As a person who is iffy on Turn 0 decisions, gas clouds scare the crap out of me. I know they confer a huge benefit to the player who can best exploit them and and I suspect that won't be me in a lot of matchups. I won't be bringing them for that reason, just as I didn't bring debris clouds in the reign of Super Dash.

37 minutes ago, RStan said:

My bigger concern is based in the same point. There are ships, upgrades and pilot abilities that straight up ignore the threat of gas clouds under their current rules. Advanced Sensors, Pattern Analyzer, R4-P17, Force Users, Fine Tune Controls, Supernatural Reflexes, etc.

Maybe they should have stuck the overlapping ship with a Jam token. (Instead of, not in addition to, skipping Perform Action.)

24 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Maybe they should have stuck the overlapping ship with a Jam token. (Instead of, not in addition to, skipping Perform Action.)

Who would decide which token is removed, in the case of multiples?

Just now, Brunas said:

Who would decide which token is removed, in the case of multiples?

Opposing player would be the most likely.

2 minutes ago, Brunas said:

Who would decide which token is removed, in the case of multiples?

Haven't really thought about it. Could be random, but that's slow. So, first instinct, the opponent of the overlapping player.

"Hey, I'm now roleplaying as a gas cloud." " ... That burrito is really enhancing your performance."

4 hours ago, sirjorj said:

My thoughts exactly - it reduces the threat of obstacles. And thematically, it doesn't make much sense. If you are being attacked though a gas cloud, I would think it would risk igniting and doing more damage than protecting you. Maybe it should add a red die instead of a green. That would at least change how you play.

Don't want to ignite all that atmospherically-pressurized space oxygen, which of course is the medium through which all of Star Wars' space sounds are made. The space whales breathe on that, you know! And if you blow it up, how will course correction work without thrusters placed at nearly every angle on the craft?

4 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

Hey so have people had enough games to agree that Gas Clouds are really dumb?

They are great to defend through *in most cases* and not bad to fly through *in most cases*. I like the blank >> evade effect as a much welcome variance-mitigating effect bizarrely in 2nd edition, but I don't like how forgiving they are to fly through them: very uncharacteristically lacking in "git-gud" theme of 2nd edition. I don't care if extended gets filled to the brim with Dash Rendarr, but I think having them deal an auto-damage upon collision is the best solution. That defense effect is fun, but not the decreased meaning in weaving around obstacles.

1 hour ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Maybe they should have stuck the overlapping ship with a Jam token. (Instead of, not in addition to, skipping Perform Action.)

Still doesn't stop reposition actions anyway. I was thinking more along the lines of the ship gains a strain token then roll a dice and on a crit replace the strain token with an ion token. That way even if you move through it and reposition or the ship ends up getting an action from other means, there can be actual consequence.

by the way, some basic stats for adepticon:

this time Scum was at 16% in swiss and just 7% cut. Resistance had 15% in both. Rebels dropped from 33% to 30%, Empire rose from 29% to 37%, FO went up from 7% to 11%. As always, small numbers, but maybe interesting anyway.

Generics went up to an unprecedented 38%! This is huge and I've never seen anything like it! 333 generics, 545 uniques.

My "archetype" analysis doesn't work here because most lists were basically unique! 148 lists were used just once or twice, and the remaining 79 were used 3 times or more often. To go more into that, these 79 lists were actually just (or still) 14 different ship combinations, while the 148 lists were 123 different combinations of ships. Now that's a wide open meta if I've ever seen one!

Phantoms had a conversion of 31%, XXAA had 17% and all other lists in the cut were a unique combination of ships. Several lists (10) of the cut were not brought by others.

As for A-wings: 29 players (out of the 228 that we have lists for) brought an awing or more. 3 guys had 5 Awings, and one of them (hi Ryan) made cut. That's a 33% conversion rate for that list, but as often with low numbers of people.

Swiss to cut: Phantom jumps like crazy for imperial players, from already high 60% of lists containing one to 80%. The Silencer, by the way, jumps even higher. Every FO list in the cut had one.

That's it more or less, I won't upload all the graphs etc.

Should/does List Fortress include obstacles?

2 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Should/does List Fortress include obstacles?

That would be cool! It could with yasb, but other (*cough* official *cough*) squadbuilders don't include them, so it would be a subset based on squadbuilder preference

23 minutes ago, RStan said:

I was thinking more along the lines of the ship gains a strain token then roll a dice and on a crit replace the strain token with an ion token.

"Replace" is a bit wonky but I think this would be cool.

15 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Should/does List Fortress include obstacles?

It doesn't - 99% of lists in BCP etc don't use them, though anything imported from TTT we'd be able to grab obstacles from theoretically.

2 hours ago, clanofwolves said:

...but is it really?

I don't have gas, err clouds of gas, so I haven't fielded not played with them on the mat. My investigation and comments are purely theoretical. But isn't this just another option? Strategy? ...that could be useful or backfire?

Dare I say it.......... fun?

edit: Again, I'm slow on the "submit" and @GreenDragoon said it first and better.

For me, they make maneuver less interesting than the other obstacles. It is that simple. I'm ok if people don't agree with the reasons (one that I didn't mention was I think they open up the board and I don't like that), but that's been my experience.

I used to bring two big rocks and a medium sized one, but knowing my opponents might bring gas clouds, I'll be bringing three big rocks and continue to try and make the clouds as irrelevant as possible during placement.

7 minutes ago, AlexW said:

For me, they make maneuver less interesting than the other obstacles. It is that simple. I'm ok if people don't agree with the reasons (one that I didn't mention was I think they open up the board and I don't like that), but that's been my experience.

Just for the record, that's IMO completely valid, even if I don't agree.

39 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

by the way, some basic stats for adepticon:

this time Scum was at 16% in swiss and just 7% cut. Resistance had 15% in both. Rebels dropped from 33% to 30%, Empire rose from 29% to 37%, FO went up from 7% to 11%. As always, small numbers, but maybe interesting anyway.

Generics went up to an unprecedented 38%! This is huge and I've never seen anything like it! 333 generics, 545 uniques.

My "archetype" analysis doesn't work here because most lists were basically unique! 148 lists were used just once or twice, and the remaining 79 were used 3 times or more often. To go more into that, these 79 lists were actually just (or still) 14 different ship combinations, while the 148 lists were 123 different combinations of ships. Now that's a wide open meta if I've ever seen one!

Phantoms had a conversion of 31%, XXAA had 17% and all other lists in the cut were a unique combination of ships. Several lists (10) of the cut were not brought by others.

As for A-wings: 29 players (out of the 228 that we have lists for) brought an awing or more. 3 guys had 5 Awings, and one of them (hi Ryan) made cut. That's a 33% conversion rate for that list, but as often with low numbers of people.

Swiss to cut: Phantom jumps like crazy for imperial players, from already high 60% of lists containing one to 80%. The Silencer, by the way, jumps even higher. Every FO list in the cut had one.

That's it more or less, I won't upload all the graphs etc.

As always, I love your data drops!

Are you comparing % between adepticon and what other tournaments? Toronto?

Are you counting generic as per list or total, did someone with 4 phantoms count as 1 phantoms or 4?

26 minutes ago, Sunitsa said:

Are you comparing % between adepticon and what other tournaments? Toronto? 

That was limited to Adepticon only, nothing else. The comparison of generics (the unprecedented 38%) is based on 1.0 stats, the Nov/Dec/Jan and the recent Feb/March hyperspace tournaments. So, not directly comparable.

26 minutes ago, Sunitsa said:

Are you counting generic as per list or total, did someone with 4 phantoms count as 1 phantoms or 4?

Usually both. But here, the 38% are total generics played, 333 / (333+545).
I didn't add the info but something like 175 (pretty much half) of all generic pilots were in a list with only generics, total 39 lists. And out of those 175, Phantoms were the largest fraction with 64 at roughly a third. The next were Y-wings (29), then surprisingly K-wings (18), T65 (14) and Rebel Z95 (13).

edit: to add some more here. Trials season part 1 had 92% of squads with 1 or more unique pilots. Adepticon was as low as 83%, which is a sharp drop.

49 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

by the way, some basic stats for adepticon:

this time Scum was at 16% in swiss and just 7% cut. Resistance had 15% in both. Rebels dropped from 33% to 30%, Empire rose from 29% to 37%, FO went up from 7% to 11%. As always, small numbers, but maybe interesting anyway.

Generics went up to an unprecedented 38%! This is huge and I've never seen anything like it! 333 generics, 545 uniques.

My "archetype" analysis doesn't work here because most lists were basically unique! 148 lists were used just once or twice, and the remaining 79 were used 3 times or more often. To go more into that, these 79 lists were actually just (or still) 14 different ship combinations, while the 148 lists were 123 different combinations of ships. Now that's a wide open meta if I've ever seen one!

Phantoms had a conversion of 31%, XXAA had 17% and all other lists in the cut were a unique combination of ships. Several lists (10) of the cut were not brought by others.

As for A-wings: 29 players (out of the 228 that we have lists for) brought an awing or more. 3 guys had 5 Awings, and one of them (hi Ryan) made cut. That's a 33% conversion rate for that list, but as often with low numbers of people.

Swiss to cut: Phantom jumps like crazy for imperial players, from already high 60% of lists containing one to 80%. The Silencer, by the way, jumps even higher. Every FO list in the cut had one.

That's it more or less, I won't upload all the graphs etc.

Were all Silencers on the cut Kylo?

I doubt any were FOTPs...

34 minutes ago, Brunas said:

It doesn't - 99% of lists in BCP etc don't use them, though anything imported from TTT we'd be able to grab obstacles from theoretically.

I disagree. It felt like 55% of the PCP lists only had pictures of the rocks or photographs of actual fortresses made out of rocks.

21 minutes ago, Kaptin Krunch said:

Were all Silencers on the cut Kylo?

I doubt any were FOTPs...

Yes. However, "all" are 3, and there were just 16 people playing FO overall. I could check. edit: 10/16 FO lists had a silencer. 9 were Kylo, one was blackout.

And as comment on the "open meta", the only visible "problem lists" are quad and maybe triple phantoms. Quad made up 16 lists (as many as FO players total...) and way too many in the cut with 5/27. If we combine the two types we get 8/27 or a third of the cut. That's is interesting because most other lists in the cut are relatively unique.

18 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

I disagree. It felt like 55% of the PCP lists only had pictures of the rocks or photographs of actual fortresses made out of rocks.

Sad reacts only!

And to hit a bit further into the phantom notch: 21 squads had 3-4 phantoms, that's 32% of imperial lists and 9.2% of all lists (that I have. If there were no others in the remaining 23 lists, it's goes as low as 8.2%).

As recently mentioned, 10% is usually when the community starts to percieve something as problem and "everywhere". For example, GhostFenn was at 10.1% during regionals season in March 2018. Massed phantoms are the only thing that gets as high in extended or hyperspace. If several combinations of U, X and Ywing are combined, only then do they scratch at 9%.

But what's the impact of going from 3 to 7 factions to that perception? As some sane people won't do all 7 forever, will the threshold that triggers the perception lower, or will the prevalence of some archetypes get buried in forced diversity (i.e. not everyone will own that "everywhere" faction to begin with)?

Is it better if people don't notice it as much?

1 minute ago, drjkel said:

But what's the impact of going from 3 to 7 factions to that perception? As some sane people won't do all 7 forever, will the threshold that triggers the perception lower, or will the prevalence of some archetypes get buried in forced diversity (i.e. not everyone will own that "everywhere" faction to begin with)?

Is it better if people don't notice it as much?

I don't think the number of factions will factor in much if at all. If something is shown to get results people will gravitate towards it regardless of faction. There will be some faction loyal or self limiting holdouts of course, but if a list is perceived as good it will get played allot.

49 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

And to hit a bit further into the phantom notch: 21 squads had 3-4 phantoms, that's 32% of imperial lists and 9.2% of all lists (that I have. If there were no others in the remaining 23 lists, it's goes as low as 8.2%).

As recently mentioned, 10% is usually when the community starts to percieve something as problem and "everywhere". For example, GhostFenn was at 10.1% during regionals season in March 2018. Massed phantoms are the only thing that gets as high in extended or hyperspace. If several combinations of U, X and Ywing are combined, only then do they scratch at 9%.

I was going to ask about the combined number of the Leia bois, thanks for being one step ahead of my questions

44 minutes ago, drjkel said:

But what's the impact of going from 3 to 7 factions to that perception? As some sane people won't do all 7 forever, will the threshold that triggers the perception lower, or will the prevalence of some archetypes get buried in forced diversity (i.e. not everyone will own that "everywhere" faction to begin with)? 

Is it better if people don't notice it as much?

I agree with @Hiemfire, it should not depend on number of factions. For example, I'm not sure if GhostFenn would have been less (or more) of a problem if it was the only rebel list played*?

What does matter is how often a faction is played, as it is a self-reinforcing feedback loop, increasing or decreasing. We saw that in hyperspace trials: if nobody plays scum then nobody will try, nobody will win, and even fewer play&try.

[*One of my hills to die on is that Xwing should not and is not balanced on the faction level. Every faction should ideally have several viable squads. If one of them has a single viable list then the faction is imbalanced, even if that list is 20% of the meta and even more in cuts. Of course factions influence how a squad can be balanced. But it never matters during a game or tournament what other faction specific options you'd have had. /1am rant]

30 minutes ago, Sunitsa said:

I was going to ask about the combined number of the Leia bois, thanks for being one step ahead of my questions

That number is from hyperspace trials! I didn't check for adepticon because there was such a huge variety of lists and it's a really tough call which lists to combine with all those options. And unfortunately I can't give you the number of rebel squads that used Leia. Ah, I can. 53 lists out of 76 rebel lists total. And none without her advanced.

edit2: and one more extra: Out of 878 total ships, there were 36 Uwings (299 rebel ships total). There were 100 phantoms (271 imperial ships). That's 4% Uwings, and 11% Phantoms. 60% of imperial squads had at least one phantom, while 70% of rebel squads had Leia.

edit3: last one for today. 39/65 (60%) of imperial squads had one or more phantoms. But 9/10 of imperial squads in the cut. As mentioned before, 8 of those 10 had 3-4 phantoms. So in the same way that Leia is taking rebels hostage, the phantoms are necessary to play imperials at a high level - at adepticon!