4 minutes ago, NakedDex said:

I did. It's called TIE Bombers. Worked a treat the other day. Who'd have thought?

But Assaj and Rau are pretty likely to remove a Bomber on the first round of shooting...what do you use?

1 hour ago, Kdubb said:

The discussion is being had, but in more... let's say, elegant places, considering anytime myself, Stay on The Leader or anyone else brings up the point that certain list/upgrade types are dominant on these forums, we get attacked by an angry mob.

Dominant does not equal problematic, though. There are some nice variety of lists making the cuts.

1 hour ago, Kdubb said:

The discussion is being had, but in more... let's say, elegant places, considering anytime myself, Stay on The Leader or anyone else brings up the point that certain list/upgrade types are dominant on these forums, we get attacked by an angry mob.

Dominant does not equal problematic, though. There are some nice variety of lists making the cuts.

Something is always going to be dominant.

9 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I think we had this same discussion last year with Triple Jumps and Palp Aces. Everyone was angry at Jumpmaster but Palp Aces were actually doing the winning.

The argument that made sense then, and I think applies to Paratanni too, is that while Jumpmasters made it abundantly clear that your game was ruined (with their massive alpha strike) the Palp Aces at least gave you the illusion that you were in a real game while they danced around you. I think a lot of the time when you're up against Paratanni it provides a very good illusion that a game is happening, when in fact the dice are being subtly stacked so consistently against you that it's all but a foregone conclusion.

I get what you're saying, and recent tournament results certainly give you support.

I'm curious to hear what your proposed solution would be?

Does Paratanni hard counter anything?

28 minutes ago, Criwi Romed said:

All rangeless abilities should be bound by R3 (including mindlink and Manaroo)...

Attani being limited to range three would make it really hard to use unless you were keeping all of your ships close together and more of less flying them in formation.

The Attani Mindlink is an OK card, it does have a punishment-Stress. It is not "pushing" out any meta lists as it is just performing better because of the efficiency. I use to gain this efficiency with FCS back in the day.

However, the problem lies within the MECHANIC CREEP from giving generic ships an EPT. While not so noticeable at the moment because of the current ships using Mindlink, the potential for abuse exists. For example, what if the PS3 Z95 had received an EPT like the last 2/3 waves of scum have gained. You could then outfit 2 of them with Mindlink and Tracer missiles for just 30 points. That would be devastating to most other lists.

The other problem is that Manaroo does not have a Range 4 restriction. Problem, there is not a mechanic for Range 4 in the current system (EPIC however, is applicable). Perhaps a folding range ruler could change all that to include the Palpatine.

So Manaroo is giving Fenn Rau SUPER Soontir Fell powers by having all the same actions PLUS another possible evade, extra die for attack, and extra die for defense at range 1. This is why it is dominating.

While no hate, I stressed preparations for a friend heading to the last Worlds because I thought it would be THE dominate list. Now that Europe has a huge lead (you really should listen to 186th Squadron Podcast) and the rest of the competitive field is picking it up. The hate will be here in a month or two.

2 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

Attani being limited to range three would make it really hard to use unless you were keeping all of your ships close together and more of less flying them in formation.

Being at R3 and being in formation are wildly different things. It's pretty easy to have ships at R3 of each other...

8 minutes ago, Admiral Deathrain said:

But Assaj and Rau are pretty likely to remove a Bomber on the first round of shooting...what do you use?

2x Gamma Vets with Deadeye and Chips. 2x Scimitars with LRS. All packing Homing Missiles and EM. I've noticed people don't like to commit their force to that. Lock up Asajj with the Scimis, and leave target flexibility to the Gammas. Slow roll forward, using the debris/rocks as a funnel. See who flinches first.

If they roll in with a show of force, you've got a decent chance of getting two missiles on each. If not, you've got four on Asajj (as long as you control your approach speed). The 5k gives you separation after the first pass, and the locks are still intact for an immediate barrage thanks to Homing not requiring the spend (bonus points if you've locked Fenn). If someone ships a bunch of damage but survives, break them off and send them after Manny with remaining ordnance.

There's a good chance they'll drop one first, if they roll everyone in guns blazing, but there's just as good a chance that you'll drop one of them in the same exchange, and that's a much bigger loss to them than you.

That is a sweet list, I haven't given the Scimitars any respect, yet, as I was still somewhat stuck on the U-Boat threshold on PS.

I don't need 4 bombers... I don't need 4 bombers...

I'm still working on getting the Y-wing's and Z-95's for Bunke's Flying Circus.

Oh it's janky as hell, and it dies horrible deaths to anything that can push crits reliably, but it'll hunt a large base or low agility ships like a boss. I've OTK'd Ghosts, YVs, and Decimators with that list, and I've finished a game against triple Defenders in turn 2. On the other hand I pulled 8 direct hits out of 9 crits dealt over 4 games yesterday, and you can get terribly unlucky with missile rolls on occasion.

But hey, it's a hell of a lot of fun, and it always delights and confuses the hell out of people when it hits a table.

One other thing that is striking to me: dengaroo, palp aces, and to some minor extent triple jumps are all archetypes rather than specific lists (especially palp aces). Parattani is a list with 0 variants, which suggests it's just a good list rather than a problematic archetype as a whole. A list can be countered, beaten, or upgraded while an archetype being all consuming usually requires errata or something harsh.

12 minutes ago, Criwi Romed said:

Being at R3 and being in formation are wildly different things. It's pretty easy to have ships at R3 of each other...

If you keep your ships about range two from each other at the start of the Activation phase, there's a good chance they'll be out of range three of each other at some time during the activation phase even if they end up at the same distance from each other at the end of the activation phase.

I guess if you got good with it, a eange limited Attani, would let you could get away with pulling red maneuvers without giving stress to your squad while still ending up with a focus token.

Attani being range limited also means that there are a lot more range checks happening which can potentially slow down a game.

I don't think anyone would be griping about Attani if it weren't for Manaoo's interaction with it.

29 minutes ago, rilesman said:

So Manaroo is giving Fenn Rau SUPER Soontir Fell powers by having all the same actions PLUS another possible evade, extra die for attack, and extra die for defense at range 1. This is why it is dominating.

Fenn doesn't have all the same actions. He gets Target Lock instead of the Evade that Fel has.

31 minutes ago, rilesman said:

The Attani Mindlink is an OK card, it does have a punishment-Stress

Sort... of...

Weirdly its punishment is actually largely ameliorated by its benefit. Even when the entire list is stressed only a single ship out of all 3 needs to do a green and they all get a focus. And between those 3 ships there is a lot of green

2 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

Fenn doesn't have all the same actions. He gets Target Lock instead of the Evade that Fel has.

Which really makes Fenn feel different to me. No evade token of any sort really emphasizes the 'trade well' and 'you will die eventually' aspect in a nice way. Fenn is a strong ace but rarely feels unkillable barring obscene luck.

3 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

Fenn doesn't have all the same actions. He gets Target Lock instead of the Evade that Fel has.

I stand corrected. What happens when writing it a second time in a rush and brain farting. I originally said same number of actions with mindlink and Manaroo.

6 minutes ago, Makaze said:

Sort... of...

Weirdly its punishment is actually largely ameliorated by its benefit. Even when the entire list is stressed only a single ship out of all 3 needs to do a green and they all get a focus. And between those 3 ships there is a lot of green

Yes, but you must fly a different style, different movements, and maintain your ordering like flying a swarm. I think swarm leaders have the lowest learning curve, but that is not scientific, just musing.

Managar would be put down across from a lot of lists and there was just no way to fight it. Parattani is strong, but I feel like any well though out list flown well has a chance against it and the same can't be said for Managar.

23 minutes ago, nigeltastic said:

One other thing that is striking to me: dengaroo, palp aces, and to some minor extent triple jumps are all archetypes rather than specific lists (especially palp aces). Parattani is a list with 0 variants, which suggests it's just a good list rather than a problematic archetype as a whole. A list can be countered, beaten, or upgraded while an archetype being all consuming usually requires errata or something harsh.

I don't think we'd see as many gripes about Attani if not for Manaroo, but probably a still a few. I have a dislike of any ability in the game with unlimited range, though. Erratta-ing any card effect not showing a range to having a range of up to 3 would be a soft touch way of dealing with it. Manaroo would have to fly in a bit closer to Dengaroo, leaving her more exposed, without changing the dynamic of the list. Palp would have to get his space cow involved in the fight, which leaves him a touch more vulnerable. Mindlink dependent lists would have to actually fly the swarming style that card should promote, but it would also allow them, as mentioned to pull a red maneuver with an errant ship without the rest of the group suffering.

4 minutes ago, nigeltastic said:

Which really makes Fenn feel different to me. No evade token of any sort really emphasizes the 'trade well' and 'you will die eventually' aspect in a nice way. Fenn is a strong ace but rarely feels unkillable barring obscene luck.

I've always maintained that Fenn is basically a sentient missile. He will explode at some point, but how much damage he does on the way to that fireball is up to your piloting skills.

Went all through all 3 pages of posts and not a single Emperor Palpatine meme requesting to let the hate flow.

2 hours ago, NakedDex said:

Unlike some of the lists that people have rebelled against, Paratanni is just solid. There's not a whole lot to it, in terms of building a list, it just happens to tick the boxes of survivability, flexibility, and offensive capability. The ships are built light (relatively. Fenn is pretty standard), but it's just each ship doing what it was designed to do, in concert with decent synergy.

In gaming terms, it's a DPS/Tank/Support. It's not a new concept, it just happens to be rare in X-wing. Fundamentally, it's balanced, which also happens to be rare in X-wing.

I'm not sure how we can call this balanced, though I agree with people that say it "feels" more fair than other lists, probably because it doesn't have a PWT and doesn't prevent an opponent from using their own strengths in the same way lists like Dengaroo do and it doesn't feel impossible to hit like X7s or the pre-nerf phantom.

But it absolutely shares qualities with those lists in terms of the advantages it leverages from current power creep effects without range, the timing of Manaroo's token passing and Asajj's stress assigning, and Fenn's red dice. Asajj in this list is one of the most action efficient ships in the game, imo, with a focus from Mindlink, a second action of her choice, and usually at least one evade from stress token that she hands out with Latts.

It made 5 of the top 8 at one System open (does anyone really believe that 50% of the lists there are Paratanni? No list, especially a very specific list gets fielded in the larger group at even close to that rate -- that notion, is frankly, ridiculous.) In fact, I think it was Australia where it was just fielded 3 times and all three players made the cut with it.

I probably misused balanced in favour of "not broken" there. Asajj is incredibly flexible in that list, and certainly very action efficient, but her evade only works against the person she placed it on, and her mobile arc is how all PWTs should have been done from the start. Fenn is incredibly strong, but he's also quite fragile, and suffers terribly to almost any crit in the deck. Manny doesn't punch out an incredible amount of damage, so it's possible to leave her last, or break off a single ship to hunt her down (if your list allows).

There's no one element of it - in a vacuum - that can't be beaten by any number of ships or lists. The strength is in the synergy, which isn't something we get to say in this game very often anymore without "overpowered" or "broken" being said in the same breath.

As I've mentioned before, I'm not fond of the lack of range restriction on any card. I don't think it would hurt this list too much to limit both Attani and Manny (as well as Palp etc) to R3, but it would allow more ways to combat it.

34 minutes ago, NakedDex said:

I don't think we'd see as many gripes about Attani if not for Manaroo, but probably a still a few. I have a dislike of any ability in the game with unlimited range, though. Erratta-ing any card effect not showing a range to having a range of up to 3 would be a soft touch way of dealing with it. Manaroo would have to fly in a bit closer to Dengaroo, leaving her more exposed, without changing the dynamic of the list. Palp would have to get his space cow involved in the fight, which leaves him a touch more vulnerable. Mindlink dependent lists would have to actually fly the swarming style that card should promote, but it would also allow them, as mentioned to pull a red maneuver with an errant ship without the rest of the group suffering.

I've always maintained that Fenn is basically a sentient missile. He will explode at some point, but how much damage he does on the way to that fireball is up to your piloting skills.

Now you've gone and made me want to change my online alias. Have been gamblertuba for 15+ years but now I want to be Sentient Missile...