5 minutes ago, MCRemix said:

I can't speak for the community, but I've found them pretty un-fun to face...although I can't put my finger on exactly why and it might just be "because they're a little too good".

It feels like you should be able to fit 5 generics with heroic and not much else. Is that too much to lose for the list to be viable?

Like, 5 Blue Squadron with heroic and no Optics? Yeah, that'll completely kill off the list. 5 Greens with Heroic, Crack Shot, and Optics has done well a couple times, I've not played that variant so I can't speak to it but it might be a little too good.

IMO what makes 5A frustrating to play against seems to be when the dice are average, the consistency of 5A makes it feel like the dice are going against you. They are also really excellent against low ship counts and 2 die attacks.

There are a lot of things that I fear as a 5A player. Hate Kylo is a tremendous uphill battle. I've played against it twice, and the only reason I won is because I outplayed my opponent, and still both games were incredibly close. I've not played against the 2 Delta 2 V19 list, but I think I need to manage to kill Anakin without losing more than 1 A-wing in order to win and that's hard. Wedge/Luke is something that I both needed to outplay my opponent and have dice variance on my side to win.

There aren't a lot of meta lists that I look at and go "I've got this in the bag" either. I generally feel pretty good against anything CIS brings, but I don't think I've managed to win any of my games against CIS by more than 30 points. 4 ship Rebel is probably the only other list that I feel like I'm on the attack against. Everything else I feel like I need to bring my A game (lul) against.

12 minutes ago, viedit said:

When they god roll their defense dice it does feel pretty bad. They key is to just focus down one and get it gone early. The 5A list snowballs fast if you start taking firing arcs off the board early.

This is the other feels bad: when the dice variance is in the A-wing's favor they feel like unkillable monsters that are slicing you to death.

15 minutes ago, Oldpara said:

Hmm... not yet. Few but successful.

But ppl will learn quickly: when in the game about moves, arcs and actions you can have ship that break all those rules, just take it.

Han dialing one maneuver can land in 8 different places (stop, stop +3x boost, move, move+3x boost) so is unbumpable, doesn't care about stress (Kannan), doesn't care about arcs (Luke) have enormous action economy (action + 2 Force, one might be Turret rotate at I7) and can regenerate shields reroling all negative effects.

I wonder if we have already reached 1.0 lvl of brokeness and NPE

..... For 130+ points.

I mean for that amount you'd hope the ship is flipping good!

20 minutes ago, SnooSnarry said:

So speaking of republic beef, it's really strong in hyperspace. I went 8-1 to reach the ATL trials final table like 2 weeks ago with it, idk why it's not in list fortress. Ashoka 2 arcs and 2 torrents is straight fire, it gives you just enough beef to survive rebel beef alpha and come out on top by blocking everything next turn. You have so many firing arcs that you also really put the pressure on aces, which I did twice vs resistance aces that day. Ashoka is either your ace that flanks their jousting list or helps cover the flanks of your list vs aces and still gives you all the actions. I'd expect to see a lot more of it these next few months.

I made top 8 at Indy this weekend. I had the oddball squad. None of the republic lists made it past first round of cut. I faced the vader/soontir/double barrage bombers and lost by 35 points. It took some absolute fire defense dice to keep one bomber alive and soontir at full health. That game was easily mine if there was a bit more average variance. But yeah, republic beef is real. I didn't see any of your variant at Indy, but I highly considered it before settling on what I did use.

Top 8 was:
1) inferno swarm
2) rebel beef (ten, braylen, dutch, cassian)
4) vader/soontir/double bomber
4) vader soontir double bomber
8 ) obi 3 Arc
8 )obi 3 Arc
8 ) obi 3 Arc
8 ) oddball/7 squad/104th/2 x torrents

57 minutes ago, AlexW said:

In general, I agree, and as they expand the Hyperspace pool (without pulling anything back), they end up creating combos that might be an issue since it just becomes closer to extended. Of course, of the ones you mentioned aren't a problem in extended with the exception of recent concern about Han. That doesn't meant they won't be and, in a smaller card pool, different cards can rise to the top and create interactions that don't have counters that are in the full card pool.

I'm pretty sure there are less problems than there should be in extended by the virtue of no one trying to break things in extended, even the Han build is mostly there in hyperspace and just needed kanan to push it a bit further (though I'm not convinced that Han isn't a beast in hyperspace as well).

I am in constant fear of them getting enough bad cards into hyperspace to break the game though.

37 minutes ago, MCRemix said:

I can't speak for the community, but I've found them pretty un-fun to face...although I can't put my finger on exactly why and it might just be "because they're a little too good".

It feels like you should be able to fit 5 generics with heroic and not much else. Is that too much to lose for the list to be viable?

you've been playing a lot of swarms though? The A's are particularly good at finding the weak points and picking apart a swarm.

Random fun fact:

In 2016, FFG released 10 expansions. (That's Wave 8/9 days, for reference.)

In 2019, FFG have released 8 expansions, with 14 more announced, and an entire additional 5-7? ship wave plausible. If we get a December, 7-ship wave, that would be 29 total releases for the year.

If we limit it to just new expansions, there are still a total of 9 across waves 3-5, with another 2-3 possible in wave 6. Or, another randomly arbitrary measure, only expansions that are new ships or new sculpts, brings that number up to 12 announced or released so far.

27 minutes ago, jagsba said:

you've been playing a lot of swarms though? The A's are particularly good at finding the weak points and picking apart a swarm.

100% accurate, been flying only imperial and CIS swarms since the Wave 2 points change and that's why I'm not sure my opinion is anywhere near the reality of the situation. 5As is about the only meta list that I look at and feel like I'm on the struggle bus...

Maybe it's just time to go back to aces for a bit...

2 hours ago, gennataos said:

Was Han that prevalent?

There were a lot about. Anecdotally I played 3 Rebel Falcons in 6 rounds (Fat Han/Wedge, Han, Norra, Arvel and Lando, Norra, Thane) which made me sad as I had Boba/Emon. The dudes I went with all seemed to play against at least one but, as I say, a small sample. There seemed to be a lot less Y and TIE swarms than I predicted (again, sad).

Is the world ready for Supernatural i6 Y-Wings?

1 hour ago, viedit said:

I made top 8 at Indy this weekend. I had the oddball squad. None of the republic lists made it past first round of cut. I faced the vader/soontir/double barrage bombers and lost by 35 points. It took some absolute fire defense dice to keep one bomber alive and soontir at full health. That game was easily mine if there was a bit more average variance. But yeah, republic beef is real. I didn't see any of your variant at Indy, but I highly considered it before settling on what I did use.

Top 8 was:
1) inferno swarm
2) rebel beef (ten, braylen, dutch, cassian)
4) vader/soontir/double bomber
4) vader soontir double bomber
8 ) obi 3 Arc
8 )obi 3 Arc
8 ) obi 3 Arc
8 ) oddball/7 squad/104th/2 x torrents

Who ultimately won the event? Can't find any data/Zach Bart bragging about it, so I assume that it was not a local. Having won dice but scrubbed too hard to make the cut, I didn't bother to go to Day 2's side events and look over at the big kids playing professionally.

1 hour ago, MCRemix said:

I can't speak for the community, but I've found them pretty un-fun to face...although I can't put my finger on exactly why and it might just be "because they're a little too good".

It feels like you should be able to fit 5 generics with heroic and not much else. Is that too much to lose for the list to be viable?

I think the fact that they do everything well and nothing really bad is a problem at their current price point. They can boom and zoom, they can knife fight, they have the best dial in the game, they can take two basically faction locked upgrades that can essentially minimize the consequences of rolling blanks, they have turrets and face no consequence fort turning away from the fight, and they can be played with gas clouds so they basically don't face consequences on 50% of the obstacles on the board. Stack this with 3 green dice, two shields for crit protection, and the general cheapness of their pilots and they can be quite annoying to have to play against.

They are not unbeatable, but they can absolute be a negative play experience depending on how their green dice fair in the early rounds. It is simply disheartening how they can just... not take damage and still have 3+ shots back on you. They remind me of triple upsilons in the sense that they are not unbeatable, so much as they are exploiting the cheapness of their chassis, spammed en masse with some questionably cheap, yet highly impactful upgrades. They just do everything good with basically no downside beyond their cost of entry. There is nothing wrong with 5As, but they are just able to take too many named pilots and upgrades in that list at the moment. They need to make more meaningful choices with their list building beyond simply taking everything.

19 minutes ago, MCRemix said:

100% accurate, been flying only imperial and CIS swarms since the Wave 2 points change and that's why I'm not sure my opinion is anywhere near the reality of the situation. 5As is about the only meta list that I look at and feel like I'm on the struggle bus...

Maybe it's just time to go back to aces for a bit...

See, I've not played against TIE Swarm yet, and the CIS lists that I've played were all Infiltrator with a mini swarm. The A-wings are real strong against 2 die attacks and the lack of need to fly in a formation I think gives them a definite edge. With TIE Swarm posting conversion rates superior to 5A I don't feel bad at all.

Vulture droids hate A-wings. Their 2 die attacks are shrugged off too easily, their dial is a lot worse, and their 2 defense dice can't keep up with the consistency of heroic and optics. I don't imagine that Vultures are any more fond of the TIE swarm though, and I think this is more a problem that CIS is slightly overcosted than RZ2s being undercosted.

1 hour ago, Micanthropyre said:

There are a lot of things that I fear as a 5A player. Hate Kylo is a tremendous uphill battle. I've played against it twice, and the only reason I won is because I outplayed my opponent, and still both games were incredibly close. I've not played against the 2 Delta 2 V19 list, but I think I need to manage to kill Anakin without losing more than 1 A-wing in order to win and that's hard. Wedge/Luke is something that I both needed to outplay my opponent and have dice variance on my side to win.

this is why I dropped 5 RZ2 locally. Hate Vader and Hate Kylo are 2 very common ships flying around and it's a pretty hard match.

I took 5A to one tournament and lost only 1 game (to 3 Tie Adv and an Academy), but faced Rebel Beef and boba/fenn. Next tournament was full of Kylo/Vader and I went 0-4. Each time just vader or Kylo left and can't get damage through.

I love the list, but your meta may make it obsolete.

I think rebel beef is a much bigger boogieman than 5A. 5A is very beatable.

11 minutes ago, player3010587 said:

Who ultimately won the event? Can't find any data/Zach Bart bragging about it, so I assume that it was not a local. Having won dice but scrubbed too hard to make the cut, I didn't bother to go to Day 2's side events and look over at the big kids playing professionally.

Tie swarm, and it was either Sam Rothstein or Sean Anderson. Not sure which. I didn't know either of the names and never faced them so not sure. One of them dropped letting the 9th place move up.

5 minutes ago, Micanthropyre said:

more a problem that CIS is slightly overcosted than RZ2s being undercosted.

Agree with that assessment. In particular, none of the limited CIS vultures are worth their points with maybe the exception of 311 and I'm not even confident that piece is priced right yet. And I'm not sure that generic drones are priced just right either, time will tell on that one.

I think more broadly though than cost, CIS swarms just have a higher burden of execution than other swarm and generic spam lists. ESC is strong, but screw up your engagement even slightly and you're losing ships without shooting.

If I screw up with my TIE swarm, my green dice (and Iden) can bail me out...but vultures are just sad if you don't get them just right.

Fun fact, I've score exactly 1635 MOV in back to back trials now with two entirely different lists. What are the chances of that?

9 minutes ago, ThinkingB said:

They are not unbeatable, but they can absolute be a negative play experience depending on how their green dice fair in the early rounds.

I disagree with a lot that was said, but this here is reason to chime in.

You do mention what is at the core, and that are the high initiatives. It will be completely sufficient to nerf Lulo and Tallie. Increase their points and the frustrating part of 5A vanishes. Full stop.

All the other points are a prime example of rationalization. It should be perfectly understood that the green dice are not an issue. Neither are the other mentioned reasons such as having 3+ shots back. If those were good points, why then are 6-8 ships instead of 5, all with 3 agility, not more of a problem? Clearly then it is not the dice luck of green dice. And don't tell me that heroic makes or breaks an NPE, because then a) you should rethink what an NPE means and b) the problem is then heroic, not the RZ2. And so on, all the other "reasons" are ways to inflate the problem when "i5" should be and is enough.

8 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

you should rethink what an NPE means

Losing is an NPE.

FFG plz nerf, we should all be winners.

35 minutes ago, ThinkingB said:

There is nothing wrong with 5As, but they are just able to take too many named pilots and upgrades in that list at the moment. They need to make more meaningful choices with their list building beyond simply taking everything.

This.

33 minutes ago, Micanthropyre said:

See, I've not played against TIE Swarm yet, and the CIS lists that I've played were all Infiltrator with a mini swarm. The A-wings are real strong against 2 die attacks and the lack of need to fly in a formation I think gives them a definite edge. With TIE Swarm posting conversion rates superior to 5A I don't feel bad at all.

Vulture droids hate A-wings. Their 2 die attacks are shrugged off too easily, their dial is a lot worse, and their 2 defense dice can't keep up with the consistency of heroic and optics. I don't imagine that Vultures are any more fond of the TIE swarm though, and I think this is more a problem that CIS is slightly overcosted than RZ2s being undercosted.

against tie swarm the ability to break up and the way the ties have to more or less fly as one arc lets them dip in and out and pick the ties apart, and especially since they with a low or non existent bid, its pretty easy to run 5As that can choose to either block up the swarm, or see where the academy is going and use that to arc dodge the rest of the swarm.

1 minute ago, MCRemix said:

Losing is an NPE.

FFG plz nerf, we should all be winners.

*Checks username*

I'm sure you'll carry on. Do or die, you'll never make them.

26 minutes ago, ThinkingB said:

I think the fact that they do everything well and nothing really bad is a problem at their current price point. They can boom and zoom, they can knife fight, they have the best dial in the game, they can take two basically faction locked upgrades that can essentially minimize the consequences of rolling blanks, they have turrets and face no consequence fort turning away from the fight, and they can be played with gas clouds so they basically don't face consequences on 50% of the obstacles on the board. Stack this with 3 green dice, two shields for crit protection, and the general cheapness of their pilots and they can be quite annoying to have to play against.

They are not unbeatable, but they can absolute be a negative play experience depending on how their green dice fair in the early rounds. It is simply disheartening how they can just... not take damage and still have 3+ shots back on you. They remind me of triple upsilons in the sense that they are not unbeatable, so much as they are exploiting the cheapness of their chassis, spammed en masse with some questionably cheap, yet highly impactful upgrades. They just do everything good with basically no downside beyond their cost of entry. There is nothing wrong with 5As, but they are just able to take too many named pilots and upgrades in that list at the moment. They need to make more meaningful choices with their list building beyond simply taking everything.

There are a number of list building choices that I have to make, and I've been constantly evolving my list over time for 5A. It's not true that they can take everything.

The comparison to triple Upsilon isn't even close to fair. UUU got to deploy last and alpha strike a ship off the board on turn 1.

13 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

You do mention what is at the core, and that are the high initiatives. It will be completely sufficient to nerf Lulo and Tallie. Increase their points and the frustrating part of 5A vanishes. Full stop.

Even increasing their points by 2 each means one less optics or taking away a combination of Crack Shot or Heroic or not taking some named pilots. Seems fine to me.

3 minutes ago, jagsba said:

against tie swarm the ability to break up and the way the ties have to more or less fly as one arc lets them dip in and out and pick the ties apart, and especially since they with a low or non existent bid, its pretty easy to run 5As that can choose to either block up the swarm, or see where the academy is going and use that to arc dodge the rest of the swarm.

I mean, could the answer be to not fly as one big group? Formation flying is super boring. Or bring a TIE swarm without an Academy or Wampa. I don't think it's impossible to win, and TIE swarm has such a safe play against nearly every other list that having an uphill but not unwinnable matchup again isn't a reason to nerf one of their only bad pairings.

7 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

You do mention what is at the core, and that are the high initiatives. It will be completely sufficient to nerf Lulo and Tallie. Increase their points and the frustrating part of 5A vanishes. Full stop.

I'm not sure that's true though. The frustrating, not necessarily OP but frustrating, feeling I get from RZ2s is that they remind me effectively of 1.0 turrets. They almost always have a shot, it's almost always modified, and because they don't particularly have to care about facing they have a wide variety of move choices available. It's that last part that bothers me. Typically I can look at a ship and run through the list of reasonable moves and rank them for risk vs reward and then take an educated guess about what the other player will do. With RZ2s... half or more of the dial gives them a shot so it's a pure guessing game. A game where I'm right half the time and they're right all the time, the saving grace is that they're not very good at killing things without good variance so it evens out hence them not actually being OP.

But it's a weird thing where I feel like me and my opponent are playing very different games. I'm trying to predict largely unpredictable maneuvers and they're dicking around waiting for good dice. Again, just feeling, no basis in any objective sense

2 minutes ago, Makaze said:

they're dicking around waiting for good dice

Funny how FFG didn't censor that, but as soon as I mention how Richard III is about a **** who dicks around, dicks people over, is a ********, etc. the asterisks come for my ****!

4 minutes ago, Micanthropyre said:

There are a number of list building choices that I have to make, and I've been constantly evolving my list over time for 5A. It's not true that they can take everything.

The comparison to triple Upsilon isn't even close to fair. UUU got to deploy last and alpha strike a ship off the board on turn 1.

Even increasing their points by 2 each means one less optics or taking away a combination of Crack Shot or Heroic or not taking some named pilots. Seems fine to me.

I mean, could the answer be to not fly as one big group? Formation flying is super boring. Or bring a TIE swarm without an Academy or Wampa. I don't think it's impossible to win, and TIE swarm has such a safe play against nearly every other list that having an uphill but not unwinnable matchup again isn't a reason to nerf one of their only bad pairings.

"remind me of triple upsilons in the sense that they are not unbeatable, so much as they are exploiting the cheapness of their chassis, spammed en masse with some questionably cheap, yet highly impactful upgrades"

Where do I say that they deploy last and alpha strike off the board? They take advantage of the cheap chassis deployed en masse and then (possibly too) cheap, exclusive upgrades that help to eliminate variance; this is the comparison. Understand that I am not literally saying that RZ-2s have 12 health, 1 evade, 4 attack dice, are taking hyperspace tracking data, and part of the first order.

1 minute ago, ThinkingB said:

"remind me of triple upsilons in the sense that they are not unbeatable, so much as they are exploiting the cheapness of their chassis, spammed en masse with some questionably cheap, yet highly impactful upgrades"

Where do I say that they deploy last and alpha strike off the board? They take advantage of the cheap chassis deployed en masse and then (possibly too) cheap, exclusive upgrades that help to eliminate variance; this is the comparison. Understand that I am not literally saying that RZ-2s have 12 health, 1 evade, 4 attack dice, are taking hyperspace tracking data, and part of the first order.

Literally the only problem was the combination of Dormitz and Hyperspace Tracking. Without one or the other the list would have fallen apart, because without Dormitz the HST tokens fall off before they do anything, and without HST the forward Upsilons don't have the token stack.

6 minutes ago, Micanthropyre said:

Even increasing their points by 2 each means one less optics or taking away a combination of Crack Shot or Heroic or not taking some named pilots. Seems fine to me.

No, at least Lulo has to increase by much more than just 5. He is in basically every resistance list, and that's as clear a sign as it can get.

5 minutes ago, Makaze said:

I'm not sure that's true though. The frustrating, not necessarily OP but frustrating, feeling I get from RZ2s is that they remind me effectively of 1.0 turrets. They almost always have a shot, it's almost always modified, and because they don't particularly have to care about facing they have a wide variety of move choices available. It's that last part that bothers me. Typically I can look at a ship and run through the list of reasonable moves and rank them for risk vs reward and then take an educated guess about what the other player will do. With RZ2s... half or more of the dial gives them a shot so it's a pure guessing game. A game where I'm right half the time and they're right all the time, the saving grace is that they're not very good at killing things without good variance so it evens out hence them not actually being OP.

But it's a weird thing where I feel like me and my opponent are playing very different games. I'm trying to predict largely unpredictable maneuvers and they're dicking around waiting for good dice. Again, just feeling, no basis in any objective sense

That's super interesting:

• They almost always have a shot?
  • The i5, yes, because they get to reposition twice if necessary. The low i ships (1 and 3) get regularly arcdodged and have much fewer shots on target. Part of the reason, I'd wager, that the named mix is the list that had most success - by far!
• it's almost always modified?
  • Only if they shoot before you, otherwise they lost their focus and are reliant on the dice gods. Of course you can't shoot all of them, but see the previous point, you can arcdodge some and shoot the others.
• and because they don't particularly have to care about facing they have a wide variety of move choices available?
  • I don't believe you because there is a very simple trick to that: if you disengage, they have to come around and give their action to turn the turret. Of course that's "free", but it still means they won't boost, so it's not free. The exception are the i5 ships as they get to decide on their arc after you moved.

There are two ways you could convince yourself: play the list, or play i5-i6 against it.