Would everything be fine if Trajectory Simulator was a 'must' instead of 'may'?

14 minutes ago, Nyxen said:

Would everything be fine if Trajectory Simulator was a 'must' instead of 'may'?

You just punish all bombers not named Nym. It's the interaction with Genius combined with the high PS that makes it abusive.

I hope people realise there is still Kylo crew card in the game - and it wrecks 1 agility ships HARD.

11 hours ago, Lightrock said:

Nymranda gets so much flak because of several design problems that kinda accumulate in one list. Problems such as:

- bombs completely ignoring AGI, which naturally makes them either too weak against ships that rely on HP/regen rather than avoidance or too strong against low HP/high agi ships. It was always nigh impossible to balance bombs, which means that initially hardly anyone ever used them and then they wiped out entire archetypes out of the meta.

- Sabine being way underpriced and making bombs too reliable.

- Bomblet generator granting infinite bombs, which practically removes decision making / mindgaming / resource management aspect from the game. You just drop a bomblet every time because why not.

- Havoc title granting both system and droid slots while not removing the EPT slot. Without any one of those slots Nym would be somewhat managable. With all three, he is problematic.

- Trajectory Simulator allowing bombs to cover a massive area that extends from beyond the actual firing range (if they're launched after movement) all the way to the ship that fired them (if used before moving). Considering that the decision to launch them before or after moving is made at PS10, for most lists there's often literally no maneuver that would allow them to dodge them.

- Miranda's ability coupled with TLT making her extremely hard to kill in the late game, which means she becomes a very efficient point fortress.

- And last but not least, TLT has always been the best turret in the game by far and it's greatest flaw (R1 doughnut hole) is completely nullified by the presence of all those bombs.

Taken together all those create a somewhat toxic experience. It feels like you need work extremely hard to get even a single shot off without eating a bomb while Nymranda player can just casually stroll forward and pepper you with TLT shots. And then you end up with a single ship against a nearly 50 point Miranda that you just can't kill. Ugh...

Very well put.

The perfect storm really. I think the games gotten to the point now where overcomplication is its downfall and as it continues to grow, the way old and new cards interact and compliment each other you get these cover-all-bases lists.

Frankenlists, almost.

I started playing about two years ago, just a scrub who turned up to his first tournament with three T-65s and an A-Wing and I mean... well I know Soontir and Han in their heyday were nightmares but for the most part one trick ponies. Nym/Miranda really does seem to have every base covered. Jumpasters were close, very close.

Genius is a 0 point card I forgot even existed so it had a lot of downfalls to using it. Great for tucking under the shortest leg of a table so you could carry on playing the game. And yet here we are. Must be a headache balancing this game at times.

1 hour ago, Scopes said:

I hate to be that guy, but there are several TIE Bomber pilots that have EPTs...

Thanks @Scopes , I fixed my rant; we’re actually all glad you’re “that guy!” ?

”Bomber” in the TIE Bomber’s Title is sadly a misnomer.

Not-really-serious radical idea:

"No ship may be equipped with more than four upgrades that cost 1 point or more."

Players have a responsibility not to pick these lists in my opinion. I don’t really agree with the ‘I don’t blame the players’ angle.

If a squad is ruining the fun for your opponent, don’t pick it. Both players contribute to creating an enjoyable game.

Maybe I have a weird POV because I come from a background of fun and fluff before competition.

1 minute ago, ayedubbleyoo said:

Players have a responsibility not to pick these lists in my opinion. I don’t really agree with the ‘I don’t blame the players’ angle.

If a squad is ruining the fun for your opponent, don’t pick it. Both players contribute to creating an enjoyable game.

Maybe I have a weird POV because I come from a background of fun and fluff before competition.

Fun is not objective.

For me, playing with or against bombs is fun.

I don't enjoy playing with or against 4 TLT or Ghost TLT.

1 minute ago, Rangor said:

Fun is not objective.

For me, playing with or against bombs is fun.

I don't enjoy playing with or against 4 TLT or Ghost TLT.

I don’t mind any element of Nym/Miranda, this squad just has too many things that occur together.

10 hours ago, ayedubbleyoo said:

Players have a responsibility not to pick these lists in my opinion. I don’t really agree with the ‘I don’t blame the players’ angle.

If a squad is ruining the fun for your opponent, don’t pick it. Both players contribute to creating an enjoyable game.

Maybe I have a weird POV because I come from a background of fun and fluff before competition.

Unrealistic. Some people play the game so that they have an excuse to go out, socialize and move some plastic spaceships on the table. They don't need to win to have fun and that's great. But for many others fun lies in facing multiple opponents and emerging victorious. It's the challenge and success that draws them to the game and they'll play whatever gives them the best chance of winning. Needless to say players with that kind of mindset are often among the most successful (if they're not, they'll probably just quit early) and as such they will shape the meta. They won't accept the "but it's not fun" argument because for them winning is what the fun is all about. And who's to say that your definition of fun is better than theirs? It's not like people have control over what they do or don't enjoy.

11 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Not-really-serious radical idea:

"No ship may be equipped with more than four upgrades that cost 1 point or more."

No small ship, maybe? But I like the idea!

4 means by the way many builds would have to be changed. E.g. Poe with B1, VI, Optics, AT and a droid. Or QD with VI, Frame, FCS, Optics and Harpoons (title is 0).

Accordingly, 4 makes it just interesting enough that you have to scrap an established upgrade, while 5 would leave many builds unchanged. Both would be interesting.

But they also clearly hurt some imperials that are not problematic a bit more, with Punishers and Bombers.

(edit: and btw: Miranda with Harpoons, TLT, Bomblet and Sabine is still pretty good. Ditch Extra Munitions, that doesn‘t hurt so much)

On 16/01/2018 at 0:33 PM, wurms said:

Then you just lose to everything else. 1-5 record? Make the cut you will not

Give a ****, I do not.

11 hours ago, ayedubbleyoo said:

Players have a responsibility not to pick these lists in my opinion. I don’t really agree with the ‘I don’t blame the players’ angle.

If a squad is ruining the fun for your opponent, don’t pick it. Both players contribute to creating an enjoyable game.

Maybe I have a weird POV because I come from a background of fun and fluff before competition.

In casual play 100%, but if you going to a tournament people want to win.

If you don't like certain builds speak with your TO if others are feeling it you could ask them to run a "Themed" Tournament with special rules.

i.e. No Bombs, No turrets, No large bases, etc...

3 hours ago, Lightrock said:

Unrealistic. Some people play the game so that they have an excuse to go out, socialize and move some plastic spaceships on the table. They don't need to win to have fun and that's great. But for many others fun lies in facing multiple opponents and emerging victorious. It's the challenge and success that draws them to the game and they'll play whatever gives them the best chance of winning. Needless to say players with that kind of mindset are often among the most successful (if they're not, they'll probably just quit early) and as such they will shape the meta. They won't accept the "but it's not fun" argument because for them winning is what the fun is all about. And who's to say that your definition of fun is better than theirs? It's not like people have control over what they do or don't enjoy.

I totally agree it’s unrealistic, people are people and some people have to win. That being said there is nothing that says if you don’t like the npe you have to sit there and take it like a good ***** either. I regularly fold card games that I can tell in the first few turns are decks I don’t want to play. I’ll take the loss it’s not important to me but I’m not gonna sit there for x minutes so my opponent can have fun. It does swing both ways and ultimately we both lose because they aren’t playing either. To quote Leia, “If money is all that you love then that’s what you’ll recieve.”

I quit playing competitively for the past 2 years so I'm not sure on some things, but sometimes I think I see problems with how people build lists. It seems everyone only builds 2-3 ship lists. I read about this new horrible list and I think a list with 4-6 ships can beat it without too much trouble. When there are powerful alpha strikes like Miranda with Harpoon Missile, I think it's OK if one of your ships dies to allow the rest of them to get to blast away at her. There is also blocking, which used to be HUGE. Throw out a few cheap ships like Tie Fighters to basically prevent Miranda from being able to zip away. When you are able to get a number of ships that have decent firepower and firing in the same turn, then a lot of these troublesome ships just die.

I went to my first tournament in 2 years a few months ago and took a Swarm Leader Vader with 5 Tie Fighters. Yes, it was a small event, but I went undefeated in my games. I played against decent players, too. My Tie Fighters were the champs of most matches as they blocked everyone and got to fire at R1 with 3 dice. You get to control where your opponent is with blocking. You get to prevent their actions. Enough Tie Fighters firing at R1 will bring down your opponent. This type of a list died when Arc Dodging was the big thing and your lower PS ships couldn't keep an enemy in their arc. The game has moved away from that, but I don't see too many people going back to this type of list. Vader was there to arc dodge and catch any nasty person who was able to evade the mini Tie Swarm (not formation flying).

I'll admit that I haven't played in a lot of tournaments and I'm out of it, but I have to wonder if just maybe some variety in list building would change things. All I see are 2-3 ace ship lists.

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Now, if you aren't happy with the competitive game....and I can understand why....you don't have to give up the game! There are a ton of ways to play Casual. Heroes of the Aturi Cluster is amazing. There are a lot of different ways to play the game. I've got a whole podcast dedicated to different ways.

1 hour ago, heychadwick said:

I quit playing competitively for the past 2 years so I'm not sure on some things, but sometimes I think I see problems with how people build lists. It seems everyone only builds 2-3 ship lists. I read about this new horrible list and I think a list with 4-6 ships can beat it without too much trouble. When there are powerful alpha strikes like Miranda with Harpoon Missile, I think it's OK if one of your ships dies to allow the rest of them to get to blast away at her. There is also blocking, which used to be HUGE. Throw out a few cheap ships like Tie Fighters to basically prevent Miranda from being able to zip away. When you are able to get a number of ships that have decent firepower and firing in the same turn, then a lot of these troublesome ships just die.

I went to my first tournament in 2 years a few months ago and took a Swarm Leader Vader with 5 Tie Fighters. Yes, it was a small event, but I went undefeated in my games. I played against decent players, too. My Tie Fighters were the champs of most matches as they blocked everyone and got to fire at R1 with 3 dice. You get to control where your opponent is with blocking. You get to prevent their actions. Enough Tie Fighters firing at R1 will bring down your opponent. This type of a list died when Arc Dodging was the big thing and your lower PS ships couldn't keep an enemy in their arc. The game has moved away from that, but I don't see too many people going back to this type of list. Vader was there to arc dodge and catch any nasty person who was able to evade the mini Tie Swarm (not formation flying).

I'll admit that I haven't played in a lot of tournaments and I'm out of it, but I have to wonder if just maybe some variety in list building would change things. All I see are 2-3 ace ship lists.

It's an appealing idea that people can simply go back to "the good old days" and solve issues using old classic techniques that everyone but a few old school players have forgotten, like blocking ur flying swarms. That's not the solution. Big lists with large numbers of ships are, almost by definition, jousting lists. You can't afford high PS, so you move first and hope your opponent flies at you so you can overwhelm them with dice. But that doesn't work against a list like Nym Miranda.

Trajectory simulator means Nym can hit your swarm with a bomb from beyond range three. So before you get into range to shoot,much less block, you're taking ions, or stress, or crits, or just unavoidable damage, depending on the flavour of the bomb. No shooting that round (remember, we're beyond range three), so assuming you can set dials (no ions) and you have your full dial available (no stress), maybe you can try to set up blocking and range one shots. Let's even say you manage it. Fine. Nym can still launch another bomb at you, either with or without Genius depending on how your swarm ended up. At this point, one of your TIE fighters is definitely dead (two guaranteed damage from Sabine and at least one from Protons or thermals or something). Nym then shoots his harpoon (he got his Target lock earlier thanks to LRS) before Vader gets to shoot. Even without a focus he statistically gets three hits, probably hits a TIE fighter. I'm not certain whether Harpooned triggers, but if it does, then you get more splash damage (at this point, that's three unavoidable damage which would kill most of the TIE Swarm before any of your ships have fired). Vader then shoots, and with Swarm Leader, I'll grant you, probably does an impressive amount of damage to one agility Nym. But then Miranda shoots her TLT or her Harpoon missile into the wounded swarm and probably PS kills yet another TIE fighter (especially since they spent their evade for Vader's shot).

At this point, it's the swarms turn to shoot. But it's likely that the warm has lost minimum two, probably three members, and the remaining TIEs are probably damaged. Maybe they kill Nym, maybe they don't, but it's basically ceased to be a game anyway. Miranda will drop a bomblet on the way out, and then TLT the remnants of the swarm down to nothing in relatively short order.

Now, yes, that scenario I just described is somewhat idealised. There are ways you can mitigate that initial damage by splitting up the swarm, waiting to engage, range controlling so Nym doesn't get that range 3.5 bomb shot. But if you do that, your offence goes down, and Nym probably gets to do the bomb launch thing two or three times anyway. Skill from the swarm player isn't irrelevant, but it's such an up hill climb that I'm not sure if there's anyone who could do it consistently.

That's not to say the list is unbeatable. If you tech against it, anything can be beaten. PS 11 Alpha strike, Kylo crew and RAC, TLT Y Wings not flown in formation. I'd be semi confident about most of those matchups, with some practice. But most of those get destroyed by other meta lists (like three or four Wookies, Harpoon gunboats, Timewalk Asajj etc.). There's no simple answer to this problem except on FFG's end.

2 hours ago, MacchuWA said:

It's an appealing idea that people can simply go back to "the good old days" and solve issues using old classic techniques that everyone but a few old school players have forgotten, like blocking ur flying swarms. That's not the solution. Big lists with large numbers of ships are, almost by definition, jousting lists. You can't afford high PS, so you move first and hope your opponent flies at you so you can overwhelm them with dice. But that doesn't work against a list like Nym Miranda.

Trajectory simulator means Nym can hit your swarm with a bomb from beyond range three.

Hmmmm....I don't think you are understanding how I fly things. First off, if you see my list, I do have a PS 9 Vader. I prefer one big shot and a mini swarm. Five Tie Fighters is pretty good. So, not an issue with PS.

Next, I think you are assuming I fly in formation with the Tie Fighters? That's a horrible idea. I think flying in formation is a terrible thing to do. I fly mine loose. Flinging Bombs won't hit more than 2. Don't fly in a horde straight at them. It will only play out as you suggest.

28 minutes ago, heychadwick said:

Hmmmm....I don't think you are understanding how I fly things. First off, if you see my list, I do have a PS 9 Vader. I prefer one big shot and a mini swarm. Five Tie Fighters is pretty good. So, not an issue with PS.

Next, I think you are assuming I fly in formation with the Tie Fighters? That's a horrible idea. I think flying in formation is a terrible thing to do. I fly mine loose. Flinging Bombs won't hit more than 2. Don't fly in a horde straight at them. It will only play out as you suggest.

Just out of curiousity did you face a nym in your tournament? If not I’d love to hear success when you do. ?

2 hours ago, MacchuWA said:

It's an appealing idea that people can simply go back to "the good old days" and solve issues using old classic techniques that everyone but a few old school players have forgotten, like blocking ur flying swarms. That's not the solution. Big lists with large numbers of ships are, almost by definition, jousting lists. You can't afford high PS, so you move first and hope your opponent flies at you so you can overwhelm them with dice. But that doesn't work against a list like Nym Miranda .

Trajectory simulator means Nym can hit your swarm with a bomb from beyond range three. So before you get into range to shoot,much less block, you're taking ions, or stress, or crits, or just unavoidable damage, depending on the flavour of the bomb. No shooting that round (remember, we're beyond range three), so assuming you can set dials (no ions) and you have your full dial available (no stress), maybe you can try to set up blocking and range one shots. Let's even say you manage it. Fine. Nym can still launch another bomb at you, either with or without Genius depending on how your swarm ended up. At this point, one of your TIE fighters is definitely dead (two guaranteed damage from Sabine and at least one from Protons or thermals or something). Nym then shoots his harpoon (he got his Target lock earlier thanks to LRS ) before Vader gets to shoot. Even without a focus he statistically gets three hits, probably hits a TIE fighter. I'm not certain whether Harpooned triggers, but if it does, then you get more splash damage (at this point, that's three unavoidable damage which would kill most of the TIE Swarm before any of your ships have fired). Vader then shoots, and with Swarm Leader , I'll grant you, probably does an impressive amount of damage to one agility Nym. But then Miranda shoots her TLT or her Harpoon missile into the wounded swarm and probably PS kills yet another TIE fighter (especially since they spent their evade for Vader 's shot).

At this point, it's the swarms turn to shoot. But it's likely that the warm has lost minimum two, probably three members, and the remaining TIEs are probably damaged. Maybe they kill Nym, maybe they don't, but it's basically ceased to be a game anyway. Miranda will drop a bomblet on the way out, and then TLT the remnants of the swarm down to nothing in relatively short order.

Now, yes, that scenario I just described is somewhat idealised. There are ways you can mitigate that initial damage by splitting up the swarm, waiting to engage, range controlling so Nym doesn't get that range 3.5 bomb shot. But if you do that, your offence goes down, and Nym probably gets to do the bomb launch thing two or three times anyway. Skill from the swarm player isn't irrelevant, but it's such an up hill climb that I'm not sure if there's anyone who could do it consistently.

That's not to say the list is unbeatable. If you tech against it, anything can be beaten. PS 11 Alpha strike, Kylo crew and RAC, TLT Y Wings not flown in formation. I'd be semi confident about most of those matchups, with some practice. But most of those get destroyed by other meta lists (like three or four Wookies, Harpoon gunboats, Timewalk Asajj etc.). There's no simple answer to this problem except on FFG's end.

There are quite few issues with how this played out in your head.

If he blocked Nym and set up Range 1 shots ("... maybe you can try to set up blocking and range one shots. Let's even say you manage it. Fine. "), then Nym can't Harpoon (range 2-3), can't TLT (range 2-3), can't Genius (overlapping a ship prevents Genius now). Also to answer your question, a harpoon missile doesn't trigger its own applied condition. It can trigger a pre-existing Harpoon condition (ie. Miranda could trigger Nym's previously applied Harpoon'ed condition with her own Harpoon missile uncanceled crit hit)

36 minutes ago, LordFajubi said:

Just out of curiousity did you face a nym in your tournament? If not I’d love to hear success when you do. ?

I did not. It was:

1) Bumpmaster + 2 generic Skkurggs with Harpoons and ICT

2) Fat Han + 2 Y-wings

3) Vader + RAC

21 hours ago, ayedubbleyoo said:

Players have a responsibility not to pick these lists in my opinion. I don’t really agree with the ‘I don’t blame the players’ angle.

If a squad is ruining the fun for your opponent, don’t pick it. Both players contribute to creating an enjoyable game.

Maybe I have a weird POV because I come from a background of fun and fluff before competition.

yeah i refuse to play opponents with OP turd lists. i want to share a fun game with my opponent, not subjagate or dominate them. lot of nerds view powergaming as a way to prove their worth, which is sad. if youre unhappy with your life or dont feel masculine, a miniature game wont fix that. Just play and have fun. winning is great but its meaningless if it wasnt a fair match to begin with

1 hour ago, Vontoothskie said:

yeah i refuse to play opponents with OP turd lists. i want to share a fun game with my opponent, not subjagate or dominate them. lot of nerds view powergaming as a way to prove their worth, which is sad. if youre unhappy with your life or dont feel masculine, a miniature game wont fix that. Just play and have fun. winning is great but its meaningless if it wasnt a fair match to begin with

More way of the dragon less nazi blitzkrieg.