4 hours 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.

Having watched the game after hearing the complaints (when it first happened), I actually thought the castling was going to last longer than it did. I also thought that despite the narrative that he outflew his opponent, the approach could have been more coordinated (though I may be remembering wrong). That said, I wasn't playing or on either side of the table so it's easy to armchair admiral it.

2 minutes ago, AlexW said:

Having watched the game after hearing the complaints (when it first happened), I actually thought the castling was going to last longer than it did. I also thought that despite the narrative that he outflew his opponent, the approach could have been more coordinated (though I may be remembering wrong). That said, I wasn't playing or on either side of the table so it's easy to armchair admiral it.

I don't think Sable is a horrible player or anything and that's the end of a tournament where the minds are going to be more frazzled but I think going on a podcast to complain about an opponent and extoll the skill of one's own list, especially when neither of them are particularly 'meta' is bad form.

18 minutes ago, Panzeh said:

I don't think Sable is a horrible player or anything and that's the end of a tournament where the minds are going to be more frazzled but I think going on a podcast to complain about an opponent and extoll the skill of one's own list, especially when neither of them are particularly 'meta' is bad form.

I totally agree and wasn't implying that he's a bad player and I certainly haven't done better. Like I said, it's easy to make observations about a video but I did think that I saw at least what I considered an error that benefitted his opponent.

In this game, the guy actually moved his ghost and biggs into position. He started ghost in the corner and biggs off to the inside of the board, but he got it so his ghost was facing biggs and his front of his ghost at a 45 degree angle out of the corner, so he could use primary weapons too. It was pretty cool to watch. Then they just sat there the entire game. Funny thing was I think if they did kill biggs ghost would have dropped the shuttle and then flown off the board because the angle.

Pre rant:

I have been flying bombing K-wings for a long time. I have never used a castle in a tournement in 2-3 years of playing this game.

Actual rant:

I live K-wings and I love Sable Gryphon, but I have had it with the complaints about castling. It is a tactic, just as any other tactic like flanking, running away, etc. Clearly with the latest Wave, FFG is trying to put a greater emphasis on initial board setup with New Han and some of the weird cards. As one podcast host pointed out, it is not a common tactic, and if it does not get out of hand, should anything really be done about it.

Post rant:

With respect to the Austin Regional, I watched it live. I thought it was a brilliant tactic against a difficult counter. I have not listened to S&V yet, and I do not want to second guess anything either player did in that match because we all know at that level of competition, after playing God knows how many rounds, it is both physically and mentally exhausting. That said, in my opinion, there were two distinct points in that final match that I feel heavily swung the favor towards the G-1A's. First, I think Sable's initial approach with the K-Wing from the castle flank was suboptimal. Not a game changer, but it hurt. Secondly, there was a point where Sable followed one of the G-1A's into the upper left corner and had the kill shot...I think twice, and his dice crapped out.

Neither of these are the fault of a castle tactic, although the first instance certainly contributed to it. No worse than rock placement in my opinion.

This is not an Intentional Draw type of problem. This is not even a problem right now. Just my opinion.

5 hours ago, AlexW said:

Having watched the game after hearing the complaints (when it first happened), I actually thought the castling was going to last longer than it did. I also thought that despite the narrative that he outflew his opponent, the approach could have been more coordinated (though I may be remembering wrong). That said, I wasn't playing or on either side of the table so it's easy to armchair admiral it.

I agree on all counts. I watched it live, and was pretty confused at a single K-wing going in for a run. All three heading in could have at least done some more damage before one of them died. Of course it's the end of a long day, and there's guesses and clunter-guesses going on.

Where are people watching this? I can't find a replay of the game.

I want to watch it too. Do tell!

https://youtu.be/4VYWQnwMjio

27 minutes ago, balindamood said:

https://youtu.be/4VYWQnwMjio

Thanks for the link. I though the game in question was a Ghost/Biggs squad versus the K-wings.

17 minutes ago, jmswood said:

Thanks for the link. I though the game in question was a Ghost/Biggs squad versus the K-wings.

There's 2 different things been spoken about in thread, OP is specifically talking about his own match viewing experience, which undoubtably was inspired by the video linked. Everyone else is talking about S&V podcast which recently highlighted on this "cowardly" tactic.

This is the one I have

https://youtu.be/4VYWQnwMjio

After listening to the discussion on the Mynock podcast (which apparently was even more balanced than the S&V one) I had the impression that this was some completely broken technique he had abused to sit in the corner untouched the entire game or something. After watching the video, the tactic seems completely fine and a totally legitimate option given the two lists.

Lots of respect to Mark as well, but I echo the sentiment that he approached it pretty sub-optimally. He seemed completely set on trying to *force* some bombs into the formation, and paid the price for it. Had he instead just flew around at range 3 of the z-95 and taken pot shots with his turrets he would have forced the breakup of the castle with no risk to himself. Getting into that range 3 band isn't very hard in this situation where the front-most bumped ship is pointing backwards anyways and has no tokens for defense... and hey, if you screw up the approach (try a target lock) just SLAM back out and try again. You have all the time in the world

If he didn't want to do that for some reason, he could have approached from the board edges and only been in arc of a single G1A. That's what I expected him to do with the first K, but he inexplicably turned back in... again I can only assume he was trying to force bomb drops, which was simply a mistake. And if you're going to go balls-in for some reason, going in with a single k-wing at a time is a further bad decision.

As others have noted, there's ways to modify the list to make it more resilient to this sort of setup. You are taking a risk when you make a relatively homogeneous squad and that risk *should* have solid counters. That said, I don't even think you need to change this list against such a setup... just change your approach until the castle is broken up - don't try and *force* bomb drops at start - just take the easy range 3 turret shots until they realize they have to move.

Obviously this stuff is more obvious in retrospect and I'm not blaming Mark for not being in the right head-space to change his thinking at the end of a long day. But I absolutely do not buy the argument that there's anything wrong with this tactic, or even that it's particularly good in most situations.

And really - as noted earlier in the thread - it's hardly fair to argue that low PS K-wing bombers play the game "properly" either... while I like that they exist in the meta, it's almost as if you're playing solitaire, particularly with the conner net variants (and hardly "fun" for the opponents, regardless of who wins). When you move before everyone, have SLAM and are ioning everything on the table, much of the game design is bypassed in the first place, so it's not a fair criticism to complain when someone comes up with something that forces a strategic change, if only for a few rounds

Anyways kudos to Daniel for doing so well with a unique list, and particularly for coming up with something to deal with an almost auto-lose matchup in the finals. It's a shame that a few podcasts dragged him through the mud on something which is pretty objectively fine, and certainly no less fine than K-wing bombing shenanigans. Just switch up your strategy a bit if you run into it until you force them to break the castle and then proceed to basically auto-win vs. that list as you would normally

On 2/10/2017 at 5:54 AM, clanofwolves said:

... 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....

Should be but it does not give control to the opponent. The player running the castle/fortress actually has control of the field, as they have prevented any approach other than from a single 90 degree angle starting from directly behind their rearmost ship. They also have in effect 270 degree area of instant death to both sides and rear which require a very tight flight pattern stay within that 90 degree arc, otherwise their opponent loses any ship that flies outside it.

Castling is an unintended effect of the interaction between several game mechanics, and while in no way illegal or against the rules, it should be banned from tournament play as falling under Unsporting Conduct as abuse of rules. Casual play can do whatever they want; I wouldn't play against someone that castles, I have better things to do

On 2/10/2017 at 5:19 AM, Stay On The Leader said:

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.

Complaining about it is how FFG learns its a problem. If it became common, and no one complained about it, it wouldn't be changed as no one would be expressing a problem with it.

I wonder how the K-Wing player would respond to someone calling him a CHICKEN or saying he is unsporting if he had a lead and then decided to continually fly the K-Wing away from the other player? That's just having the shoe on the other foot.

10 minutes ago, StevenO said:

I wonder how the K-Wing player would respond to someone calling him a CHICKEN or saying he is unsporting if he had a lead and then decided to continually fly the K-Wing away from the other player? That's just having the shoe on the other foot.

Yeah opinions on whether it makes the game "unfun" aside (which obviously will vary from person to person), it's frankly ridiculous that people would call it "unsportsmanlike" when stuff like optimizing your point values and MERs in time limited games is par for the course. Let's keep the discussion at the high level and not accuse any individuals of anything, as it is clearly a legal and valid strategy and thus you can no more blame anyone for employing it than for picking strong or annoying lists.

48 minutes ago, punkUser said:

I have to echo the sentiments that after listening to the discussion on the Mynock podcast (which apparently was even more balanced than the S&V one) I had the impression that this was some completely broken technique he had abused to sit in the corner untouched the entire game or something. After watching the video, the tactic seems completely fine and a totally legitimate option given the two lists.

Lots of respect to Mark as well, but I echo the sentiment that he approached it pretty sub-optimally. He seemed completely set on trying to *force* some bombs into the formation, and paid the price for it. Had he instead just flew around at range 3 of the z-95 and taken pot shots with his turrets he would have forced the breakup of the castle with no risk to himself. Getting into that range 3 band isn't very hard in this situation where the front-most bumped ship is pointing backwards anyways and has no tokens for defense... and hey, if you screw up the approach (try a target lock) just SLAM back out and try again. You have all the time in the world

If he didn't want to do that for some reason, he could have approached from the board edges and only been in arc of a single G1A. That's what I expected him to do with the first K, but he inexplicably turned back in... again I can only assume he was trying to force bomb drops, which was simply a mistake. And if you're going to go balls-in for some reason, going in with a single k-wing at a time is a further bad decision.

As others have noted, there's ways to modify the list to make it more resilient to this sort of setup. You are taking a risk when you make a relatively homogeneous squad and that risk *should* have solid counters. That said, I don't even think you need to change this list against such a setup... just change your approach until the castle is broken up - don't try and *force* bomb drops at start - just take the easy range 3 turret shots until they realize they have to move.

Obviously this stuff is more obvious in retrospect and I'm not blaming Mark for not being in the right head-space to change his thinking at the end of a long day. But I absolutely do not buy the argument that there's anything wrong with this tactic, or even that it's particularly good in most situations.

And really - as noted earlier in the thread - it's hardly fair to argue that low PS K-wing bombers play the game "properly" either... while I like that they exist in the meta, it's almost as if you're playing solitaire, particularly with the conner net variants (and hardly "fun" for the opponents, regardless of who wins). When you move before everyone, have SLAM and are ioning everything on the table, much of the game design is bypassed in the first place, so it's not a fair criticism to complain when someone comes up with something that forces a strategic change, if only for a few rounds

Anyways kudos to Daniel for doing so well with a unique list, and particularly for coming up with something to deal with an almost auto-lose matchup in the finals. It's a shame that a few podcasts dragged him through the mud on something which is pretty objectively fine, and certainly no less fine than K-wing bombing shenanigans. Just switch up your strategy a bit if you run into it until you force them to break the castle and then proceed to basically auto-win vs. that list as you would normally

It's just another variation on the argument from years ago when an A-Wing player refused to force himself into a joust against a Y-Wing player. The Y-Wing player was salty that the A-Wings spent so much time using hit-and-run tactics and refused to engage on his terms, as though his opponent were obligated to fight in a manner that wasn't beneficial to him out of "fairness."

Just now, PhantomFO said:

It's just another variation on the argument from years ago when an A-Wing player refused to force himself into a joust against a Y-Wing player. The Y-Wing player was salty that the A-Wings spent so much time using hit-and-run tactics and refused to engage on his terms, as though his opponent were obligated to fight in a manner that wasn't beneficial to him out of "fairness."

Yes, I agree there is a definite analog to stuff like boosting/barrel rolling out of arc being "unfair". Obviously there are degrees, but it's worth people admitting to themselves that the fundamental reasoning is the same.

You got to be kidding me.

K-Wing guy complains because his opponent used completely legit tactic and actually gave himself a chance to win a game against in my opinion a sleeper cancer of this game - K-Wing bombers.
So it is fine for me to evade fights the whole game, slam away and bomb oponent into oblivion with unblockable damage, yet when said opponent uses legit and smart tactic to counter me it is in some way unsportsmanlike?

You know what bomber man? F*** off.

Also, as a way to tell "I told you, see?" I wil quote myself from the other thread, from about a two weeks ago:

Quote

The problem is there is hidden cancer of current meta - namely bombs - it effectively makes some fragile ships unplayable or auto losing against certain match ups.
Unfortunately many players behave like a flock of sheep complaining about supposed imbalance of Palpatine, not seeing brokeness of bombs - well my guess is novelty of this toxic archetype is still obscuring proper judgement for some people.

But give it some time - I bet in a month or two there will be many threads complaining about bombs, Sabine and K-Wings.

I once played a tournament game against a list designed to castle. It was run by the supposed "victim" in the 2014 Worlds castling "scandal". He ran 3 shuttles including Yorr, and 2 black squadron TIEs with Wingman.

I thought it was hilarious and it definitely posed an interesting challenge. I had to alter my usual approach to minimize shots and snipe the TIEs, which meant the shuttles had to move and I was able to slip in behind them to mop up.

I've got no problem with castling if it gives you an advantage against me. I'll either figure it out, or I'll stop taking a list against which castling is good.

Whining that your opponent didn't dutifully play to your advantage is the poor sportsmanship, playing by the intended rules of the game is not.

1 hour ago, kris40k said:

Castling is an unintended effect of the interaction between several game mechanics, and while in no way illegal or against the rules, it should be banned from tournament play as falling under Unsporting Conduct as abuse of rules. Casual play can do whatever they want; I wouldn't play against someone that castles, I have better things to do

Complaining about it is how FFG learns its a problem. If it became common, and no one complained about it, it wouldn't be changed as no one would be expressing a problem with it.

I'd see 3k lists (new thing) as much more trolly and abusive of an exploit than bumping for position (old as the game).

Any list where you can move speed 8 in a turn and make 3 auto damage attacks three times a turn is forfeiting any right to complain about others using foundational tactics to counter their newb-rocket list.

Kwing bomber lists are the disease here, castling is just the foul tasting medicine needed to cure it.

I played in the Austin Regional and was lucky to be 1 of the 2 people who were able to beat Daniel in that tournament. He's a super nice guy and would enjoy playing him again. He hadn't had much success with that list before the regional and he sincerely felt that was the only way he could win against certain match-ups. The other thing I'll say is Daniel didn't castle because he must do it to win. He won the Dallas regional too with a Parattani list so he can flat out fly. Incidentally, there's only 2 Texas Regionals this season and he won both of them.

I would wager that for a lot of people, they play X-Wing because they like to fly and castling just doesn't make sense. Personally, I get more enjoyment out of doing a 3 bank that parks me 1/4 inch away from an asteroid, or K-turning right by the edge of the board more than I do rolling lots of red dice with paint on them. It's kind of a surreal experience playing against castling and I agree that it doesn't fit the theme of the game, but not sure that I'd go so far as outlaw/discourage it unless people start going nuts with it.

I think to be convinced there's any kind of problem, I'd have to see a recorded game where castling was used much more obnoxiously than the Austin one... i.e. someone sat there the entire game with no actual way to approach them without being under multiple/all arcs and such. Such a thing seems possible in theory, but really have to see multiple people make dedicated attempts vs. such a strategy who have played vs. it before rather than a couple examples where the opponents clearly were caught off guard and made several mistakes. And even then, there seem to be a myriad of ways to make modifications to a squad to deal with castles, so it wouldn't necessary follow that it's any different than mitigating against other risks (high PS aces, turrets, etc).

I'm also still not convinced that K-wings are really hit hard by this... yes you shouldn't try and force bombs in, but you have turrets and SLAM which means you can pretty easily stick at range 3 of probably just a single ship and take pot shots on action-less defenders. And that front ship can't be pointed outwards so there's no worry about tractor beams (until they make the turret version :P).

Things like ties would be in a tough situation since it's much harder to avoid giving the castle a choice shot after the nice range 3 volley. But even then - as noted, castling and tie swarms have both been around for ages and it doesn't seem like it has been particularly effective, so it's hard to argue that there's some new emergent problem here.

2 hours ago, punkUser said:

As others have noted, there's ways to modify the list to make it more resilient to this sort of setup. You are taking a risk when you make a relatively homogeneous squad and that risk *should* have solid counters. That said, I don't even think you need to change this list against such a setup... just change your approach until the castle is broken up - don't try and *force* bomb drops at start - just take the easy range 3 turret shots until they realize they have to move.

Obviously this stuff is more obvious in retrospect and I'm not blaming Mark for not being in the right head-space to change his thinking at the end of a long day. But I absolutely do not buy the argument that there's anything wrong with this tactic, or even that it's particularly good in most situations.

Yes, exactly, I think Mark, and all of us can learn from this. Any fortress that has a ships back to you, take range 3 pot shots, eventually they will start to land and your opponent will be forced to fight.

It looks to me like the "Rock, Paper, Scissors" of X-wing is morphing into "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Lizard, Spock". In addition to the traditional Jouster, Turret, Arc-dodger (which are pretty muddled anyways) we could add Bomber and Fortress as distinct strategic archetypes.