2 minutes ago, Hoarder of Garlic Bread said:

I agree about none of us knowing what we're talking about. But saying "just do X, EZ" without giving an example of playing and doing well seems...cheap.

Just kill Fenn first and then the Ghost! Why is everyone complaining? I headsimmed the game and I won! Let's move along!

We should empathize with people on the forums and appreciate that lots of us *are* trying to engage constructively. I can’t watch the last few GSP online events at length (again, newborn), but it’s fair to look at an engagement and ask, “how did we get here? We’re smarter than this!” For instance, I remember being baffled by rock placement in one stream game because for all I could tell the Nantex player could have placed all of them. I can’t tell you where the rocks should have been, but obviously there were a large number of permutations possible.

I don’t feel like it’s reasonable to put the burden of proof on other people, especially when most of us don’t play online and can’t play in person. I thought other players, even in meme TTS tournaments, would find a good answer that didn’t require me to find it for them. I still expect it’s not as bad in hyperspace due to lack of crack shot, but it seems fair now to say they’re (PAA, at least) problematically too cheap.

To add fuel to the fire.

Spamtex just won the unofficial Italian Nationals. Played live in person. Both semi finals had Spamtex so it was almost a mirror in the final.

So much for nobody will play it live.

5 hours ago, FlyingAnchors said:

Extended is not a balanced format. Get rid of Spamtex, and something else will rise to fill that vacuum, even if it's not on the same power level as spamtex, it will be equally oppressive. You will have very few in the "At least it's not spamtex" camp, and the majority will start another dumpster fire.

Removing the ban context may alter the message beyond your intention, if so I apologise.

Personally, banlist = Hyperspace. It's not a topic I think has any value, regarding the current fire.

Even if Extended is not entirely balanced, it can be more balanced than this and aside from Spamtex, may even be nearly acceptably balanced. We haven't seen whether that is the case yet. Because Spamtex.

I'd like to add a C) option that keeps Extended balance a worthy, if difficult and ultimately hopeless aim. Since reasonable people exist who would like to enjoy it.

I feel like the scent in here of meh, it's Extended, it sucks by default, has kinda clouded the issue and lead to much of the dismissiveness and crossed wires.

This particular issue has obviously been done to death and the conclusion is clear. PACE is undercosted by 2-4pts and need addressing. 2pt if you think theyre fine, 4 if not, I guess. FFG will decide that. Once that is done, we can look at the fall out and assess who was right all along.

Any further fuss on the subject is more to do with personal opinion on best X Wing than it is anything else and therefore pretty much just worthless back and forth.

Extended is less balanced because has more options, but more options is good, isn't it?

I think both formats are interesting. Hyper because the restricted lists and Extended because I can play whatever I want.

With each update (and with each Wave too) the formats change, and is refreshing.

I don't understand the war between the supporters of each of them. There are big Hyperspace tournaments now, the Open Series, and they are more affordable tournaments than the Continentals or Worlds.

They can balance the game better but when they change the enviroment we take the time to resolve the challenge and they give us new opportunities and incentives to play the game.

If something goes terribly wrong, It can be fixed. Patience.

In Italy we just had the "largest" live event since covid happened. There were only 54 players, almost half of what our meta is in normal time, so many weren't attending.

Out of 54, 5 or 6 brought Nantex which is a quite high ratio all things considered. Only 2 made the cut (but bare in mind all of them got mirrors as early as round 2. Also almost no "known player", if you allow this elitist remark, was playing them)

https://tabletop.to/coppa-starfighters-italia-2020-xwing/ladder

https://listfortress.com/tournaments/1877

Nantex won without dropping a single game, ending 9-0 and beating imperial aces in final.

The champion, for his own admission, played incredibly poorly in the semi and even had below average rolls, yet he won it (against resistance beef, which at this point basically needs the nantex player to die in irl to win vs them). We were very close to a Nantex vs Nantex final like the online events, but in the semi a Great Inquisitor simply refused to take damages despite all odds being against him (imperial player played well, but without evading so much it wouldn't have mattered).

We also had a little store championship the week before, 14 players 1 nantex. Nantex won.

So basically between the 2 events and some tests, in the span of less than 10 days I played 6 irl games against nantex, played by 4 different people so I dare to say I've experienced the matchup a bit.

They are bull. I don't think anyone at this point could claim differntly. They are too cheap, they got the ****** mechanics of being block immune (which means less ps ships can't relay on getting a block to avoid a shot and not dieying, which is quite a core of this game), and their physical board presence means there are very few options of manouvers if you want to get an action or, god forbids, trying to get them in arc.

And to be clear: I ended the tournament 2-1 vs them. I beated them twice in swiss but narrowly lost in the top. I think my list even has an even matchup vs them which is better than 90% of the rest, so mine isn't the complaints of a disgruntled sore loser.

I've heard many takes in this thread, mostly apparently coming from just headsimming. Imperial aces aren't having a good time vs them. They aren't as screwed as something like a lower ps beef which could rather concede on the spot, but it's not like they are even. Good luck scoring points without granting something bigger in return. In the final game the Nantex player kept hard turning into barrel roll to refuse to engage the aces through the rocks, first shots were had 50 minutes into the game...

Dash being a counter is also pretty good wishful thinking: again, he's not as bad as many other things but he can't deny enough points so it's still an uphill battle.

So, how do you beat Nantex? By having some points fortress that can reliably deal damage while kiting. Are you saying it's not 1.0? Wops.

@Brunas @GreenDragoon I remember when we had the same argument! Putting together all mindlinks lists while some were 3 jumps with ordnance and other were Parattanni still don't make sense to me years, that's the hill I will die on! (or was for?)

Yay! Data. And context. Thank you.

I think the PAA is five points too cheap and crack shot should be 3 points minimum and I'm still not on board with a unilateral banning for GSP galaxies. It's just not worth setting that precedent. That's a Pandora's box that won't ever get closed again.

BUT, as for the idea of "It's not worth fixing cuz there will just be the next almost as bad thing." What?!? Of *course* you fix it (or at least FFG should with points) then when the next worst thing becomes clear you fix that next. And so on. It's not a recipe for perfect but it's the only recipe for better. The fact that we can expect them to get fixed is the best thing about 2nd edition.

2 hours ago, Sunitsa said:

@Brunas @GreenDragoon I remember when we had the same argument! Putting together all mindlinks lists while some were 3 jumps with ordnance and other were Parattanni still don't make sense to me years, that's the hill I will die on! (or was for?)

If you want to make a special carve out for your pet mindlink, you can (and not necessarily be wrong, either). Sadly, pulling 1.0 data is now actually hard.

We made the decision a long time ago precisely because either

1) you either carve out each list, and then almost no list makes a significant percentage, and then everyone just yells that the data is garbage and useless, because "clearly" mindlink is everywhere (and they'd have been right on that particularly point), or

2) you combine them, and you lose some nuance between the distinctions between the types of mindlink lists (triple vs double boat mindlink lists, vs paratanni variants, vs other mindlink variants).

The line was far more blurred than people give it credit for, so we went with combining all mindlink, to clearly represent "mindlink" in the meta.

I dont think I kneejerk about lists very often, but it took about 2 days after Corellia for me to do the maths and work out the Nantex are ridiculous.

I'm reminded that I used to say the Nantex without Ensnare wasn't actually that bad at 32pts back when I had some CIS players crying about the old points changes. I was comparing to the RZ2 at 32pts and I figured it was about right.

24 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

If you want to make a special carve out for your pet mindlink, you can (and not necessarily be wrong, either). Sadly, pulling 1.0 data is now actually hard.

We made the decision a long time ago precisely because either

1) you either carve out each list, and then almost no list makes a significant percentage, and then everyone just yells that the data is garbage and useless, because "clearly" mindlink is everywhere (and they'd have been right on that particularly point), or

2) you combine them, and you lose some nuance between the distinctions between the types of mindlink lists (triple vs double boat mindlink lists, vs paratanni variants, vs other mindlink variants).

The line was far more blurred than people give it credit for, so we went with combining all mindlink, to clearly represent "mindlink" in the meta.

Yeah I know, we already had this very same discussion back in the day. I wanted only to make a little joke about those better times without nantex on our tables. I still don't agree but that's fine, I still prefer stats I don't agree with aggregation methods than no stats at all

10 hours ago, FlyingAnchors said:

Get rid of Spamtex, and something else will rise to fill that vacuum, even if it's not on the same power level as spamtex, it will be equally oppressive.

I vehemently disagree with the "equally oppressive" part. The winrate for this list is bonkers. @GreenDragoon knows the numbers better, but I believe it is in the high 60% with mirrors, and around 77% discounting mirrors. As @Sunitsa said/implied by the words of the Italian champion, you don't even need to be particularly good to win. We had a local that has never done better than 1-5 at a tournament get top 32 at Concord Down Under. Put this in the hands of a competent player like Nicholas God, and they will practically guaranteed the top table.

We should not look at this as just another OP list. In Second Edition, it is a league of its own.

This will come as no surprise, but I support Heaver's call for #bantex. You can ban the whole chassis and it's design flaws, but just banning the PWA is likely good enough. I wouldn't push Dion for Crait, Ryloth, or Mustafar, but I would suggest the ban for Coruscant. Let folks who earned their way to the Galaxies Final by Spamtex prove their worth with a different list against those that had to push past the bugs to make top 32.

So just ban it. Nothing is official and the only reason you're playing is to have fun and keep the game alive. Yes it's unprecedented but this is a rather unique situation, no?

42 minutes ago, 5050Saint said:

I vehemently disagree with the "equally oppressive" part. The winrate for this list is bonkers. @GreenDragoon knows the numbers better, but I believe it is in the high 60% with mirrors, and around 77% discounting mirrors. As @Sunitsa said/implied by the words of the Italian champion, you don't even need to be particularly good to win. We had a local that has never done better than 1-5 at a tournament get top 32 at Concord Down Under. Put this in the hands of a competent player like Nicholas God, and they will practically guaranteed the top table.

We should not look at this as just another OP list. In Second Edition, it is a league of its own.

This will come as no surprise, but I support Heaver's call for #bantex. You can ban the whole chassis and it's design flaws, but just banning the PWA is likely good enough. I wouldn't push Dion for Crait, Ryloth, or Mustafar, but I would suggest the ban for Coruscant. Let folks who earned their way to the Galaxies Final by Spamtex prove their worth with a different list against those that had to push past the bugs to make top 32.

I actually agree this is in a league of it's own, and does not fall into the "slippery slope" of "then what do we ban next".

You actually just create a bright line, and the bright line is "the thing everyone super hates," not merely "what wins a lot".

This venn diagram overlaps.

Question #1:

What is an example of a 6-8 ship generic grunt swarm that the community would be accepting of making cuts and winning tournaments?

If CIS Swarm, Syck Swarm, Howl Swarm, Sloane Swarm, and Drea Swarm were all "to good" what Swarm is allowed to exist?

Deadmans Switch Fireball Swarms?

_________________________________________________________

Question #2:

Are any of the below lists "good"? Do they have a reasonable (50/50) win condition in the matchup vs the boogeyman & the field? Or are they unnecessarily hard mode?

• Vader Burners + Redline Adv Torps + GI = 199
• Vader Burners + Whisper Bro TC + GI = 200
• Vader FCS Procket Burners + Echo Bro Sensors + GI = 198
• Vader IA FCS Procket Burners + Soontir Crack TC + GI IA Prockets = 200
• Soontir Predator Shield + GI IA Prockets + Redline Adv Torps Seismic = 200
• Something with more Pre-Movement I guess
• Something with Ani Obi Plo I guess

_________________________________________________________

Question #4:

If i3 and i4 Nantex go up 2-3 points will you still be mad?

If i3 and i4 Nantex are increased enough to only fit 6 without any upgrades would you still be mad?

_________________________________________________________

Question #6:

?Craig

Because I'm curious, what kind of list makes people the least mad? People hate swarms, even when they're not as good as 6 Nantex. Less people hate triple high initiative force aces, but they're still hated. People tend to not like really efficent high mod 4 ship stuff such as Rebel Beef. A fair number of people also hate squads that have a ton of high initiative pre-movement repositioning, such as Boba/Guri.

So what squads do people not hate? With the understanding that people hate squads less when those squads aren't strong counters to their own favorite squads, what is "okay" (but still good)?

3 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

Question #1:

What is an example of a 6-8 ship generic grunt swarm that the community would be accepting of making cuts and winning tournaments?

If CIS Swarm, Syck Swarm, Howl Swarm, Sloane Swarm, and Drea Swarm were all "to good" what Swarm is allowed to exist?

Deadmans Switch Fireball Swarms?

2 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

Because I'm curious, what kind of list makes people the least mad? People hate swarms, even when they're not as good as 6 Nantex. Less people hate triple high initiative force aces, but they're still hated. People tend to not like really efficent high mod 4 ship stuff such as Rebel Beef. A fair number of people also hate squads that have a ton of high initiative pre-movement repositioning, such as Boba/Guri.

So what squads do people not hate? With the understanding that people hate squads less when those squads aren't strong counters to their own favorite squads, what is "okay" (but still good)?

I'm going to be honest - I think the bulk of players hate swarms (when they're good). When swarms are good/competitive, they block opposing lists and get mods/have cool abilities (inferno, vultures, and now, nantex).

I understand there are players that like swarms, but let's be real - it's a much smaller minority than everyone else, and we'll still play the game if swarms didn't exist or squad sizes were capped at 5 (arbitrary number).

****, the FOcho wasn't actually even good, and people really didn't like it. (it really wasn't good).

4 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

I'm going to be honest - I think the bulk of players hate swarms (when they're good). When swarms are good/competitive, they block opposing lists and get mods/have cool abilities (inferno, vultures, and now, nantex).

I understand there are players that like swarms, but let's be real - it's a much smaller minority than everyone else, and we'll still play the game if swarms didn't exist or squad sizes were capped at 5 (arbitrary number).

****, the FOcho wasn't actually even good, and people really didn't like it. (it really wasn't good).

For sure, but what squads make them NOT mad? Is there a squad that can be good and not make 15% or more of the player base angry?

4 hours ago, Sunitsa said:

In Italy we just had the "largest" live event since covid happened. There were only 54 players, almost half of what our meta is in normal time, so many weren't attending.

Out of 54, 5 or 6 brought Nantex which is a quite high ratio all things considered. Only 2 made the cut (but bare in mind all of them got mirrors as early as round 2. Also almost no "known player", if you allow this elitist remark, was playing them)

I wanted to come back to this, actually.

FWIW, while some may make histrionic claims that "no one" will buy 6, I want to note when *I* say it, I mean that "few" or "lower numbers" will do it. 6/54 = 11%.

Now, we know it did well, but let's focus on meta penetration - we know that swarms have never represented a significant portion of the overall meta, and it appears so because people really don't enjoy playing swarms.

We see that representation jump online, and I suspect (this is a hypothesis) because of all the automation involved with TTS/vassal. I bet, when rubber hits the road and players have to physically move those ships over hours and hours, people will shy away from those lists (or perform significantly worse with them).

I could very well be wrong, but we never saw vultures hit a large % of the overall meta, and as @Brunas noted, vultures actually had a ~70% win rate last season. Still, people didn't go and pick them up in droves (and it cost about the same to have a vulture swarm as 6 nantex).

Just now, Biophysical said:

For sure, but what squads make them NOT mad? Is there a squad that can be good and not make 15% or more of the player base angry?

The "amount" of mad at swarms seems much higher than general griping.

I mean, people are claiming this is as bad as 1.0 squads, and I think cooler heads know it is not, from a data perspective. But it feels that way to some, and I cannot tell someone how they feel.

2 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

The "amount" of mad at swarms seems much higher than general griping.

I mean, people are claiming this is as bad as 1.0 squads, and I think cooler heads know it is not, from a data perspective. But it feels that way to some, and I cannot tell someone how they feel.

I 100% agree, but I'm not trying to figure out what makes people the most mad, I'm trying to figure out what makes people the least mad.

6, much like 7 and 8, is a devil number. 5 is only ok because of 5A. Unless a list is 75% names it is the devil. NPCs aren't allowed to win, they just exist to make my heroes look like heroes.

1 minute ago, Chumbalaya said:

6, much like 7 and 8, is a devil number. 5 is only ok because of 5A. Unless a list is 75% names it is the devil. NPCs aren't allowed to win, they just exist to make my heroes look like heroes.

I know you're joking (because we both joke about this), but I literally do wonder if people would actually be mad if 5X were magically good.

I suspect the answer would be "yes". (edit: this is also a hypothesis I cannot prove, because 5X isn't good. I could only make it good if my 5X were allowed to be over 200 because I could bring names)

And yes, I suspect the reason 5A is "ok" is because it's really just 5 aces.

8 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

I know you're joking (because we both joke about this), but I literally do wonder if people would actually be mad if 5X were magically good.

I suspect the answer would be "yes". (edit: this is also a hypothesis I cannot prove, because 5X isn't good. I could only make it good if my 5X were allowed to be over 200 because I could bring names)

And yes, I suspect the reason 5A is "ok" is because it's really just 5 aces.

I think a lot of it is based on feelings. It also ties in to how swarms play strategically. The typical swarm game plan is get ahead early and stay above critical mass long enough to put the game away. For players, the combination of being behind on points early as well as visually being outnumbered probably feels bad on some level.

When you trade 2 for 1 in the opening engagement you are still technically "losing" and there are still 3 times as many ships on the table. However, playing swarms you and I know how precarious that lead actually is. When it's two 3-4 ship lists naively jousting each other, engagements don't feel as bad because they're more "even".

27 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

Is there a squad that can be good and not make 15% or more of the player base angry?

No. Absolutely, unequivocally no. That's based on playing the game since before TLT in 1.0. Any time a list or even a chassis in general is very successful there will be books written on the forums about how it destroys all agency and goes against the very core design intentions of the game.

Anyone who thinks 5A is considered OK isn't consuming much community generated media. There were a LOT of people crying when they weren't hit in the last point changes. GSP included.

Nope, as it has always been, "NPE" is simply a community approved way of crying about losing. That would be why FFG waits to see results from actual tournaments before dropping nerf hammers for the community. They can't trust the nonsensical noise that accompanies literally every effective list.

6 minutes ago, Chumbalaya said:

I think a lot of it is based on feelings. It also ties in to how swarms play strategically. The typical swarm game plan is get ahead early and stay above critical mass long enough to put the game away. For players, the combination of being behind on points early as well as visually being outnumbered probably feels bad on some level.

When you trade 2 for 1 in the opening engagement you are still technically "losing" and there are still 3 times as many ships on the table. However, playing swarms you and I know how precarious that lead actually is. When it's two 3-4 ship lists naively jousting each other, engagements don't feel as bad because they're more "even".

Basically that.

Feelings
I remember practicing against inferno squad, and basically every initial engagement, I started "down" because of iden. I would basically not kill anything, and the TIE swarm would almost always half-point something, and I'd feel awful.

Worse, if I made the mistake of thinking I should fly around the board trying to flank it, I'd waste 30 minutes, maybe get solid position, but no matter what, "start down".

But I realized that I could always start climbing back up in a few turns. The initial engage always felt awful, but then within 2 more turns, I could see the the combat rounds were functionally inevitably towards my victory: I just needed more time; thus toilet-bowling for position was SUPER not a smart move, etc.

Strategy

• Straight jousting a TIE swarm was suicide, but spending too much time "getting into position" for a 3-wide flank was a losing proposition, as noted above, due to needing the appropriate amount of time to implement the crushing, attrition strategy. So, you needed to just get your speed man going as fast as , while creating your 2-to-3 wide flank.
  • even if you didn't pick the optimum route, once things started going, just commit - course correcting too hard just loses the game a different way, but slower and crappier
• It needed to be a 2-to-3 wide flank so that the TIE swarm was forced to "pick" a direction, and then start turning or k-turning to find more targets, rather than being able to block-and-shoot "for free" the rest of your list
• Once gas clouds existed, the board functionally became wide open, so "dragging them through the rocks" wasn't a real option, so pretending it was would just make you do a pikachu face mid-game.
• There's probably other stuff, but this is good enough to hit the highlights of feelings and strategy

This Concludes my TIE Talk™.

This thread is generating a lot of reports and toxic behavior. Everyone please take a breather and cool down, and take care to ensure posts are not inappropriate or abusive.