Hi everyone,
Using the very useful meta analyzer, (I found it interesting that Parattani is absolutely dominating recent regionals (and all tournaments for that matter), as mentioned on the UK facebook X-wing group)
there are some pretty crazy results. 17 of the top 20 lists in recent weeks, (since wave 9) have included 1 or more large base ships. The only list archetypes that make it without a large base ship are triple defenders, double defenders with OL, or K-wings. For the lists that went on to win in swiss rankings, that number only dips to 16 out of 20, where the new small-base list is 4 TLT y-wings.

http://meta-wing.com/ship_combos?ranking_start=2016-11-22&ranking_end=2017-02-15&large_tournament_multiplier=false&widespread_use_multiplier=true&use_ranking_data=swiss&tournament_type=6&

I find this extremely concerning. I'm just really tired of playing against large base ships, their ludicrous dials, multiple ways of removing variability from their dice rolls (or your own) and the feeling that I need one too to keep up, or bring defenders.
yuck!
Don't mean to sound grumpy, but this is really starting to become an issue with the constant release of new, increasingly good large base ships, with the jumpmaster and shadowcaster being the two most recent examples. (I know I know, learn to fly better, etc. takes new tactics, etc. Along with some quantitative data suggesting the posibility of an issue, I'm just throwing in my qualitative opinion it's just not as fun!)

Fair enough, but 28% of all the ships released so far had a large base, so one in three ships should be expected to have one if every type of ship is to be fairly represented

11 minutes ago, haslo said:

Fair enough, but 28% of all the ships released so far had a large base, so one in three ships should be expected to have one if every type of ship is to be fairly represented

Although big ships tend to cost a lot more than small ships (on blended average cost) so you'd expect the weighting to move better than 1-in-3 towards the small ships.

Blame the JM5K expansion. Not joking. Ever since the half-points rule the only lists that have been utterly dominating are related to that godawful expansion (attani, manaroo, dengar, tripboats, ANY of the crew, etc etc). Heck even Tel is pretty dang powerful but you never see him(?) because the other 2 pilots and even the GENERIC is so over the top why would you pick the "tame" one?

10 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Although big ships tend to cost a lot more than small ships (on blended average cost) so you'd expect the weighting to move better than 1-in-3 towards the small ships.

Agreed. And you certainly wouldn't expect a situation whereby you're forced to take a large ship to have a list that even breaks into the top 20 of the meta.

The thing that really bothers me as an imperial player is that EVERY single list on that top 20 is either built on powerful turrets (with the exception of old man fennaroo), or if they're imperial, with palpatine and/or defenders.

Although it appears nice at first that there are a large number of lists which are competitive. It's not so nice that in a competitive setting your choices are actually quite constrained.

Oh hugely constrained. X-Wing has been fundamentally broken by the 2016 expansions.

I wonder if the proliferation of large base lists will herald the return of Quad TLT Y-wings? They can chew through most large base ships and even Defenders will usually get burned down by them eventually. Parattanni might be more durable since Fenn isn't too bothered by TLTs. Kanan-Biggs would probably go down in a hurry to TLT-spam too.

I mean if you think of the history of the game's meta and the general tournament mindset you see a few trends:

1) 2-3 ship lists are preferable, easier mentally over a day to keep track of

2) reducing variance is always good and that usually requires upgrades

3) hammer and anvil is a good strategy; occupying the opponent's maneuvers and resources for a long time with a large base while 1+ small bases flank and push damage is consistently good

I would say large base ships are also a heavy factor in the identity of the scum faction and beefy ships that ignore arcs is a heavy factor in the rebel faction. As for imperials, the only good crew ships or meatshields are large base, there is no imperial bwing or ywing health tank equivalent in small bases so the trend is towards agility based aces and big dumbs in case of agility counters.

So what would help? Would a tourney limit of 1 large ship per list do any good?

It's not large base ships that is the problem - it's the Scum faction that FFG FF'D UP...

4 minutes ago, Lobokai said:

So what would help? Would a tourney limit of 1 large ship per list do any good?

quite frankly im surprised that isnt a general rule to begin with.

The mere idea of large ships in the xwing template make them either ludicrously bad (see nonpalpmobile lambda) or brokenly powerful (jm5k). The sweetspot between tanky and deadly is really hard to hit without going overboard and overshadowing other ships. Any singular large ship generally isnt a problem, even Dengar typically doesnt give me issues when its only Dengar and not Dengaroo and hes probably the singular strongest standalone large ship. A 2nd large ship removes a lot of the issues large ships have: vulnerable to heavy alpha strikes and easily passed due to their innate minimum speed being faster than small ships (base sizes ftl).

6 minutes ago, Lobokai said:

So what would help? Would a tourney limit of 1 large ship per list do any good?

Heavy Rockets:

Missile (6 dice, range 1-2)

Attack: discard this card to perform an attack, if attacking a large ship cancel all defense dice, if attacking a small ship double the defense value of the ship.

Intruder Missile:

Missile (3 dice, range 1-3)

Attack: discard this card to perform an attack, if the attack hits cancel all dice results and assign one face-up damage card, 2 ion tokens and a weapon disabled token.

8 minutes ago, Lobokai said:

So what would help? Would a tourney limit of 1 large ship per list do any good?

If an upgrade was added to the game that was more effective against large ships (similar to Tractor tokens having an additional effect on small base ships) it might curb the overuse of large ships.

8 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

If an upgrade was added to the game that was more effective against large ships (similar to Tractor tokens having an additional effect on small base ships) it might curb the overuse of large ships.

This too.

Tractors are becoming more and more popular with auto tractor and damaging tractors. Getting tractored as a small ship can easily cost you the game (dunno how many times that stupid tugboat snagged me and i blame that ship's death purely on that tractor) but a large ship could care less. Large ships are bulky enough to withstand a hit anyway so -1 agi doesnt mean much.

Ions always didnt do much to large ships, requiring one-off cards to ion them in one turn or multiple sources/turns to ion them while a small ship can be chain ioned to death.

Fletchette torps have a hull threshold very few small ships break but only..what 2 large ships are vulnerable to? (Aggressor/Uwing)

Wheres the large-ship specific crap? MIRV Missiles, Seeker Missiles, heck Torpedo by definition should be hitting a large ship harder than a small.

2 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

If an upgrade was added to the game that was more effective against large ships (similar to Tractor tokens having an additional effect on small base ships) it might curb the overuse of large ships.

I think this is part of it. A lot of game mechanics are better for large ships than small (firing arcs, boosts/barrels, ion, tractoring) and there's nothing that's worse for large ships that small other than MOV for half damage, at least that I'm aware of. And the MOV thing is basically just accepting that large ships are so overpowered you probably won't be able to destroy them outright.

3 minutes ago, Jetfire said:

Heavy Rockets:

Missile (6 dice, range 1-2)

Attack: discard this card to perform an attack, if attacking a large ship cancel all defense dice, if attacking a small ship double the defense value of the ship.

Intruder Missile:

Missile (3 dice, range 1-3)

Attack: discard this card to perform an attack, if the attack hits cancel all dice results and assign one face-up damage card, 2 ion tokens and a weapon disabled token.

Those are both way over the top.

I hope that 6 dice attack dice with no way to defend against never makes it into the game, even if it targets a specific type of ship. Most large ships would be destroyed by two of those, one of them could take out an Aggressor if you got lucky with crits.

The Infiltrator Missile will discourage low hull, and low agility small ships at least as much as it does large ships. If you want to see even more Defenders and Palp Aces on tables this is a way to do it.

I like how we talk in vague generalities about large ships thinking they all do the same thing.

Its the abilities of the large base ships that hurt the game, not the large base itself. Nobody complains about facing Rey, or Decimators.

Asajj, Ketsu, Manaroo, Dengar all have abilities that automatically trigger and take effect. No actions required, works regardless of stress, etc. And are all abilities that hurt small ships considerably.

All these abilities use to come in upgrades that required flying and skill and sacrifice. Tactician (R2 in arc only) or R3A2 (to also get a stress) and lining up a single arc, or tractor beam cannon giving up an attack to do damage to help the squad. Gunner costs 5 pts and Dengar gets it built in but he doesnt have to miss. Fleet Officer would pass tokens range 1-2 and give a stress and take an action. Manaroo gets it for free with unlimited range and costs as much as Jek Porkins.

Now, we use to all complain about Soontir being **** near impossible to kill, and FFG went out of their way and pretty much made Soontir now extinct. Im pretty sure every new card in 2016 was anti-Soontir. The problem is, all these ways REALLY hurt every other small ship as well.

Large ships, for the most part, dont care too much about tractor beamed since they have high HP and cant be moved around. Ketsu cant just slam into another large ship and still get a shot. So a large ship is actually a counter to her. Asajj can stress a large ship, but the competitive large ships have white and greens everywhere or else get actionless crew like K4, Hera, Kanan, Zuckuss, Dengar, etc and could give a rats ass about being stressed. So, to counter Asajj ability, bring a large ship with crew. All the counters you need to battle these monstrosities are coming in crew (which are found in large base ships) and/or large base dials with Engine upgrade to move around these auto trigger abilities.

5 minutes ago, Panzeh said:

I like how we talk in vague generalities about large ships thinking they all do the same thing.

There are inherent advantages to the large bases format, though. The game doesn't punish an imbalance of eggs and baskets the way it probably should do to retain a healthy balance, instead it encourages an orgy of ovoid overabundance.

12 minutes ago, Panzeh said:

I like how we talk in vague generalities about large ships thinking they all do the same thing.

In general they do.

Firespray/Lambda/Uwing are the only three i'd say dont really have an advantage over small ships. At all.

UPS/Ghost has a full 1-3 speed access, even if its mostly red its still there while an Xwing cant 1turn at all. Thats huge. UPS is on the lower end of this totempole though since it has no kturn.

Decimator/YV666's lack of a Kturn keeps it from being considered more maneuverable than a fighter, but one being a PWT and other having a 180 arc and white 3turns it generally isnt an issue. Also triple crew.

JM5K/Aggressor/YT1300/YT2400/Lancer are all insanely evasive and maneuverable. Lancer i can somewhat forgive since its NOT A FREIGHTER for once but they all are capable of maneuvers not a single small ship can do without costing as much as a decked out large ship.

And all of these are durable enough where even if you get insanely lucky on an alpha strike odds are you wont 1shot them, while none of the small ships can say that. The only small ships with more than 6 hp have 1 agi. Large ships have no business having 2agi if the ARC, which is still classified as a FIGHTER STARSHIP, has 1 agi.
Ive never, ever 1shotted a JM5K but ive lost count how many times ive 1shotted an ARC. That durability difference alone should mean the ARC is more maneuverable right? Nope, JM5K wins there too.

I'd love to see a limit of 1 unique, 1 large at tournaments.

Seriously: Kylo, Vader, Palpatine, and Soontir are all in a 6 ship dogfight... rly?!

Simple fix:

Rules errata:
Secondary weapons such as torps or missiles deal additional damage against large base ships due to their size and the increased risk of hitting sensitive sub systems.

To represent this in game terms, when using any torp or missile upgrade card against a large ship, at the compare results step, any uncancelled critical hits add an additional attack dice, applying any hit or critical damage rolled. Note however, these additional dice cannot be modified by any means and any additional critical hits do not an additional dice.

That would do it, but would also likely make any additional large base ships have massive amount of hull and shields to compensate or you know, Scum would likely get a modification, "Point Defense" which completely negates or something else equally BS.

1 minute ago, Lobokai said:

I'd love to see a limit of 1 unique, 1 large at tournaments.

Seriously: Kylo, Vader, Palpatine, and Soontir are all in a 6 ship dogfight... rly?!

I guess the empire really wants the rebel scum dead

1 unique would kinda kill the game. Imperials would kinda be the only one that would reign supreme since Delta Defenders, Blackcracks, and even Trainee Strikers are a thing while Rebels got....Greenwings..........uh.......yeah greenwings and Scum got....................tugboats? Cant say tripboats because 1 large

4 minutes ago, DeathstarII said:

I guess the empire really wants the rebel scum dead