So lots of people, including scum and villain podcast, have been complaining about castling to beat the 3 K-wing list. I don't fly list that castle, so it doesn't bother me much. But I understand why others do it, sometimes your list cannot deal with 3 slamming K-wings because it has no turrets or bombs to stop them from getting behind them. A few weeks ago, I watched a game with a guy with ghost and biggs just sat in the corner running into each other until the Kwing's got close, then TLT with the ghost. Now the Kwing player was angry, but I understand the strategy of the guy playing ghost and biggs, if he moves out he will be killed, by the slamming K-wings.

Our Store owner told the K-wing player to modify his list for this type of strategy and the Kwing player got angry. I agree with the store owner, if you build a list that relies on one thing, and you cannot do that thing because the other player blocks it then you deserve to lose. The Kwing wing player should build his list better, add some Assault missiles or a different ship that can handle the TLT's. This game is about adapting and over coming a strategy not whining because your strategy is stopped by another player. Our Kwing player has not returned to our store because of it. I would have thought he would have returned with a slightly changed list able to handle people castling against him.

K Wing guy should have no trouble with that at all. Drive up to just outside the firing range of the ghost, SLAM into range 1 or ideally bump, shoot Biggs a bit, do a short move, conner net the Ghost, stay in range 1 of it, don't get TLTed, repeat until it drives off the board. Do this cyclically with each of your K Wings until all their bombs are gone, by which stage the Ghost should be mostly dead from the bombs and biggs should be mostly dead from the shooting and/or splash damage from Sabine.

3 K wings should eat a ghost, even a higher PS one, even without TLTs.

Fortressing is normally dumb because it allows your opponent the choice of how and when to engage, and is double dumb when your opponent has HUGE control over the pace of their engagement, and can drop bombs on you in doing so.

This may be true, but the K-wing player didn't do that. Instead he complained the whole time. Also, the fortress did move a little, but biggs stayed behind the ghost and had r2d2 on him. Plus Ghost had the item that makes biggs gain +1 agility when shooting through him

X-wing has always had an element of Rock-Paper-Scissors about it. Building a list that spams a single ship type is just going to exacerbate that.

Having said that, thespaceinvader presents a viable strategy to counter this so it was not like he had no way to beat it at all. Sounds like he was sore that his opponent wouldn't play along and walk into the trap. Having said that, bombing spam and castling lists don't really seem in the spirit of the game so it honestly sounds like they deserved each other.

If castling is legal then people will do it, and complaining won't change that they can do it.

If castling becomes too common then FFG will change the rules to stop you doing it, because it's not what the game *should* be about.

8 minutes ago, eagletsi111 said:

This may be true, but the K-wing player didn't do that. Instead he complained the whole time. Also, the fortress did move a little, but biggs stayed behind the ghost and had r2d2 on him. Plus Ghost had the item that makes biggs gain +1 agility when shooting through him

*shrug* if the K wing player failed to beat his opponent's strategy, that's on him, not his opponent.

Castling is dumb and bad, but that doesn't mean defeating it doesn't take some mildly unusual play.

I honestly don't think there's anything you can do with the ships in the game that isn't in the spirit of the game.

K wing player should have just pulled donuts on the other side of the board. Ghost player wouldn't have a leg to stand on if they called out the k wings for stalling.

I have heard of castling and done it playing chess many moons ago, but I don't think I could castle because I love flying. K-Wings are quite the amazing squirrel-y yet hard-hitting-bird, but they are in no way unbeatable. And, as an aside, personally, a quite un-attractive as a Star Wars ship. Anyway, I don't own a Ghost, but I have seen some builds that are quite powerful. With that said, castling is a strategy of gaming as well as warfare that has been used throughout the ages....I cannot see the logic in trying to ban it. Plus, I agree with some posts above, it should give the attacker control of most all of the mat, which, should be a great advantage.

Come to think of it, I'd love it if my last Kanan Biggs opponent castled against my Homer/Concussion LRS bomber list, it would have been an almost certain victory...alas, it was not....

I was a little annoyed at the S&V complaints. It seems a totally legit tactic. I though Sable's complaints were especially rich "my list requires so much flying, and fortressing doesn't". Says the guy who's ships plot a course and do unblock able damage to the other player before that player even executes a move.

I love Sable and the squads he makes, but that complaint was absurd.

This is a red herring that distracts from the real issue, which is that x-wing has no objectives beyond death match.

Objective based play would "solve" this problem. FFG did this in its other games (like Imperial Assault) but X-Wing was too old. At some point they should address this with a tournament pack.

14 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

I was a little annoyed at the S&V complaints. It seems a totally legit tactic. I though Sable's complaints were especially rich "my list requires so much flying, and fortressing doesn't". Says the guy who's ships plot a course and do unblock able damage to the other player before that player even executes a move.

I love Sable and the squads he makes, but that complaint was absurd.

Seriously. Sable's salt is the worst thing. When you have a list with low repositioning you don't want to expose yourself to bombs. Sable could have played that matchup a lot better.

I oppose fortressing in principle, but I'm also a pragmatist. I make exception to my usual views on fortressing in this case because the Ghost/Biggs player demonstrated another principle I embrace: adapt and overcome. I'm assuming the Ghost in the list was Kanan, it makes sense considering the Ghost is paired with Biggs. Kanan is action dependent. The fortress works at the expense of the proven strategy for Kanan/Biggs. Focus actions feed Kanan's ability and keep Biggs alive longer. Kanan can't focus if he's bumping to fortress.

Now I'll play armchair analyst with the K-wing list. There was likely a blindspot or two to approach the fortress and avoid the 4-dice attacks from the Ghost's primary. If you're SLAMming; it doesn't take much to get into a TLT donut. While you cross range 2-3, the TLT won't do enough damage to destroy a K-wing. The K-wings could have SLAMed into the Ghost. This strategy would have forced the Ghost/Biggs player to break up the fortress, or trade dice. The details depend on the exact position of the fortress, but such a dice battle should be in the K-wings' favor.

38 minutes ago, jmswood said:

I oppose fortressing in principle, but I'm also a pragmatist. I make exception to my usual views on fortressing in this case because the Ghost/Biggs player demonstrated another principle I embrace: adapt and overcome. I'm assuming the Ghost in the list was Kanan, it makes sense considering the Ghost is paired with Biggs. Kanan is action dependent. The fortress works at the expense of the proven strategy for Kanan/Biggs. Focus actions feed Kanan's ability and keep Biggs alive longer. Kanan can't focus if he's bumping to fortress.

Now I'll play armchair analyst with the K-wing list. There was likely a blindspot or two to approach the fortress and avoid the 4-dice attacks from the Ghost's primary. If you're SLAMming; it doesn't take much to get into a TLT donut. While you cross range 2-3, the TLT won't do enough damage to destroy a K-wing. The K-wings could have SLAMed into the Ghost. This strategy would have forced the Ghost/Biggs player to break up the fortress, or trade dice. The details depend on the exact position of the fortress, but such a dice battle should be in the K-wings' favor.

Advanced sensors

Its about adapting and the K-wing player needs to make changes to his list. A couple missiles, or upgrade to Miranda who can regen. Having a stale list that cant do anything but bomb needs a fix.

24 minutes ago, Moneyinvolved said:

Advanced sensors

I haven't seen the exact list used. Did it have Advanced Sensors? I assumed the Ghost would have Fire Control System because everyone I know who flies a Ghost uses Fire Control System.

Just now, jmswood said:

I haven't seen the exact list used. Did it have Advanced Sensors? I assumed the Ghost would have Fire Control System because everyone I know who flies a Ghost uses Fire Control System.

Not Kanan/Biggs ones. Getting your focus tokens is WAY more important.

K-Wing list kinda flys itself once you're enough games in. Given that movement is not a way to counter the list, I am fine with people foregoing actions as a tactic to curb the 3k menace.

For the exact situation listed, I would recommend the K-wing player immediately ask for a final salvo and then find a game where both players can have fun.

(side note: does the attack value for a docked shuttle factor in to final salvo dice totals?)

In general, the issue seems to primarily revolve around bombing lists like the Galaxy Note 7. These lists are hard counters to low health Aces. They are, in turn, hard countered by fortressing, high attack lists. Maybe it's a feature and not a bug?

I liked the Mynock's take on that game far better. I was at the Austin Regional, I saw a couple of Daniel's games and watched the final. There was nothing wrong with either players' approach to the game.

Incidentally, I heard other people complain about the triple K-wing list the same way S&V complained about the Mindlink list. Both play the game of X-wing far differently than the vast majority of players and both lists win because of that. I thought it showed a lack of self-awareness on S&V's part to support their guy's strategy and not his opponent's.

If you understand that in a mindlink list only one ship can do a red maneuver then you can quickly see why Dan would absolutely struggle to catch three K Wings playing normally.

9 minutes ago, gamblertuba said:

For the exact situation listed, I would recommend the K-wing player immediately ask for a final salvo and then find a game where both players can have fun.

(side note: does the attack value for a docked shuttle factor in to final salvo dice totals?)

In general, the issue seems to primarily revolve around bombing lists like the Galaxy Note 7. These lists are hard counters to low health Aces. They are, in turn, hard countered by fortressing, high attack lists. Maybe it's a feature and not a bug?

Final Salvo would be a very bad idea for the Kwing player which is the point of setting up the castle in the first place. You get 6 reds for the K's, the ghost list should get 10, I do believe the docked shuttle would still count. Final Salvo says all of your undestroyed ships.

1 minute ago, SkyWarp said:

Final Salvo would be a very bad idea for the Kwing player which is the point of setting up the castle in the first place. You get 6 reds for the K's, the ghost list should get 10, I do believe the docked shuttle would still count. Final Salvo says all of your undestroyed ships.

He still lost right? Just roll your dice and who knows. Worst case, you still lose but walk away in a much better place emotionally.

27 minutes ago, SkyWarp said:

Final Salvo would be a very bad idea for the Kwing player which is the point of setting up the castle in the first place. You get 6 reds for the K's, the ghost list should get 10, I do believe the docked shuttle would still count. Final Salvo says all of your undestroyed ships.

Yup, the docked shuttle definitely counts for Salvo.

2 hours ago, thespaceinvader said:

Not Kanan/Biggs ones. Getting your focus tokens is WAY more important.

I just checked the list. It was a league game.

Pilots
------

Kanan Jarrus (51)
VCX-100 (38), Ghost (0), Advanced Sensors (3), Twin Laser Turret (6), Recon Specialist (3), Tactical Jammer (1)

“Zeb” Orrelios (20)
Attack Shuttle (18), Autoblaster Turret (2), Phantom (0)

Biggs Darklighter (29)
X-Wing (25), R2-D2 (4), Integrated Astromech (0)

100 points

Your right he did have Advanced Sensors

On another note, I have played this guys list before, and he never castled before. I think he did it because in his mind he has no chance to beat the 3 K list.

Well with all the stress effect mitigation I am surprised we don't see more castles. Guess that is the inherent problem of a 3D theme projected on a 2D game.