I still don't really think Push the Limit is the problem in X-wing and that it enables more than it pushes out. An easy springboard into the action economy helps the game more than it hurts it, and I wouldn't call it degenerate.

Mostly by rotating out Wave 1-4 upgrades you'd be clearing a lot of weak upgrades from the game.

If I wanted rotation, I'd play Magic...

Is rotating out the R2 D2 astromech card not massively countrary to getting the game back to feeling more like Star Wars? I get that Rebel regen has it's detractors but it's very thematic when you look at what we see in the movies.

6 hours ago, Parakitor said:

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

ftfy

2 hours ago, Major Tom said:

Is rotating out the R2 D2 astromech card not massively countrary to getting the game back to feeling more like Star Wars? I get that Rebel regen has it's detractors but it's very thematic when you look at what we see in the movies.

I would assume that a new R2-D2 card would be created when the old one is gone?

So now rather than an interesting new card or a repeat of one I can use multiples of one of the available slots in a new ship is another copy of a unique astromech that I already have just to keep one of the most iconic characters in it's most iconic form available?

That doesn't seem the best use of a card slot really.

Expansions have different #s of cards and reprints already so not sure why you'd assume they wouldn't just put another card in?

That is true. Of interest, and we are now miles off topic, by not keeping all the unique astromechs in the same way as you suggested for unique crew are you trying to hit Rebel regen?

The rotation was aimed more at setting a minimum period of a few years that any release would be around before it rotated away, any cards/strategies hit in any way were totally incidental.

BUT when my points adjustments were discussed in another thread recently I did recognise that Rebel Regen would be one of the squads that could be problematic as it appeared untouched, so when I realised Rebel Transport would be rotated I did think 'oh, well at least that deals with any potential problems with regen'.

And R2 crew is still around.

And it's not been mentioned yet but rotation usually goes hand in with creating a format those cards are legal in, so it gives X-Wing potential to mix up tournament experiences.

19 hours ago, drjkel said:

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 would like to think that I have more than one deployment and attack strategy.

It is kind of like when someone asked Peyton Manning what "Omaha" meant. The analogy for Parattanni would probably go something like this:

Sometimes it means you set up on the right corner and go around.

Or it means you set up on the left side instead.

Sometimes you go straight for a while instead of turning in.

Maybe you do neither and do an immediate about-face down the side of the board.

Setting up in the middle is popular too. Then they have no idea which way you'll turn.

Sometimes you flank with Fenn.

Sometimes you charge right in with Fenn.

Sometimes you joust with the whole squad.

As long as you blow up all the other ships it usually works out.

16 hours ago, Makaze said:

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

This doesn't fix the fundamental problem though. Meta diversity is lacking because there are only a couple of viable list archetypes. This is a direct result of the design team's technical balance process having too much variance. Rotating out various upgrades will change which few archetypes are the overpowered flavor of the month, but it won't fundamentally fix the problem. You will still only have 3-4 archetypes that are worth bringing to the (top level) tables.

And when R2-D2 rotates back in, does it make Corran even more powerful now than he should be when combined with the other fix? You still have to design the upgrades and fixes around the worst-case rotation scenario, which means entire sets of ships and pilots will be still be useless for many of the rotation cycles.

The only solution is to tighten up the variance on the technical balance process. You want as many of the ships + pilots tier 1 / tier 1.5 as possible, without any being significantly better than the others. Unfortunately as soon as you introduce a new ship/pilot/archetype that is clearly better than anything else (which has happened multiple times in X-wing's lifetime), you just got back on the powercreep rat race, and all your hard work at balancing is essentially right out the window. It is not trivial to implement, but making most the pilots at least "pretty good" while avoiding the power creep rat race is the only true long term solution.

You absolutely can have most of the pilots be tier 1 / tier 1.5, it is just very very difficult to do so on day 1 release. It is so difficult, that I don't believe any board gaming company is even remotely capable of accomplishing this on a day 1 release.

21 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

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!!!

I think that's a gross over-simplification. X-Wing is not MtG so shouldn't be treated the same way. It doesn't have anywhere near the card pool for starters.

I think the reason people are opposed to rotation is because it's not really a great idea for X-Wing, not because they don't understand the benefits. I like the way you sometimes get quirky combos of old and new upgrades working together and I don't think you want to remove that possibility.

As far as Parattani goes, having seen it first hand at a Regional today I can say I take back my initial assessment. It's a dull, boring list that really doesn't seem to take much skill to play and just like Dengaroo, feels like you're not really playing X-Wing when you're up against it.

What is Parattani?

6 hours ago, MajorJuggler said:

I would like to think that I have more than one deployment and attack strategy.

It is kind of like when someone asked Peyton Manning what "Omaha" meant. The analogy for Parattanni would probably go something like this:

Sometimes it means you set up on the right corner and go around.

Or it means you set up on the left side instead.

Sometimes you go straight for a while instead of turning in.

Maybe you do neither and do an immediate about-face down the side of the board.

Setting up in the middle is popular too. Then they have no idea which way you'll turn.

Sometimes you flank with Fenn.

Sometimes you charge right in with Fenn.

Sometimes you joust with the whole squad.

As long as you blow up all the other ships it usually works out.

Yeah, I wasn't implying that either, just that someone laid out that general strategy (and I may be wrong on who that was). From the games I've seen, many do indeed appear to just follow that starting approach though. Sorry about the poor wording choices.

5 hours ago, MajorJuggler said:

This doesn't fix the fundamental problem though. Meta diversity is lacking because there are only a couple of viable list archetypes. This is a direct result of the design team's technical balance process having too much variance. Rotating out various upgrades will change which few archetypes are the overpowered flavor of the month, but it won't fundamentally fix the problem. You will still only have 3-4 archetypes that are worth bringing to the (top level) tables.

And when R2-D2 rotates back in, does it make Corran even more powerful now than he should be when combined with the other fix? You still have to design the upgrades and fixes around the worst-case rotation scenario, which means entire sets of ships and pilots will be still be useless for many of the rotation cycles.

The only solution is to tighten up the variance on the technical balance process. You want as many of the ships + pilots tier 1 / tier 1.5 as possible, without any being significantly better than the others. Unfortunately as soon as you introduce a new ship/pilot/archetype that is clearly better than anything else (which has happened multiple times in X-wing's lifetime), you just got back on the powercreep rat race, and all your hard work at balancing is essentially right out the window. It is not trivial to implement, but making most the pilots at least "pretty good" while avoiding the power creep rat race is the only true long term solution.

You absolutely can have most of the pilots be tier 1 / tier 1.5, it is just very very difficult to do so on day 1 release. It is so difficult, that I don't believe any board gaming company is even remotely capable of accomplishing this on a day 1 release.

As I said overly simple and hypothetical. But you're also assuming that R2-D2 would rotate back in at all (probably), and further assuming if he does that he would take exactly the same form he does currently which given other instances of games with rotation and the dual versions of Han/Chewie seems unlikely. Even without rotation I wouldn't be shocked to see a Last Jedi or 3rd movie version of R2-D2 and a red armed C3-P0.

As far as archetypes, and veering dangerously near to the actual topic of this thread, that is I think one of the problems with Parattanni. It's not just an archetype it's an ultra specific list down to the point. Rebel Regen the archetype bothers me a lot less because while the core concept of the list may be the same there are several different pilots with different loadouts that all fit under that umbrella. So even if for the sake of argument we still only had 4 overall archetypes for a given wave if those archetypes themselves had more variance then I'll chalk that up as a win.

But ignoring the specific example for the moment. I think we can both agree that the current set of cards has a high variance and in several cases were poorly implemented yeah? What do you think has more change of occuring in theory, that the existing flawed set of cards can be brought into line via additional upgrade and title cards or wave 11 could be nothing but tier 1.5 pilots? Honestly I don't believe either is all that likely, but the point is that it's easier to fix things on a moving forward basis while past mistakes shuffle off into the ether than it is to repair the myriad of questionable decisions that have been made. Effectively it shares many of the sames argument as a 2.0 version in a lot of ways (actually my preferred solution overall), rotation is just doing it piecemeal over time and without core rule changes.

So in complete agreement about the need to have balanced releases moving forward. It doesn't matter if you press the reset button and then just repeat past mistakes. I guess my question to you is what do we do with all the existing broken stuff?

9 hours ago, sf1raptor said:

What is Parattani?

Manaroo (27)
Attanni Mindlink (1)

Asajj Ventress (37)
Attanni Mindlink (1)
Latts Razzi (2)

Fenn Rau (28)
Attanni Mindlink (1)
Autothrusters (2)
Concord Dawn Protector (1)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

Named after its creator, OldPara. It is a terrible name for transparences sake, but many are tired of calling lists "AssajFennAroo". Too much -aroo lately. I am guilty of using it myself, although I really shouldn't, as it just doesn't say anything about the list except that it has Attanni.

Let's just ban the Jumpmaster 5000 entirely and be done with it

8 hours ago, Makaze said:

As I said overly simple and hypothetical. But you're also assuming that R2-D2 would rotate back in at all (probably), and further assuming if he does that he would take exactly the same form he does currently which given other instances of games with rotation and the dual versions of Han/Chewie seems unlikely. Even without rotation I wouldn't be shocked to see a Last Jedi or 3rd movie version of R2-D2 and a red armed C3-P0.

R2 regenerating shields is an iconic character doing something thematic with it's appearances in the movies. Why on earth would they change that if one of the objectives is to make the game feel more like Star Wars again (allowing the highly subjective claim that currently it does not).

21 hours ago, costi said:

If I wanted rotation, I'd play Magic...

If you don't, board games will fit better for you. I don't know any miniature/card game that never rotate.

Ok, apart chess.

45 minutes ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

Manaroo (27)
Attanni Mindlink (1)

Asajj Ventress (37)
Attanni Mindlink (1)
Latts Razzi (2)

Fenn Rau (28)
Attanni Mindlink (1)
Autothrusters (2)
Concord Dawn Protector (1)

Total: 100

View in Yet Another Squad Builder

Named after its creator, OldPara. It is a terrible name for transparences sake, but many are tired of calling lists "AssajFennAroo". Too much -aroo lately. I am guilty of using it myself, although I really shouldn't, as it just doesn't say anything about the list except that it has Attanni.

the other scum mindlink list is strong also. it uses Old Teroch instead of ventress. it seems to be good versus standard paratanni list eh?

6 minutes ago, Da_Brown_Bomber said:

the other scum mindlink list is strong also. it uses Old Teroch instead of ventress. it seems to be good versus standard paratanni list eh?

I would have thought it the other way around, with Ventresses ability being a real pain to any Attanni list. The initiative bid is useful, though.

47 minutes ago, costi said:

Let's just ban the Jumpmaster 5000 entirely and be done with it

Only if we also ban Palp and x7 at the same time

45 minutes ago, costi said:

Let's just ban the Jumpmaster 5000 entirely and be done with it

The Punishing One expansion has just caused a load of trouble. I have to say that with an ugly model, Zuckuss and a 0-point EPT, the Flying Egg expansion also wasn't the best addition to the game.

actually, the Jumpmaster was the best expansion ever maded. All 4 pilots working, different builds, amazing cards.

The problem is that it was too shiny for the game itself.

4 hours ago, Cerve said:

If you don't, board games will fit better for you. I don't know any miniature/card game that never rotate.

Ok, apart chess.

I'm still using my 15-year old minis in Infinity and the units they represent are still viable...

9 minutes ago, costi said:

I'm still using my 15-year old minis in Infinity and the units they represent are still viable...

Rotation doesn't mean "throw away your minis", it mean changing rules...