How do you do it? Where do you start? Do you need to learn to build great squads before you can really start mastering the game, or is playing the game well the essential first step in building good squads?
How important are videos online to help you learn how squads work and how to fly them? Is vassal essential? Is it better to have playtest sessions or play in competitive leagues?
What sources do you have for strategy advice that really help?
How do you 'Git gud'?
How do you 'Git gud'?
Play good lists first - otherwise you're hamstringing yourself hoping to reinvent the meta. You aren't as good as the entire X wing player base over the 4-5 years it's been going now. But don't just play them, play them. Think about how they work, and more importantly what makes them work. Then, build on that understanding by trying to put together something that emulates the qualities of those lists.
Play as much as possible - Vassal is essential because you go from playing people local to you (good as they may be) to playing people worldwide with their own ideas.
Keep working at it over time, and slowly you will git more gud. It won't happen instantly, but playing against better players will help. Talk about your games too! What worked? Why did you choose that, and what was the best choice? That helps more than anything.
Ever played chess? When you learn, you first focus on not losing your queen, then rook, then knight, then pawns and finally lose a « move » or « position ». In other words, you learn how not to do the basic mistakes and move up from there. The same thing applies to X-Wing :
- You learn how not to crash in asteroids
- You learn how to not forget the upgrades that you picked
- You learn how modifying dice is a good thing
- You learn how to stay in formation (when applicable)
- You learn which scenarios make it favorable to joust or not
- You learn how to use asteroids for cover
- You learn how to engage at a range that is favorable to you.
- You learn when to spend or not different tokens depending on the odds of your opponent defending against them.
- You learn which asteroid placement is favorable depending on your squad and your opponent’s squad (hint : it varies)
- You learn about squad synergy or combos that break enemy squad synergy
- Etc
Learn from your defeats. If you are often defeated by the same player, pay attention to what he is doing; asteroid placement, squad placement, upgrades, etc. If you are in a friendly environment, you can even ask tips right after a game.
It starts with getting in your reps.
For myself, I find that it takes about 200 iterations of a task (games) before I feel confident in my proficiency. You can always improve beyond that, of course, but that's the point where "gud" is at least a possibility that an be achieved.
Quality of reps do matter somewhat, as you learn far more from seeing the play of good opponents, and if you play against poor pilots who routinely make the same set of mistakes you run the risk of reinforcing bad habits yourself. Still, I think it's more valuable, while still in the early learning/growing stage, to get lots of reps instead of good reps. I'd prefer 25 scrub games in the FLGS than a 6-round Regional, for example, in this context.
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Squad quality, in my mind, is tangential to gitting gud You can learn solid tactics and habits with any squad. The only caveat is that you need to fly a squad ~10 or more times to learn from it, in my opinion. The main difference that squad strength brings is that getting reps with a good squad nets more game wins than with a bad one, which generally feels better; but there's an argument to be made that you actually learn less in each game, since extremely-well-made squads can cover for some pilot mistakes that make the weaker squads crumple.
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As for watching batreps, reading strategy guides, and the like. In my mind, they don't really affect how gud you git. What they do is accelerate the learning curve a little. When experimenting with your squad and getting your reps, applying principles you read about or watched can lead you to good behaviors and tactics a little faster than simply playing in the sandbox.
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Throughout all of this, though, is that you can only git gud if you play mindfully and with humility. Mindful, in that you have a reason for every tactic that you try, and pay close attention to the results. Humble, in that, when you inevitably lose, accept it. Admit to yourself that you came up short. Then, think back to the moment(s) where everything went bad, and figure out what you did that put you in that spot. Also be willing to look back at what your opponent did to beat you, and don't be too proud to assimilate that knowledge.
I think fundamental piloting skills are the first place to start - if you don't know how to fly ships well, then it doesn't really matter how good your list is. This isn't to say that the ability to list build and see synergies isn't a key skill, but it only does you so much good if you're bumping your ships or they're ending up pointing in the wrong direction. That said, a bad list can be hugely problematic, so it's worth working with more experienced players to make sure that you're not just flying garbage. More generally, it helps to have someone experienced in the game and better than you teaching you, but you don't want the gap in player skill to be too large or it just becomes dispiriting.
I'm lucky in my local area, as we've got a few really good players (including a Yavin Top 8 finalist) and monthly tournaments, so I get to test my mettle against people I'm confident know how to fly well.
I found videos and articles really helpful for some things like formation flying, the Rule of 11, and obstacle placement. (Although obstacle placement is still something I'm not strong on.) Getting to watch a game or two with a new list or ship you're planning on taking can be great for getting insights on how it flies, and avoid some basic mistakes.
Vassal is cool, and has helped with some of my positional ability, but isn't a replacement for practice on the tabletop IMO. There's nothing quite like getting hands on experience if you're training for a tournament. I'm a great believer in playtest sessions, and getting people to fly some meta lists so you can test out a new list against them. I've had more than one list that looked great on paper and was dominating against casual lists that had fatal flaws against a common meta archetype or two.
I think this topic is always going to be a balancing act - mainly due to all the differences in how people learn. Some of the best pieces of advice I can offer:
Build and play as many ships as you can. You will learn what they can do, and more importantly you learn what they can't. Netlist to figure out why that list is amazing as well as strengths/weaknesses. It will make you a better list builder.
Play against as many people as you can in a tournament setting. Practicing at home is good, but if you max this out you only learn how to play against your friends and not random people. Playtest sessions are also very good but don't have someone who's never flown Brobots fly it against your worlds list and expect a good learning session about how to beat them.
Listen to a few different podcasts. There's so many you can't take them all in unless your an OTR trucker, but pick a few different types and listen in for the bits that you can work with. Don't concentrate solely on the Meta podcasts, vary it up.
Videos can be good too but I feel like its watching golf, fast forward can be a great thing to take out all the space.
I don't know if Vassal is essential, but you will get more games against random people on it (or TTS). I don't personally play on it because I'd rather just put ships on a table to get that viewpoint, not to mention we have a wide variety of things nearby that I can get different viewpoints. (around 10 game stores)
Play the type of list you LIKE to play. You love arcdodgers? Find a list that caters to that. Same thing if you're an alpha strike, etc. Love turrets? Do that! Almost every style of play has a competitive list or components to it.
Things I wish I had done differently before a major tournament last year (I went 3-3 and missed a cut): Played against more people, even random ones with "bad" lists. Took notes about my games to go over them again later. Played MORE games!
Edited by jonnydThe exact right amount of alcohol. Just like playing pool.
1 minute ago, Jarval said:Vassal is cool, and has helped with some of my positional ability, but isn't a replacement for practice on the tabletop IMO. There's nothing quite like getting hands on experience if you're training for a tournament. I'm a great believer in playtest sessions, and getting people to fly some meta lists so you can test out a new list against them. I've had more than one list that looked great on paper and was dominating against casual lists that had fatal flaws against a common meta archetype or two.
I find that Vassal is amazing, but I don't use it for positioning practice. I play it so that I can see new lists, test new unreleased components, and most importantly lose a lot. Now, losing seems useless, but I always try and find where I went wrong. Since playback is so easy on Vassal, I can rewind the game and say 'If I hadn't turned dash into this corner he would be free to run away, and he'd lose 2h this turn instead of dying next turn. That experience is easier to get on Vassal because of the ease of playing and rewinding.
Watching other people play each other is just as helpful as videos because you can ask them why this or how that--as long as it's not during a tournament, of course. But hands-on playing a list over and over tweaking it to see how other cards work with it gives a real feel for flying each ship and how they work together. In casual play, talk about your opponent's list as well as your own.
I feel the loss of experience when a week goes by and I've not gotten to play. You really need to get a feel for the spatial play of each template. You roll die to see how the odds of rolling two v three works. Just like any sport, you develop a mental muscle memory for for each phase of the game.
On the topic of videos, I try to watch one or two per week. Specifically against squads I find scary - example was Nathan Eide at hoth, playing vs triple attani jumpmasters. I got wrecked by them at Yavin, so I watched his match to see what he did to take them apart. That was really useful, and when I play them now I can keep in mind what was good against them.
2 minutes ago, jonnyd said:Play the type of list you LIKE to play. You love arcdodgers? Find a list that caters to that. Same thing if you're an alpha strike, etc. Love turrets? Do that! Almost every style of play has a competitive list or components to it.
This! I've found that there are some list archetypes that I just don't click with. Arc dodgers really aren't my thing, while jousting really is. There's nothing wrong with recognizing that a particular style of list isn't for you, as long as you know how to fly against it.
A key but tricky part of becoming gud is also understanding that you can play correctly and still lose. While blaming dice isn't usually correct it isn't always wrong either. If you take a strategic risk that works with average rolls and get punished it doesn't mean you did the wrong thing. Similarly if you did a dumb thing and it worked you didn't do the right thing. Separate results correct play and it will improve your average performance on the whole.
Five things that I think are the key to improving your game.
1) Play against players that are better than you are. That forces you to learn.
2) know your build. Maybe this should be #1.
3) PRACTICE
4) PRACTICE
5) PRACTICE
Biggest thing that shafts people is being unable to predict flight patterns. I can predict them pretty accurately, and it has nothing to do with 40k experience judging distances since that doesnt help with turns for jack lol.
No, i fixed it by running as many ships as i could (i think i was running 7 since i didnt have that many tiefighters yet, was a mix of ties and tie/fos) and my sole purpose was DO NOT HIT ANYTHING. Yes, i lost a lot because swarms not doing a bumperstrat is pretty bad but that wasnt the point, and it gave me the ability to just eyeball so many quirky maneuvers around rocks or just BARELY clear k-turns and catch my opponents off guard because they completely expected that maneuver to not work.
Yes i still goof sometimes, it happens im human after all lol.
Course this is probably why i have such an issue flying large bases.....
47 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:How do you do it? Where do you start? Do you need to learn to build great squads before you can really start mastering the game, or is playing the game well the essential first step in building good squads?
How important are videos online to help you learn how squads work and how to fly them? Is vassal essential? Is it better to have playtest sessions or play in competitive leagues?
What sources do you have for strategy advice that really help?
How do you 'Git gud'?
I was hoping you'd share given that, to my recollection, you're actually quite highly rated yourself.
3 minutes ago, Xerandar said:I was hoping you'd share given that, to my recollection, you're actually quite highly rated yourself.
I'm not sure who is the arbiter of such things. I'm pretty good when I care to be, I guess.
At the moment my play time is very limited so mostly my play experience since November is: Make new list, get battered by Paratanni, scrap list after a game or two, make new list, get battered by Paratanni, scrap list after a game or two... I'm not sure that makes me particularly well qualified!
I'm probably the #1 expert on losing at X-Wing, though, and reading this probably does a lot to help you to git gud - http://stayontheleader.blogspot.com/2016/06/strike-me-down-how-to-lose-at-x-wing.html
Practice rolling dice ... you don't need strategy or tactics if you can roll like a god.
1 hour ago, Stay On The Leader said:What sources do you have for strategy advice that really help?
Whatever sources you find, you better hope they're not long and in print, 'cause those won't do you much good...
1 minute ago, mkevans80 said:Whatever sources you find, you better hope they're not long and in print, 'cause those won't do you much good...
Fingers crossed!
Don't blame the dice.
The number one thing that stands in the way of new players gitting gud is the tendency to blame the dice. Don't do that. Everyone has to deal with dice, and we still have a select group of consistently strong players who always place high. Chalking your losses up to RNG is the best way to learn nothing from them.
I agree with most of what's been said here. To that, I'll add:
Maneuvering and planning maneuvers--I've won many matches because my opponent didn't plan his formations/maneuvers well and missed shots/actions/etc. They would have lists with solid synergies, but those don't matter if they can't use them.
My biggest mistake is not planning for future maneuvers: where will I move in the next round? and the round after? I imagine the really good players are able to think in that way consistently. Me? Sometimes I can, but not always. If you can think about where your ships will be in the next few rounds, you'll probably have a bit of success.
1 minute ago, Ailowynn said:Don't blame the dice.
The number one thing that stands in the way of new players gitting gud is the tendency to blame the dice. Don't do that. Everyone has to deal with dice, and we still have a select group of consistently strong players who always place high. Chalking your losses up to RNG is the best way to learn nothing from them.
This. We tend to remember our really good and really bad rolls, but only the good rolls of our opponents. Dice usually even out (except when you roll 5 greens because your Fenn is range 3 and the attack is obstructed and get only blanks and focus and you don't have a token #stillbitter [and I should have had a focus token is the real lesson])
Dice can always end up deciding a game no matter how good you fly, but in this game in particular it doesnt happen that often. Regular miniature games like 40k tend to have every game be dice luck, no idea how many games ive won with orks because i somehow kept rolling 5+ on a D6, then lose with my Tau because i cant roll a 2+ to save my life (losing a Riptide from full hp with Feel No Pain to BOLTER FIRE really pissed me off...lol)
Play a lot and lose a lot; take it with a grain of salt and analyze what occurred. This is best done with players that are more experienced and interested in helping you. The more humility you bring to this task, the more benefit it will have. If there is a truely broken list in the meta, avoid it as it will teach you why that is a broken list over how to play the game better.
In the early days of WM, I became a good player by learning against a regional winner and his winning list! Nice guy but **** I got pummeled for a few games. WM is (or was back in Mk I) a game with unforgiving victory conditions compaired to XWM.
I'll throw in a part of a blog post I've been sitting on for a while, because I think it's a common issue:
Ignoring Dice Modification
You've pulled off a great move and outflanked your opponent so you've got an easy shot. The only thing that could have gone better is that you're just outside Range 1 for that fourth dice to throw. But your T-70 X-Wing has a Boost action, and you put the hammer down to close to point blank range and give him all four red dice!
Congratulations, by boosting instead of focusing you just made your attack worse.
If you roll dice without Focus or Target Lock to modify what you roll then each dice has a 50% chance of hitting, so throwing four dice is going to come up with an average of 2 hits. Your boost has given you a chance of rolling 4 hits off those 4 dice, but it's only a 6% chance.
On the other hand if you'd sat at range 2 and used your action to Focus or Target Lock then you've got a 75% chance of each red dice coming up as a focus or hit result, so throwing three dice is going to result in 2.25 hits. Yeah you've no chance of rolling 4 hits with only three dice, but your chances of throwing 3+ hits went from 31% to 43%. Fewer dice, but more hits.
Throwing your dice with no Focus or Target Lock (or Evade on defense) to help you out is where people start to feel like their dice are betraying them because they never seem to actually deal damage. It can lead to a lot of frustration, and ultimately be the reason why some players simply give up on X-Wing altogether because they feel like there's too much luck in it. They don't understand that they're introducing more luck into the game by the way they're playing and the decisions they're making.
The thing is when there's Boost and Barrel Roll actions available it's a really easy thing to get sucked into overusing them, especially for new players. The position of your ships on the table is something tangible and real while the maths of the dice is intangible and easy to underestimate or forget about entirely. X-Wing looks like it's a game about maneuvering and positioning so if you can Barrel Roll into a great position or Boost around to the back of your opponent then it very intuitively feels like a good thing for you to do. If put your guns right up the back of your opponent's ship then how can you possibly miss from there?
That disconnect between what LOOKS like an easy shot and the reality of throwing four red dice only to get 1 hit (which isn't actually that unlucky - it happens about a third of the time) is where frustration is born and bred.
This goes equally for defence dice, by the way, if not more so. Green dice have one less Evade result on them than the red dice do Hits and Crits so if you don't have a Focus token to spend on your dice then they're highly unpredictable. When you're tossing a handful of green dice at range 3 it feels like you're in great shape, but in reality even getting one evade result from four green dice is all you're really 'due'. Throw a Focus token on top of those dice, though, and you've a good chance of avoiding all incoming damage.
X-Wing looks like a game of positioning but ultimately it's not as one-dimensional as that. You need to strike a balance between getting your ships into the right place and then making that positioning count by supporting your dice rolls as much as possible. Although X-Wing looks like a maneuvering game the benefits of hugely outflying your opponent can be negligible compared to simply forcing all your dice into Hits and Evades.