When one list shows up and is able to have multiple token stacked ships whie your pitiful list has a single action per ship (like how the game was designed) it is an NPE.

You've just essentially described almost every competitively successful squad for several waves. There are a few exceptions but almost everything that does well consistently does it through stacking modifiers.

Yeah I know. Don't you think that's really ****? I do.

All this potential diversity and thrilling manuevering only it doesn't mean **** unless you're also playing Push The Limit and stacking loads of modifiers because THAT'S ALL THERE IS TO THE GAME AND EVERYTHING ELSE IS WINDOW DRESSING.

(Also Party Bus)

Yeah I know. Don't you think that's really ****? I do.

All this potential diversity and thrilling manuevering only it doesn't mean **** unless you're also playing Push The Limit and stacking loads of modifiers because THAT'S ALL THERE IS TO THE GAME AND EVERYTHING ELSE IS WINDOW DRESSING.

Everyone can play PTL. Everyone being able to heavily modify their dice is a good thing because games aren't determined by dice variance but by something else, notably flying.

PTL =/= paratanni shenanigans.

Funnily enough, part of this list (Asajj) actually makes reliance on PTL a liability.

Source: My Poe dying because he gets double stressed.

People think of Fenn as the greatest threat, but the backbone of the list is Asajj and Manaroo. If I can trade Fenn for an equivalent 32 points of my opponent's stuff, then I'm almost always going to win. Case in point, one game vs Dengaroo I lost Fenn doing 0 damage in return, but Asajj and Manaroo won anyway. I don't even think I got to half on either ship.

Could you please mention your strategy against dengaroo? Do you go for dengar first? Im thinking if it is dengar first, you block the white sloop with manaroo and then try to range 1 with asajj and fenn?

Or, do you blow past dengar and go stressing manaroo with asajj and smashing her with fenn if he can make it past dengar?

i swear people in this game are oppose to challenging lists and claim NPE at anything that isnt faceroll easy to deal with.....

People think of Fenn as the greatest threat, but the backbone of the list is Asajj and Manaroo. If I can trade Fenn for an equivalent 32 points of my opponent's stuff, then I'm almost always going to win. Case in point, one game vs Dengaroo I lost Fenn doing 0 damage in return, but Asajj and Manaroo won anyway. I don't even think I got to half on either ship.

Could you please mention your strategy against dengaroo? Do you go for dengar first? Im thinking if it is dengar first, you block the white sloop with manaroo and then try to range 1 with asajj and fenn?

Or, do you blow past dengar and go stressing manaroo with asajj and smashing her with fenn if he can make it past dengar?

I have found the latter option to be effective. I try to bump Fen into Dengar to prevent any damage, and Dengar has a difficult time hitting Asaaj. Once you fly past him, Manaroo will go down pretty quickly, as Asaaj stops her from using PTL to focus/boost away. All you have to watch out for then is that Dengar doesn't get a torpedo into Fen, as Zuckuss could cause you to die in one hit.

Latts is way too good over Dengar

I consistently disagree with this point. Latts Ventress is very tanky but loses not only a significant amount of punch (she hits like a soggy tissue) but also loses the nice feature of stress control.

Latts isnt mandatory by any means. Ive used Rage + Inspiring Recruit on Asajj to amazing results (granted i may have used Bossk as bait...but whatever)

still find it funny how so many people were claiming Latts is utterly useless since she clears stress on the enemy ship and now shes glued to the lancer in almost every list. Heck my first game with her she basically gave me 60% of my health back lol

Latts is way too good over Dengar

I consistently disagree with this point. Latts Ventress is very tanky but loses not only a significant amount of punch (she hits like a soggy tissue) but also loses the nice feature of stress control.

She only hits poorly if you don't use your other action to give you dice modification - like a target lock. In a mindlink list, as long as someone else is focussing, she can do that freely. And you don't need to remove the opponent's stress - it just gives you the option to. I find it very hard to pass up that ability to tank damage.

She only hits poorly if you don't use your other action to give you dice modification - like a target lock. In a mindlink list, as long as someone else is focussing, she can do that freely. And you don't need to remove the opponent's stress - it just gives you the option to. I find it very hard to pass up that ability to tank damage.

Doesn't that mean that she would get similar utility out of dengar + taking the evade action?

I'm not trying to say latts is bad of course, she's clearly very popular, but I'm mostly just very surprised that latts is seen consistently as the 'best' choice.

She only hits poorly if you don't use your other action to give you dice modification - like a target lock. In a mindlink list, as long as someone else is focussing, she can do that freely. And you don't need to remove the opponent's stress - it just gives you the option to. I find it very hard to pass up that ability to tank damage.

Doesn't that mean that she would get similar utility out of dengar + taking the evade action?

I'm not trying to say latts is bad of course, she's clearly very popular, but I'm mostly just very surprised that latts is seen consistently as the 'best' choice.

Have I missed something here?

Who decides whether a list is objectively an NPE? I can put my hand up and say I love playing against Paratanni because it gives me a challenge. I enjoy flying vs Dengaroo and I miss the triple Scouts because I couldn't figure out how to beat them but finally figured how to do it.

I flew none of those by the way, but enjoy flying against them.

Stay On The Leader: I like your blog, but I think you're missing the point that people play X wing for different reasons, and none of those are worse than another.

Everyone: Any list can be an NPE if people are playing for different aims. I.E. if I take my tournament practice list and someone decides to fly some silly janky list which is boring and easy to beat, is that an NPE? is my list an NPE for winning easily?

If you want to play for the same reasons then no list you pick will be an NPE because you're aiming to do something whether that's tournament prep or Death Star thematic lists.

It's a list with amazing synergy but it requires good flying to get its full effect and actually put any damage on the opponent. I'm struggling to see how it's a NPE, unless NPE is now code for "it's difficult to beat".

Compared to boosting large-base PWT ships or pre-nerf Phantoms or Dengaroo I don't really see what the problem is.

The problem might be that Parattanni is so well rounded, powerful and fun to play that you start to see it little too often on the tables around. Isn't sometimes already like 10% of all lists on the the tournament?

And it took 2 more Regionals this weekend (Dublin and Pato) becoming most winning list this season (7 or 8), so I suspect list being more and more popular in future.

She only hits poorly if you don't use your other action to give you dice modification - like a target lock. In a mindlink list, as long as someone else is focussing, she can do that freely. And you don't need to remove the opponent's stress - it just gives you the option to. I find it very hard to pass up that ability to tank damage.

Doesn't that mean that she would get similar utility out of dengar + taking the evade action?

I'm not trying to say latts is bad of course, she's clearly very popular, but I'm mostly just very surprised that latts is seen consistently as the 'best' choice.

Considering Dengar is a point more than Lattz and Lattz still lets you take an aditional evade action after a turn where you didn't spend a target lock, I think Lattz is definitely better. factor in that your opponent might be flying multiple ships that self-stress, and this can equate to multiple extra evades per round, possibly even with a lock from last round and the evade action you took this round. Starting to see the whole picture yet? If nothing else though, that 1 point extra you have to pay is too much to fit Dengar into Parattanni so that's why you always see Lattz.

The possibility of a Dengaroo match up alone makes Latts clearly superior. Also, you're gonna need to spend your actions to switch your mobile arc on a regular basis. You can't evade when you do that, but Latts works just fine. She also works fine if you're blocked etc. Essentially Latts is what makes Assajj so **** hard to kill.

The problem might be that Parattanni is so well rounded, powerful and fun to play that you start to see it little too often on the tables around. Isn't sometimes already like 10% of all lists on the the tournament?

And it took 2 more Regionals this weekend (Dublin and Pato) becoming most winning list this season (7 or 8), so I suspect list being more and more popular in future.

Do not worry. X-wing has a build-in self-regulation mechanism. Next week 3 new ships will arrive and the meta will change. Secondly, if one list is too common then a moment later counter-lists gain on popularity as well. I expect to see more RAC + Ryad lists and 98-99 p. lists with Fenn Rau

The post holiday schedule has settled down and I have been on Vassal a bit more lately. I am curious to see if people are finding lists they can reliably beat this list with? My experience so far has been to try a variety of different lists and strategies. Much to my chagrin, I have not been able to pull out a win yet with a variety of lists. Most of the OMGWTFBBQNERF lists I can beat with the right combo of list and luck. So far no dice with paratanni.

On 1/23/2017 at 6:30 PM, TitaniumChopstick said:

Considering Dengar is a point more than Lattz and Lattz still lets you take an aditional evade action after a turn where you didn't spend a target lock, I think Lattz is definitely better. factor in that your opponent might be flying multiple ships that self-stress, and this can equate to multiple extra evades per round, possibly even with a lock from last round and the evade action you took this round. Starting to see the whole picture yet? If nothing else though, that 1 point extra you have to pay is too much to fit Dengar into Parattanni so that's why you always see Lattz.

It's not unusual for Latts to stop more than 5 points of damage in a single game for me. It's rare for her to stop less than 2 (assuming that Ventress is getting shot at much at all). Ventress brings some beef and control to the list, if you are looking to bring more damage I think you'd be better off with a different ship (and maybe some ordnance on Manaroo).

Didn't someone just go undefeated with Parattani at System Open Texas ?

On 1/24/2017 at 3:54 AM, Oldpara said:

The problem might be that Parattanni is so well rounded, powerful and fun to play that you start to see it little too often on the tables around. Isn't sometimes already like 10% of all lists on the the tournament?

And it took 2 more Regionals this weekend (Dublin and Pato) becoming most winning list this season (7 or 8), so I suspect list being more and more popular in future.

I really think the that's the reason that it is becoming popular. It's not that there's anything outright broken about what it does, it's just that there aren't really any horrible match-ups for the squad. Some match-ups are obviously going to be tougher than others but there isn't really anything out there that leaves you with the "even if I outfly them, I've still got a good chance to lose" feeling like there are with other strong squads. Once you get the basics of how not to screw yourself too badly with Mindlink, it's a forgiving enough squad that if you make an error in during a long day of playing you probably have completely thrown a game away.

Palob or Old Teroch with an initiative bid may do well. You can deny those focus actions...

1 hour ago, WWHSD said:

It's not that there's anything outright broken about what it does, it's just that there aren't really any horrible match-ups for the squad. Some match-ups are obviously going to be tougher than others but there isn't really anything out there that leaves you with the "even if I outfly them, I've still got a good chance to lose" feeling like there are with other strong squads. Once you get the basics of how not to screw yourself too badly with Mindlink, it's a forgiving enough squad that if you make an error in during a long day of playing you probably have completely thrown a game away.

It does lack a bad matchup at this point, but I think it also makes use of a handful of cards/mechanics that are on the front end of power creep. I posted this elsewhere, but I'll repost the list here without the intro:

• 2x unlimited range abilities (Manaroo, Mindlink).
• Manaroo (while part of this is the range ability, her ship is undercosted and is an additional method in addition to Mindlink that makes it very challenging to limit the actions of this list through any number of strategies)
• Increased number of red dice (in the form of Fenn Rau, who while certainly has a weakness is significantly stronger when paired with both Mindlink and Manaroo)

(Note: I chose not to include ATs but probably could have).

That's some insightful commentary alexw.

2 hours ago, Cr0aker said:

The post holiday schedule has settled down and I have been on Vassal a bit more lately. I am curious to see if people are finding lists they can reliably beat this list with? My experience so far has been to try a variety of different lists and strategies. Much to my chagrin, I have not been able to pull out a win yet with a variety of lists. Most of the OMGWTFBBQNERF lists I can beat with the right combo of list and luck. So far no dice with paratanni.

I've had initial success with Carnor + Maarek + Palp. If you can get Carnor into good positions he wreaks absolute havoc, allowing Maarek to Juke some criticals through, and having both main threats above PS6 helps in handling Asajj. But I've only played the matchup twice so I should stress it is initial success. Grain of salt and all that.