I've seen a lot of posts complaining about the meta. At the moment, if you want to win championships, you need to pay attention to the meta and bring one of the top lists (eg Jumpmasters, mindlink, maybe Quickdraw) plus you need to be a really good player.

Winning tends to need both factors.

Ok, what about the rest of us? I'm not a 'top player': even if I bring a top list, I'd need quite a lot of luck on the dice for me to win a large tournament. (I don't rule out becoming a top player, but I don't get to play often enough.)

So, I take ships I enjoy flying even if it means that I lose one more game than I would with a 'better' list.

Yesterday, Beanie Games in England held its Store Championship. 40 players, 5 rounds, top 8 cut. Won by Tom Reed flying Dengar/Tel. 2nd was (I think) Dash with 2 B-Wings. 2nd in Swiss was Mark with Major Rhymer (LWF, Rebel Captive, Tactician, Snap Shot), Vessery (x7, Juke) and a delta x7. Only one rebel in the top 8; I don't know all the rest, but one was Palobtanni.

Meanwhile, I brought Porkins, Dutch Vander & Hobbie Klivian.

I flew against: Wedge (swarm leader), Blue Sq Pathfinder, 2 PTL A-Wings. Then I played Mark's Imperials (see above). 3rd round was 5 autoblaster turret Y-Wings, followed by 4 z95s, Sunny Bounder, and 2 Quadjumpers. Finally facing Dengar with 2 autoblaster turret Y-Wings. I won 2 games, lost the others. Flying a better list, the closest game I might have won extra was against Mark.

I saw multiple lists with A-Wings and/or B-Wings in, although there were also a lot of variations on Miranda + Dash, or Leebo. Along with mindlinked scum of various types.

Clearly, quite a lot of players had chosen to do what I'd done and bring what they felt like flying. This isn't going to win tournaments, but if you simply want to enjoy playing some games against friendly people, you don't have to follow the meta.

tl;dr: make your meta what you want it to be, or quit whining about it!

Hmmm.. fair enough bringing your own list, which is fun to fly. But personally I don't find it fun having an extremely sub-par list being blown up by jumpmasters over and over.. having very little chance to actually win a game despite how well you may fly doesn't feel like fun to me.

I must admit i love using Miranda, Warden and Bombs (with Sabine) so I'm over half meta! lol

I also have a Corran Horn list with an a wing and tie fighter that is fun! and one that runs with Etahn Abaht

to be honest the "meta" down here changes like the tides, a few guys bought out triple jumps at a tourney (pre deadeye nerf) and the shelved them as he found them too powerful. there have been variations on Telgar lists popping up but a lot of stuff is Ghosts, X wings and tie fighters (i even saw a punisher last time that placed relatively highly!)

You would have won, that 3rd round by walking that delta off the board with the Ion Cannon, if it wasn't for that last minute barrel roll.

" make your meta what you want it to be, or quit whining about it!" <- if I could like this more I would

I 100% agree.

"Meta" only matters if you are planning on winning events and need that few % extra power/reliability... etc

Given one of the things I love about X-Wing is list planning and theorising the thought of taking a "meta/net-list" feels me with horror.

Doesn't mean I take "soft" lists, just not what is conventionally strong or popular.

Despite never taking a "meta" list (as far as I'm aware... unless Vader or Whisper has snuck back into the meta?? ), and not being a particularly great player, I still always win more than I lose so no idea where comments like "having very little chance to win..." unless you take a meta/net-list comes from.

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tl;dr: make your meta what you want it to be, or quit whining about it!

Not an option when you are competing against players from all over the world...

In addition to "meta" and "anti-meta", there is also "counter-meta" which is my favorite. While a good "anti-meta" can in right hands turn out to be the next "meta", playing "counter-meta" is an infinite ongoing challenge. "Counter-meta" may not win you the Worlds or Continentals but can easily do well in Nats, Regionals and Store Champs.

Running a completely anti-meta tournament later this month. Mystery box! The big combos will not attend.

5 hours ago, Gilarius said:

Meanwhile, I brought Porkins, Dutch Vander & Hobbie Klivian.

Sounds like fun. How'd you kit it out?

37 minutes ago, Hawkstrike said:

Sounds like fun. How'd you kit it out?

With the pain and tears of his enemies. Least that is my interpretation of what i faced.

We're having an alternate format tournament in my FLGS later this month. The rules are quite neat: You choose one unique pilot or crew as your commander. That's the only unique pilot or crew that you're allowed to take. And every other card can only show up in your list once (essentially, every card is unique), and every ship can only show up once as well (so no spamming Jumpmasters or TLT).

I'm looking forward to it

As someone who runs nonsense like Scyk, Y-Wing, Quadjumper (With the latter 2 using proton bombs) and 2 Scyk 2 HWK, I can honestly say its possible to do well with any list as long as you remember the triggers.

The first list, while tricky, does a ton of work with those proton bombs; current count is 22 ships taken off the table without even touching their shields.

The second list I run mostly just to see the look on my opponents face when I setup 2 Scyks & 2 HWKs. Then again, Sunny Bounder rolling 3 hits into 4 at range 1 to finish off a RAC that had been dropped to PS 0 by Mux was pure gold.

My list:

Porkins: Expertise, R5D98, Plasma Torps & Guidance Chips.

Dutch Vander: Ion Cannon Turret, Proton Torps, R2 astromech, Guidance Chips.

Hobbie Klivian: Targeting Astromech, Proton Torps & Guidance Chips.

They did better than I expected, partly due to the torpedoes. A 'Beta Strike' list - too low in PS to be an alpha strike, mostly. I might switch out the R2 astromech for the EPT bot plus VI on Dutch next time. Dutch mostly died before he needed to shed stress!

To the people like William1134, I'd ask you two questions to start with:

1) do you have to win in order to enjoy a game of X-Wing?

2) are you good enough to win tournaments? Do you expect to make every cut and have a 50% or so chance of winning the elimination games?

If your answer to either (or both) is 'Yes', then you must fly the strongest possible list - whether that is jumps or whatever replaces them next or *edit* an amazing counter to those lists - because of the good points made by shadow & dotswarlock below*end edit*. If your answer is 'No', then take what you want to fly and tell your friends what you're doing - they might join in with weak/silly/fun lists too - but set yourself alternative goals: for example, in my match vs 5 autoblaster Y-Wings, I messed up my approach badly and parked Dutch on a rock for 2 turns in a row. Having lost him before barely scratching the opposition, I really couldn't win, so I decided that my objective was to kill 2 Ys in exchange for my 2 Xs. I almost succeeded, but ended up half-killing 2 (along with killing one). The fun bit was seeing if I pull off an amazing 'victory' by getting 2 of them. Vs Dengar in my last game, I really wanted to kill him and wasn't bothered by the overall victory/loss. If I'd drawn Tom Reed, my personal 'win condition' was to score any points at all!

I like crafting my own lists to play but counter-meta is something I keep in mind for tournaments against popular ships.

6 hours ago, Gilarius said:

I've seen a lot of posts complaining about the meta. At the moment, if you want to win championships, you need to pay attention to the meta and bring one of the top lists (eg Jumpmasters, mindlink, maybe Quickdraw) plus you need to be a really good player.

Yes, you need to pay attention to the meta if you wish to win. However, there are actually 2 options to win:

- Bring one of the top meta lists and fly it better than the other guys (or be luckier)

- Find the trends in the meta lists, find the weak spots, build a list accordingly and learn to fly it.

The latter takes more work and requires looking past the recurring components that you find in listjuggler in order to find the combination that other people did not think about.

During my last tournament, I flew Ventress, 3X Z-95 and Sunny and won 6 out of 6 games, including several against Quickdraw/Vessery/Omega Leader. My list was so unusual, however, that no one knew how to face it. Since I faced recurring lists on my end then that was not an issue for me.

My next tournament list is building up, it will include the Rebel Meta staple of Corran Horn (but he's really squishy so doesnt count) a tie fighter and an A wing

in total, 7 hull and 5 shield behind 3 green dice!

It's fun as hell to fly but squishy if caught in the open.

6 hours ago, Gilarius said:

tl;dr: make your meta what you want it to be, or quit whining about it!

3 hours ago, Dave Grant said:

"Meta" only matters if you are planning on winning events and need that few % extra power/reliability... etc

No, the meta matters every single day, even if you are a kitchen-table only player. When looking to design the next wave, the design team only looks at what is winning tournaments. They never design anything for theme or whimsy. So even if you are "flying what you want" you are flying something based on it's effects in the meta. "Jank lists" simply are lists that don't wreck the meta and require no attention from R&D.

5 hours ago, william1134 said:

Hmmm.. fair enough bringing your own list, which is fun to fly. But personally I don't find it fun having an extremely sub-par list being blown up by jumpmasters over and over.. having very little chance to actually win a game despite how well you may fly doesn't feel like fun to me.

This is the main issue. Some games are fun, whether you win or lose. Competitive X-Wing, though, is not one of them. Since losing in a competitive setting can often be very frustrating since it usually just means you watch your ships die while they are pretty helpless against better ships who are routinely tanking your shots or entirely denying your attack opportunities. That's not a fun way to spend 75 minutes, let alone for 4-5 rounds, especially if you're paying $10-20 for the opportunity.

I've gone to 5 round tournaments and not won a game, and still enjoyed myself. A lot of that enjoyment is from the people I've played and the company I come with.

The OP makes a good comment; can't find it atm. But aim for soft wins in game. a) i wanna kill a ship, b) score MoV (ruin theirs) c) block everything (good practice)

During an event recently; I rolled 1 natural evade all game. Me and my opponent joked about this.

I find if you have a good opponent who is up for a laugh, even the games that you are losing can be fun.

1 hour ago, dotswarlock said:

- Find the trends in the meta lists, find the weak spots, build a list accordingly and learn to fly it.

The latter takes more work and requires looking past the recurring components that you find in listjuggler in order to find the combination that other people did not think about.

That's exactly what I meant with "counter-meta".

I really like it when I can challenge myself and put my mind into the game even when not playing. I scout the local meta by attending to even the smallest tournaments and start almost every morning with nice warm cup of theorycrafting (with a side of espresso).

4 minutes ago, Arthur_McGuire said:

That's exactly what I meant with "counter-meta".

I really like it when I can challenge myself and put my mind into the game even when not playing. I scout the local meta by attending to even the smallest tournaments and start almost every morning with nice warm cup of theorycrafting (with a side of espresso).

It's even more fun when you can theocraft with a friend through the day with an email or 2 during downtimes. It helps to keep the day fun!

3 minutes ago, dotswarlock said:

It's even more fun when you can theocraft with a friend through the day with an email or 2 during downtimes. It helps to keep the day fun!

My friend an i used to do this but with HotAC pilot ability shenanigans

Just now, dotswarlock said:

It's even more fun when you can theocraft with a friend through the day with an email or 2 during downtimes. It helps to keep the day fun!

I do that most every day with my stepson. He lives with his father in another town but every other weekend he visits us and we put our theories to the test.

As weird as it sounds, I think of 3 things when I make a new list:

1. Will I have fun playing this?

2. Will my opponent have fun playing against it?

3. Will this list work well against my opponent (Specifically my opponent, not my opponent's list)?

The first one is self explanatory; why fly something if its no fun? To me, I can have fun whether I win or lose as long as its a good game with a fun list.

The second is a little more strange. Yes, I could grab the top tier meta-list and take it to a tournament. People will know it, know how to fly against it, and games turn into more of a going-through-the-motions ordeal, where you're following a set strategy that is supposed to help you fight a certain list. That's no fun to me. I like having to work on the fly, to figure out how I can pit what I brought with me against what my opponent has, and I can only hope that my opponents do the same when they see some of the odd lists I bring to the table.

The third plays into the fact that my lists always contain a pretty large dose of jank. I fly Scyks, HWKs, and other ships that you usually never see, in all sorts of strange ways. People usually either underestimate or completely disregard certain ships because they see very little play. If you suddenly found yourself across the table from 2 Scyks & 2 HWKs, what would you do? Most of the time my opponent gets over confident, over-commits with one of their ships, and I eat them alive.

4 minutes ago, Innese said:

The third plays into the fact that my lists always contain a pretty large dose of jank. I fly Scyks, HWKs, and other ships that you usually never see, in all sorts of strange ways. People usually either underestimate or completely disregard certain ships because they see very little play. If you suddenly found yourself across the table from 2 Scyks & 2 HWKs, what would you do? Half the time my opponent gets over confident, over-commits with one of their ships, and I eat them alive.

I love that "You brought WHAT?!?" and the surprise factor when I present my list, be it triple A-wings with double Rebel TIEs to 100/6, extremely risky Bro-Bot list to an escalation tournament at this day and age, or Moralo+Triple-Bots with Binayre kamikaze squadron (as in Dead Man's Switches with all the exess points) to Team Epic.