Shuttle Tydirium Episode 6: Wave 9 Awakens

Welcome aboard the Shuttle Tydirium for episode 6! We'll be talking exclusively about the recent Wave 9 reveal, and what we can expect from the new ships coming to X-wing!

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So, this episode is pretty much discussing Wave 9. We didn't really have time for anything else! There were still so much to talk about when J-bot started getting low on power and we needed to plug him in for the night.

PLEASE provide us feedback, even if you don't like certain aspects of the show. We are new and would like to hear what people think.

Thanks Joe Boss! Let me know what you think of the show.

Great job as usual guys!

Great job as usual guys!

Thanks!

Love the shout-out to Auralnauts' amazing prequel videos.

One positive aspect of the podcast is that you go over the wave shipping time intervals that people freak out about.

Yeah, I had spent most of the day reading all about Wave 9 when it had just come out. I had read all the comments and such and had gotten a bit fed up with the complaining about "why no T-65 fix?" and "why no gunboat"? I hope I didn't come across to brash about that stuff.

Love the shout-out to Auralnauts' amazing prequel videos.

One positive aspect of the podcast is that you go over the wave shipping time intervals that people freak out about.

I cannot promote the Auralnauts enough! They do awesome work.

Gotta say, I wasn't excited much for the new wave until I heard this podcast.

Knowing the options and impact of the new units and cards is fun.

The Arc I was staunchly against but would be cool alongside some YWings certainly.

The new Tie SF I can't wait to field. Even the new scum ship sounds promising!

i love your pod cast, always good fun to listen too. keep up the good work guys

Gotta say, I wasn't excited much for the new wave until I heard this podcast.

Knowing the options and impact of the new units and cards is fun.

The Arc I was staunchly against but would be cool alongside some YWings certainly.

The new Tie SF I can't wait to field. Even the new scum ship sounds promising!

Great! I like to be in the X-wing is half full camp instead of the half empty. Except when it comes to Phantoms.

i love your pod cast, always good fun to listen too. keep up the good work guys

Thanks so much! Is there anything in particular that you like about the show? Want to hear more of?

Okay, I've still not started this episode yet, as I'm making my way through the older ones. I'm noticing a theme when you guys have been discussing missions, and it's given me an idea.

The problem: Primarily, a lot of the missions have straightforward solutions for one or both sides, and this can leave the mission open to very specific exploits based on ship or upgrade card selection. In my mind, this can make it hard to do a league or pick-up game format with missions because it opens up to a one-sided experience if someone catches some trick in the squad building phase. It also makes it tough to do a pickup game because the players have to make squads for a specific mission.

A solution: A casual league/casual night mission-based format. You build a squad like a you'd build a squad for a tournament, but instead of 100 point dogfight, you'll just randomly select a mission from a stack of missions. This does a couple things. You get all the tournament-style aspects of planning a list that works together, but power-gaming doesn't really work, because you don't know the goal for any given game. It can't be too min-maxed, because you need to have a fighting chance at any of, say, 10 missions. If there was an attacker and defender, the person who won the initiative bid could decide whether to pick initiative or pick attacker/defender, and the loser of the bid could pick the other one.

To ramp it up, a league format could lock you into a list from session to session, with minor changes each week. Alternatively, you could do things like being able to select munitions after you got your mission selected.

Okay, I've still not started this episode yet, as I'm making my way through the older ones. I'm noticing a theme when you guys have been discussing missions, and it's given me an idea.

The problem: Primarily, a lot of the missions have straightforward solutions for one or both sides, and this can leave the mission open to very specific exploits based on ship or upgrade card selection. In my mind, this can make it hard to do a league or pick-up game format with missions because it opens up to a one-sided experience if someone catches some trick in the squad building phase. It also makes it tough to do a pickup game because the players have to make squads for a specific mission.

A solution: A casual league/casual night mission-based format. You build a squad like a you'd build a squad for a tournament, but instead of 100 point dogfight, you'll just randomly select a mission from a stack of missions. This does a couple things. You get all the tournament-style aspects of planning a list that works together, but power-gaming doesn't really work, because you don't know the goal for any given game. It can't be too min-maxed, because you need to have a fighting chance at any of, say, 10 missions. If there was an attacker and defender, the person who won the initiative bid could decide whether to pick initiative or pick attacker/defender, and the loser of the bid could pick the other one.

To ramp it up, a league format could lock you into a list from session to session, with minor changes each week. Alternatively, you could do things like being able to select munitions after you got your mission selected.

Yeah; I think this would be a great way to approach playing missions. The randomness you propose sounds like a great way to prevent min/max type behavior and guide list building toward a middle-of-the road style, while pushing the metagame far away enough from the standard tournament style of play to keep things feeling fresh and distinct from that kind of battle. Using the initiative bid to decide attacker/defender could also be a great way to avoid a need for symmetrical missions, also.

Another way building for specific missions can mess things up is when it makes no sense thematically. For example, we're probably going to review mission 2 in the next podcast recording, and that mission is full of problems, (in my opinion). One problem is that you tend to break the mission thematically when you build your list, especially as the defender.

The mission is to protect one ship that has a crippled hyperdrive until it can make repairs and escape. The story is that the ship was damaged during a recon mission and has vital information onboard. Fine; sounds like a good theme for a mission, right?

The problem is that as the defender there are huge incentives to build your list defensively with the crippled ship at the center of your defenses, and it just feels weird that all those layers of defense are there at the end of the day. You end up with lists like Biggs + Kyle Katarn w/ Jan Ors crew (with Ion turret or none at all) escorting Chewbacca with C-3PO and R2-D2 crew. It's a bizarre pure defense list that is built from the start to defend and preserve one ship long enough for it to escape. Thematically it makes no sense because it looks like you planned for one of your ships to be disabled from the outset of the mission. When I played the mission I and my opponent built practically the same lists independently of one another, so this is also an obvious build archetype.

In other types of missions building to the mission may not be such a problem, though. In escort/defend type missions where one side is trying to attack a specific target and the other is trying to defend it, it makes sense that both sides would be optimized to meet their objectives. Thematically, at least. There might still be opportunities for exploitative builds, as you point out. But sometimes I think it is also fun to build for a mission; it just has to not break the mission thematically or mechanically, which takes really good mission design.

In my head, I was calling the format "Rapid Reaction Force", the idea being that your ships were "on standby" to respond to urgent situations, which is why they aren't kitted out to perfectly for the mission you're attempting, I'm not sure that much thematic justification is necessary, though.

In my head, I was calling the format "Rapid Reaction Force", the idea being that your ships were "on standby" to respond to urgent situations, which is why they aren't kitted out to perfectly for the mission you're attempting, I'm not sure that much thematic justification is necessary, though.

Yeah, that could work but doesn't sound absolutely vital.

Gotta say, I wasn't excited much for the new wave until I heard this podcast.

Knowing the options and impact of the new units and cards is fun.

The Arc I was staunchly against but would be cool alongside some YWings certainly.

The new Tie SF I can't wait to field. Even the new scum ship sounds promising!

Great! I like to be in the X-wing is half full camp instead of the half empty. Except when it comes to Phantoms.

i love your pod cast, always good fun to listen too. keep up the good work guys

Thanks so much! Is there anything in particular that you like about the show? Want to hear more of?

I love all of it! Lol the banter you guys have, the missions etc. I'd like to hear a bit about hotac as I know you guys keep reading us!!

Okay, I've still not started this episode yet, as I'm making my way through the older ones. I'm noticing a theme when you guys have been discussing missions, and it's given me an idea.

The problem: Primarily, a lot of the missions have straightforward solutions for one or both sides, and this can leave the mission open to very specific exploits based on ship or upgrade card selection. In my mind, this can make it hard to do a league or pick-up game format with missions because it opens up to a one-sided experience if someone catches some trick in the squad building phase. It also makes it tough to do a pickup game because the players have to make squads for a specific mission.

A solution: A casual league/casual night mission-based format. You build a squad like a you'd build a squad for a tournament, but instead of 100 point dogfight, you'll just randomly select a mission from a stack of missions. This does a couple things. You get all the tournament-style aspects of planning a list that works together, but power-gaming doesn't really work, because you don't know the goal for any given game. It can't be too min-maxed, because you need to have a fighting chance at any of, say, 10 missions. If there was an attacker and defender, the person who won the initiative bid could decide whether to pick initiative or pick attacker/defender, and the loser of the bid could pick the other one.

To ramp it up, a league format could lock you into a list from session to session, with minor changes each week. Alternatively, you could do things like being able to select munitions after you got your mission selected.

This makes me think about what happened to Warhammer Fantasty Battle. All tournament games were just death matches. When 8th Ed came out, they dictated that all games, especially tournament ones, needed to be one of these 6 mission types. There was a nice balance of mission types that encouraged well rounded lists. If you went with just a power house meant to kick in your teeth in the old style, you wouldn't win all the missions. The tournament goers decried it as the end of tournament gaming, but what happened was that everyone started to build a lot more well rounded lists. It was pretty cool. I was hoping something like this would happen for X-wing, too.

I agree that having some sort of well rounded list without knowing what the missions are going to be would be pretty cool. I'd love to see something like that. I mentioned this in the podcast we recorded last night reviewing Mission 2.

I think the Warhammer missions were largely not that great, and while I played a fair bit of 8th ed, I don't remember ever having the missions skew things too hard one way or another.

In the context of X-wing, this wouldn't have to supplant the dogfight tournament, but I think in a lot of ways a "random mission" event would make things a lot more even between any "filthy casuals" and "dirty competitives" playing in the same tournament. I'm sure it's pretty much impossible to prevent all seal clubbing, but with shifting goalposts for winning and squads teched for dogfighting being a little less optimal, one hopes that you'd have fewer one-sided games if the game had mixed attendance.

I'll agree that the WHFB missions were utterly crazy, but I did witness the change of things. I played Greenskins (who were always underpowered). Playing to the missions did allow me to win some games that I would've have as a straight up fight. Or to even limit the loses to draws or near draws. It was more pronounced when it first game out, I'll admit.

I do think having some sort of event for random missions would be very fun. I know you will always have the die hard competitive and the really laid back guys. I think of J-bot and myself. No matter what type of event you have, you will have some people that are going to try to build the uber best and play hard. To be honest, I don't mind that so much, really. For one, you will actually see a variety of lists and ships that you would not see in a normal tournament style game. So, that right there is a benefit. I think if you start having a set of missions to go through, you will just see the meta shift to certain types of ships always being in certain factions. I will think the variety of lists would be different, though.

I also think it's just nice to play something other than just killing each other. Just to have objectives is fun.

Thanks Joe Boss! Let me know what you think of the show.

What a horribleness show... all you did was make fun of STUPID Wannabe-Wingers, and elitist schmucks.

Mean-ass-old-man! I have never been so offended in my stupid little life!!!

( )

Secretly getting betters with ev-er-yee wave... oh the SCUM Glory!!!

GLORY I SEZ!

I think the Warhammer missions were largely not that great, and while I played a fair bit of 8th ed, I don't remember ever having the missions skew things too hard one way or another.

In the context of X-wing, this wouldn't have to supplant the dogfight tournament, but I think in a lot of ways a "random mission" event would make things a lot more even between any "filthy casuals" and "dirty competitives" playing in the same tournament. I'm sure it's pretty much impossible to prevent all seal clubbing, but with shifting goalposts for winning and squads teched for dogfighting being a little less optimal, one hopes that you'd have fewer one-sided games if the game had mixed attendance.

Random mission events are great for alternate format tournaments; other good ways to play missions and scenarios in large groups are narrative events and campaigns. A good example of a narrative event would be the one they ran at the NOVA open a year ago, which culminated in a star destroyer assault, and a good example of a campaign would be HotAC, which is of course co-op. I don't think there's a really solid PvP campaign out there at the moment, but there may be a niche for one.

Generally I don't have time to listen to podcasts but as I have 2.5 hour flight ahead of me (and it's been too long a week for me to want to work on the flight), I just downloaded it and will give it a spin.

Generally I don't have time to listen to podcasts but as I have 2.5 hour flight ahead of me (and it's been too long a week for me to want to work on the flight), I just downloaded it and will give it a spin.

I hope you enjoy!

Generally I don't have time to listen to podcasts but as I have 2.5 hour flight ahead of me (and it's been too long a week for me to want to work on the flight), I just downloaded it and will give it a spin.

Bo Bo come by the house some time so we can chill...

You could just parachute right on down to the roof of my 11 story part-ment-build'n.

Generally I don't have time to listen to podcasts but as I have 2.5 hour flight ahead of me (and it's been too long a week for me to want to work on the flight), I just downloaded it and will give it a spin.

I hope you enjoy!

He is a Bo Bo Jangs... of course he will like it!