12 minutes ago, Sekac said:

I think deciding the state of the game based on the top cuts of major tournaments is unhealthy. The simple fact is the vast majority of players lamenting won't make the top cuts regardless of which list they take.

This data has value for the most competitive players out there but should mean very little to the rest of us normies.

When I get served a beer, I don't look directly down from above to determine the pour.

"Excuse me, barkeep? You seem to be wiping beer from the meta. This is obviously 100% foam, as evidenced by this top-down view."

If all one looks at is the top results of the top tourneys then, yeah? But not really. Sure SCs are filled with data, but those are casual and jank filled, very little serious planning and real effort go into those unless its practice reps. The best list rubber/players meets the road/tourneys is in Nationals, Gencon, Worlds etc. Because players who invest in going plan ahead, understand ships, mods, synergies and practice. Therefore they tend to bring the best of the best. When the waters of players are breached by the big guns from 250 to 16 or so, that's the best way to look at what IS currently the top of the top. Those lists are lightly varied and usually have all three factions represented, but not since FAQ 4.3.2 and the release of Nym has their been balance at all.

Just sayin, "them guys ain't dumb."

Oh, and if it's a proper beer, that head should be proud and thick, but ya never view it from above, as you must raise it for a toast to your pals when you get it, and then you get a good sip right off.

@Sekac enough of us have played enough games to know pretty quickly when the table's tilted.

I've been wargaming competitively for 20+ years. It's not tough to feel out when a faction or army has an edge or is lacking.

Sans palpatine the Imperials have been hurting for a long time. Whether it's empirical or emotional or both, the title wave of data and feelings is there. Game mechanics and post costing clearly favors some stats heavier than others.

I don't think a 10% point help aid to Imperials would even help at this point. It's bad. It's a thing.

All hopes resting on Gunboat.

48 minutes ago, SOTL said:

Imperial squads are both less popular and less successful. In truth the two things will frequently be co-related.

As I stated above I don't believe this statistic can be used to support this conclusion. We should looks at the number of squads, not archetypes as defined by ship composition.

1 hour ago, gennataos said:

There are so many of these "Imperials are dying!" threads, I can't keep up. How many of the folks involved in these threads actually play in the events they're citing for statistics? Or are they all just huge @Starslinger72 fans?

If Imperial players would just take RAC/Kylo with your ace of choice to big events in the same numbers that people bring Miranda and Nym, then Imperials would dumpster all of these 2-ship lists and you'd see significantly different results. If @pheaver would have run into one of those in his swiss rounds, he may not have even made the cut.

I did so. It doesn't work all that well. Current meta is dominated by bombs, TLTs, high PS alpha strikers and fat turrets. RAC can eat the bombs to an extent and - if flown very well - put enough pressure on elite bombers such as Miranda or Nym to destroy them before he gets destroyed in turn. The other stuff on the other hand is quite problematic. TLTs will eat RAC if he can't kill them quickly, which means that he struggles against lists such as Biggs+Kanan or the one that won Polish nationals. PS11s with cruise missiles are also a very unfavorable matchup. They can't be blinded before they fire and if the other player knows what he's doing he'll always keep at least one in a position to punish RAC if he goes for a bump on the other ones. And then there are triple u-boats, which are always a tough fight for RAC. Put it simply, while RAC/Kylo does reasonably well against Nym/Miranda, this isn't really a good meta for him and the tournament results reflect it quite well.

10 minutes ago, Lightrock said:

Put it simply, while RAC/Kylo does reasonably well against Nym/Miranda, this isn't really a good meta for him and the tournament results reflect it quite well.

Do the result reflect that? Of the 7 RAC lists posted for Nova, 4 of them made day 2. That seems like pretty good results. Do you normally make cuts at large events with a RAC list and suddenly can't?

2 minutes ago, gennataos said:

Do the result reflect that? Of the 7 RAC lists posted for Nova, 4 of them made day 2. That seems like pretty good results. Do you normally make cuts at large events with a RAC list and suddenly can't?

Yes, but how far did those 4 go? Cause it wasn't all the way.

If you are questioning results others are having, does this mean you think you can do better?

21 minutes ago, gennataos said:

Do the result reflect that? Of the 7 RAC lists posted for Nova, 4 of them made day 2. That seems like pretty good results. Do you normally make cuts at large events with a RAC list and suddenly can't?

Indeed. I've won several store championships with RAC this year and I've got to admit I got caught off-guard by the meta shift. Right after Nym came out I concluded that it wouldn't affect me that much. I've played against Nym lists and didn't struggle too much, as I could usually Kylo Nym to PS0 and then just avoid his bombs or simply kill him quickly. In fact, that's the worst part of it. If Nym countered RAC in an obvious way I'd know to adapt right away. He doesn't, but his very presence changed meta in a way that makes RAC lists... unreliable. If you're reasonably lucky with your pairings, you might still do well in Swiss. The number of bad matchups is much greater that it used to be a few months ago however, and most of the good ones disappeared.

Also, please keep in mind that RAC lists are almost the only imperial ones that perform reasonably well and even they struggle to make it very far in the elimination rounds. This reminds me of the time when u-boats almost wiped rebels off the top tables. There were a handful of Dash/Ghost lists here and there that did okayish in large tournaments. These were usually flown by very experienced rebel players who for one reason or another didn't want to switch to another faction and simply picked the only rebel lists that still stood a chance. Their performance didn't mean that rebellion wasn't in a sorry state however. Honestly, they probably punched above their weight too, relying on the sheer experience, talent and skill of the players to win against the odds. Ultimately though, when they got to play equally skilled scum players in their u-boats, they just couldn't push through and would usually get eliminated in top 16 or top 8. That's pretty much where imperials are right now with their RAC lists. They might give you an illusion that the empire stands a chance but it's really just a bunch of amazing imperial players doing what they can. And ultimately failing.

6 hours ago, SabineKey said:

Yeah, PGS speaking in favor of Imperials? That's the day pigs fly.

He's actually said a couple positive things on the subreddit. Something along the lines of, "At least Palp Aces weren't as bad as Turret and bomb-wing."

Just now, StriderZessei said:

He's actually said a couple positive things on the subreddit. Something along the lines of, "At least Palp Aces weren't as bad as Turret and bomb-wing."

Whelp, I'm off to catch me a flying pig.

@Lightrock - I'm still not sure what your issue is. You won several (SEVERAL?!?) store champs this year. I'm not sure you're in a position to complain. Did you play at GenCon or NOVA? If so, how did you do? How was it different than the (SEVERAL!?!) store champs you won?

1 minute ago, gennataos said:

@Lightrock - I'm still not sure what your issue is. You won several (SEVERAL?!?) store champs this year. I'm not sure you're in a position to complain. Did you play at GenCon or NOVA? If so, how did you do? How was it different than the (SEVERAL!?!) store champs you won?

Soooo, winning lower level events means you can't comment on upper level events? You have to be their to have an opinion on it? Where you there?

Just now, SabineKey said:

Whelp, I'm off to catch me a flying pig.

Eh, don't take hyperbole as praise. He's been so bad there, he's on the verge of getting banned from the sub, if we're lucky.

Just now, StriderZessei said:

Eh, don't take hyperbole as praise. He's been so bad there, he's on the verge of getting banned from the sub, if we're lucky.

It's close enough with him.

It's time to build a wall to keep out all of the scum ships taking tourneys from hard working imperial players.

2 minutes ago, rafcpl6868 said:

It's time to build a wall to keep out all of the scum ships taking tourneys from hard working imperial players.

And leave the Imps alone with the Rebs? Heh, not much of an improvement there.

2 minutes ago, gennataos said:

@Lightrock - I'm still not sure what your issue is. You won several (SEVERAL?!?) store champs this year. I'm not sure you're in a position to complain. Did you play at GenCon or NOVA? If so, how did you do? How was it different than the (SEVERAL!?!) store champs you won?

To be precise I won 2 store champs in May/June and came 2nd in other 2. Pretty nice performance overall, which made me feel reasonably confident that I can do well in the nationals. You can imagine I was kinda disappointed to realize that I'm struggling to even make the cut, let alone have a decent shot at winning the entire thing. Meta really has changed in the past couple of months and RAC lists no longer cut it.

To answer your other question - I attended neither GenCon nor NOVA since I'm from Europe and it's a bit far from here. European nationals (at least in major countries) have a similar scope however and I doubt meta is THAT different in the US. Trust me, RAC may have been enough to give empire a chance in July or early August. Right now it's a tier 2 list. Which is more than can be said about most of the other imperial lists, but still...

32 minutes ago, Lightrock said:

To be precise I won 2 store champs in May/June and came 2nd in other 2. Pretty nice performance overall, which made me feel reasonably confident that I can do well in the nationals. You can imagine I was kinda disappointed to realize that I'm struggling to even make the cut, let alone have a decent shot at winning the entire thing. Meta really has changed in the past couple of months and RAC lists no longer cut it.

To answer your other question - I attended neither GenCon nor NOVA since I'm from Europe and it's a bit far from here. European nationals (at least in major countries) have a similar scope however and I doubt meta is THAT different in the US. Trust me, RAC may have been enough to give empire a chance in July or early August. Right now it's a tier 2 list. Which is more than can be said about most of the other imperial lists, but still...

Okay, so which nationals was it and did you make the cut?

Just now, gennataos said:

Okay, so which nationals was it and did you make the cut?

Which Nationals did you make the cut in in order to hold your opinion that stats don't mean anything?

15 minutes ago, Gadgetron said:

Which Nationals did you make the cut in in order to hold your opinion that stats don't mean anything?

I don't remember asking you, but I do appreciate you volunteering to jump on my Ignore list.

22 minutes ago, Gadgetron said:

Which Nationals did you make the cut in in order to hold your opinion that stats don't mean anything?

It looks like he's more interested in his echo chamber than different opinions.

I decided to do some analysis to show why the faith into top archetypes as a measure of faction performance is misplaced.

I look into squads/archetypes that made top-64 at Nova:

For Empire there are 14/64 squads and 13 archetypes

For Rebels there are 25/64 squads and 14 archetypes

For Scum there are 25/64 squads and 15 archetypes

I added the archetypes for each faction (grouped into meta-archetypes) below:

Empire:

TIE Adv/TIE SF/TIE Bomber

TIE Adv/Lambda/TIE FO
TIE Adv/Lambda/TIE SF
TIE Adv/Lambda/TIE Defender
TIE Adv/Lambda/TIE AP

TIE SF/TIE Defender/TIE Adv
TIE SF/TIE Defender/TIE FO
TIE SF/TIE Defender/TIE Aggressor
TIE SF/TIE Defender/TIE Bomber

Decimator/TIE Phantom (2 squads)
Decimator/TIE Adv
Decimator/TIE SF

4xTIE Aggressor

Rebels:

T70 XWing/XWing/Auzituck Gunship/TIE Fighter (4 squads)
T70 XWing/XWing/ARC-170/TIE Fighter

KWing/XWing/Auzituck Gunship (5 squads)
KWing/XWing/ARC-170
KWing/XWing/T70 XWing

KWing/Scurrg (2 squads)
KWing/EWing

Scurrg/YT-2400 (2 squads)
KWing/YT-2400 (3 squads)
T70 XWing/YT-2400

YT-1300/HWK-290
YT-1300/ARC-170

VCX-100/XWing/Attack Shuttle

T70 XWing/YWing/YWing/Z-95/Z-95

Scum:

3xScurrg
YV666/Scurrg/Scurrg
Scurrg/YWing/YWing/Quadjumper
Scurrg/YWing/Protectorate

Protectorate/Jumpmaster/HWK-290
Protectorate/Shadowcaster/Jumpmaster (4 squads)
Protectorate/Jumpmaster/Jumpmaster (2 squads)
Protectorate/Protectorate/Jumpmaster
Jumpmaster/Jumpmaster/Jumpmaster (3 squads)

Jumpmaster/Scurrg (3 squads)
Jumpmaster/Shadowcaster
YV666/Shadowcaster (2 squads)

Scurrg/Shadowcaster (2 squads)
Scurrg/Shadowcaster/Scyk
Scurrg/Jumpmaster/Quadjumper

I did similar analysis on top-64 squads from Gencon and while the data is far from complete (only 32 out of 64 squads were available), the trend was similar:

For Empire there were 8/32 (top64) squads and 8 archetypes

For Rebels there were 13/32(top64) squads and 10 archetypes

For Scum there were 11/32(top64) squads and 9 archetypes

So Empire is definitely lagging (and is definitely behind as far as OP squads are concerned), however it's not as bad as archetypes data is suggesting.

To avoid any confusion or misconceptions, there's a fair amount of you folks who complain about the state of Imperials that I've already put on the Ignore list. It's a wonderful feature!

What I'm attempt to illustrate is that @Lightrock has seen success with RAC as recently as a few months ago at smaller events like a store champs. The meta shifted and even he said he didn't adjust to it. I asked about the nationals event he went to and if he made the cut to lead to the next question if he felt that performance was an outlier of what he'd have done in a previous meta?

11 minutes ago, PT106 said:

I decided to do some analysis to show why the faith into top archetypes as a measure of faction performance is misplaced.

I look into squads/archetypes that made top-64 at Nova:

For Empire there are 14/64 squads and 13 archetypes

For Rebels there are 25/64 squads and 14 archetypes

For Scum there are 25/64 squads and 15 archetypes

I added the archetypes for each faction (grouped into meta-archetypes) below:

Empire:

TIE Adv/TIE SF/TIE Bomber

TIE Adv/Lambda/TIE FO
TIE Adv/Lambda/TIE SF
TIE Adv/Lambda/TIE Defender
TIE Adv/Lambda/TIE AP

TIE SF/TIE Defender/TIE Adv
TIE SF/TIE Defender/TIE FO
TIE SF/TIE Defender/TIE Aggressor
TIE SF/TIE Defender/TIE Bomber

Decimator/TIE Phantom (2 squads)
Decimator/TIE Adv
Decimator/TIE SF

4xTIE Aggressor

Rebels:

T70 XWing/XWing/Auzituck Gunship/TIE Fighter (4 squads)
T70 XWing/XWing/ARC-170/TIE Fighter

KWing/XWing/Auzituck Gunship (5 squads)
KWing/XWing/ARC-170
KWing/XWing/T70 XWing

KWing/Scurrg (2 squads)
KWing/EWing

Scurrg/YT-2400 (2 squads)
KWing/YT-2400 (3 squads)
T70 XWing/YT-2400

YT-1300/HWK-290
YT-1300/ARC-170

VCX-100/XWing/Attack Shuttle

T70 XWing/YWing/YWing/Z-95/Z-95

Scum:

3xScurrg
YV666/Scurrg/Scurrg
Scurrg/YWing/YWing/Quadjumper
Scurrg/YWing/Protectorate

Protectorate/Jumpmaster/HWK-290
Protectorate/Shadowcaster/Jumpmaster (4 squads)
Protectorate/Jumpmaster/Jumpmaster (2 squads)
Protectorate/Protectorate/Jumpmaster
Jumpmaster/Jumpmaster/Jumpmaster (3 squads)

Jumpmaster/Scurrg (3 squads)
Jumpmaster/Shadowcaster
YV666/Shadowcaster (2 squads)

Scurrg/Shadowcaster (2 squads)
Scurrg/Shadowcaster/Scyk
Scurrg/Jumpmaster/Quadjumper

I did similar analysis on top-64 squads from Gencon and while the data is far from complete (only 32 out of 64 squads were available), the trend was similar:

For Empire there were 8/32 (top64) squads and 8 archetypes

For Rebels there were 13/32(top64) squads and 10 archetypes

For Scum there were 11/32(top64) squads and 9 archetypes

So Empire is definitely lagging (and is definitely behind as far as OP squads are concerned), however it's not as bad as archetypes data is suggesting.

May I ask you to do the same for top 32 and descending?

2 minutes ago, SabineKey said:

May I ask you to do the same for top 32 and descending?

I don't think it's worth the effort. The number of Imperials is dropping fast (I think there are only 5 Imperial lists in top 32). What I did want to show was that Imperial lists are less defined by metawing ship archetypes as a lot of their aces are interchangeable points wise and performance wise, so its often Quickdraw+Vessery+1 or Vader+Lambda+1 etc.

1 minute ago, PT106 said:

I don't think it's worth the effort. The number of Imperials is dropping fast (I think there are only 5 Imperial lists in top 32). What I did want to show was that Imperial lists are less defined by metawing ship archetypes as a lot of their aces are interchangeable points wise and performance wise, so its often Quickdraw+Vessery+1 or Vader+Lambda+1 etc.

Fair enough.