I've played tabletop games for more than 20 years. I took a few years off due to grad school and kids. X-Wing has been my re-entry into the gaming world.

I read a lot of hate on these boards and it is a bit confusing from my perspective. XWM has a pretty thin margin between top tier and ships that are lacking.

If you are a die-hard SW person and want T-65s to dominate other ships, okay, I get that.

But if you are not one of those folks...Are there some other really balanced systems that you want this game to aspire to?

To wave 10 X-Wing.

EDIT: OK let me be a little more helpful. The main thing people compare the X-Wing meta to is the X-Wing meta we had before. And if a notable amount of the community finds that the last expansions actually made the game worse that isn't actually a good sign.

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XWM has a pretty thin margin between top tier and ships that are lacking.

Looking at the TIE Punisher and the Scurgg, I wouldn't call that margin pretty thin.

55 minutes ago, Pewpewpew BOOM said:

I've played tabletop games for more than 20 years. I took a few years off due to grad school and kids. X-Wing has been my re-entry into the gaming world.

I read a lot of hate on these boards and it is a bit confusing from my perspective. XWM has a pretty thin margin between top tier and ships that are lacking.

If you are a die-hard SW person and want T-65s to dominate other ships, okay, I get that.

But if you are not one of those folks...Are there some other really balanced systems that you want this game to aspire to?

Magic: the Gathering.

It is decades old, so clearly it is a good game.

It is not afraid to remove components from the game to keep the overall game healthy.

It has multiple routes to victory.

It supports many formats for play officially, and even more unofficially.

It was designed to be played between 2 kids on the playground for ante, not as a sport at gaming conventions.

No one expected every card to be equally useful.

It doesn't have an errata booklet longer than the rule booklet.

No one ever used the word Meta in the 1990s. We just played the game and looked for combos that were cool.

Why do people complain?

Because the Imperials are not the ultimate power in the galaxy.

THE WHOLE REASON the rebels never had a true victory before Yavin was that farmboy from a godforsaken wasteland planet being told by a wizard and a terrorist group to commit mass genocide against the government.

The Imperials were powerful. No one properly stood up to them. They were supposed to be like the Nazis in 1940: seemingly unbeatable.

26 minutes ago, Keffisch said:

Looking at the TIE Punisher and the Scurgg, I wouldn't call that margin pretty thin.

There's a reason that ship was renamed from "TIE Interdictor" to "TIE Punisher", you know...

I compare a lot to Battletech.

• List building with point values for different units that have strengths and weaknesses...
• A huge faction of it's player base openly revolted against outsiders (the Clans) coming into the well defined universe with new, more powerful toys and refuse to play with anything from that era and loudly pile hatred upon it.
• Power crazed player faction that min-max everything and declares anything that fails to meet their level of acceptance as useless.
• A warship game is included... on the side... over there... where nobody plays with it.
• Different formats - tournament, scenario missions, narrative campaigns

It's quite similar in ways on a high level look, like this. Two things done for that game that I wouldn't mind seeing here...

• The entire battle value formula had a significant flaw which made certain 'mechs cost more than they should... So the design team created a new battle value system to correct the flaws and recalculated the cost for all their units.
• Much more focus on objectives and narrative story driven events. Campaign books could be bought to provide options, missions, units and campaigns.

I'm probably more casually minded about X-Wing as I've seen much of these problems before and understand a lot of the backend issues.

2 minutes ago, FTS Gecko said:

There's a reason that ship was renamed from "TIE Interdictor" to "TIE Punisher", you know...

So when will they change the name of the TIE Agressor to TIE Auto-Agressor?

6 minutes ago, Hannes Solo said:

So when will they change the name of the TIE Agressor to TIE Auto-Agressor?

When you change TIE Aggressor with TIE Auto-Correct-Aggressor.

1 hour ago, Pewpewpew BOOM said:

I've played tabletop games for more than 20 years. I took a few years off due to grad school and kids. X-Wing has been my re-entry into the gaming world.

I read a lot of hate on these boards and it is a bit confusing from my perspective. XWM has a pretty thin margin between top tier and ships that are lacking.

If you are a die-hard SW person and want T-65s to dominate other ships, okay, I get that.

But if you are not one of those folks...Are there some other really balanced systems that you want this game to aspire to?

I'm eager to get started with this game. I've played about four or five practice games and I love it.

But I don't care about Meta, what's popular, best lists, Paul Heaver or having the must haves.

I'm what I believe is referred to around here as a casual player, and I think that when you play just for the fun of playing you really couldn't give a monkey's fuzzy coconut about Meta. That said I find it ironic that I've never won a game of X-Wing with a T-65 X-Wing. Even Luke and R2 flying as many green manoeuvres as possible got shot to ribbons by a bunch of Academy Ties.

As to comparisons, the only other game I've played is Games Workshop Warhammer 40,000. No comparison really, X-Wing is head, shoulders and most of the torso above GW.

5 minutes ago, Tal Maane said:

As to comparisons, the only other game I've played is Games Workshop Warhammer 40,000. No comparison really, X-Wing is head, shoulders and most of the torso above GW.

Same here, the only other collectable tabletop miniatures games I've played which I can compare X-Wing to would be Warhammer 40K and Warhammer Fantasy Battle, which - when it came to competitive play - were the utter pits (with a capital SH).

A balanced meta doesnt matter nearly as much to me as a fun meta. Both are good but one is better. The overall balance of the Meta is actually "ok" right now. There are tons of OP things that all have immediate go home level counters.

• See Nym on the table throw down RAC/Kylo.
• See Kylo on the table throw down Cruise Missile Aces or FSR or Biggs/Low.
• See Biggs/Low on the table throw down Nym/Miranda.

I dont think its all doom and gloom. The game is still solid....it just seems to be in a kinda odd bomb/turrets/ordinace place right now. Thinking we could use some amount of the following:

• Biggs + Re-enforce to out right not exist. Its "ok" if they exist separately but they shouldnt be able to interact. And Re-enforce tokens should require spending making it a "less" good evade token.
• Nym's PS to be locked to PS7 so the highest he can get is PS9, opening things up again for a slew of priced out ships that can only consistently play the game if Kylo is there to PS0 Nym and all his PS11 counters.
• Autothrusters as a rule not a card, and without the boost pre-req.
• Sabine and Cad Ban nerfed into the ground. Bombs are already incredible since they dont roll against green dice and are an extra gravy threat outside of the combat phase.
• Advanced slam nerf, Miranda has 100% enough tricks already.
• Jumpmasters burned with fire for obvious cheeseburger related reasons.

2 hours ago, Pewpewpew BOOM said:

I've played tabletop games for more than 20 years. I took a few years off due to grad school and kids. X-Wing has been my re-entry into the gaming world.

I read a lot of hate on these boards and it is a bit confusing from my perspective. XWM has a pretty thin margin between top tier and ships that are lacking.

If you are a die-hard SW person and want T-65s to dominate other ships, okay, I get that.

But if you are not one of those folks...Are there some other really balanced systems that you want this game to aspire to?

Well, first, a die hard SW person isn't always just about t-65s. You got people who love Interceptors, Slave 1, the HWK-290, Fang Fighters, and on and on. Star Wars is huge, with multiple ways to be inducted as a fan, which can lead to attachments to a wide variety of ships. Heck, see the Gunboat thread for example.

As for myself, I find the current meta poor due to an entire faction not having something up in top tier. For a balanced game, there needs to be at least some representation of a faction (though not necessarily a particular ship in that faction) amoug the best of the best. We had a similar situation back when Deadeye U-Boats were a thing, and they pushed most Rebel lists out of the meta. That was bad and was (mostly) fixed. Now we have a similar situation with the Empire.

1 hour ago, Darth Meanie said:

Magic: the Gathering.

It is decades old, so clearly it is a good game.

It is not afraid to remove components from the game to keep the overall game healthy.

It has multiple routes to victory.

It supports many formats for play officially, and even more unofficially.

It was designed to be played between 2 kids on the playground for ante, not as a sport at gaming conventions.

No one expected every card to be equally useful.

It doesn't have an errata booklet longer than the rule booklet.

No one ever used the word Meta in the 1990s. We just played the game and looked for combos that were cool.

That list is rather contradictory. MtG as played in the 90s bares little resemblance to modern MtG. Regardless of what it was originally designed as all modern sets are most definitely created with the idea that they'll be played as sports at gaming conventions. MtG supports many formats but most of them are specifically related to its rotation scheme and the ability to draft cards from boosters. The others are unofficial (nothing stopping you from doing those with X-Wing) or, with the exception of Commander, poorly supported one offs.

Most cards are actually designed to be useful. Not necessarily in an absolute sense but in a contextual one, many cards that are subpar in constructed are quite good in draft formats. Not to mention that due to draft formats you need weaker and stronger cards to lend value to the drafting phase. But X-Wing has neither rotation nor drafting, it's effectively the same as playing constructed Vintage. You could certainly implement rotation, but while it's a great mechanical solution somehow I don't think you actually want to rotate Luke Skywalker and the T-65 out of the game entirely do you?

I have long compared X-Wing's meta to the 40k meta (pre 8th edition). For a long time Warhammer was won by the person who bought the newest shiniest model, or the person who discovered the newest most broken combo. Usually the new models had the most broken abilities as well so that to be competitive you had to buy the new stuff.

Fortunately I think X-Wing is not there yet. But it does seem to be moving more and more in that direction. It saddens me that my T-65's, A-Wings, Tie Fighters and Interceptors are far less competitive than they used to be. I would much rather FFG release updates to those old models than bring in more junk from the EU.

It does seem like a lot of people bring net lists to X-Wing's competitive scene though, most without a clue on how to fly them. There's gold out there if you can think for yourself guys! Fly what you love and get gud!

I liken it to MTG in the sense that in most releases you don't get to play what you like if you want to win. (Holding out hope that the Starviper patch to make it an arc dodging ace that doesn't crumple to one bomb)

2 minutes ago, AngryAlbatross said:

I have long compared X-Wing's meta to the 40k meta (pre 8th edition). For a long time Warhammer was won by the person who bought the newest shiniest model, or the person who discovered the newest most broken combo. Usually the new models had the most broken abilities as well so that to be competitive you had to buy the new stuff.

Fortunately I think X-Wing is not there yet...

It'll never be there, at least not in 100/6. At such a low points limit, as long you at least try to optimise abilities and upgrades you can fly a wild variety of lists and still have a decent fighting chance on a game-by-game basis. Look at the Store Championship results for example; there might be some clearly dominant lists, but there's a LOT of variety there.

Contrast that to 40K or WFB, where 1,500-2,000 point lists were the norm. You could literally pick your force, deploy it, look across the table to see what your opponent was taking and know you were going to lose before the game even started.

44 minutes ago, Boom Owl said:

A balanced meta doesnt matter nearly as much to me as a fun meta. Both are good but one is better. The overall balance of the Meta is actually "ok" right now. There are tons of OP things that all have immediate go home level counters.

I think that sums up a lot of the complaints about the meta. It's not so much about mechanical balance it's that the top lists, for a variety of reasons, tend to devolve into something not fun.

• Fat Han was impossible to hurt and could always shoot you so what you dialed/rolled was not relevant
• Old school Whisper felt like your opponent was cheating and your dial was not relevant
• Palp aces felt like what you rolled was not relevant since Soontir was just going to get 4 evades anyways
• J5ks... were and still are just OP
• Kylo hard counters 2 ships lists so hard that often playing the game is not relevant if you get matched up
• Biggs makes your target selection and with all hist buddies in FSR often all your red dice not relevant
• Adv SLAM Miranda and PS10 adv sensors Nym make it so that your dial is not relevant, you're eating a bomb and likely won't get to shoot them

The common theme there, other than the J5k, isn't that those things were super OP. They all had counters, often hard counters. Rather its that they all make some aspect of the game that you're trying to play, if not actually irrelevant at least feel that way. That's why the Krayts are always talking about agency burgling, it's both unfun but also a really great strategy for winning games. Your opponent beats you by excising their agency better than you exercise yours, but if you take theirs away then the game just boils down to how well you execute.

My analysis of what is OP in a given meta:

1.) If you compare a ship to other similar ships, is it objectively better? Compare the TIE Punisher to the Scurrg (two different heavy bombers). The Scurrg is objectively better in every way. Better dial, better upgrade bar, better stats, better pilot abilites, better upgrades for the faction, just BETTER. Answer: Yes.

2.) Is said ship dominating higher levels of play? 4 Nationals won with Nym in them. Answer: Yes.

3.) Is said ship easy to fly? Is ship immune to punishment for flying badly? In Nym's case, he's EZ mode. Dial comparable to an E-Wing, barrel roll, easy to get to PS10, Adv. Sensors = getting to move with perfect knowledge of the game state = easy to fly. Due to ease of flying, skill floor is low- this is an easy ship to pick up and have quick success with. Ceiling is high as the movement options give you so many choices. Lastly, you don't get punished for bad flying. Bump? Still get to drop bomblet. Land on debris/asteroid? Still get to drop bomblet. Ion'd? Still get to drop bomblet. Stressed? Still get to drop bomblet. And then the cherry on the cake is that you never take damage from your own bombs. What could be easier? Answer: Yes, Yes.

You can do this for lots of ships, and if your answer for all 3 of these metrics is 'YES' then you are looking at an OP ship. Try it for yourself! Plug in any ship you want, try and evaluate it objectively answering the above questions.

The meta is not rocket science or witchcraft.

Confession time:

I have some favorite ships. These ships have gotten less and less playable. That is probabl my main personal gripe with 'the meta' for some time now.

But apart from that I'm also capable of more rational thought; I can separate my personal wishes from what I believe to be objectively good for the game in a short and mid term. I could have loved Palpaces and criticized them. Similarly I could love NymMiranda and still criticize it. I don't want to derail the thread so I won't mention anything in that regard. But I brought it up because there are three metas in my opinion, and it's relevant for the last one:

1. the actual meta you play in. That changes from tournament to tournament, and probably region to region. This is the relevant one to play and win, but it's also very different between places, so hardly any grounds to discuss it.

2. the meta meta, the aggregated data of all listjuggler data. This meta is important for theorycrafting, to determine how good ships really are because it's taken from so many places from all kinds of players. That's the one being discussed, usually.

3. the ideal meta, a hypothetical construct that we aspire to. It's stable-ish, diverse, every ship or even pilot has at least one halfdecent list to play against others without losing instantly. This one is neither global nor regional. Instead it's highly subjective. But the complete picture of all these subjective opinions shapes the game in the end, defines what NPEs are and whether the designers did a good job or not in delivering what most of their customers expected and wanted.

2 hours ago, Pewpewpew BOOM said:

But if you are not one of those folks...Are there some other really balanced systems that you want this game to aspire to?

Just because one doesn't exist doesn't mean it can't. This line of thinking is what keeps many good companies from becoming great companies. They think "well no one else has done that, so we are fine where we are". What you should be thinking is "if it can be better, we are always going to do everything we can to make it better."

And xwing can be better. A LOT better.

So in essence, this is a 'no game is perfectly balanced so you shouldn't complain about X-Wing's problems', right? Which is a hugely flawed argument that dissuades discussion of said problems by burying ones head in the sand.

X-Wing is in a poor place, where the 'top' lists (FSR, anything with Nym) are actively not fun for the opponent and operate by removing their ability to effectively counterplay at any stage beyond list building. Ships and upgrades get left behind to rot or are completely replaced by newer, more powerful incarnations, and the titular ship is nowhere to be found beyond one completely atrocious pilot ability that should have been changed years ago. There is no indication that FFG want to do anything other than pile more complexity (new mechanics every wave) and power (each new wave stronger than the last) on top of the mess rather than make any serious attempt to fix it, demonstrated by the absence of a much-needed errata (though the things that warranted it are already getting left behind by the newer hotness) and no avenues of actual communication with the player base.

X-Wing can, and definitely should be, better balanced than it is. I for one have lost any hope that it will be, though. And this is why HotAC exists.

6 hours ago, Keffisch said:

Looking at the TIE Punisher and the Scurgg, I wouldn't call that margin pretty thin.

A better counter-point illustration has never been typed.

5 hours ago, Celestial Lizards said:

Why do people complain?

Because the Imperials are not the ultimate power in the Galaxy.

In fact, Imperials in this game ironically hold the position of the Rebels in the original trilogy movies, and basically have been since 2013. Recently, and oddly enough, the galaxy is being run by the Hutt cartel who, through brute force, took the government from the Great Rebel Empire.

5 hours ago, Boom Owl said:

• Jumpmasters burned with fire for obvious cheeseburger related reasons.

Love this!!!!

....but I like mine medium-rare ?

I certainly agree that X-Wing can be improved and don't mean to argue otherwise. I find the level of vitriol surrounding imbalance and the number of ___ is unplayable or ____ is DOA out of whack with what I know of other systems compared to XWM.

I am interested to learn more about successes other companies have had in this regard.

I know PP and Wyrd ran open betas when each moved to update their flagship games to 2.0. I was around for each of those and loved the level of engagement that brought to each game.

Armada?

if FFG can do it with armada, they could do it with X-wing