Hello FFG!

According to Tournament Results, there is no place for Rebels in the Meta anymore.

Yavin 2017 (Birmingham) - there are 7 Scum lists in the Top 8 - only 1 Rebel

Lothal 2017 (Nürnberg) - there are 6 Imperial lists in the Top 8 - only 1 Rebel

Why did you let this happen? I don't think that anyone has started playing XWing because of Jumpmasters or Defenders. These ships weren't even in the movies.

Don't get me wrong on this... I think it's nice to see some additional ships as well. Of course there should be a whole lot of variety to choose from.

Just like Defenders for example, which are actually pretty cool. I remember them from the old Tie Fighter PC Game. They have to be powerful ships.

But there should be MORE SUPPORT for the iconic ships of Star Wars anyway. Why don't you finally bring some X-Wings back into the X-Wing game? What's so freaking difficult about this?

All the new Rebel products felt like a whole lot of missed opportunities. Let me just name a few:

• R3 Astromech - What were you thinking? What is it good for anyway? Did you have another plan for this Astromech in the first place?
• Captain Rex Crew - Why is this only a much worse Operations Specialist? For 2 points instead of 3. Seriously?
• Baze Malbus - Why is this only a much worse Gunner? For 3 points instead of 5. This is not very helpful.
• New Han Solo - He can be placed anywhere at the beginning. Oh great and then what? You must have known this would be MUCH worse than Old Han. Why publish a new one then?
• New Chewbacca - So I just need a lot of my ships to die, to be able to use his ability. How come Dengar can do this even without losing a ton of his Squad members?
• U-Wing - I like the look of this ship. I also like the ability to put 2 crew members into it. But what am I supposed to do with a large base mediocre support ship? What's it good for?

Meanwhile you are making things even more difficult for Rebels, by giving free tokens and gamebreaking abilities to both other factions.

We all just need to get studying. There have to be some cool pilot/crew interactions out there that no one has come up with yet...

The Rebels have excellent kit. We just need to reinvent how we use it.

Kanan-Biggs, Miranda-Corran, and K-wing bombers have all done very well for themselves lately.

Played at store event yesterday. 5 Rebels, 3 scum & 1 imp. 4 of top 5 were Rebels.

Two of the four lists in Top 4 at Kashyyyk were Rebel.

They have possibilities; I just think that at the moment it is more difficult to be consistent with a Rebel list than with the other two factions. So, on average, you'll see more Scum and Imperial bubble to the top, all else equal.

These things go in cycles; try not to get too worked up over it.

ReyNorra got 5th at a tournament at my LGS, only missed top 4 by 4 points, and the guy who flew that list I don't consider to be an amazing player. Decent, but not amazing.

My brother consistently does well with a triple X wing list (Wedge with Expertise hits like a friggin truck)

Is it harder for Rebels? Yes. But that's thematic, to be honest.

It all comes down to *gaaaaaaaaasp* GOOD FLYING.

(I do, however, agree the X7 Defenders need to be looked at, cause they're pretty boring to fly against.)

Do not underestimate Fat Chewie with four Z's!

As a rebel pilot, I agree with a lot of your points about missed opportunities. We can only hope they are going to bring a rebel vets pack with more y wing pilots and more x wing goodies. An E-Wing fix would be nice too, it is just in a whole different price bracket against its rival the Tie Defender.

I also agree with the guy who mentions its just harder to be consistent with Rebels, they can match most lists on their day. I like being the underdog anyway

Yes, you people are right... there are some good pilots and still some good options for Rebels (Norra, Miranda, just to name a few). The situation is not hopeless.

But it is an uphill battle and somehow all the new products, which should have been helpful or bring some old & iconc Rebel Ships back into the Meta were missed opportunities.

I think most of you know very well, what I am talking about:

Just look at all the "How can I beat list XY" threads on this board.

Hardly anyone is asking about a Rebel lists there.... it's always about Imperial and especially Scum lists.

I have always loved Rebels but have drifted away in recent times. But, I feel they need more practice to run. I'm sorry but 3 OP defender x7's require very little skill to be effective. Now fly in formation with Biggs and see how much of a puzzle every turn is. Or fly defenders and do k-turns for days.

The reason it's much harder to play Rebels these days is because they have not kept up in the power creep race. The last three Rebel expansions have offered very little that have pushed the faction forward. Rebels still rely on the crutch of Biggs and Regen but everyone and their brother knows how to beat that. The U-Wing was especially disappointing because all the new unique crew are marginal to terrible at best. Rey is about the only new useful pilot and she is just WAY to expensive when loaded out. FFG needs to abort Operation Buff Scum so they can bring the other factions up to the new power level.

Rebel fix: Scum lists now limited to 80 pts.

43 minutes ago, migs6000 said:

Now fly in formation with Biggs and see how much of a puzzle every turn is.

As someone who has flown TIE swarms, this is real cute.

I agree that /x7's are easy to fly, however.

You also have to remember the lead-time on products are measured in terms of several months so developer thinking is probably at least a Wave ahead and possibly 2.

This time last year we were seeing Rebel Regen putting in a strong showing. Imperials were basically playing Palp Aces and Scum had not received their Jump Master.

The last couple of Waves were probably due to Rebels strong showing about this time last year. My guess is that the Devs probably over-compensated with boosting Empire and Scum but balancing is always hard.

Haven't neither seen things like Ahsoka-builds yet making their impact. Will be interesting to see where the Rebel Tie places.

Have no fear OP. As i've been posting all over the forums I strongly believe a T-65 X-wing and Rebel Y-wing fix in the form of titles, mods and astromechs tied into Rouge One (with Rouge One pilots too) will be an expansion very soon. I would be extremely surprised if FFG doesn't do some kind of Rouge One Veterans / Aces expansion. Once the Rebel workhorses are viable again there will be more solid choices for Rebel players IMO.

2 hours ago, Schu81 said:

• Captain Rex Crew - Why is this only a much worse Operations Specialist? For 2 points instead of 3. Seriously?
• Baze Malbus - Why is this only a much worse Gunner? For 3 points instead of 5. This is not very helpful.

On the right ship, these 2 cards would combo quite nicely. If you can spare the extra crew slot, you're getting a Gunner effect+a Focus token for the same price of a Gunner (5 points).

It's not game smashing, but far from useless.

28 minutes ago, Managarmr said:

Haven't neither seen things like Ahsoka-builds yet making their impact. Will be interesting to see where the Rebel Tie places.

Hopefully oneshotted by my V.I Chiraneu

Rey Falcon or Old Han with Finn can be the start of something effective.

I've had this Falcon prove pretty useful: Pilot Rey, Crew Finn and Ezra, New Falcon title, Lone Wolf EPT. I ran it alongside a Chopper VCX to good effect. With that set up, if Rey can get an arc on an enemy, she can also get a lot of natural modifiers for her attack. The weakness, of course, is the lack of defense. However, if you use Chopper as a good blocker, the Attani lists suffer a lot of Chopper induced stress, which limits the options for enemy attack modifiers. Adding a tactician makes the stress issue even better.

A better matrix would be to see what percentage of rebel/scum/imp lists make it to the top 8. The lack of representation may simply be due to a lack of population.

2 hours ago, Managarmr said:

Haven't neither seen things like Ahsoka-builds yet making their impact. Will be interesting to see where the Rebel Tie places.

I don't see the TIE really making any sort of impact on the competitive meta. It's fun and does cool stuff but the main pilots (Rex and Ashoka) are in a three hull support ship.

If anything it will be filler/blocker. But I will say, I ran a 4 ship, all unique rebel list that included Rex. Not too often you can say that.

The point about the Rebel Ties is that they are cheap but pack the kind of support that does actually help out the Aces. Rex is almost a mini-Biggs so works well with Regenerators, you can even pair him with Biggs for some entertaining results. Ahsoka provides that action economy that several builds really need. Poe and Jake really benefit from her assistance and I am sure there are others who might work too.

Rex can work perfectly well naked at just 14 points. Stealth Ahsoka runs at 19 points minimum although can be worth bumping up a couple of points to include someone like Jan or Jyn. I admit that Ties crumple readily enough but if your opponent has to dedicate a turn or two of fire from his own PS9 ships to do it then suddenly the protection that Ahsoka can give to her wingmen starts to look more useful. She is so cheap it is almost a waste for your opponent to shoot at her but she will keep the rebels buzzing if they don't/

Ran Jess/Biggs/Rex/Braylen into the top 16 in the Vegas Regional. Rex was a beast all tournament and I was able to take out mindlink and a dengaroo on my way. I think Rebels are in a decent place and it takes players actually looking and building that synergy that comes so easy to some of the other lists. I am not terribly upset with where rebels are. I think we just have to be a bit more creative and think a bit outside the box for answers.

2 hours ago, TrenchRunner said:

Ran Jess/Biggs/Rex/Braylen into the top 16 in the Vegas Regional. Rex was a beast all tournament and I was able to take out mindlink and a dengaroo on my way. I think Rebels are in a decent place and it takes players actually looking and building that synergy that comes so easy to some of the other lists. I am not terribly upset with where rebels are. I think we just have to be a bit more creative and think a bit outside the box for answers.

Sounds like a fun list.

On the one hand, Rebels haven't been pushed out of the meta by any means; there are plenty of viable builds out there. On the other hand, I feel like there recent releases have been . . . well, crap. The U-Wing had one good thing in it: Expertise. The TIE has a couple of possibly viable pilots, but nothing more. Likewise, Rey and the T-70s are pretty decent; but meanwhile, the Empire got x7s and the Upsilon (both of which are immediately top-tier competitive) and Scum got the Shadowcaster and the Fang Fighter and so on . . . .

As someone who's immersed in the top-level competitive game, here's my take: Rebels are okay right now as long as you like flying Dash, Miranda, or Kanan. If you don't want to fly any of those three ships, you should not be flying Rebels right now as they simply cannot compete with the rest of the top of the meta. Rebel small ships are way too inefficient right now, excluding the K-Wing which is basically a large ship on a small base.

I agree, though, that Rebels have gotten an unusually large pile of obvious garbage lately: R3 Astromech , Captain Rex (crew), Bodhi Rook (pilot and crew), Baze Malbus , Bistan , a whole additional pack of YT-1300s and T70 X-Wings without any serious fix for either ship, and the U-Wing as a ship chassis are all head-scratchingly bad options, even crappy comparable to currently existing analogs. Cassian and Jyn crew have some potential uses, but neither strike me as competitively viable and regional and system open results seem to support this. The ARC has quite possibly the worst suite of Pilot Abilities to date found an any ship, with only Norra being even conceivable to fly competitively.


Now, of course you'll have the Basement Aces coming on to retort that Bodhi Rook crew is really good or that HotR fixed the Falcon or that Snap Wexley is amazing or that Expertise makes Wedge good or other such bits of excited optimism, but the empirical data gathered from the successful lists at the most competitive recent events do not bear any of this out.