I believe it was the Red Baron that said something along the lines of "It's not the box. It's the man inside the box" after nearly being out flown by a British pilot in a pusher engine biplane. I think, like most, it's about 50/50. One of my favorite lists that I made, after getting a Firespray, is Bossk and Boba, each kitted to take full advantage of Botha abilities. Can't wait to grab fearlessness.

I'm of the impression it's 60/40. With the 60% being your skill with the list. Mainly because I've beaten meta hotness with lists that I'm comfortable with while my opponent was just learning his. Other than that? Your guess is as good as mine.

I believe it was the Red Baron that said something along the lines of "It's not the box. It's the man inside the box" after nearly being out flown by a British pilot in a pusher engine biplane. I think, like most, it's about 50/50. One of my favorite lists that I made, after getting a Firespray, is Bossk and Boba, each kitted to take full advantage of Botha abilities. Can't wait to grab fearlessness.

It's "crate", "The man in the crate".

I'm of the impression it's 60/40. With the 60% being your skill with the list. Mainly because I've beaten meta hotness with lists that I'm comfortable with while my opponent was just learning his. Other than that? Your guess is as good as mine.

Thank you, and good point.

Flying.......... 65%

List building... 35%

On average I'd go with 45% list, 45% flying depending on specifics (some lists help a less skilled player shine easier, while other lists require a good player to even begin to be good) and 10% dice.

Dice only matter in close games in my experience. I've lost games I feel I should have won due to dice and won games I feel I should have lost, but only when the situation was pretty close and could have gone either way right until that point. If it's a landslide and you're winning 100-0 no amount of dice luck will maker you lose (in practice, theoretically you can only roll blanks for the rest of the game ). It might turn 100-0 into 100-20, but you'll still win.

If a game ever went beyond 50% list building I would be very very concerned for its health. In saying that I generally find X wing has a pretty decent 60% flying, 30% List building and 10% luck. Unless you are playing at the top of the competitive scene most simple combos are easy to create and have fun with. Recently our store has been doing a slow grow league and it has been fun cracking out the less used ships and pilots to give some of the newer players a bit of respite...sometimes you even grow to love the pilots after using them because flying well with them actually makes them very decent. The perfect analogy for this discussion is Echo vs Whisper....Whisper gets more play time due to ease of use but the die hards who love the skill required will fly Echo.

Its definitely going to be a mix of the two but ultimately I don't think there is a huge amount point trying to determine which is more important (even less so trying to attach %s to it) because it depends how far apart any two lists are in terms of competetiveness and any two players are in terms of skill.

What happens when you give the world's best player a mediocre list and a mediocre player the world's best list? What happens when you give the best player the world's worst list and the world's worst player the world's best list. Does the better player win both/neither? Or are the results different in each case?

In a competitive setting, I would actually go one step further:

Fyling: counts for 33%

List building: counts for 33%

Building your list according to the meta you will face: counts for 33%

Why the third cathegory? Remember when Falcons with gunners were hot and everyone was using them (pre-autothrusters)? Everyone was flying that good list (list building skill) and many were flying it well (flying skill). Paul Heaver went one step further, however, and build and adapted his list to include C3-PO and R2D2 instead. The reason: if the game ever devolved into a Falcon Gunner vs his Falcon list, he would win every time.

So understanding the meta that you are likely to face is also a skill.

This is very true, but personally I'd lump meta-judgement into list building. Part of building a good list is knowing what it's likely to face and building accordingly.

You can mitigate with good flying that RNG just fine. I had plenty of RNG fluks for and against me, but I can honestly not say that RNG ever won or lost me a game. This should change when players become really good and you can not expect them to make more than one or maybe two mistakes per game while the list building is top notch too … but in general? Fly better, screw random, build better and negate random almost completely.

This is so painfully naive and optimistic it hurts. You must not play much X-Wing. There will be occasional games where randomness largely determines the result.

For instance, in a game of Palp Aces vs Dengaroo where R5P8 triggers successfully with the a [Hit] every time. There is nothing the Palp Ace player can do to avoid this outside of spreading attacks and not attacking when a ship has only 1 Hull left, but they cannot survive if the attrition war if R5P8 is hot.

You decide to play the chance game with attacking the painbot ship. You could easily go after the other ship. And btw, stopping to attack the painbot at one hull is already playing a huge chance game as you decide to bet that your ace will never takes a lucky hit afterwards.

Your example with giving the opponent evades on all dice is btw like turning the random up to 11. Something like this is so unlikely that it basically might never happen within our life span, I am to lazy to do the math, but it certainly feels like in range to not happening before all stars are burned out if you play 2 games per day until all end of time. Losing to a meteorite strike is a possibility too. ;-)

Besides, I did not rule out random influences completely anyway, I said playing better trumps rolling good.

And as I said, I never lost a game to bad dice, I got plenty of flukes, for example my whisper took 3 hits to a naked 3 dice defender attack that was unexpected and unlucky, but there tons better moves which would have won me the game before that point, instead it ended two turns later in a joust with his last defender one a 1hp Whisper and lost the game … I had a better than 50/50 chance to still win the game, ended up with that defender on 1 hp and my Whisper dead. But clearly that game was not lost to dice, because flying better would have changed the result and I could track my mistakes which lead to me getting into a situation which relied on dice instead of flying. And you see those moments, those mistakes which change the game even at games at national levels still. That one bump which turns the tables, etc …

… alas, as I have said, RNG can happen, it not like RNG never happens, it just statistical far less relevant than actually flying better.

I believe it was the Red Baron that said something along the lines of "It's not the box. It's the man inside the box" after nearly being out flown by a British pilot in a pusher engine biplane. I think, like most, it's about 50/50. One of my favorite lists that I made, after getting a Firespray, is Bossk and Boba, each kitted to take full advantage of Botha abilities. Can't wait to grab fearlessness.

It's "crate", "The man in the crate".

Thank you, and good point.

As it is a translation from the german slang of "fliegende Kisten" for airplanes which should be equivalent to the british "Flying machines" I would say neither creates nor boxes fits, even when both are legitimate translation for "Kiste".

At least I never heard of the idiom "Flying crates" nor "Flying boxes".

I believe it was the Red Baron that said something along the lines of "It's not the box. It's the man inside the box" after nearly being out flown by a British pilot in a pusher engine biplane. I think, like most, it's about 50/50. One of my favorite lists that I made, after getting a Firespray, is Bossk and Boba, each kitted to take full advantage of Botha abilities. Can't wait to grab fearlessness.

It's "crate", "The man in the crate".

Thank you, and good point.

As it is a translation from the german slang of "fliegende Kisten" for airplanes which should be equivalent to the british "Flying machines" I would say neither creates nor boxes fits, even when both are legitimate translation for "Kiste".

At least I never heard of the idiom "Flying crates" nor "Flying boxes".

A common English idiom for a plane at that time was 'crate' which is probably why that word is suggested.

I stand corrected.