I just flew against this list with a 5-pc Unguided Rocket LWF TIE Bomber Swarm and a 5-pc LWF TIE Striker Swarm. They eat the Ghost and Fenn for lunch. Focus fire Fenn, then eat up the Ghost. I was very pleasantly surprised. It does get trashed by triple defenders, though.

1 hour ago, JasonCole said:

Probably not, jwilliamson12. 5 dice primary at R1 with tons of mods followed by 2 damage at the end of combat means the ghost player can take one of your thugs off the table by the end of the first engagement. That leaves him with his two fully modded TLT shots per turn against your 3 for the next turn, until he takes yet another thug off the table. Unlimited maul+ezra+ps11 positioning is going to eat thug life for lunch, unless he does something dumb.

I thought Y-Wings had 8 hp. 5 dice and 2 damage is 7. Also, I don't think that the Ghost can shoot you with a TLT if it's shooting you with its primary at R1

I ran into a Hera/autoblaster turret/accuracy corrector/intelligence agent ghost in a tournament before the biggs nerf. and yeah, Biggs was with it. I'd much rather play against these current ones.

1 hour ago, Stay On The Leader said:

But if you remove the oppressive Ghost there's only going to be another oppressive list taking over, that's just where the game is now after all the layers and layers of untested designs have piled on top of each other.

Either you roll back 2 years of wave design through FAQing something every five weeks, or at some point you just draw the line and say "yeah, it's oppressive, but it's the least oppressive option we realistically have so we'll stick here".

Sure @Stay On The Leader , but if you just give up and give in --like in anything in life from a problem in business, friendship or family-- isn't that just not caring? Have no passion for what it could be? Never strive for the removal of cancer? Apathy? What's the point then?

If what you recommend happens, the game is truly dead.

18 minutes ago, gjnido said:

I thought Y-Wings had 8 hp. 5 dice and 2 damage is 7. Also, I don't think that the Ghost can shoot you with a TLT if it's shooting you with its primary at R1

edit - I see what you're saying, if its at R1, you can't TLT because too close. Good point. You're still eating 5 from the ghost, who knows what from Rau, and someone else is getting plinked.

8 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

Sure @Stay On The Leader , but if you just give up and give in --like in anything in life from a problem in business, friendship or family-- isn't that just not caring? Have no passion for what it could be? Never strive for the removal of cancer? Apathy? What's the point then?

If what you recommend happens, the game is truly dead.

When it's inoperable do you drive yourself into the ground trying to chase the impossible, or do you let go of your worries and enjoy life as best you can?

Just play.

3 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

If what you recommend happens, the game is truly dead.

FFG: I can't nerf my own game.

Community: Then the emperor has already won. You were out last hope.

FFG: @MajorJuggler spoke of another.

Community: The other he spoke about was Community mod.

2 minutes ago, JasonCole said:

During the combat phase, it shoots you with its main gun at R1. Then in the end phase, it can still TLT you. It doesn't have to be a TLT in the main phase to also TLT you in the end phase. You're also leaving out Fenn Rau. So 6/7 damage from the Ghost plus 2 damage from Rau (ish) = dead y wing, not accounting for crits.

Sorry. I thought TLTs couldn't shoot at R1

2 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

When it's inoperable do you drive yourself into the ground trying to chase the impossible, or do you let go of your worries and enjoy life as best you can?

Just play.

I'm certainly not driving myself into the ground, on the contrary, I enjoy this game greatly, that's why I care. FFG designers are not apathetic nor hold your thoughts; they have listened to the passionate and analyzed the data and made changes that HAVE assisted the game. The past erratas were necessary, without them the game would have died before now, and I attest FFGs admissions on slight but powerful design problems and their subsequent changes as a direct result and response to the passion of their clients, not their apathy.

11 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

When it's inoperable do you drive yourself into the ground trying to chase the impossible, or do you let go of your worries and enjoy life as best you can?

Just play.

Xwing is still a blast to play, but I have to agree with @Stay On The Leader that, as a meta game, it is probably broken beyond repair (but maybe always has been?). Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems that, to truly excel in the meta, to be that top 1%, you have to sacrifice the fun of playing for the 'fun' of winning, and that isn't a trade I want. However, there are alternatives to fighting, as Obi-wan taught us. I created an Xwing gaming group of about a dozen people and I put on tournaments for them every few months, but I always throw in a wrinkle to mess with listbuilding, and we all have a blast. The core of the game is good. The upgrades are fun. Make your own fun. If official tournaments are toxic, make your own fun! That's why @heychadwick and the Shuttle tyderium guys are my favorite podcast, because they hone in on the fun of the game rather than the brokenness. I recently played in a regional and went 4-2 (was 4-1 and in 6th before the final game, just missed the cut) but I brought a list I wanted to bring. I wanted to have fun. And you know what? I did. I had a blast. It's a game. If some people play broken lists (which they know are broken) to win, and 'have fun' winning, well, I'll be over here with my friends having a blast. You are welcome to join us!

I'm all for getting on the 'fix the game' train, but that train is only getting further and further from its destination as time goes by.

14 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

When it's inoperable do you drive yourself into the ground trying to chase the impossible, or do you let go of your worries and enjoy life as best you can?

Just play.

I'd say don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Yes, the list of things that "need" adjustment is long but each step along the way makes the game better. I do understand the concern of being too aggressive with your fixes and burying the game under errata but I believe a change to TLT improve the game. Just because a new worse thing will pop up shouldn't prevent FFG from doing some good.

Everybody is going to die. That doesn't stop doctors from fixing the things that can be fixed.

Edit:

I'm all for getting on the 'fix the game' train, but that train is only getting further and further from its destination as time goes by.

I agree that the pace of fixes needs to accelerate. The response to Nym (twice) is somewhat encouraging in that regard. Longterm, it's part of the reason I keep pushing for an official squad builder that would allow more regular changes including point cost. It needs to happen to bring any semblance of real balance.

A huge number of people think a change to TLT will improve the game. They've thought that for two and a half years.

It ain't coming. For whatever reason, it ain't coming.

(and FWIW I think if remove TLT there's a good chance something worse WILL replace it. I suspect that TLT is keeping a lot of evil at bay)

Rebellions are built on hope...

Isn't it just so ridiculously tiring, though?

There's been pretty much non-stop *******, moaning, whining, complaining, calls for fixes, calls for nerfs, calls for no nerfs, calls to undo nerfs. The game continues to get more and more broken with each passing wave, regardless.

I'm tired of it. I'm tired of all of it. I'm barely on here any more because it's so negative. The whole X-Wing community is negative now, pretty much... either negative about the game or negative about people being negative about the game. And if you try and come in and just say "hey, how about you stop worrying and just enjoy playing the game that we've got" then people will be negative about you trying to enjoy the game because apparently that means you're giving up on life.

Like... jesus. I don't even know where to go from here.

3 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

just say "hey, how about you stop worrying and just enjoy playing the game that we've got"

I love playing the game we've got and I love facing the biggest toughest "meta" list and seeing what I can come up with or how I can approach it differently to beat it. Love most of the people i've met. love traveling to events and seeing things built in ways I've never seen or thought of. LOVE IT!!

3 minutes ago, Stay On The Leader said:

Isn't it just so ridiculously tiring, though?

[Basically true stuff.]

Like... jesus. I don't even know where to go from here.

Ironically, though, I'm more upbeat toward X-Wing than I have been in ... I dunno, 18 months? Maybe I'm naive -- It would be a first for me, but it's possible -- but I actually think FFG understands now, in a way that they didn't before. They are responding faster, and they're responding better. It's true that they're playing Whack-a-Mole, but every time they whack, the mole gets a little slower to re-emerge, and a little less scary. (Hey, sue me ... burrowing rodents are gross.)

Look, I'm not convinced that FFG can pull the game out of its Porkins-dive, but I'm getting more and more convinced that FFG is willing to try. And you know what? If nothing else, this says to me that when they finally decide that X-Wing 2.0 is the way to go ... they'll probably do a pretty good job with it.

14 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

It's true that they're playing Whack-a-Mole, but every time they whack, the mole gets a little slower to re-emerge, and a little less scary.

This is by the way why I at least partially disagree with your initial post. You're right about the point fortress, and you're right about forcing passive dice mods and how that negatively affects the game, no argument there.

I think it is weak enough in offensive output that handling Fenn first and then using good maneuvering is possible, which goes against your third point.
And <=5 HP ships are not oppressed by the Ghost but have been by red dice creep like infinite procket Fenn, or 5 dice fullmod Rey, and doubly modified ordnance. The Ghost is comparably bad, especially because it is just one ship that often deals "only" 4 damage per turn.

The solution to it with respect to nerfs/changes lies IMO in changing the core rules about arcs, turrets, and secondary (laser) weapons. But those are so fundamental that FFG won't touch them. And GhostFenn is just less scary enough to make it less urgent than say NymMiranda with Genius/TS. It's less oppressive, it's less of an agency burglar, it's less dominating.

GhostFenn sits right in this spot where I'm willing to give it some more time to see whether the silver bullet gets found or whether the nerfhammer needs to act on the superficial level. Because turrets won't be touched fundamentally.

1 hour ago, gjnido said:

Sorry. I thought TLTs couldn't shoot at R1

You're totally right, they can't. I'd edited my post, but not before you quoted it :/

The reality is, if you can’t kill Fenn in the first two combat turns, you’re up for a very though fight. The sooner he dies the easier the match up becomes. The true problem is the ps11 boost.

Id errata coordinate to only be used on the printed action bar items.

Interesting thread....I think it gets off the rails easy by missing the OP's point, I apologize guys and @Stay On The Leader as I assisted on that replying to miss the marks, if there is such a thing on a forum.

The OP @Estarriol states "The ghost is bul#%£&#" in his personal experience. Typical forum patterns are: 1) some reply and say "yes, and here's why I agree X is bad for the game and here's what could be done." 2) some say "no, X is fine for the game and here's why." Then, a few might chime in and say, 3) "hey, stop saying X is bad for the game as that is bad for the game and here is why." and then I said 4) "keep saying whatever you want about what you think is bad about the game because, in the end, that is good for the game and here is why."

Isn't this one of the very reasons for the forum? For the health of the game?

Again, apologies for any frustration or irritation I caused, sincerely.

Now...where's my tea?

18 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

You don't need Expertise, specifically, but you really need something with passive mods enough to, at the very least, take Fenn off the table.

Please could people stop responding with "it's not unbeatable." Pretty much nobody is saying it's "unbeatable."

It is oppressive. But, more problematic, it's oppressive in a very specific way that isn't very good for the game.

(1) It's a tremendous points fortress. The Mauler version is typically 73 points locked up in a single ship ... except it's even worse, because if you "half-kill" the Ghost, you don't get 36 points ... you get 27 points.

(2) It suppresses every ship with 5 or few HP and no Autothrusters. (It actually even suppresses ships with Autothrusters, but less so.) That is a lot of ships, and it's a lot of iconic ships.

(3) It discounts the benefits of good maneuvering, because the best maneuvers by arced ships can simply be erased by perfect information boosts at PS 11.

(4) It forces ships to rely on passive modifications, which are, themselves, bad for the best foundational game of X-Wing, which is "Plan, maneuver, take an action, shoot."

(5) It's simply not very fun to play against. Obviously this is subjective, and I have no doubt there's some special snowflake who instinctively has already started typing, "I like to play against it!" But I would be willing to bet that if we polled all active tournament X-Wing players, 90%+ would say, "No, I don't enjoy playing against it., even when I win" Including people who actually play it!

Don't get me wrong, it's a genius list, and it deserved to win a System Open based on that. It does not deserve to keep winning; not with all the negative effects on the game required to beat it.

Like most problem lists, there's not one factor to blame. It's a toxic cocktail. I think if you really want to target just this archetype, then the "end of round" turret shot should have to be performed by a turret on the docked ship. But that ignores so many other problematic aspects of the list ... and all of them are just going to come up again.

I have to disagree with a few of these points, or at least disagree in that it's any worse than all of the other metas we've had over the last 5 years.

1) Okay, Fat Han used to be 62 points and you'd get 0 points for it. This brought about a rule change, but then let's talk about the 49 point Corran Horns or the 48 point Mirandas that'll net you 0 points. At least you get a good chunk of the Ghost.

2) I don't see where you're getting this at all. Can you elaborate a bit? The best that I can tell is that you assume every single round you'll be doing 5 damage via a 4 dice primary and TLT, so therefore it's not even worth bringing a 5hp ship to the table. Except that it really doesn't. Yes, it can consistently put out 3-4 damage on low agility ships... But fly something with 2+ agility and that damage drastically drops, especially if you're smart about your positioning and hide behind a rock. Yeah yeah yeah, PS11 boost may ruin that - I still don't see why people don't just kill the defenseless Fenn first. But regardless, a really good counter is a well flown swarm, and they only have 3hp (or 4 if you're going with a Z95). All of those defensive things that mitigate the ghost's damage are completely overwhelmed. If it's Kanan, he can only affect one shot. Hotcop can do a second, and Fenn a 3rd. Which means you get 4 guys plowing their dice into a totally defensively Ghost. Ouch. Also, calling out autothrusters is kinda BS... it's a SUPER HARD COUNTER, that for some reason no one flies anymore. Just as much as you're complaining about the uphill fight when you see that, the same Ghost player is feeling the same way when he sees AT.

3) Whee, perfect information boost at a high PS? Nothing to see here, Fel has been doing it since W2. And he doesn't require a 27pt squad mate who then has to somehow stay at R1-2 of a large boosting ship while doing a green maneuver to clear his own stress. Super repeatable, right? Or at least super exploitable.

4) You mean you haven't been relying on passive mods? I fully agree with your statement that they suck. But I'm pretty sure that a ton of the meta has been dominated by passive (or at least free action) mods for a ton of time. There's something super stupid against playing Dengar w/ K4 and Expertise, knowing that no matter what you do, he's got 2 (basically) fully modified shots at you every turn. This started back in W2 with Fel's free focus, but continued in W4 with predator, and has just gotten worse from there. I agree this is a problem, but it's not specific to this ship or this list.

5) Yup, it's subjective. And I can fill a paragraph with lists that aren't fun for me to fly against. But the worst thing is to have to play against the same list 6 times in a row at a tourney. We're at a point in the meta where this really isn't the case, so I'm not going to complain about any of the lists being not fun to play against. The best that I can tell, most people that complain about lists complain about what it prevents them from doing. Pre-nerf Whisper the complaint was that it didn't matter what they did, Whisper would just decloak and run away (same complaint regarding Fel/Inq today). Biggs was that it prevented them from shooting at who they wanted to shoot at. Kanan was that it prevented them from doing damage. Manaroo was that it prevented them from preventing actions. K4/Expertise same thing. Though I suppose some of the complaints were still of the "this is too good" side of things, such as Palp and JM15k.

My main criteria for whether a list is bad for the game or not is based on "if you removed the list, what lists would return to competitive play?" And I really can't think of any archetype being suppressed by this list right now. I would normally say your low agility ships since it eats them for lunch, but those are all of the place right now... So Jeff (or anyone else), what is this list type preventing from being competitive?

Sorry, don't understand the problem here.

How about a Quad TLT list? Doesn't that beat the Ghost very very very easily?

The VCX has always been a fairly powerful ship, but until now has always been appropriately costed and was counter-able by more than ultraspecific builds. Fenn Rau broke the **** out of it with coordinate at PS11, along with his PS11 token stripping with HotCop. Everything that balanced the Ghost and kept it in check was immediately removed with Maul and the FennBug.

4 minutes ago, Khyros said:

1) [...] At least you get a good chunk of the Ghost .

One-third -- if you half-kill it -- is a "good chunk"? The current Ghost is the best point-fortress in the game, Miranda notwithstanding.

Quote

2) [...] But fly something with 2+ agility and that damage drastically drops

This betrays a significant (and common) underestimation of the accuracy and damage output of the list. (It makes me suspect you haven't played against it, or plugged the numbers into a good X-Wing calculator.) There is almost no difference between AGI 1 and AGI 2 with regard to expected damage of Mauler Ghost. It drops with AGI 3, and it drops with Autothrusters, but it remains impressive even against those.

Quote

3) Whee, perfect information boost at a high PS? Nothing to see here, Fel has been doing it since W2.

Sure, but Fel hits like a wet noodle, and Fel relies on that perfect information for a lot of his survivability. Also, Fel is PS 9, which is now very beatable. The Ghost has 16 HP and boosts at PS 11.

Quote

4) [...] But I'm pretty sure that a ton of the meta has been dominated by passive (or at least free action) mods for a ton of time. There's something super stupid against playing Dengar w/ K4 and Expertise , knowing that no matter what you do, he's got 2 (basically) fully modified shots at you every turn. This started back in W2 with Fel 's free focus, but continued in W4 with predator , and has just gotten worse from there. I agree this is a problem, but it's not specific to this ship or this list.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what a "passive modification" is. Just of those you list, Fenn turns off the TL provided by K4 and the Focus received by stressed Fel. Also, if Expertise has been around for " a ton of time," I think I may have blacked out for a couple of years.