A long, long time ago tournament rounds were 60 minutes. This put a big emphasis on early damage and ships that didn't burn down in that amount of time (Biggs+B-Wings, Han, Imperial aces). Then it was extended to 75 minutes to give a better balance between the different list types at the time. Now it's got me wondering - at what match times do different factions dominate the game? I want to divide the game into "combat rounds" for clarity, since most games tend to follow he same general trend of 1-2 turns of setup, and then combat until the end of the game. Vassal leagues typically play to 19 rounds, so this is fairly accurate.
Combat Round 1:
The Imperial Alpha strike undeniably dominates here. Triple cruise missiles or Harpoons can really mess with your day.
Combat Rounds 2-5:
Scum has this section of game firmly in their gasp. Fenn, Talonbane, Dengar, Ketsu and Asajj are semi-immune to fire in their own ways during this time, while dishing out very respectable damage. As always, they're defeated by focused fire. Other big hitters like Lothal Rebels and Rey also shine here, but scum has the edge.
If swarms were still a thing, this is where they'd shine (hence why the game time was extended, since with a swarm in play 8 rounds can be a whole game. As it is, the closest thing is FSR 2.0.
Bombers enjoy the target-rich, densely packed environment, and bombers mean Miranda and Nym.
Combat Rounds 6-10:
Fat turrets love this part of the game, assuming they're still alive. Often, it will be the case that an opponent simply doesn't have enough ships on the table to catch a PWT by this point. RAC and Dash in particular have a field day at this point.
Shenanigan lists, like Quadjumpers, TIE/Ds, etc shine at this point too, since they're not overwhelmed by damage, yet still have a lot of presence on the board. You could probably throw in most of the mid-PS named pilots like Viktor Hel, Keyan, Thweek, Backdraft, etc in here as well.
Combat Rounds 10-15:
At this point a god deal of things are dead (unless its FSR2 Vs FSR2), and the damage output of both sides has gone way down, as well as there being less arcs on the table. Rebel Regan and Imperial Arc-dodgers have their time in the sun here. Fenn does too, but you killed him first, right?
I could also see Fat turrets remaining dominant especially Dash and Fat Han at this point.
Combat Rounds 16+:
From here on it's truly the domain of Regen and Arc-Dodgers. Everything else is either dead or dying.
Many players complain about Imperials lacking any meta-presence at the moment, and with good reason - they get one good turn, and then have to survive 8-9 bad ones before they get to par again, and then they have to do enough catch up damage in the second half of the game to get a win. Similarly, Rebel Regen like Norra (and to a lesser degree, Corran) really gets hammered by the massive damage potential of both Imperial alpha strikes and Scum OP-ness. Jank lists suffer the same problem - do even do their thing they need to survive 4+ rounds of brutal fire.
These symptoms are caused by two problems; Red dice creep, and match times. We know about dice creep - cards like Expertise, Predator and now bullseye firing arcs continue to make red dice better without equivalent green dice buffs since wave 6 (autothrusters). However, many matchups can also be easily delayed by, say, a Dengar player so that there are only 5-10 effective combat rounds, putting the advantage firmly in the favour of high-damage lists as opposed to durability.
My suggestion is to either remove the brutal red-dice combos from the game (predator, expertise, FCS, etc) or increase match time to 1.5 hours. The former solves a lot of problems, whereas the latter gives a much more balanced playing field for different list designs.
