For what it's worthy, not that I have a stake in it or really care about the competitive meta, but personally I think the game is supposed and should be about dog fighting, so PTL Aces fit into that scheme perfectly and any effort to knock arc dodging/dog fights out of the game, in fact every piece of equipment and ship added to the game that supports a game where arcs can be ignored is effectively broken. TLT's for example were horrible for the game, it turned the entire game into a round robin circle jerk with 50% of the people running TLT lists and the other 50% trying to figure out how to work around the TLT meta with counter-cheese. Tournaments during this period where as boring to play as they were to watch.

At this point within X-Wing there is a great game if you avoid the boring meta lists and competitive play, but watching competitive players at this point is such a yawn fest where the only thing that is really relevant is dice statics and dice manipulation. The only maneuvering/movement for requirement for most lists is to get your ship into shooting range. In recent years at local tournaments, people looked at each others list, shook hands and declared a winner and looser, matches weren't even played because everyone knows it's largely a formality after lists are revealed. And if you refused you were considered a "****" for making your opponent go through the motions of a match that was already determined by comparing lists. It was ugly.

I don't want to kill PTL aces outright, but increasing the variety of options we see, and keeping a variety of ships and generics viable is important.

I can see two house rules worth experimenting with for casual games:

(1) Limit lists to one unique pilot per list, to encourage "single ace plus support" play.

or

(2) Treat all EPT, crew, and droid upgrade cards that have a cost of 1 or more as unique (exception made for Attani Mindlink). So you can have a PTL ace, but you can't have multiple PTL aces in a list.

Fun fact: Quad TLT stopped fat turret lists. Complain about them all you want, having to face the occasional quad TLT list was much better than showing up to an event and out of 6 people, being the only one without a fat turret.

Being able to boost and barrel roll at a higher PS than their ship is not dog fighting, and it ignores maneuver dials because you don't really have to predict your opponent that well.

BBBBZ or XXXXZ or a TIE Swarm or whatever? Now that's a dog fighting list. You know, one that has to actually play the game and not just fly like a reckless idiot by throwing your aces into bad positions and having your dice mods bail you out.

Also, off you made stuff that costed 1 or more point unique, it would do nothing to stop my Vessery Inquisitor OGP Palp Aces list.

That's all well and good but the real fun fact is that fat turrets shouldn't have existed in the first place, so there should have been no reason to have to create a counter for them. That's kind of my point. X-Wing is a dog fighting game, but even from the earliest days they added mechanics that compromised that and they shouldn't have. What they should have done is simply altered the rules for turrets so that their effectiveness was desirable as a supplement not a main element of the game.

This happens a lot in CCG's, its one of the main reasons why they started using key words, instead of writing out the rules of the keyword on the card. It offers the opportunity later to errata the keyword without having to ban or compensate for a misstep in the design process. Design flaws are going to happen and frankly to be expected, but I think the issue with X-Wing is that the game is incredibly sensitive. A single equipment card can render half your collection worthless competitively.

This sort of thing also leads to the dreaded counter build problem. Where effectively there have been so many over powered elements in the game introduced and countered by specific cards that completely wreck those elements that after so many waves most games are won or lost on lists, no on gameplay. Oh you have a turret list... no problem all my ships have autothrusters... game over.. no point in playing.

^ I doubt this game will get like that...again. It was that way around wave 4-5 with PWTs and Phantoms.

These days a mixed list is the most powerful, bringing together various mechanics like control, action economy, spoke damage, accurate guns, PS bidding, ect.

Relying only on one or two advantages or strategies is not what tournament champs do.

Your probably right at least as far as competitive play goes. Thankfully there are our own gaming groups who still know how to enjoy the game. Tomorrow my crew is playing Epic and I'm running a full, authentic red squadron. Win or loose it will be awesome.

First we got the bizarrely underpriced and over done U-boat to shut down the Rebels. I'm still having a hard time forgiving FFG for this misstep. Challenge the Rebel regen/stress sure. Kill it completely? Not too smart.

Now we are getting a similar, but weaker, counter to Imperial PTL Aces.

Where exactly is FFG driving the game? Honestly I can't see it. Are we meant to bow down and welcome our new Scum overlords? Are we going to see the same sort of jump in power for Rebels and the Empire in future waves?

Argh! The sky is falling!

Seriously though, where is the game going?

Less fat turrets.

Less invincible Acewings.

Less invincible regen Acewings.

More playing the actual game. Hopefully.

FEWER invincible regen Acewing fat turrets.

MOAR swarmy generics!

MOAR weird mid PS pilots!

MOAR ordnance carriers!

More actual outflying your opponent?

For what it's worthy, not that I have a stake in it or really care about the competitive meta, but personally I think the game is supposed and should be about dog fighting, so PTL Aces fit into that scheme perfectly and any effort to knock arc dodging/dog fights out of the game, in fact every piece of equipment and ship added to the game that supports a game where arcs can be ignored is effectively broken. TLT's for example were horrible for the game, it turned the entire game into a round robin circle jerk with 50% of the people running TLT lists and the other 50% trying to figure out how to work around the TLT meta with counter-cheese. Tournaments during this period where as boring to play as they were to watch.

At this point within X-Wing there is a great game if you avoid the boring meta lists and competitive play, but watching competitive players at this point is such a yawn fest where the only thing that is really relevant is dice statics and dice manipulation. The only maneuvering/movement for requirement for most lists is to get your ship into shooting range. In recent years at local tournaments, people looked at each others list, shook hands and declared a winner and looser, matches weren't even played because everyone knows it's largely a formality after lists are revealed. And if you refused you were considered a "****" for making your opponent go through the motions of a match that was already determined by comparing lists. It was ugly.

I don't want to kill PTL aces outright, but increasing the variety of options we see, and keeping a variety of ships and generics viable is important.

I can see two house rules worth experimenting with for casual games:

(1) Limit lists to one unique pilot per list, to encourage "single ace plus support" play.

or

(2) Treat all EPT, crew, and droid upgrade cards that have a cost of 1 or more as unique (exception made for Attani Mindlink). So you can have a PTL ace, but you can't have multiple PTL aces in a list.

Fun fact: Quad TLT stopped fat turret lists. Complain about them all you want, having to face the occasional quad TLT list was much better than showing up to an event and out of 6 people, being the only one without a fat turret.

Being able to boost and barrel roll at a higher PS than their ship is not dog fighting, and it ignores maneuver dials because you don't really have to predict your opponent that well.

BBBBZ or XXXXZ or a TIE Swarm or whatever? Now that's a dog fighting list. You know, one that has to actually play the game and not just fly like a reckless idiot by throwing your aces into bad positions and having your dice mods bail you out.

Also, off you made stuff that costed 1 or more point unique, it would do nothing to stop my Vessery Inquisitor OGP Palp Aces list.

That's all well and good but the real fun fact is that fat turrets shouldn't have existed in the first place, so there should have been no reason to have to create a counter for them. That's kind of my point. X-Wing is a dog fighting game, but even from the earliest days they added mechanics that compromised that and they shouldn't have. What they should have done is simply altered the rules for turrets so that their effectiveness was desirable as a supplement not a main element of the game.

This happens a lot in CCG's, its one of the main reasons why they started using key words, instead of writing out the rules of the keyword on the card. It offers the opportunity later to errata the keyword without having to ban or compensate for a misstep in the design process. Design flaws are going to happen and frankly to be expected, but I think the issue with X-Wing is that the game is incredibly sensitive. A single equipment card can render half your collection worthless competitively.

This sort of thing also leads to the dreaded counter build problem. Where effectively there have been so many over powered elements in the game introduced and countered by specific cards that completely wreck those elements that after so many waves most games are won or lost on lists, no on gameplay. Oh you have a turret list... no problem all my ships have autothrusters... game over.. no point in playing.

I want this game to be more like how it played before everyone in my area realized how good the Phantom was. I want there to be more of an emphasis on player skill than list building.

I've just succumbed to flying power squads all the time, but I really enjoyed the quad AC TIE MK II Punisher vs. 4 ship Rebel game I played a long time ago. There is a place for upgrades of course, but I want to go back to playing games where you have a general purpose squad against your opponent's general purpose squad and no ones ships are invincible and there aren't turrets or high PS repositioning.

This is why I don't actually care that all pre-wave games were just TIE Swarm vs. BBBB. 4 ship Rebel ditto matchups are great fun, and swarm ditto matchups, while sometimes tedious due to bumping, are great fun also.

This is also why I don't think U-Boats are a problem for the game. They're just jousters with a level of offense that can sometimes match the hyper damage mitigation of Palp Aces. They're just a large base version of 3x Dagger, 3x FCS, 3x HLC that actually works.

The TOP GUN format accomplishes this gameplay, while also forcing swarms not to be a thing. It really is the best way to play this game.