4 minutes ago, Transmogrifier said:

As someone who has spent a lot of time running 5 and 6 ship lists, I would say two main things make the lists unappealing:

Mental burden: flying a swarm in formation is not a big deal, but once you hit the “parking lot” stage of the game, the spatial reasoning burden goes way up. In individual games, this isnt a big deal, but in a tournament, the fatigue differential between list archetypes becomes pronounced.

 Reduced capabilities: this is the real issue with high ship-count lists - as you add ships, you (should) gain efficiency, but each individual piece of the list becomes less and less capable in isolation. This means that you end up with much narrower win conditions and it’s much easier to end up in situations where you have essentially no path out of a losing game state.

So its fear of losing and thinking that leads the 1.0 player to the low ship count list?

Its weird because you can mess up all kinds of stuff and its fine...there is a substantively longer fine w/e I lost a ship stage than a 2-3 ship list gets to play with.

Just want to take a second to say I think we should realize how ridiculous a lot of us are.

Discussion point a week ago- “Extended opens the game up to so many more pilots and upgrades that will inevitably create issues you don’t have in the 2.0 format. 2.0 should be the standard.”

point now- “Boba is the best pilot in extended.”

27 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

So its fear of losing and thinking that leads the 1.0 player to the low ship count list?

Why frame it as "1.0 player"?

1 minute ago, Kdubb said:

Just want to take a second to say I think we should realize how ridiculous a lot of us are.

Discussion point a week ago- “Extended opens the game up to so many more pilots and upgrades that will inevitably create issues you don’t have in the 2.0 format. 2.0 should be the standard.”

point now- “Boba is the best pilot in extended.”

I like Second Edition to be more new-player friendly. Boba won an event and I guess that's the inevitable reaction. He is a toolbox, though, or at least capable of being one.

34 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

So its fear of losing and thinking that leads the 1.0 player to the low ship count list?

Its weird because you can mess up all kinds of stuff and its fine...there is a substantively longer fine w/e I lost a ship stage than a 2-3 ship list gets to play with.

I think it might be the tournament scoring as well. You get a lot more chances to be nickel and dimed out of MoV with a bunch of ships.

I think the system open method (or the Mario tennis scramble) should have higher ship counts, and self damaging upgrades like unkarr crew, deadman switch, and the 1.0 Vader crew. If those formats are common enough it will skew what people play, because I think we are back to a game where you want to get large amounts of practice.

If the vast majority of tournaments are MoV based it will push ship count down in the long run, just like first edition.

12 minutes ago, Kdubb said:

Just want to take a second to say I think we should realize how ridiculous a lot of us are.

Discussion point a week ago- “Extended opens the game up to so many more pilots and upgrades that will inevitably create issues you don’t have in the 2.0 format. 2.0 should be the standard.”

point now- “Boba is the best pilot in extended.”

1 out of most of it isnt bad!

Wave 1 scum is still really good: fangs and firesprays (and escape craft) are good! Falcon... eh.

X-wings... Luke.

y-wings... Norra

U-wings... No

Advanced... Vader

Reapers... Maybe? Lambda?

TIEs... swarms.

I also look forward to the 4 ships resistance and f/os have, each, and expect to be balanced against the 20 of the other factions.

Either DOA, or OP and eventually needing massive points adjustments.

Good call. Good times.

Wait, I forgot an option:

Most of the ships in extended are actually DOA too. That's an option (also, sad).

26 minutes ago, gennataos said:

Why frame it as "1.0 player"?

There is a 1.0 player in all of us.

4 hours ago, gennataos said:

I like Second Edition to be more new-player friendly. Boba won an event and I guess that's the inevitable reaction. He is a toolbox, though, or at least capable of being one.

I thought from the helmet he was more of a mailbox guy but hey, toolbox it is!

5 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

So its fear of losing and thinking that leads the 1.0 player to the low ship count list?

Its weird because you can mess up all kinds of stuff and its fine...there is a substantively longer fine w/e I lost a ship stage than a 2-3 ship list gets to play with.

You know how playing 3 arcdodgers is mentally more demanding and tires you out faster? In my opinion and experience, swarms (of 5-6 only!) are very similar. I haven't even played 7-8.

There are simply more dials to set, which means you have to keep more end positions in your mind, more maneuvers that have to be correctly visualized and overlayed. Swarm players were always slower and it's not because it's easier or because the physical movement to set dials and add/remove tokens slows them down. It's mainly the mental part, and that wears you down over the course of a tournament.

I still want to try, but it will be more tiresome than playing Boba and something.

11 hours ago, AEIllingworth said:

I think it might be the tournament scoring as well. You get a lot more chances to be nickel and dimed out of MoV with a bunch of ships.

I think the system open method (or the Mario tennis scramble) should have higher ship counts, and self damaging upgrades like unkarr crew, deadman switch, and the 1.0 Vader crew. If those formats are common enough it will skew what people play, because I think we are back to a game where you want to get large amounts of practice.



If the vast majority of tournaments are MoV based it will push ship count down in the long run, just like first edition.

Oddly enough, I've found my MOV has gone through the roof after moving to 5 ship lists. That was half the power of the 5x lists at the end of 1.0. It was an incredible MOV bunker. Especially before the small base half point ruling. If an Xwing was getting beat up, you turned it away and bailed. Conserve MOV by not losing it. I was running a 3x + 2A list and several games I'd only lose one or two ships.

In 2.0 my first major tournament I ran 4x sabers and an bomber. I had the second highest Mov of 21 people going into the 4th round. And that's with the half point ruling. With 5 ships, if one gets hurt you bail them out and still have enough arcs/firepower to be dangerous with the remaining ones.

6 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

You know how playing 3 arcdodgers is mentally more demanding and tires you out faster? In my opinion and experience, swarms (of 5-6 only!) are very similar. I haven't even played 7-8.

There are simply more dials to set, which means you have to keep more end positions in your mind, more maneuvers that have to be correctly visualized and overlayed. Swarm players were always slower and it's not because it's easier or because the physical movement to set dials and add/remove tokens slows them down. It's mainly the mental part, and that wears you down over the course of a tournament.

I still want to try, but it will be more tiresome than playing Boba and something.

That's what I like about flying drunken anti-formation mini-swarms. Xwings were amazing at that with flight assist. They could be almost anywhere you wanted them and they were FAST. Interceptors in 2.0 are similar with their reposition ability. The hard part for me with a 3 health tie fighter is going up against lists with incredibly high spike damage ability. I took 4 squints against a list that was Zuckuss, a Slaver, a cartel executioner and a Lok revanant. SOOOO MUCH HEALTH. And Zuckuss at range 1 is throwing 5 dice to my maximum of 3 greens. Cartel is throwing 3-4 dice and you can't use tokens if it catches something in bullseye. My hardest mental match was that list just due to the shear health of the list, the space it took up on the board, and it could just bully it's way through by sheer red dice vs green dice. I won, but I had two squints that got one-shot in the process.

When you fan out and spread firing arcs, you also by effect reduce your decisions you need to make with your dials. You just have more of the board open and can react better.

12 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

So its fear of losing and thinking that leads the 1.0 player to the low ship count list?

Its weird because you can mess up all kinds of stuff and its fine...there is a substantively longer fine w/e I lost a ship stage than a 2-3 ship list gets to play with.

I would say that a lot of the stuff keeping players from exploring higher ship counts is just an aversion to the playstyle required/lack of interest in putting the work in to learn a new playstyle.

As to your second point, you do have a more forgiving opening and you can get pretty far with these lists because people will joust you that shouldn't, but you also hit a tipping point sooner where your list's effectiveness drops off quickly. As you take losses, the combat effectiveness of your list doesn't decay linearly - it stays fairly flat at first and then decays fast once you can't mass enough arcs and mid quality shots to generate damage. If you reach that point too soon in the match, you have a mountain to climb to salvage the game. If you don't know you already hit that point/don't know that it exists, the lists can be really frustrating since you will lose and not necessarily be able to trace it back to what decisions caused you to lose.

7 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

You know how playing 3 arcdodgers is mentally more demanding and tires you out faster? In my opinion and experience, swarms (of 5-6 only!) are very similar. I haven't even played 7-8.

There are simply more dials to set, which means you have to keep more end positions in your mind, more maneuvers that have to be correctly visualized and overlayed. Swarm players were always slower and it's not because it's easier or because the physical movement to set dials and add/remove tokens slows them down. It's mainly the mental part, and that wears you down over the course of a tournament.

I still want to try, but it will be more tiresome than playing Boba and something.

And that's why I prefer Ace w/mini-swarm; Its a lot less mentally taxing imho and I'm glad that 2.0 has at least made it viable.

15 hours ago, Scott Pilgrim2 said:

I really don't see a way unless you need a deeper bid.

8 points beats most of the bids I've encountered locally; I was tempted to do 4 Academies so Vader is never outbid (15 points ftw) but I do like having Wampa as pseudo-Biggs.

5 minutes ago, Transmogrifier said:

I would say that a lot of the stuff keeping players from exploring higher ship counts is just an aversion to the playstyle required/lack of interest in putting the work in to learn a new playstyle.

As to your second point, you do have a more forgiving opening and you can get pretty far with these lists because people will joust you that shouldn't, but you also hit a tipping point sooner where your list's effectiveness drops off quickly. As you take losses, the combat effectiveness of your list doesn't decay linearly - it stays fairly flat at first and then decays fast once you can't mass enough arcs and mid quality shots to generate damage. If you reach that point too soon in the match, you have a mountain to climb to salvage the game. If you don't know you already hit that point/don't know that it exists, the lists can be really frustrating since you will lose and not necessarily be able to trace it back to what decisions caused you to lose.

I actually think the 5ish equal ship list has a bad damage curve as they take losses. Because they often need either blockers or to spread arcs to ensure they catch someone, there's usually 1-2 ships not taking shots. As they take losses, they still have that 1-2 ship overhead, so they lose more firepower than them close points, percentage wise. This isn't always true, 1 remaining ship can still do damage, but the frequency and quantity of this damage will be lower.

3 minutes ago, impspy said:

And that's why I prefer Ace w/mini-swarm; Its a lot less mentally taxing imho and I'm glad that 2.0 has at least made it viable.

8 points beats most of the bids I've encountered locally; I was tempted to do 4 Academies so Vader is never outbid (15 points ftw) but I do like having Wampa as pseudo-Biggs.

Turns out if you brought blockers, Im not exactly sure how much of a bid vader needs (except against supernatural i6s... which is vader).

Just now, Biophysical said:

I actually think the 5ish equal ship list has a bad damage curve as they take losses. Because they often need either blockers or to spread arcs to ensure they catch someone, there's usually 1-2 ships not taking shots. As they take losses, they still have that 1-2 ship overhead, so they lose more firepower than them close points, percentage wise. This isn't always true, 1 remaining ship can still do damage, but the frequency and quantity of this damage will be lower.

There are several ways to build these lists but yeah, I don't think going all-in on the mid powered ships is a good idea. At that price level, you can't get a well-rounded ship, so min-maxing on it results in a list that is pretty rigid in what it can do, which creates auto win/auto loss matchups. I was thinking something more well-rounded (say ace + swarm, ace + support + swarm, etc.).

3 minutes ago, Transmogrifier said:

There are several ways to build these lists but yeah, I don't think going all-in on the mid powered ships is a good idea. At that price level, you can't get a well-rounded ship, so min-maxing on it results in a list that is pretty rigid in what it can do, which creates auto win/auto loss matchups. I was thinking something more well-rounded (say ace + swarm, ace + support + swarm, etc.).

Gotcha. I really like ace Miniswarm as well. It covers a lot of bases.

13 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

Right so if average is 4...then people would generally feel comfortable taking a 3 ship or even 2 ship list to a tournament?

The "5+ ship is hard" mindset is bizarre and a contributing factor to what the meta will end up looking like. At least the swiss meta if thats even a term. Why do people think swarms are hard? Is it because they have to put templates down a couple more times per game? Half the time the ships dont even go different directions and just move as one ship. Arguably its easier with 5+ ships to do what the bad x-wing player wants to do...which is just joust. I know what they really want to do is joust with 1 ship and not take damage. But lets assume thats not possible for the time being outside of Norra, Boba, Luke, and I guess re-enforced stuff? (*They all definitely still take damage...)

I think it more comes down to why take a swarm when you can take Boba and fly with no consequences. Defensive rerolls, two focus, a reinforce, and an evade is disgusting. Easier to set one dial that doesn't matter than manage 6+ ships in a fight.

14 minutes ago, Scott Pilgrim2 said:

I think it more comes down to why take a swarm when you can take Boba and fly with no consequences. Defensive rerolls, two focus, a reinforce, and an evade is disgusting. Easier to set one dial that doesn't matter than manage 6+ ships in a fight.

So, Boba isn't immortal and can't kill everything by himself (usually). I'm not all the way through this episode, but they talked about killing his wingmen first. (GSC winning) Matt and I did a test game last Friday so he could get a feel for how to deal with Super Vader. I ran Super Vader and 4 academies (with a giant bid, prove us wrong, yes I know it didn't matter in this game), killed Guri first and it was kind of downhill from there. The challenge/trap is if those wingmen get away.

Boba is not immortal; he's just REALLY good at what he does, and is rough to kill even with lots of guns on target, which is not true for other ships.

8 minutes ago, gennataos said:

So, Boba isn't immortal and can't kill everything by himself (usually). I'm not all the way through this episode, but they talked about killing his wingmen first. (GSC winning) Matt and I did a test game last Friday so he could get a feel for how to deal with Super Vader. I ran Super Vader and 4 academies (with a giant bid, prove us wrong, yes I know it didn't matter in this game), killed Guri first and it was kind of downhill from there. The challenge/trap is if those wingmen get away.

In my experience flying with Vader v. Boba I've come to the same conclusion; if you can't burn down the wingmate then you'll have a bad time but Boba alone can't dodge a bunch of shots forever and can't shoot all your ships.

Boba isn't immortal, but having effectively super reinforce and offensive rerolls makes him really good at damage racing.

Monday Morning Anecdote:

Destroying Boba in two rounds with 4 strikers and sloane Whisper was satisfying. Two strikers shot Boba from out of Arc Round 2, all 4 shot Boba from R1 Round 3. Boba is very good but definitely takes damage when dealing with multiple 3 dice shots. After months of fighting Biggs or Kanan protected Ghosts I dont have real fear of Boba yet. Hes good. Covers up mistakes good. Alot of stuff in 2.0 does that to some degree thoygh. Bobas not exactly broken good.

I think we are seeing so many Boba+ lists because people love the character, its a really good 1.0 like ship, and it fits the all important player preference criteria of not having to set more than 2-3 dials per turn. With ship counts low Boba is an even better choice.

I feel like FFG balanced both game modes around the idea that 4-8 ship lists should be pretty good but if no one uses them then the game is a sorta crazy mess of stuff that can take ridiculous bids and smile at all the favorable 2-3 ship matchups. If I know efficiency lists are rare than I am taking the best I5-6 ships I can find and a bid in a heart beat. Or be that one guy who brings more than 4 ships?

Boba is definitely not the only I5 ship that wants to see 3 ships on the table across from him.

What can the community do to encourage non-formation or formation swarm play? Or even 4 ship list usage? Does it require a billboard with neon lights of undercosted higher hp stuff like Jonus Bombers?

If people dont use efficiency swarms then the list of good things changes alot.