2 hours 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.

Hello Dear Sir, I kind of feel like I'm called up to the board. Let me contribute my two cents as well.

Indeed I started my X-wing adventure about half year ago, attending 5 store championships since then, winning three of them, and scoring I think second once, and third once. Two out of those victories were achieved with Parattani. Every one of them were achieved with Attani Mindlink, which has been my favourite EPT since day one. I was flying with Manaroo from the very first moment, then in October I introduced Fenn to every single list I fly (jugglng with the third ship - Guri, Palob, Kavil, Cobra...). As Maciek said, he spent few hours describing his idea and master plan behind parattani. Main part of my Yavin preparation were playing probably 40+ games with Parattani against all the hardest opponents: Palp defender, triple defenders, Rebel regen, and obviously: mirror parattani games. Believe it or not, but before Yavin my record against parattani was 6-0, and is now 8-0. I am also lucky to live in Norwich, Norfolk, with a very active and skilled group of players around. They might not be very active on the international tournament scene (hopefully it will change!), but it is highly competitive environment. I learn a lot on our weekly Xwing nights and monthly tournaments, and that is also a big element of my success. Not to mention, even when I was visiting my family in Poland, during christmas time, I brought my spaceships with me to join a local tournament in my home city (which I almost won). That is another highly competitive local community. Surely I was lucky in Birmingham criting "Benn Rau" for PS=0, but as history teaches us: defeat allows no excusses, victory doesnt need one. Hell, I even asked my friend to build the nastiest RAC+Kylo list he can think of as a parattani counter and played against it, just to have some experience with it before Yavin (it was the big boogyman since winning australian regio couple of weeks ago).

I feel it is not fair what you are suggesting here. I started playing Wargames...18 years ago now, and have been playing competitively since then. WFB, Warmachine (member of Polish National Team in 2011), Infinity (almost won last year's Infinity Tournament during UK Games Expo 2016). I believe rules and mechanics changes; tactics and strategy doesnt. 12 guys travelled to Birmingham from Poland during the weekend, 3 out of 4 are my old Warhammer buddies, I think 10 9 or 10 of them made it to day two, and at least 5 (or 6?) were still fighting to make it to the cut in last round. No, I dont believe you need to be an experienced player to score high. This game is relatively easier to learn than Warmachine or Infinity. Parattani is a brilliant list to play, definitely my favourite one. It's best quality is not action economy or firepower, but versatility and space for outplaying your opponent. you need some serious experience to play it properly, as I said, I think I have played it 40+ times before coming to Yavin.

Personally, I think Cal Jones success of coming second is a perfect example of the current state of the meta. Cal's list is a perfect example of versatile, innovative and skill-based list. He also was flying this list like a boss in many, many games, twaaking the list here and there, before finally introducing Ahsoka as his wingman. Every imperial player is now complaining about empire being weak and not viable competitively. And you know why is that? Because they are still bringing knifes to firefights and cavalry to armoured warfare battles. the imperials are still mostly spamming x7 defenders and/or palpatine, being so surprised when something is beating them. Yet it was Tie/D Vessery+Omega+Striker loosing round 10 game against Krzysztof Piszcz, and almost making it to the cut, most likely highest or second-highest scoring Empire list.

The Imperials have to either learn new tricks, or accept the fact Defenders aren't an autowin anymore. Rebels seems to learn it and we see a lot of various rebel builds here and there (including a gent who scored really high in yavin flying with 2*Bandit+Braylen ARC+Blue Squadron+Gold squadron build).

21 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

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.)

I think Mindlink itself is an issue when you have 3 ships. You're essentially getting 2 free focus tokens for 3 points. This is significantly undercosted when compared with any other focus generating upgrade (or really any action) in the game in general. This isn't terrible or overpowered in some scum lists because some of their ships (Scyk, Starviper, G1 A) are a bit overcosted and so they balance each other out nicely.

On top of that, I think people realize that mindlink actually combats stress a bit and that it's not enough of a drawback, especially with unlimited range and ships with good greens. IGs have a forward facing arc and don't have a hard green turn.

So, as you get already efficient ships with good green maneuvers, it becomes more problematic.

The thing is, with Manaroo even a two Mindlink list is pretty good. We just had a discussion where we talked about ineffective it was to Boba Fett the Attani Mindlink off of Manaroo. She can still take the focus action then pass it over to the rest of the team, she just won't get her token back after she passes.

4 minutes ago, AlexW said:

I think Mindlink itself is an issue when you have 3 ships. You're essentially getting 2 free focus tokens for 3 points. This is significantly undercosted when compared with any other focus generating upgrade (or really any action) in the game in general. This isn't terrible or overpowered in some scum lists because some of their ships (Scyk, Starviper, G1 A) are a bit overcosted and so they balance each other out nicely.

On top of that, I think people realize that mindlink actually combats stress a bit and that it's not enough of a drawback, especially with unlimited range and ships with good greens. IGs have a forward facing arc and don't have a hard green turn.

So, as you get already efficient ships with good green maneuvers, it becomes more problematic.

Spot on!

9 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

The thing is, with Manaroo even a two Mindlink list is pretty good. We just had a discussion where we talked about ineffective it was to Boba Fett the Attani Mindlink off of Manaroo. She can still take the focus action then pass it over to the rest of the team, she just won't get her token back after she passes.

It also prevents the double focus. Now Manaroo moves first, takes a focus, which gives the target ship its first through mindlink, then gives it a 2nd with her ability (or the target takes a focus if Manaroo couldn't and gives her one that way which she then passes back to them for 2)

If she's not mindlinked then the target doesn't get that 1st focus unless they used their own action on it and only ends up with the passed one.

Just now, Makaze said:

It also prevents the double focus. Now Manaroo moves first, takes a focus, which gives the target ship its first through mindlink, then gives it a 2nd with her ability (or the target takes a focus if Manaroo couldn't and gives her one that way which she then passes back to them for 2)

If she's not mindlinked then the target doesn't get that 1st focus unless they used their own action on it and only ends up with the passed one.

The idea is you've still got (for example) Asajj and Fenn Mindlinked to each other, so one of them can focus and double-up, or they can both do other actions and get one focus.

It's definitely a nerf, but not a wrecking ball.

Just now, Stay On The Leader said:

The idea is you've still got (for example) Asajj and Fenn Mindlinked to each other, so one of them can focus and double-up, or they can both do other actions and get one focus.

It's definitely a nerf, but not a wrecking ball.

Agreed, but then I'm not sure mindlink needs a wrecking ball. Either of them having 2 focus in addition to another action any time they needs it is part of what makes the list shine. Knocking that action economy down from 3 to 2 isn't crippling but may be all that's needed to bring things in line

14 minutes ago, Makaze said:

Agreed, but then I'm not sure mindlink needs a wrecking ball. Either of them having 2 focus in addition to another action any time they needs it is part of what makes the list shine. Knocking that action economy down from 3 to 2 isn't crippling but may be all that's needed to bring things in line

I think limit 2 on mindlink would be very very limiting on what it would offer.

The 3 G1As and Z-95 is an example.

Yeah it probably wrecks 'nice' applications of Mindlink more than it wrecks the competitive applications!

11 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Yeah it probably wrecks 'nice' applications of Mindlink more than it wrecks the competitive applications!

Mindlink has this weird parabola of efficiency because as you get to the 4+ ship range, the ships available become less efficient. You will be able to take six sycks with mindlink when the C-ROC comes out and i'm fairly confident that won't be a big deal despite the massive efficiency gains mindlink offers with that many ships.

I've played 2-ship mindlink lists, and they struggle because you really get hemmed in trying to take advantage of it. I mean, it's okay, but not very good- you could probably do better with the EPT slots.

Looking back on it, my thought of Manaroo passing stress off would be way too good for Dengaroo. I think instead you could change her ability to trigger after her 'perform actions' step rather than at the beginning of combat if you really wanted to target this interaction, which would make her have to guess which ship needs two focuses.

I think that says more about Scyks and 2 dice attacks than anything else.

Oh suggestion I heard which is probably too complex for people to get behind but I think would be really interesting is if you could only run Mindlink in even pairs. Like, you can't leave an odd mindlink left rolling around, it'd have to be something like 2/4/6, which would kill Parattanni but keep a lot of fun options - but this would require some new kind of restriction wording and at least one reference card or new rule and thus probably be way too much of a pain in the ass to pull.

Just now, UnitOmega said:

Oh suggestion I heard which is probably too complex for people to get behind but I think would be really interesting is if you could only run Mindlink in even pairs. Like, you can't leave an odd mindlink left rolling around, it'd have to be something like 2/4/6, which would kill Parattanni but keep a lot of fun options - but this would require some new kind of restriction wording and at least one reference card or new rule and thus probably be way too much of a pain in the ass to pull.

It's not just Parattani, though. I run a Bossk, Zuckuss, Talonbane list that uses mindlink. It is one of my favorite lists to fly but my win rate is only about 2-4 with it. So I, personally, don't like that idea, but it definitely would change the meta. It just feels a bit heavy-handed.

Honestly, most everything except MAYBE the range limits on all otherwise global support abilities or just waiting for people to discover lists or for ships/cards which enhance anti-Mindlink play is pretty heavy handed as far as things go. This sadly isn't like a video game where we can shave a couple virtual meters of range or some damage numbers off a ship in a 5 second patch people barely notice.

Here's an idea to limit Mindlink. Make an erratum for it that says that if you already have a stress token, you still take a stress token from other ships in the link getting stressed. Now stress lists tear Mindlink Ships to shreds, but Mindlink is still good against other lists.

So what if Mindlink only allowed you to assign a focus (or stress) to one other ship rather than all?

Seriously, just used the **** Restricted, target the problematic combos, and be done with it. Rather than make more and more rediculous errata.

It might be worth an errata that makes latts crew behave like an evade, specifically so you can't use stress and a token to cancel two dice from a single attack before you even roll your greens. There's a reason you can't spend multiple evades simultaneously anymore, and that reason applies here too: it makes defense too good.

"Remove a stress from the attacking ship to add an Evade token" would work.

The thing is that just makes it more frustrating that it's all worded as it is, because they KNEW multiple evade effects were a sh*tty thing but they made one anyway.

1 hour ago, Stay On The Leader said:

"Remove a stress from the attacking ship to add an Evade token" would work.

The thing is that just makes it more frustrating that it's all worded as it is, because they KNEW multiple evade effects were a sh*tty thing but they made one anyway.

which is why if you go after asajj you MUST target her with at least two heavy hitting ships. Shooting her with one shot is mostly pointless.

Three interesting questions I see here.

Question one, coming into question two: is parattani dominant list in the meta now, and if so, WHY is it that way?

Well yeah, considering several regional victories, 3 out of 3 Open series wins, thats not something you can walk over just like that.

WHY is it that way? Well probably various reasons. List is strong, versatile, not easily countered. Decently counters the previous meta-dominationg list of commonwealth or palp defenders (to start with: renders both Ryad's PTL and Vessery's Juke useless). But there is another aspect: that list requires some decent skill to fly well as well as it is just good fun to use it. I would die out of boredoom doing 4_kturns with defenders all day.

Another aspect is something I would call, "space for outplaying". I am in the camp where I consider x7 Defenders the biggest cancer of yesterdays and todays X-wing. I dont shout for nerf on every opportuinity as some people do, despite the fact I think it is horribly undercosted (should be 0 or 1 poiny instead of -2), IMHO. I try to find my alternative solution for defenders. In Pre-parattani times, I won a tournament with Punishing One-titled torpedo-less Scout, Kavil, and Palob godalhi, all mindlinked, going against defenders all day long. But I was able to block and shoot them to death from angles they werent able to get without dropping stress (I had 2 tacticians).

With Defenders, you simply cannot play in a surprising, exceptional way. You can hardly bluff or do unexpected things. With Parattani, you can d it all day long, as you have so many great moves to take every turn. not to mentiion my favourite trick, rushing 4-5 straight through asteroids which is the oldest trick in the book. Yet I have caught so many good players pants down with asteroid rush with Asajj or Fenn.

Also let's not forget about the fact that good players make the list shine - the more of them, the bigger chance the list will be prevailing. Yes, many good players made it to the cut/day 2 on Yavin thanks to the innate power of parattani, but it works both ways: many parattani lists were present on day2/cut BECAUSE good players were flying them.

Question three: where is the parattani hate?

Answer is simple: there is none as the list is not as "cancer-spreading" as as X7 Defenders, as were whisper or triple scouts. Its a decently balanced, versatile list. Everyone can play against it, everyone can win against. It needs some experience to learn how, which people tend not to like. I always try to fly as much as possible against the hardest matchups. I have played sooo many games against defenders. I intentionaly played two games against RAC-Kylo as it was rumoured to be flooding Yavin (it wasnt). I am keeping clean sheet of 8 victories and zero defeats in parattani vs parattani games. I am sure I will eventually meet someone who will beat me on a mirrror game (luckily I havent faced Mishary, who won yavin, as this would probably turn it into 8-1 xD).

So... maybe parattani just ain't bad enough for the game to hate it as much as Dengaroo/Uboats/x7's were/are hated?

19 minutes ago, Voitek said:

Its a decently balanced, versatile list.
So... maybe parattani just ain't bad enough for the game to hate it as much as Dengaroo/Uboats/x7's were/are hated?

While it is certainly versatile and does do more than defenders (so it is more interesting to fly and fly against) or doesn't rip lists apart in the way Dengaroo or Triple Jumpmasters can and did, it is not "decently balanced." Majorjuggler has pointed out that in terms of value it's anywhere worth 110-115 points, which makes it the most efficient list the game has ever seen.

I certainly think it's a lot worse for the game than Dengaroo or Triple Jumps.

It's the most powerful squad ever, a good 10% better than anything else ever has been. There's no possible way that's a healthy situation.

19 minutes ago, AlexW said:

Majorjuggler has pointed out that in terms of value it's anywhere worth 110-115 points, which makes it the most efficient list the game has ever seen.

I respect and value Major juggler's analyses a lot, having some formal mathematics education as well as commerial experience building algorithms. Yet I remember his analyse of the classic Dengar build itself; in his "pure jousting value" analyse, in one of the scum&villainy podcast episodes (October/november?), Dengar alone was estimated to be worth 120-150 "jousting point". This did not even include his complete stress immunity, or I believe ability to Sloop while stresed as these are variables hard to calculate just using the numbers. Neither did it include 40-60 point jousting value of manaroo. Discrepancy? Change of method? As it is not explained, I am a bit suspicious about it now.

Now, if the 110-115 value is regarded to the "magic" calculation, it is based purely on the percentile calculation which bases on "how often was particular list played and scored in highest places" in various tournaments. This calculation is, in my personal opinion, omitting the most important factor: the player skill. I think the player skill is 70% of your success on a tournament. 20% is the list you are flying. 10% is pure luck. If parattani is 105 stronger than any other list, then you have no more than 2% advantage over a non-parattani player.

Now for all the x7 defender-spam players, please dont take it personally: I believe defenders spam or dengaroo are slightly easier lists to play, hence they are more often picked by average-skill players. I'm not saying great pilots arent flying it - that would be not true - I have lost so many games in my life to greatly skilled people flying with defenders. Yet I dare to say: because of slightly higher entry level, currently parattani is less popular among people who would most likely end up somewhere in the middle of the table. It will change as the list will become more and more popular. Rememeber it is only 2 and a half month old - and people on reddit are still asking "what is parattani". This clearly shows tournament veterans know it, but an average Xwing players still arent aware of it's potential. And might never really decide to use it knowing it is way less forgiving, to start with (one bad move and fenn is dead), while palpatine+3 shields on defenders can really help you smooth up any positioning mistake you can make, at least for a turn

1 minute ago, Voitek said:

I respect and value Major juggler's analyses a lot, having some formal mathematics education as well as commerial experience building algorithms. Yet I remember his analyse of the classic Dengar build itself; in his "pure jousting value" analyse, in one of the scum&villainy podcast episodes (October/november?), Dengar alone was estimated to be worth 120-150 "jousting point". This did not even include his complete stress immunity, or I believe ability to Sloop while stresed as these are variables hard to calculate just using the numbers. Discrepancy? Change of method.

Now, if the 110-115 value is regarded to the "magic" calculation, it is based purely on the percentile calculation which bases on "how often was particular list played and scored in highest places" in various tournaments. This calculation is, in my personal opinion, omitting the most important factor: the player skill. I think the player skill is 70% of your success on a tournament. 20% is the list you are flying. 10% is pure luck.

Now for all the x7 defenders spammer, please dont take it personally: I believe defenders spam or dengaroo are slightly easier lists to play, hence they are more often picked by average-skill players. I'm not saying great pilots arent flying it - that would be not true - I have lost so many games in my life to greatly skilled people flying with defenders. Yet I dare to say: because of slightly higher entry level, currently parattani is less popular among people who would most likely and up somewhere in the middle of the table. It will change as the list will become more and more popular. Rememeber it is only 2 and a half month old - and people on reddit are still asking "what is parattani". This clearly shows tournament veterans know it, but an average Xwing players still arent aware of it's potential. And might never really decide to use it knowing it is way less forgiving, to start with (one bad move and fenn is dead), while palpatine+3 shields on defenders can really help you smooth up any positioning mistake you can make, at least for a turn

All good points, but my question for you is: Is it healthy for the game, in your opinion, when one list undeniably dominates the meta?

I'm sure all of your arguments around why Parattanni isn't "cancer" are well=thought out, but a list-type is actually cancerous when it spreads/pushes out all else uncontrollably - as Parattanni is doing right now.