Just now, Sciencius said:

3. Interesting. I need to watch that final. I would have thought Soontir would effectively have "3 actions" a turn: (1) Boost + (2) Barrel-roll to arc-dodge, but his ability should give him an extra (3) focus for that attack (assuming no defender can shoot at him) + Palp. But ofcourse the defender has focus + evade + Palp.

According to your analysis, then the new "coordinate" action on the Upsilon should change the situation back in favour to the "traditional aces", right?

If the problem is lack of modifiers in outcome 3, then the new coordinate action could add the target-lock/focus that was missing after arc-dodge. Ofcourse the defenders could be flying supported by the Upsilon, but they are already tokened up so not much more to gain.

The problem is, both shuttles died roughly at the same time, so there was no Palp modification. It was 3 dice + focus from Soontir againts 3 + focus and evade from the defenders. If I recall correctly there was only like 1 round when both Soontir and Inquisitor had a shot at a defender at the same time and one when Soontir had a one range shot, but the Defender player had a good defence roll that round(s) and came out without even a scratch.

The rest of it was like Soontir attacks: 3 dice + focus, 2 hits, roll defense, basically any one symbol saves the defender, next round.

Is there a list that reliably stands on its own vs Parattani?

I've literally seen none, which makes me wonder. I mean, even Dengaroo had its hard counters.

Maybe the anger is avoided simply because you can play whatever you want & still get annihilated? It's like the modern American version of freedom.

I played Parattani for the first time against a friend's very scary Bossk-Manaroo list, late last week. This is a list he's been flaying for a few months. He's good at it, and the only thing I regularly beat with it is AdvS Brobots.

Despite doing zero damage to Bossk -- to a YV-666! -- in the engagement round, and despite losing Fenn early -- I was in range 2 of Bossk's auxiliary arc by a millimeter, I won the game (by concession, when a nearly full-HP Asajj got behind Bossk). Fenn did enough damage to Manaroo before dying that Asajj was able to finish it, primarily because of that "free" Evade.

I was flabbergasted. I felt like -- with the huge caveat of Fenn -- that I flew well, and he did roll below average on his attacks, but ... Fenn shot twice. It was my first time flying the squadron. I think about how one-sided it would have been with Fenn just at Range 3, instead of at Range 2, and I shudder.

The JM5K is undercosted. My opponent could easily afford to drop 2 points from his 50-point Manaroo, but Parattani? Parattani would have to make a hard, hard choice. The JM5K is simply undercosted. (EDIT: Actually, he wouldn't have to change anything under my proposed fix, because while Manaroo's cost would go up 2, he ran Punishing One, which would go down 2.)

Have no doubt. A nerf will come. But you watch: FFG will punt on 3rd down again, and instead of fixing the actual problem, they'll do something like nerf Mindlink.

5 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

I played Parattani for the first time against a friend's very scary Bossk-Manaroo list, late last week. This is a list he's been flaying for a few months. He's good at it, and the only thing I regularly beat with it is AdvS Brobots.

Despite doing zero damage to Boosk -- to a YV-666! -- in the engagement round, and despite loosing Fenn early -- I was in range 2 of Bossk's auxiliary arc by a millimeter, I won the game (by concession, when a nearly full-HP Asajj got behind Bossk). Fenn did enough damage to Manaroo before dying that Asajj was able to finish it, primarily because of that "free" Evade.

I was flabbergasted. I felt like -- with the huge caveat of Fenn -- that I flew well, and he did roll below average on his attacks, but ... Fenn shot twice. It was my first time flying the squadron. I think about how one-sided it would have been with Fenn just at Range 3, instead of at Range 2, and I shudder.

The JM5K is undercosted. My opponent could easily afford to drop 2 points from his 50-point Manaroo, but Parattani? Parattani would have to make a hard, hard choice. The JM5K is simply undercosted.

Have no doubt. A nerf will come. But you watch: FFG will punt on 3rd down again, and instead of fixing the actual problem, they'll do something like nerf Mindlink.

I can already envision the "deadeye'sque" nerf to mindlink.... perhaps this time they will go "large ship only" (what a shame if it comes to that).

3 minutes ago, Sciencius said:

I can already envision the "deadeye'sque" nerf to mindlink.... perhaps this time they will go "large ship only" (what a shame if it comes to that).

I don't see the nerf coming to Mindlink. If FFG does anything, my bet is that they add a range limitation to Manaroo. It's the easiest change to make that has the least potential for unintended effects.

10 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Have no doubt. A nerf will come. But you watch: FFG will punt on 3rd down again, and instead of fixing the actual problem, they'll do something like nerf Mindlink.

I'm expecting Mindlink to be changed to small ship only (Manaroo gets her Antanni capabilities from her pilot skill I guess will be the fluff justification). But yeah, I don't think they have much room for manoeuvre when it comes to errata-ing an actual ship.

7 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

I don't see the nerf coming to Mindlink. If FFG does anything, my bet is that they add a range limitation to Manaroo. It's the easiest change to make that has the least potential for unintended effects.

Which will hurt Dengaroo in a major way, but not really parattanni.

I watched Yavin open on twitch all last weekend, and in almost all engagements all 3 ships in the top parattanni lists-engaged the opponent, range 3 restriction on Manaroo would not have made a big impact. Dengar is heavily dependant on Manaroo to supply tokens, once she goes down its "game over", in Parattani... Fenn and Asaj just pounds you should you go for Manaroo.

Not the fix we are looking for.

1 minute ago, Sciencius said:

Not the fix we are looking for.

True, it doesn't fix the actual problem. Which means @WWHSD is probably right: the simplest "fix" is a range limit on Manaroo. Never mind that she's not the common factor. It's simply easier. That makes it the odds-on favorite. I've seen zero willingness from FFG to look below the surface when it comes to fixing a problem in the game.

9 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

True, it doesn't fix the actual problem. Which means @WWHSD is probably right: the simplest "fix" is a range limit on Manaroo. Never mind that she's not the common factor. It's simply easier. That makes it the odds-on favorite. I've seen zero willingness from FFG to look below the surface when it comes to fixing a problem in the game.

I do think they'll go for the simplest, lowest impact, fix instead of a more direct fix if they do anything.

I don't see FFG adjusting the Jumpmaster price. If they do that, they really need to open the floodgates on other price adjustments.

I don't see them making Mindlink "Small Ship Only" because then they'd be shipping a card to is unusable with the expansion that it comes with.

I don't see them adding a range limitation to Attani Mindlink because it makes the card more cumbersome during play.

The two things I can see them doing in an attempt to curb the dominance of the Paratani squad would be to give Manaroo a range limit and make Latts Razi crew usable once per round. Those are both small changes that are inline with errata issued by FFG for X-Wing in the past that might take Paratani down a notch while still leaving it a very competitive squad.

14 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

True, it doesn't fix the actual problem. Which means @WWHSD is probably right: the simplest "fix" is a range limit on Manaroo. Never mind that she's not the common factor. It's simply easier. That makes it the odds-on favorite. I've seen zero willingness from FFG to look below the surface when it comes to fixing a problem in the game.

5 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

I do think they'll go for the simplest, lowest impact, fix instead of a more direct fix if they do anything.

I don't see FFG adjusting the Jumpmaster price. If they do that, they really need to open the floodgates on other price adjustments.

I don't see them making Mindlink "Small Ship Only" because then they'd be shipping a card to is unusable with the expansion that it comes with.

I don't see them adding a range limitation to Attani Mindlink because it makes the card more cumbersome during play.

The two things I can see them doing in an attempt to curb the dominance of the Paratani squad would be to give Manaroo a range limit and make Latts Razi crew usable once per round. Those are both small changes that are inline with errata issued by FFG for X-Wing in the past that might take Paratani down a notch while still leaving it a very competitive squad.

Well..the "simplest" fix could just as well be an errata on attani mindlink like for dead eye, and then just making it large ship only..... but now we are just speculating, we will se what happens....

I can plausibly see them making the change to the rules that says all effects are Range 1-3 unless explicitly stated (affecting Manaroo, Mindlink, Palpatine, Sabine Wren).

3 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I can plausibly see them making the change to the rules that says all effects are Range 1-3 unless explicitly stated (affecting Manaroo, Mindlink, Palpatine, Sabine Wren).

In looking at it, Mindlink is a bit problematic in terms range restriction and would have to probably be completely rewritten, otherwise the effect could be chained to the point where the range restriction wouldn't much matter since the key word right now is "assigned." I think changing the language to be "focus action" instead of a "assigned" (so stressed ships would not benefit) would be enough, even if they didn't add a range restriction -- even though I am not a fan of unlimited range abilities.

14 minutes ago, Sciencius said:

Well..the "simplest" fix could just as well be an errata on attani mindlink like for dead eye, and then just making it large ship only..... but now we are just speculating, we will se what happens....

But then you kill lists like Scyks + Palob, which are actually fun to fly and nowhere near broken.

As for a nerf, range limit on Manaroo will help somewhat, because while she maybe at R3 of one of the ships, whe may not be at R3 of both. Another thing that might help is to errata her to pass stress tokens as well, stopping her from being a workaround for stress.

9 minutes ago, AlexW said:

In looking at it, Mindlink is a bit problematic in terms range restriction and would have to probably be completely rewritten, otherwise the effect could be chained to the point where the range restriction wouldn't much matter since the key word right now is "assigned." I think changing the language to be "focus action" instead of a "assigned" (so stressed ships would not benefit) would be enough, even if they didn't add a range restriction -- even though I am not a fan of unlimited range abilities.

That would pretty much kill off any sort of cool interactions with Mindlink and pilot abilities.

34 minutes ago, Sciencius said:

Well..the "simplest" fix could just as well be an errata on attani mindlink like for dead eye, and then just making it large ship only..... but now we are just speculating, we will se what happens....

That's a simple fix but it is in no way low impact. That would have a widespread impact when you are just trying to bring Paratani down a bit.

3 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

That would pretty much kill off any sort of cool interactions with Mindlink and pilot abilities.

You mean like Manaroo, Kato, and Palob? Yeah, that would be unfortunate, but the card is just too cheap for what it does as is and those "cool" interactions (at least one of them anyway) are why we're seeing the mindlink lists that we are seeing dominating the meta since they push an already effective card further.

12 minutes ago, costi said:

But then you kill lists like Scyks + Palob, which are actually fun to fly and nowhere near broken.

Oh absolutely! It was only in reference to what Jeff Wilder and WWHSD said about "simplest". And the same can be said about the "dead eye" nerf. There were a lot of lists that used a single torpedo-uboat and these lists where nowhere broken. It was only the tripple Uboat version that was broken.

I really hope mindlink remains untouched - but I also dont want to see Manaroo nerfed as that would not be enough to stop parattanni, but just kill dengaroo and other manaroo+other ship lists....

What if people just didn't hate on other lists and just played the game?

I keep seeing arguments as to if the list is 'overpowered' or not.

The list's track record shows that it is pushing out most other lists from the top slot/slots of most regionals and all the open series so far. Even if the list does not have a mechanic that 'feels' broken (like Dengar with 20+ stress) it's a record that is hard to dismiss. Yes, some of this is a result of the meta warping that Palp and x7 has had, but that doesn't change the fact that paratanni performs this well against any list. Many ideas have been floated as a 'fix' (FAQ range restrictions, limit of 2, etc...) and I hope FFG can come up with a tweak along those lines (without crippling its ability against the next strongest archetype - palp/defenders) as I feel most people want a more open meta. My fear would be a 'fix' in the form of further excessive power creep in the next wave.

2 minutes ago, Sciencius said:

I really hope mindlink remains untouched - but I also dont want to see Manaroo nerfed as that would not be enough to stop parattanni, but just kill dengaroo and other manaroo+other ship lists....

I'd be interested in seeing a few games played with a Paratani squad using a range 1-3 limit on Manaroo. I suspect that it would have more of an effect than people think. I'm by no means a great Paratani player but I frequently have Ventress and circling the fight and on opposite sides of my target. I'd guess that Ventress probably spends 1/4 to 1/2 of every game outside of range three of Manaroo unless it is a match that I need to get in and aggressively bump.

2 minutes ago, Cr0aker said:

I keep seeing arguments as to if the list is 'overpowered' or not.

The list's track record shows that it is pushing out most other lists from the top slot/slots of most regionals and all the open series so far. Even if the list does not have a mechanic that 'feels' broken (like Dengar with 20+ stress) it's a record that is hard to dismiss.

I still contend that Paratanni is only as dominate as it is because it doesn't really have a bad match up. When you have to win 11-13 games of X-Wing to win a tournament a list that is strong and doesn't have to worry about getting particular match ups is going to come out on top.

4 minutes ago, WWHSD said:

I still contend that Paratanni is only as dominate as it is because it doesn't really have a bad match up. When you have to win 11-13 games of X-Wing to win a tournament a list that is strong and doesn't have to worry about getting particular match ups is going to come out on top.

I agree with your assessment. I think it needs a tweak because of this, not because it is broken. Why? I like a more open meta were something off the wall has a chance to, with skill and the right matchups, make it all the way.

Where something good has a chance. Not something great will float to the top, regardless.

Has every single idea been exhausted to beat the Parattani list? What about a solid Alpha strike to take Rau out or to put some hurt on Manaroo?

Are people just sticking with the xD list or Palp Aces? What about the Trip K wing list? I saw a pretty expensive but cool Triple T-65 list with Luke/Wedge and whats his name

theres no way they'd "deadeye nerf" attani mindlink. IT COMES IN A LARGE SHIP!

manaroo getting a price hyke and/or range limiter would be more likely. If anything.

43 minutes ago, Raltus said:

Has every single idea been exhausted to beat the Parattani list? What about a solid Alpha strike to take Rau out or to put some hurt on Manaroo?

Are people just sticking with the xD list or Palp Aces? What about the Trip K wing list? I saw a pretty expensive but cool Triple T-65 list with Luke/Wedge and whats his name

On that note, I first played and lost to paratanni at my local regional. I tried a wide range of lists against matchups (which were not that hard to find at the time) on vassal. I lost every one of them. I could not even question a single win as a fluke... as I never pulled it off :P. I decide to play around with mindlink and came up with my own version that might stand chance against paratanni or at least give me insight as to what will beat paratanni based on what this list lost against.

Took it to a FLGS and went 3-0 in a casual tournament. Decided to keep testing it on vassal. I have not yet had a paratanni matchup (odd after running into it every other match on vassal prior). So far I am 11-0 on vassal and 14-0 total. I don't even have loses to give me data on how to beat paratanni. I have had one player call my attempt to beat paratanni with something that isn't quite paratanni (even if close to it), the 'weakest' mindlink list he has faced yet. And I still won.

Although I cannot judge how 'good' a player is on vassal, I played two players at the FLGS I would call 'good'.

THIS is what has cemented in my mind why it needs a tweak and the only reason I have been vocal about it on the forums when I said little about torpedo scouts or dengaroo. I am not 14-0 good with an equal list or even a modestly unequal list.

EDIT: And one last thought on that. I used Lady Luck on a lot of those matches and wished I had exported or saved that data. Sometimes my dice were hot. Sometimes they sucked. But almost every game my hits after re-rolls and converts was 2x my expected hits. This number dwarfed my opponents, and spoke to its action economy.