the rant meta

By Kleeg005, in X-Wing

Again, there isn't a single expandable game where every printing remains viable throughout the game's lifespan. The fact that as much of the old stuff is still playable after ten waves is a testament to good design, not bad. I think you have very unrealistic expectations.

However, Corvus Belli was smart and they did not paint themselves into a corner by using cards. Instead, they just revised the unit stats PDF when needed and with the introduction of 3rd edition they went even further and now the official source for up to date units stats and costs is the online army builder maintained by CB.

The main problem with any changes in X-Wing are the cards. Any dramatic changes would require FFG to release a big card pack with an update of everything. Doable, but not easy and certainly not free. What they could do is release a PDF with corrected card images, so people could print them and sleeve them with the cards they have, while at the same time packing the updated cards with every new reprint (marking the cards with a symbol indicatng a revision). This way the old cards would be slowly phased out.

You have a point about the community not grinding newbies to dust, but honestly, currently it is way too easy to put a trash list together. I'm not seeing a whole lot of reasons to continue investing money into this game.

See a trend? I do.

The game ebs and flows. People have been wanting the magic bullet (I'm going to laugh at you all now before it does happen, making things more of what you don't want) since wave 4. That's more than two years ago. Some of those pilots you listed where the big deal for quite some time in certain waves. Are they still good? Yes, but you can't just plop them down an be roflstomping the competition any more. Yes, there are currently some ships that need some love, but as we can see with the defender, it's bound to happen. You all want instant gratification and aren't willing to go with the growing pains of a constant expanding game. Or some of you are just nostalgic rose tinted glass wearing players that relate more to the pepperridge farm meme than any thing else.

If you can't see the trees in the forest, ITS NOT THE FORESTS FAULT. Constantly blaming the game helps no one.

And for all you thinking the game is dying or too confusing or too much bloat, we just had a team tournament, multiple new faces showed up and everyone had a good time. Maybe you all just need to be more active in the community and help build it instead of demand it be built around you.

Edited by Hujoe Bigs

There is no winning this arguement from either side but I do find it hilarious the people who defend their community with new faces but live in cities of 20, 30, 50 million people. You are stoked about getting 30 people to an event out of a pool of several million? Not trying to ruffle feathers just saying, if you live in any kind of populated area you shouldn't have to try to build a community. If people don't want to play it's not my job to convince them it's a good idea. I'm happy to demo if they are interested but some suggestions here seem like the people not pushing the meth are bad people for not saving this game. Happy for you people that have good communities but it is very different situation depending where you live. Giving new players ships to play, ok sounds good, they had a great time awesome, they gonna buy any ships or use yours? FFG will not survive a good will movement they need to sell ****. If your community is good don't move you might be surprised what you find outside your group.

Lot of talk about a reboot, well WizKids are now in the process of doing just that for Attack Wing. They have announced that they will release an updated rulebook with timing chart and full updated FAQ, a contents pack which has all errata'd card text, including pilot and ship cards with adjusted points.

WizKids being WizKids, and FFG being FFG, the result will still be much worse than X-Wing.

Sniping for the sake of space.

Letting people borrow stuff is also a good way to have them buy it. Usually most people won't wanna keep using someone else's stuff, they tend to get their own. But sometimes they wanna make sure they will like it, so in your example, it's like renting out a play piece to a new player to help them get a feeling for what they might like.Then sometimes some people have a good size collection but have life circumstances that won't allow them to buy the item right away (gasp no money for a hobby?!) so letting them borrow an item gives them the ability to still play the game at the same speed. Now am I saying you need to do that every time? No, but if you insist that your group is shrinking but have an out look of no borrowing, I'm betting it's more than just an issue of letting people borrow ships that's driving people away.

Edit: Also, that whole moving thing is also a load of hogwash. I've been up and down California playing games and even out of state. Where there is a community there are players. Even evidence by Facebook pages. So again, a less cynical attitude might help with the whole community thing.

Edited by Hujoe Bigs

FFGs business model is to never release for free a universal balance update when you can charge for future waves that further throw off balance to allow for the next imbalanced wave and so on. This allows them to sell to the tournament WAACs for a guaranteed income cycle from wave to wave. They already know they have us Star Wars fans because of model quality (with a few exceptions.)

I almost feel like the player base needs to just begin a separate forum to create a balanced game using X-Wing models and templates. Kinda like way back when with GW and the Bloodbowl community.

Edited by Gadgetron

That's actually an extremely good idea.

It was the Magic community taking charge of Vintage and turn it into an enjoyable format with the right bannings/restrictions that finally got WotC to adopt those same bannings and restore Vintage tournaments.

I almost feel like the player base needs to just begin a separate forum to create a balanced game using X-Wing models and templates. Kinda like way back when with GW and the Bloodbowl community.

If part of the community decides to do that, that's fine, as long as they're not surprised if FFG releases a new wave or mechanism or FAQ or errata that doesn't work with all their efforts, like the TI3 Shattered Ascension sub-community was when FFG released Shards of the Throne. SotT was both an awesome expansion and 100% incompatible with SA's many variants and "fixes" (which included having to own at least three copies of TI3 in order to have enough components for some of the rules changes).

With the much faster release cycle of X-Wing, that's bound to happen sooner rather than later.

  • Bloodbowl is different because GW dropped Bloodbowl altogether, and GW isn't particularly good with creating balanced stuff in the first place.
  • MtG is different because the Vintage format is different from the standard formats, and the community effort convinced WotC that there was sufficient demand.
Edited by haslo

Sure, but right now I couldn't give two **** what FFG want or do.

Sure, but right now I couldn't give two **** what FFG want or do.

I think perhaps you do a little. Hence the blogs and forum activity :P

Fair.

The correct answer is: right now I hate my job and I have a ton of additional life stress and it's led to me placing too much emphasis on the enjoyment I get from the escapism of X-Wing. Although at the moment I want/need to enjoy those hours that I get away from everything else I find that spending those hours on X-Wing only exacerbates the problem due to poor design decisions. I don't want to feel that the hours & money spent on X-Wing has been wasted so I continue to plug away trying to unlock a new way to enjoy playing the game, only to get more and more frustrated.

I've played my last game of X-Wing every week for about 3 months now, but somehow I keep coming back to it like a woman who can't keep away from an abusive ex.

Fair.

The correct answer is: right now I hate my job and I have a ton of additional life stress and it's led to me placing too much emphasis on the enjoyment I get from the escapism of X-Wing. Although at the moment I want/need to enjoy those hours that I get away from everything else I find that spending those hours on X-Wing only exacerbates the problem due to poor design decisions. I don't want to feel that the hours & money spent on X-Wing has been wasted so I continue to plug away trying to unlock a new way to enjoy playing the game, only to get more and more frustrated.

I've played my last game of X-Wing every week for about 3 months now, but somehow I keep coming back to it like a woman who can't keep away from an abusive ex.

In all honesty; I fully empathise with you there. I was simply being facetious out of boredom.

Recently I've had a hell of a lot of life stress and trying to unwind with X-Wing has led me to a similar state of mind. Where I really enjoy the game; I'm really not enjoying the "get wins or die trying!" mentality that seems to be everywhere right now. I own a shop in Bournemouth and live in Southampton. Southampton has a lot of competitively minded players who are still playing hard and on the quest for that Regionals list but in Bournemouth the competitive players have seemed to eek out everyone else to the point where they have no one left to play and have taken up Destiny.

Our HoTAC campaign drew some old faces out of the woodwork but I just haven't had the time to get it going again recently. *sad face*

Fair.

The correct answer is: right now I hate my job and I have a ton of additional life stress and it's led to me placing too much emphasis on the enjoyment I get from the escapism of X-Wing. Although at the moment I want/need to enjoy those hours that I get away from everything else I find that spending those hours on X-Wing only exacerbates the problem due to poor design decisions. I don't want to feel that the hours & money spent on X-Wing has been wasted so I continue to plug away trying to unlock a new way to enjoy playing the game, only to get more and more frustrated.

I've played my last game of X-Wing every week for about 3 months now, but somehow I keep coming back to it like a woman who can't keep away from an abusive ex.

Perhaps your angst towards the game isn't entirely the fault of the game. You keep bringing up supposed design mistakes. In my opinion, they've gone out of their way to correct former imbalances. I think they've taken great strides towards balancing the game and making it more skill-intensive.

It could be that due to your life circumstances, you don't like the kind of game X-Wing has become. I felt similarly frustrated with the game and have spent the last several months playing a new list practically every week. It helps you to see the game from different perspectives. If you feel cornered by their design decisions, it could be that you're using ships that just don't work well anymore. Every game has components that become obsolete. It's true that everyone needs to modify their dice to compete but hasn't that always been true and isn't that a good thing? Personally, I don't want to just roll dice with an opponent and see who rolls better.

I'm sure that I'm tilting over the subject. This is me on tilt.

However I don't consider forcing everyone to play the same few upgrade cards to remove dice variance a step forwards - I'd gladly accept increased dice variance as an outcome of more diverse listbuilding options. Where variance becomes too low is often a red flag for me regarding whether I'll enjoy a game or not, because variance produces unexpected game states and responding correctly to those game states is something I find challenging and interesting. At the moment I feel like every game of X-Wing is basically the same, and after a game or two I'm bored of the repetition and regretting coming to play X-Wing.

And in my personal case it's certainly exacerbated by the fact that I was too successful last year in enthusing and motivating my local playgroup. It's proven almost impossible for me to find games against players who didn't compete in Worlds or aren't trying to win a Regionals. So just as I think the game design has tilted too far towards stacking dice modifiers I've been unable to find games against anything that isn't abusing precisely that.

Edited by Stay On The Leader

The last time I played X wing was at Canadian Nationals and I can’t say I really miss it. I’d say I’m a middling player typically, I’ve won tournaments and placed well at large events but I get stomped more often than not. My luck tends to be that I do well the first couple rounds, well enough that I get paired with the best players in my meta and then it’s a downward spiral. I don’t have a problem with this (usually) and I’ve been doing it since wave 2 but I had finally had enough. Dengaroo and Jumpmasters were what drove me out, I got through Palp Aces, Brobots, TLT spam, Fat Turrets, Phantoms, everything leading up to wave 8 but that was really the tipping point. I’m not saying it’s unbeatable by any means, I just had no patience anymore fighting through the ridiculous slog of half the competitors playing the same lists. I understand people want to win and I certainly crafted my lists on a meta basis (I shifted from TIEs & decivader to 4x tempests to 3x tempest and soontir to Soontir, Carnor, and Marek to leaving off with Tomax, OL, and Vessary) but I personally found certain lists just completely unfun to play against and saw no end of them in sight. I see it as both a combination of the game itself (balancing) and the community (Mathwing is ,I think is, the worst thing that happened to X wing) so there’s no easy answer.

Since then I’ve been playing Warmachine, with its recent version change its now a completely new game. One of my favorite parts to it is the War Room app. It’s completely removed the need for cards, contains quick links to the FAQ and rules, has list building integrated. You need to purchase different factions decks to use them but they are cheap. If X wing were to do a 2.0 this would be the way to do it. Remove the need for physical cards, leave the cardboard alone, and let people buy specifically what they want. You still need to buy models but not any that you won’t use.

Pretty sure FFG can't actually do an all digital function like that - that might come too close to an "electronic game", keeping in mind their license with LFL is so archaic that they can't even release digital PDFs of their RPG line, they'd have to coperate with licensee EA on that front.

I'm sure that I'm tilting over the subject. This is me on tilt.

However I don't consider forcing everyone to play the same few upgrade cards to remove dice variance a step forwards - I'd gladly accept increased dice variance as an outcome of more diverse listbuilding options. Where variance becomes too low is often a red flag for me regarding whether I'll enjoy a game or not, because variance produces unexpected game states and responding correctly to those game states is something I find challenging and interesting. At the moment I feel like every game of X-Wing is basically the same, and after a game or two I'm bored of the repetition and regretting coming to play X-Wing.

And in my personal case it's certainly exacerbated by the fact that I was too successful last year in enthusing and motivating my local playgroup. It's proven almost impossible for me to find games against players who didn't compete in Worlds or aren't trying to win a Regionals. So just as I think the game design has tilted too far towards stacking dice modifiers I've been unable to find games against anything that isn't abusing precisely that.

Man... would be great to play a game with you. I could bring my thematic Yavin and Endor lists and we could just fly around and throw dice with a Star Wars movie playing in the background.

Have you tried playing the alternative game styles? Aside from the obvious ones, there are easy twists on the usual formula like a full on asteroid field battle or a nebula battle where abilities get periodically disabled.

Reminded again why this community rocks. Supporting each other and our real world problems. Let's try to not lose sight that this game is an escape, and any grief it brings (no matter how exaggerated) is unwelcome by both casual and competitive players, alike..

*group hug*

One of the challenges we face when introducing people to X wing is that initially they appreciate the game system and dog fighting etc, then they get an understanding of it, move away from their favourite ships in favour of "stronger" ones and then you have this dreaded conversation:

Person 1: "What list are you running?"

Person 2: "Corran / Miranda, its gaining popularity and I am trying to get to grips with it, you?"

Person 1: "Figured I would try out a Garven / Dutch combo, you know, one target locks and the other focus, seems legit!"

One stomping later.

Person 1: "Wow, you still have all your shields, crumbs, what a list!"

Person 2: "Yeah. . "

Person 1: "I may pick up those two ships and try it out for myself."

Person 2: "Cool, you will need an E-wing and a K wing obviously which is good because that will give you a extra munitions card, a single connor net and also the Twin Laser Turret you need, then you need an A wing for Push the Limit and Homing Missile, the starter set for R2-D2, a YT-1300 for engine upgrade and a B wing for Fire Control System. Then a VCX for Sabine crew and another two connor nets somehow, so . . . maybe another two K wings ?"

Person 1: "What . . . . I am not buying a Falcon, a B wing and a Ghost just for one blasted card!"

Person 2: "Well . . you could get them second hand I guess?"

Person 3 "That's nothing, wait until you want to run an Imperial Aces list and need Palpatine or you want to run the Falcon, old school. You will need the Raider and Corvette for those."

Person 1: "Seriously? I need to buy those massive things for a single card, can't I just borrow or proxy?"

Person 2: "No proxies allowed in tournaments and they only come with one copy of the card and I don't know ANYONE that has two. I mean, ha ha you can only use one in a Epic battle anyway right? Ha ha."

Person 1: "I'm out."

My biggest frustration with the game to a T.

The community over here is actually really good and very supportive of each other. I rarely have a bad experience and we've just seen the game grow and grow and grow and grow. Just today I had a game with someone who is getting into the game and he had a fun and enjoyable experience. In the lifetime of X-Wing at our store, I have seen players of various games come and go. I know one player who used to play X-Wing religiously....then Armada came out and in his mind Chess had just been released to replace Draughs. His opinion is his own but he is just one person.

I've seen X-Wing continue to grow and grow and it shows no sign of stopping, nor are Wednesday nights getting any quieter at the store. As a big player of X-Wing myself, one thing that keeps it fresh is our rotating tournament schedule. We run a Standard Tournament, a Hangar Bay, and finally an Escalation. Rotating between those each month and when we start a new rotation that's when a new prize pack is introduced. Never have we had a tournament below 17 people at the store. In fact, in the last event, we had to cap it at 24 due to scheduling conflicts and had a lot of people upset that they were too late to purchase a ticket.

I have my concerns about X-Wing, but as someone who trained in game design, I also know it's not easy to keep a game interesting while maintaining balance. Change too little or introduce something that doesn't make an impact and it just doesn't get used or people complain the game isn't evolving. Make changes and introduce brand new staple cards that redefine the meta and suddenly the sky is falling and people are complaining that too much has changed.

I do think they messed up when it came to the JumpMaster but I also know they test their products and with so many combinations available in the game it's a little excusable that they might have missed the deadeye thing or not noticed early on just how powerful that combination was.

Community is where the game is at and how that community interacts with one another is what keeps the game alive. I've been on the bad side of negative play experience, and it can be tough but in the last 6 months the game has gained new people in the area so something must be going right and people are interested in the licence.

People who talk about X-Wing 2.0 in my opinion, are very quick to dismiss what they have or give FFG a chance to actually fix things and would rather a drastic shift. Everyone seems to have their own idea on what is good for the game and what isn't and rarely is anyone right (myself included) because all have different views and values. For example Ficklegreendice calls PWT bad game design. I don't think it's bad design, and I think the mobile firing arc is not the fix for the PTW since the abilities, costing and everything was done on the basis of the PWT, making the mobile firing arc would entail completely rewriting all turrets to now utilise a secondary firing arc which in itself costs an action to move so you are already hampering a large ship by affecting its action economy.

Not saying FFG don't screw up, but they have shown they are willing to make changes to the rules and even add entirely new lines of card text. I'd rather that than a developer that did not listen at all to player feedback and just said "screw them, we have their money now." Frank and Alex clearly have a passion for the game and are trying to improve it with the resources at their disposal. They are not beyond reproach certainly but let us not make cynical assumptions about FFG, its business model and how it operates when we don't actually know anything and all we have is rampant speculation.

I almost feel like the player base needs to just begin a separate forum to create a balanced game using X-Wing models and templates.

Yeah, and all respect to them: they aren't game designers. A good player a game designer does not make. Dedicated fans maybe, but that does not mean they are qualified or have the skills necessary to balance the game while still keeping it interesting and evolving. Ask 10 people what they would change about one ship and you'll most likely get 10 different answers. This is why I am not a fan of the custom card league because a designer myself I look at some of those cards and just think "What?...Are you kidding, you complain about X, Y and Z, and then think THIS isn't broken?"

I remember reading a post many pages ago about a guy who proceeded to name most wave 1 ships and label them as trash. Yeah because the X-Wing, TIE Fighter, and staple ships deserve to tank anything that they go up against because they were part of dat original star wars!

I am of course exaggerating, but I feel a lot of people look at all the ships in the game and turn their noses up like some elitist art critic when there really is not need for that. Just because we have fond memories of said ships from movies, does not mean that those ships should always be top dog. Likewise, I am not saying there is not a problem with them in the meta. I'd be the first to say the T-65 does need a push, but I don't want to see a T-65 tanking TIE Defenders and the likes because ships have to have weaknesses, even if I think the Defender is a bit too good now. Hell, I remember when Wave 10 was announced and everyone was moaning how the Quadjumper, a ship that gets 2 seconds or even less of screen time in The Force Awakens was being released, especially since we never saw what it did in the film. Seems odd how people tend to forget that as fondly as people think of the B-Wing that had the same thing occur in Return of the Jedi. Double standards much?

Plus I think there are cases to be made that the pilot does matter to a list as well, I say this because right now the big scary list on the block is Parautani and I saw 3 named X-Wings and a Tala come so so close to actually winning. I know what you're about to say "Ah, but it didn't." No, however, I talk that down to player tactics more than anything. If you are interested in watching it you can see it here .

Star Wars means a lot of thing to a lot of different people. I get tired of seeing people asking for the Assault Gunboat. You'd think it was some holy grail of starships the amount of times I see people ask for it. A ship that appeared in granted very popular games of the time. Then people moan about The Ghost, or other ships calling them 'not Star Wars' well I take that argument and point you back at the Assault Gunboat. Star Wars is not just Episode 4, 5, and 6. It's not just what was released in the cinema between 1977 and 1983, it is an amalgamation of everything related to Star Wars since 1977. For better or worse: Original Trilogy, Expanded Universe/Legends, Prequel, The Clone Wars, Rebels, New Canon they are all Star Wars no matter what crazy highly subjective standard you hold ships too. I'm not saying you have to love every ship, that's not what I am saying, but at least respect it enough to know that it IS Star Wars, even if it is not YOUR Star Wars. It is very arrogant, shortsighted and dare I say selfish to only think your vision of what Star Wars is matters

FFG Should test more! I've heard this chestnut before, there is only so much testing and theory crafting you can do. A small pool of testers that FFG have access too is probably under 100 people although I will again say I have no accurate knowledge of this, just what I know from reading the playtester credits from the back of ships released in a wave. Giving these ships to a 100 people is very different to when they are in the hands of thousands upon thousands of people. That is the true test of anything these days which is why server based video games or applications crash on the first day, because estimates and tests can only give you so much information on what you can handle and what you will get from them.

FFG are not perfect, X-Wing is not perfect. I have my problems with the game, but I enjoy my experience and the local player base has not waned in the past 3 years the meet up has been going on for. Just the other day I got a memory alert on Facebook and it was a picture of 6 of us in this tiny room on the 2nd floor of Athena Games' old store playing X-Wing. Now our Wednesday Flight Nights have more people attend and a variety of opponents to pick from. Not only that, but the community gets excited about new releases and how it will bring changes. For the wave 10 unboxing, we even have a player part of the unboxing that views Wave 10 with distaste and disappointment and I am very interested to see how he and the others will interact in the video because his views are not wrong, they are his views after all.

Sorry for the long post but people were getting their opinions out and I wanted to add mine to the pile. I don't think the game is going anywhere. If you dislike where it has gone or is going that is fine but I urge you to pick it up again after a few waves and see if that changes your mind. It may be better, it may be worse. If your not having fun, there's little point in continuing to play even if it is just to escape the harsh reality we live in. Escapism is pointless if it is not a fun and enjoyable experience.

It's been a while since I've lost interest in the game (since wave 8 I believe). Decided to check out how things were going, which ships had been released and all...

The thing is, I'm always thinking the game is subpar but has enormous potential - so I kept buying everything that came out (until wave 8) and kept being disappointed. People have been asking for the Assault Gunboat since, like, forever. People have been asking for a decent fix to T65 X-Wings since, like, forever.

I thought by now the game would be balanced, X-Wings would be badass, Vader would still be a thing and FFG would be adding exciting stuff to the game besides new OP ships and new OP cards - like AT-ATs , Turrets (miniatures) that could be placed on asteroids and things like that. Instead they keep introducing ugly ships for S&V, empire keeps being good but not great and the ships that bear the game's name are now completely obsolete.

X-Wing is the game I would love to keep loving, but it keeps letting me down.

Vader is still a thing, and X-Wings are absolutely fine as long as you take the refined T-70 version :lol:

In terms of balance, the game is in a good spot, except for Attanni Mindlink and the Jumpmaster. But those are beatable, too.

Personally, I'd hate AT-ATs and asteroid turrets. This is a game about spaceships, not walkers ;)

5 minutes ago, haslo said:

Vader is still a thing

Is he? I havnt seen him in any serious lists for a VERY long time. Sadly despite the fix for the Advanced, it was still quickly eclipsed by Wave 8 shortly after its release.

6 minutes ago, haslo said:

X-Wings are absolutely fine as long as you take the refined T-70 version :lol:

Yeah, the issue there is that both of them should be usable, because as close as it is, the T-70 isn't the iconic ship all the older fans remember. That's not even starting on the fact that few T-70 pilots are actually worth the points (Jess and Nien are about the only realistically viable named ones now).

8 minutes ago, haslo said:

In terms of balance, the game is in a good spot, except for Attanni Mindlink and the Jumpmaster. But those are beatable, too.

Again, is it? Observation seems to indicate that Mindlink variants are far above the curve for efficiency, and despite other comparable cards getting 'nerfed' so they could be countered (TIE/x7) or have limitations on wide-range abilities (Manaroo, Palpatine), Mindlink (and Sabine, another oft-criticised card) remained untouched. The Lancer and Jumpmaster both remain severely undercosted for their capabilities to the point where it's almost a no-brainer to include one or both of them, since few other Scum ships (particularly any of the small ones that isn't a Protectorate) are even close to comparable effectiveness. Add bloody Fenn Rau (too cheap - just compare what he can do for the cost to Soontir Fel or Talonbane Cobra) to that mess and you end up with a very narrow variety of lists that can meet consistent success without getting hard-countered, which leads us to the very limited Rebel options (Miranda or Dash + friend, or the awful Kanan/Biggs 'Fun Destroyer' list, seem to be about the size of it) and the practically nonexistant Imperial ones (Defenders and SF's are about the last bastions there), while Scum can throw Mindlink and undercosted ships into their list in a ton of different combinations and do fine, even if the player makes mistakes, because those ships are not punished enough for making them where comparable examples (TIE/x7, again) are.

And all of that doesn't consider the underwhelming nature of both the C-ROC (a handful of mediocre to decent pilots and a couple of trash upgrades) and Wave 11 thus far (a TLT carrier, another Rebel brick with at least 1 trash card, and another Scum ship that seems set, for its cost vs stats/slots, to be the Second Coming of the Jumpmaster), leaving us with nothing interesting to anticipate until Guns for Hire (which is far later than it should have been), and in all cases it feels like Scum remain at the top of the pile since they continue to escape the nerf bat, somehow, even while other comparable ships/upgrades are getting swatted by it - too hard, in most cases.


Worst of all, there has still been nothing to sort out the original X-Wing, despite it having been years since it was first identifed as lacking (a fact that has only got worse) and despite a perfect opportunity (a Battle of Scarif themed Rogue One box with a Blue Squad X-Wing and then either some other ship or a second X-Wing in the 'Partisan' scheme) arising and then vanishing again (the window between R1 and TLJ is closed), all without presenting an explanation or reason to leave the ship that the whole game is named after in the dust. Occasional appearences by Biggs (the most badly designed and obnoxious pilot in the game) in tournaments do not excuse it or prove that the ship is fine, rather just add fuel to the fire of removing that awful card from the game.

So, no, I disagree entirely that the game is in a good spot. Frankly it's a mess right now, and the faith I had in FFG's designers for the game is being rapidly eroded.

1 hour ago, MalusCalibur said:

Occasional appearences by Biggs (the most badly designed and obnoxious pilot in the game) in tournaments do not excuse it or prove that the ship is fine, rather just add fuel to the fire of removing that awful card from the game.

Fel's wrath is poorly designed (no ept). HWK's primary value was a poor design choice. Biggs is quite the opposite. Biggs is to perfect . That's why you see him in most rebel compeitive list. And honestly, If were going to change him without the idea of this magical 2.0 or 3.0 or whatever, making Biggs a once per round thing would be a good balancing act. Biggs can still be biggs, He just can't biggs all over the board and ruin the rest of the opponent's attack phase.

I'm gonna add my own rant. I still...hate...regen...badly.

Just lost a close game to a rebel list that had corran. Not sure how many shields he regened, possibly double digits. I got him down to 1 hull earlier in the game, but he kept running away. Got him shield less a couple more times but couldn't ever get that last hull.

I think there was 3-4 times where he would have died if I had gotten 1 more hit or he had one less evade. So incredibly frustrating. His green dice were about average, so I guess it's more my red dice fault than his green. But again one more result either way I win.

I finally gave up after stripping his shields once again, but being at only 1 hull myself, and in a bad position for shots next round, assuming I even lived to shoot, I ended it.

I didn't fly a perfect game, but I did fly well enough to win it.

End rant