15 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

There's an interesting tournament report from Yavin just gone up on Facebook. One of the players who made Top-8 with Paratanni was playing his 5th ever X-Wing tournament and made it through the swiss barely losing a ship (he lost 10 ships in 9 rounds, including his two defeats). I'm sure he played very well, but that's quite a testament to what the power of Paratanni can do for a player's results.

Talking about Voitek Sza? Actually he's very skilled player with massive background in other war games. He lives in UK now, but we know each other from Poland. He played Attanni since he started play X-wing few moths ago, I've talked him into Paratanni, we discussed every aspect of the list, he practiced a lot (including winning one big local tournament with Parattanni at Athena Games). This is example of talented player who put lot of effort to prepare himself to the tournament, not some random noob picking best net list he can find. Top8 well deserved. I find your example misleading.

I don't think I said he was a noob, in fact I think I said I'm sure he played very well.

Calm down.

2 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I don't think I said he was a noob, in fact I think I said I'm sure he played very well.

Calm down.

Well, of course you didn't said anything like that straight, but there were 3 Parattanni lists in top8, yet you mentioned the one lead by the guy played 5th tournament, loosing only few ships suggesting thats the example of power if the list diminishing his accomplishments and putting him in "lucky noob playing powerful list" position.

Not to mention he was 8th in Swiss that means players before him had better MOV ergo they lost less ships than him during the tournament.

As he's my friend I feel obligated to comment your post as I find it manipulative and unfair for him.

55 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

There's an interesting tournament report from Yavin just gone up on Facebook. One of the players who made Top-8 with Paratanni was playing his 5th ever X-Wing tournament and made it through the swiss barely losing a ship (he lost 10 ships in 9 rounds, including his two defeats). I'm sure he played very well, but that's quite a testament to what the power of Paratanni can do for a player's results.

How many prior tournaments should a player need to have under their belt before they are deemed worthy to make the cut at a System Open on their own merit?

Fair enough. But I think you're being overprotective, unless you think it's a common occurrence that players make Top-8 at the largest and most competitive events of any game with only a few tournaments under their belt.

I think it's noteworthy.

1 minute ago, WWHSD said:

How many prior tournaments should a player need to have under their belt before they are deemed worthy to make the cut at a System Open on their own merit?

I don't know, what's the average number of tournaments that System Open cut players have played in? That'll give us a mean score to work out his performance variance against to see how much of an outlier it is.

3 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Fair enough. But I think you're being overprotective, unless you think it's a common occurrence that players make Top-8 at the largest and most competitive events of any game with only a few tournaments under their belt.

I think it's noteworthy.

Both narratives are just that, and certainly the original report taken by itself would be interesting to consider, but the follow-up that the player has been playing it exclusively and for a few months gives more context.

3 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I don't know, what's the average number of tournaments that System Open cut players have played in? That'll give us a mean score to work out his performance variance against to see how much of an outlier it is.

Player skill has nothing to do with events won. Bigger events draw people who don't have access to smaller events quite often, so you get absolutely fantastic players who may have NO other tournament experience.

Your premise is flawed, which is why you're getting some flak for it.

Now, if it was the player's fifth GAME, I'd say we're on to something.

2 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I don't know, what's the average number of tournaments that System Open cut players have played in? That'll give us a mean score to work out his performance variance against to see how much of an outlier it is.

X-Wing isn't rocket science. It's also not a game that requires any specialized skills that only come from playing X-Wing. Someone that has solid space relation skills, a basic understanding of probability, and experience playing other tactical games should be expected to do well with a relatively few number of games played.

13 minutes ago, AlexW said:

Both narratives are just that, and certainly the original report taken by itself would be interesting to consider, but the follow-up that the player has been playing it exclusively and for a few months gives more context.

I didn't have that context either, but I did expressly state that I was sure he played well.

Not really sure what else I could have done.

*shrug*

Edit: let me rephrase it now in a more accurate way.

"There's an interesting tournament report from Yavin just gone up on Facebook. One of the players who made Top-8 with Paratanni played well."

There you go, fixed!

7 minutes ago, ArbitraryNerd said:

Player skill has nothing to do with events won. Bigger events draw people who don't have access to smaller events quite often, so you get absolutely fantastic players who may have NO other tournament experience.

Your premise is flawed, which is why you're getting some flak for it.

Now, if it was the player's fifth GAME, I'd say we're on to something.

Interesting, so there are other examples of players making Top-8 at 300+ player events with little tournament experience? I wasn't aware, sorry!

On 20.2.2017 at 5:10 PM, Force Majeure said:

I've gone up against Parattani and never won, yet I don't feel cheated. Dengaroo on the other hand has Zuckuss and I always come away feeling cheated. Same goes for Palpatine lists.

THAT is the difference. For me at least. Parattani isn't changing dice that I rolled or magically altering their own, you know?

Zuckuss is in some way a Negative Play Experience. You roll that evade are happy about it and it gets taken away from you. Even if you roll another evade than Zuckuss player has his negative play experience as he was counting on negating that evade. Palpatine is similar as he cheats you at of a hit in the last moment.

Now Paratani does exactly what it is supposed to do in a manner which feels like any other regular game. It just a really effective list. The salt will come once people start seeing them more and more, just like it did with the defender lists which in many ways are an imperial mirror to the mindlink scum lists. Action efficiency is king and at this point they just could release a 1 or 2-point astromech which gives you a free action on revealing a maneuver to bring rebels up to snuff. ;-)

10 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I didn't have that context either, but I did expressly state that I was sure he played well.

Not really sure what else I could have done.

*shrug*

Right, I wasn't trying to be critical (just pointing out why both sides came to the conclusion they did) and probably would have come to a similar conclusion as you and still think it's quite a feat.

4 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Zuckuss is in some way a Negative Play Experience. You roll that evade are happy about it and it gets taken away from you. Even if you roll another evade than Zuckuss player has his negative play experience as he was counting on negating that evade. Palpatine is similar as he cheats you at of a hit in the last moment.

Now Paratani does exactly what it is supposed to do in a manner which feels like any other regular game. It just a really effective list. The salt will come once people start seeing them more and more, just like it did with the defender lists which in many ways are an imperial mirror to the mindlink scum lists. Action efficiency is king and at this point they just could release a 1 or 2-point astromech which gives you a free action on revealing a maneuver to bring rebels up to snuff. ;-)

If i were to go back i would absolutely want to bring make rebel astromechs more compelling and offer more straight up action economy ala OCR4 or R4 agromech.

Oldpara hits the nail on the head when he says that its undercosted by 10%.

But peeps will keep playing it, so we need to get our chins up and keep searching for the counter. I'm hoping people are adjusting for it for Lothal this weekend, and I'm excited to see what kind of lists people will create in response to the Parattani explosion.

4 minutes ago, Bonza said:

Oldpara hits the nail on the head when he says that its undercosted by 10%.

It just happens to be a perfect storm of abilities, dials and upgrades. I dropped it after its power became apparent, though I had feeling it was a little busted after I won a regional with it, having only ever played it once before.

But peeps will keep playing it, so we need to get our chins up and keep searching for the counter.

The two changes i kinda like are increasing manaroo's cost a bit or making her give away stress tokens as well.

I'm not really convinced mindlink itself or the platform itself is the problem.

22 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Action efficiency is king and at this point they just could release a 1 or 2-point astromech which gives you a free action on revealing a maneuver to bring rebels up to snuff. ;-)

Still wouldn't be good enough, as stress shuts down free actions and you don't ditch stress until after the maneuver, not on reveal. Basically, the Ysanne problem.

/x7 and attani both allow tokens to get around stress.

8 minutes ago, Panzeh said:

The two changes i kinda like are increasing manaroo's cost a bit or making her give away stress tokens as well.

I'm not really convinced mindlink itself or the platform itself is the problem.

Now, this I like. Making Manaroo give away her stress means you have a good shot at triple stressing whomever she passes the tokens to. This would make stress a problem for Parattani, not just a slight inconvenience.

1 minute ago, kris40k said:

Still wouldn't be good enough, as stress shuts down free actions and you don't ditch stress until after the maneuver, not on reveal.

/x7 and attani both allow tokens to get around stress.

You are correct that this might be a problem. Better before or after. Though the T-70 could use tech and PTL and allow BR, Boost before maneuver with it.

We could make it before or after executing a maneuver to allow to clear stress with a green or allow boost/barrel roll before maneuver.

I don't think that another stress/block immune action would be really needed or helpful for the game. Besides, the mindlink lists pay with shared stress as well. Stressing those lists is super annoying, not devastating, but really hurting. And if you get the free action before your maneuver you can focus, ptl target lock and k-turn in one go for double stress, right?

3 minutes ago, Bonza said:

Now, this I like. Making Manaroo give away her stress means you have a good shot at triple stressing whomever she passes the tokens to. This would make stress a problem for Parattani, not just a slight inconvenience.

Not sure it would actually matter all that much. Manaroo herself won't be anywhere near the stress dealer, so she's just getting one a turn from the mindlink during combat. She can then do a green, get the focus which gives it to everyone, and at start of combat hand a 2nd focus but no stress to whoever needs it.

I'm very torn on whether there's a fundamental problem with Mindlink. I mean I wrote two blogs saying how much I liked Mindlink and wanted it to be good... I do like Mindlink, I like how creative people got with it.

My current 'fun list' is a Mindlink list, and even though it's featuring all the jank I can lay my hands on at one time it's also unreasonably good because it's got four copies of Attani Mindlink. If even that crappy list is destroying people because of Mindlink then I worry that it's always going to be a problem in competitive circles.

It's the sort of card that, even if you solve the immediate Manaroo shenanigans, is just going to be an obstacle for any future scum ship designs. The cost in no way matches the potential benefits that Mindlink delivers. I like Mindlink, but I also think it's a massive problem.

20 minutes ago, Bonza said:

Oldpara hits the nail on the head when he says that its undercosted by 10%.

But peeps will keep playing it, so we need to get our chins up and keep searching for the counter. I'm hoping people are adjusting for it for Lothal this weekend, and I'm excited to see what kind of lists people will create in response to the Parattani explosion.

I think 10% is probably conservative, or at the least, relative to other current power lists. I think any top list is probably getting at least an extra 10% in efficiency when compared with the rest of the meta. Paratanni is dominating. Though, it is interesting that a 1 point addition to any card drastically changes the list. What would be the first thing to drop? The title on Fenn or Autothrusters?

I'm not as sure Mindlink has a problem as I am that JM5K has a problem. (I.e., every JM5K except one carrying the title is undercosted by 2 points.) But I'm also not sure it doesn't.

Just create the "two-dot" (call it "Scarce") to go with the one-dot ("Unique"). "A Scarce card can only appear in a squadron twice. If at any time it appears in a squadron more than twice, the opponent chooses one of the instances and discards it." (That last part is to future-proof, for cards following the C-ROC upgrades that allow swapping in of upgrades.)

Surely Mindlink isn't broken in pairs, but would still be useful to creative list-builders? (FWIW, I'm pretty good at AdvS Brobots, and I can't do a **** thing with Mindlink Brobots.)

1 minute ago, Bonza said:

Now, this I like. Making Manaroo give away her stress means you have a good shot at triple stressing whomever she passes the tokens to. This would make stress a problem for Parattani, not just a slight inconvenience.

The problem is that will kill also Fangaroo and other Manaroo-based Mindlink builds. And those are perfectly fine it terms of power. Nice equivalent of Palp Aces - competitive, fun to play, not overpowered.

I believe problem lays more in Asajj + Latts Razzi who is too tanky and brings also some control mechanism to otherwise already powerful setup.

On the other side Asajj with Latts - out of Parattanni - is also nice balanced.

Looking at all of this I must admit that FFG did amazing job balancing things - almost everything is fine with Mindlink/Protectorate/Shadowcasters etc except ONE single setup. ONE unique combination. The rest is ok.

And this ONE setup is too strong only by an inch. By 1-2-3 pts or so.

People usually don't complain about Parattanni as they do about Dengaroo because they don't feel cheated like by Zuckuss crew cheating green dices or Countermeasures cheating Alpha Strike list . They know they're facing list slightly better then theirs but list that can be beaten by good flying.

I wish FFG to slightly tone down Parattanni but without killing all the other Mindlink list fun.

11 minutes ago, AlexW said:

Though, it is interesting that a 1 point addition to any card drastically changes the list. What would be the first thing to drop? The title on Fenn or Autothrusters?

It's possible to the drop the title without it hurting too much. I've seen some players drop it to get initiative in the mirror.

You don't drop Autothrusters.