21 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

The meta rules:

do as much damage as possible.

Take as little damage as possible.

So any pilot abilities that don't do either of those things directly just aren't worth it, no matter how 'fun' they may be. The exceptions are the killer combos like toilet seats that flush torps

Riiiiiiiiiggggghhhhhtttttt. Having fun is a waste of time and totally not worth it. Now I remember why I don't go to tournaments. . .

As others have said, there are more than you have listed. As to your question though, I think it is a combo of things, some 'misses' from ffg designers, some cards meant for epic and fun and some that have esimply been outclassed as the meta has shifted. For example, at one point there were multiple viable t65 pilots. Not so much now...

20 hours ago, jmswood said:

I think you're painting with a very broad brush.

o, he's being utterly ridiculous, that's what he's doing.

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

Riiiiiiiiiggggghhhhhtttttt. Having fun is a waste of time and totally not worth it. Now I remember why I don't go to tournaments. . .

Your assessment is unfair and biased. At no point did GrimmyV say having fun "is a waste of time and totally not worth it.". Instead he said fun abilities (which I take to likely mean synergistic and/or gimmicky abilities) often don't meet the criteria to be considered the best around, meaning "Spikes"-the players who gets a thrill out of running the very best lists around and winning with them (this is what GrimmyV failed to mention)- wont ever consider these pilots because the consensus is they handicap a player where no handicap is wanted.

And anyone who says they are avoiding the tournament scene because tournament players think "having fun is a waste of time" is making an asinine statement. Unless someone is somehow making massive amounts of cash on their prize winnings, there is next to no reason for someone to attend a tournament other than to have fun.

And on a side note, if you should actually try a tourney sometime, you would likely be surprised how many of the players aren't just meta heads who net list. Even if there is a healthy portion of those players, they are almost always very courteous and friendly. I love tournaments and I never run a meta list at a tournament. Even when I have a bad day with a relatively poorly constructed list, I look back on the experience and am always glad I attended, often for the enjoyment of comradery, which is more valuable than any number of game of xwing.

21 minutes ago, Kdubb said:

Your assessment is unfair and biased. At no point did GrimmyV say having fun "is a waste of time and totally not worth it.". Instead he said fun abilities (which I take to likely mean synergistic and/or gimmicky abilities) often don't meet the criteria to be considered the best around, meaning "Spikes"-the players who gets a thrill out of running the very best lists around and winning with them (this is what GrimmyV failed to mention)- wont ever consider these pilots because the consensus is they handicap a player where no handicap is wanted.

And anyone who says they are avoiding the tournament scene because tournament players think "having fun is a waste of time" is making an asinine statement. Unless someone is somehow making massive amounts of cash on their prize winnings, there is next to no reason for someone to attend a tournament other than to have fun.

And on a side note, if you should actually try a tourney sometime, you would likely be surprised how many of the players aren't just meta heads who net list. Even if there is a healthy portion of those players, they are almost always very courteous and friendly. I love tournaments and I never run a meta list at a tournament. Even when I have a bad day with a relatively poorly constructed list, I look back on the experience and am always glad I attended, often for the enjoyment of comradery, which is more valuable than any number of game of xwing.

Well said. I personally love tourneys because it gives me an excuse to play X Wing for 8+ hours. They did get rather droll back in the days of W4, where you were guaranteed to see Whisper or Han and that was about it. But I made it exciting (for me at least) by creating a non-meta list that destroyed both of those (go go Blackmoon Squadron Pilot! I'm still pretty sure that I'm the only person to take a generic E wing to top 16 at Gencon). I only play lists that I enjoy playing. And a bunch of the other tourney players do the same.

2 hours ago, John Rainbow said:

As others have said, there are more than you have listed. As to your question though, I think it is a combo of things, some 'misses' from ffg designers, some cards meant for epic and fun and some that have esimply been outclassed as the meta has shifted. For example, at one point there were multiple viable t65 pilots. Not so much now...

Thanks for actually responding there. I realize I may have missed a few pilots, even going back through the actual data showed Jess Pava and Backstabber. Though it also removed both Rey and Han. So while my off-the-top-of-my-head list is not 100% accurate, the data provided from list juggler supports the same claim/question that I posed to begin with. I'm going to just go with Epic & Fun. Alex Davy once said in an interview that X wing is different than a CCG/LCG game where part of the fun is figuring out which cards are good and which cards are filler. Instead, it's figuring out where each card is useful. Now I suppose we could question the quality of that execution, but at least it sounds reasonable.

37 minutes ago, Kdubb said:

Your assessment is unfair and biased. At no point did GrimmyV say having fun "is a waste of time and totally not worth it.". Instead he said fun abilities (which I take to likely mean synergistic and/or gimmicky abilities) often don't meet the criteria to be considered the best around, meaning "Spikes"-the players who gets a thrill out of running the very best lists around and winning with them (this is what GrimmyV failed to mention)- wont ever consider these pilots because the consensus is they handicap a player where no handicap is wanted.

And anyone who says they are avoiding the tournament scene because tournament players think "having fun is a waste of time" is making an asinine statement. Unless someone is somehow making massive amounts of cash on their prize winnings, there is next to no reason for someone to attend a tournament other than to have fun.

And on a side note, if you should actually try a tourney sometime, you would likely be surprised how many of the players aren't just meta heads who net list. Even if there is a healthy portion of those players, they are almost always very courteous and friendly. I love tournaments and I never run a meta list at a tournament. Even when I have a bad day with a relatively poorly constructed list, I look back on the experience and am always glad I attended, often for the enjoyment of comradery, which is more valuable than any number of game of xwing.

I concede to being hyperbolic and biased, but I have to admit that I get a great deal of frustration from (often) feeling like players think this game should only be designed for Spike, and people who play casually only get "trickle down X-Wing."

Just now, Darth Meanie said:

I concede to being hyperbolic and biased, but I have to admit that I get a great deal of frustration from (often) feeling like players think this game should only be designed for Spike, and people who play casually only get "trickle down X-Wing."

That's fair, and if I recall I'm pretty sure we have had this discussion before. I personally am for a full on competitive focus on xwing (admittedly biased) as I see negligible effects on other formats if they do so. But I'm entirely not opposed to FFG releasing ships/expansions/whatever it may be that have a full intentional focus on epic or scenario play either. I just get bothered when they don't make that intent clear. If the Punisher or Pilot X is meant for epic play, they should promote it as such.

22 hours ago, ScummyRebel said:

The answer is all the pilots are viable for something. You just need to figure out how to incorporate them. Some are just easier to do than others.

Ok, while I don't agree with the OP let's not overcompensate in the other direction.

Not all the pilots are viable for something, in fact. Just from the Rebels:

Ibitsam is useless, especially if you consider that Nera can take Lone Wolf for the same price and get as much if not more from almost the same ability.

Etahn is useless when you consider the very few crit synergies Rebels have.

And there are a number of other pilots whose abilities are very situational and niche (Blue Ace for instance doesn't have the action economy to afford exploiting his ability all that frequently during a game; Arvel Crynyd is substantially less effective vs lower pilot skill opponents, and Roark is useless if you already out-PS your opponent; Zeb's ability isn't very good so he's only useful as a filler ship (for which there are cheaper options available) or to get the Phantom title on your Ghost as cheaply as possible (in which case you're actively hoping to never use him, which is pretty funny); Heff Tobber might never trigger all game long, especially vs 2-ship builds, and the list goes on) and I really don't think you can say that situational abilities with great dependence on your opponents' list are ever truly "viable".

They can have a good match-up but even if that number of match-ups is as good as one out of three then you're pretty screwed, aren't you?

4 minutes ago, Kdubb said:

That's fair, and if I recall I'm pretty sure we have had this discussion before. I personally am for a full on competitive focus on xwing (admittedly biased) as I see negligible effects on other formats if they do so. But I'm entirely not opposed to FFG releasing ships/expansions/whatever it may be that have a full intentional focus on epic or scenario play either. I just get bothered when they don't make that intent clear. If the Punisher or Pilot X is meant for epic play, they should promote it as such.

Agree totally. While it is clear that Huge ships are "casual only," it is unclear if ships like the Quadjumper and Punisher were meant to be "serious" or "experimental." I love "experimental" ships because winning is never my priority. . .sometimes I play stuff because I know I'm gonna lose, the question is How Badly??