The local meta appears to be solidly in post-store championship season, and other tournament structures are popping up in the next few weeks. I'm curious about them, but I've not played something other than 100pts matches against grown-ups since I started in January. There's a lot of people picking up the game now, and I'm sure this will be of interest to many.
So on with my questions about escalation tournaments and your experience with them!
1. Max out a few uniques v. maximizing the number of ships on the board.
They both seem to have merit. It appears to me that the first round would benefit strongly from a strong ace, like a regen Poe, but there'll likely be so many guns on the board by the end that aces will likely just melt away. Does that assessment generally bear out?
2. Stretch which ships you include to add upgrades in later rounds v. add "equipped" ships from the get go.
One of my ideas was to get a Decimator in early, as you can't add it later without shaving a lot of points out of your squad in the previous round, but that means a very naked Decimator + maybe a wingman, worth it?
3. Just how many ships would you expect to be on the board by the end?
This affects the whole issue of bumping in huge furballs as well as which obstacles to bring. I could see a Dash being useful by the end with debris, as you have 6 less things to think about in evaluating collisions. Same thought process goes into minimizing the number of large-based ships you bring to the game, even though 150 points could fit in a disgusting number of scouts.
I'm having a hell of a time picking a list, or even a faction, for this one. Some of the approaches I considered:
60: Patrol leader (Vader) + Wampa (targeting computer)
Lots of hull, Vader for slippery aces, Wampa for low hull aces
90: add Omega leader (juke, comms, stealth)
Because OL is awesome and there shouldn't be too many ships on the board at this point
120: add 2 black cracks
For cheap punch
150: add 2 black cracks
For cheap punch
60: Poe (Pred, R2-D2, autothrusters), Ezra
Poe and Ezra should be really survivable at this level
90: add Push the limit to Ezra, add a Dagger squadron with FCS
Ezra becomes better and the B-wing is cheap punch
120: add autoblaster turret to Ezra and a Warden with TLT
More ships moving around makes turrets even more beneficial to be able to pick who you focus on
150: add Raging Tycho (push, rage, title, chardaan, autothrusters)
Cause he seems like a ton of fun, though he'll likely melt and 2 prototypes may be better here.
Scum standards
60: Palob (TLT and title), Scout (deadeye, plasma torp, guidance, R4 agromech)
I love Palob, and a Scout, even with a single torpedo, should punch hard at 60 points (and I don't have enough Scouts to just do a Scout spam)
90: Add Kavil (predator, dorsal turret)
Kavil is very nice to have for crowd control, especially combined with Palob.
120: haven't worked it out at that point...
I love scum, but their large-based ships are my favorite and it doesn't seem like a great idea to pack a lot of large-base ships in this format... Triple Aggressors would be fun though. I wanted to drop in low-level Kihraxz, but their point value doesn't mesh up well with the format.
Hopefully, this will spark a very interesting discussion about the escalation format, more X-wing can only be better. We also have a team epic tournament coming, in which my 6 year old will team up with me, this escalation tournament will be a practice run for that!