23 hours ago, Sunitsa said:

NORDICS TOP16.

No idea on total attendance, lists were posted by Jesper on a FB group

• Fenn Guri Teroch

• Boba 4Lom Palob

• Boba Palob l337 Quad

• Jonus 4xGamma (barrage+bombs)

• Wedge Sabine NorraY JanOrs

• Wedge Luke Sabine

• Wedge Garven Dutch (2x selfless)

• Rhymer Jendon x2Gamma x1Scimitar

• Redline Deathrain 2xScimitar

• EchoSloane PureSabacc 2xSaberAce

• RedlineAdvSens Deathrain Jonus Rhymer

• Boba Guri (198, dengar gunner on boba)

• Boba 4Lom Palob

• RedlineAdvSens Deathrain LambdaVader

• Boba 4Lom Palob

• WhisperVader Deathrain Deathfire Nightbeast

3 Rebels, 6 scum, 7 imperials

Only 1 scum list without boba.

Wedge in all rebel lists.

Only 1 Sloane.

5 Boba, 4 Deathrain, 4 Palob, 3 Redline, 3 Wedge, 3 generic bombers and other things I stopped counting

EDIT: another interesting thing is only 4 lists had a ps6, 3 of which were rebels. 9 carried ordnance

There were 112 players registered and 99 who played Swiss. For the Nordic countries that pool their resources for a "joint" Nationals, that's an excellent turnout. Winner was a local Swede (Andreas Karlsson with Rebels) and runner-up was British (Simon Tournay of 186th Squadron with Imperials). The final was a great watch, if you have an hour to spare.

Event was run (and streamed) by the Stockholm Wampas: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkTcACtE90Sr7urV6dj15BQ

1 hour ago, baranidlo said:

For that reason I would also value just looking on what made top cuts above the exact conversion percentages.

That is something I had looked at in 1.0, but I don‘t think it addresses potential as much as the actual strength. Of course OP ships have high potential too, but I understand the question to be about unfulfilled potential.

I would try to identify that more via ships/pilots that generally do bad but consistently have outliers that do well, as you also wrote here:

1 hour ago, baranidlo said:

If the ship makes the top cut repeatedly, then that demonstrates high potential (even if average conversion is low).

That’s very interesting. The conversion rate (% that makes the cut) could be more useful to tell how difficult something is or how much practice you need, rather than how good something is. Consistent outliers of good finishes probably mean a ship can be good with effort, but opponents might not take you seriously early in Swiss. Seems like a win win.

18 minutes ago, AEIllingworth said:

how difficult something is or how much practice you need, rather than how good something is

I agree, and I would call that the potential

38 minutes ago, AEIllingworth said:

That’s very interesting. The conversion rate (% that makes the cut) could be more useful to tell how difficult something is or how much practice you need, rather than how good something is. Consistent outliers of good finishes probably mean a ship can be good with effort, but opponents might not take you seriously early in Swiss. Seems like a win win.

Good points.

I would add here that sometimes it might not be just the individual ship difficulty, but maybe the overall difficulty of finding and optimizing the list for the ship.

Seems that Rebels are generally more difficult to build in 2nd edition.

But I think we can see the progress being made, and the Nordic winning list seems to me more optimized then the 4 ship Rebels we have seen before.

4 hours ago, baranidlo said:

Which is what I don't like about the statistics - I don't care what the average placement is, I'm more interested in what is the full potential.

Clearly Wedge is good in right list and right hands - even if perhaps it is not "easy mode" to play him since the average placements are not that great (so the statistics might be useful in giving us this part of information).

3 hours ago, baranidlo said:

For that reason I would also value just looking on what made top cuts above the exact conversion percentages.

If the ship makes the top cut repeatedly, then that demonstrates high potential (even if average conversion is low).

Again, I'm not sure you're looking at "data" correctly, or at least what any of us are trying to use data for.

The data is actually terrible at making specific predictions - this is why no one should try and predict a winner.

However, the data has been (at least the last 3 regional seasons) been quite good at predicting general trends, and general top 16 breakdowns.


For instance - Wedge winning shouldn't actually "prove" anything additional to anyone - wedge basically makes the cut for every rebel list, and thus should not exactly be terribly surprising a list eventually won with it. However, Rebels still make a minority of the cut, which is far more interesting: both from a meta prediction standpoint (for players), but also more about "what are we (if anything) missing in Rebels, since they are below the average on making the cut?"

Is it the faction is bad? is it we haven't innovated enough? Both? Probably both, as we have seen very low turnout on anything BUT Wedge/Thane/Luke lists. That information doesn't come from the cut, but from overall participation. People are basically not even TRYING non-x-wing lists right now (91.34% of all rebel lists contain at least one x-wing).

Maybe the tournaments from last weekend will dilute those numbers, but maybe the won't - and then we're left wondering: "Hey, are we all missing something again, like we sat on mindlink for almost a year?"

50 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

I agree, and I would call that the potential

By the way, based on the recent episode, Thane would be one. 3/37 is low to call it consistent outliers, but few more tournaments and it might be enough. So has Thane actual potential? Or is there another explanation?

Because the next step after identifying a candidate is to say whether such a ship is pulling up the wingmates or whether he's being carried. Or to rephrase: did those 3/37 win because of Thane or despite Thane?

10 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

By the way, based on the recent episode, Thane would be one. 3/37 is low to call it consistent outliers, but few more tournaments and it might be enough. So has Thane actual potential? Or is there another explanation?

Because the next step after identifying a candidate is to say whether such a ship is pulling up the wingmates or whether he's being carried. Or to rephrase: did those 3/37 win because of Thane or despite Thane?

I haven’t tried thane, but he seems super opponent-dependent. You match up against a falcon or Decimator and you are good to go, you match up against phantoms or Blair Bunke and he may as well be blank. Draw matchups like a god is a valid strategy, but probably not one to count on yet.

Edit: I guess that means I think he is a meta call, and we don’t have a meta to really call yet.

Just now, AEIllingworth said:

I haven’t tried thane, but he seems super opponent-dependent. You match up against a falcon or Decimator and you are good to go, you match up against phantoms or Blair Bunke and he may as well be blank. Draw matchups like a god is a valid strategy, but probably not one to count on yet.

Not with that attitude.

32 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

Again, I'm not sure you're looking at "data" correctly, or at least what any of us are trying to use data for.

The data is actually terrible at making specific predictions - this is why no one should try and predict a winner.

However, the data has been (at least the last 3 regional seasons) been quite good at predicting general trends, and general top 16 breakdowns.


For instance - Wedge winning shouldn't actually "prove" anything additional to anyone - wedge basically makes the cut for every rebel list, and thus should not exactly be terribly surprising a list eventually won with it. However, Rebels still make a minority of the cut, which is far more interesting: both from a meta prediction standpoint (for players), but also more about "what are we (if anything) missing in Rebels, since they are below the average on making the cut?"

Is it the faction is bad? is it we haven't innovated enough? Both? Probably both, as we have seen very low turnout on anything BUT Wedge/Thane/Luke lists. That information doesn't come from the cut, but from overall participation. People are basically not even TRYING non-x-wing lists right now (91.34% of all rebel lists contain at least one x-wing).

Maybe the tournaments from last weekend will dilute those numbers, but maybe the won't - and then we're left wondering: "Hey, are we all missing something again, like we sat on mindlink for almost a year?"

Sounds fine.

I don't have personally anything against your data crunching activities.

But what I sometime take a strong exception to is how the results of that are presented and interpreted.

A few pages back there was a discussion to the effect that "Wedge is bad" (not exact words, but the sentiment).

And as a proof some people have used the low conversion rates of the ship, or whatever other statistics they had.

A few months ago in 1.0 I have seen a similar argument being made for the whole Imperial faction.

Just because they had low conversion rates (and general low usage rate) people were ready to dismiss it, including the outliers which did very well (because there WERE a lot of Imperial lists doing just fine, just much less than Rebels or Scum).

If anybody who presents statistics make it abundandly clear what are the actual results and limitations, maybe less people would tend to jump on incorrect conclusions..

EDIT: I really hated that "magic number" in Metawing. So many people didn't know or care what is it about - they have just seen that these are the "best" ships and it was really causing so much toxicity in forum discussions. Hey, you can only play these 4 ships because they are the best! Everything else is junk. We have a formula for that, so it must be true!

1 minute ago, baranidlo said:

Sounds fine.

I don't have personally anything against your data crunching activities.

But what I sometime take a strong exception to is how the results of that are presented and interpreted.

A few pages back there was a discussion to the effect that "Wedge is bad" (not exact words, but the sentiment).

And as a proof some people have used the low conversion rates of the ship, or whatever other statistics they had.

A few months ago in 1.0 I have seen a similar argument being made for the whole Imperial faction.

Just because they had low conversion rates (and general low usage rate) people were ready to dismiss it, including the outliers which did very well (because there WERE a lot of Imperial lists doing just fine, just much less than Rebels or Scum).

If anybody who presents statistics make it abundandly clear what are the actual results and limitations, maybe less people would tend to jump on incorrect conclusions..

Actually, most of us (The Krayts) stand by the premise "wedge is bad" (we actually said something more akin to "Wedge isn't Good").

He's not terribly efficient, and his ability isn't actually that large of an increase in expected damage (perception vs reality). Like, wedge appears to be making the cut so often for rebels because he's in 63.8% of all rebel lists. That is a terrible conversion.

In this case, we acknoweldge the correlation cannot be pegged to causation: there are so many factors that could influence someone's decision to bring wedge, from personal thematic preferences (I LOVE WEDGE!), to the fact he's the only i6 torpedo carrier (Man, Proton Torpedoes are OP!), to the exaggerated belief that his pilot ability kills 3 agility ships (Minus one whole agility? OMG!).

We have said on the podcast, and in other places, we basically think wedge is "good enough" - we would not be surprised if he makes cuts or wins, but his actual ability is not some OMGWTFBBQZOR ability. The i6 seems to be far more relevant to Wedge than anything else about him, which makes me wonder if Rebels had another aggressive (3-attack die) i6 ship, if it would subsume wedge. Further, since ~61.7% of all wedges bring a proton torpedo, I'm making the argument he'd literally be better off in a y-wing for y-wing prices, as he's evolved into a high-initiative ordinance carrier, and if that's the case, you'd rather have him cheaper, and with the possibility to reload.

35 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

People are basically not even TRYING non-x-wing lists right now (91.34% of all rebel lists contain at least one x-wing).

The game is called x wing

Also, another interesting stat:

For all the complaining about "Second edition format sucks! MOAR Extended!", the only faction that appears to be massively affected by that switch is imperials. Rebels and Scum are using a LOT of second edition format ships in their lists.


Of course, the sprinkle in non-second edition ships to round out the lists, but the fact many second edition ships are that popular is a really good thing (to me).

Wedge might the most talked about average or below average ship ever.

Good:

• Makes 1-2 dice things a little unhappy: Boba, Luke, Whisper, Redline, etc.
• Pretty Cheap Filler Ace, fits in more lists
• Opening and Closing Foils is slightly more useful at I6
• Easier to get Proton Torp Locks at I6

Bad:

• "Ok" alpha strike, often only single modified without Katarn, Tubes, or Coordinate nearby.
• Weak defense outside of HP & Initiative Killing things.
• Usually modifies just one dice color
• Typically only alive for 2 rounds unless you hold him out of combat, on the edge of combat, or sacrifice other things.
• Rarely survives to the end game, can struggle end game due to bad defense.
• Limited Repositioning

While I have enjoyed using him, he feels at best average and difficult to lean on as your primary end game ship.

Lists built around him can typically be architected better elsewhere.

For awhile I thought of him as Rebel Soontir. But "No Defense Omega Leader" might be the better parallel.

Congrats to anyone doing well with him as the center piece ace of a list.

*Should also add that for the health of the game I want all I6 ships to be this way. Rarely available (1-2 per faction max) Good at a few things, bad at everything else.

I still think the main contributor to the Wedge Syndrome™ is native i6 - moving last is so, so much easier in second edition that even an xwing traps you into thinking it's good when it gets to move last.

57 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

Actually, most of us (The Krayts) stand by the premise "wedge is bad" (we actually said something more akin to "Wedge isn't Good").

He's not terribly efficient, and his ability isn't actually that large of an increase in expected damage (perception vs reality). Like, wedge appears to be making the cut so often for rebels because he's in 63.8% of all rebel lists. That is a terrible conversion.

In this case, we acknoweldge the correlation cannot be pegged to causation: there are so many factors that could influence someone's decision to bring wedge, from personal thematic preferences (I LOVE WEDGE!), to the fact he's the only i6 torpedo carrier (Man, Proton Torpedoes are OP!), to the exaggerated belief that his pilot ability kills 3 agility ships (Minus one whole agility? OMG!).

We have said on the podcast, and in other places, we basically think wedge is "good enough" - we would not be surprised if he makes cuts or wins, but his actual ability is not some OMGWTFBBQZOR ability. The i6 seems to be far more relevant to Wedge than anything else about him, which makes me wonder if Rebels had another aggressive (3-attack die) i6 ship, if it would subsume wedge. Further, since ~61.7% of all wedges bring a proton torpedo, I'm making the argument he'd literally be better off in a y-wing for y-wing prices, as he's evolved into a high-initiative ordinance carrier, and if that's the case, you'd rather have him cheaper, and with the possibility to reload.

I'm pretty sure I've always said ps 6 was the biggest selling point of Wedge when he was being discussed some pages back, it's nice to see you are starting to acknowledge that!

Your words also pronted me to spend 5 minutes on gateofstorms to see if his ability was so lackluster as you are claiming:

3 focussed red dice vs 2 focussed green dice is 1.074 expected total hits.

3 focussed red dice vs 1 focussed green die is 1.635 expected total hits.

isn't this 60% more average damage? That's sounds crazy good or am I missing something? it's like the difference shooting someone with token rather than someone without. Yeah, against ships naturally rolling 3 dice, forcing them to roll only 2 is only a 20% more (which is also pretty good thought), but right now how many commonly played ships have 3 green dice?

And this doesn't even take into consideration how good is removing 1 green die from meta staples like Whisper, Boba and Luke make their ability somewhat worse.

At 54 points, I dare to say that a predator Wedge is insanely efficient. At that price range he's competing on equal footing with Juke Whisper (a ship which doesn't particulary like to face wedge who has no problems on going after her while keeping his wings closed) and a skinny Redline (which is probably one of the strongest pilot of 2.0 to begin with).

I'd say Wedge is a bit more than just "good enough", but that prompt the question: if wedge is that good, why rebels, who are putting wedge in almost any lists, have such a poor conversion rate?

Am I overrating Wedge? Or are the wingmates that are lacking?

PS am I using "which" correctly? Learn english with the Krays!

4 minutes ago, Sunitsa said:

I'm pretty sure I've always said ps 6 was the biggest selling point of Wedge when he was being discussed some pages back, it's nice to see you are starting to acknowledge that!

Your words also pronted me to spend 5 minutes on gateofstorms to see if his ability was so lackluster as you are claiming:

3 focussed red dice vs 2 focussed green dice is 1.074 expected total hits.

3 focussed red dice vs 1 focussed green die is 1.635 expected total hits.

isn't this 60% more average damage? That's sounds crazy good or am I missing something? it's like the difference shooting someone with token rather than someone without. Yeah, against ships naturally rolling 3 dice, forcing them to roll only 2 is only a 20% more (which is also pretty good thought), but right now how many commonly played ships have 3 green dice?

I think 60% gains is misleading, because the percentages applied to small numbers can be misleading.

If my expected damage is 0.3, and I add something that makes it 0.6, i doubled the expected damage (Now over +100%!), but in reality, it's mostly meaningless for in-game situations.

Is the +0.6 expected damage good? Maybe™.

5 minutes ago, Sunitsa said:

And this doesn't even take into consideration how good is removing 1 green die from meta staples like Whisper, Boba and Luke make their ability somewhat worse.

Here is where I do agree. It's useful, but my reaction is mostly that people act like its a silver bullet (it isn't); However, the ability to push damage on hard targets is useful, though gaining +1 damage (where the damage may actually *BE* 1) on a ship with 9 HP is still a slow grind (boba).

For whisper? Sure, but she's a slippery ship, so it still sort of matters who her friends are. If she trades Redline for Wedge, then preys on the rest of your list, Wedge didn't help (yet).

7 minutes ago, Sunitsa said:

At 54 points, I dare to say that a predator Wedge is insanely efficient. At that price range he's competing on equal footing with Juke Whisper (a ship which doesn't particulary like to face wedge who has no problems on going after her while keeping his wings closed) and a skinny Redline (which is probably one of the strongest pilot of 2.0 to begin with).

I'd say Wedge is a bit more than just "good enough", but that prompt the question: if wedge is that good, why rebels, who are putting wedge in almost any lists, have such a poor conversion rate?

Am I overrating Wedge? Or are the wingmates that are lacking?

PS am I using "which" correctly? Learn english with the Krays!

So, I think Wedge is solid for his i6, and basiclly nothing else. I wish he were in a number of different Chassis for their equivalent costs (Y-Wing; A-Wing). The fact we all think he's as good as he is speaks more to our collective opinions about the rebel faction, I think, than specifically how good Wedge himself is: we think they're bad and inefficient, so any semblance of efficiency (possibly, naive efficiency, if we're still all wondering if we could play the rebel faction differently) draws us to him.

Basically, We all seem to be lackluster about every rebel "wingmate" we select: not everyone is in love with luke, or sabine, or wedge, simultaneously. None of us seem to agree on what is even the best route forward for rebels.

I don't say any of this because I "hate" rebels - I hated 1.0 rebels, which was just a rube goldberg machine to not play x-wing. I'm not a faction player. In fact, I'd prefer if there were more competitive lists across all factions so I can flip between then when I see weaknesses in the meta to exploit (and, honestly, to limit boredom). For example, I get bored of a list after a few tournament showings, and absolutely prefer evolving/changing metas on a regular basis. It keeps things fresh for me.

PS - The "which" checks out! You're good!

P.P.S - Also, I think imperials and rebels are probably the most boring factions for what their extended "good lists" are.

I vote we cease the, "Is Wedge good?" debate and start talking about why Super Luke isn't doing more. I think it's because he's an I5 which benefits heavily from moving last, yet lacks the list-building wingmate options to have much of a bid. And, please, let's not devolve into, "But I can only win if I'm moving last!" meme. I know I've tried him plenty and I'm always left wanting.

I'm in a phone for a while so I can't contribute much, but the .6 damage increase is also a little misleading - because you're also more likely to keep a focus to the next attack. Here's what I mean:

Wedge and a generic xwing: 2.8

http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=ggAAAAAAAAA&a1=MQgAAADgAQA&a2=MQgAAAAAAAA

Two generic xwings: 2.3

http://xwing.gateofstorms.net/2/multi/?d=ggAAAAAAAAA&a1=MQgAAAAAAAA&a2=MQgAAAAAAAA

2 agility is the worst example for demonstrating this is if I remember correctly, but whatever. That difference gets smaller the more iterated shots (which intuitively makes sense, the more dice being rolled the smaller the effect of removing one).

That being said, the ship count seems to be tending down, so his ability is becoming more and more relevant. I'd still have just a generic i6 in almost any other chassis with no ability if they'd let me, but they won't.

I wish xwings were better

1 minute ago, gennataos said:

I vote we cease the, "Is Wedge good?" debate and start talking about why Super Luke isn't doing more. I think it's because he's an I5 which benefits heavily from moving last, yet lacks the list-building wingmate options to have much of a bid. And, please, let's not devolve into, "But I can only win if I'm moving last!" meme. I know I've tried him plenty and I'm always left wanting.

I think not having the option to have the bid sucks - every supernatural ace is absolutely trying to move last (though are fine if not). It's a bit that rebels cant compliment as well as other factions can compliment their good ships: Whisper + vader crew is pretty stupid.

Redline moving after luke is a real threat.

Boba is damage resistant (moving 1st is less relevant but not helpful), and usually has really good support friends (and good crew on himself). Slave 1 boba may ACTUALLY be a legit problem if moving second.

Guri - similar issue - can better capitalize on moving 2nd, and can more easily carry a bid.

I could make the list longer, but I think this encapsulates some of his issues at the moment (from my perspective)

6 minutes ago, gennataos said:

I vote we cease the, "Is Wedge good?" debate and start talking about why Super Luke isn't doing more. I think it's because he's an I5 which benefits heavily from moving last, yet lacks the list-building wingmate options to have much of a bid. And, please, let's not devolve into, "But I can only win if I'm moving last!" meme. I know I've tried him plenty and I'm always left wanting.

You can't derail a thread on purpose, that's cheating.

But here I'll save you a step:

"Ok here's super Luke and wedge and norra"

"Wait is wedge even worth bringing?"

And we're back to square one

Let's be real, using anything close to what can be called "data" in X-Wing results to calculate, hypothesise, or otherwise conclude what the "good ships" or "bad ships" are to any accurate definition is ridiculous. Mathwing was ridiculous. Doubly so if you start throwing causation into the blender.

Sometimes, people use ships because they like them.
Sometimes, people don't use ships because they don't like them.
Sometimes, neither of these things matter.

People sometimes win tournaments because they're good, because they got lucky, or because their list had good matchups, or any combination of these three. Not everything can be neatly boiled down to "X is the correct choice" or "Y was the wrong choice because of X", and reducing a game with this many iterative decisions and points of variance to a conclusive statistical analysis is quite frankly stupid.

1 minute ago, jesper_h said:

Let's be real, using anything close to what can be called "data" in X-Wing results to calculate, hypothesise, or otherwise conclude what the "good ships" or "bad ships" are to any accurate definition is ridiculous. Mathwing was ridiculous. Doubly so if you start throwing causation into the blender.

Sometimes, people use ships because they like them.
Sometimes, people don't use ships because they don't like them.
Sometimes, neither of these things matter.

People sometimes win tournaments because they're good, because they got lucky, or because their list had good matchups, or any combination of these three. Not everything can be neatly boiled down to "X is the correct choice" or "Y was the wrong choice because of X", and reducing a game with this many iterative decisions and points of variance to a conclusive statistical analysis is quite frankly stupid.

I think the "conclusive statistical analysis" part is where everyone seems to be hung up: that's not what is, or has been, happening.

However, acting like we can't know anything, or draw trends, is very naive.

Just now, Tlfj200 said:

I think the "conclusive statistical analysis" part is where everyone seems to be hung up: that's not what is, or has been, happening.

However, acting like we can't know anything, or draw trends, is very naive.

It's what people are inferring. When somebody with a platform says "Wedge isn't good", and then somebody wins a premier event with Wedge, the response from a portion of the community isn't "Oh, cool, well done to that guy for doing well with a list he made." instead it's "See! Wedge is good! You're bad!"

There's been a trend in certain sections of this community (and other miniature/card gaming communities like it since the dawn of time) to take result trends and call it data. It's anecdotal evidence at best, and boy, I'm using the word evidence loosely here.

To expand on that: we're seeing even here, right now, in this discussion.

Nordic Nationals just happened. Without any semblance of ownership (who was flying these lists), history (what matchups those players had), or context (how and why they won those matchups), conclusions are already being drawn as to why we're seeing more of X pilot or Y faction based on Z trend.

I'm not sure how helpful that is. Or, on the reverse, how harmful that is. Doesn't it just feed back into the echo chamber? And isn't propagating that echo chamber through the popular mediums (ie. podcasts) part of what got us into such a mess during first edition meta(s) in the first place?