1 hour ago, Astech said:

So don't blame the dice - blame the reason you needed dice to win.

Exactly.

Yes, there are dice.

Yes, sometimes they will not co-operate.

Yes, occasionally there will be a game where you can genuinely say the dice screwed you over and nothing you could have done would make a difference - to put in perspective, during one event one of our best local players started counting how long it took for his green dice to do something useful. Across a couple of games, Dash Rendar rolled twenty-seven blank evade dice in a row, and I'm happy to accept that at that point you're allowed to write off your performance to 'a bad dice day'.

But ultimately it's a game of risk management. You need to decide how much you can leave to chance, and occasionally that'll backfire. One of my best examples of this was with my strikers; there's a trick where if you aileron over debris then reveal a green move, you end up unstressed. Obviously you need to risk rolling a red die, but it's a 1/8 chance. Worth it for a focused range 1 shot the other guy wasn't expecting, right?

Critical/Major Explosion/Blinded Pilot.

I could rage at that, but I chose to do it . Sometimes that's the breaks

But there's always something to be learned from any game.

Broadly speaking, the game consists of:

• Squad Building
  • Unlike some people on this forum seem to believe, you cannot win the game in squad building. But you can lose it there.
  • The goal is a squad with a nice balance of capabilities, or a squad specialising in a single party trick that you don't believe you'll see a dedicated counter to.
    • Don't fall in love with your own cleverness in card combos and so on. You only have so much mental effort to spend during a game and generally the less you have to spend remembering all your triggers and options, the more you have to spend on figuring out your moves (and your opponents) a turn ahead.
    • Actually having a plan with a 'poor' squad beats 'that list off the internet' almost every time
  • Don't respond to a loss by changing your squad. Respond to repeated losses by changing your squad, by all means, but build up experience with a given ship or squad before dismissing it.
• Deployment & Approach
  • Remember that placing obstacles is part of deployment and can win or lose a game just as much as deploying your ships.
    • Does cover and movement restrictions benefit you or your opponent
    • Where do you want the opening engagement to actually happen? Middle? Their corner? Your corner?
    • Is debris or asteroids better for you?
  • Remember that a different enemy squad archetype will want a different approach. You can change your squad's behaviour without changing one card of the squad itself.
  • Always figure out who has to die first
  • Don't try an over-complex plan. Your opponent is unlikely to comply, and more importantly you're not going to be able to keep it in your head. "Kill fenn first, even if it means flying past the Lothal Rebel whilst evading without engaging it" is a perfectly valid plan and probably about as complex as you want
• Mid-game
  • This is a tactics (rather than strategy) bit. The ability to improvise blocks, eyeball movement templates and guess enemy moves is more something that comes from experience than anything else in the game.
  • Always see if you can force your opponent to do what you want rather than reacting to what they do. Blocking is the obvious one, but (for example) rather than chasing a turreted ship, you can always break a ship or two off your chasing group and send it ahead to 'cut him off at the pass.
• End-Game
  • Whilst this is still tactics, you should define the 'end-game you want to see' from the moment deployment begins and keep it in mind the whole time
• Post-Mortem
  • Yes, games can be lost through dice, but as noted, there's always something you did wrong. There may also be something you want to note for future use/exploitation/warning (in my first game against an accuracy corrector twin laser turret I figured out the awful effect it has on lightweight frame and such ships now have a massive bullseye floating over them!).
• Keep playing
  • This game has skills, and like every skill they atrophy without use. The more games you can get in a week or two with a single squad, the better.
  • Do consider trying other squads as a 'learning experience' - an especially useful tool is playing an evening with a variety of different squads against your 'default' squad. Trying to figure out how to take down your own squad of choice with other squads is a very good exercise.

This is a great piece of advice, and I'd only add two things:

1) when you hit the plateau it's often because you've learned to do the right things all the time. The next stage in progression could well be learning when you should do the wrong thing instead. K-turning onto an asteroid, red-1 turns with an /x7 Defender, smashing over a set of Cluster Mines... all decisions I can point to in the last few months that won me games. I like your analogy of needing a new lens, but often it's a case of removing the blinkers that have been focusing you onto avoiding bad decisions.

2) http://stayontheleader.blogspot.com/2016/06/strike-me-down-how-to-lose-at-x-wing.html I think this blog of mine about analysing why you're losing could be very useful. There's only 4 ways to lose at X-Wing and working out which is happening to you helps you know how to fix it in future!

I would broadly agree on the issue of "dice blindness" where a hard swing on dice can mask other poor decisions and make it hard to evaluate the mistakes that led to those dice being relevant in the first place. Even if the dice fail you, you still need to be willing to evaluate your own performance for possible mistakes or ways you could've removed those dice altogether.

For example, if you lose a game of Warmachine to a super low odds assassination, take a step back and ask yourself "did I even need to be there? Could I have recognized that my opponent was transitioning into 'go for it' mode and taken extra steps to lock down resources for that assassination?". In short, did I give my opponent a 10% chance for victory when I could've only given him a 1%?

9 minutes ago, MasterShake2 said:

I would broadly agree on the issue of "dice blindness" where a hard swing on dice can mask other poor decisions and make it hard to evaluate the mistakes that led to those dice being relevant in the first place. Even if the dice fail you, you still need to be willing to evaluate your own performance for possible mistakes or ways you could've removed those dice altogether.

For example, if you lose a game of Warmachine to a super low odds assassination, take a step back and ask yourself "did I even need to be there? Could I have recognized that my opponent was transitioning into 'go for it' mode and taken extra steps to lock down resources for that assassination?". In short, did I give my opponent a 10% chance for victory when I could've only given him a 1%?

I try to do this. I'm naturally aggressive, but I've slowly trained myself to disengage when I'm up and reset for a more advantageous position. Over the years, I've lost more ships than I'd like to because "I'll probably kill him here" didn't work out.

20 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

Over the years, I've lost more ships than I'd like to because "I'll probably kill him here" didn't work out.

That‘s one of my „why are you bad at x-wing“ points, too. It is basically throwing a game you allegedly already won because you lose focus or bite.

50 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

1) when you hit the plateau it's often because you've learned to do the right things all the time. The next stage in progression could well be learning when you should do the wrong thing instead. K-turning onto an asteroid, red-1 turns with an /x7 Defender, smashing over a set of Cluster Mines... all decisions I can point to in the last few months that won me games. I like your analogy of needing a new lens, but often it's a case of removing the blinkers that have been focusing you onto avoiding bad decisions.

Definitely. Theoretically you could play a game using a HotAC AI and a six-sided die. But learning to go "you know what, I think this is probably worth the risk" occasionally is no bad thing. Certainly deliberately clipping rocks or debris; when you're not getting an action anyway due to a red move, theoretically there's very little additional downside to clipping a rock in the process and it can often achieve that game-tilting " where the heck did he come from!?!?! " moment.

19 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

I try to do this. I'm naturally aggressive, but I've slowly trained myself to disengage when I'm up and reset for a more advantageous position. Over the years, I've lost more ships than I'd like to because "I'll probably kill him here" didn't work out.

Also true.

Learn to take risks, but before you commit to doing them, think "what am I going to do if this screws up?"

Sometimes - especially in the end game - the answer is "lose". In my last game I had a heavily damaged striker versus crimson specialist on one hit point, who's half points were worth less than a striker. Essentially whatever cunning tricks I pulled between now and when the time ran out, I would always have to fly into range, eat a bomblet, eat a turret shot, and hope my return fire killed him. The dice were in my favour and there was no blind spot to exploit. So the only possible plan was " Get im' Kev! " and hope it worked out.

Most of the time, though, your gambit not working will make the game harder but shouldn't lose it for you as long as you have a backup plan .

On 18/2/2018 at 8:41 AM, Blail Blerg said:

Hey look, a bunch of people agree with you. I don't. I've literally never ever ever seen a game where dice were the overwhelming factor (beyond skill or decision making), and I've played since Wave3, against a huge variety of dice whiners.

You choose to believe whatever. But I only comment on dice to make sour losers feel better. And I mean it as shallowly as the best lies I ever speak.

You are actually wrong just in a single and simple scenario. Two opponents with the same list, same asteroids, mirrored setup. They play the exact same manouvers. Only one can win, thanks to luck

10 hours ago, Flaren48 said:

You are actually wrong just in a single and simple scenario. Two opponents with the same list, same asteroids, mirrored setup. They play the exact same manouvers. Only one can win, thanks to luck

I get the point, but this is the exact same as a mirrored chess match - white will always win. Is any luck whatsoever involved there?

A lot of mirror matches come down to an initiative roll. That's not a bad thing, because mirror matches typically occur when people netlist the current hotness, so this can be entirely avoided by running one's own list for once if you're sick of seeing mirror matches.

Even in the scenario of a perfect mirror match, player skill is the deciding factor in most cases (just not Palp aces). Miranda can block one ship and shoot the other, Nym can block lanes with his bombs and so on.

I am not, nor will I ever be any good at these games.

Don't care! Plastic pew pew!

VROOM! BLAT BLAT BLAT! BOOM!

7 minutes ago, Astech said:

I get the point, but this is the exact same as a mirrored chess match - white will always win. Is any luck whatsoever involved there?

A lot of mirror matches come down to an initiative roll. That's not a bad thing, because mirror matches typically occur when people netlist the current hotness, so this can be entirely avoided by running one's own list for once if you're sick of seeing mirror matches.

Even in the scenario of a perfect mirror match, player skill is the deciding factor in most cases (just not Palp aces). Miranda can block one ship and shoot the other, Nym can block lanes with his bombs and so on.

Tell that to my dice.

Please? They won't listen to me.

Back when the Phantom was the new sexy, I got Echo right dead on a x-wing butt at short range, perfect shot opportunity, the kind pilots live for.

My dice...all blank.

This continued until Echo eventually exploded.

19 minutes ago, Deathseed said:

Tell that to my dice.

Please? They won't listen to me.

Back when the Phantom was the new sexy, I got Echo right dead on a x-wing butt at short range, perfect shot opportunity, the kind pilots live for.

My dice...all blank.

This continued until Echo eventually exploded.

Good job, you've successfully outlined a single case of dice variance, which is entirely normal in a game of tens of thousands of players. A random number generator can keep saying 42 until the end of the world, after all.

I've had games where I couldn't damage a tokenless A-wing at range 1 of 3 ships over several turns. That A-wing then killed all my ships over time. So what? Dice are dice, and they wouldn't be meaningful if we stayed 1 within standard deviation of the mean on every roll.

There will always be someone better than you.

My game has improved greatly by using the same list over and over. I beat top players frequently but Im more of a 'gut' instinct player than a math one. I do analyze wins and losses and what I could do differently.

It is interesting this post came up because I was thinking about what to do when my game plateaus. Thanks for the insight.

I really love list building. That is one of my strengths.

20 minutes ago, Astech said:

Good job, you've successfully outlined a single case of dice variance, which is entirely normal in a game of tens of thousands of players. A random number generator can keep saying 42 until the end of the world, after all.

I've had games where I couldn't damage a tokenless A-wing at range 1 of 3 ships over several turns. That A-wing then killed all my ships over time. So what? Dice are dice, and they wouldn't be meaningful if we stayed 1 within standard deviation of the mean on every roll.

I was making humor (trying to make light of things with self-deprecating humor), and then you "serioused" all the things.

Careful dude, you're wandering into pedantic land.

Maybe don't try so hard to be the smart one in the room. At least, if you're going to stroke your nerd-cred, don't do it in front of the rest of us. We just ate.

And I'll have you know that the last pseudo-random number generator I ever programmed did, in fact, keep repeating 42! The authorities were notified. I also stopped programming in Java.

5 minutes ago, Deathseed said:

I was making humor (trying to make light of things with self-deprecating humor), and then you "serioused" all the things.

Careful dude, you're wandering into pedantic land.

Maybe don't try so hard to be the smart one in the room. At least, if you're going to stroke your nerd-cred, don't do it in front of the rest of us. We just ate.

So you made a post about a point you weren't actually making in order to lighten a thread predominantly about weighty matters of the game, then expect me to... what? Ignore what you said? Respond with an equally inane comment? Nothing I can do here actually contributes to the conversation at hand, so maybe before you derail a thread next time you'll think twice.

50 minutes ago, Astech said:

So you made a post about a point you weren't actually making in order to lighten a thread predominantly about weighty matters of the game, then expect me to... what? Ignore what you said? Respond with an equally inane comment ? Nothing I can do here actually contributes to the conversation at hand, so maybe before you derail a thread next time you'll think twice .

Responding with an equally "inane" comment would have been fun. Having a laugh, demonstrating a sense of humor and the absurd, sure those would work too.

Wait, are you the Final Boss of the Internet?

I never thought I'd actually meet you!

So, how does this work, do we fight for two rounds, is to first blood, to the death?

Is it...is it a pillow fight? It's a pillow fight isn't it?

(Seriously man, your ego needs checking. You are exceptionally far down the list of people who ever gets to even pretend to put me in my place or tell me how to behave. So far down, you might very well have fallen through the planet and into a parallel dimension. But go ahead, continue. See how far your aggression and ego get you. Is there such thing as negative inches? Yeah, that's how far. Toodles Pumpkin!)

51 minutes ago, Deathseed said:

Responding with an equally "inane" comment would have been fun. Having a laugh, demonstrating a sense of humor and the absurd, sure those would work too.

It might have been fun for us two, but it clogs these X-wing Forums up with useless posts. If you want to go off topic, you know where the section is, but if you want an actual discussion on a part of the x-wing miniatures game then post in an actual discussion of the x-wing miniatures game.

2 hours ago, Kijaucey said:

I really love list building. That is one of my strengths.

I love list building in this game. I'll agonise for 20 minutes over whether to go with A Score to Settle or Trick shot, and make the decision not to take a TLT in a heartbeat. I don't think that part of a person's game will ever plateau, because there are so many combinations fitting so many different players that the possibilities are nearly endless. It'll just get better as the designers bring out well designed wave after well designed wave.

11 minutes ago, Astech said:

It might have been fun for us two, but it clogs these X-wing Forums up with useless posts . If you want to go off topic, you know where the section is , but if you want an actual discussion on a part of the x-wing miniatures game then post in an actual discussion of the x-wing miniatures game .

I love list building in this game. I'll agonise for 20 minutes over whether to go with A Score to Settle or Trick shot, and make the decision not to take a TLT in a heartbeat. I don't think that part of a person's game will ever plateau, because there are so many combinations fitting so many different players that the possibilities are nearly endless. It'll just get better as the designers bring out well designed wave after well designed wave.

Ah, but I wasn't off topic. I was having my fun with the topic.

And what you categorize as useless, some of us would categorize as just a part of the game, being a community, and having fun with it.

Also, once again, don't presume to lecture me on how to conduct myself here. Until you become a moderator or Christian T. Petersen, you've got exactly zero clout with which to do so here (or anywhere else for that matter).

But I digress, the fault is mine. I forgot...

Men and women playing with plastic soldiers and cardboard is serious business!

20 hours ago, Gilarius said:

The arguments over dice are fairly irrelevant to 'gitting gud'. Yes, they can and do affect games, but the focus of the last page or so on them is very similar to the ways players avoid analysing where they actually went wrong or could improve.

Here's an example: I flew a 7 ship Scum swarm against triple Wookiees.

Coming into the last round, with time about to be called, I'd lost one Z95 and would lose another this round. I'd got one Wookiee down to 2 health, and a shield off a 2nd, so I set up a lovely kill-box - which my opponent read and managed to avoid with the hurt one, whilst leaving his fully healthy one self-bumped in the middle of it.

I had focus and target locks - but on the ship I couldn't shoot. 10 red dice, 3 single greens.

The dice favoured me, I got 9 hits and he failed to evade any. 33-24 win.

But ignore the dice: why hadn't I won earlier or without needing lucky dice rolls?

Mostly because I took too long to formulate and enact my game plan. If I'd had more time, I'd have won easily. But I hadn't flown against multiple Wookiees before and had to work out what to do on the fly, wasting turns of ineffective offense costing me a ship, before realising that I needed to block rather than just chase - reinforce really neuters 2 dice attacks.

YOU GET IT.

I'm glad some people are very clearly articulating all of these thoughts. You guys are awesome.

It's not hard. You should come away from every game asking yourself: "what mistakes did I make, and how can I ensure I don't make them again?". Luck is something you have no control over, but their are always mistakes you make in a game that you can improve upon.

Also, play difficult high skill lists like low PS swarms. If all you play is 2-ship fat-turrets and/or Aces, you're probably not going to improve very much. It will make you much better at the game, and you can switch back to your cheese list for the big tournaments.

1. Stop overthinking the game and thinking it's more complex than it is. It's not complex or deep, it's a very simple game from list building to actually playing. Thinking it's more than it is does you no good.

2. Fly power lists. Don't be the guy/gal who says well I'm gonna make this ship work. You're most likely not. We've all said it at some point in time especially when it comes to our favorite ships but the people who win alot are going to fly what's really good. Again it's not rocket science to find out what the powerful ships and combos are. These are reason why they're used so much.

3. If on the off chance you do find a crazy powerful list keep it to your self or to a small group. This is assuming you're wanting to win tournaments. If you have something powerful that wins alot and people aren't ready for than that's a huge advantage. The most fun games of x wing I ever had was when our group took Dengaroo to the Ohio regionals. We had kept it under wraps for a while working and tweaking it and just absolutely wrecked people because they weren't ready for it. In hind sight we probably should have waited until nationals because by then everyone and their mother was flying it and getting practice against it. If you're in that situation with a power list leverage it.

6 hours ago, Kijaucey said:

There will always be someone better than you.

Also, this plays into strategy.

There is a regular player at our store who is (a) much better than me, (b) gets to play a lot more often and (c) invariably runs some twist on the tournament hotness.

His current favourite is the whole Nym/Miranda thing (which even sans daft card interactions is still brutal in the hands of a good player).

• If you're playing this squad and want to win , Miranda is the first logical target. Always kill the regenerating ship when you have your full squad available, and you take out the unlimited ammo bombs and sabine into the bargain. This is what I normally do.
• If you're playing this guy (or your equivalent personal scumgrod) in a semi-competitive event then there is a school of logic which says kill Nym first. Doing so probably hurts your chances of winning the game, but if I start with the premise that I'm probably not going to win the game anyway , my realistic goal is to extract as many MoV points from the game as possible - which means getting at least one kill before I'm inevitably wiped out in a maelstrom of bomb and harpoon splash damage and arcs of twin laser turret fire, since neither ship gives up 'partial' points.
• In no way does this countenance surrender or not playing to my utmost. But in an event, your top level goal is the best overall performance of the day, and there is strategy in trying to balance what's more important: a win, or more MoV - and whether continuing to press the fight as the game stands (assuming you're currently winning) is likely to earn you more kills than you lose.

3 hours ago, CRCL said:

It's not hard. You should come away from every game asking yourself: "what mistakes did I make, and how can I ensure I don't make them again?". Luck is something you have no control over, but their are always mistakes you make in a game that you can improve upon.

Absolutely. Luck is a very real phenomenon in a game where you roll 40-60 dice total. I just finished a Vassal game in which I rolled 7 hits/crits less than expected (replaced by blanks, not focuses). Naturally, I failed to do any meaningful damage to Boba/Asajj with my double TIE/D defenders, resulting in all my ships being stressed, tokenless and whittled down until death. I could have raged at the dice, but instead I took a deep breath and accepted that deathrain is an awful companion for TIE/Ds, and the Twin Ion engines is utterly crucial on defenders. List building learning achieved.

I'm nowhere near this point with X-Wing, still have plenty of the basics to learn. However, I am at and past this point in another game, Blood Bowl, so I can comment from that perspective and try to draw comparisons.

For those who don't know, Blood Bowl is a miniatures board game that is equal parts American football, rugby, D&D, and chess. You play a very violent football-ish game with fantasy race miniatures. So dwarves are going to be short and slow, but stout and good hitters. Elves are going to be faster and better at passing, but don't take a hit very well. Goblins aren't good at either, but have chainsaws and generally cause mayhem. And so on.

You originally "get good" at Blood Bowl by mastering a single race, learning the best setups and strategies with them. What skills to give the players as they get experience. And so on. You plateau when you more or less master a race. You get beyond it by playing and mastering the opposite type of race. It's the old "know thy enemy" thing - by learning the problems a dwarf coach faces, you learn better how to exploit them as an elf coach, and vice-versa. Well I've been playing Blood Bowl for 25 years now, competitively for almost 20, so I pretty well have them all figured out.

So how does this all relate back to X-Wing. I don't think it breaks down perfectly along faction lines the same way Blood Bowl does with races. After all, a rebel squadron of 2 falcons is not remotely the same as a squadron of 5 A-wings. But I think you can talk about different types of squadrons between factions. If you're most comfortable doing big formations of cheap ships, make it a point to fly some lone wolves and some big ships. If you're the small squadron of elite pilots then try the fragile swarms. Try some weird EPS combos. Force yourself to approach the game from directions you aren't accustomed to. Play some Epic to deal with big fleets and big ships. Play some weird scenarios that make you think about things differently.

tl;dr - force yourself to think differently about the game and your approach, in every conceivable way. Don't let yourself get lazy and get stuck in a rut where you're flying on auto-pilot.

2 hours ago, direweasel said:

I'm nowhere near this point with X-Wing, still have plenty of the basics to learn. However, I am at and past this point in another game, Blood Bowl, so I can comment from that perspective and try to draw comparisons.

For those who don't know, Blood Bowl is a miniatures board game that is equal parts American football, rugby, D&D, and chess. You play a very violent football-ish game with fantasy race miniatures. So dwarves are going to be short and slow, but stout and good hitters. Elves are going to be faster and better at passing, but don't take a hit very well. Goblins aren't good at either, but have chainsaws and generally cause mayhem. And so on.

You originally "get good" at Blood Bowl by mastering a single race, learning the best setups and strategies with them. What skills to give the players as they get experience. And so on. You plateau when you more or less master a race. You get beyond it by playing and mastering the opposite type of race. It's the old "know thy enemy" thing - by learning the problems a dwarf coach faces, you learn better how to exploit them as an elf coach, and vice-versa. Well I've been playing Blood Bowl for 25 years now, competitively for almost 20, so I pretty well have them all figured out.

So how does this all relate back to X-Wing. I don't think it breaks down perfectly along faction lines the same way Blood Bowl does with races. After all, a rebel squadron of 2 falcons is not remotely the same as a squadron of 5 A-wings. But I think you can talk about different types of squadrons between factions. If you're most comfortable doing big formations of cheap ships, make it a point to fly some lone wolves and some big ships. If you're the small squadron of elite pilots then try the fragile swarms. Try some weird EPS combos. Force yourself to approach the game from directions you aren't accustomed to. Play some Epic to deal with big fleets and big ships. Play some weird scenarios that make you think about things differently.

tl;dr - force yourself to think differently about the game and your approach, in every conceivable way. Don't let yourself get lazy and get stuck in a rut where you're flying on auto-pilot.

indeed. i first started playing two months ago with 4x y-wing, moved to 4x t-70, then 4x b-wings. local store league uses a ban list so I had to move out of my comfort zone a little bit and made a old chewie and 2x b-wing. have had good success.