down to what you wanna play, just know how to fight the more popular lists with yours.

You can always have a lot of fun running an anti meta list like Crack Swarm or the like.

Hell I have a friend who went to the top four of our store Championships running a list that included Wedge and Nera so just have fun with it.

Thanks for the advice guys, a lot of encouraging words here

I love it how people keep claiming that Palp+Aces is the kryptonite against jumpmasters when Ryan killed 4 variants of Palp+Aces in a row while only losing 3 jumpmasters total during the top16 stream yesterday. None of them really stood a chance although I gotta hand it to Nathan for his arc-dodging. Too bad that he barely ever got a shot at the masters with all the running away.

I like diversity and it appears that one of two things are happening.

The best players stick primarily to Palp builds and the Wolfpack (what I am calling 3 U-Boats) with a smattering of Imperial A-holes

OR

those are the BEST and only truly Competitive builds.

I refuse to play an identical build so I know going in with my lack of skill and build I will lose many games (goal is now to get to .500 or better). Debating about bringing back my B-Wings (NOT BBBBZ) crap or sticking with A-Wings that I hate but usually fair success.

Areas I will try to look at with my crazy busy schedule.

How to bump or mitigate the bumpmasters (Contracted Scout used to bump)

How to mitigate or push through Palp (example, can Bobba Fett crew card be used effictively?) Figure this one out and your tourney journey just became easier to manage.

How to mitigate the Wolfpack missile barrage (example, Carnor?)

Next will be understanding and utilizing Tractor Beam which for me is the big unknown (tactics, triggers, protection)

The rest, just improving to fly better and take no rebel captives (except I do play a lot of rebel).

Excited to go to my first Regionals this year.

If your meta only has aces and jump master at top tables I feel sorry for you. Around here we see a large amount of rebel regen, with a little Imperial aces and the torp boats are just now coming to the scene. There's still a large part of people playing scum junk and those lists really benefited from having a u-boat to add. Pretty diverse meta around my neck of the woods, makes it harder to plan for tourney play.

I think my answer is going to combine with the other thread that talks about how much they practice before a tournament.

I usually only at best get 2 games in before a tournament would happen. Insufficient data to really know how well you do.

In these cases, people like me have other things in life that make it hard to get games in. I suggest that you spend a few of your casual games just playing your competitive list for a while. Every so often, if you don't have a pressing gotta-fly-it list, pull out the old competitive one. And go some rounds with it.

To answer a slightly grumpy thread honestly:

Have a plan that doesn't require jousting unless you can out-joust jumpmasters.

Have a plan for how to deal with tractor beams, should they face you across the table.

Have a plan for killing PS8+ aces.

Have a plan that survives against massed TLTs.

Have a plan how to kill regenerator ships.

Then practice.

Loads of Z-95s with missiles,and Blount with Thread Tracers to outgun the toilet seats!