In this blog I look at how 2nd Ed squadbuilding needs us to forget what we knew in 1st Ed, and a useful trick for accelerating your acclimatisation to the new edition...

http://stayontheleader.blogspot.com/2018/08/you-must-unlearn-what-you-have-learned.html

...and it also has a funny dog gif.

Thx for sharing your approach. I felt myself that maximization leaves me with too little ships in the list, also I have indeed been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of cards I haven't memorized yet.

I will pick up your idea and see how it goes

I have two approaches I did when starting with 1.0, and which I will do again in 2.0, and the two are almost the opposite of each other:

1. Build my individual dream ships. Which Luke do I like best? Is it instinctive aim and torpedoes, or supernatural reflexes, or something else?

2. Which ships go well together? (Mandatory reading is your squad balance article and some posts by Theorist on TC) This takes more effort and testing - what are the different tempos of ships, what role can they fulfill and so on.

I combine them and start with fully stuffed individual ships. E.g. if I want to go towards an alpha-esque list, I first add TorpedoLuke with R2D2 and maybe afterburners. Then add other ships, way past 200pt. Then I trim away the fat and at the same time look what fits well together to pose a difficult puzzle.

In every case, the list has to fit with what I like to fly. Personally that's MiniSwarms or TripleAces for me.

9 hours ago, SOTL said:

In this blog I look at how 2nd Ed squadbuilding needs us to forget what we knew in 1st Ed, and a useful trick for accelerating your acclimatisation to the new edition...

http://stayontheleader.blogspot.com/2018/08/you-must-unlearn-what-you-have-learned.html

...and it also has a funny dog gif.

That was a good read, I had a bit of a play and I think I like this list. Cheers for letting me know about your Blog, will keep an eye out for it now.

Total 198.

On your Sai/Soontir example Soontir could not focus the second time. Can't perform the same action more than once on a ship per round so he could either focus or focus->red barrel roll either of which would grant Sai the focus but Soontir would only have one.

48 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

On your Sai/Soontir example Soontir could not focus the second time. Can't perform the same action more than once on a ship per round so he could either focus or focus->red barrel roll either of which would grant Sai the focus but Soontir would only have one.

The second focus is triggered from Soontir's ability and is not an action. Assuming he lined up the bullseye arc properly, that's two focus tokens and an evade token on Soontir Fel. (The error is that he says evade token when he meant focus token, but he counted it as a focus token)

This article sort of has the tournament blinders on as it focuses only on one type of format and that is the premier format (nationals/worlds). It isn't a bad thing but I don't think it covers all concepts of squad building for other tournaments that may come up such as System Open or the last one which had 1 mandatory upgrade that was voted on depending on what faction you flew for. Then there is also the alternative threat system but that topic has been beaten enough for a dead horse.

Some things are good such as the compassion of past actions and upgrades, also the pilot chart showing the cost adjustments in the new scale. What actions and mechanics have been scaled back bringing which mechanics into more of the focus.

I would however start with a focus on faction selection especially with 4 new ones on the horizon (2 of them never released in 1st edition). With more ships and more factions faction switching is not going to be as easy as in the early waves on X-wing (though more easier than WarmachineHordes or Warhammer). Also what type of match are you looking at, if this is just regional/store championship practice. The first thing in any list building is determining what the list is being built for otherwise you are starting at step 13 and not at step 1.

All in all a decent article if it is not a proper guide.

Nice article. I am going to approach list building the same way I did in first edition. I'll pick my favorite SW characters, upgrade them reasonably and fill up the rest of the list with ships I like ?