31 minutes ago, balindamood said:Gunner is the second best passenger on stress-Braylenn. (Luke is the best, but I rarely have the 2 points to spend).
Better to spend those 2 extra points on Vectored Thrusters before Luke, anyways. That repositioning is super useful early and late game. (Mid-game you're too stressed.)
12 hours ago, Herowannabe said:I'm not sure if you're trying to be facetious or you're just mistaken, but Soontir has never won Worlds. Neither has Whisper, or any other list that relies upon token-stacking arc-dodging aces.
No, not facetious, just sarcastic.
Imperials have had a nasty habit of resembling gatekeeper lists - you need to beat them to win. They don't actually win in and of themselves, at least at Worlds.
20 hours ago, Celez said:Gunner used to be a pretty popular upgrade as recently as a couple waves ago, usually on large/expensive ships to guarantee you push damage through even with fewer ships.
I rarely see it used anymore though, what happened?
People are running 1 and 2 evade dice ships, your 3 or 4 attack dice ship is probably going to get at least one damage through thus reducing the value of gunner.
It's not that gunner has been replaced with better upgrades, it's that in the current meta gunner is not as powerful.
I run imperial ships counting on green dice and tokens quite often and I still fear gunner, thankfully it's not played as much because it's useless against ships like nym or any other 1 or 2 evade dice ship.
Gunner is an amazing crew if you are going to miss often, and a horrible piece of crap if your target can be hit easily. Shoot at a ship with 4 Green dice and evade + focus gunner is solid gold, shoot at nym and gunner is horrible junk.
I think allot of people on this thread have it completely wrong in their reason why gunner is not seen. It really has nothing to do with any kind of offensive power creep and more to do with defensive power reduction in the current meta. If half the lists you face have nothing over 2 evade dice and have little to no defensive tokens then gunner is a waste of points in half the games you play so it's better to go with an upgrade that's good more often.
8 minutes ago, Icelom said:I think allot of people on this thread have it completely wrong in their reason why gunner is not seen. It really has nothing to do with any kind of offensive power creep and more to do with defensive power reduction in the current meta. If half the lists you face have nothing over 2 evade dice and have little to no defensive tokens then gunner is a waste of points in half the games you play so it's better to go with an upgrade that's good more often.
It really has everything to do with offensive power creep, because that's exactly why we're seeing all of these 1- and 2-agility ships. Why take a low-health, high-agility ship when your opponent will just blow straight through your dice with automatic damage or multiple fully modified (and then some) 4- or 5-dice shots?
5 hours ago, MegaSilver said:
Better to spend those 2 extra points on Vectored Thrusters before Luke, anyways. That repositioning is super useful early and late game. (Mid-game you're too stressed.)
I disagree. First, as you pointed out, at PS 3, he rarely needs it. When he does, he is dragging a cart full of stress tokens with him. I have tried it and it is not worth it.
Secondly, what makes Bralyenn worth the extra points over the stresshog is 1). The rear arc, and 2). he hits hard...but only when you use the title, which is a may. The extra focus is really convienent when he does not otherwise have a means to modify his dice.
Edited by balindamood13 hours ago, Ailowynn said:This is off the top of my head, so I might be wrong on a couple of the details...
Year Three: Fat Han (Predator, Engine, 3P0, R2D2, Title) and three Talas beats Whisper (Gunner VI FCS ACD) + miniswarm (4 Black Squadrons).
2014 Imperial squad that Paul's Fat Han beat at Worlds:
42 Whisper, VI, FCS, Reb Cap, ACD
20 Howl, Swarm Tactics
36 3 x APs
-98-
32 minutes ago, DR4CO said:It really has everything to do with offensive power creep, because that's exactly why we're seeing all of these 1- and 2-agility ships. Why take a low-health, high-agility ship when your opponent will just blow straight through your dice with automatic damage or multiple fully modified (and then some) 4- or 5-dice shots?
You are missing the point, i am not saying why you see 1 and 2 evade dice ships. We are talking about gunner.
Gunner is still good it has not be replaced by something more powerful (power creep) the targets it does well against are not on the board as much. They may be off the board due to power creep (I don't think that's why, just a different meta, but that's a different discussion) but that does not mean gunner was oversteped or replaced by something more powerful it just means it's not as valuable in the current meta.
Note: my opinion as to why we're are seeing all these 2 ship list with 1 and 2 evades winning big tournaments is because they are less mentally fatiguing to fly in a big tournament. They are more forgiving to piloting mistakes and have way less choices and strategy associated with them. I love my 5x mangler m3a list and think it's the strongest list right now in a single game but I won't take it to a big tournament because as I get tired and sore I will make mistakes and that list needs to be flown mistake free. So I will take a list I know is worse but can handle me making more mistakes. This is the case with most high evade low health ships as well, one bump you die does not go well after 6 games in a row because you will start bumping and/or being out of position. My first regionals I came in second to a guy I 100-0 in round one of the tournament because my list was very high skilled to fly and by the final (8th game that day) I flew so badly even my deployment was stupid, I had no hope in winning. Then went these 2 ship lists win or do well in major tournaments a bunch of people net list the crap out of them so they start turning up in even more matches and tournaments thus creating a feedback loop.
This leads me in a huge tangent to, how do you balance ships with player fatigue in major tournaments in mind and single kitchen table games? You can't. A 4 game tournament has a different balance then an 8+ game tournament, that has to be a designers nightmare right their.
18 hours ago, Herowannabe said:Looks mostly right as far as I can remember. Year 2 the b-wings had Adv Sensors, not FCS, and Year 4 Nathan had a Protoype A-Wing along with Corran and Poe, I'm pretty sure.
He did. I remember because I happened to be running his list before seeing it and was psyched to see it at worlds.
On 8/28/2017 at 5:03 PM, Ralgon said:Is there a listing of the previous winning lists? I've gone looking before but cant find one. For some reason my brain keeps telling me there was a RAC + phantom in there somewhere (pre-nerf)
It's (almost) everything here, courtesy of MajorJuggler.
Winner: Doug Kinney with Vader+Howlrunner+4 TIEs
Winner: Paul Heaver with Biggs+X+B+B
Winner: Paul Heaver with Han+3 Zs.
Winner: Paul Heaver with Poe+Y+Y+Z
Winner: Nand Torfs with Dengar+Manaroo
Winner: Justin Phua with Dengar+Tel Trevura (Nand Torfs was the other finalist with Miranda+Biggs+Jess Pava)
Fun fact: Dengar is the only pilot to win two Worlds. After him/the JumpMaster, the only other ship with more than one win is... the Z-95!
The RAC list you remember was Brad Miller's in 2015, but it only got 10th. Soontir (+Vader+Palp) was 4th the same year with Jeremy Howard, it's the best result ever for an Interceptor. I chronicled the Imperial results at Worlds from the past 3 years here .
Personally, I like putting gunners on my Phantoms; Gunner + FCS. (If the FAQ doesn't support this, so be it; I'm a casual, so I'm still letting pre-FAQ Palp loose...)
Fear the Z-95!
1 hour ago, balindamood said:Fear the Z-95!
Banyre pirate is the real MVP!
5 hours ago, MarekMandalore said:Personally, I like putting gunners on my Phantoms; Gunner + FCS. (If the FAQ doesn't support this, so be it; I'm a casual, so I'm still letting pre-FAQ Palp loose...)
FCS Gunner is a thing that works fine. Buzzsaw Phantoms are scary.
It's just that missing in the first place is relatively unlikely in the current meta.