I don't see a need for rotation, personally. Why rotate out perfectly acceptable and healthy upgrades and pilots (not to mention models)?

If 2.0 doesn't happen, the best scheme (logistical nitty-gritty aside, as I'm not knowledgeable about such things) would be:

(1) Quarterly FAQ/errata publication, consisting of (a) published changes, and (b) endorsement of the change or modification of the change two weeks later.

(2) Upgrades and pilots modified via errata.

(3) Interactions clarified via FAQ.

(4) Three-month open beta of new expansions following normal development and playtesting.

4 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

I don't see a need for rotation, personally. Why rotate out perfectly acceptable and healthy upgrades and pilots (not to mention models)?

Rotation sidesteps all the nastiness.

There isn't any one who has to be responsible for deciding what in or out, what gets banned/restricted, what gets an balancing adjustment, rather it's just a rule and it gets applied evenly so you can't muck it up. All that matters and all energy can be dedicated to making sure the next wave is balanced. Plus it opens up design space by retiring unbalanced cards whose fixed version is too similar to print unless the former is gone. Or cards that in and of themselves aren't problematic, and may in fact be complete crap so no one would miss them, but whose potential interaction prevents printing some other interesting card or even an entire mechanic.

It's attractive in a lot of ways, just not sure those pros outweigh the cons.

Just now, Makaze said:

It's attractive in a lot of ways, just not sure those pros outweigh the cons.

Especially when you don't control new sets to dictate if anything needs reprinting or that anything does fill that design space.

20 hours ago, Voitek said:

I did some legwork regarding all Regio+ rank tournaments played this weekend, apparently there were plenty of them. Winner and top8 check only.

Italy, Vaneto, Regionals: Winner: Dash+Miranda, 1 Parattani in TOP8,
Switzerland, Bern, Regio: Winner: Dengar+Bossk, NO PARATTANI IN TOP8
Czech Republic, Ostrava, Regio: Winner: Parattani, no more Parattani in TOP8, also TOP1 in swiss to brobots (!)
UK, birmingham, Yavin: Winner Parattani, 3 Parattani in TOP8
Canada, Ontario. Regio: Winner: Parattani, 1 more Parattani in TOP8
USA, Anchorage, Regio: Winner: Fenn/Teroch/Manaroo, 1 parattani in TOP8
Canada, Vancouver: Winner parattani, 3 Parattani in top8
Norway, Trodnheim, Regio, Winner: Parattani, 1 more parattani in top8
Australia, Brisbane, Regio, Winner: Fenn/Teroch/Manaroo, 2 parattani in top8


5 out of 9 won by Parattani. Quite a high number indeed. Very similar to what Defenders were doing in pre wave9 times, I guess?

Overall number: 13 Parattani lists in the TOP8 in total out of 72 lists. Now say what you want, but 13 out of 72 lists...I'm totally cool with that.

Just to show some perspective: on the Italian Regio, there were 4 imperial lists in TOP8, featuring 11 ships in total, and 9 of them were Defenders. Now that is seriously annnoying.

In Ottawa, there were 58 participants, of which 4 were running Paratanni.

#2 after swiss at 5-1 (me!), the other 3 were at 4-2, seeded #8, #9 and #16.

What beat Paratanni:

• Paratanni: I beat #9 and #16 in swiss, lost to #8 in the final match.
• RAC/Carnor: Beat #2 and #8 in swiss, lost to #8 in Top 8.
• Quad TLT: Beat #9
• Commonwealth Defenders: Beat #16

Had I not faced #9 and #16 in swiss, there might have been more Paratanni in the top. All three paratannis I faced tried to fly the MajorJuggler (?) way (setting up in their right corner and going 'round), I don't. I had initiative in two matches and gave it away in one, won one of each. The final was close, and was streamed if anyone wants to see it.

I faced commonwealth twice, Miranda/Rey, Dash/Lothal (streamed), a very interesting Asajj/Torkil/Thug (streamed), said RAC/Carnor (streamed), and those 3 Paratannis. Basically, meta smorgasborg.

Ottawa usually doesn't have a meta, and the top 8 showed it with only two of the locals in there, clinching #1 and #2 in swiss The PTL out of Toronto had a very, very solid showing, so did the guys from Montreal.

It came close to there being just one paratanni in the top 8, the MoVs of the 4-2 were tightly clustered.

Most importantly, everyone was super nice and enjoyed the matches, no one complained about any list. Except that RAC/Carnor one, what a horrible monster

3 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

http://stayontheleader.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/the-state-of-game-part-ii-new-hope.html

Part: The Second

Finally. Someone on board with rotation.

33 minutes ago, AceWing said:

Finally. Someone on board with rotation.

A rotation would be a huge turn off. If I wanted to light money on fire just to be able to play a game competitively, I'd go play MtG. A rotation just reeks of corporate greed.

One thing I like about X-Wing is that with few exceptions, you can show up for a tournament with the stuff that you've owned for years and play. It might not be full of the newest and shiniest stuff and it might not find strong match-ups with the current meta but people can still play. I know a number of players that for whatever reason have taken a break from X-Wing. They've sold of some of there collection and only held on to a part of their collect. They show up to the occasional tournament or X-Wing night and get in a few games and catch up with friends. It's stuff like that that helps build a community.

If a rotation were implemented for X-Wing tournament play it would trickle into league and casual play as well. Sure, players that weren't interested in tournament play could still do whatever they want but they still need to find people to play with. The X-wing community is not large enough to be fractured even further than it is now and a rotation would do that.

Did you read his article? Pilots, titles and unique crew wouldn't rotate, just all other upgrade cards.

I really, really dislike the idea of any rotation. It kills the quirky combos that can pop up down the line making bad cards useful because cards are currently out of rotation.

To me, it'd be the death warrant and I'd just be that much unlikely to play outside of my house. I'd miss the (generally) cool swag though!

9 minutes ago, AceWing said:

Did you read his article? Pilots, titles and unique crew wouldn't rotate, just all other upgrade cards.

I read the article. Stuff gets rotated out and it can no longer be used. I don't like that and don't think that it's good for the community.

I don't think it's worth discussing the topic any further really, and nearly didn't post that blog at all. I don't think anything we say on either side of any argument will have any outcome other than to wear out our keyboards unnecessarily.

27 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I don't think it's worth discussing the topic any further really, and nearly didn't post that blog at all. I don't think anything we say on either side of any argument will have any outcome other than to wear out our keyboards unnecessarily.

Keep up the good work on the blog. It's been an interesting and thought provoking read, even when I don't agree with you.

4 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

For players not used to the idea I'm sure it's quite jarring.

Rotation for waves 1-4 (in my example suggestion) was not aimed at any particular cards as you're suggesting, but at putting in place a system that would continue to change the game in future years and create new design opportunities in spaces that old cards were occupying.

I read the article. I consider myself a happy man that have never played magic the gathering competitively.

Still cant see the slightest reason to rule out perfectly fine wave 1-4 upgrade cards. How exactly would it help the meta become more varied and balanced?

No. Do not rotate.

This is not Magic. Old ships need to be competitive with new ships. Period.

The list of things that need to be fixed really isn't that long either. FFG has done a really good job of keeping most things relevant.

28 minutes ago, Voitek said:

I read the article. I consider myself a happy man that have never played magic the gathering competitively.

Still cant see the slightest reason to rule out perfectly fine wave 1-4 upgrade cards. How exactly would it help the meta become more varied and balanced?

As a hypothetical and overly simple example? R2-D2 makes Corran Horn good enough, due to his maneuverability plus regen, that it's extremely difficult to buff the E-Wing chassis without making him completely unbalanced. By rotating it out you open up more design space to buff the E-Wing in a balanced way in the next wave so that other pilots could potentially enter the meta thus making it more diverse

Generally speaking, people who come from games with rotation are usually big fans of rotation because they saw the benefits first hand.

People who come from games without rotation go: DON'T YOU TRY AND TAKE MY CARDS FROM ME! I'LL CUT YOU! I SWEAR TO GOD I'LL CUT YOU!!!

It seems to me like rotation would require releasing card packs, probably close to quarterly, to keep up with meta changes.

I'm not inherently against the idea, especially because it would allow wave 1-4 cards to be redesigned better, but it would require a drastically different release model than FFG has done so far, or is apparently comfortable with doing. You will also almost certainly need to be able to rotate pilots out, or at least release new updated cards for them, to make this work. Just upgrades is only half the picture. I think it could work, but I'm a pretty competitive player and wouldn't mind keeping up. I can see how even moderate-tier players wouldn't like the idea though. Showing up and being told your cards aren't legal isn't fun.

I also don't think cards should be rotated out just because, but because there's something about them that needs to be changed.

The issue with rotation is that FFG is highly unlikely to retool those expansions with new cards. So you have a ton of expansions with worthless cards. Frankly, we are unsure what FFG is going to do with rotated cycles with LCGs once they start rotating. No reprints? Only POD like CoC? Not to mention the sheer amount of cards that get reprinted down the line.

And once again, I feel the Restricted List to surgically attack the specific problematic combos is a much better idea than simply rotating out cards that are not an issue.

6 hours ago, Makaze said:

By it applying mostly to upgrades, broken uniques like Zuckuss or Manaroo aren't covered by it. So one of its best aspects, that of naturally getting rid of broken cards over time, isn't being applied evenly.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. I get that people don't like Zuckuss-crew. Fine. But now we're complaining about Zuckuss-pilot? Where did this come from? Sure he's good, but broken? He lets you roll 1 extra die! Do you know who else gets an extra die? Talonbane Cobra and Fenn Rau. At range-1, they are rolling 5 dice. How many dice is Zuckuss rolling at range-1? Five. And he's giving the defender an extra green die on top of that. And he's basically in a B-wing chassis. Surely there are some other pilots you can pick on to go into rotation. Maybe some that actually appear at top tables consistently?

2 minutes ago, Budgernaut said:

Wait, wait, wait, wait. I get that people don't like Zuckuss-crew. Fine. But now we're complaining about Zuckuss-pilot? Where did this come from? Sure he's good, but broken? He lets you roll 1 extra die! Do you know who else gets an extra die? Talonbane Cobra and Fenn Rau. At range-1, they are rolling 5 dice. How many dice is Zuckuss rolling at range-1? Five. And he's giving the defender an extra green die on top of that. And he's basically in a B-wing chassis. Surely there are some other pilots you can pick on to go into rotation. Maybe some that actually appear at top tables consistently?

Not sure if he really meant the Zuckuss pilot, although I have seen quite a few complaints about "red dice creep" in the various complaint threads.

3 minutes ago, Sithborg said:

Not sure if he really meant the Zuckuss pilot, although I have seen quite a few complaints about "red dice creep" in the various complaint threads.

His point was that the newest article about competitive X-Wing suggests rotating upgrades but does not rotate pilots (in an effort to keep all expansions at least somewhat relevant). @Makaze is suggesting that "broken" pilots like Zuckuss and Manaroo need to get rotated out.

Now, I understand that if a rotation is implemented, they will most likely not be targeting powerful individuals to rotate, but systematically rotating things based on wave. Still, I just thought that was a rather odd example. I mean, isn't Fenn a more prominent example of red-dice-creep?

2 hours ago, Budgernaut said:

His point was that the newest article about competitive X-Wing suggests rotating upgrades but does not rotate pilots (in an effort to keep all expansions at least somewhat relevant). @Makaze is suggesting that "broken" pilots like Zuckuss and Manaroo need to get rotated out.

Now, I understand that if a rotation is implemented, they will most likely not be targeting powerful individuals to rotate, but systematically rotating things based on wave. Still, I just thought that was a rather odd example. I mean, isn't Fenn a more prominent example of red-dice-creep?

He was referring to the fact that unique crew would not rotate so Zuckuss would never leave. I can see how it would be confusing because he mentioned Manaroo in the same sentence.

I tried to watch the Yavin videos and immediately died of boredom from parattaini overdose.

I love.the squad but...**** dudes...Branch out some.

I was definitely talking about the Zuckuss crew, which as a unique crew (like C3PO as mentioned in the blog post) would hypothetically not be rotated out. I mentioned Zuckuss the crew with Manaroo the pilot because they're both undercosted cards with mechanically questionable effects. He, specifically, is a problem to handle via points changes because he's not all that unbalanced on something like the Mist Hunter and used sparingly with 4-LOM to pass off stress (as I believe the card was probably concepted). But he's down right broken on ships that can ignore his supposed balancing penalty and don't particularly care if they have 20+ stress. Making him cost what he's actually worth in Dengaroo makes him unplayable on his buddy 4-LOM which seems wrong.

I don't think rotation would work as well for X Wing as it does for Magic for a variety of reasons. But IF one were to go down that road, naturally getting rid of cards like the Zuckuss crew and allowing other cards with a less degenerate version of the mechanic or a new Zuckuss the crew with an entirely new ability to rotate in would be one of the primary benefits.

21 minutes ago, Makaze said:

I was definitely talking about the Zuckuss crew

My apologies. I was 100% sure you were talking about how pilots don't rotate out. My mistake.

Don't nerf anything yet! Swarms are poised to make a come back! (It's gonna be BIG!)