Complaining about a list that is an auto win on scenario of one map, while a few months ago we had a list, that was auto-win on every map - scum hunters (and let's be honest switching onar with jabba and shyla does not make those lists different) is something I will never understand. Also note, that luke Rangers on coruscant landfill crates map was also an auto-win and nobody had a problem with that.

BTW. on last years polish Nationals (before hote camera out) we had 4 or 5 ugs and afair none of them made it to top 8.

On 8/3/2018 at 6:13 PM, ThatJakeGuy said:

It means that the attacker goes first, then the defender.

Outside of an attack, the player with initiative goes first then the player without initiative, but during an attack initially of ceases to matter and it revert to attacker / defender.

Basically attacking eJets move before Han's Return Fire even if Han's player has initiative. That sounds like a big change, an actual nerf.

43 minutes ago, Golan Trevize said:

Basically attacking eJets move before Han's Return Fire even if Han's player has initiative. That sounds like a big change, an actual nerf.

That's not a change, but a verification of the actual rules.

4 hours ago, Golan Trevize said:

Basically attacking eJets move before Han's Return Fire even if Han's player has initiative. That sounds like a big change, an actual nerf.

But only if You attack outside of jest activation (call te Vanguard, palp) otherwise movement point will Just be added to the pool and you wont br able to spend them before return fire resolves.

18 hours ago, TheWelcomeMat88 said:

Did you say...

RANCOR???

Baby come back...

Exactly what i was thinking haha!

6 hours ago, wannabepudge said:

Exactly what i was thinking haha!

Yeah I imagine this is what the beast tamer cry baby sang after his beloved beast was taken from him so suddenly ?

On March 9, 2018 at 10:32 AM, NuSair said:

A single instance of 'ohhh- look what this character did' is not a convincing argument. I once had a eSab hit at 9- that doesn't mean they are reliable or that should be a basis for any decision.

In following this discussion- a jank droid would just kill off the Hired Guns. And it would be turn one.

Again, a single instance of 'oh this happened' means next to nothing against mountains of other evidence.

As for Hired Guns being a subpar troop- I stick by my comment. Being able to occasionally pull off some surprising damage is not a reason to include them in a list. That's like saying a broken clock works because it's right twice a day.

I fail to see how providing anecdotal evidence at the request of another is labelled as "not a convincing argument".

The Hired Guns are primarily objective runners. Every now and then you get a lucky break where they go off and put a few damage on something, but that's like an outlier bonus. You would not use the random chance of doing some damage as a reason to include them.

Also, I've discussed at length some facts surrounding the Junk Droid in a different, longer, more heated thread before @pheaver talked me down from my soap box so I'll try and summarize here;

@miguelj has the right of it. The list shows up in the minority in real tournament play today, and his theories about it above are something I can back as a reasonable hypothesis;

1. It's not the most interesting list to be stuck piloting all day
2. There is a perceived weakness against Imperial lists wth Zillo and defensive walls like Vader and Riots
3. The Junk Droid shaming in the community suppresses people from running it for fear of being called out

So those could be some meta reasons why we don't see a lot of it right now, but if you go back to when it was all the rage (pun intended), I would argue that even in a field where 50% of your players ran it, that's still a chance of roughly 8% that your Round 1 pairing would be against that list on Raining Freight.

Basic assumptions; half the field runs the list, 4 rounds of Swiss and a Top 4 sounds like a fair scenario for a tournament for a game that doesn't put up a lot of numbers in attendance.

So after that highly unlikely pairing in Round 1, yes, the odds of pulling Raining Freight go up each round as you get to the end, but it's still just pure chance. By the time Round 4 is drawn, it's still only a 33% chance that Raining Freight gets pulled, and then you still need to get paired with the Junk Droid player for it to matter. If the Junk Droids are all in the mid-field, maybe this lets someone make it into the cut? If they're all at the top of the Swiss anyways by this point, being 3-0, then the bulk of them would have made it in anyways, so again you're not out much.

Ultimately, if there's one guaranteed auto-loss scenario for your list that is not likely to happen anyways, I think this hardly requires mass hysteria and calls for errata when the offending map itself will be crept out of the meta by the end of the year, and in the mean time you can play around it.

If you take 1 loss in your Swiss, it hardly disqualifies you from winning the championship if there's a cut. You just need to run a tight ship. I don't want to fall back on "get good" but player skill can still triumph here.

And all this assumes it's still a 50% Junk Droid field, and I don't see the data to support that based on tournament reports from players through Regional Season.

Anecdotally, our Regional last weekend in Toronto I believe had zero Junk Droids, and on top of that, Raining Freight didn't even get drawn.

In a post-Heart meta, the resources are there to effectively play around the list, and except for one specific scenario that will affect a vast minority of players, there is little to fear other than a skill disparity between you and your opponent, and if winning the tournament is important to you, then you need to get back in the training lab and work on your game.

If you want to get into the identity politics of putting "I play for fun" against "winning (ethically) is my goal" then you're going to run into conflict because it's a contest of our abilities to play the game at the end of the day. If you're there to use the tournament as a means to get a bunch of games in, know that you could have a negative experience regardless of Junk Droids because some people are just terrible people. You run this risk on some level anytime you interact with humanity.

Try ordering a pizza for your tournament of 20 people next time and see how much work it might take to get everyone to agree on what they would all be fine with eating if you couldn't make it personalized for everyone. You'd throw up your hands and just order plain cheese, and then the person who is lactose intolerant raises their hand...

On 10/3/2018 at 11:20 AM, Golan Trevize said:

Basically attacking eJets move before Han's Return Fire even if Han's player has initiative. That sounds like a big change, an actual nerf.

One thing is to gain movement points and another one is to spend them...

eJets gain 2 movement points but they can only spend them after Return Fire (except if they’re attacking outside of their activation).

Ok, so to continue the discussion on Ugnaughts, I decided to be 'that player' in the Paris regional today, mainly to see how Ugnaughts perform in the current meta and whether I should worry about them for Worlds. I haven't seen them played for several months and I didn't know whether that was because people didn't think they were strong anymore, or because people just didn't want to play the list because they find it boring/controversial/NPE. I am happy to say that I did not prevail, and only went 2-2, which put me in 6th out of 14 (cut was to top 4). I consider myself to be a strong player in my local meta and have previous experience with Ugnaughts, so I feel like these results are meaningful.

I lost to a Scum beast/hunter list and then to a Palpatine/Vader/AT-DP list. Ugnaught lists are definitely strong, but they really rely on getting hunter cards and Blaze of Glory early to be able to deal with figures like Vader, and with no extra card draw, it's not very consistent. I managed to get Vader down to 2 health and the AT-DP down to 1, but then the list ran out of steam. I feel like Ugnaughts also struggle with most objectives except for the crates on Raining Freight (where they are broken).

@turkishvancat

Your anecdotal evidence largely dovetails with my own beliefs on the Ugs in the IA world today; they're fine, but you're not going to win a large event with them unless you are really that good with the game. Much like Phantoms in X-Wing before the nerf, even a mediocre player could have run the Junk Droids in that window of time before Heart/After Jawa wave and gotten the best results of their career.

The whole thing solved itself and we narrowly avoided the initial launch meta of Imperial Assault being repeated, or living in the miasma of X-Wing top tables. Check out the System Open event from Adepticon on the "big finale" of the final table where they took a break and came back for a final salvo.

2 hours ago, cleardave said:Check out the System Open event from Adepticon on the "big finale" of the final table where they took a break and came back for a final salvo.

This after the series of debacles at Canadian Nationals. Accusations of collusion in the top tables more than once, alleged spectator interference, and a final they wanted not to play at the time. X-wing is a mess.

16 hours ago, NeverBetTheFett said:

X-wing is a mess

Sounds like they should start playing IA then haha!

23 minutes ago, wannabepudge said:

Sounds like they should start playing IA then haha!

Funny you say that. A number of hard core x-wing players (some well known) have been switching over because of all of the shenanigans at the premier events.

3 hours ago, NeverBetTheFett said:

Funny you say that. A number of hard core x-wing players (some well known) have been switching over because of all of the shenanigans at the premier events.

And IA is a ton of fun~