1 hour ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I don't think I've gotten any worse as a player (I went 6-1 in Swiss at my second Regional that year and made the cut, once I set aside the creative unique squad), nor do I think I've lost touch with the meta, but now my efforts to fly something neat, thematic, and creative end in not even getting the Top 64 "participation card," heheh, when in the old days I always felt like I had a real shot at making T16 cuts, even with novel jank, as long as I understood the meta well enough and flew well...... I wish experience and on-table decision making played more of a role than they do now in determining the winner of a game, but perhaps there is value in having a much lower skill ceiling so that new players can jump in and become competitive much more quickly. I don't like it, as I think it greatly undervalues skill, experience, and good-decision making, but maybe I'm on the wrong side of the fence on this.

I find this topic very interesting. I think we could separate the discussion into competitive and casual with list building being an integral part of each. I personally think this forum often sets competitive and casual at odds with each other when they are two distinct ways of playing that are not in conflict with each other. Play HoTAC and have fun. However, for many players it is a lot of fun to improve your game and compete against others who are also trying to do their best. Tournaments offer a way to test your skills and list building against others.

I hear AllWingsStandingBy saying that the competitive list building is not as much fun these days and that is a fair comment as part of the fun at a tournament is bringing something that you have put together that has a fair chance against other builds. In chess, the build is always the same so it is the tactics and strategy of the game that one must improve at. If you think that only the meta lists have a fair chance of winning then I think there should be no hesitation to take one of those lists or a derivative of it and test your flying and tactics against others.

One thing that I think benefits other competitive games is a handicap system where a stronger player can challenge a weaker player to a game and there is a handicap system that allows the two to play a game of x wing with a somewhat equal chance of winning. I don’t know how this would work in x wing, whether it be a squad point reduction for the stronger player or a squad point increase for the weaker one or something else.

6 minutes ago, Zatoichi77 said:

One thing that I think benefits other competitive games is a handicap system where a stronger player can challenge a weaker player to a game and there is a handicap system that allows the two to play a game of x wing with a somewhat equal chance of winning. I don’t know how this would work in x wing , whether it be a squad point reduction for the stronger player or a squad point increase for the weaker one or something else.

Oh, that part is easy. For the better player, by faction, that player must fly all. . .

Kihraxz (Scum)

X-Wings (Rebel)

TIE Punishers (Imperial)

16 hours ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

Try playing some Epic, or better still, Team Epic. While this won't address your issue of winning less often in standard play, it will remind you just how gosh darn fun X-Wing is at its core.

For me (and I probably could speak for some of the other local players), Epic does a much better job of capturing the spirit of X-Wing. First of all, you have larger squadrons so the game looks and feels more like a real in-universe engagement (instead of almost every encounter being between a couple of freighters and maybe a lone fighter). The map is larger, so it doesn't have that "circling a fishbowl" feel of Standard 3x3 X-Wing. There are more ships on the board, so there's much less of a Joust-k-turn-repeat feel to the game, since after passing through some enemy fighters a group of ships may keep pressing on to keep strafing other targets in the enemy fleet (as opposed to needing to turn around or give chase to that one ship on the enemy fleet you're going to be chasing and trying to kill for 45 minutes like a standard game). There is much more room for list diversity, and you often see a lot more ships and pilots and upgrades getting used in Epic than you'd see in Standard. I, personally, love the U-Wing, and Heff Tobber with Jyn Erso is a super valuable asset to some of my favorite Rebel Epic Squads. That being said, Tobber (or any U-Wing) is an awful addition to any standard X-Wing squad, where their utility is not nearly valuable enough. This is true for so many ships, and Epic lets you get a lot more of your collection onto the table than the razor-thin opportunities in the Standard Meta Game. Also, things that are degenerative and break standard X-Wing (think classic Whisper or Fat Han or Palp-Fel back in the day) have much less of an impact in Epic. In a Standard game, you have to kill your opponent's whole fleet to reliably win, so lists with nigh-impossible-to-kill ships that can dodge two or three arcs and/or shrug off two or three attacks per round are devastatingly effective against 100 points of ships. In Epic, on the other hand, if you were to pair against a Whisper, you have two options (1) Ignore her entirely, since you don't need to kill her to win a 400 vs 400 game, and she's only making one attack a round, trans: she's not going to table your squad like she might in standard, or (2) go ahead and try to kill her, you've got a lot more guns on the table so her ability to shrug off a couple attacks per turn won't save her if she's trying to engage 300 points of ships.

These all make Epic feel much more fresh and more thematic than standard X-Wing, in my opinion. Most importantly, this makes it more fun, and the narrative element of an Epic game often makes it fun and cinematic to win or lose. In Standard, it's not uncommon for a good squadron with a decent player to table a worse squadron being flown by another decent player, and these sorts of games are demoralizing. In Epic, even the losing side usually gets to shoot down quite a few ships, which is fun.

If I could like this post more than once, I would. I started playing HotAC with the local group, and they really liked it, but now they want to take a break to practice for Store Championships. Sigh. I really want to introduce them to Team Epic because I know they'll love it!

31 minutes ago, Parakitor said:

If I could like this post more than once, I would. I started playing HotAC with the local group, and they really liked it, but now they want to take a break to practice for Store Championships. Sigh. I really want to introduce them to Team Epic because I know they'll love it!

I'm going to like your post about liking the post, and since I liked the OP, it's kinda like I liked the OP twice, right?

7 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

I'm going to like your post about liking the post, and since I liked the OP, it's kinda like I liked the OP twice, right?

I like it!

I had like 2 month losing streak few years back partly because my dice rolled only blanks that time, but I just kept on playing. I played some thematic lists (like Vader + Black Squadron or Luke + X-Wings) because it didn't matter what I flew because I was going to lose anyway. Luckily there hasn't really been that much netlisting where I live and play. Our "meta" is no meta at all, we have pretty good mix of casual and competitive players. At least we get to play against variery of different lists and usually people play same list only when training for bigger tournaments like Regionals that don't happen that often..

Eventually it started to get better for me.. just in time for tournament season .

Long losing streaks aren't fun and surely they test your motivation to play the game. Sure it is fun to play the game but it isn't fun anymore when you lose every game for few months. Haven't had that big of a slump after that period.

Go outside and break something! It'll make you feel better, trust me....

So I started this topic but have recently discussed it with someone and made some opinionated conclusions.

1) First and foremost is that I generally don't Net list. I hate it. For example I used to play fat Han and Jake but then it did well at last year's worlds and people started to play it so I stopped. Everyone is Net listing though so their tried-and-true lists go up against my new creative list which only has a few games of testing. Therefore without a meta or net list I just loose.

2) with the way this last year has been arranged with worlds, regionals, then getting ready for worlds again followed closely by store championships, there has been no break from what I call "tournament prepping." A buddy of mine hasn't flown anything but the same list since our last regionals almost four months ago. Another guy I played against only brought net lists to the store to practice with for store championship season. There hasn't been a break for people to try and get creative.

3) although I'd love to try new formats of X-Wing, the people who show up on X-Wing night show up to practice their tournament lists and therefore usually don't want to try different formats or fly anything janky. I try vassel and it's practically the same there.

4) the pressure to win tournaments has grown with the community and that usually means people don't fly their own lists, but rather fly what is meta at the moment.

In conclusion the game is just at a very competitive stage and there isn't a lot of options in other people minds because they have their eyes on the prize. I love the competitiveness of this game but I also love theory crafting and building new and unique lists... it just seems that people don't want to do that as much anymore.

Also i so I just want to point out that I do play Hotac and find it very fun, but the rest of the time it's business as usual with competitive games. And also to the people that say just enjoy the game and don't get caught up on loosing, I hear you, I do, it's just that when your list gets destroyed after 3 rounds of combat and the match wasn't even close, it leaves a sour taste in your mouth because you didn't even get a chance to achieve your "goals" or test out the new list to its full potential.

im taking a step back from the game to try and clear my head. But I agree the meta is all about net listing and it makes casual lists hard to use. But that's just my opinion...

This might help: watch Mighty Ducks seven times in a row, followed by a few rounds of Bad News Bears

Bombay: "You think losing is funny?" Averman: "Well, not at first, but once you get the hang of it."

But on a slightly more serious note, it does seem frustrating how certain game mechanics get "net decked" everywhere. I'm new enough where I can't really have winning or losing streaks, but something that encourages me is Nand Torf's 2017 list. Sure it had Miranda and Biggs, but it seemed pretty atypical. I mean, everyone maligns X-Wings (I still think they need a buff), but a T-65 and a T-70 made the World's finals! Not sure how that translates to local metas, but worth a thought.

Also:

7 minutes ago, HanScottFirst said:

This might help: watch Mighty Ducks seven times in a row, followed by a few rounds of Bad News Bears

Bombay: "You think losing is funny?" Averman: "Well, not at first, but once you get the hang of it."

But on a slightly more serious note, it does seem frustrating how certain game mechanics get "net decked" everywhere. I'm new enough where I can't really have winning or losing streaks, but something that encourages me is Nand Torf's 2017 list. Sure it had Miranda and Biggs, but it seemed pretty atypical. I mean, everyone maligns X-Wings (I still think they need a buff), but a T-65 and a T-70 made the World's finals! Not sure how that translates to local metas, but worth a thought.

Also:

Yes Nand is a great player but once his list made finals at worlds, it became a net list.

2 hours ago, Sir13scott said:

In conclusion the game is just at a very competitive stage and there isn't a lot of options in other people minds because they have their eyes on the prize. I love the competitiveness of this game but I also love theory crafting and building new and unique lists... it just seems that people don't want to do that as much anymore.

I think your conclusion is sound. I also don't see FFG doing much of anything to promote XWM as something other than a sporting event.

X-Wing for fun is definitely a DIY project; lucky for us, there are a lot of great people out there willing to generously donate their time, energy, creativity, and enthusiasm for X-Wing the Star Wars Game (not available in stores) to the rest of us.

Easy. Just blame the meta.

I haven't been doing as well as I used to either. Up until this time last year, the worst I'd ever finished at a tournament was Top 8. Now, I haven't made the cut in...well, over a year. Not quite sure why.

But recently, I've just been flying ridiculous lists. You can't feel bad about losing when you're running two attack shuttles and an A-Wing, but you can feel good if you actually win with it. Last week, I flew just Corran and Jake. It was an 82 point list, but dammit, I had fun. That's all that really counts.

On ‎5‎/‎19‎/‎2017 at 7:30 AM, heychadwick said:

There are quite a few things you can do that would be still playing X-wing, but just differently.

• Heroes of the Aturi Cluster is awesome, but it's also CO-OP, so you are all on the same side. It's a way to play without anyone "losing", unless you all fail the mission!
• Epic is great (as AWSB stated) and really feels more like Star Wars. Go with as many generics as possible.
• Put down 20 obstacles! It's a lot of fun when you are half trying to not hit something and half trying to shoot each other down. This one is more fun than I thought it would be.
• Play something like 200 pts with All Generics. Make it a big game about blowing stuff up. Should be fun, even if you lose.
• There are A LOT of missions to fly out there. There are official ones and all of Mission Control. Look at the top rated ones.
• Play the campaigns in the Epic ships. They are pretty fun and get you used to the epic ships.
• Mario Kart X-wing! Mario Kart, Wee!
• Have you done Dagobah Dave's Trench Run? He even redid it and it's even better than before. Who wouldn't want to play this? You can't get more Star Wars than this.

In short, try playing the game a different way. It's still the same game, but feels pretty different. Sometimes you figure out something unique that actually helps you in regular 100/6 play, as well.

If you haven't tried the Hunger Games scenario, that's quite a bit of fun also.