I have some questions about maintaining a fun meta at local groups. As the title states these ideas revolve around building fleets specifically to counter dominant fleets and the circular motion that this causes in local metas. Locally, my meta is usually pretty stable if not typically light on squadrons (no more than 70-80 points in squads 4-5 aces typically). That said I have noticed there's been a bit of a pattern.

1.) Rise of a fleet archetype.
It seems to me the first step in this cycle is the widespread usage of a single fleet type, or a single fleet in our group becoming so dominant, either people mimic it or strait copy it. This has happened a few times locally. During wave 5 we had a rise in floatilla pushed relay squads, wave 6 brought about the rise of dual victory lists and widespread usage of the "wambo" (Howl, dengar, scoontir, mauler, +/- the other scatter aces), and lately, post wave 7, with the widespread use of large ships we've seen a rise of the Dodonna drill liberty with no squads.

2.) The counter fleet.
Once a fleet has established itself or has become saturated in the meta, it usually only takes a few weeks for people to start bringing new lists. However, it seem to me when people realize there's a large saturation of a specific fleet type, or there's one fleet in particular they want to beat, they'll build a fleet specifically to counter the other. Locally, citing the changes stated above we saw this with the release of wave 6. The dominant meta was bomber heavy and relied on flotillas pushing relay squads. Upon wave 6, and the release of sloane and the quasar, we saw people counter this very effectively with variations of a list I created (2 vic IIs GTs,QBTs,Dcaps,LSs- a quasar with motti and FCs, and either a gozanti or added scatter aces +the "wambo") the introduction of the quasar allowed players to push alpha strikes of relatively small squadron groups (as small as 4 aces) with devastating results to bombers. We also saw this change recently with the release of wave 7. Wave 7 added some needed love to big ships and as a result, they have been fairly predominant as people explore the new upgrades. However, with the usage of large ships we saw a shrinkage in squadrons, specifically bombers. It wasn't long before this revived the old reliable whaling ship, liberty+mon karren+XI7s+intel officer, however with the new weapons team (the twins) the liberty is able to hit much harder. This fleet developed into a 5 activation (6 with SAs) 2 large ship monstrosity that runs no squads. It's been devastating even balanced large ship builds.

3.) Circular motions
I've noticed that because of the rock-paper-scissors quality in fleet weaknesses the meta will shift from one to another in an almost circular motion. For instance, continuing the motion of the changes above, when flotilla bombers lists dried up because of the quasar vic lists, the vic lists became predominant, as a result players started modifying their lists to have better anti-squadron squadrons, eventually this turned the meta into full Sloane fleets pushing max scatter aces from smaller-weaker ships. Once the max Sloane fleets became dominant (and with the release of wave 7) players started running large ships with smaller squads realizing that if they had just enough anti-squad they could sink the smaller Sloane ships before Sloane could effective strip the large ships. This created another shift, as Sloane lost it's effect multiple large ship builds with limited squads had risen to the surface and all but saturated the meta. Which brings us to the revival of the Dodonna drill running no squads. This list has been savagely wrecking the meta, I guess the added value of 50-80 points from the lack of squads, and the near-uselessness of anti-squadron squads being brought against it have given it an advantage. There have been a few players already playing with msu full bomber lists to specifically counter this, which would bring the meta full circle, and according to the dodonna drill list's owner, is exactly what he's waiting for, as he's waiting for these lists to surface so he can switch to the max sloane scatter aces list. (effectively he's predicting the turn of the meta and using it to cash in on casual wins lol)





Is this something other people have experienced locally? have other players effectively predicted the meta change and used it to field devastating counters? Is there a risk of a stale meta from players building lists this way? Am I over thinking this?

Honestly not trying to be snarky but I'm afraid it might come across this way... aren't you just describing what the meta game is? The players/fleets that last won big are a natural thing for everyone else (who wants to be competitive) to think about beating. So they take a hard counter or something completely different and hope for favorable matchups. This is how it works for every meta (local, national, etc) isn't it? The meta game is inherently anti and/or circular because that's part of the meaning of the term.

Not trying to be unhelpful, just not quite sure what you're looking for. Our local group certainly looks like this although we have a lot of players more in to having fun (taking fun lists) that being hyper competitive in casual tournaments. In store championships+ I think we certainly think about what really good list to take and how it fares against other really good lists - i.e. anti-meta or cross your fingers for favorable matchups.

2 minutes ago, Ken-Obi said:

Honestly not trying to be snarky but I'm afraid it might come across this way... aren't you just describing what the meta game is? The players/fleets that last won big are a natural thing for everyone else (who wants to be competitive) to think about beating. So they take a hard counter or something completely different and hope for favorable matchups. This is how it works for every meta (local, national, etc) isn't it? The meta game is inherently anti and/or circular because that's part of the meaning of the term.

Not trying to be unhelpful, just not quite sure what you're looking for. Our local group certainly looks like this although we have a lot of players more in to having fun (taking fun lists) that being hyper competitive in casual tournaments. In store championships+ I think we certainly think about what really good list to take and how it fares against other really good lists - i.e. anti-meta or cross your fingers for favorable matchups.

That's just it, I really don't know. Our local meta is all I have to base off of. There was a time when players came up with ideas independent of the meta (and some still do, I try not to get sucked into the rock paper scissors of it all). I was under the presumption that competitive lists were more about finding a solid balance than predicting the meta and building hard counters, (store champ and regional included).

Back when I played MTG with a small group of friends we encouraged people to come into the matches blind, with new decks because building hard counters made the matching all very boring and predictable. I don't feel like competitive Armada is like that? Am I wrong?

39 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

3.) Circular motions
I've noticed that because of the rock-paper-scissors quality in fleet weaknesses the meta will shift from one to another in an almost circular motion. For instance, continuing the motion of the changes above, when flotilla bombers lists dried up because of the quasar vic lists, the vic lists became predominant, as a result players started modifying their lists to have better anti-squadron squadrons, eventually this turned the meta into full Sloane fleets pushing max scatter aces from smaller-weaker ships. Once the max Sloane fleets became dominant (and with the release of wave 7) players started running large ships with smaller squads realizing that if they had just enough anti-squad they could sink the smaller Sloane ships before Sloane could effective strip the large ships. This created another shift, as Sloane lost it's effect multiple large ship builds with limited squads had risen to the surface and all but saturated the meta. Which brings us to the revival of the Dodonna drill running no squads. This list has been savagely wrecking the meta, I guess the added value of 50-80 points from the lack of squads, and the near-uselessness of anti-squadron squads being brought against it have given it an advantage. There have been a few players already playing with msu full bomber lists to specifically counter this, which would bring the meta full circle, and according to the dodonna drill list's owner, is exactly what he's waiting for, as he's waiting for these lists to surface so he can switch to the max sloane scatter aces list. (effectively he's predicting the turn of the meta and using it to cash in on casual wins lol)

Guy's a genius.

2 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

That's just it, I really don't know. Our local meta is all I have to base off of. There was a time when players came up with ideas independent of the meta (and some still do, I try not to get sucked into the rock paper scissors of it all). I was under the presumption that competitive lists were more about finding a solid balance than predicting the meta and building hard counters, (store champ and regional included).

Back when I played MTG with a small group of friends we encouraged people to come into the matches blind, with new decks because building hard counters made the matching all very boring and predictable. I don't feel like competitive Armada is like that? Am I wrong?

Realizing that my local meta is anecdotal, I think you can split tournaments into 2 styles - fun and competitive. We had a new Utah Open tournament last weekend as a fun thing since we didn't get a regional this year. We had several players not able to come at the last minute but of the 10 that were there, we had 10 different commanders! Lots of fun/experimental lists and it sure sounded like everyone had a blast. The store used the recent quarterly kit plus handed out everything else they had left over. IMHO your community would probably have more fun if the "general consensus" is you have some casual tournaments separate from competitive ones. Spell it out so people have an idea of what to expect if you have to.

For competitive tournaments locally, there's no question that the good players both talk to each other and pay attention to the national meta (usually lurking in this forum). Since at the end of the day you have to pick a list to run, do you (1) take what others are having success with, or do you (2) take something (and practice with it) that others think is anti to the first group, or do you (3) take something off the wall but still good and play the spoiler (win if you get a favorable matchup, or go for a 6-5/5-6 against the 1st group).

The innate advantage that one list might have other another is an issue for casual games in both X-Wing and Armada.

In tournaments, knowing you have to lock into a list and stick with it through multiple rounds against a variety of random pairings is part of the list-building strategy and one of the elements of luck you have to accept about the game (match-up plays a role in determining the outcome of a game, just like player decisions and dice also do).

What's trickier is how to approach this Rock-Paper-Scissor sort of dynamic in casual games . Watching a rock smash a pair of scissors or watching a scissors slice through a sheet of paper is not very fun ... for either player . So there is a bit of an onus on players looking to play casually to figure out how they'll handle the match-up... that is, what lists will they play. If they want to just say "hey, you get out a list you want to fly and I'll pull out a list I want to fly," they both have to be willing to bite the bullet if one list is a "counter" to the other.

Alternatively, players can do a little coordinating to try and control match-up. This happens a lot in X-Wing, I think because it's easier to put a list together and it plays more quickly. But I'll see players plan ahead of a match and say things like "Hey, I really want to fly this Fairship Rebels build. I'd love to practice it against a Kylo list. Do you want to build a Kylo list to fly against me?" Then, there's an implicit assumption that the player will be willing to fly some desired practice list against the other player next or at some point. I suppose this could happen in Armada, but it's more complicated to put a list together, the archetypes are less publicly known, and the games take longer to play out so reciprocation might be further away. I also think the vast majority of X-Wing players (who are playing in game stores and at game nights and stuff) fancy themselves interested in the competitive game, and pretty much every game is scene as potential practice for a future tournament. Not sure if the Armada community, generally, feels this same way.

18 minutes ago, Indy_com said:

Guy's a genius.

It's not going to help him competitively, but he's got our local group by the horns, he's steering the meta

26 minutes ago, Ken-Obi said:

For competitive tournaments locally, there's no question that the good players both talk to each other and pay attention to the national meta (usually lurking in this forum). Since at the end of the day you have to pick a list to run, do you (1) take what others are having success with, or do you (2) take something (and practice with it) that others think is anti to the first group, or do you (3) take something off the wall but still good and play the spoiler (win if you get a favorable matchup, or go for a 6-5/5-6 against the 1st group).

So what I should gather from this is that the local meta is becoming more competitive within itself? These 3 options seem to be what the players are doing these days. Our store runs a store champ and is the location for Ohio regionals. I never considered our guys to be competitive but they are following that formula.

So it sounds like the easy answer is something that counters MSU squads, Sloane, and a Dodonna Liberty.

Cracken CR90/HH swarm with 8 YT2400s?

Just now, geek19 said:

So it sounds like the easy answer is something that counters MSU squads, Sloane, and a Dodonna Liberty.

Cracken CR90/HH swarm with 8 YT2400s?

There's only one player in our meta who could even try. lol (none of our guys have more than like 3 Cr90s). Not a bad plan though.

A friend and I were discussing this just the other day. We try to avoid metas entirely so the game wont become dull. It feels like with metas in general it just becomes a list building competition in which the game almost becomes irrelevant.

We came up with two ideas to avoid metas in our group:

1) Limit upgrades. We didn't want to do home brew rules, so we figured limiting upgrades would help slow creation of an overarching meta.

2) Dispose of FFG mission cards and use historical scenarios. We are both American war between the states buffs. Several of the battles fought then make a great basis for Armada battles. Using one of those scenarios as a base, the forces get built to win the scenario completely ignoring the tournament metas. WWI and II also have a lot of great bases for scenarios. Another benefit is that tactics became more important.

Of course, none of this really helps for competitive play, but since no one in my group does that, its not a problem for us.

2 minutes ago, Thalomen said:

A friend and I were discussing this just the other day. We try to avoid metas entirely so the game wont become dull. It feels like with metas in general it just becomes a list building competition in which the game almost becomes irrelevant.

We came up with two ideas to avoid metas in our group:

1) Limit upgrades. We didn't want to do home brew rules, so we figured limiting upgrades would help slow creation of an overarching meta.

2) Dispose of FFG mission cards and use historical scenarios. We are both American war between the states buffs. Several of the battles fought then make a great basis for Armada battles. Using one of those scenarios as a base, the forces get built to win the scenario completely ignoring the tournament metas. WWI and II also have a lot of great bases for scenarios. Another benefit is that tactics became more important.

Of course, none of this really helps for competitive play, but since no one in my group does that, its not a problem for us.

an interesting thought!

I may bring that up a couple of our guys could really enjoy that.

One of the things I try to do to mix things up is throw random "monster truck" days in. Where everyone has a day to build a 600 or 800 point fleet with a 100 point squad cap. Tends to be a big hit.

I'm not going to say that it's unwise to create fleets that you feel have a good chance against what's popular. That's just being intelligent. But a cycle of hard counter skew fleets creates the churn you're experiencing and in my experience, players who chase the churn never get good enough with any particular fleet to do well with it at a competitive event against players who have stuck to an archetype and nailed it down. Ideally, you should be trying to get to the end of the dialectical process before anyone else and stay there: people who are chasing the churn use extreme fleets that are either a thesis or antithesis to the current hotness, you ideally want to arrive at a less-extreme more-stable synthesis that incorporates the good ideas of both and can hold its own in that environment without being a skewed caricature.

11 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

I'm not going to say that it's unwise to create fleets that you feel have a good chance against what's popular. That's just being intelligent. But a cycle of hard counter skew fleets creates the churn you're experiencing and in my experience, players who chase the churn never get good enough with any particular fleet to do well with it at a competitive event against players who have stuck to an archetype and nailed it down. Ideally, you should be trying to get to the end of the dialectical process before anyone else and stay there: people who are chasing the churn use extreme fleets that are either a thesis or antithesis to the current hotness, you ideally want to arrive at a less-extreme more-stable synthesis that incorporates the good ideas of both and can hold its own in that environment without being a skewed caricature.

This was my presumption about competitive play. You find something that works, then git gud at making it work for you. My meta is rapidly turning into a whirlpool. I fear that eventually players will get sick of cycle and leave. Any advice to keep the casual scene from getting too caught up in this?

Pretty much all wargames suffer from this super-list syndrome. In the worst cases it kills the game altogether.

In FFG/GW games the changes can be quite stark as both marketing strategies involve periodically adding new products to their games, which in order to boost sales are usually better than previous products and therefore change the balance of the game considerably.

Sadly, I don't think there is an easy way to counter it without amending the rules. For peace of mind it seems the best response is just to accept the inevitability of it.

2 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

an interesting thought!

I may bring that up a couple of our guys could really enjoy that.

One of the things I try to do to mix things up is throw random "monster truck" days in. Where everyone has a day to build a 600 or 800 point fleet with a 100 point squad cap. Tends to be a big hit.

May I suggest a potential first scenario? We have not play tested it, so if you use it, feel free to tweak. For that matter, Ill be happy to refine the scenario off line.

The Battle of Dogger Nebula, based on the 1915 battle of Dogger Bank.

The Imperial Navy has intercepted Rebel transmissions coordinating an attack on Imperial supply lines. The Rebels are gathering their most powerful capital ships so as to make as strong a showing as possible.

Seeing an opportunity to destroy major units of the Rebel fleet, the Imperials summon major units from surrounding sectors in an attempt to overwhelm the enemy fleet.

Victory Conditions:

Major Rebel Victory: Rebels escape with at least 3 ships.

Draw: Imperials destroy or cripple 50% or more of Rebel fleet with less than 50% destroyed or crippled.

Major imperial Victory: All four Rebel ships are heavily damaged (Defined as 1/2 or more hull points gone) or destroyed.

Fleet building rules:

Rebel fleet includes 4 Large based ships.

Imperial fleet includes 5 Large or Medium based ships. No Interdictors.

Maximum of two upgrades per ship. No named admirals. No fighters.

Scenario rules:

6 turns. No obstacles. Wrecks are left on the table. Any Rebel ship may flee to hyperspace on turn 5 or afterwards, if:

50% or more of hull points are intact. They are out of range of the closest Imperial ship. There are no ships/wrecks in a straight line from the bow of the ship to the nearest edge of the gaming table.

2 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

This was my presumption about competitive play. You find something that works, then git gud at making it work for you. My meta is rapidly turning into a whirlpool. I fear that eventually players will get sick of cycle and leave. Any advice to keep the casual scene from getting too caught up in this?

Bring a good all-around fleet that's not riding on just one trick and keep whipping them with it. Ideally if you've got more than one good player, if your top-tier players can win fairly regularly with different styles of fleets, the churn comes to an end almost immediately because there's no one specific target to tech against.

It also seems to be common in metas where players don't feel that skill matters and games are won and lost purely based on the match-up. It's true that some match-ups are way harder for a given fleet than others, but someone with more skill/practice will usually come out ahead of someone with less. Does your meta not have a mentoring style system or something that encourages stronger players to help weaker players improve? Just spitballing here, mind you.

51 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

There's only one player in our meta who could even try. lol (none of our guys have more than like 3 Cr90s). Not a bad plan though.

Now I know what to bring the next time I am finally able to make it down to your neck of the woods for a game!

17 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

Does your meta not have a mentoring style system or something that encourages stronger players to help weaker players improve? Just spitballing here, mind you.

I would also be interested in hearing about your meta and players and how everyone/everything is going. You may want to turn that into a PM, but I'd be happy to listen and offer what limited advice I could, haha.

22 minutes ago, Snipafist said:

Bring a good all-around fleet that's not riding on just one trick and keep whipping them with it. Ideally if you've got more than one good player, if your top-tier players can win fairly regularly with different styles of fleets, the churn comes to an end almost immediately because there's no one specific target to tech against.

It also seems to be common in metas where players don't feel that skill matters and games are won and lost purely based on the match-up. It's true that some match-ups are way harder for a given fleet than others, but someone with more skill/practice will usually come out ahead of someone with less. Does your meta not have a mentoring style system or something that encourages stronger players to help weaker players improve? Just spitballing here, mind you.

Unfortunately I am the top player in my meta. And understand, I'm saying that knowing full well I'm not an expert, I contest sometimes that I'm not even skilled, just REALLY lucky. (When I bring this up a few have said I build fleets that take luck out of the equation which is what makes some of them really hard to fight). Either way I guess I seem to understand the game better in some area then the rest of our group. I do have a good 50-100+ games over the rest of the group. I win consistently with a WIDE variety of fleets. But you know me lol in your own terms I'm a "jankmaster". I run a lot of oddball builds. I think since I first started playing I've learned how to make my fleets more balanced, even with the jank, and that adds to why they do well, but ultimately it's just me.

I turn people over to your articles when they wanna learn things, I wouldn't know what to teach 'em. I've linked our members to you and geek, steel, and gks blogs to learn, I'm afraid I'll teach them something that makes sense at a local level but will get them screwed competitively

I would say we have a couple players I think are more skilled than me in theory but have a really hard time either building fleets or just play for small wins or loses. One player in particular comes to mind, he's very good, but builds fleets that rarely win or lose big. He very consistently gets 6-5s or 5-6s.

I really don't know where I stand. I win or place high at the quarterly events I can play in, but most of the more competitive events I end up TOing ... so I haven't played the best in our area.

13 minutes ago, LT BDP said:

Now I know what to bring the next time I am finally able to make it down to your neck of the woods for a game!

lol The player was you.

Also complicating things is that we have the regular multiple-games-per week players and the once or twice-a-month players (like me). It's not always so simple to talk about a single meta. I've only heard rumors about this legendary Dodonna Liberty Drill, never actually faced it.

Maybe one of these Friday nights we all agree to bring new/untested lists and just see what the **** happens? Just to shake things up.

Just now, connivingmole said:

Also complicating things is that we have the regular multiple-games-per week players and the once or twice-a-month players (like me). It's not always so simple to talk about a single meta. I've only heard rumors about this legendary Dodonna Liberty Drill, never actually faced it.

Maybe one of these Friday nights we all agree to bring new/untested lists and just see what the **** happens? Just to shake things up.

That's a good idea. I may have to pitch it to the group. Though to be fair to the guy running the DD, he started playing when I did and was historically not awesome at the game, this could just be a sign that he's coming into his own. Which to me is still a good thing, even if the meta spins a bit hahaha.

Just now, Darth Sanguis said:

That's a good idea. I may have to pitch it to the group. Though to be fair to the guy running the DD, he started playing when I did and was historically not awesome at the game, this could just be a sign that he's coming into his own. Which to me is still a good thing, even if the meta spins a bit hahaha.

Oh yeah, I don't begrudge anyone running a fleet that works. I look forward to facing him and striving for the 6-5 victory!

Also, we're about due for another seasonal kit tournament that should help everyone focus and build confidence in one particular fleet.

1 minute ago, connivingmole said:

Oh yeah, I don't begrudge anyone running a fleet that works. I look forward to facing him and striving for the 6-5 victory!

Also, we're about due for another seasonal kit tournament that should help everyone focus and build confidence in one particular fleet.

Yeah I hope we get the kits soon, Carl said they're ordered but who knows with the distribution.... I still have to e-mail FFG about the Legion fuckery.