September Pilot/Ship/Squad Rankings (Meta-Wing)

By Stay On The Leader, in X-Wing

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Not on a regular basis, no. It was useful as a one-off or occasional thing.

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It's interesting to see Vader, QD and Vessery in the top16. But they are not all played together. Vessery/QD is a frequent combo, and also Vader/QD, but Vader/Vessery is rare.
QD/Vessery has a more beefed up Quickdraw, often with Expertise.
QD/Vader otoh is often an alpha strike list.

I'm not sure that this means they work roughly as well as the other version. After all there are many other builds with QD and Vader, but interestingly not really for Vessery.

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Well, MY list was Vader/QD/Vessery...

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21 minutes ago, Rinzler in a Tie said:

TFW @Stay On The Leader puts out more and better content than FFG.

TBF they have approached me a couple of times and asked me my price. I just don't think I could write the type of articles I would want to write if I was constrained under the FFG umbrella.

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2 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

TBF they have approached me a couple of times and asked me my price. I just don't think I could write the type of articles I would want to write if I was constrained under the FFG umbrella.

Bananas.

Good on you, but that must have been hard to turn down. Some would consider that dream-come-true.

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Well I've been writing for games companies since 1999 so I've been there, done that. And if it was about the money I'd never have walked away from Magic: The Gathering!

Id rather have control over what I write. I'm not ruling out writing for them in future, just the stuff the floated my way didn't sound like my bag.

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Now we just need to update the performance metrics from "MAGIC" to something more meaningful and accurate!

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10 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Well I've been writing for games companies since 1999 so I've been there, done that. And if it was about the money I'd never have walked away from Magic: The Gathering!

Id rather have control over what I write. I'm not ruling out writing for them in future, just the stuff the floated my way didn't sound like my bag.

I remember reading this at the bottom of your blog.. Any tips for starting such a thing and keeping the content fresh? I smell an Off-Topic thread..

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Well, StarViper and Kihraxz being 48th and 49th sure tells us that the scum aces pack isn’t a mistake!

Also, looks like Imperial Firespray and Punisher will be next in the queue for “fixes”... so maybe that’s the next ace pack?

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On 10/6/2017 at 6:04 PM, Rinzler in a Tie said:

I remember reading this at the bottom of your blog.. Any tips for starting such a thing and keeping the content fresh? I smell an Off-Topic thread..

Wasn't ignoring you, I just switch to daddy mode for the weekend and don't get to reply much.

So first of all, this is my key approach to writing/analysis both in games and in my day job: CIA (Communication, Insight, Accuracy).

  • Communication - be appropriate to your audience. Make it interesting, crack some jokes. If something needs explaining then explain it, but if it doesn't then don't write a thousand words when a hundred would do.
  • Insight - have something to say that they haven't heard before. Give them a helping hand to see something or understand something that they might not know about already. "This is good" is a bad blog, "this is good because..." is a good blog. Often I'll not actually be blogging about a squad, but using the squad as an example to illustrate and introduce a bigger concept.
  • Accuracy - don't make some simple mistake or misunderstanding that spins you off in the wrong direction for a whole blog. If you're not sure that you're getting something right then ask - I'll frequently use friends or other X-Wing groups to sound out 'I'm about to say [insert thing], am I way off base or does that sound about right?'.

Each step is built on the steps that follow, so Communication is the topping on the cake that makes it look great but there's no point nailing the Communication if you've no Insights worth reading, and there's no point spending ages coming up with a great Insight if that's then flawed because you were getting something wrong fundamentally.

Then, about MY style in particular...

Most bloggers I know find a niche and stick to it. They become the 'here's what I played last night' guy, or the 'the latest thing that got spoiled' guy, or the 'guide to a ship' guy. I deliberately move around all over the place, shaking up both the topics I write about and the style I write about them in.

Partly that's just to keep me sane, partly I'm just having fun, but a lot of it comes from that I spent 6 or 7 years writing for Magic and we were always very aware that we had a hugely varied audience to serve. We were doing coverage from a high-end professional tournament so there had to be strategy insight and specific metagame talk, but we also wanted more general tips and advice and interviews, and some match reports etc... and the whole piece had to be wrapped up in a bundle that made it look like going to a major Magic tournament was the most fun ever and next time one comes close by you should definitely make the effort to go! We always got complaints from the PTQing type people who just wanted 100% solid pro-level discussion and to know what the best decks were and how they worked, but however loud they were they were only a portion of our audience and we had to mix it up.

So I do a metagame/strategy blog, then I do a casual squad I'm messing about with blog, then I do a blog aimed at beginners, then I do a serious blog in a goofy style, then I do a dedicated blog about a particular ship.

Not everyone likes everything. In fact I'm pretty sure somebody is pissed off about something every time I write a blog. But if you didn't like one blog maybe (hopefully!) there's something for you in the next one, or the one after that.

I try and keep the tone positive as much as I can. My tone in forums and so on is a lot more negative and confrontational than it is in the blog, and deliberately so - a forum post disappears in hours, a blog post is a lot more permanent. I'd rather blog about something you CAN do than something you CAN'T. I'll be positive, I'll empower people, I'll encourage people to try something out. In all my 50+ blogs there's maybe only a couple that are proper downers about 'the state of the game'. If I'm not enjoying playing tournament X-Wing I won't blog that tournament X-Wing sucks, I'll blog about playing a casual squad instead. I might piss & moan a bit on here to get it out of my system, but I won't put it down for posterity in a blog.

I don't set myself deadlines, I just write when there's something I want to say. That's good and bad. It means my output is very sporadic, I'll go weeks without posting a blog then do two in 24 hours. On the plus side I never feel like I have to just grind a blog out so that I've posted something this week. I'm not getting paid for this, I'm doing it because I enjoy it. If I stop enjoying it, I stop doing it.


Best advice... just start writing! If you're enjoying it you'll want to do it more, and then all the good stuff will follow as you get better at it, people find your blog and you build a readership. If you're not enjoying it then stop. You won't find out until you really give it a try.

That's just off the top of my head. If you want any more tips just let me know, I'll be happy to help!

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On 10/6/2017 at 0:40 PM, GreenDragoon said:

Any chance you will do the awesome ‚pilot performance better than its ship‘ chart again?

Then I did it anyway...


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9 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Wasn't ignoring you, I just switch to daddy mode for the weekend and don't get to reply much.

....

Best advice... just start writing! If you're enjoying it you'll want to do it more, and then all the good stuff will follow as you get better at it, people find your blog and you build a readership. If you're not enjoying it then stop. You won't find out until you really give it a try.

That's just off the top of my head. If you want any more tips just let me know, I'll be happy to help!

Excellent! Thank you for the thorough response. A friend and I are always toying with the idea of starting a blog, each with topics of our own. Mine would be X-Wing as it's my current obsession, but I would most likely write about the game as a game (game-play mechanics, community, externality type stuff), with battle reps and meta talk being launching points.

I may just drop you a PM after we get rolling. Keep up the good content.

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10 hours ago, Stay On The Leader said:

I try and keep the tone positive as much as I can. My tone in forums and so on is a lot more negative and confrontational than it is in the blog, and deliberately so - a forum post disappears in hours, a blog post is a lot more permanent. I'd rather blog about something you CAN do than something you CAN'T. I'll be positive, I'll empower people, I'll encourage people to try something out. In all my 50+ blogs there's maybe only a couple that are proper downers about 'the state of the game'. If I'm not enjoying playing tournament X-Wing I won't blog that tournament X-Wing sucks, I'll blog about playing a casual squad instead. I might piss & moan a bit on here to get it out of my system, but I won't put it down for posterity in a blog.

I actually noticed this a lot and was wondering why it seemed as such. I really enjoy reading your blog. Then I see a lot of forum posts and was like... :/ why? But now all is explained

Edited by Gibbilo
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Partly as I said, this is a steam blow off and I don't really take my forum presence very seriously. And some of the time I deliberately turn the salt up to 11 on here because it gets a rise out of people and I've always had a thing for playing the heel over the babyface.

On Reddit/FB and my blog (and certainly in person) I'll usually be a good bit more constructive. This place is just such an angry mess it's rarely worth the effort to try and be balanced - nobody will notice!