I'm not sure I agree completely with the basic premise of the article and the example squad is...weird.

2-dice attacks have never been good, except possibly in the very early era of x-wing. All 2-dice attack squads that are or have been successful have had extra help in the form of Howlrunner or Crackshot. Also, I find the idea that ships without Boost/Barrel Roll being unable to see enemy ships with those actions to be ridiculous. It's simply hyperbolic to assume Soontir or Dash will always be able to get out of arc of their enemies.

The example squad of 4 X-Wings doesn't make sense either. Why would one assume it should be good in the first place? "At first glance, this list has what it takes to deal with a Palp-aces dominated meta." Does it? I'm not sure anyone vaguely familiar with the game would make that claim. Granted, you could argue that's partly due to the problems Theorist highlights but I might as well say 4 Tempests with AC and Prockets should be good - look at all the dice they can throw!

I won't deny there are some issues with the game currently with Palp Aces and Jumpmasters being too dominant but last year you could say the same about Fat Han or RAC Soontir and they're nowhere to be seen now. I'd rather a situation where all ships were viable in some fashion but X-Wings have never been great outside of a few specific pilots so picking on them seems strange. Ironically it may well be that the new Fang fighter brings more options for the kind of game this article is lamenting doesn't exist.

The jousting role needs to be redesigned to be effective, and not to be just the lack of a role.

I think you nailed it here. It's not that Arc Dodgers are too good, it's not that token stacking is too good, it's not that Turrets are too good. It's that those ships which are called Jousters are by and large ineffective at doing the one thing they need to do, which is dish out damage.

Not even because of the ship itself, but because of everything that FFG has added over the last two to three years.

The jousting role needs to be redesigned to be effective, and not to be just the lack of a role.

I think you nailed it here. It's not that Arc Dodgers are too good, it's not that token stacking is too good, it's not that Turrets are too good. It's that those ships which are called Jousters are by and large ineffective at doing the one thing they need to do, which is dish out damage.

Not even because of the ship itself, but because of everything that FFG has added over the last two to three years.

And what I mean by token stacking isn't just stacking actual tokens, it's also freebie stuff with little/no downsides like C-3PO, Palpatine (hyper C-3PO for your entire list), R2-D2 & R5-P9, autothrusters, soon to be Sensor Cluster on Poe, Advanced Cloaking Device even post-nerf, etc.

I'd also like to remind everyone that fat turrets with engine upgrade, especially Dash are the best arc dodgers in the game. Their ability to always have shots allows them to fly in a purely defensive manner, and their general action economy allows them to boost without much downside offensively or even defensively if they're using stuff like C-3PO or R2-DCrew or Yssanne.

Fat turrets being the best arc dodgers in the game made it such that in order to counter them, you were best off having your own turret. This is why the advent of quad TLT stopped fat turrets almost immediately, because they couldn't arc dodge any of the shots and they could take 6-8 shots every round. The half health, half point MoV rule for large bases helped a tiny bit but quad TLT was the real reason.

Palpatine is 29 points. Not sure how that's undercost.

Hell for that price I should get to use him 3 times per turn.

Even if he isn't undercosted, what you are proposing is insane.

Which was the point of the post. Making an exaggeration to poke fun about something nearly as stupid. ;-)

And as usually some takes it at face value while calling people stupid. ^-^

To be fair, it's a little hard to tell on the internet.

It's only hard on the internet, because people have little to no respect for their discussion partners on the internet. If you are not assuming that you are talking to a moron, it becomes surprisingly easy to tell when someone is using a hyperbole. And there is no harm to assume a hyperbole, when someone is actually serious either.

I'm confused. Where was anyone calling anyone else stupid?

And if you are always assuming hyperbole, perhaps my post was just extending the hyperbole with a typical, exaggerated internet overreaction. Who's to say I wasn't?

Not looking for any sort of argument here, but not sure why I am being called out for doing something that is now seemingly being done to me.

If I misunderstood you Velvetelvis, apologies for misunderstanding your quip.

But seriously, a 3 times per turn Palp on a 29 point shuttle would be bonkers insane.

Also, to respond to the actual article itself, he's correct. Theorist isn't always correct, but he's right on this topic.

Seems like a lot of people would rather ignore what someone is saying because it's them saying it. Typical of these forums, ignore someone who is correct because you don't like them.

You should address the argument, not attack the person.

"Jousting" by itself is never going to work, and 'pure jousting' will only get worse. Because - as noted - the best squads have both extreme ability to modify their dice and extreme ability to modify their manoeuvres, and they do both at higher pilot skill than the opponent. As more ships are released, and more upgrades and combinations turn up for the slots that large ships and ace ships have that 'basic' generics don't, the disparity in capability is only going to increase. It's like the classic argument with the E-wing - it's hard to introduce anything that benefits the E-wing (which needs it) without providing a massive boost to Corran Horn (who doesn't so much), because he has all the slots of the cheap guy, he just has more .

Aces in snubfighters arc-dodge, whilst turret ships can focus on avoiding your arcs because they don't have to line up their own, and the best anti-turret upgrade (autothrusters) is limited to the arc-dodgers.

Therefore they limit how many "jousters" can attack them at once, meaning that depletable but regenerating resources (regenerating shields, evade tokens, once-per-turn abilities like Palpatine, etc) don't get overwhelmed.

"Jousters" can't really respond - because with your you have two choices manoeuvre essentially 'locked in' you have a choice - split up your squad (producing several fire zones but none with enough concentrated fire to do anything) or focus them (producing a single 'kill box' which the ace will then boost or barrel roll out of).

The advantage of the heavy fighters tends to be a hit point or two extra (actually, that's not fair; an Integrated Astromech Red Squadron Pilot is twice as tough as a PS4 TIE interceptor) but as noted, that ultimately tends to boil down to 'loosing slowly'.

What you need is the ability to do one of the following - which are starting to grow in capability:

• Take your licks and then deliver a SERIOUS punch back on the one turn where you have a shot. This the the alpha strike/ordnance approach - and you'll note that the two 'joust-ish' squads which you see a lot of (Crack Shot TIE Fighter swarm and Plasma Torpedo Contracted Scouts) are variations on this theme.
• Block a ship and then kill it whilst it's blocked. Harder to do than you'd like because many builds (like TIE/x7 defenders with Palpatine, Dengar/Manaroo, etc) are tolerant of not getting actions, especially since your attacks must logically be down a ship. Unless you start trying to block with Arvel Crynd, I guess.
• [sun Tzu]Attack them where they are, not where they wish to be[/sun Tzu]. Random ancient Chinese wisdom out of the way, this is an ability which is growing in potential. Proximity Mines were always interesting, but Connor Nets are better. Deathrain is very good, and Deathfire almost as good (but cheaper). SLAM K-wings with Sabine do well at this, but the best trick may well be what's coming in the next wave. Quickdraw is essentially a Jouster (that is to say, lacks the essential agility to be an 'arc dodger', whatever her PS) who can shoot in the activation phase. Probably more importantly, Seismic Torpedoes provide an activation-phase attack out of the forward arc, and potentially provide utility to all those rebel ships with never-used solitary torpedo tubes. Is it deadly? Probably not. But three or four of them in quick succession? If it's 3 points (and I can't see it being more) you can have four rookies with these things and still have R2 astromechs and integrated astromechs on each. That's enough to seriously inconvenience a ship before it ever gets to move.

"Jousting" by itself is never going to work, and 'pure jousting' will only get worse. Because - as noted - the best squads have both extreme ability to modify their dice and extreme ability to modify their manoeuvres, and they do both at higher pilot skill than the opponent. As more ships are released, and more upgrades and combinations turn up for the slots that large ships and ace ships have that 'basic' generics don't, the disparity in capability is only going to increase. It's like the classic argument with the E-wing - it's hard to introduce anything that benefits the E-wing (which needs it) without providing a massive boost to Corran Horn (who doesn't so much), because he has all the slots of the cheap guy, he just has more .

Aces in snubfighters arc-dodge, whilst turret ships can focus on avoiding your arcs because they don't have to line up their own, and the best anti-turret upgrade (autothrusters) is limited to the arc-dodgers.

Therefore they limit how many "jousters" can attack them at once, meaning that depletable but regenerating resources (regenerating shields, evade tokens, once-per-turn abilities like Palpatine, etc) don't get overwhelmed.

"Jousters" can't really respond - because with your you have two choices manoeuvre essentially 'locked in' you have a choice - split up your squad (producing several fire zones but none with enough concentrated fire to do anything) or focus them (producing a single 'kill box' which the ace will then boost or barrel roll out of).

The advantage of the heavy fighters tends to be a hit point or two extra (actually, that's not fair; an Integrated Astromech Red Squadron Pilot is twice as tough as a PS4 TIE interceptor) but as noted, that ultimately tends to boil down to 'loosing slowly'.

What you need is the ability to do one of the following - which are starting to grow in capability:

• Take your licks and then deliver a SERIOUS punch back on the one turn where you have a shot. This the the alpha strike/ordnance approach - and you'll note that the two 'joust-ish' squads which you see a lot of (Crack Shot TIE Fighter swarm and Plasma Torpedo Contracted Scouts) are variations on this theme.
• Block a ship and then kill it whilst it's blocked. Harder to do than you'd like because many builds (like TIE/x7 defenders with Palpatine, Dengar/Manaroo, etc) are tolerant of not getting actions, especially since your attacks must logically be down a ship. Unless you start trying to block with Arvel Crynd, I guess.
• [sun Tzu]Attack them where they are, not where they wish to be[/sun Tzu]. Random ancient Chinese wisdom out of the way, this is an ability which is growing in potential. Proximity Mines were always interesting, but Connor Nets are better. Deathrain is very good, and Deathfire almost as good (but cheaper). SLAM K-wings with Sabine do well at this, but the best trick may well be what's coming in the next wave. Quickdraw is essentially a Jouster (that is to say, lacks the essential agility to be an 'arc dodger', whatever her PS) who can shoot in the activation phase. Probably more importantly, Seismic Torpedoes provide an activation-phase attack out of the forward arc, and potentially provide utility to all those rebel ships with never-used solitary torpedo tubes. Is it deadly? Probably not. But three or four of them in quick succession? If it's 3 points (and I can't see it being more) you can have four rookies with these things and still have R2 astromechs and integrated astromechs on each. That's enough to seriously inconvenience a ship before it ever gets to move.

Excellent post.

Reminder: The person who flies through Proximity or Cluster Mines is the one rolling the dice. Another way Palpatine ruins the game.

Reminder: The person who flies through Proximity or Cluster Mines is the one rolling the dice. Another way Palpatine ruins the game.

True, but there are ways around that, too. Sabine Wren turns cluster mines from an irritant into a terrifying threat for TIE Interceptors and TIE Advanced Prototypes....

Ultimately, if your plan is just 'line up and pray for aces to wander into your sights' it's not going to work. You know it's not going to work, and ultimately, deep down you know it shouldn't. Either you need to do something to actively create those shots (blocking - Academy, Prototype & Vectored Thruster Bandit Pilots, action-attacks - Mines, Seismic Torpedoes), or you need to have enough concentrated firepower to take advantage of the one shot in the game where your opponent screws up (one-use damage boosting mechanics - Ordnance/Crack Shot/Rage, stress- and ion-delivering attacks - R3-A2/Tactician/TIE/x7/Flechette Torpedoes).

These are growing in number and options. Just not as rapidly or as obviously, and it may take a bit of time to catch up. But it is still doable to play without aces, and may well become more so.

eh, honestly I don't really care how the game looks as long as PWTs aren't dominating

I personally find the bog-standard "move forward and focus" jouster to be really **** boring (and really **** dicey)

And I don't even really like arc-dodgers, it's more that K-wings and Jm5ks, Defenders and Deathfire... everyone SLAMing and rolling around blocking and being incredibly unpredictable with their dice-dependent weaponry AND dice-independent tricks (bombs and feedback) have spoiled me silly ito gameplay options

theorist is, at least, sorta right in going after excessive dice mods. They are really what keeps Jm5ks and palp aces at a dominant position over the rebels. Problem is his titles are really boring, and your bog standard jousters were always pretty sh*tty ever since the tie fighter existed (ie, when the game first game out)

here's my personal stab at it

*Red Leader - 1 point

X-wing Only; Rebel Alliance Only. Title (screw you T-70 and your hogging of Black One!)

Whenever an enemy ship at range 1-3 and inside your firing arc is defending against another friendly ship, the defender cannot cancel one of the attacker's HIT or CRIT results

*(The Real) Squad Leader - 2 points ept

X-wing Only

A ship cannot perform Squad Leader as a free action (**** off, Airen)

ACTION: choose 1 friendly ship at Range 1-2 that has an equal or lower pilot skill than you

The chosen ship may immediately perform an attack.

Then, assign a Weapon's Disabled token to this ship

*(The Real) Squad Leader - 2 points ept

X-wing Only

A ship cannot perform Squad Leader as a free action (**** off, Airen)

ACTION: choose 1 friendly ship at Range 1-2 that has an equal or lower pilot skill than you

The chosen ship may immediately perform an attack.

Then, assign a Weapon's Disabled token to this ship

The equal part is nasty, you can move into fire position, get your dice mods and then shoot before they can move away and arc dodge if your squad leader is close enough to you.

I like it.

*(The Real) Squad Leader - 2 points ept

X-wing Only

A ship cannot perform Squad Leader as a free action (**** off, Airen)

ACTION: choose 1 friendly ship at Range 1-2 that has an equal or lower pilot skill than you

The chosen ship may immediately perform an attack.

Then, assign a Weapon's Disabled token to this ship

The equal part is nasty, you can move into fire position, get your dice mods and then shoot before they can move away and arc dodge if your squad leader is close enough to you.

I like it.

it's because I can't stand pure support unless it does something incredibly useful. Hell, palp's got that **** figured out because he can buff the shuttle he's on

this way, even if your entire squad is dead, the leader still gets to do things albeit most likely unmodified (can target himself)

Theorist can do one, and so can his terrible titles.

Does anyone want to go back to Swarmwing? Even the most stagnant Fat Han meta had more variety than Wave I.

Either you took 6 TIE Fighters and Howlrunner, or you lost. Biggs was the only Rebel Unique pilot worth a **** (and still is the only T-65 worth a ****), but the X-Wing was so horrible overpriced relative to the TIE Fighter (and lol the TIE Advanced) that they may as well have called the game TIE Fighter from wave I-III, when the B-Wing came out and managed to actually be a well priced Rebel Ship.

Palpatine is 29 points. Not sure how that's undercost.

Hell for that price I should get to use him 3 times per turn.

Even if he isn't undercosted, what you are proposing is insane.

Imperial players are either non-intelligent or greedy.

There is a certain type of player that plays this game, and plays a certain blatantly broken list archetype, that is completely blind to just how difficult and how much of an NPE his list archetype is.

There is an Imperial player in our area that mained pre-nerf phantoms and still complains about the nerf. I played against him playing a Deci pre-nerf Phantom squad with triple Defender. When I then complained about how broken phantoms were and that I automatically lost the game because it was impossible to get a shot on one without some no-skill turret, I was told that he was sick of me complaining all the time and that phantoms weren't broken, I just needed to fly less predictably. With Defenders.

We had Imperial players complaining during wave 7 about how the stresshog was too easy to utilize, too inexpensive, and an autoinclude.

I PROTEST!

I'm an Imperial player, and I am both intelligent and greedy!

Good day sir!

I said, "GOOD DAY SIR!"

"Jousting" by itself is never going to work, and 'pure jousting' will only get worse.

I agree which is why I've been saying for some time now, that they need to do something fairly radical with ships like the T-65 to make it useful in the ever expanding meta, or else we all need to simply accept it as something you can maybe win with but never something tier 1.

I really like the Red Leader title (maybe more if it were Rogue Squadron and non-unique). It brings out the idea that what rebels do is work together.

*Red Leader - 1 point

X-wing Only; Rebel Alliance Only. Title (screw you T-70 and your hogging of Black One!)

Whenever an enemy ship at range 1-3 and inside your firing arc is defending against another friendly ship, the defender cannot cancel one of the attacker's HIT or CRIT results

*(The Real) Squad Leader - 2 points ept

X-wing Only

A ship cannot perform Squad Leader as a free action (**** off, Airen)

ACTION: choose 1 friendly ship at Range 1-2 that has an equal or lower pilot skill than you

The chosen ship may immediately perform an attack.

Then, assign a Weapon's Disabled token to this ship

There are too many things to quote so I won't even try.

It is inevitable that X-wing will have some power creep, & it does. This is okay and healthy if the pace is slow. Upgrade cards are almost entirely the source of power creep in X-wing.
> Interceptors are relevant because of auto-thrusters
> Tie swarm is relevant again because of crack shot
> The Shuttle is relevant because of Palpatine (Having the Lambda shuttle in the meta is a good thing. Such a wonky ship!)
> Dengaroo is relevant because of Zuckuss crew
> Corran & Poe are good because of R2-D2

For those that say certain things should be removed from the meta with heavy nerfs, I respectfully disagree. If you make everything overpowered, then nothing is overpowered

Some say early jousting waves were boring, so you can't buff generic pilots. I, respectfully, would say that's a poor argument. X-wing has progressed so far that it could never return to that sort of meta.

** Theory **
For the sake of game balance, every single pilot in X-wing needs access to creatively designed upgrades that give consistent action, attack, or defense efficiency.

Small base generic pilots are the ships with the least access to appropriately costed consistent upgrade cards. This is why upgrade cards that generally apply to them are a plausible course of action. Ship specific upgrades are already something that's happening to varying degrees of success.
> The Defender titles are a wonderful example, even making the generics decent
> Tie Shuttle for the bomber gives them access to crew upgrades
> The Fang fighter title is a poor example as it doesn't have consistency like crack shot, PTL, and Predator have

Someone mentioned how very few upgrades work against large base fat ships. Good observation! Perhaps only fire-control and plasma torps are available. Right now tractor beam looses so much value because it is less effective against large base ships.

Game balance is more than figuratively the white whale. The last unicorn. The great tasting diet soda.

I would like to see a new type of upgrade: squadron upgrades. These would apply to all the ships of that type in your list, meaning that generics would benefit more as you could fit more in.

Eg

Rogue Squadron (T65 X Wing only) : When attacking, if the target ship has previously been attacked by at least one Rogue Squadron ship this round, roll one extra red die.

Red Squadron (T65 X Wing only): Red squadron X Wings may fire proton torpedoes without spending their target lock.

I haven't worked out points costs to balance these, but something like this could reinvigorate some of the less popular ships.

I would like to see a new type of upgrade: squadron upgrades. These would apply to all the ships of that type in your list, meaning that generics would benefit more as you could fit more in.

Eg

Rogue Squadron (T65 X Wing only) : When attacking, if the target ship has previously been attacked by at least one Rogue Squadron ship this round, roll one extra red die.

Red Squadron (T65 X Wing only): Red squadron X Wings may fire proton torpedoes without spending their target lock.

I haven't worked out points costs to balance these, but something like this could reinvigorate some of the less popular ships.

Squadron upgrades! That's so thematic I love it

The jousting role needs to be redesigned to be effective, and not to be just the lack of a role.

If a jouster has got a target in its arc, then the jouster has done its job and it should be rewarded with damage being dealt. That is why Omega Leader works, but other jousters don't.

Theorist's proposed upgrades are too much, though. You cannot simply disable a lot of defensive upgrades with a 1 point title or mod, and let all small base ships equip it. That is nuts!

Also, the defensive part of his proposals is excessive and can make ships with lots of health be a slog to kill, also rendering Predator, Advanced Targeting Computer, Guidance Chips, Proton Torpedoes, Concussion Missiles, and many other cards useless against them.

I have a more elegant solution.

They can add a new rule into the game that for every crit (or every attack, whichever is more balanced) canceled by defensive dice, subsequent attacks reduce the agility of the target by 1 . This fix is primarily for swarms or other low-cost generics that are not normally capable of breaking through the defense of a pimped out ace while still rewarding skillful play.

Thematically, it represents a very well-aimed shot distracting the ace pilot enough for someone else to get a better shot. This can allow even humble TIE-Fighters to have a CHANCE to hit high-agility aces... assuming you can get them in multiple arcs (easier said than done, but that's where skill comes in.)

No excessive titles, no errata, no nothing fancy. Just the way FFG likes it.

Someone mentioned how very few upgrades work against large base fat ships. Good observation! Perhaps only fire-control and plasma torps are available. Right now tractor beam looses so much value because it is less effective against large base ships.

Sorry to nitpick, but I've seen a couple of people make this point, and as someone who plays a decent amount of control lists I can tell you that you've got it backwards. These are my go to control list:

62 (2x) Warden w/ TLT, Tactician

26 Gold w/ TLT, R3A2, Title.

12 Bandit.

0 Initiative.

75 (3x) Blue w/ IonC.

25 Gold w/ ICT, R3A2.

0 Initiative.

I can tell you I experienced no greater joy than when my opponent would plonk down 2 big ships opposite me. If you've got a control heavy list it's almost an auto-win against those lists.

There's good reasons for Ion, and tractor tokens having a lesser effect on big ships:

1) It makes sense theme-wise. The bigger the ship, the harder it is to tractor/ionise.

2) Big ships move faster and have a bigger footprint, so when they're ionised it's more likely that they'll land on an obstacle, fly off the board, or just generally end up in a bad position. A favourite strategy of mine is to just tag a big ship with a single ion token, and then dare them to end their movement facing an obstacle or board edge.

3) Big ships are generally more expensive, and so they tend to make up a larger portion of your list. If you then throw control tokens like Ion/Tractor on them you're debuffing a greater portion of your opponents list than you would if you controlled a small ship. It's the same reason why FCS is so good against big ships.

4) Big ships are easier to hit with control weapons, as the majority of them are high HP with agility 0-2, and the Ion weapons and tractor beams are attack 3. It's a lot easier to put ion/tractor tokens on big ships. Also, since big ships tend to have high HP pools the tractor token can be particularly devastating as suddenly your whole list is shooting at a target with -1 agility, whereas a small ship in the same situation will generally die after 1-2 shots, 'wasting' the token on subsequent shots (again similar to FCS).

Really the only exceptions to this are Dengaroo being able to ignore stress (He hates tractor tokens though), and the U-boats. I would argue that the U-boats are a special case anyway, since they'll generally out-PS a control list and can nuke it before it has a chance to setup it's controls.

@forbiddencookie

But that debuffs defense across the board, not selectively. We need jousters to get damage through thick defenses, not all other ships.

Eh, it is generally best to not take that source as gospel.

And as someone who has been here from the beginning, I remember what it was like when the uniques were not worth taking, outside of a very, very select few.

This was the truth. Up until the Phantom was released there was really no point in building squads based on high PS because:

A- Han would always shoot first

B- you would be outnumbered by a TIE swarm.

I'm going to repeat this ad nauseum until someone on the Xwing side sees my posts as much as they do on the Armada side. (They made 200 points tourneys a thing - my posts.)

STOP MAKING LARGE SHIPS SO GOOD AND WITHOUT CARDS THAT ARE MEANT WORK WELL AGAINST THEM.

Aces and small ships have tons of counters. There literally aren't any cards at all that are better vs large ships than they are vs small ships. None. Zero. Conner net doesn't count, it works just as well if not better vs aces.

You've now printed ALL of these against aces: Feedback Array, Conner Net, Flechette Torp, R5-P8!!, APL.

Go ahead. Go think up one card that's better vs large ships than it is vs small ships to an effective degree.

STOP STOP STOP.

The days of 2 Falcon, Fat Han, Decimator, Dash rage were not good. That was the worst meta diversity in the history of the game. When you go overboard giving new ships, especially large ships, too many new toys, its easy to find a "within-the-ship" synergy that is extremely hard to beat. Hence, 3scout and Dengaroo.

Comparably, how paltry and useless do the cards in the Khiraxz, Scyk, and even the TAP expansion look? This is pretty outrageous. (Though TAP has a bunch of nice options. Good design).

In terms of his article, I think he sums up why Dengaroo is actually a dangerous precedent, which we found out the hard way. However, I vehemently disagree with the card ideas he espouses as I think it removes the difficulty from the game. What should have been done is not make new stuff quite as bombtastically good as they did and focus more on fixing what they made already.

Instead of giving even more power creep and buff to small ships to combat the giant power creep of large ships and their ridiculous upgrades, simply create more cards that are good vs large ships.

Plasma torps was kind of the right track. But I want to see something even more blatant.

I can know for certain that the 4 other matchups I face will be large ships usually with turrets and still be impossibly able to counter build then. That's bad game state.

Let's go back to the era where players had to actually plan everything and create their own move plans. See the Lambda shuttle dial? That ship, is one of the greatest designs in prohibitive play ever.

2-dice attacks have never been good, except possibly in the very early era of x-wing. All 2-dice attack squads that are or have been successful have had extra help in the form of Howlrunner or Crackshot. Also, I find the idea that ships without Boost/Barrel Roll being unable to see enemy ships with those actions to be ridiculous. It's simply hyperbolic to assume Soontir or Dash will always be able to get out of arc of their enemies.

Against a lower pilot skill, Dash can and will dodge arc every turn unless he's in a really bad position. Especially if the Dash player is smart enough to stay in the asteroid field. Soontir can do this too, because he can turn almost 180* each turn, and then repeat next turn. This is equivalent to back-to-back K turns which aren't possible for most ships.

2-dice attacks have never been good, except possibly in the very early era of x-wing. All 2-dice attack squads that are or have been successful have had extra help in the form of Howlrunner or Crackshot. Also, I find the idea that ships without Boost/Barrel Roll being unable to see enemy ships with those actions to be ridiculous. It's simply hyperbolic to assume Soontir or Dash will always be able to get out of arc of their enemies.

Against a lower pilot skill, Dash can and will dodge arc every turn unless he's in a really bad position. Especially if the Dash player is smart enough to stay in the asteroid field. Soontir can do this too, because he can turn almost 180* each turn, and then repeat next turn. This is equivalent to back-to-back K turns which aren't possible for most ships.

Unless you, y'know, bump him, thereby also leaving him actionless. I'm fully aware of how slippery ships like Dash or Soontir are but I despair at the notion you need to have a higher PS or equal mobility to compete against them. Blocking seems to be something of a lost art. Soontir in particular can often be fairly predictable as far as his dial goes. It's the post-dial mobility that makes him so hard to catch.

It's also possible to place your ships in such a way that their arcs cover many areas of the board. Sure, against Soontir you're going to need more than 1 shot but Dash isn't particularly good defensively once you can actually get shots on him.

(Note: I know it's not easy to do this. I never said it was.)