They dice were above average (not ungodly), the 6 hits from the jess / biggs fist volley, to the many rolled evades.

Regarding the 2 hard, I honestly think Nand could have forgotten about expertise . Maybe he was banking on just k4 kicking in?

Either way, Justin proved himself to be an excellent pilot, and extremely deserving of the title. It's a little sad people will remember this as the year jumpmasters won (yet again), and not Justin .

Just now, chervorlovesu said:

They dice were above average (not ungodly), the 6 hits from the jess / biggs fist volley, to the many rolled evades.

Regarding the 2 hard, I honestly think Nand could have forgotten about expertise . Maybe he was banking on just k4 kicking in?

Either way, Justin proved himself to be an excellent pilot, and extremely deserving of the title. It's a little sad people will remember this as the year jumpmasters won (yet again), and not Justin .

Justin was clinical. Very impressed.

He didn't bring Manaroo or Attani and I think his list will forever pay tribute to him: Phuaboats .
He definitely gets all of the props and it makes me want to play Scum (which is really something, 'cause I hate Scum these days)

20 minutes ago, WAC47 said:

Edit: whoops, talking about the wrong move. I think that turn was to get Miranda's firing arc on target so she could fire the plasma. Giving her the best chance to regen while still doing damage?

It was the Plasma shot, yeah, that must be it.

25 minutes ago, Rinzler in a Tie said:

Justin was clinical. Very impressed.

He didn't bring Manaroo or Attani and I think his list will forever pay tribute to him: Phuaboats .
He definitely gets all of the props and it makes me want to play Scum (which is really something, 'cause I hate Scum these days)

I came in after the Miranda move just before her destruction so I can't speak to dice before then but really liked the precision flying. Having two X-wings on the board that late in a game was pretty awesome. Having two of them on the table in the Finals speaks loads about Nand's ability. I wish I could see the whole match from the beginning.

2 minutes ago, Stoneface said:

I came in after the Miranda move just before her destruction so I can't speak to dice before then but really liked the precision flying. Having two X-wings on the board that late in a game was pretty awesome. Having two of them on the table in the Finals speaks loads about Nand's ability. I wish I could see the whole match from the beginning.

I'm not sure - it was Biggs and Jess. We're used to seeing Biggs all the time and maybe we need to get over the line on the fact we're going to see Jess all the time as well because her pilot ability is also very good.

The whole match is still up on Twitch...

36 minutes ago, Rinzler in a Tie said:

Justin was clinical. Very impressed.

He didn't bring Manaroo or Attani and I think his list will forever pay tribute to him: Phuaboats .
He definitely gets all of the props and it makes me want to play Scum (which is really something, 'cause I hate Scum these days)

Come on @Rinzler in a Tie , stop beating your head against a wall and start flying Scum. I'm not taking anything away from Justin --he is an awesome pilot and would beat me soundly I'm sure-- but Scum is not only fun to fly, but it's so much easier than Imperials right now. Rebels are great too, but it takes careful thought, planning and concentration akin to how Imperials were. Scum however, it's relaxing to fly those open dials, stack lots of tokens, and throw lots of dice. Sweet victory......even as a criminal, haha.

Just now, clanofwolves said:

Come on @Rinzler in a Tie , stop beating your head against a wall and start flying Scum. I'm not taking anything away from Justin --he is an awesome pilot and would beat me soundly I'm sure-- but Scum is not only fun to fly, but it's so much easier than Imperials right now. Rebels are great too, but it takes careful thought, planning and concentration akin to how Imperials were. Scum however, it's relaxing to fly those open dials, stack lots of tokens, and throw lots of dice. Sweet victory......even as a criminal, haha.

That all sounds great lol
I'm still trying to make RAC viable, but have started playing 100-point Corran (Corran, Biggs, Ashoka) and love it - Scum feels so dirty because you know it's just a bit outside of what a reasonable person would call the power curve. And don't get me started on the JM5k dial ...

1 minute ago, Rinzler in a Tie said:

That all sounds great lol
I'm still trying to make RAC viable, but have started playing 100-point Corran (Corran, Biggs, Ashoka) and love it - Scum feels so dirty because you know it's just a bit outside of what a reasonable person would call the power curve. And don't get me started on the JM5k dial ...

I know, I know. I still fly Imps almost exclusively in pint games. It just isn't fun in a competitive setting as you know you are coming to a gunfight with a knife. Good to hear you're trying a Rebel Synergy list, they can hold up better under the weight of the Jumpmaster than anything in the silver and black post nerf. I actually have good luck with a Corran/Dash list, but it still is mentally draining for a +/- 33% win tally. I am also delving into Armada and it is a neat distraction from the competitive Jumpmaster nonsense.

I don't want to derail this thread, but I think FFG's last errata on Palp and X7s might have been incorrect as those cards have now been proven to be the only thing that kept Imperials competitive, right? (I'll start a new thread as to not mess this up)...so ignore these sentences please.

My internet sucks where I am (not going to try to load twitch) what is the lists for this final round.

3 minutes ago, Cubanboy said:

My internet sucks where I am (not going to try to load twitch) what is the lists for this final round.

From MajorJuggler's results page:

Winner

(#12) Justin Phua

Dengar + Expertise + EM + Plasma + K4 + Unhinged + title + GC

Tel Trevura + VI + EM + Plasma + K4 + Unhinged + GC

Runner Up

(#2) Nand Torfs

Miranda + EM + Plasma + Autoblaster + GC + Ion bombs + Cluster Mines + Rey

Biggs + R4-D6 + IA

Jess Pava + Pattern Analyzer + M9-GA + IA

37 minutes ago, SabineKey said:

Runner Up

(#2) Nand Torfs

Miranda + EM + Plasma + Autoblaster + GC + Ion bombs + Cluster Mines + Rey

Biggs + R4-D6 + IA

Jess Pava + Pattern Analyzer + M9-GA + IA

1 minute ago, wurms said:

But man, those system open flings she was on!

She's in good company. Howlrunner, Whisper... Corran Horn.

7 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I didn't get Miranda turning to face the rock rather than like a 1 bank or something. Why did he do that?

This was Nands only mistake. Pretty sure he'd have won if he'd gone right instead.

12 minutes ago, WAC47 said:

She's in good company. Howlrunner, Whisper... Corran Horn.

Yo, Whisper is fine. Shut your mouth.

8 minutes ago, Rinzler in a Tie said:

Yo, Whisper is fine. Shut your mouth.

My mistake, Whisper was only Worlds runner up once. It's really only Howlrunner (13, 14), Corran (15, 16) and Miranda (16, 17) in the "forever bridesmaid" category.

Oh and Whisper is plenty fine. Don't get me wrong.

What strategy would you have used to beat Justin's list with Nands list? That seemed like just a brutal matchup for Nand.

22 hours ago, Rinzler in a Tie said:

Definitely interested in that statistical breakdown. The X-Wings were certainly were above the damage curve.

And I'd wager that Nand's green dice were generous, too.

I've done the analysis and you're correct that Nand's dice were hot, but I don't think it had much influence. By the second round of firing he was approximately 6 damage ahead of expected, roughly three on offense and 3 on defense (ie. he'd dealt 3 more than expected to Tel and received 3 less than expected, spread across his ships). What happened from there was that his dice cooled a little only to return on Biggs hanging in there at the end. He finished about 6.5 damage ahead of expected results.

BUT

The 3 incremental damage on Tel didn't achieve anything as Justin then played Tel to protect him, so the extra damage never turned into an advantage on the table. The 3 extra damage he dodged early on didn't make much difference either as his ships ultimately all got overkilled (I believe) and would have died anyway to average rolls.

My main take-away from the final when I watched it back a second time is just how strong Justin's decision to bump into Jess repeatedly was. Whenever he did so he still got TL/Expertise but effectively reduced Nand to a 70pts list, and that more than made up for the dice variance that Nand was getting.

Good play beat good dice, at least in this case.

2 hours ago, SOTL said:

I've done the analysis and you're correct that Nand's dice were hot, but I don't think it had much influence. By the second round of firing he was approximately 6 damage ahead of expected, roughly three on offense and 3 on defense (ie. he'd dealt 3 more than expected to Tel and received 3 less than expected, spread across his ships). What happened from there was that his dice cooled a little only to return on Biggs hanging in there at the end. He finished about 6.5 damage ahead of expected results.

BUT

The 3 incremental damage on Tel didn't achieve anything as Justin then played Tel to protect him, so the extra damage never turned into an advantage on the table. The 3 extra damage he dodged early on didn't make much difference either as his ships ultimately all got overkilled (I believe) and would have died anyway to average rolls.

My main take-away from the final when I watched it back a second time is just how strong Justin's decision to bump into Jess repeatedly was. Whenever he did so he still got TL/Expertise but effectively reduced Nand to a 70pts list, and that more than made up for the dice variance that Nand was getting.

Good play beat good dice, at least in this case.

Awesome - thanks for the breakdown!

That seems accurate - there was a lull in Nand's dice, where I like to think his piloting was on full display. Justin's list and flying was amazing - it prompted me to order a second Jumpmaster (yes, that's right - I still don't possess two Jumpmasters...)

I really liked Nand's strategy of putting Jess and Biggs up front first, holding back Miranda.

Justin's ships would be picking up the free TLs from K4, so the torpedoes in that first exchance made sense.

For Nand it meant that once he committed Miranda to the combat that half of Justin's ordnance was spent.

Both played a great game, congrats to Justin and Nand.

3 minutes ago, timgronneberg said:

I really liked Nand's strategy of putting Jess and Biggs up front first, holding back Miranda.

Justin's ships would be picking up the free TLs from K4, so the torpedoes in that first exchance made sense.

For Nand it meant that once he committed Miranda to the combat that half of Justin's ordnance was spent.

Both played a great game, congrats to Justin and Nand.

It was a great game, worthy of being the final table. I'm not even mad Scum won because it wasn't Attani. The JM5k is problematic, but the piloting in that game over removed any doubt that the players make the list, and not the other way around.

On 5/8/2017 at 9:22 AM, chervorlovesu said:

It's a little sad people will remember this as the year jumpmasters won (yet again), and not Justin .

Eh, that's the trade-off, though. If you fly Top Meta builds, you can't expect much glory or recognition, and better be expecting to just feed the complaint fire.

So winning with something creative and unusual is the way to really get recognition, but of course the trade-off is that stuff that's not top-meta is out of the meta for a reason: it's typically a handicap to take it unless you can find something really impressive no one's uncovered yet, e.g. Dengaroo.

When Jeff first unveiled Dengaroo during the Regionals last year, he and his list got a lot of attention, because it was something crazy and unexpected and creative. Granted Contracted Scouts had been ripping up the meta, but no one had yet bothered much with unique Jumpmasters, Zuckuss Crew, etc. By the time Nand won Worlds with Dengaroo, the public reaction was basically just "meh, another #@%$ win for Dengaroo." The cost of net-listing top squads is that, even if you do win, you're not likely to get the same sort of positive attention as someone who pulls off a win with something novel or wacky. Sadly, the competitive meta of X-Wing doesn't leave much room for novel and wacky builds to perform consistently well, so they're kind of like hunting for diamonds in the ruff.

I've no problem with that winning list at all.

Compared to the abusive nonsense of Dengaroo this is a very straight forward X-Wing list, flown well.

23 hours ago, WAC47 said:

She's in good company. Howlrunner, Whisper... Corran Horn.

Yea they even let her shoot a couple times. Corran never fired a shot in his two second place finishes.