5 hours ago, NervousSam said:

This was not my intention. You can be a good player and choose to fly whatever ships you like.

However, you may not get good results. If you don't see how big of an uphill climb 3X will have against the biggest monster in the Meta right now, then I can't help. I'd rather give the OP an honest answer than blow smoke about this #whatmeta carebear stuff.

Estarriol, Icelom and yourself are all correct, I think. Nym (plus rest of list) is clearly more powerful than 3 X-Wings; therefore, to win you do have to beat the player and not just the ship. It is not impossible, but you need a higher level of skill than the Nym player.

Eg I can quite consistently win against rubbish players; I also consistently lose to top players - pretty much regardless of lists. However, if I play people of similar skill level, it becomes more of a 'does my list win?' in the matchup (and then dice also play a part). Taking 3 X-Wings means you have to be a better player of X-Wing than your opponent in order to win - because you have chosen to handicap yourself.

I often do this on purpose. I usually fly Porkins, Dutch, and Hobbie. They are not the best pilots, but they do work well as a team. If I face a top player (who generally will be flying a top list), I will lose. In tournaments, this puts me against weaker players with good lists or better players who have also brought sub-optimal lists - because they will have also already lost their first round. I find that I enjoy my games more when neither player is realistically going to win the tournamant and the focus of the games is having fun.

My case exactly!

I am prepping for a tournament tomorrow, flying 3 T70. In all practice games, they fared really bad against Nym. Look at the last three sides of this thread here for discussion:

I think Nym/Miranda is the worst to go up against for any traditional list like using 3 t65s... the problem is that miranda can skirt around you and make it impossible for you to engage with all your ships at once in an optimal formation... and pick off your ships one by one all the while enjoying shields regenerating, launching the odd 5 dice homing missile shot, etc. while nym controls where your ships are moving by forcing you to fly to extremes to avoid the bombs (that always do extra damage with Sabine)... if you engage at close range in formation you get bombed... if you engage in dispersed formation you get TLT'ed and missile shot to pieces.

So yeah... against a player of equal skill your only chance is to utilize gambling and hope the odds go in your favor. It won't win you tournaments because your luck will eventually fail, but occasionally you might get some glory. Also, practice is still applicable. If you literally know the opening moves like a chess player with certain matchups you might be able to gamble a lot more efficiently. Normally though, a good player will literally run rings around your ships and unless you knock out the regenerating ship (usually miranda) in the first rounds of engagement there is very little hope.

Probably work better than three 3-4 health ships that many players still insist on trying.

8 hours ago, Meade said:

Normally though, a good player will literally run rings around your ships and unless you knock out the regenerating ship (usually miranda) in the first rounds of engagement there is very little hope.

It's the sad truth.

It can be disheartening. Temper your expectations and you can still enjoy the game somewhat. I make it a personal goal to take out the ship carrying Sabine. If I can do that, I don't care if I win or not. I just want to get rid of that bomb toting jerk!

An argument for optimism when using non-meta lists:

It's never as simple as "player with off list has to be better than player with power list to win". It's not just raw skill, although that helps. It's preparation and experience. Someone flying an off list will likely have put some thought and playing time into matchups against power lists. Odds are heavily in your favor that a person playing a power list has devoted zero time to their game plan against triple X-wings. So even if two players have equal skill, there's a likely preparation advantage on the part if the non-meta list.

Yes, you can leverage unfamiliarity with your list (maybe even by using weird interactions between cards and stuff that's unfamiliar?), gamble (take that red maneuver for the range one shot even though you know your dice will be unmodified), and hope for a matchup against that other list that's tailored to be a counter for the current most popular metalist (the one in people's crosshairs).

15 hours ago, Biophysical said:

An argument for optimism when using non-meta lists:

It's never as simple as "player with off list has to be better than player with power list to win". It's not just raw skill, although that helps. It's preparation and experience. Someone flying an off list will likely have put some thought and playing time into matchups against power lists. Odds are heavily in your favor that a person playing a power list has devoted zero time to their game plan against triple X-wings. So even if two players have equal skill, there's a likely preparation advantage on the part if the non-meta list.

I can't tell you how many games I've won simply because my opponent had never seen a list like mine and just made poor choices in approaching it. I flew a double bomber K-wing list last year (before bombs were cool ), which would just table people because they had no experience against bombs. The only games I'd occasionally lose were against opponents who I'd already played a few times and had learned through trial and error how to approach the list.

On 2017-10-12 at 2:48 PM, CRCL said:

I was actually thinking about this the other day. You probably want something more like:

99 (3x) RSV w/ Crackshot, Targetting Astro, Pattern Analyser, AT.

You have Crackshot to push damage through initially, then when you K-turn or Tallon roll you get a Focus + TL. Autothrusters will help in the turret heavy meta we find ourselves in, and 18HP at agility 2 with AT is solid if the first engagement is at R3.

It's not an amazing list, but it's OK.

Having now played this list a few times, I can give it the thumbs up. Being able to 3-Tallon Roll or 4-K turn then get a free TL and still perform an action before getting stressed was really good. They're a bit like a Defender, except with way more options. Definitely not a Tier-1 or even 2 list, but it was a fun break from all the ultra competitive stuff I've been trying.