8 hours ago, svelok said:

Oops, 2pt Leia. Nevermind, kturn all you like. Oh and Cassian too, just in case we need to do it a little more next turn. Stress? The fundamental mechanic that underlines decision making and rewards/penalizes setting good/bad dials? What's that?

I saw Leia more of a piece that could "even the playing field" for all these clunky, low-init rebel ships.

I mean, they're up against ships that, in many situations, get to see where you're going, and then choose not to be in your firing arc, and often still have mods for their attacks. How does an i4 or below x-wing even exist in a meta where Jedi, soontir, phantoms, inquisitors, Vader, etc just lol out of all arcs unless they choose to make a favorable points trade? Leia gave them at least something to do about it.

15 minutes ago, Ablazoned said:

How does an i4 or below x-wing even exist in a meta where Jedi, soontir, phantoms, inquisitors, Vader, etc just lol out of all arcs unless they choose to make a favorable points trade?

Rework force rules so the shots and blocks allowed matter more. Or make more things turrets/control. Or give everything double mods on offense with 0 pt LRS. Or up up up aces by 8 pts on average. Or remove more of their upgrade slots. Or some smaller amount of all of the above.

Aces being able to stay out of arcs doesn’t bother me much. Its doing it all with 2 shots worth of mods regardless of landing in or out of arc, blocked, or wit or wit out stress.

14 minutes ago, Ablazoned said:

How does an i4 or below x-wing even exist in a meta where Jedi, soontir, phantoms, inquisitors, Vader, etc just lol out of all arcs unless they choose to make a favorable points trade?

I hunt aces with i3s or lower regularly, so I don't know what you're doing wrong. Git gud?

My favorite Ace harasser is 4-LOM. They get a lot more predictable with stress. Killbox.

9 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

Rework force rules so the shots and blocks allowed matter more. Or make more things turrets/control. Or give everything double mods on offense with 0 pt LRS. Or up up up aces by 8 pts on average. Or remove more of their upgrade slots. Or some smaller amount of all of the above

All fair. But given that all those things weren't true, Leia could have been an attempt at an alternate balancer.

My personal top suspects for helping with force aces is to rework light/dark side. Light side users' default effect is only green dice, and dark side only for reds. Aethersprites can no longer out-joust or out-alpha swarms. Kylo doesn't get to be an invincible points fortress 1v1. Boba doesn't get 6-10 free hull upgrades per game with maul.

Oh, and Afterburners grants a red boost.

5 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

I hunt aces with i3s or lower regularly, so I don't know what you're doing wrong. Git gud?

Cool story bro

8 hours ago, svelok said:

Rebel beef (due to Leia) was able to fundamentally ignore the penalty of taking stress for kturns, which (like force) undermines the fundamental design balance of trading mods for positioning and made flanking the list basically pointless.

In a normal match, getting in the side of a list is a massive advantage. B-Wings have one white turn, X-Wings have two and they're the faster ones, and in general range and position control is much harder left/right than forwards because of how the maneuvers work, the number of them you have available, etc. They can kturn or tallon or rotate, to fix their positioning, but it costs their mods this turn and their dial next turn, giving the flanker a big advantage.

Oops, 2pt Leia. Nevermind, kturn all you like. Oh and Cassian too, just in case we need to do it a little more next turn. Stress? The fundamental mechanic that underlines decision making and rewards/penalizes setting good/bad dials? What's that?

Leia is one of the most fundamentally corrosive cards in X-Wing and the wave 3/4 Leia/Jedi meta was a huge middle finger to dials-based game design; and we knew it at the time, too.

I mean Leia is only every three turns, it had to move before some stuff, and most meta lists since have had force which also completely invalidates stress. So unless you’re arguing the first season’s 200 point Boba and Redline/Whisper/Soontir we’re harder to fly, I don’t actually think this invalidates my point. I didn’t say I think Rebel beef is a fun list or something that should exist, I just said that I think of all the meta boogeymen in second edition it was still the one that required the most thinking on the part of the person playing it (it was definitely the boogeyman I had the most fun playing against).

3 minutes ago, Ablazoned said:

Oh, and Afterburners grants a red boost.

This makes alot of sense.

35 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

I hunt aces with i3s or lower regularly, so I don't know what you're doing wrong. Git gud?

My favorite Ace harasser is 4-LOM. They get a lot more predictable with stress. Killbox.

Fly Casual AI isn't that good with flying Aces mate, that doesn't count.

1 hour ago, funwok said:

Fly Casual AI isn't that good with flying Aces mate, that doesn't count.

Locally at FLGS, two local imperial players. Played them a lot before corona, variations of my 4-LOM 4-ship list is 7-0 against them. Only 1 variation had an i6(Fenn Rau).

26 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

Locally at FLGS, two local imperial players. Played them a lot before corona, variations of my 4-LOM 4-ship list is 7-0 against them. Only 1 variation had an i6(Fenn Rau).

12 minutes ago, EbonHawk said:

More surprise that people are struggling that hard to beat aces with lower initiative ships. You can fit more of them, have more hitpoints and firepower on the board. Yes they can arc-dodge, make arc nets, make killboxes they can't dodge out of, stress them, tractor them onto rocks, block them, etc.

7 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

Not quite, more like 11% for end of April 2019. In notably the most diverse meta I've ever seen.

Too lazy to do an archetype count, but in wave 3/4, 29.1% of lists were rebels and 68.5% of rebel lists (19.1% of all lists) had Leia in them. Removing lists were the Leia carrier was Lando or Han, puts the remaining Leias at 16.4% of all lists. So giving up another point or two for other weird lists and sitting at 14-15% seems to check out, unless you're getting 11% from a specific count somewhere (or we're using different definitions for what is/isn't the same archetype).

But - the wave 3/4 meta is, I'm pretty sure, the least diverse we've had in 2nd edition. It was super, super un-diverse. I'm very confused.

Meta diversity can get stuck in definitions/semantics ****, but here's two quick and dirty measures - top two factions percent of total, and percent of lists belonging to an archetype making up 1% or more of all lists. (Archetype definition: same ship types/numbers; pilots/upgrades ignored.) Using extended only for both to keep it more apples:apples.

Wave 3/4 - July points:
Top two factions, Empire and Rebels, are 58.1% of all lists; 38.5% of lists are in an archetype comprising 1% or more of lists.

July points - Jan points:
Top two factions, Empire and Republic, are 39.8% of all lists; 20.7% of lists are in an archetype comprising 1% or more of lists.

I don't know why you mix waves 3 and 4, and why you look at extended when most was hyperspace. I stopped doing my meta analysis after wave 3, but I'm inclined to believe that I did the probably most careful analysis up to that point.

5 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

I don't know why you mix waves 3 and 4

Well, we had wave 4 ships a minute before points - but maybe I introduced confusion; to clarify, the data filter was set to "wave 3 to July points". So, the Leia era. (Excluding the hot minute before wave 3 when Hyperspace was very restrictive.)

5 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

and why you look at extended when most was hyperspace.

Like I said, to keep it a similar comparison across the seasons. But significantly, Hyperspace then wasn't that different from extended, the only factions that cared were Empire (mainly for Phantoms) and Scum - Rebels ran the same lists in both, Empire players dropped trip ace to pick up Republic trip ace, but otherwise format was mostly irrelevant. (And quad Phantoms were never that popular, just strong, so their impact on the data isn't large.)

I can check hyper later, but I don't think it moves the needle that much.

5 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

I stopped doing my meta analysis after wave 3, but I'm inclined to believe that I did the probably most careful analysis up to that point.

I'm open to the possibility that for some distinct, shorter unit of time (an early month in, say), things were more diverse than later. That would be a semantics **** release valve. (Though that would mean later was even less varied.)

Also open to the idea that neither metric I used is good for this purpose. But I remember, and the first two metrics I used to check support, wave 3 being an incredibly, incredibly undiversified meta compared to what came before or after. Like massively so. Hence my confusion at seeing the opposite stated.

On 5/31/2020 at 5:59 PM, Cerebrawl said:

More surprise that people are struggling that hard to beat aces with lower initiative ships. You can fit more of them, have more hitpoints and firepower on the board. Yes they can arc-dodge, make arc nets, make killboxes they can't dodge out of, stress them, tractor them onto rocks, block them, etc.

I'll take the bait/walk into the net.

Nets - They are apparent when they are about to be sprung. Can be avoided or mitigated with proper maneuvering.

Killboxes - same thing. It takes a lot of setup a surprise one, and won't happen every game.

Stress them - requires specific list building, and isn't as effective vs every list. You can't change lists in tournaments afterall.

Tractor them - why are they next to the rocks? If they move after you, why are they in a position to be tractored? This includes quadjumpers. Nantex: the ace player has a general idea where you're arc will be. If they move after you, they should be able to maneuver in a way to make sure they aren't r1. Quads: harder, but again, you can learn their threat range.

Block them - Give away a shot, and most aces have passive mods. So sorta ok? Also if you miss, your ship is likely out of position for 2+ turns.

All that, and you missed the 2 most important ones:

Keep a wide arc. Vs good aces, you don't try to get the high quality shots. You just try to get shots, which leads to....

Corral them. Most ace players will opt out of getting shot rather than risk getting shot, due to green dice variance. Use this to force their movements into a corner or obstacles.

I'm happy you can beat your locals, but not all locals are created equal. There's a greater understanding to be had when you realize this. Most of the people in this thread are quality players from all over the world. Now that doesn't make everything said here correct, but there is a wider range of experiences put into what is said.

On 5/31/2020 at 2:04 PM, Kyle Ren said:

I just said that I think of all the meta boogeymen in second edition it was still the one that required the most thinking on the part of the person playing it

Hard disagree. Rebel Beef was point and shoot. It was incredibly predictable, but it was hard to deal with even when you knew exactly what it was going to do. Average folk could do very well with it, and became truly dangerous if someone who was actually good flew it.

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ summon new points

7 hours ago, Smikies02 said:

Tractor them - why are they next to the rocks? If they move after you, why are they in a position to be tractored? This includes quadjumpers. Nantex: the ace player has a general idea where you're arc will be. If they move after you, they should be able to maneuver in a way to make sure they aren't r1. Quads: harder, but again, you can learn their threat range.

I agree with your points but, to be fair, I think this one is actually a bit less trivial, mostly when Tractor Beams are involved. For example, I played Oli Aces vs 2x Zealous 2xIonScyk 2xTractorScyk at the first Space Jam and it was a really challenging match-up, since basically any single control attack from one of the Scyks could mean death within 0-1 turns. If the Scyk player is flying well and able to keep his Scyks from being overly committed to any one target, it means the ace player now needs to treat every rock as if it were roughly 1 range band higher, similar to a list flying multiple trajectory simulator Seismics, except instead of just taking one damage, I probably end up losing a ship within a turn of the tractor/ion hit. Flying aces under those limitations is a really interesting exercise, and I think probably leads to much more limited ace positioning that can be exploited by the tractor user.

It can also occasionally be a challenge with Ketsu (although she is a bit more predictable and often makes big positional sacrifices to get a tractor) or Dooku (who can tractor you at i7 if he's ended up somewhere you didn't expect), but these fall more into your argument of tractors that are a bit more avoidable.

But I mean, the entire argument of "beating aces is easy, just tractor 'em," is the old trope of presenting a listbuilding solution to a strategy question, anyway.

51 minutes ago, DoubleDown11 said:

Snipped for viewing pleasure

Aye, that list, with so many control options, is a good counter point. Even if it doesn't tractor you onto a rock, it'll still ruin your day. I had forgot that, while only thinking about lists with 1-2 options.

Ketsu and Dooku definitely require specific ways to approach, and depending on obstacles and board layout you can't just say "stay away from the rocks." But I feel it's pretty close to that.

But I agree throughout your post, thanks for clarifying the tractor!

5 hours ago, svelok said:

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ summon new points

when was the original due date? IIRC isn't it closer to July 1?

6 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

Hard disagree. Rebel Beef was point and shoot. It was incredibly predictable, but it was hard to deal with even when you knew exactly what it was going to do. Average folk could do very well with it, and became truly dangerous if someone who was actually good flew it.

Man maybe im remembering wrong, it's been a while since i was super plugged in, but IIRC even at the height of rebel beef, it got eaten alive by the equivalent tie swarm.

26 minutes ago, svelok said:

Insufficient data available, expecting 0 adjustments to points till Sept or next Jan. Possible FAQ and errata's for known issues.

• Rebels
  • Hopes: No big changes.
  • Expectations:
  • Hype:
• Imperial
  • Hopes:
    Expecations:
  • Hype:
• Scum
  • Hopes:
  • Expectations:
  • Hype:
• Resistance
  • Hopes:
  • Expectations:
  • Hype:
• First Order
  • Hopes:
  • Expectations:
  • Hype:
• Republic
  • Hopes:
  • Expectations:
  • Hype:
• CIS
  • Hopes:
  • Expectations:
  • Hype:

Expecting boba to actually get nerfed feels like a hot take