Stuff's been happening really quickly in the past week. Saw, Reapers, 2.0 and so forth. It doesn't seem like anybody's settled down to talk about the effect of all these goodies on the tournament scene. Here's my speculation.

1. Heavy swarms will be the THING after Saw drops. U-wings are 23 points each for FCS and courier droids, giving them insane deployment and firepower advantages. Reapers with LWF and token denying ISB Slicers are 26; with extreme manoeuvrability to boot.

2. T-65s will reign supreme. Wedge is ABSURD; 29 points gets you BB-8, VI and the new gadgets. Wes is just as good; porkins is hilarious and so forth. They're the perfect hammer for Rey's anvil.

3. Krennic Phantoms are something I've been trying out, to much success. Whisper is ungodly with Sensor Jammer, and both aces pair well with a Palp decimator.

Onto Second Edition now:

1. Luke is AMAZING. If his base cost was 70 points (35 in 1st edition) he'd be fantastic. The ability to generate a HUGE number of what are essentially calculate tokens each round is amazing. He's a 5, and the highest yet revealed is a 6 (Wedge), so he's right up there with the big aces.

2. Y-wings appear to have a significant buff. Barrel rolls, "crew" slots, mobile arcs and so forth promise a points decrease to this already efficient ship.

3. Just about everything else is up in the air, from what PWTs will look like to whether the classic pillars of X-wing will start to matter again. I hope that Unkar gets a good buff while retaining his tractor shenanigans, but other than that I'm willing to accept a new, varied and interesting meta.

What do you think will be the next big thing, in both 1.0 after Saw's Reaper drops and 2.0 upon release?

1.0 discussion, whoo! I missed you.

I'm very into Krennic, SJ Whisper myself. Pilot skill remains an issue obviously, so he's hot/cold as before but it does seem a significant step up. Tactical Officer on an accompanying ship adds another string to his bow but I've been running into list efficiency problems there, as I lack a Decimator.

I've also toyed with Saw plus Finn on sloop Rey and it's absolutely brutal.

Three words: Five Rookie X-Wings.

4 Zealots + Saw as a force multiplier

When is the new wave out?

1.0 x-wings are sadly not that good

gotta remember the environment they're expected to exist in, one drowning in heaps of action independent modifiers + hyper maneuverability + unavoidable turrets + ridiculous burst damage

these guys won't amount to much. U-wings still can't compete with Auzzies

and while Xs are fine, the rigors of flying all those ships compared to the cruise control nature of meta turrets is going to make it harder for people to survive the rigors of long tournaments. They could win, but they are less likely to

similarly not much hope for krennic phantom. Krennic's great, but PS 9 is hardly novel at this point and we're already seeing tons of action independent FOCUS modifiers to get around sensor jammer. The phantom's crippling dependency on PS will keep it from seeing any sort of sustained competitive success imo...

2.0:

Yes, Luke is bonkers. He's a better Poe in a game where action independent modifiers will be far more difficult to come across

He will probably also be very expensive to reflect how powerful he is, provided FFG knows what they're doing now

Not sure about Ys, need to see what guns they can bring to bear. All in all, however, I'm hopeful for every ship in 2.0. It's an exciting, brand new world

Gonna be a wonderful time...if FFG doesn't drop the ball again

I am glad that Luke is bonkers. One of the biggest disappointments when I first started exploring the game was finding out that Han and Luke were just not really competitive and bringing them to the table meant you were giving yourself a sizable disadvantage. Don't get me wrong, I love Wedge and Rey, but Han and Luke are THE icons of Star Wars and deserve to be expensive top-tier pilots. One of the most exciting things about the redesign for me is that Luke and Han can be made great without necessarily shouldering other pilots like Wedge and Rey permanently aside.

nexttwelveexits- Han was meta for a couple seasons, you must not of been an X-wing player back then. He was really good for a while.

I'm excited to see if swarms and the Empire are good again. The Empire faction hasn't been good enough to win World's since 2012, even with a pre-nerf Phantom, Emperor, Defenders, it still wasn't enough to get them over the hump.

I'm also curious on if The Jumpmaster will get it's tricks back(Crew, Droid, Torps slots) and become a unique ship again. The Firespray looks great with all the improvements it has and it's move down to a medium base. I'm guessing Jumpmaster and IG-88 are both medium size ships now too. Hopefully they redo the Hound's Tooth, it always felt to narrow and small especially since it had its own Headhunter inside it.

I'm going to guess that 5 X-wings won't be possible in 2.0 since 8 Ties seem to be the max still for the Empire.

Black squad TIEs with crackshot seem to be cheaper as you can still run four with Vader despite Vader costing almost half your list

At apparently 86 out of 200 naked, your looking at a 43 point Vader and 60 points of black Crack

Conjecture: crackshot is 0 points on black squadron now

And 5 xs against a bunch of crackshot and howlie, well I'd give it to the tide of TIEs

1 hour ago, ficklegreendice said:

1.0

similarly not much hope for krennic phantom. Krennic's great, but PS 9 is hardly novel at this point and we're already seeing tons of action independent FOCUS modifiers to get around sensor jammer. The phantom's crippling dependency on PS will keep it from seeing any sort of sustained competitive success imo...

I should perhaps have noted that I didn't expect any kind of meta return for him in 1.0 (thread title, I know :D) . It's not just the PS, running up against Expertise/Tactician Wookies makes me feel like I just sat on a whoopie cushion.