I think there are some examples that show the meta is in a rut (95% of Imperial lists making the cut at worlds/regionals including x7 or Palpatine), while there are other outstanding examples (G1As, Scyks, & B-wings in regional winning lists) that say otherwise.

I personally, think that there are a few pieces that make an extreme negative impact, and FFG would be wise to errata them to open the meta wide open again. Palpatine, x7s, and maybe Manaroo should be dealt with in some way to get them back on the power curve.

I don't think we will see anything done with Palpatine though. If they wanted to do something, I think they already would have by now, which is disappointing. He very well may be the nail by which Imperial players forever hang. Manaroo I'm not sure FFG see a serious problem with either (or the player base at large for that matter). With her low PS, at the very least, higher PS large base ships with boost and ways to mod dice after a boost can handle her.

But x7 has been extremely detrimental to Imperial list diversity and the game overall. Once you start getting cards that make a certain ship, regardless of pilot, more cost efficient than every other ship available to that faction regardless of build, there is an issue. The x7 title does this in such a way that I have never seen in the game before. Even in the days of pre-nerf Whisper, at least her support wasn't a solid staple. With x7, list building for imperials competitively goes like this, only varying when the player looks to the change of pace Decimator as the foundation (which usually has Palpatine crew and is often supported by an x7 Defender anyway)-

1.your choice of x7 Defenders

2. maybe a Palp shuttle, or another x7 Defender, or Carnor Jax for the mirror.

3. If for some reason nothing in step 2 fits, Omega Leader or Inquisitor awaits.

Do you remember how strong Crack swarms used to be? They've disappeared as fast as Pokemon Go players thanks to x7. The question is no longer about if x7 is too strong. The question is does the existence of x7 allow for competitive imperial players to field non-x7 lists without placing a major handicap on themselves?

When Veterans came out I described the Imperials has having three 'hubs' for competitive lists - Swarms, Decimators, Aces. I said that Veterans meant Defenders added a fourth hub that hadn't previously existed.

I was wrong - Defenders just took over all previous hubs. Want to play a swarm? Run three Defenders, they're better. Want to play Aces? Run two Defenders and Palp, they're better. Want to run Decimator? Pair it with a Defender.

There's very few exceptions to this. /x7 Defenders are so far off the power curve that they are better than the specialist ships & pilots were in their respective niches. Shameful that this card made it through playtesting.

We just had a Battle of Scarif night at the FLGS. It was T65 X-Wings, U-Wings and Y-Wings against TIE Fighters and TIE Strikers (yes, some exist in the wild). It was a fantastic time. The game can be whatever you want, and what you can encourage others to try.

*this* is what the game is about for me!

DIT... TOO... YOO!!!

DITTO, DITTO, DITTO!

If you don't like the meta, you don't like the game at all.

Literally every ship not named the punisher is 100% competitive right now.

*cue sad eddie*

As a person that has played x7's exclusively since they came out, they're laughably beatable. Sorry you haven't figured it out yet.

As a person that has played x7's exclusively since they came out, they're laughably beatable. Sorry you haven't figured it out yet.

Well, obviously in certain hands...

As a person that has played x7's exclusively since they came out, they're laughably beatable. Sorry you haven't figured it out yet.

Filthy lies and dirty untruths! You play exclusively Starvipers!

As a person that has played x7's exclusively since they came out, they're laughably beatable. Sorry you haven't figured it out yet.

Its not about being impossible to beat, its about the 5% improvement that it is indesputably. The alternatives just have nothing more to offer, so why not just play Defenders?

When a PS 2 rebel swarm and a 3 G1A starfighters can win regionals, I don't think the meta is as closed as you'd think.

A list with 2 wardens and 10 bombs made at least top 8 (maybe even top 4) at another regional.

Where I come from (Central Canada), things are a little rigid. certain ships really get no love.

examples:

U-Wing: regarded as DOA. people only buy them for 2 copies of Expertise.

A-wing: the little ship that can't. "even Prockets don't throw enough red dice anymore" said one player.

X-wing except Biggs: now you're just being silly.

B-wing, TIE Punisher/Bomber, E-Wing: those exist???

I don't know about E-Wings, but I am pretty sure that I have seen Corran & Miranda in the Worlds Finals. ;-)

As a person that has played x7's exclusively since they came out, they're laughably beatable. Sorry you haven't figured it out yet.

Its not about being impossible to beat, its about the 5% improvement that it is indesputably. The alternatives just have nothing more to offer, so why not just play Defenders?

It's fun to counter defenders with something build to counter them. Good enough reason for you?

Personally I've just found the action/token economy race quite tedious to keep up with. Always bound to happen the more and more upgrades and slots that appear, but it's definitely taken a bit of a shine off the game over the past year or so.

I guess that part of it is that it currently feels like there's X-Wing: The Dice Game and X-Wing: The Guaranteed Damage/Evade game, with the latter being the standard these days at events.

Maybe casual epic is the answer...

I think it's devalued maneuvering to quite some extent, because successful maneuvering WITHOUT heavily modified dice doesn't get you anywhere.

I do have to say that things have improved on the FFG forums. If this thread had come out a year or two ago, half the responses would've been things like "Maybe this game isn't for you". So...I'm happy to see that the general response from average forum goers is better.

Something must be done with x7s with no doubt. The question is - do we nerf them (if yeah - how), or do we introduce counters. I would prefer the latter. I must admit, i play defenders myself, but it started feeling dirty at some point. Defenders turn all the nice people to whiny, unhappy people. Token stack each turn at heavily undercosted ship (withx7) is just too much for most normal lists to handle. Especially against those z's or tie's trying to get their 1 hit, but it's impossible.

At some point just card pool is so big that options instead of getting better are just narrowing. The best builds and combos are just too great to take them down.

My prefered solution is just X-wing 2.0. It has to happen, and it better does as fast as possible. We need change, edition 2.0 can deal with token stacks with general, make titles built-in ships instead of autoinclude cards that you can forget, change turrets into mobile arcs, rebalance all the pilots and upgrades, maybe change some dials.

How i would make it happen? A big core-set like pack containing everything you need to transfer all the ships to 2.0 assuming that you have 1 of everything costing around, i dunno, 30$, and small transfer packs for around 3$ to transfer one of certain ship to 2.0 and reprint everything to make it 2.0. If it doesn't happen, the power creep will go on and the game will just fall apart. All the wargames and cardgames without rotation or ban system need it. Look at wh40k (from the good times). First few editions just fixed the mistakes of the previous one and changed the units. It made it fresh.\

You can even separate card packs from ships, making their price lower and preparing for 3.0.

I doubt they'll Nerf X7 anytime soon. The easiest fix would be to make the title Unique, which would be silly.

I think we're years from X-Wing 2.0, if it ever happens at all. X-Wing 1.0 is still growing and you'd just alienate all the casual players who are jumping on to please the relatively small number of players who care about tournament balance.

It's time for FFG to pull on their big boy pants and ban cards from tournaments, which would have no impact at all on casual players. I hear so much how cards restrict what future upgrades/pilots can be made (I'm told Biggs is the #1 culprit). If he's such a problem then get rid of him, it's not like we're short of X-Wing pilots to replace him with.

Something must be done with x7s with no doubt.

That something must be done during list building and in Turn 0.

There are quite a few Defender counters out there, use them - if the X7 Defender(s) is causing you problems.

Please no, keep playing x7 defenders guys. I want to get some value out of the money I just shelled out for my second Protectorate.

So post worlds I have been to two regionals, Wisconsin having a finals with two dash lists, where i saw lots of attani, some rebel HOTR, and a smattering of everything else. Michigan had a decimator finals and had all the usual suspects, attani, x7, but again... a whole host of other lists.

To say that the only thing you see is x7 or attani or dengaroo is not my experience. Last regional season was much much much worse than this. When every build brought to a tournament was met with the question, "how does this deal with 3xJM?" and "how does this handle palp aces?" I feel as if generally we are in a better place. Building my list of what lists i expect to face, x7, attani, and dengaroo are certainly on the list, but mixed in with about 8 other lists I wouldnt be surprised seeing.

Has there ever been a meta where mid tier aces (x7), scum trickery (mindlink), bigship/smallship (deci, dash, etc), bombers (Galaxy Note), and generics (looking at you turtling G1-A) all have a chance to win a regional level competition? If thats not diversity, I am really lost as to what your definition is. I mean c'mon, I top 16'd a regional with 2 tie s/f.

Something must be done with x7s with no doubt.

That something must be done during list building and in Turn 0.

There are quite a few Defender counters out there, use them - if the X7 Defender(s) is causing you problems.

I can deal with them, i play dash a lot and i know how to exploit their weaknesses. But defenders are what scaries most casual players out of tournaments. And having to deal with the list before you face it is not a good design. It just shows that this ship is basically superior in vacuum.

Dash is SO bad against Defenders.

Dash is SO bad against Defenders.

Not at all. He (with kanan) can arc-dodge against them, as many of defenders are low ps. He has a high attack power, being able to get through their stack. If you get your astreoids right, you can block their k-turns while being able to ignore those big rocks yourself.

Dash is SO bad against Defenders.

You can either arc dodge OR modify your attack. If you don't arc dodge you lose a dice duel, and if you don't modify your attack you don't hurt them at all and lose a slower dice duel.

The Dash matchup is pretty straightforward.

If Dash is the answer to not scaring casuals then 2016 really did screw something up in the space-time continuum.

Lately, I've been increasingly......irritated (?) with the meta of X-wing. Builds like Dengaroo and Palp Defenders are so common these days, the game is losing its charm. Is there a name of this phenomenon or explanation from a game design point of view? My background in gaming is RPGs (narrative) and wargames (scenario based). Is it simply that the 100 point 6 rock deathmatch was never my thing?

I do love X-wing, but its feeling increasingly hard to find a casual group these days. When you pull out a list of 3 T-65s, you're almost laughed at. (not to mention your ships being promptly sent off the board as well)

The closest I could find was an article by Mark Rosewater (Magic The Gathering designer).

http://magic.wizards.com/en/articles/archive/making-magic/timmy-johnny-and-spike-2002-03-08

I'm pretty sure that I'm a "Johnny".......but there seems to be too many "Spikes" these days.

I had an eerily similar experience. I loved my triple X squadron because it was fun and it reminded me of the X-Wing series. Once my friends and I started really knowing how to play the lists ramped up until my Rogue Squadron was just a non-factor. My solution was to make a great list with builds I enjoyed flying but that involved a lot of time. It is always easier to just go with the Meta and tweak from there. However, I grew up playing board games with my dad and one of my favorites was Ace of Aces (technically not a board game but whatever) which is why I love X-Wing so much.

If you can't find some folks to play with, maybe solo the Aturi Cluster campaign. That was fun for me. I found an app on my phone that allowed me to do the enemy movements quickly. Once you get the hang of it you can make your own missions but we all know solo play isn't the most fun.

Reach out to board game stores and other areas where people may play. There are casual players everywhere (I hope).

In the meantime, just know I always carry a triple X squadron and whip it out whenever someone pulls out a casual list. I am definitely not alone there.

What app is that for the enemy movements???

You can either arc dodge OR modify your attack. If you don't arc dodge you lose a dice duel, and if you don't modify your attack you don't hurt them at all and lose a slower dice duel.

The Dash matchup is pretty straightforward.

Or, you can fly PTL Dash and wreck Defenders. Imho the issue is still finding a good wingman for him, not Dash himself.