20 minutes ago, Boreas Mun said:

I'm pretty sure that momentum in X-wing doesn't exist.

Ever been losing a game, see defeat is unavoidable, and then manage to get a lucky shot on a key target? That feeling that you're suddenly back in the game? That's the momentum here.

9 minutes ago, Sunitsa said:

direct consequence of me losing momentum

I think we are actually looking for a different word here though. Its not a tangible specific thing. Its more about how you react emotionally to mistakes and then start making more.

1 minute ago, Boom Owl said:

I think we are actually looking for a different word here though. Its not a tangible specific thing. Its more about how you react emotionally to mistakes and then start making more.

That is one of my main weaknesses. I lose interest in the worst cases and would rather concede and play some turns from the start again. Sometimes the tilt lasts even into the next game.

18 minutes ago, Boreas Mun said:

I'm pretty sure that momentum in X-wing doesn't exist.

To flip that on it's head: how many games of X-Wing do you play where you feel there are lead changes? In my experience, one player takes the lead and usually holds it. Words don't always mean the same things for everyone, but I'd describe that as momentum.

Or let's describe another situation. When some ship I thought I was going to kill (supposing I had a good shot lined up on it) escapes it lives another round on 1 hull. Then I've got to make sure I can shoot it again, rather than simply moving on to the next target. So it makes one more attack (even if it's just a chip damage or two) and I sink another attack into that ship to finish it off. So I'm now down two attacks--the opponent got one, and I "lost" one because I couldn't finish it off last round. That's a major difference in momentum than if I'd just have rolled one more hit the first time around.

9 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

I think we are actually looking for a different word here though. Its not a tangible specific thing. Its more about how you react emotionally to mistakes and then start making more.

"morale" might be a better word, but it's still tied to momentum imo

6 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

“A good player who loses at chess is genuinely convinced hat he has lost because of a mistake, and he looks for this mistake in the beginning of his game, but forgets that there were also mistakes at ever step in the course of the game, that none of his moves was perfect. The mistake he pays attention to is conspicuous only because his opponent took advantage of it.” - Tolstoy, in War and Peace

This is a terrific quote! I think there are several really good articles on Magic the Gathering (or maybe Hearthstone) about this, basically rebuking players who complain about their opponent topdecking the winning card against them or themselves not drawing the card(s) they needed to pull out the win by suggesting that better choices throughout the game might have avoided being in a position where the player was relying on just that sequence of cards to begin with. I wish I could find them.

It's so much easier to identify and agonize over the major blunder, but players aiming to improve their game are doing themselves a disservice if they are letting that distract them from taking a hard look at their opening, their approach, their action decisions, etc and trying to find opportunities for better decisions throughout. X-Wing gives a player so many open-ended decision points and even in hindsight it's sometimes so hard to determine what the "best" decision was; certainly harder than just identifying that the bad ones were, although that's a good start at least.

47 minutes ago, Sunitsa said:

"morale" might be a better word, but it's still tied to momentum imo

I've been working on this myself. Last night, I played a match where I got ahead early on, but took serious losses in the second round of shooting. So you might think I should despair. But, looking purely at the state of the board, I was still up in positioning and points.

Advantage might be difficult to define objectively or rigorously in x-wing, but it's DEFINITELY a state parameter.

In response to the question raised on the podcast about X-Wing maybe not being a competitive game and are we just wrong and/or messing it up?

I don't think it should have ever reached these heights of competition. It's a game of precise movement where official game components are imprecise and inconsistent. We all smack ships around and tiddlywink obstacles. Maybe this is common in other miniatures games, this is the first and only one I've played.

/shrug

29 minutes ago, DoubleDown11 said:

It's so much easier to identify and agonize over the major blunder, but players aiming to improve their game are doing themselves a disservice if they are letting that distract them from taking a hard look at their opening, their approach, their action decisions, etc and trying to find opportunities for better decisions throughout.

An interesting set of terms in Chess analysis are Inaccuracy, Mistake, and Blunder. Mostly just terms of gradation.

Roughly speaking, Blunders lose games (or allow losing opponents to draw them instead). Mistakes lose pieces. Inaccuracies are those moves which could have been better, but add up over time and can put someone into a losing position.

1 minute ago, theBitterFig said:

An interesting set of terms in Chess analysis are Inaccuracy, Mistake, and Blunder. Mostly just terms of gradation.

Roughly speaking, Blunders lose games (or allow losing opponents to draw them instead). Mistakes lose pieces. Inaccuracies are those moves which could have been better, but add up over time and can put someone into a losing position.

We could incorporate so many concepts from other games.

4 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

An interesting set of terms in Chess analysis are Inaccuracy, Mistake, and Blunder. Mostly just terms of gradation.

Roughly speaking, Blunders lose games (or allow losing opponents to draw them instead). Mistakes lose pieces. Inaccuracies are those moves which could have been better, but add up over time and can put someone into a losing position.

X-Wing Players prefer this more accurate and reliable system.

To follow up on this more, I think the game is probably best when played with some friends or a game shop group. Some person/list rises to the top, everyone else works toward toppling the "king", rinse and repeat. Maybe their current "meta" gets "solved" until the next wave release or FAQ/points update, and things get kind of stale until then or they convince the "king" to abdicate their throne and play something else.

Now, I think this is exactly how competitive X-Wing works right now (except the abdication), just on a macro scale...kind of.

But it's still dumb that most judge calls are on arc checks.

28 minutes ago, gennataos said:

In response to the question raised on the podcast about X-Wing maybe not being a competitive game and are we just wrong and/or messing it up?

I don't think it should have ever reached these heights of competition. It's a game of precise movement where official game components are imprecise and inconsistent. We all smack ships around and tiddlywink obstacles. Maybe this is common in other miniatures games, this is the first and only one I've played.

/shrug

A game doesn't become playable at competitive level out of thin air. It has to be good from the beginning, with a solid player base and with some support from the dev team. I think X-wing is not perfect but has all of that. The basic concept of spaceships fighting with a Star Wars layer on top is very enjoyable, and because of that two points, the players are quite attached and enthusiastic about this game (see all the content from the fanbase : blogs, podcasts, streams,...). Then the dev team support the game with regular FAQ updates and since 2nd edition, balance through the points. Nevertheless it is not perfect with the margin of error being significant, but the fact that the game is in this state today proves that it has what it takes to be competitive.

A perfect example could be made by comparing with E-sport games. A lot of video-games are released but a very few makes it to competitive level. Sometimes it is not really explainable why some games works and other not. Fortnite is still top when it was not designed as competitive in a first place. You could argue it is not the best of its kind and maybe you would be right, but fact is its still here, while all its competitors die one after another.

20 minutes ago, theBitterFig said:

An interesting set of terms in Chess analysis are Inaccuracy, Mistake, and Blunder. Mostly just terms of gradation.

Roughly speaking, Blunders lose games (or allow losing opponents to draw them instead). Mistakes lose pieces. Inaccuracies are those moves which could have been better, but add up over time and can put someone into a losing position.

Fine terms but I prefer "Whoops", "Uh Oh", and "Now That Wasn't Podracing."

15 minutes ago, Ximatique said:

A game doesn't become playable at competitive level out of thin air. It has to be good from the beginning, with a solid player base and with some support from the dev team. I think X-wing is not perfect but has all of that. The basic concept of spaceships fighting with a Star Wars layer on top is very enjoyable, and because of that two points, the players are quite attached and enthusiastic about this game (see all the content from the fanbase : blogs, podcasts, streams,...). Then the dev team support the game with regular FAQ updates and since 2nd edition, balance through the points. Nevertheless it is not perfect with the margin of error being significant, but the fact that the game is in this state today proves that it has what it takes to be competitive.

A perfect example could be made by comparing with E-sport games. A lot of video-games are released but a very few makes it to competitive level. Sometimes it is not really explainable why some games works and other not. Fortnite is still top when it was not designed as competitive in a first place. You could argue it is not the best of its kind and maybe you would be right, but fact is its still here, while all its competitors die one after another.

I think you've missed my point, which is that X-Wing is a game where even the slightest tweak to the positioning of a ship can have a profound impact. It's a game of precision played with inconsistent game components utilized by clumsy human hands

Yeah, actually I focused on your first question.

About your point , the best best we could do is play every top game in Vassal or an other simulator, where there is no room for imprecision or interpretation.

But yes the inconcistencies in official components, most notably range rulers and templates but also dice as shown in recent study, is troubling. But it is more of an issue for FFG selling bad products and having a policy about official component being mandatory than us mere mortals being forced to play with them. I think we do our best with what we have.

18 minutes ago, gennataos said:

I think you've missed my point, which is that X-Wing is a game where even the slightest tweak to the positioning of a ship can have a profound impact. It's a game of precision played with inconsistent game components utilized by clumsy human hands

It's not a unique problem to X-Wing though. Miniature games generally are sensitive to bumps. Heck, even hex-maps aren't fool proof as I've seen blunders causing minis to be pushed into the wrong hex, knocked over, twisted... (also even more cringe worthy, moved so hard the glue joints fail and the loaner mini comes apart in the players hands...)

Inaccuracy =

Mistake =

Blunder =

Thanks @Boom Owl thanks @theBitterFig

Can we redo the quiz with these instead?

1 hour ago, gennataos said:

I think you've missed my point, which is that X-Wing is a game where even the slightest tweak to the positioning of a ship can have a profound impact. It's a game of precision played with inconsistent game components utilized by clumsy human hands

Vassal X-Wing might be...? Interface issues aside it satisfies the precision aspect and enforces some of the less enforceable aspects of the tabletop version. Whether it's actually a good competitive game, ie. balanced and entertaining, is a bit more subjective at that point

I will pretty firmly state my opinion that tabletop X-Wing is not, nor will it ever be, a good competitive game. But that it is definitely a better game than Vassal X-Wing because of the added benefits of social interaction, tactile feedback, and hucking dice (which is why the dice app is a soul sucking abomination that should not be)

2 hours ago, gennataos said:

But it's still dumb that most judge calls are on arc checks. 

I'm sorry, but sometimes (everygame) I need authority on a check that's looking like it's leaning my way. It's a power move.

3 hours ago, gennataos said:

But it's still dumb that most judge calls are on arc checks.

Just trying to help Brent get his steps in

2 hours ago, LagJanson said:

It's not a unique problem to X-Wing though. Miniature games generally are sensitive to bumps. Heck, even hex-maps aren't fool proof as I've seen blunders causing minis to be pushed into the wrong hex, knocked over, twisted... (also even more cringe worthy, moved so hard the glue joints fail and the loaner mini comes apart in the players hands...)

It's not even just a miniature games thing: soccer is full of inaccuracies, even post VAR, yet it's the most played and followed competitive game in the world.

Even computer Esports like league of legends have their share of game changing bugs

Precision to stick on its own rules/mechanics isn't necessary for something to be competitive, we have plenty of example of imprecise competitive games

1 hour ago, Makaze said:

it is definitely a better game than Vassal X-Wing because of the added benefits of social interaction, tactile feedback, and hucking dice (which is why the dice app is a soul sucking abomination that should not be)

I'll agree with this point. The real thing is far better than the computer recreations, despite the increase in accuracy they can provide.

I don't believe the game needs to be perfect to be a competitive thing, because no game or sport is perfect. See above.

Yeah if we want a competitive "balanced" game, what we really need is refs, and the assumption that refs are part of the game that sports have. For competitive play we probably have enough judges at this point, but we also probably need to let the judges call more stuff and make more controversial calls, and then the players just accept that they're going to get screwed over by the ref every now and then and that's just how it works.

Not really saying I want that, just saying that's kinda how sports have "solved" this

@Kieransi I didn't want to torpedo your thread because the first few posts often set the tone, but...

my actual reaction was more this