I have been playing X-wing all the way since the beginning and I remember when the meta was Howelrunner and a TIE Swarm. Howelrunner's reroll to everything in range 1 is a classic example of what is called a force multiplier. Basically Howelrunner makes everyone better (to a degree). And the more ships you have the more Howelrunner helps you. This inspired people to bring lots of cheaper ships.

Over the past few months I have felt like the basic dog fighting in X-wing seems to be sliding. That is not entirely true since you still see high PS arc dodging aces. What you don't see is low PS swarms. Quality be it that expensive 7 point TLT or even more expensive 360 degree primary-weapon-firing ship, or a highly upgraded high PS ace seem to be really common.

Few better ships be they bombers or turret carriers is the Meta almost everywhere. When you get few ships, upgrades become less of a hard choice. I flew Nym at a tournament last weekend with seven upgrades, and I didn't really even notice until I had to find a place for all the cards on the table.

I think Force Multiplier ship abilities can bring the more-ships-is-better archetype.

All we really need is for the new ships coming out to have these pilot abilities or new EPTs. I don't know what it would have to be, but there has been a bit of talk about making outmaneuver just a universal rule, what if someone basically gave outmaneuver to all ships of the same type in range 1 (or 2) of it.

I don't know if this would bring back lists with 4 X-wings, in them, but it might.

Well Youngster would be a good example, except that all of the EPTs with the Action: header aren't very worthwhile. So TIE Swarms could get revitalized with the introduction of one card where you're like, "wow this EPT action is great! I wish I could copy/paste it!" In that sense though he's less of a force multiplier and more of a "buy-in-bulk discount".

Swarm Leader is a card that's like an inverse force multiplier, in that having several ships fulfilling the conditions might enable a single ship to perform a better-than-usual attack. This again incentivizes greater numbers, but it can be challenging to set up.

Biggs, Rex, Kanan, and Lowhhrick can act as force multipliers just by enabling friendlies to be more aggressive with token spending on offense; if you'd otherwise have had to spend a token on defense, they've done their job by taking some of the heat off from the opposing fire. In this sense, I'd say that Rebels have the best force multiplication right now, and indeed they're the only faction that commonly has 4 ship builds hitting the tables.

Scum I think has the least opportunity so far for force multiplication as far as pilot abilities go, but Attanni Mindlink is pretty much the definition of what you're after. Problem is, Mindlink can do so much better on 3 ships with great abilities and shenanigans than it can on 4-5 generics, so why would you ever go with the numbers game? Tractor beams in the form of Shadow Caster title or Quadjumper spacetug arrays are another great, under-utilized example. The more ships you have firing, the more that -1 agi does work for you. That said, Shadow Caster really caps the number of ships at 3 max, and Quadjumpers are really rare to see put to use.

12 hours ago, Hrathen said:

I think Force Multiplier ship abilities can bring the more-ships-is-better archetype.

The problem is where the force multiplier is a separate ship - Howlrunner has a nasty tendancy to explode at PS7+ during the first exchange of fire, for example.

But yes, force multipliers are nice. @FTS Gecko's infamous Five. Cartel. Marauders. are about to get a lot tastier with Vaksai, as you can afford to give all of them XX-23 S-thread tracers, guidance chips, and munitions failsafes, which means any of them can play 'howlrunner' for a turn as required.