Let me ignore the drama like I always do and point something out I noticed:

9 hours ago, sozin said:

One, it was going to be super annoying if I had to make code changes to List Juggler to track multiple rulesets going around for multiple regionals. Two, this was going to drive a huge wedge into our nice little community. Three, maybe there is a way out of this mess. What if I could convince the Illuminati Judges to go with the FFG HQ Ruling?

Meta-Analyzer was there to analyse the meta based on the raw. So why not just stick to raw? Just being prepared to sticking to the raw would have solved a lot of your problems. And I mean that completely regardless of your stance in being pro or against house-rules for tournaments.

Everything about this whole situation: the buck stops with FFG.

Designing a mess to begin with: FFG

Not making clear rulings in a timely manner: FFG

Allowing a non-official 'ruling' to come out with FFG name and logo to divide and fragment the community: FFG

Leaving a leadership void in the community (now and always): FFG

They really are utterly dreadful at most aspects of managing their game. Fault of individuals or fault of company? Don't know, don't care, not important. They're dreadful.

But at the same time @sozin your line about praising Iain 'forcing the hand' of FFG reads a lot like how somebody tried to 'force the hand' of FFG by leaking the FAQ last year. Is a rulings vigilante what we need right now?

Maybe it is?

8 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

But at the same time @sozin your line about praising Iain 'forcing the hand' of FFG reads a lot like how somebody tried to 'force the hand' of FFG by leaking the FAQ last year. Is a rulings vigilante what we need right now?

Maybe it is?

I don't think I was super clear on that point, let me try to flush it out a little. In my mind, a pointy haired boss at FFG was like, "Hey, let's just pass the buck over to the TOs. They won't want to deal with all the community rage, and will all immediately go with the FFG HQ ruling. Everyone will be back on the same page and then we won't have to deal with this issue again until the FAQ comes out, problem solved!"

Except the Judge Illuminati didn't do that. Instead they stuck to their principles and said (again this all part of my own little mental dialog, I'm sure they didn't say this), "No, sorry FFG, you don't get to weasel out of it like that. You are going to have to take ownership of this."

I don't think that is vigilante behavior? Feels more like putting the buck back where it belongs I guess.

19 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

Let me ignore the drama like I always do and point something out I noticed:

Meta-Analyzer was there to analyse the meta based on the raw. So why not just stick to raw? Just being prepared to sticking to the raw would have solved a lot of your problems. And I mean that completely regardless of your stance in being pro or against house-rules for tournaments.

Sure. I think its because we were already pot committed, with Chicago already going one way, and with several other Regionals (including FFG's) going that way as well. It wasn't realistic to try to get the genie back in the bottle, so I thought, well, maybe its just better to for all of us to decide that the Genius+No Traj is RAW, if you squint at it and wave your hands around...

Don't know if the logic is sound or not, but that is what went through my head at the time.

The point of any tournament or organized event, be it official or unofficial is to create a fun, competitive experience for the participants. TO's and organizers are in a sense the hosts of the event and even though the game itself is "the entertainment", an event can easily be spoiled by an absence of adherence to the most important rule.. have fun. To me personally, FFG "official rules", are no more official than "official tournaments". Meaning that, TO's and hosts, should feel comfortable to alter the rules in the presence of something that would spoil the event. Certainly going to a tournament and finding that 90% of the participants are running the same list qualifies as a **** show, something obviously has gone wrong and needs fixing, I don't think people should wait for it to be "officially fixed".

2 hours ago, sozin said:

I love X-Wing. I like playing competitivley, and taking my fun seriously.

But dude. There comes a time when you have to realize it is Just A Game. This drama is far worse than any superlist shenanigans.

The saddest part of all this, is that I used to say that the X-Wing community is better than (I'm not going to name names here. You can guess a couple, I'm sure)

I can't say that anymore.

I love this post.

2 hours ago, sozin said:

Re: "Just A Game": when you combine community, sunk financial cost, time investment, family points spent, and other factors (for me, for example, a lot of software written), it sort of becomes ... something a little more, I guess?

I've played a lot of chess in my life -- travelled for it, played Gary Kasparov once (lost), made enough one year to claim it on my taxes, won a youth state championship, have big library of books, do tactics puzzles every day on chess.com, made friends all over the world because of it, got mad when Deep Blue beat Gary ... and while chess technically, is, just a game, for me its way more than that. It's part of who I am now. And while it sounds dorky and cheesy, I have some of that with X-Wing as well. Not as much as with chess, but some.

AND I love this post. I think sozin has a great point here. One can say, its not good to get mad over anything (some masters would even say no attachments, not even to life and family), but that everyone can get upset of anything.

I think its also really time to not giving YOUr/OURselves the fake pat on the backs. And just stop saying that the Xwing community is the best/chilled out community. I hear that for every single darn community I see, from sports teams to basket weaving meet ups. Its fallacious. Nor will I say that I've found Xwing people to be miles ahead of other great people in other great communities (its decent though). I will say, its much better than the vitriol I've seen constantly in Armada. And they too think they're the great community.

The X-Wing community is the main reason I play as little X-Wing as I do.

The only people who aren't ******* and moaning seem to be the ones trying to claim high ground by making a point that they'd like to ***** and moan about the people who are ******* and moaning.

And, on a personal local level, there are people who did some things I think are shady who I really never expected would do shady things.

I just want to play games.

10 hours ago, Koing907 said:

I love X-Wing. I like playing competitivley, and taking my fun seriously.

But dude. There comes a time when you have to realize it is Just A Game. This drama is far worse than any superlist shenanigans.

The saddest part of all this, is that I used to say that the X-Wing community is better than (I'm not going to name names here. You can guess a couple, I'm sure)

I can't say that anymore.

Sure you can.

The X-Wing community is the best I have ever experienced, bar none and by a wide margin. It still is. But this was never because X-Wing players were inherently superior to players in other games, never because of some moral rectitude possessed by those owning a particular set of plastic space ships.

It is like this because way back in the beginning, one guy (Doug Kinney) won a tournament and decided to make a conscious effort to take the game to a place that embodied "Fly Casual", and the community that existed decided to go there with him. Every tournament and every season, for that matter I would guess every store championship or league night, someone has done something unpleasant/toxic despite the overwhelming presence of awesome behavior and people. The difference has always been a willingness to take a step back from that, reset, and get back to making this a great community.

I don't like what happened here. I appreciate that Sozin has realized his part in it, I hope and expect that the community and the individuals involved will once again take a step back, reset, and go back to "Flying Casual".

See you guys there.

@sozin I empathize with your gut reaction and emotion here. Watching from the sidelines it looked as if the x wing community was going to finally break free and fork a “community FAQ”. We were so close.

I think this is worthy cause! Imagine a body of experts that adjudicate and develop the Community FAQ? Composed not of the loudest voices, but the most sensible ones. Similar to how the Linux Kernel is maintained and developed. I could see it getting real uptake and regular usage on vassal, kit tournaments, and smaller events. And then people will want to play by these rules at larger events as time goes on.

6 minutes ago, acidReign said:

@sozin I empathize with your gut reaction and emotion here. Watching from the sidelines it looked as if the x wing community was going to finally break free and fork a “community FAQ”. We were so close.

I think this is worthy cause! Imagine a body of experts that adjudicate and develop the Community FAQ? Composed not of the loudest voices, but the most sensible ones. Similar to how the Linux Kernel is maintained and developed. I could see it getting real uptake and regular usage on vassal, kit tournaments, and smaller events. And then people will want to play by these rules at larger events as time goes on.

Maybe something akin to the Decipher Star Wars card game, but more well known? I could support such a community "ruleset."

Something that seems to be a worrying trend (at first it seemed like the S&V podcast in general, but maybe it's Sozin in particular) is that you seem to put a bit too much faith in speculation and educated guesses when it comes to motivation on FFG's part.

It ultimately becomes problematic since FFG employees are unlikely to be able to comment publicly on certain things due to company policy (and/or licensing agreements).

The interview you guys did with the X-Wing designers a few months ago, and your subsequent reactions/analysis of it, left a bad taste in my mouth. If I were them, it would make me reluctant to re-engage with community content creators in something semi - candid like that in the future. FFG is by no means perfect, but it doesn't seem helpful to give too much credence to incomplete or speculatory information about what may or may not be going on at the company behind the scenes.

I appreciate all of the discussion on this. It got heated, and I understand why. It got heated because both groups are correct. One is correct for results the other is correct for method. That is why it is heated. Because both groups are right.

Hopefully we can all come together and realize that we all care about the game more than we care about winning this argument.

Shame on you FFG. You have created a schism in the community with your ambiguity.

I implore everyone to overcome this and at least have empathy for the opposite side. Sozin's post was a good start. I would still be honored to throw some dials on the table with you folks. Even if we disagree.

3 minutes ago, willow560 said:

I appreciate all of the discussion on this. It got heated, and I understand why. It got heated because both groups are correct. One is correct for results the other is correct for method. That is why it is heated. Because both groups are right.

Hopefully we can all come together and realize that we all care about the game more than we care about winning this argument.

Shame on you FFG. You have created a schism in the community with your ambiguity.

I implore everyone to overcome this and at least have empathy for the opposite side. Sozin's post was a good start. I would still be honored to throw some dials on the table with you folks. Even if we disagree.

I feel like people keep forgetting that FFG is between a rock and a hard place. EVERYTHING they do in terms of promotion and documents released online have to go through approval by LFL.

"Tabletop miniatures game" is at the bottom of the pile, far below Star Wars fruit snacks and Darth Vader underoos.

Every time the thought that you, @sozin, forms in my mind that you're side stepping slowly away from the game (by the crude metric of us not having played against each other in ages, same goes for Ricky for the same dam-with-an-inner-n reason), this kind of sensible involvement happens. Well done for that post. You know you and your immediate podcast crew has played a huge part for my deep involvement with the game. It would feel a bit towards ploughing through alone if you guys were out. I'm thoroughly convinced you still care a lot about the well-being of the game as a starting point to understand what happened.

Recognizing you had rushed through your posts and writing exactly what was in your train of thought does a lot of good and helped me understand what I honestly only had time to read in diagonal.

2 minutes ago, mightyspacepope said:

"Tabletop miniatures game" is at the bottom of the pile, far below Star Wars fruit snacks and Darth Vader underoos.

I wouldn't be sadly surprised to learn this IS the case from Star Wars IP marketing. Really.

I would not be surprised if darth vader underpants turn more revenue than Xwing IP license.

12 minutes ago, mightyspacepope said:

Something that seems to be a worrying trend (at first it seemed like the S&V podcast in general, but maybe it's Sozin in particular) is that you seem to put a bit too much faith in speculation and educated guesses when it comes to motivation on FFG's part.

It is probably a mix of Bob and me. From Bob’s side, he (correctly) believes that FFG appropriated his work on mathwing without giving credit (there is at least one article where they talk about “jousting value”).

From my side, it basically revolves around their long history of treating the open source tech community with disrespect. There are a lot of data points here, which I won’t get into because it will just raise my blood pressure, but if you want a recent example go look at Chico most recent article o the X-Wing meta, where FFG refused to acknowledge MetaWing/ListJuggler.

Embracing your open source dev talent is a standard page from the corporate playbook. For FFG it’s the opposite, and that has nothing to do with the Star Wars license.

1 minute ago, Blail Blerg said:

I wouldn't be sadly surprised to learn this IS the case from Star Wars IP marketing. Really.

I would not be surprised if darth vader underpants turn more revenue than Xwing IP license.

They absolutely do. Combine that with the fact that Episode 8 just came out and Han Solo is around the corner, and yeah, there's going to be a slowdown.

1 minute ago, sozin said:

It is probably a mix of Bob and me. From Bob’s side, he (correctly) believes that FFG appropriated his work on mathwing without giving credit (there is at least one article where they talk about “jousting value”).

From my side, it basically revolves around their long history of treating the open source tech community with disrespect. There are a lot of data points here, which I won’t get into because it will just raise my blood pressure, but if you want a recent example go look at Chico most recent article o the X-Wing meta, where FFG refused to acknowledge MetaWing/ListJuggler.

Embracing your open source dev talent is a standard page from the corporate playbook. For FFG it’s the opposite, and that has nothing to do with the Star Wars license.

That's the thing, though. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if they legally CAN'T acknowledge community efforts due to IP or licensing issues.

Good one, someone needs to make a stand about all this ill tested utter broken **** ffg keep pushing.

And well down the TO who went agaist RAW to make it a tournament he wanted to run because he was the TO.

I have worked closely with IP lawyers for many years and can say with close to 100 percent confidence that there would be nothing stopping them from doing something like, say, thanking the open source community for their contribution. Or offering them gratis things like free System open tickets. Or asking them if they want to be sign an NDA to do QA on TOME.

EDIT: Disney, btw, has actively embraced the open source community. Check out https://disney.github.io/

EDIT2: there is a decent probability you are right about them not being able to link to those sites from their articles though, so please know I am not dismissing your good point

Interesting. From my admittedly second-hand nature understanding of things (having friends who have done writing or art duties for major comic book companies), it would seem really unlikely for FFG to allow any of those things (aside from maybe free tickets to events, but that might even be out of FFG's hands now that major events are done by outside companies like Cascade). My impression of major pop culture IP companies is that employees are super-careful to go out of their way to avoid fan-created content.

As the licensee of a major property (especially one that has led to incredible growth for their own company), I'd imagine that FFG wants to approach any outside contributions extremely cautiously.

You've done a significant amount of good for the community, so please don't take my posts as being entirely critical. You've raised similar bones of contention about this type of issue in the past and I think the reality of the situation is just that FFG doesn't have any wiggle-room.

34 minutes ago, mightyspacepope said:

That's the thing, though. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if they legally CAN'T acknowledge community efforts due to IP or licensing issues.

Which makes the playtesting even more of a screw up, because they certainly can't claim to be surprised by any of that.
It's not like people were not hyped or terrified about a TS/genius Nym even in the preview articles. A loud and sound discussion about the interaction was going on before the cards got even completely spoiled, etc

If they know that they can't just FAQ stuff fast, they should be more carefully about their products. Hiring some editor or giving their existing editors more time to work on their projects would be a start. FFG has a long standing reputation for bad editing anyway already … so why not improve on that when the licensing agreement is creating more problems base on that? (not that I believe in this theory anyway)

2 minutes ago, mightyspacepope said:

You've done a significant amount of good for the community, so please don't take my posts as being entirely critical. You've raised similar bones of contention about this type of issue in the past and I think the reality of the situation is just that FFG doesn't have any wiggle-room.

You think so? Because they seem to keep hiring freelancers all the time, including for their star wars games. They send out plenty of free stuff to their volunteer beta testers as well.

Just now, SEApocalypse said:

Which makes the playtesting even more of a screw up, because they certainly can't claim to be surprised by any of that.
It's not like people were not hyped or terrified about a TS/genius Nym even in the preview articles. A loud and sound discussion about the interaction was going on before the cards got even completely spoiled, etc

If they know that they can't just FAQ stuff fast, they should be more carefully about their products. Hiring some editor or giving their existing editors more time to work on their projects would be a start. FFG has a long standing reputation for bad editing anyway already … so why not improve on that when the licensing agreement is creating more problems base on that? (not that I believe in this theory anyway)

"Open secret" is probably a more apt term than theory in this case. It's the reality of the situation.

I think the logistics of manufacturing products and shipping them from China make the timeline of finalized playtesting on a product a bit murky. It's probably fairly likely that rules text is finalized LONG before we start seeing product preview articles.

4 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

You think so? Because they seem to keep hiring freelancers all the time, including for their star wars games. They send out plenty of free stuff to their volunteer beta testers as well.

Contracting someone to do work for the company is different than publicly embracing fan- or community-created content.