46 minutes ago, Vergilius said:

I think that what they mean by "2" is the new Pelta type lists pushing some kind of B-wings. The Houston regional was in wave-4, played by the runner-up at worlds, and if all we mean is a squadron-centric list won a tournament, then we're actually all the way back to the beginning of wave-4 and the number is absolutely much larger than 4.

The most important difference is the inclusion of Flight Commander and Fighter Coordination Team, which is what makes the Yavaris/Pelta combo so efficient. Had it existed previously, we would have likely seen something like a double-triple Nebulon Escorts doing the same thing but not quite as efficiently.

i think we have some confusion about the way we are organizing claims. Do we mean to speak of wave-4 or just wave 5? Squadron dominance by itself shouldn't surprise anyone. It's been around for a while. I just sense an attempt at representation as if it is some new thing we should all be reacting to.

1 hour ago, Vergilius said:

i think we have some confusion about the way we are organizing claims. Do we mean to speak of wave-4 or just wave 5? Squadron dominance by itself shouldn't surprise anyone. It's been around for a while. I just sense an attempt at representation as if it is some new thing we should all be reacting to.

The current wave of Rebel squadron dominance functions in a very different way compared to previous squadron metas, which is a key reason it is consistently getting exceptionally high tournament scores.

2 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

The current wave of Rebel squadron dominance functions in a very different way compared to previous squadron metas, which is a key reason it is consistently getting exceptionally high tournament scores.

So the claim is limited to wave 5 (current wave). Here's the data as best as I can see it:

Wave 3/4: 5 winners of 16

Wave 5: 4 winners of 17 (so far)

I'm not sure I'd see evidence of a shift from wave 4 to the present. The Pelta certainly gives another optional tool in that equation, but nothing that is dramatically shifting the picture here. Beyond that, there are certainly some key wins in both waves off of Rebel squadrons, but is this data really enough to call it consistent?

Can the data be controlled for only events where this list archetype apopeared? Rieekan Aces using 5 ship Pelta/Yavaris with FCTs and FC officers? If so, what's the performance like within those events?

8 minutes ago, thecactusman17 said:

Can the data be controlled for only events where this list archetype apopeared? Rieekan Aces using 5 ship Pelta/Yavaris with FCTs and FC officers? If so, what's the performance like within those events?

I haven't been tracking FCTs or FC. Anecdotally most Yavaris players this season have been using them.

It would be easy enough to find fleets with Rieekan, 5 activations, Pelta, and Yavaris.

I'm gonna be honest here, I'm finding it very hard to counter rebel bomber/fighter ace zombie builds with anything Imperial....it's just obscene how much damage they can push.

My only logical idea here is high activation msu fleets that roll speed 3...and blitz them to kill the carriers.

Possible for sure, but that's the kind of work that the people making the claim should do. The fewer data points you have, the less reliable that data is though.

I'm no comp winner, but I definitely think the top placers should try out a way to beat their winning lists with something Imperial.

15 hours ago, ripper998 said:

Actaully 3. The Houston regional winner had a yavaris, aces reekian list as well.

It did not have the pelta, and it was pre-wave 5

19 minutes ago, Gottmituns205 said:

My only logical idea here is high activation msu fleets that roll speed 3...and blitz them to kill the carriers.

More finese pls

Turn 3. Kill Rieekan.

Turn 4. Kill everything else.

That has always been the flaw of Rieekan.

Flotilla block all they like. You cannot stop a determined raider or mc30. And for that matter neither can you stop Steele/Jendon/Rhymer/Boba, unless you want to neuter your owns squads that is.

25 minutes ago, shmitty said:

It would be easy enough to find fleets with Rieekan, 5 activations, Pelta, and Yavaris.

I had Rieekan. Pelta. Yavaris and 4 activations at Waterloo

1 hour ago, Gottmituns205 said:

I'm gonna be honest here, I'm finding it very hard to counter rebel bomber/fighter ace zombie builds with anything Imperial....it's just obscene how much damage they can push.

My only logical idea here is high activation msu fleets that roll speed 3...and blitz them to kill the carriers.

I have had success with imp lists with 5+ activations with this set up for anti-fighter.

Raider-I Class Corvette (44 points)
- Impetuous ( 4 points)
- Agent Kallus ( 3 points)
- Ordnance Experts ( 4 points)
- Flechette Torpedoes ( 3 points)
= 58 total ship cost

2 TIE Fighter Squadrons ( 16 points)

Put simply if you cant kill Rieeken zombie aces then make them useless with Flechette Torpedoes agent Kallus sounds great against aces help get the crit you need then use the Flechette torpedoes to activate the pesky squadrons OE and Impetuous for insurance to make sure the squadrons get activated. the Ties are really just there to screen the raider on its initial approach. Ideally you would have first/last with the raider, but if you had a target that the bombers could ot resit like an ISD so that the bombers were already activated, or at least the most threatening ones have before the raider comes in. I use the ties to tie up fighters that waited to be activated in the squadron phase. a bid for first is ex-termly necessary minimum of 5 point bid. It dose work, just need to fly the raider well.

against list with fighter screens and no bombers the raider can clean them up, or can become a flotilla hunter its flexible that way, granted it would be a better hunter with APT's but in my meta i'm more worried about the rebel fighters, but it dose have that flexibility.

I can see it struggle against a Rhymer ball, but that is not present in my meta, but I still think the Raider could be used against a Rhymer ball you would just have to hold back more and then jump on top of the Rhymer ball going from long range to short range and with the raider being able to go up to speed 4 its very doable, just would need to have some finesse with the raider.

You are spending a total of 74 points for the ties and this raider, but that is as much as you would spend on a fighter screen anyway, possibly more and with this you get an activation. I have also found that even if I take 100+ points of fighters to kill rebel squadrons they just end up killing all my squadrons anyway because of Yavaris and Rieeken and i'm putting less points on the line with the raider, and I have found it to be more reliable because all I want is to keep the bomber ball locked down for 2 turns and kill his carriers I don't really care if I kill his fighters because they die if I table him anyway. I have kept a ball pined down for 3 turns with this setup it works pretty well, but it dose take practice!

7 hours ago, thecactusman17 said:

The most important difference is the inclusion of Flight Commander and Fighter Coordination Team, which is what makes the Yavaris/Pelta combo so efficient. Had it existed previously, we would have likely seen something like a double-triple Nebulon Escorts doing the same thing but not quite as efficiently.

FC/FCT has little to do with the Pelta beyond "it can take them"... and honestly, ET is probably better in most of these kinds of builds. FC/FCT's a Wave Thor thing, not new, mostly limited in effectiveness to Yavaris, and frankly already partly obsoleted now with Relay.

This Rieekan Yavaris + primary carrier + 2-3 flotilla support archetype has been around since the very beginning of Thor, and was what Justin ran to #2 at Worlds. Yes, it got a boost with all the unique in CC, and yes the Pelta offers some sweet new variations on it, but I don't understand this sky-is-falling attitude.

That said, I played a dual ISD1 supercarrier list in CC this weekend and got consistently trashed by a mid-tier Dodonna GH squadrons build. I can definitely sympathize more with the Imp frustrations in the squadron game now. It's rough out there for Imps right now.

I do think imperials are a bit in the hole compared to rebels, but I also think there are a lot of squadron combinations yet to be fully fleshed out that will lead to a very successful imperial list being brought to the fore. What it is I'm not sure, but I am confident there is at least one monster Imperial list lurking in the wings and it's only a matter of time until it shows.

Would also like to point out that Ard and Parkerdaddy did a grudge match after their CC campaign to see what a fourth round at the SA regionals would look like. Parker was running a pelta yavaris list that took second. Ard his mc30 swarm. It was very close but the rebel squadron build won. It was really brutal though.

I think the main issue Imperials face in the squad game is that you have to pay a good amount of points for very specialized squadrons that are good at only one thing, either killing squads or bombing ships. Meanwhile, the near same investment can be made into Rebel squadrons that can pull double duty, with the high hull to threaten ships even after winning the squadron war

COUGH WHERE HAVE I SEEN NEARLY THIS EXACT LIST BEFORE.

also. Interesting.

3 minutes ago, ripper998 said:

Would also like to point out that Ard and Parkerdaddy did a grudge match after their CC campaign to see what a fourth round at the SA regionals would look like. Parker was running a pelta yavaris list that took second. Ard his mc30 swarm. It was very close but the rebel squadron build won. It was really brutal though.

4 hours ago, Vergilius said:

So the claim is limited to wave 5 (current wave). Here's the data as best as I can see it:

Wave 3/4: 5 winners of 16

Wave 5: 4 winners of 17 (so far)

I'm not sure I'd see evidence of a shift from wave 4 to the present. The Pelta certainly gives another optional tool in that equation, but nothing that is dramatically shifting the picture here. Beyond that, there are certainly some key wins in both waves off of Rebel squadrons, but is this data really enough to call it consistent?

I made a large data analysis dump of wave 3 4 season 1 2 being strongly weighted to mass squadrons. So its not exactly limited to wave 5 either.

wave 5 was seeing a relative even field based on squadron count, but you have a recurring example of a single list coming in first/second over and over.

Second, you're only look at the Rieekan FCT BCC lists with a pelta, whereas I was saying that generally mass squadron lists are **** good, and this is a culminating archetype of it.

But also, its not really about the pelta. More about BCC and squadron design. They're literally the best tools vs everything.

19 hours ago, ripper998 said:

Actaully 3. The Houston regional winner had a yavaris, aces reekian list as well.

^

A PSA that supposedly this list has 3 full regional wins to its name.

59 minutes ago, Ardaedhel said:

FC/FCT has little to do with the Pelta beyond "it can take them"... and honestly, ET is probably better in most of these kinds of builds. FC/FCT's a Wave Thor thing, not new, mostly limited in effectiveness to Yavaris, and frankly already partly obsoleted now with Relay.

This Rieekan Yavaris + primary carrier + 2-3 flotilla support archetype has been around since the very beginning of Thor, and was what Justin ran to #2 at Worlds. Yes, it got a boost with all the unique in CC, and yes the Pelta offers some sweet new variations on it, but I don't understand this sky-is-falling attitude.

That said, I played a dual ISD1 supercarrier list in CC this weekend and got consistently trashed by a mid-tier Dodonna GH squadrons build. I can definitely sympathize more with the Imp frustrations in the squadron game now. It's rough out there for Imps right now.

The issue is that W5 and Corellian Conflict has supercharged it in a few key ways:

• Norra Wexley has radically improved the offensive power of the bomber anti-ship capability on top of the existing squadron power buffs we've already seen.
• The "generic" unique squadrons such as Dagger and Gold have given more double-die bombers which are also effected by Rieekan
• The Pelta has enabled using a single relatively cheap ship to push 4 squadrons forward at once with the FCT+FC combo, radically increasing the threat range of several squadrons. This lets the Pelta move many squads up even if it uses non-squadron commands

9 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

COUGH WHERE HAVE I SEEN NEARLY THIS EXACT LIST BEFORE.

also. Interesting.

I made a large data analysis dump of wave 3 4 season 1 2 being strongly weighted to mass squadrons. So its not exactly limited to wave 5 either.

wave 5 was seeing a relative even field based on squadron count, but you have a recurring example of a single list coming in first/second over and over.

Second, you're only look at the Rieekan FCT BCC lists with a pelta, whereas I was saying that generally mass squadron lists are **** good, and this is a culminating archetype of it.

But also, its not really about the pelta. More about BCC and squadron design. They're literally the best tools vs everything.

It really depends upon what claims are being made. I looked at Rieekan lists because that's what the poster above asked for. Mass squadrons is a fairly broad claim, and there the data is much more supportive, but that's also a dead horse at this point that we've hashed out in multiple threads. I think the positions have been made clear enough there, and there's little sense in just repeating the old stuff.

5 minutes ago, Vergilius said:

It really depends upon what claims are being made. I looked at Rieekan lists because that's what the poster above asked for. Mass squadrons is a fairly broad claim, and there the data is much more supportive, but that's also a dead horse at this point that we've hashed out in multiple threads. I think the positions have been made clear enough there, and there's little sense in just repeating the old stuff.

That horse is dead but no ones is doing anything about it, cept letting it Rieek. So, I'll disagree with your assertion here, but I would ask you to look at the data of this list and think about what it means to you. If you're willing to shrug it off after 3 regional wins, copy-catted multiple times in multiple regionals, second place with parkdaddy (though his has RLB), then make that your public position. I don't know what else to say except that I think that vision of the game is unhealthy.

37 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

That horse is dead but no ones is doing anything about it, cept letting it Rieek. So, I'll disagree with your assertion here, but I would ask you to look at the data of this list and think about what it means to you. If you're willing to shrug it off after 3 regional wins, copy-catted multiple times in multiple regionals, second place with parkdaddy (though his has RLB), then make that your public position. I don't know what else to say except that I think that vision of the game is unhealthy.

I actually somewhat agree with the "doomsayers," as far as the Rebel squadron game goes. I've heard in multiple places several times that the empire is/was "easy mode" back in waves I and II. Point and shoot. But Rieekan is probably the easiest admiral overall to take advantage of and get good with, especially for new players.

I just can't see an imperial build that can table one of those types of lists flown by a good player who knows the list very well. But those types of lists can table Imperial lists flown by experienced players.

Now they can win, they just can't win big (and that is, imho, the trick to winning against those types of lists-don't go for the big win). But that will by and large be true of matches between players of similar skill at high levels of play. I think Verg and I have gone 6-5 in our last four or five games, and then Ard and I just had a ridiculously close game.

Now I'm not saying that whoever uses him has it easy all the time–it takes a lot of skill to use him effectively against an experienced opponent that knows how to deal with rieekan,

also, the key difference between my Pelta build and the others isn't RLB. I'll tell you that much, but only that much

55 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

That horse is dead but no ones is doing anything about it, cept letting it Rieek. So, I'll disagree with your assertion here, but I would ask you to look at the data of this list and think about what it means to you. If you're willing to shrug it off after 3 regional wins, copy-catted multiple times in multiple regionals, second place with parkdaddy (though his has RLB), then make that your public position. I don't know what else to say except that I think that vision of the game is unhealthy.

What do you want the community to do about the problem? After all, if the problem is as endemic as you say, then really only FFG could do something about it, and probably only with the release of new material.

Much of the rest of this is just flamboyant exaggeration and unnecessarily aggressive. I have praised the list elsewhere. It wouldn't have gotten as far as it has if it weren't good. The regional data shows that it isn't the only thing that is good. If it represented 3/4 of the top list in almost all of the regionals, that would say something that would justify the present state of alarm. Instead, I think it says something more along the lines of, "Here's something to talk a closer look at over the next few months and see if the trend continues." That's a more modest claim. What I don't think is fair is looking for ways to limit the evidence to support a fairly strongly worded and narrow opinion. After all, if we can just discount all the evidence that doesn't support our position, then we always win. The best arguments are the ones that make the most sense out of the most data and that read that data with a view toward its limitations.

IMO an easy first step (and one I think should have been the case) is that unique sources are per card title, not per card. At the moment it only affects bcc, targeting scramblers, and maybe one other card. The end effect would be bomber command center doesn't stack. You can still take multiple for more coverage, but say no to stacking.