I would also argue that the dice are a mechanic meant to force you to change tactics. You can't walk in to X-Wing with a prefabricated plan because the dice may make break that plan. Your job as a player is to A) mitigate the effect dice can have against you, B) maximize the effect dice can have against your opponent, and C) put yourself in a position to change tactics when your dice fail you. If you go all-in on each and every roll, you're dooming yourself to failure.

I was going to say "unless you're flying Triple Scouts", but I just recalled a game two weeks ago where my opponent rolled 4 focus, spent the TL, got 3 blanks and a hit.

Tournaments and competitive play should not damage our ability to enjoy the game. The stakes in an X-wing tournament aren't so high as to make loss unbearable, nor even stressful. Just play with the best list you can craft and as well as you can, and enjoy the battles, win or lose.

I find tournaments appealing not for prizes or bragging rights, but because they give a chance to play several matches against different people with different lists, making for a varied and exciting day of playing X-wing. The community is largely friendly, even as they try to curb stomp your squadron. Take what you learn in casual games, and apply those lessons to building a good list and fly it as well as you're able. Basically, treat the tourneys as a chance to integrate and apply every skill you've learned and and see what you can do with those lessons.

I'd like to step in here just to comment for the OP:

I had a streak of "bad luck" where I thought the dice were failing me. Being the extremely paranoid person that I am, I decided to do one of those chi-square test on my dice. I spent an entire weekend rolling each one of my dice hundreds of times to find out if they were balanced or not. Result? They were all pretty well balanced. It was then when I came to the sudden realization that it wasn't the dice, it was my decision making.

Since then, I've been winning a much higher percentage of my games, because after every loss I can attribute the loss to a maneuver, action, target choice, etc. When you learn from your mistakes, you get better. Not every match is winnable, but when the dice "fail you", realize the scope is much larger than that single dice roll, because a series of events lead you to that moment, and if played out differently, you would not be in that situation.

Tournaments and competitive play should not damage our ability to enjoy the game. The stakes in an X-wing tournament aren't so high as to make loss unbearable, nor even stressful. Just play with the best list you can craft and as well as you can, and enjoy the battles, win or lose.

I agree with the ideas behind this, but unfortunately, I've seen this not in practice. I've seen people get upset at tournaments and I've seen people quit the game due to lack of casual games. I think tournaments don't have to be all that, but for some people, they are.

It's also OK to just neglect the tournament scene, too. I'll say that I'm a lot happier since I decided to do that.

I'd play competitively if I didn't have to drive an hour away and it didn't smell when I got there.

Tournaments or bust, ya hippies

I have to say that I've enjoyed more of my games since I denounced tournament play. If I happen to have bad dice or a bad game, it's really not a big deal. I'm not stressing over my list and trying to fine tweak it. I'm not obsessing how will it fly against meta list #4. I'm not forcing myself to play games against hard tournament lists all the time to fine tune it. I'm having a lot more fun with it. It's just a lot less stressful.

OK...I know some people like that and I used to like it. At some point, though, it became more of a chore. I do like getting into something and making it work, but I guess I don't like the pressure that I have to do it all the time. I've been playing Mission 1 with Senator's shuttle and I've been trying to figure out how to crack it. I've gotten into list building and how to fly it and all sorts of stuff, but the pressure hasn't been there. If it ever got tiring, I can just fly whatever and enjoy.

If you are at the point that the dice variance is ruining your fun...since you aren't doing well at the tournament, maybe it's time to step back and play the game for fun.

You can't just set down quad T-70's and expect to do well against Whisper RAC's or Palp Aces or Super Dashes. The meta necessitates you have to fly some squad that basically breaks the game in some manner(s) in order for you to have a chance. Even the Crackswarm uses a card that has this weird omniscient timing.

If we had some more support for the Top Gun format. I wouldn't mind dice luck or a competitive cut throat game in that format. I suggested it once to a friend and was immediately dismissed because god forbid we play a format without Soontir for once.

You can't just order macaroni and cheese at Applebee's, it has to have bacon bits or some other stupid EXTREME BLASTED stuff in it. Likewise you can't just put down 2 Tempests and 2 TAPs or whatever and expect to not get stomped by a Soontir or Inquisitor or whatever.

I stopped playing quad R7 T-65 because every fight ended up being some 40 minute end game struggle with 2 T-65's against Soontir. It's just annoying playing a 'normal' squad to your best and having to compete with someone who can just on a whim make his ship invincible. His 35 point ship against 50 points of solid jousters, mind you.

I just want mashed potatoes, not mashed potatoes with bacon bits Jesus Christ. I just want deodorant that smells like vanilla, I don't want SEA BLAST.

eh, the only problem with soontir being the gatekeeper is what we're overlooking just how much generic, dice-dependent pilots just sorta suck. I'm personally far more okay with a meta dominated by tons of dice mods/cheats than going back to trying to gun down PWTs with stupidly luck dependent jousters and then losing due to bad dice rather than any potential contribution as a player

the "normal" models in this game just don't cut it for me anymore, because "normal" games are just horribly dice dependent (and even the above normal games can be decided by some incredibly stupid dice swings). I'll take bombs and thrusters and PTLs w.e any day, because at least then positioning plays a far heavier role in conjunction with dice rather than just being trumped by them

imo, the game could really benefit from more crackshot-esque benefits or more automatic damage to make jousters/normal ships actually worth taking, rather than just pointing at soontir and co. as if they were the entirety of the problem. There's nothing less appealing than going through all the effort to line up arcs with less mobile ships only to have the dice fart out on you. Nothing says "you may as well not even be here" as much as those moments

Dice actuall

eh, the only problem with soontir being the gatekeeper is what we're overlooking just how much generic, dice-dependent pilots just sorta suck. I'm personally far more okay with a meta dominated by tons of dice mods/cheats than going back to trying to gun down PWTs with stupidly luck dependent jousters and then losing due to bad dice rather than any potential contribution as a player

the "normal" models in this game just don't cut it for me anymore, because "normal" games are just horribly dice dependent (and even the above normal games can be decided by some incredibly stupid dice swings). I'll take bombs and thrusters and PTLs w.e any day, because at least then positioning plays a far heavier role in conjunction with dice rather than just being trumped by them

imo, the game could really benefit from more crackshot-esque benefits or more automatic damage to make jousters/normal ships actually worth taking, rather than just pointing at soontir and co. as if they were the entirety of the problem. There's nothing less appealing than going through all the effort to line up arcs with less mobile ships only to have the dice fart out on you. Nothing says "you may as well not even be here" as much as those moments

eh, the only problem with soontir being the gatekeeper is what we're overlooking just how much generic, dice-dependent pilots just sorta suck. I'm personally far more okay with a meta dominated by tons of dice mods/cheats than going back to trying to gun down PWTs with stupidly luck dependent jousters and then losing due to bad dice rather than any potential contribution as a player

the "normal" models in this game just don't cut it for me anymore, because "normal" games are just horribly dice dependent (and even the above normal games can be decided by some incredibly stupid dice swings). I'll take bombs and thrusters and PTLs w.e any day, because at least then positioning plays a far heavier role in conjunction with dice rather than just being trumped by them

imo, the game could really benefit from more crackshot-esque benefits or more automatic damage to make jousters/normal ships actually worth taking, rather than just pointing at soontir and co. as if they were the entirety of the problem. There's nothing less appealing than going through all the effort to line up arcs with less mobile ships only to have the dice fart out on you. Nothing says "you may as well not even be here" as much as those moments

Dice actually play a huge role against Soontir. If you block Soontor, with only 4 agility and Palpatine he has a 48% chance of taking zero damage from a 3/3 hit attack. An entire game based around one or two coin flips, that's about as luck dependant as you can possibly get.

In games again Acewings, positioning doesn't matter one bit. If you have higher pilot skill you win automatically since you can boost last.

Soontir can also just fly into terrible spots and dice mod his way through things.

It's fine though, I have Feedback on my Brobots so that way Soontir players know what it's like to automatically lose in the list building phase.

I had a whole reply typed up, but it looks like it got lost in the network trouble going on right now.

Basically, I agreed that I have beef with tournament play, too. I don't mean to bash it, though. Lots of people really love the style and I'm happy they do. More power to them. I do regret that people aren't also open to other ways to play the game. I'm lucky in my local store, but would be happier if more people overall played more mellow games.