20 minutes ago, Alyx'sDog said:

Are there any plans to release more refined episodes? Or will I be forced to grin and bear it?

Pretty sure that the grinning isn't required

Just now, Maui. said:

Pretty sure that the grinning isn't required

Oh dear.

9 minutes ago, Alyx'sDog said:

Oh dear.

There's a lot of noise that the occasional signal pokes through. The difference between the Krayts and other podcasts historically is that the signal tends to be a lot more insightful and comes from a place of very real understanding of the game. They tend to skip all the more introductory, general audience sort of discussions and replace it with playing videos games and laughing at their own **** jokes. You get what you pay for, but there's a reason this thread has almost 700 pages.

2 hours ago, Biophysical said:

I'm trying real hard to convince myself I'm not going to do this. Interceptors are enough for me (but they're not in Hyperspace, the voice whispers).

I'd say you can borrow some of mine, but you can't.

1 minute ago, gennataos said:

I'd say you can borrow some of mine, but you can't.

Wasn't gonna ask.

7 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

Wasn't gonna ask.

Good! Cuz I wasn't gonna let you!

43 minutes ago, Alyx'sDog said:

Hi, I was directed to the podcast by a friend, who said it would help me get good at x-wing fast since I just started in September.

I've listened to a couple episodes he picked out, (Listener, a smattering of others) and they were great.

Then I tried listening to the latest episode, and it's painful.

Are there any plans to release more refined episodes? Or will I be forced to grin and bear it?

if your a few months into the game i suspect your definition of getting good and the krayt mantra to Git Gud are probably quite far apart.

my personal suggestion, if you want to get good at the game so you don't hit rocks, and can fly in formation and judge range or movement distance. or know what most ships and cards do. there are plenty of resources that better accommodate teaching new players. i recommend Mynock and Gold squadron. supplement this with Krayts listener 4 which is an excellent roadmap getting better at games, that happens to use xwing examples.

after you get good at the game, maybe go to a few organised play events and decide you want to Git Gud (which was defined in listener 4). revisit the Krayts and reassess if the weekly episodes are worth your time or not.

Pick one surprise Wave 2 Ship:

First Order Tie Interceptor

or

First Order Tie Striker

or

First Order Tie Bomber

Two Advanced Optics come in both Resistance and First Order conversion kits. One comes in the TIE f/o. I'm not planning on playing First Order.

queue rant about FFG forcing me to pay a bunch of money to play a game or something

2 minutes ago, RynoZero said:

if your a few months into the game i suspect your definition of getting good and the krayt mantra to Git Gud are probably quite far apart.

my personal suggestion, if you want to get good at the game so you don't hit rocks, and can fly in formation and judge range or movement distance. or know what most ships and cards do. there are plenty of resources that better accommodate teaching new players. i recommend Mynock and Gold squadron. supplement this with Krayts listener 4 which is an excellent roadmap getting better at games, that happens to use xwing examples.

after you get good at the game, maybe go to a few organised play events and decide you want to Git Gud (which was defined in listener 4). revisit the Krayts and reassess if the weekly episodes are worth your time or not.

I haven't hit a rock in 7 games now, at least not on accident. (I flew over one to get a block onto a different rock!)

I took a mat, placed every obstacle I own and then from a couple feet away threw some tokens at the mat. The challenge was to fly my entire 5-6 ship squad through the mat, landing on each token, without hitting any rocks, in as few turns as possible. I did that for a couple hours, and it's been pretty good practice.

But for context, I wanted to get good at the game as fast as possible. Honestly, the average skill level seems to be comically low among players from what i've seen. Possibly it's my lack of Y chromosome and newness causing underestimation, but that's a whole different story. I figured diving in on the competitive deep-end was the most effective method to learn.

20 minutes ago, Alyx'sDog said:

I haven't hit a rock in 7 games now, at least not on accident. (I flew over one to get a block onto a different rock!)

I took a mat, placed every obstacle I own and then from a couple feet away threw some tokens at the mat. The challenge was to fly my entire 5-6 ship squad through the mat, landing on each token, without hitting any rocks, in as few turns as possible. I did that for a couple hours, and it's been pretty good practice.

But for context, I wanted to get good at the game as fast as possible. Honestly, the average skill level seems to be comically low among players from what i've seen. Possibly it's my lack of Y chromosome and newness causing underestimation, but that's a whole different story. I figured diving in on the competitive deep-end was the most effective method to learn.

There's some good videos since 2.0. They're not all good, but this one stands out as particularly good, and back-and-forth.

2 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

There's some good videos since 2.0.

This is a good way to watch some games to.

http://xba.azurewebsites.net/

21 minutes ago, Alyx'sDog said:

I haven't hit a rock in 7 games now, at least not on accident. (I flew over one to get a block onto a different rock!)

A good sign if you're not blinded by the need to swerve around them. Judging when to take risks in exchange for positioning is important!

22 minutes ago, Alyx'sDog said:

I took a mat, placed every obstacle I own and then from a couple feet away threw some tokens at the mat. The challenge was to fly my entire 5-6 ship squad through the mat, landing on each token, without hitting any rocks, in as few turns as possible. I did that for a couple hours, and it's been pretty good practice.

I hate you. Actually, to be fair, while I can't bring myself to this level of practice (I find self-play monotonous and boring) you probably forced yourself to get much better at maneuvering than even a lot of more experienced players are today. Flying by dial, and pre-planning your points of contact, seem to be kind of a lost art for some who rely solely on card combos. Card combos aren't as powerful as they once were.

23 minutes ago, Alyx'sDog said:

Honestly, the average skill level seems to be comically low among players from what i've seen.

And here you may not be wrong.

28 minutes ago, Alyx'sDog said:

Honestly, the average skill level seems to be comically low among players from what i've seen. Possibly it's my lack of Y chromosome and newness causing underestimation, but that's a whole different story.

No, you're about right. I actually had this discussion with Ryno above a month or so back, after he picked up a Sloane swarm for a few games. He was marveling at how many people just flew into the kill box, then acted surprised when they died. People are bad.

26 minutes ago, Alyx'sDog said:

I haven't hit a rock in 7 games now, at least not on accident. (I flew over one to get a block onto a different rock!)

I took a mat, placed every obstacle I own and then from a couple feet away threw some tokens at the mat. The challenge was to fly my entire 5-6 ship squad through the mat, landing on each token, without hitting any rocks, in as few turns as possible. I did that for a couple hours, and it's been pretty good practice.

But for context, I wanted to get good at the game as fast as possible. Honestly, the average skill level seems to be comically low among players from what i've seen. Possibly it's my lack of Y chromosome and newness causing underestimation, but that's a whole different story. I figured diving in on the competitive deep-end was the most effective method to learn.

You're right, there's a lot of bad players. Even "good" players are often just the ones who are intentional about it and pick good squads and not make any mistakes.

I'll selfishly suggest my blog. It's only a handful of articles, but some of them are rather long-winded.

http://starfightermafia.blogspot.com/?m=1

Just make sure you don't fall into the trap of, "people are bad, so what they are doing is bad, and they won because of luck." that's how you go from a good player, to a toxic player. If your opponent does something you think is bad, they are either making a mistake or know something you don't. Make sure you figure that out, and if you lose, figure out why. Blaming your dice gets you less than nowhere.

1 minute ago, LagJanson said:

I hate you. Actually, to be fair, while I can't bring myself to this level of practice (I find self-play monotonous and boring) you probably forced yourself to get much better at maneuvering than even a lot of more experienced players are today. Flying by dial, and pre-planning your points of contact, seem to be kind of a lost art for some who rely solely on card combos. Card combos aren't as powerful as they once were.

I take a pile bases and put them on the table. Then I place one down and then put the rest into where I think each move will land me. Then go grab my templates and see how close I am.

This gets even more important for stuff like pre-bank boosting a punisher before a K-turn. Or adaptive a's on a reaper.

Just need to build in that muscle memory of where a ship is going to land. Medium bases are funky.

1 hour ago, gennataos said:

Two Advanced Optics come in both Resistance and First Order conversion kits. One comes in the TIE f/o. I'm not planning on playing First Order.

queue rant about FFG forcing me to pay a bunch of money to play a game or something

Seriously? I've got like 15 copies of Daredevil and they can't even bother to put 3x of the Tech cards?

5 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

I'm actually kinda bearish on Nien Nunb's Pattern Analyzer shennanigans. I think he'll be decent because of Init 5, but for his whole chain to work, you have to K-Turn or T-Roll into a position where you've got range 1 and arc (or at least can barrel roll into range 1 and arc). It sounds great on paper, but I'm skeptical of how reliable it'll be with the on-table geometry of it.

As such, I feel like folks are sleeping on Ello Asty, who's 4 points cheaper, since he doesn't need to take anything in his tech slot. I think a large part of that is Ello being a tad overpriced in 1e, so folks didn't use him as much as the Heroes of the Resistance pilots.

I thought about changing your mind, but I'd much rather people play ello than nien. So you do you.

5 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

I'm actually kinda bearish on Nien Nunb's Pattern Analyzer shennanigans. I think he'll be decent because of Init 5, but for his whole chain to work, you have to K-Turn or T-Roll into a position where you've got range 1 and arc (or at least can barrel roll into range 1 and arc). It sounds great on paper, but I'm skeptical of how reliable it'll be with the on-table geometry of it.

I flew quite a bit of R3-A2 Nien Nunb in 1.0 and I never found it to be much trouble once engaged. It doesn't happen every turn, but it also doesn't need to. Two full modded 4 dice attacks is basically what people bring Redline for so if you can pull if off twice a game plus a smattering of other random shots then he's more than paid for himself

Though it does present a quandary in terms of initiative since moving first lets you pull it off more often but also less able to arc dodge with all those actions

3 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

Pick one surprise Wave 2 Ship:

First Order Tie Interceptor

or

First Order Tie Striker

or

First Order Tie Bomber

FIRST ORDER STRIKERCEPTOR

ADAPTIVE AUTOTHRUSTERS

3/3/4/1 STATLINE

Or more likely, this thing

What statline will it have?

4 hours ago, gennataos said:

Two Advanced Optics come in both Resistance and First Order conversion kits. One comes in the TIE f/o. I'm not planning on playing First Order.

queue rant about FFG forcing me to pay a bunch of money to play a game or something

I have an AA Advanced Optics that I made for this reason (I'm planning on doing FO swarm, it was my main list in 1.0).

I called this so hard that I (attempted to) give out copies of my Advanced Optics cards at the Gold Squadron Classic. They were not popular to say the least. Who is laughing now, since I can't print more for at least 4-6 weeks due to holiday rushes at the printing facility that DTC uses!

IDK. Probably DTC themselves?

3 hours ago, Alyx'sDog said:

I haven't hit a rock in 7 games now, at least not on accident. (I flew over one to get a block onto a different rock!)

I took a mat, placed every obstacle I own and then from a couple feet away threw some tokens at the mat. The challenge was to fly my entire 5-6 ship squad through the mat, landing on each token, without hitting any rocks, in as few turns as possible. I did that for a couple hours, and it's been pretty good practice.

But for context, I wanted to get good at the game as fast as possible. Honestly, the average skill level seems to be comically low among players from what i've seen. Possibly it's my lack of Y chromosome and newness causing underestimation, but that's a whole different story. I figured diving in on the competitive deep-end was the most effective method to learn.

obstacle practice on your own is a great start. Getting ranges and maneuvers locked into your head is also vital

In terms of podcasts/reading. Listener series from the krayts (most everything else, as mentioned, is mostly noise with a few insights), Barons and 186th are both solid.

Bio doesn't need to be 'umble, his blog is solid. Otherwise, I found Tokaz (http://www.notsuchabadpilot.com/) to be interesting when starting out. Some of his stuff isn't super useful anymore, but there's a decent amount of info (firing priority, obstacle positioning) that is interesting to at least think about how to think. Blair (http://blair.brianbunke.com/) has maybe three x wing articles on his blog, but its interesting to probe his mind.

Otherwise game tape is good. Critical viewing of games can get you a lot if you can't play much. Gold squadron has the biggest chunk of content, but first earth and weekend warlords also have some stuff on youtube worth watching (as a general rule of thumb the commentary is background noise, predicting moves/actions and understand how lists work is important).

Really you should find a group of competitive players, latch on and practice as much against them as possible.

Also, don't listen to anyone on the forums (or reddit). We're all idiots.

28 minutes ago, Makaze said:

I flew quite a bit of R3-A2 Nien Nunb in 1.0 and I never found it to be much trouble once engaged. It doesn't happen every turn, but it also doesn't need to. Two full modded 4 dice attacks is basically what people bring Redline for so if you can pull if off twice a game plus a smattering of other random shots then he's more than paid for himself

Though it does present a quandary in terms of initiative since moving first lets you pull it off more often but also less able to arc dodge with all those actions

don't have a bid so you don't have to make that choice?