I checked the submitted lists that qualified for the second round of elimination, and I found every ship except the following:

• TIE Bomber
• TIE Punisher
• TIE SF Fighter
• Imperial Firespray
• Rebel HWK
• Kira;lqwjsdf
• Starviper
• G1A

First, is this correct? Second, who else thinks it is amazing that there are 40 ships in this game, and 32 of them made it into the second day at worlds. I don't think Zuckuss should be nerfed, I don't think Palp should be nerfed, I think that we are playing an amazing game and Dengaroo is a really hard list to fly well against all of these different opponents. This is easily the healthiest meta we have seen.

It's impressive alright. All though it's even more impressive that people will still manage to cry about an "xwing fix" in light of several ships that have rarely if ever graced the higher tables. Nice to see variety even in light of a good chunk of it being based on Ol Palpy.

It's funny: maybe we didn't watch the same games on the ffg stream. I didn't see any list winning games. I saw players winning or losing by flying brilliantly or sometimes making mistakes, or even really lucky dice (or appalling ones like Fenn Rau got against Corran). But the games I watched didn't make me think right from the start: hey, that's a bad matchup. This list is so better than that one....

The new world champion didn't win because Zuckuss is OP. He won by brilliantly blocking Han on a rock for two turns in the semi final.

Personally, I really enjoyed watching all those games. Very diverse ships being used and some really impressive moves/strategies.

Yeah, both of the last two games involving Dengaroo had more to do with tactics than zuckuss. Han getting blocked on a rock, Corran taking unanswered power shots from Dengar. It doesn't really matter if Corran had another turn or two to live because Corran would not get a shot. Same for a way out of position Jake.

Meta Comparisons for Worlds 2013 - 2016

Unless otherwise noted, baselines are:

• Worlds 2013 Top Cut (16)
• Worlds 2014 Top Cut (32)
• Worlds 2015 6-2 or better (32)
• Worlds 2016 6-2 or better (41)

Faction breakdown

2013 2014 2015 2016

Rebels 56.25% 62.5% 40.6% 24.4%

Imperials 43.75% 37.5% 25.0% 29.3%

Scum 34.4% 46.3%

Named vs Generic usage by points

2016

2013 2014 2015 (41) (16) (8) (4)

Named Pilots 33.3% 53.2% 53.8% 76.0% 76.2% 88.6% 91.7%

Generic Pilots 66.7% 46.8% 46.2% 24.0% 23.8% 11.4% 8.3%

Vanilla generics 66.7% 46.8% 12 .7% 10.0% 2.1% 0.0% 0.0%

* Vanilla generics exclude:

• Emperor Palpatine
• Twin Laser Turret
• Zuckuss crew
• TIE Fighter + Crackshot
• Contracted Scouts + Torpedoes

At the risk of being ignorant - could you explain the difference between a Generic Pilot and a Vanilla Generic please? Is a vanilla generic essentially "any generic other than the 5 things I've determined as being meta combos we already know about?" - with TLT specifying any Y-Wing used as a TLT caddy? I am confused how Zuckuss crew fits into that archetype (is it a fancy way of saying party busses?)

Well, these 5 cards represent strong powercreep. They essentially put the ships into a different cathegory.

It is interesting to see that split to Generics and Vanilla generics. It's only because one could argue that generics are still popular, but that is not true.

On the other hand, there should be Defender with title as well within Vanilla category imo and maybe an information about how big each vanilla is. It may be significant but also may be not if TIE's are like 0.2%.

Please, also show those vanillas as [ship] + [upgrades], i.e. Lambda + Emperor OR Any + TLT.

Many thanks Those statistics are really great and you have done fantastic job pulling it out for us.

There is no really bad matchup for Dengaroo. Defenders should be, but we saw yesterday that this wasn't exactly the case.

How much have you really played with/against Dengaroo if you really believe there aren't really any bad machups?

Where are these counters? Dengar can do alarming amounts of damage against low agi ships and nearly the same amount against high agi ships. That's pretty unique if you ask me.

I saw quad TLTs mentioned. They are too slow to catch Manaroo and they happen to get killed pretty fast by Dengar as he should not have problems keeping them in arc. Glitterstim/ Countermeasures also pretty much makes you very hard to hit for a crucial turn. It's not exactly a bad matchup.

Defenders? Apparently not! They didn't exactly do great against Dengaroo and we saw a pretty bad result from them in top 16. It helped that Kevin was curbstomping any ace list he saw however because that's what his build does.

Fat Han was actually the closest thing to a counter we saw against Dengaroo. That matchup is 50/50 and only got won because of a small misread by the Han Player. But even if Han is not blocked it was still very possible to win the matchup.

I also nowhere call it a braindead list. You need to have a lot of skill to fly it, and these guys on the top tables obviously have that. But if you do Zuckuss is the tiny thing that is over the top. Too cheap, too few limitations on the card. Dengaroo without it is still strong but it can't delete ships if defense dice are somewhat okay.

There are other powerful builds, but they have hard counters. This one doesn't and that sets it apart.

We saw 3 Dengaroos in top 16 and this is actually as many as we had total rebel lists. Only one of them lost against something else than another Dengaroo.

The list also won a ton of tournaments and Regionals as soon as it was discovered, and it is played a lot, so it was the main favorite in my book, which avered to be justified.

I think you're over selling the damage thing. Dengar can reliably get 2-3 damage, that much is true. This is balanced by the fact that it's only him doing damage most the time. Assuming Manaroo is in range, 2 red die without modifiers aren't gonna accomplish a whole lot. Especially if you're running away taking range 3 pot shots. Of course Dengar has his ability for a extra shot, but he needs to have you in arc for that and it's your call to take the shot. If you blast into a Dengar facing you blowing your focus and leaving your self open for the counter shot that's your mistake, not a mistake of game design.

Honestly I think that's the key weakness of Dengaroo is firepower. Swarms or chunky ships like the Ghost or Y-wing should be able to easily outgun him.

Also to the Zuckass haters, it's only good on two builds currently and it's ineffective against anything that don't rely on green dice for damage mitigation. I feel like it's mostly Empire boys complaining on this one. If so I find the irony of them complaining about a particular crew member being a center piece of list building palpable.

Also to the Zuckass haters, it's only good on two builds currently and it's ineffective against anything that don't rely on green dice for damage mitigation. I feel like it's mostly Empire boys complaining on this one. If so I find the irony of them complaining about a particular crew member being a center piece of list building palpable.

Oh dear, how long have you been waiting to break that one out?

Also to the Zuckass haters, it's only good on two builds currently and it's ineffective against anything that don't rely on green dice for damage mitigation. I feel like it's mostly Empire boys complaining on this one. If so I find the irony of them complaining about a particular crew member being a center piece of list building palpable.

Zuckuss is not broken. However the points cost of the card should be adjusted. It will still be good at 2 points, for example.

Zuckus crew says that no ship can evade and negates a serious portion of the entire game. There needs to be some sort of limit.

Zuckus crew says that no ship can evade and negates a serious portion of the entire game. There needs to be some sort of limit.

zuckuss crew does nothing to evade tokens

that's 4-lom

Also to the Zuckass haters, it's only good on two builds currently and it's ineffective against anything that don't rely on green dice for damage mitigation. I feel like it's mostly Empire boys complaining on this one. If so I find the irony of them complaining about a particular crew member being a center piece of list building palpable.

Zuckuss is not broken. However the points cost of the card should be adjusted. It will still be good at 2 points, for example.

Eh, agree and disagree. I agree that it would still be good at 2 points, but if we're going down that path there are a whole lot of cards that could give or take 1 point for the sake of balance.

Making it 2 points wouldn't change much in the grand scheme of things and I don't like the idea of using erratas too much to edit cards. It creates issues with players not keeping up to date or not remembering particular changes. This creates clunky gameplay and that's bad.

FFG have said they don't wish to do card packs. I really wish they'd change their stance on that. I'd be willing to invest 10-15$ for updated cards as long as we got some new pilots and upgrades out of the deal.

Zuckus crew says that no ship can evade and negates a serious portion of the entire game. There needs to be some sort of limit.

zuckuss crew does nothing to evade tokens

that's 4-lom

Zuckus crew says that no ship can evade and negates a serious portion of the entire game. There needs to be some sort of limit.

zuckuss crew does nothing to evade tokens

that's 4-lom

I would have assumed you'd be up on every synonym for green dice.

we're talking about evade results, so you mean antonym right?

Zuckus crew says that no ship can evade and negates a serious portion of the entire game. There needs to be some sort of limit.

This is hyperbole. He makes you reroll the die, not negate it completely. Considering not every ship cares about agility and this comes at the cost of never taking an action or preforming a red maneuver I'd say it's a fair trade off.

Half the reason it's so good is because Imp Aces utterly dominates the things Zuckuss is bad against.

Now Imp Aces still stand a reasonably good chance of defeating Dengaroo even with Zuckuss. Imp Aces on the other hand makes an entire spectrum of ships for all 3 factions obsolete for competitive play and you still think Zuckuss is the issue? The fact that Aces still preform so well at the top level of play with the influx of anti Ace tech don't tell you anything?

Having played against Zuckuss, yes, at times when you get that awesome defense roll and you have to reroll it all makes you feel like you can't evade anything. However, when you shoot back and juke his one evade result that he can't modify because Manaroo is dead and he has 12 stress, things feel a bit more fair. Zuckuss can also be Boba Fett'd out the airlock if you so desire. I'm sure we will get more tools in the future to use against stressed ships, but at the moment Latts Razzi, BMST, and (hahaha) Eaden Vrill exist, so you'll have to make do with those, lol.

Zuckus crew says that no ship can evade and negates a serious portion of the entire game. There needs to be some sort of limit.

Actually, all that Zuckuss does is prevent 'oh look, I got lucky on my 3 naked greenns and rolled 3 evades' moments. If you invest in your defense (focus/evade tokens) he becomes way less effective.

Totally.. his re-roll, is before all the other modifications the defender can do.

Just rules checking here.. Can a defender reroll a dice the attacker reroll.. IE is the restriction on rerolling just on dice you personally have rerolled?

poe with sensor cluster autothrusters..... dengaroo is not gonna like seeing that

Totally.. his re-roll, is before all the other modifications the defender can do.

Just rules checking here.. Can a defender reroll a dice the attacker reroll.. IE is the restriction on rerolling just on dice you personally have rerolled?

No, he can't. At least if it works like effects force-rerolling attack dice, which it should. I am pretty sure the general rule is that any die can only be rerolled once throughout an entire sequence, be it attack or defense.

Edit: Not that it matters too much, Lone Wolf is the only card I would expect to see that rerolls defense dice.

poe with sensor cluster autothrusters..... dengaroo is not gonna like seeing that

Question is... which PS and EPT?

PS8 and VI

or

PS 9 and PTL

Totally.. his re-roll, is before all the other modifications the defender can do.

Just rules checking here.. Can a defender reroll a dice the attacker reroll.. IE is the restriction on rerolling just on dice you personally have rerolled?

No, he can't. At least if it works like effects force-rerolling attack dice, which it should. I am pretty sure the general rule is that any die can only be rerolled once throughout an entire sequence, be it attack or defense.

Edit: Not that it matters too much, Lone Wolf is the only card I would expect to see that rerolls defense dice.

important: When a die is changed or rerolled, ignore its original result and apply only the new result. This new result may be modified by other effects; however, a die that has already been rerolled cannot be rerolled again during this attack.

TBH that is the one change I would make to the core rules, I'm not sure how fair it is for a reroll by the opponent should lock you out from using one of your rerolls from upgrades.

poe with sensor cluster autothrusters..... dengaroo is not gonna like seeing that

Question is... which PS and EPT?

PS8 and VI

or

PS 9 and PTL

actually, I think PS8 with PTL. Youre not going to be able to underbid dengaroo, And you really want PTL for arc dodging.. So save the points and invest into more fun toys.

Also to the Zuckass haters, it's only good on two builds currently and it's ineffective against anything that don't rely on green dice for damage mitigation. I feel like it's mostly Empire boys complaining on this one. If so I find the irony of them complaining about a particular crew member being a center piece of list building palpable.

Zuckuss is not broken. However the points cost of the card should be adjusted. It will still be good at 2 points, for example.

The winning Degaroo list came in at 97 points so it would take a one hell of a points increase to nerf it. If there is a problem (which I'm not sure that there is - but I'm primarily a rebel player so won't comment one way or the other) then it would probably be better solved by restricting the card to say 1 green dice per shot/turn or only available when not already stressed.

Zuckus crew says that no ship can evade and negates a serious portion of the entire game. There needs to be some sort of limit.

Actually, all that Zuckuss does is prevent 'oh look, I got lucky on my 3 naked greenns and rolled 3 evades' moments. If you invest in your defense (focus/evade tokens) he becomes way less effective.