6 minutes ago, Makaze said:

Last I checked they all fly meta lists. Sometimes to the point that they are the innovators of said list and and so are defining the meta. Their skill is what sets them apart from all of the people netlisting stuff and it's absolutely why they make the cut time and time again. But (when flying seriously) none of them are putting anything on the table that they don't consider the best of the best at that point in the game.

Heavers 2015 worlds build only became "meta" after the twitch streams.

Just now, Luke C said:

sooo.. when you show up to a tournament, you might not be the same skill level as the guy across from you? You might have more or less practice? That's my point. Meta list or not, skill matters most.

In round 1 of swiss, sure every chance you can fly circles around someone. At the 4-1 in round 6 tables or in the top 8? Sorry but everyone there is good and no one, not me, not you, not those guys, is good enough to reliably skill their way through that with a bad list at any decent sized event.

Skill absolutely matters, but so does your list. The closer the skill between opponents the more the list matters and the closer the lists are in power the more skill matters.

4 minutes ago, Smutpedler said:

Heavers 2015 worlds build only became "meta" after the twitch streams.

Your point? Or were you just trying to prove mine? Things enter and stay in the meta because they're good. Heaver and those other guys run good lists, almost exclusively.

1 hour ago, Luke C said:

Also Manzano got 2nd in Chicago with 3xJM and the cut at worlds. ALSO Booth won a regional with brobots. Not so much meta lists....

. . .but also not early wave ships.

3 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

. . .but also not early wave ships.

Exactly.

Does anyone have a list of all the worlds winners lists?

14 minutes ago, BlodVargarna said:

Does anyone have a list of all the worlds winners lists?

1. Jank TIE Swarm with Vader and Howlrunner I believe.
2. XXBB, Biggs, two Daggers and a Rookie
3. Fat Han with R2-D2 instead of Gunner and with three Talas
4. Rebel Toolbox with R2-D2 Poe, Stresshog, a normal TLT Y-Wing and a Bandit
5. Dengaroo of some form

1 hour ago, Makaze said:

Your point? Or were you just trying to prove mine? Things enter and stay in the meta because they're good. Heaver and those other guys run good lists, almost exclusively.

That was my point. "Good" & "meta" are not synonymous.

edit: were you just trying to prove mine? ?

19 minutes ago, Smutpedler said:

That was my point. "Good" & "meta" are not synonymous.

edit: were you just trying to prove mine? ?

Paul Heaver's lists (all of them) might not be 'meta' lists themselves but they arise from a pretty deep meta knowledge. Paul doesn't seem to put ships X, Y and Z on the table because he likes them, he puts them on the table because in his view they provide the best winning chance in that current meta.

2 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

Paul Heaver's lists (all of them) might not be 'meta' lists themselves but they arise from a pretty deep meta knowledge. Paul doesn't seem to put ships X, Y and Z on the table because he likes them, he puts them on the table because in his view they provide the best winning chance in that current meta.

It was X, Y, Y and Z.

2 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

Paul Heaver's lists (all of them) might not be 'meta' lists themselves but they arise from a pretty deep meta knowledge. Paul doesn't seem to put ships X, Y and Z on the table because he likes them, he puts them on the table because in his view they provide the best winning chance in that current meta.

WHAT?! In order to win large events you need to know what you probably will face? Preposterous sir. Preposterous.

23 minutes ago, Smutpedler said:

That was my point. "Good" & "meta" are not synonymous.

edit: were you just trying to prove mine? ?

Over time they are. Anything good will become part of the meta.

5 hours ago, Darth Meanie said:

Based on what??????? No one flies lists based on B-wings, X-wings, Kihraxz, HWKs et. al.

There is not a single extant thread that talks about early wave ships as part of the tournament meta except for the occasional super-pilot (e.g., Biggs) or left-over filler.

But we're not talking about the tournament meta, at least the post I replied to wasn't. I see all the "bad" ships on our weekly game nights. I play them, I lose to them. They're not unplayable by any means. The power gap is relatively small in this game. It's only really relevant in the tourney environment where those few percentage points actually make a difference.

The histrionics are tiresome.

1 hour ago, Chumbalaya said:

The histrionics are tiresome.

Yeah, well, the thread started out as an interesting discussion about where X-Wing should go as a game and devolved into the usual griping about whether the current 100/6 meta is acceptable.

17 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

Yeah, well, the thread started out as an interesting discussion about where X-Wing should go as a game and devolved into the usual griping about whether the current 100/6 meta is acceptable.

Avoid the hyperbole and maybe we can have a nice discussion

10 minutes ago, Chumbalaya said:

Avoid the hyperbole and maybe we can have a nice discussion

Hyperbole? You mean, kinda like the word "histrionics"?

9 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Hyperbole? You mean, kinda like the word "histrionics"?

Well, given what I replied to.

If the newer ships continue powercreep in the same speed as they do right now, you cannot field thematic battles with older releases like T65, Hwk, Khiraxzes, Vipers etc together with later released ships, as these just steamroll over the older ships

Based on what??????? No one flies lists based on B-wings, X-wings, Kihraxz, HWKs et. al

It seems rather apt, unfortunately.

18 minutes ago, Chumbalaya said:

Well, given what I replied to.

It seems rather apt, unfortunately.

The main issue is that you didn't actually ANSWER his question and tried deflecting it instead, so I'll restate it without hyperbole:

One or two lists out of literally thousands making a cut with a bad ship doesn't make that bad ship good, or even decent; it means that a good player was handicapping himself for some reason.

Literally. Thousands.

And nothing says anything about the quality of opponents that said people faced to make that cut; if all our hypothetical "Bad Ship Good Player" hit were amateurs at their first tournament who don't know the difference between turns and banks he would have cruised to the cut and then washed out immediately.

You look at statistical outliers and anecdotal evidence (your own, no less!) and act as though you've won the argument about how Wave 6+ dominates the game and is a clear sign of power creep.

You haven't. All you've shown is inability to understand high-school math.

14 minutes ago, iamfanboy said:

The main issue is that you didn't actually ANSWER his question and tried deflecting it instead, so I'll restate it without hyperbole:

One or two lists out of literally thousands making a cut with a bad ship doesn't make that bad ship good, or even decent; it means that a good player was handicapping himself for some reason.

Literally. Thousands.

And nothing says anything about the quality of opponents that said people faced to make that cut; if all our hypothetical "Bad Ship Good Player" hit were amateurs at their first tournament who don't know the difference between turns and banks he would have cruised to the cut and then washed out immediately.

You look at statistical outliers and anecdotal evidence (your own, no less!) and act as though you've won the argument about how Wave 6+ dominates the game and is a clear sign of power creep.

You haven't. All you've shown is inability to understand high-school math.

We're talking about different things and I'd appreciate you lightening your tone.

I'm talking purely about casual play here. Specifically, the falsehood that older ships are not played and incapable of winning. In tournament play, those mathematical differences are relevant. On weekly game night, not so much.

52 minutes ago, Chumbalaya said:

We're talking about different things and I'd appreciate you lightening your tone.

I'm talking purely about casual play here. Specifically, the falsehood that older ships are not played and incapable of winning. In tournament play, those mathematical differences are relevant. On weekly game night, not so much.

Except at weekly game night at FLGS you see these same lists.

27 minutes ago, BlodVargarna said:

Except at weekly game night at FLGS you see these same lists.

And on these boards, the ship X-Wing is never coupled with the word "list," but rather with the word "fix."

3 hours ago, iamfanboy said:

And nothing says anything about the quality of opponents that said people faced to make that cut; if all our hypothetical "Bad Ship Good Player" hit were amateurs at their first tournament who don't know the difference between turns and banks he would have cruised to the cut and then washed out immediately.

That's not how Swiss rounds work. As you progress through a tournament, you're paired against players with a comparable record. You might be able to make that argument in the first couple rounds of a tournament but you could just as easily be wrong about the quality of his opponents in the early rounds. If someone wins a large event with a "bad" ship, your definition of good and bad may be off.

There's so much hyperbole and ignorance in this thread. In one breath someone will tell me certain lists do well, not because they're popular, but because they're genuinely good and in the next breath tell me that certain lists only perform well, not because they're actually good but because an extraordinary player brought it. The caliber of player increases as you advance through a tournament. If someone flys a "bad" ship and does well, you're probably just wrong about it being a bad ship.

All wings report in. Keep it tight boys, we're about to make the jump to hyperbole. . .

1 hour ago, AceWing said:

That's not how Swiss rounds work. As you progress through a tournament, you're paired against players with a comparable record. You might be able to make that argument in the first couple rounds of a tournament but you could just as easily be wrong about the quality of his opponents in the early rounds. If someone wins a large event with a "bad" ship, your definition of good and bad may be off.

There's so much hyperbole and ignorance in this thread. In one breath someone will tell me certain lists do well, not because they're popular, but because they're genuinely good and in the next breath tell me that certain lists only perform well, not because they're actually good but because an extraordinary player brought it. The caliber of player increases as you advance through a tournament. If someone flys a "bad" ship and does well, you're probably just wrong about it being a bad ship.

That's why we have these little things called 'statistics' that tell us how much a ship wins and does not win to back up our arguments, versus someone whose evidence is "The game is fine! I don't know what you guys are complaining about!"

How do we know that Soontir Fel is weak? Because he isn't making the cut. Bad players steer away from Soontir because he's so skill intensive, and good players lose despite taking him. At one point, he was 20% of Imperial lists making the cut - now, he's at a bare 1%. Declining by a factor of twenty is NOT a good indication.

How do we know that the X-Wing is weak? Because despite being taken as 10% of all Rebel Ships (and only 5.8% of them Biggs), 7.3% of Rebel ships making the cut are Biggs - the other .4% include all other X-Wing pilots). And .3% of that is Garven. When a ship with 8 pilot cards to its name has only ONE that matters, that's another bad sign of imbalance and power creep.

Note that List Juggler has better than 20,000 points listed just in results that make the cut. When you look at those numbers and realize that there were a total of 91 points spent on Soontir Fel among top lists during the entire month of February which made it in... maybe things have gone a little far?

When a player can put a Countdown with Title and a Rookie X-Wing pilot with R2/IA next to each other and realize that the game considers these two ships to be worth the same amount, that's a terrible sign for game balance and a clear indication for power creep.

Making our own version of whatever isn't a very good option. As I said before, game companies are in a bad spot when it comes to fanmade stuff. If they release something of their own that's too close to the fanmade items, then they run the risk of toxic publicity, or being sued. If they outright buy it from the fan, they get a poisonous amount of fanmade stuff from people who don't know a **** thing - and the fans who DO know something are often drowned out by all the noise. If they just ignore the fanmade stuff, then they run the risk of losing their game out from underneath them.

None of those choices are good. I accidentally trashed several months of hard work by game devs I respected when I released my own points system for Battletech's Alpha Strike - the method I used was almost identical to theirs and they couldn't run the risk of doing either 1) or 2). They had to go to a weird fractional formula.

It'd be tragic if what killed the X-Wing Campaign Mode was HotAC. The writer is a professional, but avoiding even the appearance of buying fanmade stuff might well be what stopped it.

7 minutes ago, iamfanboy said:

It'd be tragic if what killed the X-Wing Campaign Mode was HotAC. The writer is a professional, but avoiding even the appearance of buying fanmade stuff might well be what stopped it.

OTOH, HotAC is not player vs. player, so there is still hope. Rebellions live on hope, I've heard.