7 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

I get it. you think that as long as there are at least 4 viable archetypes, that it is OK to have 95% of the pilots be utter garbage, and that constitutes good game balance. Since "good game balance" is a completely made-up and undefined term, you are of course entitled to your opinion. However a large number of others do not share your opinion and are leaving the game or at the very least getting frustrated. Your definition of what "good game balance" is, and dying on that hill will be a Pyrrhic victory if everyone else leaves.

About 20 minutes into the actual discussions about balance, I realized that, but also knew it going in. Have you seen an exodus from the game? My local area (Southeastern United States) is still adding new faces, and very few of the old have left. I chalk this up to the prevelance of casual formats that let us play all the ships.

Numbers have been up and down. But frustration is high. Anecdotally, I only played in one store championship this season, and I think that'll be it for me. Granted I went 6-0 and won, so that helps make the decision easier... but really it's just hard justifying spending an entire day or evening flying against the same stuff over and over and over again. In today's text message chain with my gaming buddy who also won a Regional, he is saying the same thing. Our TO is saying the same thing. Heck, everyone is making jokes about the fact that Jumpmasters are too good, simultaneously complaining about it but flying them anyway. We have people that want to try different things, even try old things, but they can't. It's like being constrained in a straight jacket. It's a game, and when it stops being fun then people stop playing, and when they stop playing they stop buying.

Attendance numbers for Store Championships is down this year over last, but that could be because of summer.

3 hours ago, Jdling said:

Again, what needs fixed? They didn't ban any ships from casual play.

Like I said, ships to be competitive in the tournament scene. A company should work to keep older ships at least relevant, not hang them out to dry like you think they should. Notice How TLT benefited the Y-wing? Or Unguided rockets and bomblet generator are going to help the TIE Punisher? Or Autothrusters For the TIE Interceptor/A-wing? It helps the older ships keep up and the newer ships have appeal.

I never said anything about casual play, that's a whole different experience.

8 hours ago, Jetfire said:

I wouldn't quote MTG for good design concepts. They benefited more from being a first mover in the market than from solid design and later from solid marketing. You can run a successful business without necessarily making the game balanced.

This is true to an extent. Certainly truer than designers would like to think. However!

The best marketing in the world can't sell total crud. It can help, but it can't sell a bad game for as long as MtG has been around. Heck! New Coke didn't even last a year. And Suicide Squad was a commercial failure. (Conversely lacking marketing and quality is no guarantee of failure: Hasbro has also been selling Monopoly for about a century, and without any real marketing or mechanical revamp. Your guess is as good as mine there.)

There were enough fast followers to Magic that if any of them had been significantly better games- and had Magic itself not (presumably) improved in response, We'd be talking about another game right now. As a for instance: Everquest came first. And it's still around. But it does not have the MMO market or mindshare that World of Warcraft has.

Indeed, some of those fast followers are still around! For instance: Pokemon the card game came out a few years after Magic. This strongly implies that Magic faces some strong category opposition and that network effects alone (you tend to play what your friends are playing, regardless of a weak preference for another game) aren't enough to explain why Magic remains successful.

The fact that Magic is still around 24 years later means that they're still attracting _new_ players. That means that there is something important that they're doing correctly beyond being first, having good network effects (which is part of what being first gives you, TBH), and having incredibly marketing. Those lessons might not apply to X-Wing, but it's useful to try and figure out what those lessons might be.

2 hours ago, MajorJuggler said:

Also, to your comment, 11 of the Top 16 at Worlds were mindlink lists. I'm glad those four people got to experience a diverse meta across three games in the Top 4 and it got caught on tape. Everyone else is stuck flying against the same old overpowered stuff.

I have said more than once (not on these forums, I don't think) that I love Mindlink because I believe it to be impossible to price properly. It simply gets better with every copy you have in a list, as long as each ship has a sufficiency of green maneuvers. That doesn't mean that the card is currently balanced, or impossible to balance properly. But I think cost is the wrong lever to pull in this instance.

Of course I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this.

the game is ******* called x wing, so x wings should be useful in some capacity instead of being outdone entirely by several ships which themselves aren't even used.

if the game called magic didnt have any magic spells worth using it would be an equal problem tbh

Lol so true!

1 hour ago, Punning Pundit said:

I have said more than once (not on these forums, I don't think) that I love Mindlink because I believe it to be impossible to price properly. It simply gets better with every copy you have in a list, as long as each ship has a sufficiency of green maneuvers. That doesn't mean that the card is currently balanced, or impossible to balance properly. But I think cost is the wrong lever to pull in this instance.

Of course I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on this.

Mindlink definitely scales better the more ships you have. The average number of extra actions per ship asymptotically approaches 1 for a large number of mindlinked ships, at a cost of just 1 per ship. (Hello epic!) By comparison, Push the Limit costs 3 points, and you don't get the action if you bump or are previously double stressed. Mindlink has a higher floor, because even in a 3 ship list, it's extremely likely that someone is going to get a focus action. In my games it is easily over 95% of the time, more likely over 98% of the time. I'll typically go an entire 3-round night never having a combat round where I didn't have focus so long as I have 3 ships.

3 ships with PtL vs 3 ships with ML:

• 9 points vs 3 points
• 2 near-guaranteed focus with Mindlink vs 3 conditional actions with PtL. With ML, the 2 extra focus tokens go on your best ships as they activate last. So ML easily comes out ahead here IMO.
• If there's a ton of stress, then ML wins hands down, because its almost certain that someone has a focus. If nobody has focus, then you spend less points on EPTs and you're still ahead.

I generally don't like to drastically change anything in my house rules, so I just changed the wording so it only works on unstressed ships. And then there's a cost adjustment:

PtL: 2 / 3 / 4

ML: 2.5 / 3 / 3.5

I use a tiered pricing approach, so cheap ships like TIEs or cheap X-wings only pay the lowest price, mid range stuff pays the medium, and the high cost is only paid by really expensive ships (Han, RAC) or pilots that have exceptional synergy with upgrades (Corran, Miranda, Fenn). Mindlink is still quite possibly better than PtL even after those changes. It's untested.

Another option I usually hear as soon as I mention this on the forums is to just make it 2 ship only like in the lore. Haven't spent too much time thinking about that one, except that a few builds will still be just fine, like Dengaroo 3.0: just sub in PtL Fenn instead of ML Fenn.

A big problem with these balance discussions is people have very different opinions of what it means.

For some, and this is a fair point, the game is ultimately balanced between players, if you disregard $ issues of the models themselves. Two players, assuming equal access to ships and cards, have equal opportunity to take whatever the most effective lists happen to be. If you love non-Biggs x-wings, that's great and all but if you want to win consistently "git gud" as the kids tend to say.

For others faction balance is king. Scum are just dominating top tables with a smattering of rebels. Imperials have been purged after their palp-induced dominance.

Others want ship and upgrade level balance. The holy grail would be all ships, even all upgrades equally viable. You could toss a random selection of ships on the table and a good player could make it work.

Upgrade balance is harder but can also be less problematic. Push the Limit has been undercosted since, what, wave II? It could easily have been 5-6 points and still see play as it just lets you do stuff that many builds need. But it's so ubiquitous that it isn't often seen as a major issue as everyone can have it.

Finally, there's often a feeling like if perfect balance can't be achieved why bother? But I think true perfect balance is impossible in a game this convoluted the closer you get the better the play experience is with a greater variety.

I am just happy that I am great at this game, and use everything in it and it is always great fun.

4 hours ago, MajorJuggler said:

I generally don't like to drastically change anything in my house rules, so I just changed the wording so it only works on unstressed ships. And then there's a cost adjustment:

One idea I have for scaling it back a bit is to make it reduce PS by 1. I literally had this idea just after my initial post a few hours ago, so haven't thought much about it. At first blush, tho, it seems like it should pull back the power of the card by a bit on higher PS ships, while also mitigating against the PS race.

Generally speaking, the middle PS ships won't be effected all that much, and tend to overpay for their PS in the first place, so it might be a relative bump for them.

15 hours ago, Punning Pundit said:

This is true to an extent. Certainly truer than designers would like to think. However!

The best marketing in the world can't sell total crud. It can help, but it can't sell a bad game for as long as MtG has been around. Heck! New Coke didn't even last a year. And Suicide Squad was a commercial failure. (Conversely lacking marketing and quality is no guarantee of failure: Hasbro has also been selling Monopoly for about a century, and without any real marketing or mechanical revamp. Your guess is as good as mine there.)

There were enough fast followers to Magic that if any of them had been significantly better games- and had Magic itself not (presumably) improved in response, We'd be talking about another game right now. As a for instance: Everquest came first. And it's still around. But it does not have the MMO market or mindshare that World of Warcraft has.

Indeed, some of those fast followers are still around! For instance: Pokemon the card game came out a few years after Magic. This strongly implies that Magic faces some strong category opposition and that network effects alone (you tend to play what your friends are playing, regardless of a weak preference for another game) aren't enough to explain why Magic remains successful.

The fact that Magic is still around 24 years later means that they're still attracting _new_ players. That means that there is something important that they're doing correctly beyond being first, having good network effects (which is part of what being first gives you, TBH), and having incredibly marketing. Those lessons might not apply to X-Wing, but it's useful to try and figure out what those lessons might be.

The thing is that MTG has a great system despite some glaring flaws and they have definitely refined it over time, but balance has been less of a thing other than specifically stopping wins on turn 1-3 and trying to prevent infinite combos or extremely slow and tedious to resolve interactions.

MTG is far from well balanced but it is enough to be fun, but I would argue that X-wing is more balanced than MTG ever was. The key problem is that X-wing buy in isn't just buying packs and trading for the cards you want. You have to specifically buy the ships you want and those you need for cards and can't play cross faction lists so it would be like if in MTG you had to buy Black Boosters or Red Boosters and play mono color only. It magnifies any issues with imbalance where instead you can simply splash colors. Also MTG rotates regularly and regularly bans and restricts things that they missed in testing. That's a much harder task in X-wing.

16 hours ago, Jdling said:

To help define the terms, what makes a balanced X-Wing environment, in your opinion?\

Also,

http://www.mtgtop8.com/format?f=ST&meta=138

I'll play your game, but take out the MTGO results. Face to face at PT Amonkhet, 3 decks were 82% of the meta. What single dominant build was present at worlds? Can't say jumpmaster is all the problem as it is used in multiple different ways.

http://meta-wing.com/ship_combos?

8 scum builts in the top 10, 2 rebels, no imperials. A balanced environment would have a much more proportional representation of the 3 factions.

1 tournament doesnt make a meta. If you want to take into account only live events (why would you? not a rhetorical question, id really like to know.) there is the option to look for the past 2 months: http://www.mtgtop8.com/format?f=ST&meta=46.

Like i said you really cant compare the two games outside of some very restricted parameters.

- MTG is a TCG instead of a Wargame.

- It has frequent and steady product rotations.

- It has an incredibly larger player base.

- It has professional players making a living out of the game and working full time on it.

- It's THE game that allows most gaming store to survive. It NEEDS to generate a lot of money through cards resale/speculation to keep those stores going. The way it generates revenue (for both the producers and the stores) is totally different. Without MTG it's almost certain you wouldnt have a local store to play Xwing.

- It's a much older game.

- From what i remember when i was playing, the meta was shifthing quite regularly.

- It has more factions and they are not meant to be mutually exclusive (ie you can combine them).

- It's not made from a popular movie franchise. Most players dont care about the lore and it wont matters if X character isnt available or isnt performing well. Keep Xwing game mechanics and rules but change the the setting (any other sci-fi franchise) and it would not have been successfull (or much less).

From what i could observe (personnal opinion here) most Xwing players want 2 things: Playing with characters/ships they know/love and performing well. It's no surprise that people wants the ship of which the game name is made to perform well...

49 minutes ago, Thormind said:

http://meta-wing.com/ship_combos?

8 scum builts in the top 10, 2 rebels, no imperials. A balanced environment would have a much more proportional representation of the 3 factions.

This goes back to the point earlier with @MajorJuggler . I take balanced to be number if viable builds, not representation of factions/ships. If one faction is overrepresented, it is for one of two reasons: either it is the only build playable, or people just like playing it. Yes, the numbers are high for scum, but when other builds are still making a good show of it, then we aren't unbalanced. I don't want to hate on guys for playing what they want. When Delver decks were 75% of every top 8, it was no surprise because they were also 75% of the entered decks. The answers were there, but no one wanted to play them because the typical blue MTG player likes a control deck with a heck of beater to finish off the game.

56 minutes ago, Thormind said:

1 tournament doesnt make a meta. If you want to take into account only live events (why would you? not a rhetorical question, id really like to know.) there is the option to look for the past 2 months: http://www.mtgtop8.com/format?f=ST&meta=46.

If you have ever played a FNM right after a pro tour, one tournament can make a meta. MTGO is a brewing ground. Think of it has high speed evolution trying to solve the format after the results of the last major event. Lots of brews in the beginning, but it settles down to 2-3 by the time if the next tourney. As far as going back further, the cascading bans of current MTG and the release of new product cause a lot of instability as players try to sort out the new meta.

You eloquently give all the reasons why a compairison of MTG and X-Wing isn't really valid as they are vastly different in gameplay and business models, and I agree with all of them. The thing that started this conversation was the statement (by a respected MTG designer, if the MTG part is relevant is up to the individual) that balance does not mean everything has to be playable. I still believe that statement applies.

Yes, we have a desire to play our iconic ships. I want to play my triple squints just like I want to play my creatureless control deck. And I still can, every time I go to the LGS. And when I do, I still see X-wings, and I see that 15 year old kid with his RAC-Whisper build, and I see the college kid playing his dragons deck(the most iconic creature in MTG) when it isn't winning tournaments either. If people continue to show up, enter events, fly the ships they want, and have fun (winning is optional), then the game will grow.

When @MajorJuggler said that people are fed up and starting to leave, I believe him, and I believe that the reason why is because those people want to win with their favorite ships, and that isn't always going to be possible.

Quote

Mindlink definitely scales better the more ships you have. The average number of extra actions per ship asymptotically approaches 1 for a large number of mindlinked ships, at a cost of just 1 per ship.

It's also driven by the dials of the ships it's attached to - much like Push The Limit; yes, the plurality of Attani Mindlink lists started after Deadeye jumpmasters left the scene stage right, but it's the arrival of the protectorate fighter and lancer pursuit craft, with hard green turns, that's really kicked them into overdrive; with three ships and green turns, someone will have a green move open.

Quote

When @MajorJuggler said that people are fed up and starting to leave, I believe him, and I believe that the reason why is because those people want to win with their favorite ships, and that isn't always going to be possible.

Possibly - even probably. Not being able to use a Nicol Bolas deck effectively probably bugs your average competetive magic player less than not being able to use Wedge Antilles bugs a competetive X-wing player. After all, given the way the game works, the dragon may not even turn up to a game and instead spend it having a crafty smoke at the bottom of your deck. Plus, the nature of the cycling releases means you are forced to change and rebuild your deck frequently to genuinely new themes (background and art, even if not mechanics).

I dunno. I have to admit that I'm seemingly in the minority that I will play stuff that I want to use for no better reason than I want to. More and more I keep hearing phrases like "not viable" from other people at my club when discussing ships (even newly released or pre-released ones!). Which is fine, but if winning/efficiency is the key, don't stress over not being able to use a given background 'theme' to your squad and vice versa. If you want to take a TIE swarm, take one. I know I'm never going to win major events, because I refuse (for my own preferences) to mix eras and, wherever possible, like consistant ship types in a squad (a TIE fighter squadron, or TIE striker squadron, or whatever). But that's not the same as not enjoying events, nor as being able to put up a fight.

48 minutes ago, Jdling said:

If one faction is overrepresented, it is for one of two reasons: either it is the only build playable, or people just like playing it.

Those explanations can be tested, because they predict different data. Not definitively however: the two are not mutually exclusive. Chances are, many like to play Jumpmasters because they are so good.

4 hours ago, Jdling said:

This goes back to the point earlier with @MajorJuggler @MajorJuggler . I take balanced to be number if viable builds, not representation of factions/ships. If one faction is overrepresented, it is for one of two reasons: either it is the only build playable, or people just like playing it.

A meta analyser doesnt take into account only how many time a built has been played. If you looks at the meta analyser of list juggler it takes into accounts how well the different builds perform (% of win/high ranking, importance of the events, etc). For example in the current top ten Dashing Miranda is only in 6th position but she has the highest number of squadrons played. People are playing what they want as long as it has a reasonable chance to win.

When playing with 1 faction raises your chance to win drastically, it's not balanced. How would you define viable builds without taking into account their performance history?

4 hours ago, Jdling said:

@MajorJuggler If you have ever played a FNM right after a pro tour, one tournament can make a meta. MTGO is a brewing ground. Think of it has high speed evolution trying to solve the format after the results of the last major event. Lots of brews in the beginning, but it settles down to 2-3 by the time if the next tourney. As far as going back further, the cascading bans of current MTG and the release of new product cause a lot of instability as players try to sort out the new meta.

I did. The most memorable one was after the first pro tour following the release of Theros. Before the Pro Tour it was all about a very fast and agressive mono red. After the pro tour mono-blue (with master of wave) took the top spot. It did not take loong to have 3-4 that would counter mono blue and then the red agro came back because the blue one was less present. This all happened within a month or 2 after release. One event doesnt make the meta... And again you cant compare MTG to Xwing for the reasons i previously listed.

5 hours ago, Jdling said:

When @MajorJuggler said that people are fed up and starting to leave, I believe him, and I believe that the reason why is because those people want to win with their favorite ships, and that isn't always going to be possible.

That proves my point. Xwing is unique because it's based on Star Wars. The only reason it's not possible at the moment to perform well with the old x-wing or Tie swarm is because of some recent bad decisions. Up to not so long ago there still was a lot of the old material played and performing. It can happen again if the game gets some needed fixes.

If people are leaving what is best to do? Tell them they are wrong and it's normal for the ships they want to play to not be viable. Tell them it's normal that our game looks more and more like Scumwing? Or tell them some fixes are coming to change the game to the state it was not so long ago?

42 minutes ago, Thormind said:

When playing with 1 faction raises your chance to win drastically, it's not balanced. How would you define viable builds without taking into account their performance history?

Would we have the same issue bring brought up if, with all waves available, it was mostly X-Wings seeing play? What about the guys that love bounty hunters? If you were at Star Wars Celebration you saw how much love the community has for Scum. Would their complaint that the Firespray isn't seeing play have any weight? Some say yes it would, as all ships need to see play, while others would say "The game isn't called Firespray-Wing".

47 minutes ago, Thormind said:

I did. The most memorable one was after the first pro tour following the release of Theros. Before the Pro Tour it was all about a very fast and agressive mono red. After the pro tour mono-blue (with master of wave) took the top spot. It did not take loong to have 3-4 that would counter mono blue and then the red agro came back because the blue one was less present. This all happened within a month or 2 after release. One event doesnt make the meta... And again you cant compare MTG to Xwing for the reasons i previously listed.

X-Wing wasn't even brought up during that part of the discussion, so your statement that MTG and X-Wing can't be compared isn't pertinent. I have never compared them relative to each other, only brought up the point that just like a healthy MTG format, a healthy X-Wing format only needs to have several viable builds, not every ship, or every card being playable.

The meta of any game is constantly fluctuating. MTG sees it move faster as it has a regular release schedule, more moving parts, and a lot more players. When one build of any type starts to dominate the scene, the answers start to show up and push that build out. Once the threat is gone, those builds quit packing their answers to the threat, and all of a sudden the original returns. That is true for both X-Wing and MTG, as long as the answers are available in the format.

58 minutes ago, Thormind said:

That proves my point. Xwing is unique because it's based on Star Wars. The only reason it's not possible at the moment to perform well with the old x-wing or Tie swarm is because of some recent bad decisions. Up to not so long ago there still was a lot of the old material played and performing. It can happen again if the game gets some needed fixes.

Are the needed fixes you are referencing a fix that makes the X-Wing playable, or a fix that makes all ships playable? I fully believe the first is going to happen. They have probably had a T-65 title in the works since Rogue One came out, but the developers are letting the meta shift away from it for a little while. If they didn't, every match would feel like every other match. Fat Han, Tie Swarm, Soontir, BBBBZ, etc. made the game vibrant for a while, then we all moved on to the next thing. The X-Wing will come back. However, the all ships playable isn't going to happen.

1 hour ago, Thormind said:

If people are leaving what is best to do? Tell them they are wrong and it's normal for the ships they want to play to not be viable. Tell them it's normal that our game looks more and more like Scumwing? Or tell them some fixes are coming to change the game to the state it was not so long ago?

Is it wrong to tell someone that in a competitive event, their triple T-65 build isn't going to do well right now? No. Friends don't let friends fly non-Biggs. However, the competitive scene is tiny compared to all the playing we can do with our groups. And yes, tell them a fix for that ship is coming, but warn them that the fix to that fix will come later and the X-Wings go back in the bin and the Squints get their time to shine again. It is the way the game has been, and the way any game that releases new content will be.

This game is not perfect and right now with the meta, quite off the mark from balanced. Other than to say that since everyone can roll all misses during a game, and someone can roll all hits during a game, anyone can win. Which is like saying if you go to a casino, you have a balanced chance of winning at craps.

I think lack of balance happens in any game, but when the lack of balance leads to a game that doesn't really entertain or even look like the thing that the game is called, then probably something needs to happen quickly to change that. With thought, of course. But faster, please.

People can draw their lines wherever they want, that's fair. But I certainly am not in the camp of everything is totally hunky dory the way it is if I were focused outside of casual play. Again, I'm not such a critic of FFG as to say they messed things up on purpose, I think that's a bit silly. But they do need to do a better job. With their generally decent track record, I hope they do.

47 minutes ago, Jdling said:

When one build of any type starts to dominate the scene, the answers start to show up and push that build out. Once the threat is gone, those builds quit packing their answers to the threat, and all of a sudden the original returns. That is true for both X-Wing and MTG, as long as the answers are available in the format.

In general this principle does apply (more on that below), but there is an extremely limited set of archetypes that are even capable of competing with the top lists. With the exception of advanced SLAM bombers, nothing really hard counters anything else, so the cyclical paper-rock-scissors dynamic that you describe largely does not exist.

7 hours ago, Jdling said:

This goes back to the point earlier with @MajorJuggler . I take balanced to be number if viable builds, not representation of factions/ships. If one faction is overrepresented, it is for one of two reasons: either it is the only build playable, or people just like playing it. Yes, the numbers are high for scum, but when other builds are still making a good show of it, then we aren't unbalanced. I don't want to hate on guys for playing what they want. When Delver decks were 75% of every top 8, it was no surprise because they were also 75% of the entered decks. The answers were there, but no one wanted to play them because the typical blue MTG player likes a control deck with a heck of beater to finish off the game.

What you describe is the Nash Equilibrium applied to tabletop game theory. A stabilized meta with all 'rational' actors in it results in several things:

1. The expected win rate of any squad is 50%
2. The appearance rate of each squad results in a system where #1 becomes true (i.e. "playing the meta")
3. Directly due to #1 and #2, all squads that are strictly inferior to other squads are completely pruned out

If there are N viable squads, then the above can be mathematically represented as an set of N equations, where the squads' win rates are determined by the appearance rate of all other squads, and the win rate coefficients for each squad vs each other squad. This can be cast into matrix form and then solved for the squad appearance rates, knowing only the win rate coefficients and assuming a stabilized meta such that each squad's overall expected win rate = 0.5.

So in a stabilized meta, you cannot point to a squad's 50% win rate as evidence that it is not overpowered. By definition, all viable squads in a stabilized meta will have an expected win rate of 50%. If a squad starts to win more, then its counters show up instead (point 2). If a squad shows up in 75% of all samples, then that is strong evidence that either the squad itself is too strong, or it is hunting another even stronger squad that it is the best counter for. The latter, by the way, explains why Fat Han was everywhere despite ACD Whisper being the one that needed a nerf.

6 minutes ago, MajorJuggler said:

So in a stabilized meta, you cannot point to a squad's 50% win rate as evidence that it is not overpowered. By definition, all viable squads in a stabilized meta will have an expected win rate of 50%. If a squad starts to win more, then its counters show up instead (point 2). If a squad shows up in 75% of all samples, then that is strong evidence that either the squad itself is too strong, or it is hunting another even stronger squad that it is the best counter for. The latter, by the way, explains why Fat Han was everywhere despite ACD Whisper being the one that needed a nerf.

And then FFG nerfed Fat Han after it stuck around in that top spot.

So if they continue to follow the pattern, now that Palp aces (aka the ACD whisper list) Has been nerfed, it is reasonable that a bigger nerf to bring the Parratani jumpmaster down would be next. Or would Miranda/Biggs be their target?

1 minute ago, FlyingAnchors said:

And then FFG nerfed Fat Han after it stuck around in that top spot.

So if they continue to follow the pattern, now that Palp aces (aka the ACD whisper list) Has been nerfed, it is reasonable that a bigger nerf to bring the Parratani jumpmaster down would be next. Or would Miranda/Biggs be their target?

Hopefully all of the above!

BTW Juggler, how much money would be need to raise via a kickstarter to get you working for FFG for 5 years ;-)

Ah, forget that idea, I think we are just going to play for free your X-Wing fork

So guys since we are arguing in favor of MTG do you think it's a good idea to have a Type 2 competitive sanctioned format ??? No ??? Then what is this argument about

1 hour ago, MajorJuggler said:

So in a stabilized meta, you cannot point to a squad's 50% win rate as evidence that it is not overpowered. By definition, all viable squads in a stabilized meta will have an expected win rate of 50%. If a squad starts to win more, then its counters show up instead (point 2). If a squad shows up in 75% of all samples, then that is strong evidence that either the squad itself is too strong, or it is hunting another even stronger squad that it is the best counter for. The latter, by the way, explains why Fat Han was everywhere despite ACD Whisper being the one that needed a nerf.

While the theory is indisputable it requires your first point: rational players. A player who knowingly takes a bad list to a tournament is not acting rationally, and many other players just bring whatever their favorite player was using the week before. I love game theory and economics, but human nature and the bottom line is going to push things out of whack. I respect you for your ability to grind the numbers and the ability to explain it clearly. This is a designed meta, and as you said before, they will fix the underperforming ships with a later release, just like they planned to.