But Wave X isn't an obvious point of creating a flux, because it really isn't that much of a power wave, with obvious power combos. I mean, hell, look at how long it took for Attani to really gain steam. Wave X isn't Wave VIII, with the sudden demolishing of the meta. And even then, some of the Wave X is already beginning to splash in. Sometimes, you need to have patience to see a Wave's full effect.

I wouldn't call the defense in paratanni 'impenetrable'.

It's not like a focus/evade/palp/autothruster stack that makes flinging 2 dice at Soontir or Inquisitor a pointless exercise.

On first view of Wave 10 I would agree that powerful applications are less obvious.

That only makes the current situation more concerning though as if we've got a clear dominant list there seems nothing coming that would shake things up. We could be stuck with it for a long while yet.

5 minutes ago, Panzeh said:

I wouldn't call the defense in paratanni 'impenetrable'.

It's not like a focus/evade/palp/autothruster stack that makes flinging 2 dice at Soontir or Inquisitor a pointless exercise.

It's A LOT like that! I haven't done the comparison but I wouldn't be surprised to learn Asajj is harder to land damage on than Soontir at range 1-2. He gets 4 Evades very easily.

Edit: 3 focused dice at Soontir range 2 misses 93% of the time. Against Asajj you miss 94% (assuming Latts Razzi active).

1 minute ago, Stay On The Leader said:

It's A LOT like that! I haven't done the comparison but I wouldn't be surprised to learn Asajj is harder to land damage on than Soontir at range 1-2. He gets 4 Evades very easily.

How is that? Soontir Fel is rolling 4-5 green dice with at least a Focus in there. Next is Auto Thrusters and then Palpatine. That's a lot of dice with lots of modification.

Ventress gets 2-3 green dice with a Focus and a possible Evade (most likely).

Just now, heychadwick said:

How is that? Soontir Fel is rolling 4-5 green dice with at least a Focus in there. Next is Auto Thrusters and then Palpatine. That's a lot of dice with lots of modification.

Ventress gets 2-3 green dice with a Focus and a possible Evade (most likely).

Ventress with Latts is almost always getting one free additional evade per round as well in addition to another evade and focus token (or two). She also has 10 health.

Two evades (one as action, one from Latts).

8 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

On first view of Wave 10 I would agree that powerful applications are less obvious.

That only makes the current situation more concerning though as if we've got a clear dominant list there seems nothing coming that would shake things up. We could be stuck with it for a long while yet.

It's been, what, 2-3 weeks? I think you are expecting things to move more quickly than they will. I mean, SFs are only now starting to see play with some success. Hell, Sabine's TIE just did second at Yavin, which is really good. Wave X isn't a meta smasher. It will be subtler, and as such, will take more time and testing to fully have an effect.

The more I think about it, the more 5 Y-wings with Autoblasters seems like a good Paratanni killer. They effectively make Fenn a one-use-only ship. It's got enough separate attacks that Asajj/Latts defense doesn't have nearly the impact it does on single, powerful attacks. It's got a large enough foot print that blocking big ships and boxing them in for multiple turns is feasible. And it's got enough hit points that it's very unlikely Y-wings will be removed before they shoot.

13 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

It's A LOT like that! I haven't done the comparison but I wouldn't be surprised to learn Asajj is harder to land damage on than Soontir at range 1-2. He gets 4 Evades very easily.

Edit: 3 focused dice at Soontir range 2 misses 93% of the time. Against Asajj you miss 94% (assuming Latts Razzi active).

Yeah if you get stressed by Asajj Latts is very effective. Goal against Latts is to get her stressed and/or force her to take rotate arc actions if you have the positional capability or even to get her to bump.

I think the notion that bumping/stressing doesn't do anything to the list is a massive exaggeration, though. Both Latts and Fenn have actions they want to take on top of the focus they get and denying that is worthwhile. In particular, making Fenn do 2-moves is also somewhat useful because it takes away some of his more threatening plays like the tallon or 1-hard.

1 minute ago, Sekac said:

The more I think about it, the more 5 Y-wings with Autoblasters seems like a good Paratanni killer. They effectively make Fenn a one-use-only ship. It's got enough separate attacks that Asajj/Latts defense doesn't have nearly the impact it does on single, powerful attacks. It's got a large enough foot print that blocking big ships and boxing them in for multiple turns is feasible. And it's got enough hit points that it's very unlikely Y-wings will be removed before they shoot.

Keep in mind that there are other lists than paratanni and you will have to win against them, too.

16 minutes ago, AlexW said:

Ventress with Latts is almost always getting one free additional evade per round as well in addition to another evade and focus token (or two). She also has 10 health.

If she is using the Evade action for herself, then she only has the Focus for modification on her offense.

3 minutes ago, Panzeh said:

Keep in mind that there are other lists than paratanni and you will have to win against them, too.

It also shreds defenders, Old Mann Fenn, and low agility ships. It would certainly struggle against keep away lists like Super Dash and theHera build that just won Yavin.

2 minutes ago, Sekac said:

The more I think about it, the more 5 Y-wings with Autoblasters seems like a good Paratanni killer. They effectively make Fenn a one-use-only ship. It's got enough separate attacks that Asajj/Latts defense doesn't have nearly the impact it does on single, powerful attacks. It's got a large enough foot print that blocking big ships and boxing them in for multiple turns is feasible. And it's got enough hit points that it's very unlikely Y-wings will be removed before they shoot.

All 3 ships are faster than a Y-wing, two have turrets, and two have excellent repositioning ability. The entire list is perfectly content to sit out at range 2-3 kiting you around and knocking a bit off turn after turn after turn. If you spread them out to cover more area then it's pretty easy for Fenn/Asajj to dive in and simply evaporate one entirely. Average expected damage from both of them TL + focus shooting a focused Y at range 1 is around 7 damage getting through with 1.5 of them being crits, so on the contrary there's an excellent chance of a PS killed Y. Plus neither Asajj nor Manaroo with their 10 and 9 HP respectively are all that afraid of taking an autoblaster or two, especially since they won't crit.

25 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

If she is using the Evade action for herself, then she only has the Focus for modification on her offense.

Which is just as much offense as Fel ever had....

29 minutes ago, Makaze said:

All 3 ships are faster than a Y-wing, two have turrets, and two have excellent repositioning ability. The entire list is perfectly content to sit out at range 2-3 kiting you around and knocking a bit off turn after turn after turn. If you spread them out to cover more area then it's pretty easy for Fenn/Asajj to dive in and simply evaporate one entirely. Average expected damage from both of them TL + focus shooting a focused Y at range 1 is around 7 damage getting through with 1.5 of them being crits, so on the contrary there's an excellent chance of a PS killed Y. Plus neither Asajj nor Manaroo with their 10 and 9 HP respectively are all that afraid of taking an autoblaster or two, especially since they won't crit.

So IF Fenn and Asajj both manage to get the TL (Manaroo can donate one) and end up at range 1 without getting blocked, then you trade Fenn for maybe 1 Y-wing. Sounds like a good trade. Then you've got 5 dice a turn and 32 hit points to chew through. And you're facing 8 dice a turn with 19 HP before you die. If the Y wings can do 10 damage, then you lose on points unless those 5 dice can knock off 24 of the remaining 32 hit points. And that damage must be consolidated whereas the Y wings can split the necessary 10 damage and win on points.

36 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

If she is using the Evade action for herself, then she only has the Focus for modification on her offense.

Not quite. She takes an evade and could end up with a focus target lock from Attani and Manaroo. But, yes, that scenario is rare. Usually she's got an evade and a focus or two.

54 minutes ago, AlexW said:

Ventress with Latts is almost always getting one free additional evade per round as well in addition to another evade and focus token (or two). She also has 10 health.

this

Just now, Sekac said:

So IF Fenn and Asajj both manage to get the TL (Manaroo can donate one) and end up at range 1 without getting blocked, then you trade Fenn for maybe 1 Y-wing. Sounds like a good trade. Then you've got 5 dice a turn and 32 hit points to chew through. And you're facing 8 dice a turn with 19 HP before you die. If the Y wings can do 10 damage, then you lose on points unless those 5 dice can can kill knock off 24 of the remaining 32 hit points.

No, what I'm saying is that if you bunch all the Ys up they'll chill out at range 2-3 and pick you off since they have an overwhelmingly massive advantage at that range thanks to the 2 red/1 green the Ys are sporting. If you spread them out to the point that they have to be in range 1 then the after they kill that 1 Y the others won't be in autoblaster range. There is zero reason Fenn would ever go near one of the Ys unless he had a good chance of nuking it off the board and he's easily maneuverable enough to make that desire a reality. As far as the TL, they move after the Ys, they can choose to take the TL if it makes sense based on the board state and either way they'll always have focus (or focuses) thanks to mindlink/Manaroo

2 hours ago, heychadwick said:

Me? I've been talking about Tie Bombers for a while, but haven't bothered with tournaments since they got all the fixes. Dengaroo really hurts Bombers by shucking the TL and getting a lot of effective evade dice, but I've been talking about 4 x Tie Bombers being effective for a while now. I say it's awesome that you have made it work. I've been wondering when someone will (since I choose not to try).

I've had a love for Bombers right from the start, but man it was rough for a long time. When I took that list to regionals, I hadn't any particular hopes for it beyond having a lot of fun. I won my regionals last year with a solid list, but I didn't enjoy the experience, so I decided to go the whole other direction this year and just have some silly fun. I figured it'd be solid against Asajj, and I knew from experience it works nicely against Dengar and Defenders. I really expected to see a lot more Upsilons though. It's downside, however, is TLTs still. Oh how they lament TLTs...

I have seen your trojan work with Bombers, and I very nearly followed suit with dropping Deadeye for Crackshot, but the math didn't click for me versus the flexibility of of target shifting. I toyed with leaving them asymmetric with plasmas, too, but homing negating evades, and holding onto that lock is too useful.

What about a pack of Y-wings with autoblaster turrets and plasma torpedoes as anti-parattani tech? Seems as strong an option as any I have heard.

25 minutes ago, NakedDex said:

I have seen your trojan work with Bombers, and I very nearly followed suit with dropping Deadeye for Crackshot, but the math didn't click for me versus the flexibility of of target shifting. I toyed with leaving them asymmetric with plasmas, too, but homing negating evades, and holding onto that lock is too useful.

The need for Crackshot has dropped with the use of Soontir Fel, to be honest.

14 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

The need for Crackshot has dropped with the use of Soontir Fel, to be honest.

Even without Fel, crackshot is quite literally the best ordnance in the game. If they ever roll an evade for any reason, you can get value out of it, it just makes it even more painful when they have to overspend tokens before you choose whether you have to crackshot or not(which is the hidden power of it).

58 minutes ago, Makaze said:

No, what I'm saying is that if you bunch all the Ys up they'll chill out at range 2-3 and pick you off since they have an overwhelmingly massive advantage at that range thanks to the 2 red/1 green the Ys are sporting. If you spread them out to the point that they have to be in range 1 then the after they kill that 1 Y the others won't be in autoblaster range. There is zero reason Fenn would ever go near one of the Ys unless he had a good chance of nuking it off the board and he's easily maneuverable enough to make that desire a reality. As far as the TL, they move after the Ys, they can choose to take the TL if it makes sense based on the board state and either way they'll always have focus (or focuses) thanks to mindlink/Manaroo

If you play Fenn conservatively then he'll not be shooting more often than he is. If he does shoot, then he'll have to turn away, barrel roll and not shoot the turn after. So more often than not it's 10 dice coming towards you and 5 going back. On a good turn it's 8 vs 10. But a good turn could be immediately followed by a terrible turn if Fenn is not in a position to turn and roll. And even if he does, a 3 bank from the Ys will often put them in range 2, where his lack of evade really hurts.

I would aggressively pursue Asajj and it won't take long before she's trapped in a corner or asteroid field. Against a swarm, she's about as hard to get half points from as it is to kill an X-wing. Fenn can either sit idly by and watch Asajj die while occasionally shooting, or he can try to do something about it and risk dying. He has ZERO margin for error. I often read "just stay at range 3" on the forums and yet I have never played or seen a game played where it was a simple as that.

I'm just trying to come up with solutions to the list rather than give in to the incessant whining for nerfs that this and many other threads consist of.

15 minutes ago, Panzeh said:

Even without Fel, crackshot is quite literally the best ordnance in the game. If they ever roll an evade for any reason, you can get value out of it, it just makes it even more painful when they have to overspend tokens before you choose whether you have to crackshot or not(which is the hidden power of it).

Crackshot is good with ordnance, but when Soontir Fel was around, it was one of the few ways to pretty much insure that you got the hit in with a Homing Missile. With LRS, Focus, and Crackshot, you could get a 98% of getting at least one hit in. If Soontir Fel didn't do anything, you were ahead with a 27 pt ship causing a 37 pt ship to not engage for a turn or two more.

As it is, Deadeye might be better for flexibility now. Or really, Deadeye is more acceptable without the threat of an untouched Soontir Fel around. Yes, Crackshot is still good, but not as required as it was.