BEEP BEEP WORD WALL INCOMING

Let me tell you a quick story. This is story of Fox McCloud. In Super Smash Bros. Melee, Fox was the best character in the game. In Melee, because of the extremely high end characters compared to extremely low-end characters, only half of the cast(out of 26 characters) are actually viable in tournaments. Project M was a mod for the next game in the Smash series, Brawl. It was designed as a spiritual successor to Melee. They made a terrible, terrible mistake. They chose to sort out the balance issues in Melee, by buffing every single character in the cast to be roughly as good as Fox was. The only way to do this was to give a whole bunch of characters stupid, infuriating gimmicks or otherwise just gave them many, many options.

As a result, in my opinion, Project M is the least fun to play because you can get hit once and combo'd to death. That's not fun for anybody to play against.

So, how does this relate to X-Wing?

Well i generally consider ships/characters/etc. "good" if they have a lot of options. I consider something too good if they have a lot of options, but so many options that they outweigh the downsides of the character. This applies to things like Defenders, Soontir Fel, Palp, and the TIE Advanced. They have so many options, both in maneuverability, offense, defense, actions and so on that they perform well in a very wide range of situations and don't have clear-cut weaknesses. I consider these ships to be in the top tier of X-Wing ships/pilots/upgrades/whatever. However, just like in Melee, there is a very high end and a very low end, and these low-end ships are not viable in tournament by any means. These are ships like Starvipers, Kihraxzs, Scyks, X-Wings, etc. These are ships that absolutely need buffs that widen their range of options. For example; The X-Wing's primary and glaring weakness is poor mobility from a medicore dial and bad action bar. If you give it some maneuverability options, it could easily be viable, but would still be susceptible to alpha strikes like it is, but not so much that it's an auto lose, because with proper skill the pilot could potentially avoid the alpha strike. What you DON'T want to do with X-Wings is take something it already does well(pilot abilities i suppose, X-Wing pilots have decent abilities) and make them better, because you're then not addressing the issue that was actually holding the ship back.

In my opinion once a ships reaches comfortable mid-tier, with decent options but exploitable downsides, it's balanced. This is extremely important, so take note of that. In the Star Wars universe, every single ship served a role in one way or another. Ships like the X-Wing were multirole ships, and did a lot of stuff but didn't do all of those things as well as a specialized ship could, but cost less than those specialized ships. One way or another though, they had things they did well, things they did poorly, things that they would beat in a 1-on-1, and things they would lose to in a 1-on-1. In X-Wing, especially the way the tournament structure is, this is absolutely not the case. Soontir Fel has one exploitable weakness, and that's his susceptibility to stress. But even Fox in Melee had a weakness, but his wide array of options kind of negated that, and the same is true with Soontir. If you try to double stress Soontir now, Vader will just roll up on your Y-Wing or what have you and kill him, and even if you do throw dice at Soontir, he still has AT, SD, and Palp as a significant safety net.

The answer to balance issues is not buffing everything to Soontir's level, because that's what we call Power Creep, and it has ruined too many games. I'm sure you're all well aware of that term if you've been here longer than a week. The answer is buffing those at the bottom end of the spectrum into the mid-tier, and nerfing stuff in the top and top-high tier into the mid-tier. This is when you get a fun, balanced, and competitive game. The reason why video games are by and large more balanced than table top games is because they have an easier time or nerfing stuff.

What X-Wing needs is nerfs. What X-Wing needs are buffs. FFG cannot, i repeat, CANNOT avoid nerfing ships if they truly want to maintain a balanced game. What we see is the result of taking bottom tier ships and making them top-tier(TIE Advanced, TIE Defender, TIE Interceptor), or introducing ships that are good enough to challenge the other top tiers(Jumpmasters).

Now, about Wave 9. Wave 9 gives the introduction of two ships of note to this discussion, the ARC-170, and the TIE/SF. The ARC-170 is, in my opinion, one of the most comfortably balanced ships in a long time. It's a ship with a good amount of options from the crew slot, astromech slot, good dial, an the aux arc. However, it has a major crux in that it's an AGI 1 ship, and is as such weak to ships with a high peak offense. The way to mitigate this is Biggs, which has a downside in that you're now sacrificing MOV by giving the enemy Biggs to protect your more important ships. This is fantastic balance. There are downsides to the decisions you're making, but skill as a pilot and using the tools you've chosen and the options with them can allow you to overcome them if you play well enough.

So why is the TIE/SF important? I think it is easily a mid-tier ship. Easily viable as a mid AGI 3 attack 6 HP ship with a respectable dial and an affordable cost. It's aux arc also opens up some options, but you could go a whole game without using it and be fine. This is a well balanced ship. This is what irks me so much about the forums is everyone trashing the TIE/SF because it's not another top-tier scumbag ship for scumbags. This ultimately ties back in to my problem with the Imperial faction, is that it is easily the best faction in the game because, surprise surprise, it HAS THE MOST OPTIONS. The Imperial faction has a cost effective solution for every single matchup in the game. This why i say this:

Imperials in general need a nerf. Because yes, they are too good.

The Wave 8 Imperial faction is what happens when you you buff stuff too much. It becomes a power house and the only significantly viable faction. We see this from this year's tournament results, where the average is 50% of all players in the cut of tournaments were Imperial players. Now, in a two-faction game, that would technically be balanced. Scum averages 30-35%, generally balanced(but not balanced in the way that matters, i'll touch on that), while Rebel cut average is the remaining 15-20%, definitely a clear low-tier and not significantly viable.

So why is Scum not balanced?

Because their viable builds are extremely limited. It's basically Jumps or Brobots, that's it. This is not healthy metagame. Again the split between high tier and low tier is so polarizing that a significant number of ships aren't viable. This is a result of FFG's reluctance to nerf ships, where they would instead prefer to buff everything to be as good as the current best, which is a largely unsustainable band-aid to the real problem of X-Wing balance.

Wave 9 shows in interest in maintaining REAL balance. Now, they swung a little low in some areas(like R3 Astro and such), but overall, they have done a very good job in introducing new mechanics while not making those new mechanics too powerful. This bodes well, i think. They're setting themselves up for some balanced expansions and i appreciate that both as a game designer myself and a player of their game.

So what do i propose with all this? Well, i propose that X-Wing gets fluffy. By that i mean, i think FFG needs to begin doing the following: A) Examine the ships in context of the Star Wars universe, and determine what those ships did well and what they did poorly, B) Adjust those ship's capabilities to roughly match that if they did not already(if it's not possible to do this without breaking the ship or destroying it, err on the side of caution), C) Determine which ships are low-tier after these changes and buff them to mid-tier, where they have decent options but exploitable weaknesses, D) Nerf high-tier ships to mid-tier, and E) Introduce a varied tournament format, potentially involving different kinds of missions per game so that no matter what, there is NEVER a clear-cut superior ship in every game.

This will do many different things; First off, it makes the game more fluffy, which is always nice if you can have both fluff and competitive gameplay. Second, it eliminates the need for an S Tier and an E Tier. There will be, at most, an A Tier and D Tier. Some ships are still going to be the worst in the game, but they should still be viable, and some ships are going to be the best but it shouldnt be an hour-long affair to kill them. Third, this will make tournaments far more fun, interesting, and competitive, as you can get caught off-guard by a mission your squad does poorly with, but this does not mean it's an auto-lose necessarily because as we've already discussed, in this ideal X-Wing nothing is an auto-lose. Even in this tournament format with missions, your skill and resourcefulness as a pilot should always be enough to carry you through, not just netlisting like it is now. This also fixes another big issue in that ships that people really really like are actually usable, which makes the fanbase much happier. Additionally, a lot of the balance gets done by changing the tournament structure. If you make a mission about destroying a whole bunch of shipping containers or something, Palp Aces has a really bad matchup there because only two of the ships are actually combative. See what i mean? You may not even need to do all that much balancing if you just introduced competitive missions.

Using the example of Smash and why i believe this is right solution: Fox has stages that he performs worse on compared to other characters. These are called counterpicks. If you lose to a player in a game, you get the choice of which stage to go to next, and you have the advantage going into the next match. There is no character that has a favorable matchup against any given character on every legal stage. Back to X-Wing. Say there are 6 legal missions. The player who gets initiative bans one mission that they don't want to play. The player without initiative then bans 2 more missions that player doesnt want to play. The player with initiative then picks out of the three remaining missions, and they play that. There is now a larger advantage to take initiative, as you get choice of mission, so Palp Aces that never takes initiative is automatically faced with a tricky decision(move last or pick mission?), and the atmosphere is still competitive.

Let me now explain why it is in FFG's interest to do this.

1. Previously unviable ships now being viable means more purchases of those ships.

Think about it. The only reason anyone buys a StarViper is for autothrusters. The only reason people buy Kihraxzs is for Crackshot. Same for a whole bunch of ships. But consider this. A new person comes onto the forums. "Hey guys, i'm thinking of getting into tournament play! Do you have any suggestions as to what i should run?" Your response doesn't have to be the same canned "Imp Aces, Defender, Imp Vets" or whatever. It would be "Well, what Star Wars ship do you like?" They tell you "Oh, i like A-Wings!" "Then get that, Rebel Aces and whatever else you want. A-Wings do really well in Mission X, and have a favorable matchup against Y in Mission Z. Good luck and have fun!" Imagine how awesome that would be.

2. Increased tournament turnout, which leads to a larger amount of tournament kits sold

Right now the most annoying, yet definitely understandable thing i see when someone asks "Is X ship viable" is "in casual every ship is viable!". Their argument is that tournament is dull, boring, and lifeless netlisting and playing the same game over and over, and they're kinda right. Well, with the aforementioned overhaul of X-Wing and tournament play, that all goes away. No game will ever be the same, no list ever the same. If tournaments were run like this and X-Wing meta wasn't so black and white as it is, i would play in a lot more tournaments. It would be incredibly good for the community and very lucrative for FFG.

3. People like me, Hobojebus, PGS, and so on shut the **** up

This one pays for itself.

Don't make the mistake Smash Melee did. Don't make the mistake Project M did.

TL;DR If you buff every ship to be infuriatingly good, the game will not be good or fun.

You lose the fox comprison when you start saying that if you take advantage of his weakness another ship will kill you.

That's like saying if your fighting fox well then Marth is gonna wreck you. Doesn't add up in a 1v1, because thankfully we aren't required to fly a single ship.

Agreed. FFG uses too much rule of cool in its design. They want the ghost which is a huge Disney asset to be really really good. So they made it really good and gave it huge amounts of synergy options with huge amounts of upgrade slots. This is poor design. Same with the jump master which actually became imbalance the classically textbook way: an old card interacting with a new card in a bad way due to negligent levels of play testing.

Also way too many large ships too good. You mention IG and Jumps. In the past all the Falcons decimator and dash were running rampant over everything.

You lose the fox comprison when you start saying that if you take advantage of his weakness another ship will kill you.

That's like saying if your fighting fox well then Marth is gonna wreck you. Doesn't add up in a 1v1, because thankfully we aren't required to fly a single ship.

I disagree. Vader represents Fox's super strong options to avoid being combo food, which is Fox's singular weakness. A character with a weakness that it by and large doesnt really worry about isn't a character with a weakness. If you try and stress Soontir, that player has a number of options available:

A. Run Vader in and give support(this is the effective equivalent of using an aerial to escape out of a combo)

B. Run Soontir away and set Vader and the Shuttle to cover his retreat(This is DI'ing out and camping with lasers)

C. Rely on Soontir's SD, AT, and Palp to protect him(This is holding shield/crouch canceling)

D. Use Soontir as bait to set a trap with Vader(This is baiting an attack and punishing with a grab, shine, tilt, etc. You might lose the stock, but you just might take one too)

There are so many options i really can't begin to cover them all. All i know is, for every time that i've successfully killed Soontir by double stressing him, i've not landing damage after double stressing him 3 more times.

I think you have some really valid points here .. the game is bloated and clumsy by now in my opinion as a result of continuous buffing - and i still mis the possibility to play my fave ships... I like playing it casually but always in missions and scenarios, While crossing fingers that we wont end up the same place with Armada (which i play competitively).. Until there is some then Heroes of the Aturi cluster and epic scenarios for X-wing and tournaments for Armada.

Don't make the mistake Smash Melee did.

Super Smash Bros Melee still has tournaments with thousands of attendants 15 years after the game came out. It's one of the top 3 largest competitive fighting game scenes in the world 15 years after the game came out. The only video game I can think of with comparable longevity is Starcraft Brood War.

That's like the worst example of a "mistake" to use.

Don't make the mistake Smash Melee did.

Super Smash Bros Melee still has tournaments with thousands of attendants 15 years after the game came out. It's one of the top 3 largest competitive fighting game scenes in the world 15 years after the game came out.

That's like the worst example of a "mistake" to use.

That's because even terrible matchups can be overcome by skill the sheer freedom the smash gives you. The same isn't quite true in X-Wing. For example: Hungrybox, the best melee player in the world right now, plays Jigglypuff. Jigglypuff has a negative matchup at 70/30 against Fox, and it's generally considered that Fox will beat Jiggs. However, Hungrybox clutched out the win at Evo 2016 over Armada's fox, but specifically CLUTCHED IT OUT. I'm talking last stock, last game, last set, last hit clutch. But every X-Wing world's has been won by the best list at the time. The game play differs, and in Smash it is easier to overcome a bad matchup than it is in X-Wing, and the fact that since you're not building a list with many upgrade cards, any one of which could prove to be the downfall of the list, whereas in smash it is A. One character, B. Counterpick stages are a thing which give an advantage, C. You can switch characters at any time, D. Technically speaking it's 100% skill, unlike X-Wing which is dice-based. A good player can win a set without taking a single percent of damage, but they have to have the skill to never get hit, but in X-Wing you will never NOT get to shoot at something, and there it's only guaranteed dice mods that will save you, not skill.

You can't compare X-Wing to a video game because in a video game you can freely change the code. Once you print something in X-Wing there's very little you can change. That's why FFG buffs weak ships.

One thing FFG can do is use card limitations or bans. Even this has to be done carefully. If you ban Deadeye and Palpatine for example you'll kill Torpscouts and PalpAces, but will that create a varied meta or will it just open the path for two new overdominant lists? Would it just turn into TLT Spam and Dengaroo?

Three words: City of Heroes

The Cryptic said they would never nerf, only buff, and things were great for a while.

Then came the great nerfing of 2005, and things were never the same.

Point being, taking something away does more harm than adding something in my experience.

I find project M twice as fun as melee, and prefer the newest smash over all of them. So, I find your example lacking. Melee is only for nostalgia driven die hards.

Nerfs never make a game better. Someone always gets shafted.

Edit: also the first 2 wins of heaver had at worlds were NOT the top meta list at the time. They became so after because he made them popular, so your data is flawed there as well.

Agreed. FFG uses too much rule of cool in its design. They want the ghost which is a huge Disney asset to be really really good. So they made it really good and gave it huge amounts of synergy options with huge amounts of upgrade slots. This is poor design. Same with the jump master which actually became imbalance the classically textbook way: an old card interacting with a new card in a bad way due to negligent levels of play testing.

Also way too many large ships too good. You mention IG and Jumps.pant over everything. In the past all the Falcons decimator and dash were running ram

On the contrary, a new place for an old card is great design.

a new card that's SUPER GODDAMN AUTOINCLUDE (looking at Autohumpers and TLTs) is bad design.

And yes, the game ought to have more than 2(3) sizes.

Punisher, K, IG, Firespray, ARC, they all don't quite fit into small\large categories

1x2

1,5x1,5 bases would have solved it, just as YV666 should have the 3x2 one

I find project M twice as fun as melee, and prefer the newest smash over all of them. So, I find your example lacking. Melee is only for nostalgia driven die hards.

Nerfs never make a game better. Someone always gets shafted.

"Nerfs never make a game better." Nerfs are literally the devs acknowledging that they made a mistake, and that they needed to fix it. It happened with the Phantom, and everyone got over it, because we knew it was needed. What you propose is by making more mistakes to make up for the original mistake, because two wrongs make a right, i guess. When you use buffs when you should be using nerfs, the original problem doesn't go away. It stays and festers, and all you managed to do was create a second problem.

Also, EVO 2016's melee stream broke records. I didnt even play melee as a kid, so i wasnt driven by nostalgia, nor do i even play it competitively(i prefer smash 4 as it is the most balanced), and i watched the stream. And i do play melee with my friends occasionally. Argument = invalid.

Don't make the mistake Smash Melee did.

Super Smash Bros Melee still has tournaments with thousands of attendants 15 years after the game came out. It's one of the top 3 largest competitive fighting game scenes in the world 15 years after the game came out. The only video game I can think of with comparable longevity is Starcraft Brood War.

That's like the worst example of a "mistake" to use.

Don't make the same mistake Pokemon made.

Don't make the same mistake WoW made (or any Blizzard franchise for the matter).

Don't make the same mistake other people have made comparing a boardgame to a video game.

The franchise is what sells this game. If this wasn't a SW game it would be very popular among mini's wargamers but it wouldn't be the hit it is today. Having the SW license is what makes it a hit, fullstop. It's true, the rules at this point are bollocks and they distort the game with every release. But they're not going to change their ways until people stop playing the game.

The only mistake being made here is the one you (Razgriz25thinf) make by continuing to buy ships.

Nerfs never make a game better. Someone always gets shafted.

Of course there are people that don't like it if their toys get nerfed, but there are also people who recognize it was necessary and appreciate it although the play it. And you can never make anyone happy.

Neither nerfs or buffs are bad, they are both tools of balancing, of course you have to be careful when using them because you can easily make something to weak or strong. Both of them are needed, no game will be perfect and if one unit/ship is to strong it's easier to nerf that one unit then to buff the rest, of course with X-Wing we have the "problem" that FFG doesn't change stats on already printed cards as far as i know, in other games if a ship is 1-2 to expnesive to be good you would just get a errata correcting that, in X-WIng you get a card to make the ship somehow better, both systems have their good and bad sides.

Agreed. FFG uses too much rule of cool in its design. They want the ghost which is a huge Disney asset to be really really good. So they made it really good and gave it huge amounts of synergy options with huge amounts of upgrade slots. This is poor design. Same with the jump master which actually became imbalance the classically textbook way: an old card interacting with a new card in a bad way due to negligent levels of play testing.

Also way too many large ships too good. You mention IG and Jumps.pant over everything. In the past all the Falcons decimator and dash were running ram

On the contrary, a new place for an old card is great design.

a new card that's SUPER GODDAMN AUTOINCLUDE (looking at Autohumpers and TLTs) is bad design.

And yes, the game ought to have more than 2(3) sizes.

Punisher, K, IG, Firespray, ARC, they all don't quite fit into small\large categories

1x2

1,5x1,5 bases would have solved it, just as YV666 should have the 3x2 one

Absolutely not.

Personally, I would have been fine with pre-fix Phantoms if Interceptors had autothrusters. Autothrusters makes the interceptors feel like interceptors. And gives less of the crazy variance of dice that people don't want to see. Gives them a role and point cost that doesn't overlap with Phantoms.

TLT is bad design. Its overpowered for its cost. Simple.

No to more sizes. More sizes increases cognition overload when thinking about overlaps and blocking, which is the important part of the game at high levels. (except against dengar, trolololol).

No my main problem is that you can't list counter large ships. And FFG is intent on making large ships incredibly strong. And they do a poor poor poor job on many small ships.

But every X-Wing world's has been won by the best list at the time.

Wrong.

I do agree with the main point that FFG should do more nerfs as oppossed to buffs.

I'm glad they've fixed issues with ships in the past, but I feel their fixes often go a step too far, and suddnely a ship on the lower end of the spectrum instead of becoming average, becomes above average instead.

Take Auto Thrusters for example. Great fix for arc dodgers who were getting murdered by turrets since they will ALWAYS be in arc of the turret. But then FFG took it one step to far and also let it work at range 3 IN ARC. Where they were usually pretty safe already because of the extra defensive dice, along with whatever tokens they had.

Another example could be the tie defender x7 title. It's arguably a bit TOO good right now. Maybe if it had been a free evade action instad of a token it would be about right. That way the evade is never a guarantee for going fast.

But every X-Wing world's has been won by the best list at the time.

Wrong.

People like you infuriate me.

But every X-Wing world's has been won by the best list at the time.

Wrong.

People like you infuriate me.

It is wrong though. Neither the World's 2013 winning list nor the World's 2015 winning list were considered the "best" lists until they actually won. If you look at the Worlds 2015 top 32, nobody was using that combination of regen and a Stresshog, and many people at the time were assuming Palp Aces would win Worlds.

Agreed. FFG uses too much rule of cool in its design. They want the ghost which is a huge Disney asset to be really really good. So they made it really good and gave it huge amounts of synergy options with huge amounts of upgrade slots. This is poor design. Same with the jump master which actually became imbalance the classically textbook way: an old card interacting with a new card in a bad way due to negligent levels of play testing.

Also way too many large ships too good. You mention IG and Jumps.pant over everything. In the past all the Falcons decimator and dash were running ram

On the contrary, a new place for an old card is great design.

a new card that's SUPER GODDAMN AUTOINCLUDE (looking at Autohumpers and TLTs) is bad design.

And yes, the game ought to have more than 2(3) sizes.

Punisher, K, IG, Firespray, ARC, they all don't quite fit into small\large categories

1x2

1,5x1,5 bases would have solved it, just as YV666 should have the 3x2 one

Absolutely not.

Personally, I would have been fine with pre-fix Phantoms if Interceptors had autothrusters. Autothrusters makes the interceptors feel like interceptors. And gives less of the crazy variance of dice that people don't want to see. Gives them a role and point cost that doesn't overlap with Phantoms.

TLT is bad design. Its overpowered for its cost. Simple.

No to more sizes. More sizes increases cognition overload when thinking about overlaps and blocking, which is the important part of the game at high levels. (except against dengar, trolololol).

No my main problem is that you can't list counter large ships. And FFG is intent on making large ships incredibly strong. And they do a poor poor poor job on many small ships.

Heh, the point is that any arcdodger must die to turret, that was the grand design in the first place, you can dodge the arc, but won't dodge the turret.

AT spoiled that.

Their role as turret-eaters? They didn't start sucking against jousters, but gained a huge boost against turrets, that's fail. and a reason Palpaces are around in droves for the whole year already. Definitely a flaw

TLT isn't even remotely overpowered, it just hardcountered 1-2 evade ships, namely PWTs. as if AT didn't spoil their life already.

Complexity is not a bad thing. and in most cases we have ships that would have been better on another base.

Incredibly strong? Go ask Aggressor if it can possibly outgun a goddamn defender! Being large is a huge debuff in itself.

But every X-Wing world's has been won by the best list at the time.

Wrong.

People like you infuriate me.

He's right though.

WORLDS 2012 - Wave 1 Tournament

Won by Dallas Parker iirc.

The best possible list in Wave 1 is the Howl Swarm, but the winning list contained an original TIE advanced.

WORLDS 2013 - Wave 3 Tournament

Won by Paul Heaver.

Dominant list is the TIE swarm hands down. The TIE Swarm is why Wave 4 has so much generic hate in it. Won by XXBB, a list designed to be able to beat the TIE swarm by outflying it with the bizarre behaviour of the Adv Sensor B-wing.

WORLDS 2014 - Wave 5 Tournament

Won by Paul Heaver.

Dominant list is the Fat Falcon and Phantom + Miniswarm. Won by a Fat Falcon tailored to kill Fat Falcons.

WORLDS 2015 - Wave 7 Tournament

Won by Paul Heaver.

Won by a toolkit list containing a T-70, a single TLT Y-wing, a Stresshog and iirc a Z-95. Never became a netlist. PalpAces was in this tournament.

The only time the popular archetype won was Worlds 2014 and even then it was a new form of it specialised to kill others of its archetype: it brought the previously dismissed R2-D2 Crew out of nowhere to take the Falcon's durability from ignore two hits to ignore three.

Whether to nerf or buff an option in a competitive game depends on where an option is relative to the balance curve. The inquisitor and Palpatine? Far above the curve. The Scyk? Can't even see the curve it's so far below it.

However, the card based format makes nerfing a card impractical. Honestly, the best solution is probably a rules rewrite that would give FFG the chance to reevaluate costs and perhaps change the turret mechanic.

Regarding Autothrusters: Autothrusters needed to do something against non-turrets to make up for the opportunity cost. And on A-wings, the Protectorate Starfighter, the Starviper, and (imo) Aggressors, they're fine. The problem is more with how hyper-defensive Imperial Arc dodgers are.

Reading the negativity in this thread is baffling.

A/ if you don't like it anymore...try something else. Bye!

B/ tourneys lead to bleeding edge lists that suck to play against.

Don't play tourneys. Simple.

Speaking as someone who avoids tourneys like the plague, this game is the best it's been. Triple Scouts seem retarded, so I don't play them. Palp aces is amazing, I don't play them that often. Tie punishers suck badly, I like winning (or trying to) with them.

A win with crap like a punisher is worth more to me than a dozen wins with palp and his buddies. I like trying to make Cobra commander work. The game is what you make of it. If you find you have issues, maybe the problem is you.

Agreed. FFG uses too much rule of cool in its design. They want the ghost which is a huge Disney asset to be really really good. So they made it really good and gave it huge amounts of synergy options with huge amounts of upgrade slots. This is poor design. Same with the jump master which actually became imbalance the classically textbook way: an old card interacting with a new card in a bad way due to negligent levels of play testing.

Also way too many large ships too good. You mention IG and Jumps.pant over everything. In the past all the Falcons decimator and dash were running ram

On the contrary, a new place for an old card is great design.

a new card that's SUPER GODDAMN AUTOINCLUDE (looking at Autohumpers and TLTs) is bad design.

And yes, the game ought to have more than 2(3) sizes.

Punisher, K, IG, Firespray, ARC, they all don't quite fit into small\large categories

1x2

1,5x1,5 bases would have solved it, just as YV666 should have the 3x2 one

Absolutely not.

Personally, I would have been fine with pre-fix Phantoms if Interceptors had autothrusters. Autothrusters makes the interceptors feel like interceptors. And gives less of the crazy variance of dice that people don't want to see. Gives them a role and point cost that doesn't overlap with Phantoms.

TLT is bad design. Its overpowered for its cost. Simple.

No to more sizes. More sizes increases cognition overload when thinking about overlaps and blocking, which is the important part of the game at high levels. (except against dengar, trolololol).

No my main problem is that you can't list counter large ships. And FFG is intent on making large ships incredibly strong. And they do a poor poor poor job on many small ships.

Heh, the point is that any arcdodger must die to turret, that was the grand design in the first place, you can dodge the arc, but won't dodge the turret.

AT spoiled that.

Their role as turret-eaters? They didn't start sucking against jousters, but gained a huge boost against turrets, that's fail. and a reason Palpaces are around in droves for the whole year already. Definitely a flaw

TLT isn't even remotely overpowered, it just hardcountered 1-2 evade ships, namely PWTs. as if AT didn't spoil their life already.

Complexity is not a bad thing. and in most cases we have ships that would have been better on another base.

Incredibly strong? Go ask Aggressor if it can possibly outgun a goddamn defender! Being large is a huge debuff in itself.

Literally everything you just said is wrong.

PalpAces itself empirically isn't actually that overpowered: it didn't even make the final at Worlds. The Inquistor is good but he's not critical to it: Fel has always been its wrecking ball and it's always been possible to pair him with a fully loaded Vader. The problem is that the lists that killed PalpAces can't fight the TorpScout.

Speaking as someone who avoids tourneys like the plague, this game is the best it's been.

I think late Wave 7 after TLT Spam died down was the game's strongest point in terms of balance: I couldn't point to the two dominant lists each other wave has had. (Wave 1 TIE swarm, Wave 2 TIE swarm, Wave 3 TIE swarm, Wave 4 Phantom Miniswarm vs Fat Falcon, Wave 5 Phantom Miniswarm versus TwoShip, Wave 6 TwoShip versus TwoShip, Wave 7 ???, Wave 8 Torpscout vs PalpAces with Dengaroo starting to bleed in).