2 hours ago, Tlfj200 said:

Vulture Swarms: A Manifesto

Grappling Struts

That said, I have some complaints. I think struts should cost zero points… but that the vulture chassis should go up proportionally, so that vultures always have struts.

Agreed, but also the chassi is too cheap currently. TFD should probably be 21 or 22, with the struts being free.

1 hour ago, Boom Owl said:

I dont really want to get into a premovement mechanic debate. Doesnt take many games with Vader to see that Precog is undercosted. Same with Sense on Jedi or with other Aces using it to fill in bid for jousts.

Im fairly confident that without a cost increase R2A6 Ani will end up on more peoples radars once regen goes up.

Ani CLT R2A6 is my favorite republic ship to fly. In three matches vs Sinker Swarm, he lost a total of 1 shield. Its hard to pin him down.

1 hour ago, skotothalamos said:

only one result, admittedly, but I just took Precog Vader to Philly and 5-0'd the Worlds Qualifier.

Been wanting to try this. Have not had the chance yet. Gonna wait for points update then go at it. What was your list?

55 minutes ago, pheaver said:

I can see generic Vultures going up a point. The Vulture Swarm (with whatever enabler you like) is a smidge too good compared to other swarms. Separatists in general have been doing really well, even non-Nantex lists. Named Vultures are still garbage.

Nantexes are definitely too good.

Bellyrubs and Infiltrators and Hyenas are reasonable. If anything, the Bellyrub title might be the too-cheap card in that chassis.

I like Travis's idea. If TFD's with struts are 21 points, and there's no strut-less option to run, I think that's fine.

I would be very surprised if Chertek w/ Ensnare and 7 droids w/ some toys is still a legal list in January.

How critical were discord missiles in your victories? If vultures with struts are 21pts vs 20pts, you would only lose two discord missiles from the list? Still seems strong.

4 minutes ago, wurms said:

How critical were discord missiles in your victories? If vultures with struts are 21pts vs 20pts, you would only lose two discord missiles from the list? Still seems strong.

which was my point. Because if that's the case then pre-July vultures were already good enough

11 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

which was my point. Because if that's the case then pre-July vultures were already good enough

Reminder, pre-July points Soulless One was 4 more pts, TA175 wasn't out yet so it was only 10 pt Kraken, and Chertek wasn't out either. These are all HUGE factors in Vulture Swarm list building for that final 8th piece around 50 pts. Also Struts were 3 pts at that time...

50 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

Agreed, but also the chassi is too cheap currently. TFD should probably be 21 or 22, with the struts being free.

2 hours ago, Tlfj200 said:

*This is not to say, or claim, that vultures are fine from a points perspective, but rather to note that as long as a swarm exists, the above will exist. Perhaps vultures could, or should, be more expensive, but let's not pretend that will change how they play.

***

25 minutes ago, wurms said:

How critical were discord missiles in your victories? If vultures with struts are 21pts vs 20pts, you would only lose two discord missiles from the list? Still seems strong.

Losing 2 discord missiles is literally two-thirds of all discord missiles in the list. That seems pretty relevant, as they're the only upgrades in the list other than struts and chertek-related stuff.

14 minutes ago, wurms said:

Ani CLT R2A6 is my favorite republic ship to fly.

11 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Because if that's the case then pre-July vultures were already good enough

Vultures with Struts under proposed new paradigm: 21 points
Vultures with Struts under Wave 3 points: 23 points

That's not only a 14 point swing (almost as big as the 17 point swing that took Rebel Beef from absolutely everywhere to nearly nowhere), Hyenas/TA-175/Ensnare all didn't exist yet; and even now that they do, Vultures are really only seeing results with two of them - the mixed all droid lists haven't really performed consistently, a small few exceptions from Worlds/Nova/Brazil not really seeing wide replication. And on top of all that, Sear got Soulless discounted, and buzz droids got cheaper too. This line of argument just doesn't hold water.

I really don't understand why "Wave 3 vultures were good" is the particular hill you've picked to die on, although as a chronic-hill-dier personally, .

To clarify, for all the 🤪

Its not just droids. Hyper Joust lists in general give me some feelsbad when they're strong, not because I wish to joust with my not-a-joust list, but because I find games with such binary options really quite boring.

Swarms are fun to play against when you can force them to make sacrifices, either positionally or on mods, or something. There are so many elements now that allow them to just straight line at you and still mod well. It almost forces you to simply run and wait longer for a turnaround in some small specific part of the board. Something you're both well aware of. That's another factor that is clearly going to drag a game out and favour one or other side of the min/max in the match up.

Droids are obviously top of the Swarm joust pile atm and not having to make quite enough sacrifice to make it interesting or fun to play against, for me. I thought it was because they now have numbers and mods and nowhere they can't go. Maybe I'm wrong.

I don't ace hard enough to begrudge them a Nantex, spices things up a bit.

The flip side ofc, is regen Jedi, or Super bid fortress positioning evil aces. 2 sides of the same boring coin. Winning in 1 or 2 rounds of shooting, either followed by or preceded by lots of nothing, is the enemy.

Thankfully, the cool thing is that you don't have to play the min/max way with any of this stuff. That alone makes the overwhelming majority of my games top fun.

4 minutes ago, svelok said:

I really don't understand why "Wave 3 vultures were good" is the particular hill you've picked to die on, although as a chronic-hill-dier personally, .

Eh, it's not a hill I care much about. I just find points discussions about small changes irritating, and points discussions almost replaced list discussions. It's so uninteresting to talk about what the points should be.

2 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

It's so uninteresting to talk about what the points should be.

That's a good point.

4 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

It's so uninteresting to talk about what the points should be.

1 minute ago, LagJanson said:

That's a good point.

I see what you did there...

5 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

Eh, it's not a hill I care much about. I just find points discussions about small changes irritating, and points discussions almost replaced list discussions. It's so uninteresting to talk about what the points should be.

What matchups do you wanna talk about?

Assuming free struts, something like:

Sear - 43
TA175 - 10
Trade Fed Drone - 21
Struts - 0

Might be the minimum viable archetype. Sits exactly at 200, losing discord missiles and notably Soulless One. This is obviously a sizeable nerf (currently sits at 184), hence "minimum" - anything more expensive than that and the archetype is most likely dead? Assuming other stuff gets nerfed too (cough force aces cough, seriously I die a little more on the inside every time balance talk shifts to vultures instead of the true enemy, jedi), something between here and there would be appropriate.

Just now, GreenDragoon said:

It's so uninteresting to talk about what the points should be.

I revoke

10 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

points discussions almost replaced list discussions

ok wait this is actually worth talking about

List discussion in 1.0 was fostered by 1.0 being more of a card game. Recent trends suggest otherwise but at least for a while 2.0 was less of a card game, and its actually really hard to discuss in-game decision making online because of the sheer number of factors involved. Some of that difficulty might just be learning new muscles/vocabulary. A lot of list building decisions are dependent not upon X card does Y effect, but on a subtle je ne sais pas that just sort of helps the list move compatibly and work together well in ways that are very tough to put into discrete words. The more those factors are played up, the harder/lower value list discussion ends up having.

"I'm bringing Intimidation Ani because he's a great blocker, sets up shots, and holds points well", is card-based and easy to express. It can be a lot more difficult to express why Fenn just doesn't jive with Scum Han, or whatever, because of the way that they move in-game.

22 minutes ago, svelok said:

Assuming free struts, something like:

Sear - 43
TA175 - 10
Trade Fed Drone - 21
Struts - 0

Might be the minimum viable archetype. Sits exactly at 200, losing discord missiles and notably Soulless One. This is obviously a sizeable nerf (currently sits at 184), hence "minimum" - anything more expensive than that and the archetype is most likely dead? Assuming other stuff gets nerfed too (cough force aces cough, seriously I die a little more on the inside every time balance talk shifts to vultures instead of the true enemy, jedi), something between here and there would be appropriate.

I revoke

That looks about right where they should be, an 8 ship list shouldn't have much space for extra gravy. Jedi aces should probably be nerfed pretty hard too, a couple of points on the pilots here and there, and a big hike on r2. One engage, run and regen and avoid playing should be a dead archetype.

8 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

That looks about right where they should be, an 8 ship list shouldn't have much space for extra gravy. Jedi aces should probably be nerfed pretty hard too, a couple of points on the pilots here and there, and a big hike on r2.

Pause - one second. The position is simply "8 ships shouldn't have upgrades" as a broad statement? Just... because? What, philosophically, regardless of chassis or upgrades?

Let's evaluate this list:
Vultures are the bare minimum ship in the game, arguably under TIEs. TA-175's usefulness is diminished against lists with same-initiative spam, and literally useless against ships of the same initiative as your own.

Sear would be a 5 hp ship with 2 agility, a single focus, at i2, and no other mods, and the rest of your ships wouldn't shoot until i1, so if anyone kills sear before i1, TA-175 is further relegated to uselessness.

I just want to walk through the logical extension of points proposals, because I suspect people just lash out with feelings, and don't think through what the resulting effects are.

points and listbuilding and matchups are all talked about too frequently.

instead, let's talk about flying. how is it that phantoms and Starvipers are so good? it's because of the ability to drift around the edge and wait for the opponent to pick the engage, right? is there a way to replicate this with more "normal" ships? let's say you're flying 5 Y-Wings. how do you set up to force people to come fight the Y-Wings on their own terms (assume the judge will give warning points for fortressing)? what goes on in your mind during list placement, rock placement, dials... what moves do you do? if you want a more specific scenario let's imagine your opponent's list is Vader/Soontir/Fairoph and they do NOT opt into the joust, nor will they run down the opposite side of the board halfway and then turn in 90 degrees and joust sideways.

I could talk about why Chertek is so much better than Sear?

He's an endgame unit, unlike Sear, so he can close the game against what remains of your opponent's list. I tractored droids more often than I tractored enemy ships: in one fun case, I landed on a rock with a strut droid, rolled off of it, and then tractored the droid onto a different rock and out of arc from a Luke that took a lock on him. I've tractored droids to get off discord missiles: buzz droids are pretty essential in the other swarmy matchups to keep your damage high and take things off the board. Finally, it really helps in my harder matchups, triple aces, when I can move a vulture to get a shot or a better shot.

It's been totally worth it compared to Sear's ability (which is generally useless in the hard matchups) and TA175 (useless in the mirror, often useless against triple aces).

9 minutes ago, pheaver said:

I could talk about why Chertek is so much better than Sear?

He's an endgame unit, unlike Sear, so he can close the game against what remains of your opponent's list. I tractored droids more often than I tractored enemy ships: in one fun case, I landed on a rock with a strut droid, rolled off of it, and then tractored the droid onto a different rock and out of arc from a Luke that took a lock on him. I've tractored droids to get off discord missiles: buzz droids are pretty essential in the other swarmy matchups to keep your damage high and take things off the board. Finally, it really helps in my harder matchups, triple aces, when I can move a vulture to get a shot or a better shot.

It's been totally worth it compared to Sear's ability (which is generally useless in the hard matchups) and TA175 (useless in the mirror, often useless against triple aces).

Do you feel the value of the 3rd Discord Missile is higher than putting struts on the last 3 drones that don't have them? How did you fly them so the mix of struts and no struts didn't limit you too much? I look forward to watching your games to see this actually happen which I assume will help with understanding how to fly a mixed "strut - no strut" vulture swarm.

22 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

What matchups do you wanna talk about?

Right now not one in particular. Maybe ace vs mid ini beef, ace vs ace (moving first), or beef vs beef for the purity. I'd be more interested in talking about the new vocabulary that @svelok mentioned.

I don't know what other hobbies you guys have, but I see parallels to several of mine in the following way: it often isn't relevant to talk about strategies on any level as long as the mechanics are not down. No need to talk starcraft2 stratgey if the macro is bad, no reason to talk boxing strategy if you can't throw a jab, no importance to ice hockey strategy if you can't pass or skate, no way to talk chess strategies if you don't know basic lines. Some basic capabilities are necessary to do something.

Similarly in X-wing it is a bit futile to talk about ways as long as the list is bad, distances are misjudged, triggers are missed, cards misunderstood, and other basic things.
It's probably up to opinion whether dice probabilities are a basic or intermediate topic, but they are mostly simple and as such less interesting to discuss. I would also be interest in talking about openings, rock selection&placement, ship deployment, which I consider to be intermediate - but it could be that it is rather simple, too.
Something more advanced is maybe to identify the inherent strengths and weaknesses of a list in comparison to your own. And another topic I'm interested is how to identify and exploit mistakes in a sustainable way.

But these all need specific situations OR a good idea on how to talk about it in an abstract way.

9 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

points and listbuilding and matchups are all talked about too frequently.

instead, let's talk about flying. how is it that phantoms and Starvipers are so good? it's because of the ability to drift around the edge and wait for the opponent to pick the engage, right? is there a way to replicate this with more "normal" ships? let's say you're flying 5 Y-Wings. how do you set up to force people to come fight the Y-Wings on their own terms (assume the judge will give warning points for fortressing)? what goes on in your mind during list placement, rock placement, dials... what moves do you do? if you want a more specific scenario let's imagine your opponent's list is Vader/Soontir/Fairoph and they do NOT opt into the joust, nor will they run down the opposite side of the board halfway and then turn in 90 degrees and joust sideways.

That's super hard with Y-wings, because they're so slow that they can't force any kind of engagement just from movement. The opponent knows where you are and where you'll be next turn. Their zone of possible positions is extraordinarily small.

28 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

Pause - one second. The position is simply "8 ships shouldn't have upgrades" as a broad statement? Just... because? What, philosophically, regardless of chassis or upgrades?

I said they shouldn't have much space for extras. Luxuries like missiles. Choose: play 8 ships, or drop one to make room for missiles. It should be a choice. Networked calculations is very good, and could very well elevate the little droids above academy pilots, especially after factoring in struts. Alternatively drop the support ship/upgrade to make room for missiles.

For a related topic,

I'd enjoy anything that creates a more dynamic Turn 0.

GA-97.

Beckett.

Boba Crew.

New obstacles.

Pre turn 1 mines.

....(please add more)...

...pretty please.....

....and squads/upgrades that encourage a non-clumped deployment/engagement....

43 minutes ago, svelok said:

Fenn just doesn't jive with Scum Han, or whatever, because of the way that they move in-game.

Friendship with Svelok ended.

1 minute ago, Biophysical said:

That's super hard with Y-wings, because they're so slow that they can't force any kind of engagement just from movement. The opponent knows where you are and where you'll be next turn. Their zone of possible positions is extraordinarily small.

My opinion: The Y-wings can't "force" the engagement beyond the final salvo scenario. They need to keep close enough together to react to a push from an ace and yet spread out enough to prevent narrow bands of fire that are easy to flank past. It's a defensive formation of keeping options open until you have a chance to pull in for a block or pounce on an overly aggressive move - both can be interpreted as unforced mistakes by the ace player.

2 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

I said they shouldn't have much space for extras. Luxuries like missiles. Choose: play 8 ships, or drop one to make room for missiles. It should be a choice. Networked calculations is **** good, and could very well elevate the little droids above academy pilots, especially after factoring in struts. Alternatively drop the support ship/upgrade to make room for missiles.

I understand this isn't the point of this discussion, but I find vultures much more manageable to play against than TIE Fighters. The damage against them is more predictable because of the reduced agility.