1 hour ago, Astech said:

I, for one, have stopped buying X-wing for the past 4-5 months and swapped to building my Armada collection - a much more stable game.

You can also look at the bottom end of tournaments, where players bring a very cheap list (often under $150) and get burned out after the first few rounds due to massive losses. They might quit the game, or boycott XWM for 6 months as a protest. It happens, just not at the top tables where winning is the only priority.

Actually, I don't think it happens all that much outside top-tier players either, as the tournament attendances are increasing.

As an anecdote, myself. I never stopped buying X-wing, in the past year I bought my firs epic ships and next week-end I'm heading to the Bologna System Open, my first major tournament. On paper it's easy to conclude I'm enjoying the game more than ever. In reality however, this is my 2nd least enjoyable time in x-wing (after unhittable palp aces pre wave 8). I am still enjoying the game enough though and, even in it's current state, it feels miles better than my only other tabletop wargame experience (warhammer 40k 7th edition).

Is high end tournament attendance really the best way to evaluate the state of the game?

X-Wing is bar far the most popular Star Wars game going right now - and there's lots of competition for it. Destiny, IA, Armada, Legion - All doing well enough, but X-Wing was the first, and is still going strong.

They are slowing down the release schedule a bit - but honestly that kinda should have happened a long time ago. There is a TON of product. A ton. Armada doesn't have half the product X-Wing does, but it's also slowed things down and it's fine - there's more than enough expansions out there for a vast world of builds and designs. It's a great time to be a Star Wars gamer!

18 minutes ago, Crabbok said:

X-Wing is bar far the most popular Star Wars game going right now - and there's lots of competition for it. Destiny, IA, Armada, Legion - All doing well enough, but X-Wing was the first, and is still going strong.

They are slowing down the release schedule a bit - but honestly that kinda should have happened a long time ago. There is a TON of product. A ton. Armada doesn't have half the product X-Wing does, but it's also slowed things down and it's fine - there's more than enough expansions out there for a vast world of builds and designs. It's a great time to be a Star Wars gamer!

The trick is that X-wing isn't just falling under the umbrella of "Star Wars game" in terms of competition. Its niche is in a few areas:

Game Length: Armada, legion and destiny all have different game lengths to X-wing. Destiny is significantly shorter, and both armada/legion can go far longer.
Game Type: Destiny is a card game (as is the SW LCG). Legion is a classical war minis game. Armada is closest, but is a very different game in many regards.
Game Price: X-wing is affordable to enter, as is Destiny, in terms of the core set and a few initial purchases. But both Armada and Legion have steeper entry prices.
Competitive Price: X-wing is quite expensive to remain competitive in, but not on the same scale as, say Destiny. Armada is a larger game overall, hence a greater price, and it remains to be seen what the Legion meta is like.

So X-wing fills a player niche, and one that is very lucrative - players that want 1(ish) hour games, miniatures - but not too many and a low entry price to test the waters followed by comparatively reasonable competitive 'fees'. X-wing being released first certainly helped, but it's losing that edge more each day, and FFG's other, superior Star Wars games will supersede it if FFG isn't careful with what they release. Hopefully the slower release schedule for X-wing will allow the designers more time to balance things out, rather that the upgrade shotgunning that leaves us with either garbage or outstanding cards.

All that said, this is definitely the time to get on board the Star Wars train at FFG. All their other games seem to be excelling at the moment.

We are trying to grow our local X wing community in Oklahoma - any advice for getting exposure to new players? I migrated from WFB and I know there's more miniature gamers still looking for a replacement

At my FLGS there's a hardcore of 6 of us. Enough to have a few games each Thursday (X-Wing night!).

It would be nice to have more, and we do sometimes, especially when the students are all here.

Last tournament we had 24 pilots and filled the shop! So there are enough people in the local area, even if we don't see them every week.

As a local meta, we're all over the shop. Three Silencers, G1-As, Brobots. I'm probably the most meta with QD, Vessery and a TLT Aggressor at the moment. So we don't get trapped in the power creep so much (though I did get a lot of crap when Harpoons first came out, but we've all eased away from them now).

One or two buy Armada but don't play it in the shop. No one plays IA. I've seen Destiny a few times. The price is putting people off Legion for now.

I'd like more people on a weekly, but X-Wing is in a pretty good spot.

I agree with the OP.

The game isn't perfect, but rather than complaining about it, we just play the game that is in front of us, and encourage new players to do the same. This has led to a developing and flowering community. Our local FLGS has between 8 and 15 every Tuesday with a steady run of people looking for pick up and league games. We have a solid culture that you play whoever asks whether you are a top tier player or a newbie, so everyone improves bit by bit. Our last GNK had 18 players for a 3 round Swiss with a mixture of top meta lists and more funsies stuff being rolled out.

As a group, we are pretty sold that this is one of the most open meta environments to date. We have good players flying all 3 factions, and doing equally well. At big tournaments, we have a reasonable, if not stellar showing, but that is improving event by event.

3 hours ago, Dreadai said:

As a group, we are pretty sold that this is one of the most open meta environments to date.

This is not true at the competitive level.

It keeps getting repeated, but there is no data supporting that. Further, all of the top competitive lists are defensive fat turrets, some of which regenerate and/or drop bombs.

Casual play is, and always has been, fine, and will probably always be fine, because people just come to play. But the competitive scene is, as least for varieties sake, the same as it has always been; however, unlike previous metas, it's heavily focused on turrets over arcs.

I've been talking to some people from the local group. We're going to get the record of what is used at our next tournament (mid May), and see how things stack up.

Since there will be the regulars and people from outside of our usual games it should be interesting too see just 'meta' the tournament ends up being.

48 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

This is not true at the competitive level.

It keeps getting repeated, but there is no data supporting that. Further, all of the top competitive lists are defensive fat turrets, some of which regenerate and/or drop bombs.

Casual play is, and always has been, fine, and will probably always be fine, because people just come to play. But the competitive scene is, as least for varieties sake, the same as it has always been; however, unlike previous metas, it's heavily focused on turrets over arcs.

But your use of data is heavily biased to what people play in countries that provide data. It's US centric and top-cut centric. We have a straight data point of arced ships winning 2 or maybe 3 system opens (Imperial/Palp aces) - the same number as fat turrets, or regen turrets, or bomb turrets... You are correct that turrets are heavily favoured over arcs as a competetive choice that makes life a bit easier for pilots, but saying that arcs are not competitive at all is still fallacious.

43 minutes ago, Dreadai said:

It's US centric

It's about 50/50. The other 50% is Australia, Europe, and Brazil.

44 minutes ago, Dreadai said:

top-cut centric.

Yes. But that's what I meant by competitive.

44 minutes ago, Dreadai said:

We have a straight data point of arced ships winning 2 or maybe 3 system opens

My data includes that. Winning the tournament is a single data point in a plethora of data, such as the top cut. 2 system opens do not outweight the preponderous of events, and even those cuts were dominated by turrets.

45 minutes ago, Dreadai said:

but saying that arcs are not competitive at all is still fallacious.

Good thing I didn't say that. I said the competitive lists are dominated (i.e. a majority) of turrets. That's true.

~45% of the top cut meta is rebels, and those rebel lists' main win engine are turrets that drop bombs, regenerate, or have defensive stacking (or a combination). I mean, that's just the data. Some people find that fun, but some don't. And the fact that this meta is more heavily skewed to non-arcs was my point. Because it is.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kNos2DhJfYOwKfFBVZS3GbnADB4WL6NvByuCeNmLdtc/edit?usp=sharing

I was gonna do another comment about cost, but after adding up the MSRP of my X-Wing collection I started to cry.

I don’t suggest doing that.

9 minutes ago, FatherTurin said:

I was gonna do another comment about cost, but after adding up the MSRP of my X-Wing collection I started to cry.

I don’t suggest doing that.

Fortunately for me, most of my somewhat excessive collection is second hand!

29 minutes ago, FatherTurin said:

I was gonna do another comment about cost, but after adding up the MSRP of my X-Wing collection I started to cry.

I don’t suggest doing that.

I did that once, then compared it with what I would have had to spend if I wanted to get back into 40k. I felt much better after that.

1 minute ago, Major Tom said:

I did that once, then compared it with what I would have had to spend if I wanted to get back into 40k. I felt much better after that.

Yeah....but I compared it with cost of my Imperial Guard and Custodes and realized I had to add them together and I just cried more.....

In all seriousness, thanks to almost never paying retail thanks to a great FLGS, on top of growing the collection over 4 and a half years, it really doesn’t amount to that much at once. Even with 40k I took advantage of the fantastic savings you get from the battleforces, plus my local discount. While I probably have spent a total of around 3 grand on nerd stuff over the last half a decade, not only was a lot of it funded by selling off old armies and board games, but it’s STILL a heck of a lot cheaper than smoking. I save money and my lungs! Win-win.

FYI, going by my pre-quitting rates, I would have dropped around $15k on cigarettes over the same time.

The moral of story kids? Don’t smoke. And never pay retail.

2 hours ago, Tlfj200 said:

~45% of the top cut meta is rebels, and those rebel lists' main win engine are turrets that drop bombs, regenerate, or have defensive stacking (or a combination). I mean, that's just the data. Some people find that fun, but some don't. And the fact that this meta is more heavily skewed to non-arcs was my point. Because it is.

You keep fogetting what meta means.

It's not just about what lists are objectively strongest, but which are also the most popular and accessible.

Is Ghost/Fenn objectively stronger than the Yorr Palp Aces? Not really.

Is it easier to play and more popular? Oh, yes!

Also, you and a handful of other members of these forums are the big part of the problem, and the reason why this place has turned into a toxic dump.

It's the same people who were complaining to no end about Jumpmasters just a few months ago.

Please don't pollute this thread with this - there is enough spam topics on that already..

And the game will never be perfectly balanced, just learn to live with that, or switch full time to the looping chewie nonsense or what not.

And let's not forget that the current numerical dominance of Rebels at tournaments is a direct result of FFG overnerfing Scum (since Rebels have just occupied the power vacuum left by JMK and Attani).

So I guess you got what you asked for, right?

29 minutes ago, baranidlo said:

You keep fogetting what meta means.

It's not just about what lists are objectively strongest, but which are also the most popular and accessible

Uh... huh?

A game’s meta is the game outside of the core game itself. More colloquially, it’s shorthand for what lists you should expect at a tournament.

...so, that’s all the data attempts to answer: what is making the cut, in aggregate. Any individual area will vary, but nonetheless, knowing the aggregate trends is useful, in particular when figuring out how much time and attention you should pay to a list when preparing for a tournament.

...So, no, I did not forget what ‘meta’ means.

3 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

Uh... huh?

A game’s meta is the game outside of the core game itself. More colloquially, it’s shorthand for what lists you should expect at a tournament.

...so, that’s all the data attempts to answer: what is making the cut, in aggregate. Any individual area will vary, but nonetheless, knowing the aggregate trends is useful, in particular when figuring out how much time and attention you should pay to a list when preparing for a tournament.

...So, no, I did not forget what ‘meta’ means.

Good.

Now, how did you come to conclusion, that in order to win a tournament you are only permitted to play one of the most popular 2-3 meta lists??

Because that's what keeps being repeated or suggested all the time in the threads, by you and others.

But from the mathematical logic point of view, you should agree that it is not directly implied by these statistics..

5 minutes ago, baranidlo said:

Good.

Now, how did you come to conclusion, that in order to win a tournament you are only permitted to play one of the most popular 2-3 meta lists??

Because that's what keeps being repeated or suggested all the time in the threads, by you and others.

But from the mathematical logic point of view, you should agree that it is not directly implied by these statistics..

Can you tell me exactly how I said that?

In Listener 4, while you are learning, we suggested to pick a known meta list. This was to reduce the number of factors you're trying to improve at the same time. You can play non-meta. But if you want to do well, your non-meta list had better consider the current meta, or you're just list building to list build.

So, to summarize what just happened:

1. You informed me I don't know what a meta is
2. You then incorrectly defined what a meta is
3. You now acknowledge what a meta is
4. But then argue I said yet another thing somewhere else... maybe?

What exactly is the point here?

MY underlying point was simply that this isn't the "most varied meta ever." It's basically the same level of varied as other metas in previous years.

It is far more turret-heavy, which I noted.

58 minutes ago, baranidlo said:

You keep fogetting what meta means.

It's not just about what lists are objectively strongest, but which are also the most popular and accessible.

Is Ghost/Fenn objectively stronger than the Yorr Palp Aces? Not really.

Is it easier to play and more popular? Oh, yes!

Oh geez.

20 hours ago, heychadwick said:

Is high end tournament attendance really the best way to evaluate the state of the game?

It is if you attend a lot of high end tournaments.

39 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

What exactly is the point here?

MY underlying point was simply that this isn't the "most varied meta ever." It's basically the same level of varied as other metas in previous years.

It is far more turret-heavy, which I noted.

That's nice, but it's not what's in your Krayts crying thread, and what bunch of other topics here have been saying for the past months..

10 minutes ago, baranidlo said:

That's nice, but it's not what's in your Krayts crying thread, and what bunch of other topics here have been saying for the past months..

Um... no?

Edit: I actually kind of like Krayt Krying... but it needs a K. For reasons.

4 hours ago, FatherTurin said:

I was gonna do another comment about cost, but after adding up the MSRP of my X-Wing collection I started to cry.

I don’t suggest doing that.

JFC.... yup. I cried.

9 minutes ago, Tlfj200 said:

Um... no?

Edit: I actually kind of like Krayt Krying... but it needs a K. For reasons.

I'm not really going to dig through the past 500 pages of the thread to find quotations.

So let's maybe say that you specifically may be just saying what you're saying.

Unfortunately, there is a bunch of trolls occupying these forums which are clouding any kind of potentially productive discussion..