So when I play, if anyone has read my lists it's clear I don't like generics. Here is the thing, I generally feel pilot skill and abilities are generally more important than having 1 more cheap ship. I might be missing something but I don't know why I would do saaaay bbxx when I could do xxb with much stronger pilots. So I'm wondering, what's the general opinion?

I like ships on the board. 4 ships bring more offensive dice and hp.

But if one of them is dead before it ever opens fire what was the point? I suppose the other 3 lived a bit longer, but I might shred another next turn and now we are even assuming you get one of mine.

Ya, but depending on the ship an elite pilot will die like a generic.

Comes down to playstyle really.

For awhile I was really good with low PS ships and blocking.

Sometimes having an extra ship can go a long way

If you have xxb all named pilots one can die just as easy as a generic.

If you have xxbb and lose one, well you still have three ships.

However with 3 named pilots you really want to be killing something a round, or its going to get tough.

If your killing a ship a turn great, if not uh oh

Just a lot of variables there, so again really, comes down to playstyle

I like ships on the board. 4 ships bring more offensive dice and hp.

I would somewhat agree with this, especially about HP and targets for your opponent to pick.

It might be more dice vs another list with the named pilots, but they might also be unmodified (less effective) dice if your named pilot upgrades grant offensive skills or EPT slots for predator/LW/PtL.

Much the same way, by the above reasoning you could say expose is a great EPT, because more dice is better. In the end it's one strategy VS another. Do you want superior numbers or superior pilots. Quantity vs quality

At the end of the day, quality vs quantity comes down to who can make the most of the advantages on offer. If your elite ships can use their high PS and abilities to erode the opponent's numerical superiority before they get crushed by greater numbers, they will be on the way to victory. Otherwise they will not.

The fact that Aces and Swarms are both staples of the meta suggest that FFG have got the costing about right. In a fight between lists based on the those 2 extremes, it will come down to the skill of the players and the luck of the dice. As it should!

Having said that, I feel swarms are harder to play due to the potential for collisions etc. Blocking can be useful in the right circumstances but usually you want to plan it rather than let it happen by accident.

So when I play, if anyone has read my lists it's clear I don't like generics. Here is the thing, I generally feel pilot skill and abilities are generally more important than having 1 more cheap ship. I might be missing something but I don't know why I would do saaaay bbxx when I could do xxb with much stronger pilots. So I'm wondering, what's the general opinion?

it's not so much that as some pilots are just far more efficient uses of points than others

a lot of these pilots, turns out, are higher pilot skill because shooting first (killing the opponent before they even get to shoot you) is a huge boost

but just having higher pilot skill and being more expensive isn't necessarily a ticket to success (see Wedge; powerful but very brittle). Having higher pilot skill AND durability for cost on top of being able to abuse higher pilot skill for arc-dodging purposes, now those are the "much stronger pilots"

traditionally, those are imperial aces especially soontir/inquisitor. thrusters are a huge boost here too

now, as for cheaper ships, it also depends on the ship. I know heaver probably invalidates my opinion, but I can't think of a more worthless addition than a single bandit/pirate without upgrades. It's stiff, barely does anything, and often just ends up getting in my way as much as my opponent's

but a lone refit proto-type? oooooooooooooooooo man I love that little guy to death. He's a devastatingly irritating little blocker that can come catapulting from beyond range 3 to deny scouts their torpedoes

Quantity has a quality all its own, and God favors bigger battalions.

In any game the person who gets more chances to act has an advantage. In X Wing more actions and more shots is better. They've done a pretty good job overall balancing that with pilot abilities and costs. PS helps, but Soontir without the EPT and special ability is just an expensive Interceptor.

There used to be a single easy answer for this. Plastic > Cardboard. But that was back in the days of wave 3 or so. Now it's more nuanced and I like that. I much prefer seeing a game where there's more than one right answer.

It may simply be because I am a newer player, but I tend to like the flavor and visual appeal of a squadron of generics on the board. Besides I still eat Spam straight from the can too. If I do try to put together an Aces list.. I am still prone to keep the visual appeal of like (or similar) ships. Poe, Biggs, Ello as an example.

Squads containing a mix of ship types feel right for Scum but not as much for the other factions. How likely would it be for a US F-16/A-10/F-22 to be flying together as a single squad? Crazy point of view from a game perspective I know but it's just me.

But if one of them is dead before it ever opens fire what was the point? I suppose the other 3 lived a bit longer, but I might shred another next turn and now we are even assuming you get one of mine.

You nailed it here. A big part of it is survivability. What if you field three high PS ships and one is dead before it ever opens fire? You're sunk even more than if you had fielded a generic and it died.

The fewer ships one fields, the more survivable they need to be. Back in the day of the 2-ship meta, most ships could either take double digit hits, were elite arc dodgers, and/or could regen.

The PS and special abilities are only worth it if you can keep them on the board. That's one of the reasons you see the elite TIE Interceptors a lot, but not the elite X-wings very often. The x-wings pilots have good PS and abilities, but they are too easily focused fired into nothing. Unless you have a solid way to make the high PS pilot last longer than the generic, it's hard for many to justify the extra points invested. That's why X, B, and Y-wing generics are more popular than the named pilots.

In addition to survivability, pure brute strength is another thing. The classic BBBBZ can dish out at 14-18 red dice a turn could absorb 36 hits. Being able to melt a Decimator in one round is pretty awesome.

It may simply be because I am a newer player, but I tend to like the flavor and visual appeal of a squadron of generics on the board.

I think quantity of ships is big advantage for newer players (as long as you don't have so many ships it gets difficult to stay out of your own way) since there is much less of an impact of putting one of your 4-5 ships on an asteroid, facing the wrong, or right in your opponent's kill box than there is when you only have 2-3 ships.

We're talking about differences here, subtle and not-so-subtle imbalances in force content. What I must do is play in such a way as to make the differences favor me: play to my strengths, guard my weaknesses. Sounds simple. Isn't.

I think this is where crack swarms really shine; relatively large number of ships (6 or 7), and they can usually survive some 4 dice attacks. They have a decent PS depending on how you run them, for example, Howl, 3 blacks and 2 omegas. At best they're throwing 18 red dice, modified with Howl and a focus, most of the time. With CS, it's virtually "24" hits coming at you. Defensively though, they each TIE can usually survive a heavily modified torp shot from a JM5K.

I find a lot of the small swarms are better for novices interesting. I have only been playing for a little under a year, so I am clearly still new, but I have flown aces since day one and never looked back. Yeah I keep a generic around now an again but I like to have an ace as the backbone. So it's interesting to see things turning out like this.

Quantity has a quality all its own, and God favors bigger battalions.

In any game the person who gets more chances to act has an advantage. In X Wing more actions and more shots is better. They've done a pretty good job overall balancing that with pilot abilities and costs. PS helps, but Soontir without the EPT and special ability is just an expensive Interceptor.

god has no power here

there is only green dice

Since I usually run mid to low ps lists I always get a chuckle inside my head when facing a opponent with multiple ships who have VI, as it often made no difference against my list.

I just think hey that's 3 less points I have to beat in their list.

A lot of it also depends on the nature of the pilot and what they're intending to do.

High pilot skill is mandatory for arc dodgers, as you cannot dodge if you don't know where they're going. It's why Fel is everywhere, and Royal Guard Pilots are not.

It's less valuable on low-HP ships that can't reposition, and who have the durability to sustain the initial assault. You will almost never get the extra points you put in out of Ten Numb or Keyan, and it's certainly not worth the nine-point bump to run Ten instead of a Blue Squadron Pilot. They'll probably get off the same number of attacks before dying. I'll also take the Lothal Rebel every day over any of the named pilots.

Also, cheap low-PS blockers are godly. We've seen this since the days of the Wave 1 Academy Pilot. If you can keep a ship from getting actions, they're going to deal less damage over the course of a game and take more damage in return. It's demoralizing to get a roll of four eyeballs on a turn when you were blocked out of a Focus token.

High pilot skill is mandatory for arc dodgers, as you cannot dodge if you don't know where they're going. It's why Fel is everywhere, and Royal Guard Pilots are not.

Fel is a bad example, he has both high PS and great action economy.

Toward the end of a match, I had three damaged ships v Poe regening shields and had a one hit, three crits roll and he still cleaned me out. That cardboard counts for something.

Having the first shot and the kind of dice a top pilot has is a mighty fine advantage in whittling down large numbers of less "empowered" fighters.

I'm a Quality over quantity player.

It just seems that Elites "do something" rather than just point and shoot. Compare Soontir Fel vs 2 Alpha Squadron. All the Alphas can do is try to block, focus and try to make a square engagement. Soontir can react to them with a combination of effects that can more often than not counter any of the damage the alphas could muster. Generics only seem to matter when you want to abuse an effect or maximise HP/Atk. See lists like Quad TLT, and 3x U-boats (Two lists I find detestable)

That's cuz most players are pissantly poor at blocking.

Toward the end of a match, I had three damaged ships v Poe regening shields and had a one hit, three crits roll and he still cleaned me out. That cardboard counts for something.

With a 3 to 1 ship advantage Poe probably shouldn't be getting many actions if he's stuck on greens trying to regen shields with R2-D2. If you're rolling a bunch of shuttles or HWKs it would make it hard to throw blocks but most other ships should have a good chance of forcing a bump most turns.

The thing about pilot skill is that it is the only stat that's value is only quantifiable in relation to the other ships on the board. Largely pilot skill is bimodal in list building: it's often best at the extremes (so you can be sure you are the lowest or the highest) and mid-range pilots typically are chosen for their abilities rather than PS. But it's relative and meta dependent. Lots of U-boats? PS4 is as good as PS11. Lots of palp aces? If you're not 9+, might as well be 1.

As such it's hard to really say what is "good". Low PS blockers and high PS arc dodgers. Having all or some of your ships the same PS provides you with an activation advantage. Rebels and Scum care less about PS advantages than Imperials because shields can withstand bad positioning for a little while and they often don't live and die by tokens and arc dodging.

Heck, look at the final match of the Yavin System Open event. Howlrunner, three Blacks with Crackshot and three Academy Pilots, against three generic Jumpmasters. The Academies were stars there, forcing blocks to both keep the Jumpmasters from getting focus tokens for their torpedoes and to keep their own allies from moving too fast and losing their shots. They were also just providing extra cheap bodies on the board.

Presumably that pilot also had to clamber over the bodies of other Imperial aces to reach that point.