not pictured: the two FOs who couldn't sustain full modifiers + thrusters/Omega L's ability

hey guys,

so, as you'd probably expect from somebody named "ficklegreendice", I am unable to play any ship that can't head into battle without full modifiers either on offense or defense (preferably both) for fear of dice chicanery. after playing this game for well over a year (and racking up an embarrassing amount of posts), I have long ago determined that a game as involving as this one cannot be more upsetting than when it is won or lost by freak rolls, which just takes the players out of the experience regardless of who won or lost imo

Now, building to mitigate RNG as much as possible is the name of the game for literally every competitive game that contains even the slightest amount of RNG. For card games, you build for deck with the absolute minimum amount of cards required and with as many multiples as possible (generally) in order to improve consistency to the nth degree. In X-wing, the more consistent builds generally dominate, be they Swarms/rebel generic spam/TLTs (reliability through more attacks rather than mods) or the modded up the butt squads (Two-ships, palp aces etc.).

This is a scenario engineered by the general nature of dice games, and then exacerbated by the imo archaic design of defensive rolls (freaking power armor all over again) + the incredibly polarizing pilot skill system. It's become a problem in the game, as of late, as it exposed generics as being far too unreliable and, for some unholy reason, less efficient than simply spamming aces.

Strange thing is, I far prefer this version of X-wing to what we had previously (bunch of 2-ships + all the scrubs that couldn't modify as hard as them). Emphasizing defensive modifiers on action dependent ships takes power away from dice and hands them over to maneuvering, turning games against even the almighty bore of the PWT into nailbiters.

In the above game v Dengar, his out of arc shenanigans coupled with insane post-maneuver movement would've driven me insane had it not been for the fact that both Omega L and the Inquisitor were effectively immune to offense from anywhere that wasn't inside his arc. By turning the out of arc shots into essentially non-factors, it shifted the game into a deadly dance of forethought and blocking that eventually ended with everyone at half health (except you don't half points for small ships . The deciding turn was the final round, in which OL sealed Dengar's foward movements while the Inq slapped himself right where a white segnor's would have otherwise allowed the Punishing One to obliterate the poor little TAPs

I guess, in short, that I'm really enjoying the new wave with its Inquisitor, dice ignoring (or fully modified or both) giant space flounders, and the lovely torp boats (which can combine full offensive modifiers with green dice hate ala misthuner crew). While we may be seeing (and hastily overreacting to) a ton of new tech and inflated probabilities, imo this wave only benefits a game that can all too often devolve into someone simply rolling better (which is always a possibility regardless, just less so with proper modifiers). Imo, the cool reliable tech in Wave 7 (plus the much needed large ship mov nerf) was the best thing to ever happen to this game, and Wave 8 seems to be taking us even further along

happy hunting, everyone!