Effort OP to come. In the meantime, here is the latest:

http://xwingtactics.blogspot.com/2016/10/ranking-upgrades-ship-titles-rebel.html

Really nice write up on all the titles. I think you nailed it, hard to argue with any of your reasoning. Great work!

I don't know. I would rate Independence B tier. Also don't like Mon Kerran as much. Foresight is higher up in my opinion.

Foresight is a hard one to rank. Its middling with any commander that isn't mon mothma, but with her its S-tier IMO.

Foresight is a hard one to rank. Its middling with any commander that isn't mon mothma, but with her its S-tier IMO.

It does more than the evade part. It can really reduce damage from a demo or other MC-30.

Sure...but if you arent running mothma id rather have admo in the situations where that comes up.

How I feel when reading Ranked Lists (And the comments that follow them):

Liberty an F? But it's so cheap - that should make it a D class upgrade at worst.

I am now determined to destroy you with Garm and Nebulon-Bs based on your last few articles.

I understand these kind of rankings can be helpful to new players, but I can't help feeling it's WRONG to make them. Luckily this game is - for the most part - not about "tiers" but about what use one makes of the ships, commanders and upgrades, and even seemingly crazy builds can be powerful.

Remember when we all thought the raider was ****, then Clon came and the forum was full of topics about how unfair Demsu was?

I understand these kind of rankings can be helpful to new players, but I can't help feeling it's WRONG to make them. Luckily this game is - for the most part - not about "tiers" but about what use one makes of the ships, commanders and upgrades, and even seemingly crazy builds can be powerful.

The more we play the game the more we will defined what the meta is, since then a lot of other meta shift can happen like the one you have quoted. But eventually we will reach a stable meta , the more people play the game and the more competitive the game becomes, the faster it will reach this stability state.

I understand these kind of rankings can be helpful to new players, but I can't help feeling it's WRONG to make them. Luckily this game is - for the most part - not about "tiers" but about what use one makes of the ships, commanders and upgrades, and even seemingly crazy builds can be powerful.

I am sorry to destroy your hopes and dreams but no matter how balance they are, EVERY GAMES played at a competitive level have tier deck/units/armies/Build, EVERY GAMES have a metagame. On Armada just like every other games, knowing what is good and what is not will give you an edge over your opponent and thinking: "everything is playable" will lead you to make sub-optimal choices.

The only reason why the metagame on Armada is not clearly defined compared to other games I know of, is because it does not see nearly as much play as the other games I know of.

Remember when we all thought the raider was ****, then Clon came and the forum was full of topics about how unfair Demsu was?

The more we play the game the more we will defined what the meta is, since then a lot of other meta shift can happen like the one you have quoted. But eventually we will reach a stable meta , the more people play the game and the more competitive the game becomes, the faster it will reach this stability state.

Armada is played plenty enough to see a meta fleshed out. "Everything is playable" is not a trap so long as you're doing the proper analysis to make sure your fleet is purpose built to use what you take. The trap is just following along with the meta and assuming something is worthless at a glance. Stability is stupid, boring, and pointless. I love seEing a build come out of left field to blow away complacency. Clonisher was great at that. I also love that it's now kind fallen by the way side with all the flotillas and squadron play. Now it's coming close to time to wreck that meta with something else.

You ranked Paragon higher than Gallant Haven. I stopped caring at that point. Paragon is not terrible, but Gallant Haven feels like you break the game when it starts working.

Liberty as an F is comical. For how cheap it is, any of the token granting mechanics makes is useful. Not powerful or a game changer. Just useful.

Yavaris as an Omega title is also goofy. By your own ranking system, it cant be over an A or so as it is totally reliant on other cards.

You ranked Paragon higher than Gallant Haven. I stopped caring at that point. Paragon is not terrible, but Gallant Haven feels like you break the game when it starts working.

Liberty as an F is comical. For how cheap it is, any of the token granting mechanics makes is useful. Not powerful or a game changer. Just useful.

Yavaris as an Omega title is also goofy. By your own ranking system, it cant be over an A or so as it is totally reliant on other cards.

Gallant Haven is pretty good depending on the situation but it is easy to target the Haven with the bigger ships we have. Plus no smart person would try to engage squads in the haven. Couple this with Rhymer as the hardest counter to Haven and one of the most popular imperial squadrons to bring makes it meh.

Armada is played plenty enough to see a meta fleshed out.

No it isn't .The more a game is played the more your discover about it, beside there is not enough money of the stack to have people picking the game up really seriously. Starcraft Brood War was a national sport in South Korea and massively played during more than 10 years and yet people still could find new stuff to play at a competitive level. In comparison to that, Armada is a baby , if the game is as deep as I hope it is we haven't seen nearly a quarter of what the game can offer.

"Everything is playable" is not a trap so long as you're doing the proper analysis to make sure your fleet is purpose built to use what you take.

Maybe we don't have the same definition of "playable", what I personally mean by playable, is playable in a competitive environment where every players want to maximize their chance of winning. From that definition there is plenty of upgrades and ships type that are sub optimal choice.

People believe that X-wing is less balanced than Armada because the meta is more stale , but X-wing is made by the same company and has probably the same design process and philosophy. The only reason why X-wing feels more stale than Armada is because it is just more played and is more competitive (for now )

If we organize a league with a series of 10 tournaments with a 10 000 dollars cash prize for each and give 6 month to prepare for it , do you really think that the meta will be as diverse as your LGS? Of course not, players will start playing the game like never before, experience builds for tons of hours, find out what is good and what is not and come up with build that will crush every fleet you've made in the past and you thought were "playable".

I can't even count how many games I have played/watch competitively, and it is always the same thing, Armada is no different.

Maybe we don't have the same definition of "playable", what I personally mean by playable, is playable in a competitive environment where every players want to maximize their chance of winning. From that definition there is plenty of upgrades and ships type that are sub optimal choice.

Thork. Do you count sensor teams as sub optimal? Want to let me prove you wrong?

No it isn't .The more a game is played the more your discover about it, beside there is not enough money of the stack to have people picking the game up really seriously. Starcraft Brood War was a national sport in South Korea and massively played during more than 10 years and yet people still could find new stuff to play at a competitive level. In comparison to that, Armada is a baby , if the game is as deep as I hope it is we haven't seen nearly a quarter of what the game can offer.

......

If we organize a league with a series of 10 tournaments with a 10 000 dollars cash prize for each and give 6 month to prepare for it , do you really think that the meta will be as diverse as your LGS? Of course not, players will start playing the game like never before, experience builds for tons of hours, find out what is good and what is not and come up with build that will crush every fleet you've made in the past and you thought were "playable".

These two sentiments run counter to each other. You're simultaneously trying to say that a meta can definitively shake out what's optimal and what's not optimal when it's played frequently, but that a meta is constantly changing to find new combinations. I'm simply saying the latter rather than the former. Armada has already seen plenty of "ZOMG THIS IS OP!" freak outs only to have the meta come round again with formerly sub-optimal choices suddenly looking pretty great. The meta had determined that squadrons were useless in wave one, and then an A-Wing swarm won Nationals. Ackbar was OP, then DeMSU utterly annihilated it. Rieekan was useless, then a bunch of us, myself included, won Regionals with him at the helm. Now squadrons and flotillas are ascendant. I'll bet something will come out of the wood work to crush them.

I have to disagree about frequency of play. The natural tendency of players is to gravitate toward what appears to be working, not trying something new. All that frequency of play does is encourage sameness at a more rapid rate. We see that tendency all the same with Armada. Everyone ditched squadrons in wave one. Every Rebel was playing Ackbar at the beginning of wave two. To me, what shows Armada's fantastic balance is that at many major events, the winner is often the guy running a build completely counter to the meta. Q won Nationals this year with Mon Mothma. Last year's World Champ was the aforementioned A-Wing swarm. That shows that whatever the meta has decided is "the best" can be crushed by looking at different options in a new way.

You ranked Paragon higher than Gallant Haven. I stopped caring at that point. Paragon is not terrible, but Gallant Haven feels like you break the game when it starts working.

Liberty as an F is comical. For how cheap it is, any of the token granting mechanics makes is useful. Not powerful or a game changer. Just useful.

Yavaris as an Omega title is also goofy. By your own ranking system, it cant be over an A or so as it is totally reliant on other cards.

Gallant Haven is pretty good depending on the situation but it is easy to target the Haven with the bigger ships we have. Plus no smart person would try to engage squads in the haven. Couple this with Rhymer as the hardest counter to Haven and one of the most popular imperial squadrons to bring makes it meh.

Its also relatively easy to trigger some of Gallant Haven. It is hard to ride it ruthlessly. Use a squad command, jump your squads in for alpha strike, and move GH up behind them for when your opponent tries to activate them. Rhymer gets dealt with similarly.

Half of your opponents should be Rebels and they (until Snipe) have no counter.

I should do low effort filler more often.

Biggs be popping out the clickbait articles now. Next one's gonna be like "ISD's Hate Him; You Won't Believe How This Admiral Pushed 6 Squads for Under 60 Points!"

Biggs be popping out the clickbait articles now. Next one's gonna be like "ISD's Hate Him; You Won't Believe How This Admiral Pushed 6 Squads for Under 60 Points!"

Exactly! Why put effort into my monthy writing / containment thread when I can poop out a moderately subjective article that doesn't actually contain tactical advice and get 10x the comments?

The worst part is I've already written the Imperial article, so get ready to criticise that on Wednesday.

These two sentiments run counter to each other. You're simultaneously trying to say that a meta can definitively shake out what's optimal and what's not optimal when it's played frequently, but that a meta is constantly changing to find new combinations. I'm simply saying the latter rather than the former. Armada has already seen plenty of "ZOMG THIS IS OP!" freak outs only to have the meta come round again with formerly sub-optimal choices suddenly looking pretty great. The meta had determined that squadrons were useless in wave one, and then an A-Wing swarm won Nationals. Ackbar was OP, then DeMSU utterly annihilated it. Rieekan was useless, then a bunch of us, myself included, won Regionals with him at the helm. Now squadrons and flotillas are ascendant. I'll bet something will come out of the wood work to crush them.

Ok let me express myself more clearly:

Basically you say:

Everything is competitive depending on the context and there is a counter to everything.

I say:

This situation even if true today won't last forever, at some point people will figure out the meta like it's the case in every other game , it takes time on armada because the game is not very played and not very competitive.

Once again it the case for every single game and if you believe that Armada is different you are either dreaming or a fanboy

The natural tendency of players is to gravitate toward what appears to be working, not trying something new. All that frequency of play does is encourage sameness at a more rapid rate. We see that tendency all the same with Armada.

Even if what you say is true to an extent , there is always some innovators among a given playerbase and bigger the playerbase is the more innovators there is too. But even more important than the number of players, the competitiveness of the game is a even more important factor.

Ok let me express myself more clearly:

Basically you say:

Everything is competitive depending on the context and there is a counter to everything.

I say:

This situation even if true today won't last forever, at some point people will figure out the meta like it's the case in every other game , it takes time on armada because the game is not very played and not very competitive.

Once again it the case for every single game and if you believe that Armada is different you are either dreaming or a fanboy

I'll clarify that I don't think every single thing in the game is competitive. I'm looking at you Point Defense Re-Route. I'm also more than happy to concede there are some upgrades that are meta defining. Dealing with Demolisher, for example, requires forethought. I just don't dismiss large swaths of upgrades simply because they're outside the current meta, nor do I think taking the OP hotness is required to win. Again, I can name an awful number of upgrades that we initially jettisoned out the airlock that came back to smack the meta in the face. Chalk me up as a dreaming fanboy. I cannot see how a game that is constantly invaded with new options will inevitably settle into a certain meta of limited, stagnant builds. All I can do is watch the trends of this game which I have come to love, enjoy, and compete within at a high level. Those trends tell me to constantly re-examine the things I have dismissed as "sub-optimal."

Don't mind me, while I just go and troll the Steel Squadron Facebook Page.... >.>