On 30.4.2017 at 6:16 PM, iamfanboy said:

And people might use the T-65 if its base chassis were only 18 points - and keep the price of Biggs where he's at right now, but discount the other aces.

I just wish they'd bite the bullet and release X-Wing 2.0 already. Up the point value to 200 for more granularity, release card packs for each faction updating them, cut a lot of the dead weight upgrades (has Assault Missiles EVER made a top table?)... but the prevailing theory, that they can't release packs of Star Wars cards, is probably true. That's why Destiny is a dice game with cards, not the other way around. I'm sure they could come up with ways around it, but the will isn't there at FFG.

On 1.5.2017 at 5:17 AM, Darth Meanie said:

Yeah. Assault missiles are amazing. . .in Epic. Not everything needs to perform well in 100/6 to be useful for the game. OTOH, I agree 100% that a full-on revision of the game is well overdue.

In that case you can just replace Assault Missiles with every Astromech they ever printed except for 2 or 3 cards? There's also pilots noone ever uses, Elite Talents, other ordnance. The list of unused stuff is pretty long I think. 100% with you on getting 2.0 to be honest.

Ok I'm a bit confused here, yes I'd like to see a 2.0 version of the game, but why are folks saying they won't buy more ships. FFG isn't GW, which has a nasty habit of coming out with a new version of 40K (i.e. . just announced 8th ed.) and then making your current army unplayable. I can see faction card decks and some tweaking of rules, but what I don't see and maybe I'm just missing it here, whey would folks think they would need to buy new versions of the ships they already have??

14 minutes ago, Ghostrider58 said:

FFG isn't GW, which has a nasty habit of coming out with a new version of 40K (i.e. . just announced 8th ed.) and then making your current army unplayable.

You mean like how FFG did when they rebooted A Game of Thrones LCG?

15 minutes ago, Ghostrider58 said:

Ok I'm a bit confused here, yes I'd like to see a 2.0 version of the game, but why are folks saying they won't buy more ships. FFG isn't GW, which has a nasty habit of coming out with a new version of 40K (i.e. . just announced 8th ed.) and then making your current army unplayable. I can see faction card decks and some tweaking of rules, but what I don't see and maybe I'm just missing it here, whey would folks think they would need to buy new versions of the ships they already have??

If we're talking proper 2.0, there's a few precedents for FFG. There's Descent 2nd Ed., where the old models are still playable but whether you have them or not doesn't change a thing about the game being about the new components. There's Mansions of Madness, where again, you can use a few components from the first edition (namely, floor tiles and monster miniatures), but the game is really about the new stuff. There's also the Game of Thrones LCG, where 2.0 meant nothing from the old system was able to carry over (and this is probably the most applicable, because X-Wing shares the same living format).

Certainly, FFG isn't GW, but a "real" 2.0 reboot does almost certainly mean that the old stuff isn't usable any more. Mainly because of aforementioned balancing nightmare that a complete revamp brings with it if all the ships currently out are to stay in the game.

I find it really hard to envisage an X-Wing 2.0 where they launch the game with all the ships we currently have, and then go on to add even more mechanics/ships on top!

Part of the attraction of a 2.0 release is stripping back to basics with a smaller number of ships, and then exploring the new mechanics and ships as they're added over time.

1 hour ago, Ghostrider58 said:

Ok I'm a bit confused here, yes I'd like to see a 2.0 version of the game.....

1 hour ago, Stay On The Leader said:

You mean like how FFG did when they rebooted A Game of Thrones LCG?

1 hour ago, haslo said:

If we're talking proper 2.0, there's a few precedents for FFG. ....

1 hour ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I find it really hard to envisage an X-Wing 2.0 where they launch the game with all the ships we currently have.....

SNIP

I think you guys might be replying in the wrong thread?

1 hour ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Part of the attraction of a 2.0 release is stripping back to basics with a smaller number of ships, and then exploring the new mechanics and ships as they're added over time.

IMHO, part of the attraction of 2.0 is looking at the game as a whole at this moment, and making sure everything works well together, and possibly changing some core rules so that they do.

2.0 does mean bulldozing the house and rebuilding; it could mean doing a gut rehab to bringing everything up to spec.

21 minutes ago, Timathius said:

I think you guys might be replying in the wrong thread?

Absolutely. How silly of us.

On 2017-04-29 at 4:06 PM, haslo said:

Conversely, it looks to me like TIE Defenders actually have gotten a bit better since the nerf, because they're no longer part of the core meta lists one would expect, and fewer people are explicitly packing anti-Defender tech into their lists.

Problem is, the meta is full of the things that affects post nerf defenders: ships that are amazing blockers (Uboats...), ships that can apply stress (Asajj, Stressbot), ships that bypass defense (bomb kwings) and ships with so many red dices that they end up bypassing most ship offense (Fenn...)

The old defenders would balance part of that out by still being able to get an evade token. Now they cant. That's why people don't bring them and/or perform poorly with them.

On 2017-04-29 at 2:57 PM, LordBlades said:

That is actually wrong. The Meta will exist independent of netlisting simply because some things are better than the others and smart people will still figure it out.

It s was actually quite true. Nowadays most builds that dominate the meta were netlisted from the first guy who created them. Parattani was discovered by a guy (dont remember the name, sry) who posted it on the forum saying he would not play it because it was OP. From what i know the builder never actually won a tournament with it. It's people who netlisted his built that won with it.

Now because the list proved to be powerful in some tournament, more people saw it on the Internet and brough it. It started defining the meta...

So a list was played in tournament because of netlisting and became part of the meta because it had good results. Then people started to bring it more (netlisting) because it was good in the meta. Then because people played more and more with it (and win), it became a dominant list.

So yeah, netlisting is a big part of what define the meta just like the meta is influencing netlisting.

I stoped playing Magic with the Theros block. I was there when the first expansion came out. I remember having the first local tournament with the set just after a major event took place. It was a week or two after the xpac was released. During that major tournament, a guy won with a mono blue deck that he had netlisted prior from release (netlisting created the meta). The day right after that event there was 10 players with the same deck out of 50 participant (the meta created netlisting...). Of course that deck took 1, 2, 3rd and 4th place....

On 2017-04-29 at 2:24 PM, iamfanboy said:

But net-listing jerks aren't what a metagame is, and I'm getting pretty tired of people confusing the two, bellowing angrily at the ocean because they got splashed by it

What?? I'm a jerk because i want to compete but do not have the time to test a gazillion builds? I dont know if you have any base in psychology but studies have shown that wanting to win (or achieve) is human nature, especially for men. Being a jerk would be something like cheating to reach my goal, being upset/aggressive when i lose (to a netlist?) or overly expressive when i win (with a netlist?)...

On 2017-04-29 at 2:24 PM, iamfanboy said:

I know what it is to HATE the people who blindly go online and copy what teh winrars of teh last tournament played.

Have you ever though you might have a problem that is not related to gaming at all? Hating someone just because he does what most people do (by human nature) is not a behavior i would call sane... I suspect this angriness comes from somewhere else and is manifesting itself through a game environment.

On 2017-04-29 at 2:24 PM, iamfanboy said:

A metagame is the stuff outside the rules that affects the game itself.

A better definition would be: " any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game. Another definition refers to the game universe outside of the game itself. "

Here netlists would be in the "external factors" part of the definition.

On 2017-04-29 at 2:24 PM, iamfanboy said:

A netlist is a winning tournament list that people copy from the internet . One does not equal the other, even if netlisting comes from the metagame.

In any competitively played game , there are a finite number of solutions, and these solutions make up a metagame - either you're using the solutions, or countering those solutions. Netlisting comes from people using other people's solutions instead of creating their own. In a more flexible game, those solutions would be wildly varied, but for X-Wing those solutions are very limited (and obvious) for several reasons:

A netlist winning a tournament is both comming from the metagame and influencing it at the same time. It is not the only defining factor but it is certainly a big part of it.

On 4/29/2017 at 8:24 PM, iamfanboy said:

net-listing jerks aren't what a metagame is

I agree with everything you say but I don't really understand nor approve this undercurrent of contempt against the so-called "net-listing". It's like you (and others) imagine this arrogant kid who says, "Gee, I want to play this X-Wing game, except I don't really care, so I'll just do this thing everybody else does so I'll win easy". Newsflash: most of the times, this is not how it works.

First of all, they're called archetypes . A Magic player should know that. And archetypes come into being because they already existed within the game (or began existing after a new element was introduced) and multiple players at once realize that, then use them with success, which reinforces their universal assessment, which increases their popularity. It's not anybody's fault but the designers if A naturally fits with B in a way that generates efficiency. And if you play competitively, you need to pursue efficiency (otherwise, just don't play competitively).

I almost never play tournaments, I play weekly with a kitchen table group, and we routinely discover stuff that, we'll realize later, a thousand other people already discovered before us. You said it yourself, this is a game with very few solutions , and those solutions, especially the best of them, will be immediately evident to anybody that has a little experience with the game. (And in the web era, that means everybody will know it one day later). So, what do you do? Actively decide NOT to play the obvious interaction because it's just too obvious? Sure, you can do that and be proud of your, I don't even know what to call it, abstinence? But you can't demonize people who see 2 and 2 and immediately think 4.

Like, who first found out Soontir Fel works great with Push the Limit? I'd say, every single player who looked at that pilot and that card for more than 30 seconds. So what? One should refrain from playing PTL Soontir to be more "creative"? Nonsense. It was designed that way, it's the way it's supposed to be played. It's like demonizing players that insist on flying Phantoms with Advanced Cloaking Device.

Most of the so-called "net lists" have the very same level of self-evidence. Do we really think everybody playing Rebel Bombs is copying the list of the one guy who first made the incredibly hard connection between Sabine crew and bombs? Or realized a K-Wing has a crew slot and two bomb slots? So what, there's this one guy that was creative and everybody else is a sheep? No siree Bob. The real reason people play Rebel Bombs is that they printed Sabine crew to begin with, and the rest was a direct consequence that took close to zero thinking and emerged simultaneously in the mind of any single player that owned a Ghost expansion and a K-Wing. The actual list is an afterthought. And it gets tweaked now and then by players, anyway. Archetypes are never immutable. You can see it in Magic, one archetype generates its next iteration through fine adjustments, and those adjustments (that after a few generations might have made the archetype wildly different from its origin) are required by all the ways the competing archetypes are evolving, and so on and so forth, and this is the metagame. (And then there are non-archetype lists that predate on the archetypes of a given meta and are called "rogue lists"; but they're not any less deterministic, as they strictly depend on the meta).

tl;dr. Competitive archetypes come into existence because of the way a game is designed; a game is healthy (or healthier) when it allows more than just two or three archetypes to coexist at once.

11 minutes ago, Thormind said:

a guy won with a mono blue deck that he had netlisted prior from release (netlisting created the meta). The day right after that event there was 10 players with the same deck out of 50 participant (the meta created netlisting...)

I appreciate your post, but what you're describing here is slightly different, because it's what happens during release events, that span a week-end. A deck becomes quickly popular, but then the meta changes two weeks later when pros have time to test their studies (I did Magic comparisons too, to show how things happen in a huge, hugely competitive environment, but I'm not sure it really fits, because Magic has pro teams that go on retreat for a week to design the lists they'll play in the next part of the season, and we're talking sponsored guys who make a living out of it, it's not just a game for them anymore, so doing what they do is like taking the advice of a star tennis player who just suggested you how to improve your serve).

Also, playing a suggested list that was published before a release cannot exactly be called net-listing because it's not something that has been previously tested in an actual event, so you're actually taking a risk following that particular advice. If it pans out then it's not a case of "net-listing creating the meta" as much as it is a case of "a pro's intuition creating the meta". At the same time, "the meta creating net-listing" is sort of redundant, because the moment you're observing a meta you're aware of the lists that have been played with success, so the only way to avoid playing even partially the same stuff would be not being aware of the meta at all.

Quote

What?? I'm a jerk because i want to compete but do not have the time to test a gazillion builds?

And it's not even just that. What if I came up with an idea on my own and then found out it was already well-known and at the top of the meta? Should I be called a jerk because I still want to play with that list? (I'm sure there are people that would refuse to do it once they know it's not "unique" anymore).

1 hour ago, Kumagoro said:

I appreciate your post, but what you're describing here is slightly different, because it's what happens during release events, that span a week-end. A deck becomes quickly popular, but then the meta changes two weeks later when pros have time to test their studies (I did Magic comparisons too, to show how things happen in a huge, hugely competitive environment, but I'm not sure it really fits, because Magic has pro teams that go on retreat for a week to design the lists they'll play in the next part of the season, and we're talking sponsored guys who make a living out of it, it's not just a game for them anymore, so doing what they do is like taking the advice of a star tennis player who just suggested you how to improve your serve).

It wasnt the release but close to it. At release the most popular deck was a fast mono red agro deck. The major tournament was a pro "something". Basically it was the first competition after the release with top players. Everybody was waiting for it (as usual) to see what would be the best deck. That mono blue built was dominant for many months after the release.

1 hour ago, Kumagoro said:

Also, playing a suggested list that was published before a release cannot exactly be called net-listing because it's not something that has been previously tested in an actual event, so you're actually taking a risk following that particular advice. If it pans out then it's not a case of "net-listing creating the meta" as much as it is a case of "a pro's intuition creating the meta". At the same time, "the meta creating net-listing" is sort of redundant, because the moment you're observing a meta you're aware of the lists that have been played with success, so the only way to avoid playing even partially the same stuff would be not being aware of the meta at all.

We do not have the same definition then. For me net-listing is using, or be inspired by, a built you took from the internet and did not create. Even if it's from pro intuition, it's still a net list. And metagaming starts as soon as people know what kind of material is going to be released. You try to guess what is going to be powerful/popular and you either play that or try to find a counter to it...

All of that is happening outside of the game, so it correspont to the definition: " any strategy, action or method used in a game which transcends a prescribed ruleset, uses external factors to affect the game, or goes beyond the supposed limits or environment set by the game ". It does not have to be based on tournament result to be considered a part of the metagame.

1 hour ago, Kumagoro said:

And it's not even just that. What if I came up with an idea on my own and then found out it was already well-known and at the top of the meta? Should I be called a jerk because I still want to play with that list? (I'm sure there are people that would refuse to do it once they know it's not "unique" anymore).

100% agreed

2 hours ago, Kumagoro said:

And it's not even just that. What if I came up with an idea on my own and then found out it was already well-known and at the top of the meta? Should I be called a jerk because I still want to play with that list? (I'm sure there are people that would refuse to do it once they know it's not "unique" anymore).

1 hour ago, Thormind said:

100% agreed

This is an important aspect that I don't think people really remember. Just because someone arrives with a "netlist" doesn't mean they got it off the internet. This happened to a buddy of mine who worked out Palp Aces on his own shortly after the release of the Raider, but got "oh, you're bringing that list" comments at tournaments because someone else made it famous. Annoyed the crap out of him.

9 hours ago, Thormind said:

It s was actually quite true. Nowadays most builds that dominate the meta were netlisted from the first guy who created them. Parattani was discovered by a guy (dont remember the name, sry) who posted it on the forum saying he would not play it because it was OP. From what i know the builder never actually won a tournament with it. It's people who netlisted his built that won with it.

Now because the list proved to be powerful in some tournament, more people saw it on the Internet and brough it. It started defining the meta...

So a list was played in tournament because of netlisting and became part of the meta because it had good results. Then people started to bring it more (netlisting) because it was good in the meta. Then because people played more and more with it (and win), it became a dominant list.

So yeah, netlisting is a big part of what define the meta just like the meta is influencing netlisting.

Parattani and Dengaroo are exceptions: builds that can be traced clearly to a creator and were netlisted from that guy, mainly because they're specific and not very obvious combos.

Most combos in x-wing are pretty obvious however. Thinking of last year alone (both before and after Dengaroo/Parattani): Palp aces, triple U-boats, Defenders, Fenn+2 scouts with Attani, bombing Miranda, all of this is stuff good players can and have come up with on their own.

The way I see it, top-tier meta exists generally independent of the netlisting phenomenon (netlisting mainly shapes mid-tier meta), however, there are exceptions to this (namely Dengaroo and Parattani).

58 minutes ago, LordBlades said:

Parattani and Dengaroo are exceptions: builds that can be traced clearly to a creator and were netlisted from that guy, mainly because they're specific and not very obvious combos.

The degeneracy of Manaroo and Mindlink was obvious right from the box, at least to me and my friends; it took a few months to become apparent because of how broken triple Scouts were - and let's face it, even if the Lancer had been released then, U-Boats would have eaten Paratanni alive. A friend of mine (not a netlister!) was running Dengaroo practically unchanged from the Worlds List in... March? April? Of last year. I know there was a difference, but I can't for the life of me think what it was. Maybe something other than Countermeasures on Dengar? Might have been. But I do remember Zuckuss/Glitterstim on Dengar, with Manaroo feeding him plenty of Focus tokens.

9 hours ago, LordBlades said:

Most combos in x-wing are pretty obvious however. Thinking of last year alone (both before and after Dengaroo/Parattani): Palp aces, triple U-boats, Defenders, Fenn+2 scouts with Attani, bombing Miranda, all of this is stuff good players can and have come up with on their own.

List juggler is so helpful to see how true an information is. From the release of the Raider to the end of 2015, Palp was in 10th position in the upgrade category, behind Luke and C3P0. Palp Aces were in 4th position, behind Thug life, Brobots and Han/Jake. It's only in march 2016 that he took 1st place as an archetype and upgrade. It did take some time before everyone realized just how powerful he was and found the right build for him him.

Same thing for TLTs. They were released in august 2015 but it's only in november 2015 that they took 1st position.

Sabine (crew)? Two months after her release she was nowhere to be found. The Jumpmasters were dominating but the meta was also full of imperial aces. We all know now how powerful she is vs them. She was in 83rd position. It's only in october 2016 that she started to appear in top positions.

I think the same is going to happen with the rebel Tie fighter. More specifically Ashoka. Players are not realizing how powerful she can be and the proper built for her hasnt been found yet.

Some upgrades/ships are powerful from the start but not most of them. And even if players know something is good, it often take some time to find the built to exploit that the most.

It's easy to say that some stuff were evidently powerful from the start after they reached their max potential but lets play a little game... :-) Is Jabba a powerful upgrade? Before the release of the next wave, what is THE BEST possible built with him? Will that build reach top positions? A lot of player think he's powerful (i do) and are throwing around some potential builds. But no one knows exactly what build is the best and how far it can go. Outside of a few ships/upgrade (Uboats, Phantom, Han...) most release look exactly like that.

10 minutes ago, Thormind said:

List juggler is so helpful to see how true an information is. From the release of the Raider to the end of 2015, Palp was in 10th position in the upgrade category, behind Luke and C3P0. Palp Aces were in 4th position, behind Thug life, Brobots and Han/Jake. It's only in march 2016 that he took 1st place as an archetype and upgrade. It did take some time before everyone realized just how powerful he was and found the right build for him him.

Same thing for TLTs. They were released in august 2015 but it's only in november 2015 that they took 1st position.

Sabine (crew)? Two months after her release she was nowhere to be found. The Jumpmasters were dominating but the meta was also full of imperial aces. We all know now how powerful she is vs them. She was in 83rd position. It's only in october 2016 that she started to appear in top positions.

I think the same is going to happen with the rebel Tie fighter. More specifically Ashoka. Players are not realizing how powerful she can be and the proper built for her hasnt been found yet.

Some upgrades/ships are powerful from the start but not most of them. And even if players know something is good, it often take some time to find the built to exploit that the most.

It's easy to say that some stuff were evidently powerful from the start after they reached their max potential but lets play a little game... :-) Is Jabba a powerful upgrade? Before the release of the next wave, what is THE BEST possible built with him? Will that build reach top positions? A lot of player think he's powerful (i do) and are throwing around some potential builds. But no one knows exactly what build is the best and how far it can go. Outside of a few ships/upgrade (Uboats, Phantom, Han...) most release look exactly like that.

Phone is terrible at splitting quotes, so sorry for answering in block.

Palp: I think you're looking at it wrong. You should not look at Palpatine in the global card hierarchy,but in the Imperial card hierarchy. Unless something is truly game warping, I don't think many players will switch factions. Per your data Palp aces was in 4th position behind 3 Rebel and Scum archetypes, which makes it the top Imperial archetype. To me that means Empire players did recognise Palp's power almost immediately.

Sabine: of course it was nowhere to be seen in U-boat age. What would you put Sabine on that didn't get murdered by triple U-boats?

Rebel TIE: Ahsoka and Rex are already the top 2 TIE pilots, ahead if ALL Imperial pilots, so I'd say people have realized rebel TIEs are good.

Jabba: in my view Jabba is currently NOT a powerful upgrade in standard play. You need to use an YV-666 and spend 2/3 crew slots (which are the YV's main source of utility) in order to bring him and currently there is no illicit/ship combo where adding 1 use to the illicit will outweigh the cost of Jabba and a semi-crippled YV-666. I'm almost certain that, until new illicits and/or new 2 crew ships are released Jabba will not be a competitive powerhouse.

2 hours ago, LordBlades said:

Phone is terrible at splitting quotes, so sorry for answering in block.

Palp: I think you're looking at it wrong. You should not look at Palpatine in the global card hierarchy,but in the Imperial card hierarchy. Unless something is truly game warping, I don't think many players will switch factions. Per your data Palp aces was in 4th position behind 3 Rebel and Scum archetypes, which makes it the top Imperial archetype. To me that means Empire players did recognise Palp's power almost immediately.

Sabine: of course it was nowhere to be seen in U-boat age. What would you put Sabine on that didn't get murdered by triple U-boats?

Rebel TIE: Ahsoka and Rex are already the top 2 TIE pilots, ahead if ALL Imperial pilots, so I'd say people have realized rebel TIEs are good.

Jabba: in my view Jabba is currently NOT a powerful upgrade in standard play. You need to use an YV-666 and spend 2/3 crew slots (which are the YV's main source of utility) in order to bring him and currently there is no illicit/ship combo where adding 1 use to the illicit will outweigh the cost of Jabba and a semi-crippled YV-666. I'm almost certain that, until new illicits and/or new 2 crew ships are released Jabba will not be a competitive powerhouse.

Pretty much this.

I think another problem is that the playtesters themselves are ahead of the normal metagame by 2 waves at least, and they seem to downplay broken interactions because of it - their attitude is, "In the next wave, the fix is coming out, so it'll be fine ." There's always a fix coming out, and it's never enough to actually fix the game.

4 hours ago, LordBlades said:

Palp: I think you're looking at it wrong. You should not look at Palpatine in the global card hierarchy,but in the Imperial card hierarchy. Unless something is truly game warping, I don't think many players will switch factions. Per your data Palp aces was in 4th position behind 3 Rebel and Scum archetypes, which makes it the top Imperial archetype. To me that means Empire players did recognise Palp's power almost immediately.

He was game warping... Palp Aces was probably the only built capable of standing close to the old scouts. It ended up being clearly superior to the two builds that were on 2nd and 3rd position. Palp being behind Luke in upgrades positions clearly shows that the meta wasnt evaluating properly the cards power level at release and for months afterward.

4 hours ago, LordBlades said:

Sabine: of course it was nowhere to be seen in U-boat age. What would you put Sabine on that didn't get murdered by triple U-boats?

There were other archetypes played back then even if nothing could really compete against U-boats. Look at the amount of fragile ship that were present. She would definitely had strong results in that meta but nobody realized how good she was. If i follow your logic regarding Palp/Imperial, there would have been many more rebel players using her (with miranda...) than what the results show.

4 hours ago, LordBlades said:

Rebel TIE: Ahsoka and Rex are already the top 2 TIE pilots, ahead if ALL Imperial pilots, so I'd say people have realized rebel TIEs are good.

The best archetype with her is in 7th position. IMO she has the potential to be higher than that.

I could give other examples as well. The most recent example would be the Shadowcaster. IMO Asajj/Ketsu are superior to Dengar but it took some time before they reached the top spots. 2 months after release it was only in 10th position.

4 hours ago, LordBlades said:

Jabba: in my view Jabba is currently NOT a powerful upgrade in standard play. You need to use an YV-666 and spend 2/3 crew slots (which are the YV's main source of utility) in order to bring him and currently there is no illicit/ship combo where adding 1 use to the illicit will outweigh the cost of Jabba and a semi-crippled YV-666. I'm almost certain that, until new illicits and/or new 2 crew ships are released Jabba will not be a competitive powerhouse.

Time will tell... Who knows, a bunch of Z75 with hot shot blasters could be a thing...

Just keep in mind that when it comes to meta-wing, "7th position" or "4th position" aren't hard facts of any sort. These positions are merely based on a fuzzy logic thing that tries to incorporate how often soemthing is played, how well it performs when played, and the size and quality of its competition when it's played, into one value that I called "magic" exactly because of that...

I really need to find the time to add some more data crunching. Particularly MajorJuggler's two dimensional graph that plots performance against occurrence will be really interesting.

43 minutes ago, Thormind said:

He was game warping... Palp aces were probably the only built capable of standing close to the old scouts. It ended up being clearly superior to the two builds that was on 2nd and 3rd position. Palp being behind Luke in upgrades positions clearly shows that the meta wasnt evaluating the cards power level at release and for months afterward.

Palp was not game warping at release. Rebel regen and stress control was handling palp aces just fine (Worlds 2015 final was between 2 rebel regen lists, one with stress control). Why would a Rebel player switch to Palp when he had, at the time, superior options ? Only when U-boats pushed most Palp aces counters out did Palp really become meta warping.

43 minutes ago, Thormind said:

There were other archetypes played back then even if nothing could really compete against U-boats. Look at the amount of fragile ship that were present. She would definitely had strong results in that meta but nobody realized how good she was. If i follow your logic regarding Palp/Imperial, there would have been many more rebel players using her (with miranda...) than what the results show.

Sabine was a bad choice in the U-boat meta, because building a bomb list mean you'd be taking an auto-loss almost every time you'd encounter U-boats. I wouldn't put much stock into what rebels were playing during that time, because they were competitively dead, and most good players (including Paul Heaver) correctly recognized that. It was one of those meta-warping times that caused competitive people to switch factions.

43 minutes ago, Thormind said:

The best archetype with her is in 7th position. IMO she has the potential to be higher than that.

Possibly. 7th however indicates people recognize it correctly as a good ship.

43 minutes ago, Thormind said:

I could give other examples as well. The most recent example would be the Shadowcaster. IMO Asajj/Ketsu are superior to Dengar but it took some time before they reached the top spots. 2 months after release it was only in 10th position.

When Assajj/Ketsu were released Dengaroo was still a thing. Also, see above. 10th place still means a good ship IMO. It;s also debatable whether Assajj or Ketsu are superior to Dengar and they should place higher

43 minutes ago, Thormind said:

Time will tell... Who knows, a bunch of Z75 with hot shot blasters could be a thing...

'a bunch' means at most 4 at 100 points after you include the YV-666 with Jabba. Most lists can at a minimum PS kill one before it shoots (even if you use PS 3 Z-95s), and then PS kill another before it shoots the 2nd time. This means you've brought Jabba to double the hot shot blasters of 2 Z-95s. Not that impressive.