This is a serious question for those out there. Have Bombs and their super effectiveness made the game more boring to you.

So I normally watch every video of tournaments, and have for a while now. But with Gencon on and all the games being broadcast. I found that most of them were very boring. They didn't even look like a dog fighting game. I watched the final and yes it was boring, but I checked out for about half of it. I even didn't go to X-wing last week, I think that is the first time ever. I have gone when I felt like I was going to die, but last thursday. I sat at home and said, I'll watch preseason football instead. Never thought that would happpen. I used to hang around an watch others games before heading home from the store, now I just leave because watching thing is really bad.

Overall, I only watched 3 matches, because frankly I was bored, with the Bombs and bomb meta. I acknowledge it takes skill to use them, but wow having played with them and against since the release and watched others play. Games are not fun to watch anymore, as both side deploy bombs and skirt the edge of the board running from the other guys bombs. Did FFG make the game more boring with all the auto damage and addition of bombs in the new wave?

Does anyone else feel that way about watching this new meta? Are games just more boring to watch then ever?

Yes

so much more fun to play with bombs because of the positioning considerations they impose and the maneuvering dynamics they introduce. auto damage is also more interesting because, again, it emphasizes positioning over a handful of crapshoot dice

now turrets are boring, but they've been boring at omnipresent ever since wave 5. bombs don't really have anything to do with that

I've never watched a competitive game and ever found it to be entertaining. Would rather be playing

Nothing wrong with a limited number of bombs being placed on the board for a consideration for flying and decision of when/where to place them. Infinite bombs is another story.

Infinite bombs have.

When one or two bombs was all you had, and a well timed and placed bomb could swing the game, they were exciting. Now it's just "and I drop another bomb."

Yeah, I'm going to go with the infinite bomb is boring. At least with other bombs (even SLAMing Clusters), their limited nature makes things more interesting. You can waste a bomb, therefore it becomes more precious.

I have to say no. Bombs, regardless of type, forces you to play differently and think differently.

Just on Miranda.

yes and **** yes.

bombs and missiles were not taken into consideration when the game was designed, and its showing now. due to single digit health of sips, ordinance damage is either very op or weaker than a base attack. bombs and auto damage dont fit well with the other rules, nor do ordinance. a tie shouldnt be unplayable because of a single turret or bomb, but it is.

1 hour ago, Hawkstrike said:

Infinite bombs have.

When one or two bombs was all you had, and a well timed and placed bomb could swing the game, they were exciting. Now it's just "and I drop another bomb."

How are you guys letting bomblet ships land more then one or two bombs.... The ships running bomblet explore if you look at them funny.

16 minutes ago, Icelom said:

How are you guys letting bomblet ships land more then one or two bombs.... The ships running bomblet explore if you look at them funny.

While a bit squishing, I wouldn't say Nym or Miranda explode when looked at funny. Particularly if you find yourself in the unfortunate position of behind them.

25 minutes ago, Icelom said:

How are you guys letting bomblet ships land more then one or two bombs.... The ships running bomblet explore if you look at them funny.

Did you watch any of genecon. Did the ships running bomblets instantly explode. Nope. Because people flew them in a protected manner and used other ship to protect them. Bomblet should have been a dual card which you could flip. Also in the lore on nyms ship when he created a bomblet he had to go slow because his power from the ship drained the core system. The trigger for flipping it back should have you must complete a 1 or 2 maneuver. It kills me that the guys who made the ship didn't read the lore for it. And just created what they wanted. Lastly a Tallon roll?. Nym was quoted as saying this ship is fast but when it comes to turning don't do it

There has been a real change of direction in how game mechanics are being designed. The emphasis is on mechanics that are interesting to play with rather on mechanics that are interesting to play against and bombs are a shining example of this.

Bombs may be fascinating to the person playing with them, especially bombs combined with lots of repositioning can make you feel very powerful and very clever, but for the person across the table (or anyone watching) it can be very frustrating, negative, and boring to have to deal with.

The problem is that the game was pushing you to not consider the flight pattern in this game from the past. Since 2 waves, you don't litterally care about how to fly. Turrets completed the job. And Miranda was the cherry on the cake.

So in this lack-of-flightskill meta, bombs are terrifing. The thing that:

-Fel (and aces) were impossibile to get with a bomb.

-Then they created AdvSlamBombs.

-No more Aces in the table.

-Then the other bombs arises.

The clue is: bombs are boring only if you don't know how to prevent your opponent's flying pattern (there was a nice Heaver's topic in the FFG news in the past, about it).

The real and only boring bomb carrier in this game is anyone with an Adv.Slam.

8 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

so much more fun to play with bombs because of the positioning considerations they impose and the maneuvering dynamics they introduce. auto damage is also more interesting because, again, it emphasizes positioning over a handful of crapshoot dice

now turrets are boring, but they've been boring at omnipresent ever since wave 5. bombs don't really have anything to do with that

I've never watched a competitive game and ever found it to be entertaining. Would rather be playing

I agree with the bomb and autodamage part.

But I think the same applies to turrets, which is all about range control and thus also maneuvering. The obivous case being against any HLC-Outrider where you ideally want to get inside that R1 safezone. But even against turret-primaries a similar situation apply as you have to maneuver to catch the turret player in a spot where you have considerably more red dice (~ships) versus the turret.

6 hours ago, Vontoothskie said:

yes and **** yes.

bombs and missiles were not taken into consideration when the game was designed, and its showing now. due to single digit health of sips, ordinance damage is either very op or weaker than a base attack. bombs and auto damage dont fit well with the other rules, nor do ordinance. a tie shouldnt be unplayable because of a single turret or bomb, but it is.

Missiles were not taken into consideration when this was created? Wut?

We have had them since wave 1!

I also remind you that for 7-8 waves, Bombs were considered unplayable and missiles not worth it... so, yeah. You can say that they are very strong now, but not that they were not considered for balamcing purposes!

18 minutes ago, ForceM said:

Missiles were not taken into consideration when this was created? Wut?

We have had them since wave 1!

I also remind you that for 7-8 waves, Bombs were considered unplayable and missiles not worth it... so, yeah. You can say that they are very strong now, but not that they were not considered for balamcing purposes!

I think he's 100% correct. The game was balanced around primary weapons and the 'time to kill' that they produce. The crazy push to make ordnance playable has destroyed that balance.

The mechanics for missiles/torps/bombs are poorly thought out and poorly implemented, because the templates for them were laid down a long time ago. It's doing tremendous damage to the game we see now.

25 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

There has been a real change of direction in how game mechanics are being designed. The emphasis is on mechanics that are interesting to play with rather on mechanics that are interesting to play against and bombs are a shining example of this.

Bombs may be fascinating to the person playing with them, especially bombs combined with lots of repositioning can make you feel very powerful and very clever, but for the person across the table (or anyone watching) it can be very frustrating, negative, and boring to have to deal with.

So, in other words, welcome to competitive gameplay in any Tabletop that has ever been created. And most card games...

A Bomb list is like a good control deck in a card game. It strangles your opponent to death by not letting him free reign over what he does or considers best in other matchups. Control decks can be very powerful and often require a smart player to run them efficiently. But ask the opponent if he had fun playing.

Optimizing lists and synergies makes any game frustrating and control decks/lists even more so. But they have been accepted as a part of the meta in any other game, so i am totally fine with that.

These lists also have their counters after all. A massive alpha strike killing a Bomber and sonetimes just ignoring a bomb is not unheard of. After all most of these lists are 2-ships. Swarming them IS possible even if it sometimes requires plowing through a bomb or mine. It just feels bad, but can win you the game.

3 minutes ago, ForceM said:

So, in other words, welcome to competitive gameplay in any Tabletop that has ever been created. And most card games...

Well, just because it's common doesn't mean it's acceptable. I come from Magic, which is at extreme pains to ignore precisely these issues and has continued to grow year-on-year for two decades as a result.

6 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I think he's 100% correct. The game was balanced around primary weapons and the 'time to kill' that they produce. The crazy push to make ordnance playable has destroyed that balance.

The mechanics for missiles/torps/bombs are poorly thought out and poorly implemented, because the templates for them were laid down a long time ago. It's doing tremendous damage to the game we see now.

You gotta decide what you want. One of the best counters to minelayer lists are missile alpha strikes and ships with a lot of hp, like most ships capable of good missile ordnance usage are.

The problem with missile alpha strikes on the other hand originates from one single utterly mispriced toilet-seat shaped ship. All the others are not game-breaking with missile ordnance.

in other words it is not so much the missiles that are the problem, but one of the carriers.

My 2 cents from a casual play, Epic loving point of view.

A limited number of bombs is good. Better mine laying uniques and Extra Munitions were good improvements. A squad based on mining the entire mat is quite odd to my taste. X wing, this little and fun game about maneivering and outsmarting your rival, not about eating mine after mine.

Bombs, Missiles, 360 firing... Perhaps one way to enhance game experience is simply to play a little of everithing. You can not do this playing 100 pts. You need 150+ pts.

From my experience the game "feels" much better if you deploy a minelaying K Wing, a TLT Y Wing, one HLC B Wing and one Procket A Wing. Much better than 4 mirror ships. And you can field this ships as 2-4 ships Squadrons even better.

If you play with a variety of ships you mitigate a lot the "Superpilot" sindrome. From a Casual POW. I am 45 and play X Wing por the pure joy of playing. Yes thinking about best ways to win one scenario but not 12 mines over the mat.

12 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Well, just because it's common doesn't mean it's acceptable. I come from Magic, which is at extreme pains to ignore precisely these issues and has continued to grow year-on-year for two decades as a result.

Precisely Magic has had insanely frustrating control decks, and the main way to get rid of them has mainly been the transition between editions. So going to great lengths... well.

Cards and cycles becoming illegal in standard makes such decks suddenly go away of course.

I would not however advertise this system as a solution for X-Wing.

No. The opposite, in fact. The introduction of bombs added variety to the game.

The use of Bombs and their various effects gives us another way to play the game, and one where positioning and repositioning become incredibly important. For a long time (from Wave 2 up to Wave 7) players were literally demanding on these forums better and more useful ways to use bombs.

Now, bombs have been improved to the point they're very popular, and certain (not all, by a long shot) builds using them are able to compete at the very top of the meta.

There's a couple of mechanics that probably make bombs a little too powerful when used against inexperienced or unprepared players. The current version of Advanced SLAM (which already looks as though it's been addressed), for one. Genius (which should probably not allow a bomb drop after a bump or while ioned) is another. Sabine's guranteed +1 damage (including to ships which may not even have been hit) is a third.

But as a whole, bombs and the bombing mechanic add to the game, not detract.

12 minutes ago, ForceM said:

Precisely Magic has had insanely frustrating control decks, and the main way to get rid of them has mainly been the transition between editions. So going to great lengths... well.

Cards and cycles becoming illegal in standard makes such decks suddenly go away of course.

I would not however advertise this system as a solution for X-Wing.

Or FFG, who initially made an awesome game that did NOT fall into the same trap, could have realized that repeating the same mistake of so many others is not clever. Especially when working with a limited franchise where ships can't just be banned and cycled out.

IMO Xwing got that large and popular because of simplicity and dogfighting. Making it more complex and turning it into Ordnancewing (after Acewing and Turretwing) is not a clever move.

I will keep flying aces and have fun against most other lists. But FFG is not making it easier

I'm not saying that's it totally overpowered, just a little OP. But very boring to watch! I mean like watching paint dry. As I stated, I literally feel asleep watching the final. That has never happened before. It's just gotten so boring to watch because all the lists were bascially the same. Bombs and more bombs. It reminded me of the Phantom Fat Han days, boring!!!