Wow! This really topic took off. I don't know, but maybe FFG should sticky this or make a similar post. I honestly think it could be helpful (especially to new players getting started figuring out competitive X-Wing), I'm not just trying to get my post pinned.

4 hours ago, Cloaker said:

5. Cartel. Marauders.

No other list in nearly 100 games of second edition has given me more victories.

I've murdered every supposed 2.0 meta list with it. 18-2.

When they raise their base cost by 1 one day I'll weep villainous tears.

This is why I love playing homebrew outlier lists. Dedicated tournament players often practice against other dedicated tournament players, reading tournament blogs and generally being steeped in the competitive echo chamber. That makes them vulnerable to skillfully flown fringe stuff. Having Seventh Sister hit Whisper with an R1 shot, removing the last shield with Optimized Prototype and forcing through a crit with her ability, or having a Lambda take a hit, trigger Valen Rudor's Squad Leader, handing out a focus and a lock to a Redline who in turn protorps Wedge in the face, that's what makes this game so fun.

Gonna bring down Boba with a couple of Black Sun Enforcers later today, I think.

25 minutes ago, Okapi said:

This is why I love playing homebrew outlier lists. Dedicated tournament players often practice against other dedicated tournament players, reading tournament blogs and generally being steeped in the competitive echo chamber. That makes them vulnerable to skillfully flown fringe stuff. Having Seventh Sister hit Whisper with an R1 shot, removing the last shield with Optimized Prototype and forcing through a crit with her ability, or having a Lambda take a hit, trigger Valen Rudor's Squad Leader, handing out a focus and a lock to a Redline who in turn protorps Wedge in the face, that's what makes this game so fun.

Gonna bring down Boba with a couple of Black Sun Enforcers later today, I think.

Well said sir. Fearless and Inventive... my kind of scum. Rogue list builders unite!

Though I must add that I don't think the disperate factions of Xwing are different enough to check and balance for a more diverse meta

It isn't like warmachine/hordes where you have three distinct victory conditions (kill army, kill warcaster; scenario) and countless ways to go about it between shooting, magic, melee, and powerful once-per-game feats

Sadly, the simplicity of the xwing system comes shackled with limited design space. Armada side stepped this just fine, even with only two factions,, but idk if it's possible for xwing to follow in those footsteps

54 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Though I must add that I don't think the disperate factions of Xwing are different enough to check and balance for a more diverse meta

It isn't like warmachine/hordes where you have three distinct victory conditions (kill army, kill warcaster; scenario) and countless ways to go about it between shooting, magic, melee, and powerful once-per-game feats

Sadly, the simplicity of the xwing system comes shackled with limited design space. Armada side stepped this just fine, even with only two factions,, but idk if it's possible for xwing to follow in those footsteps

Honestly, I think it is. It's just that no one official is really putting in the effort.

At the very least, this is what Epic should be about. Not just huge ships, but also scenarios/missions/objectives. It is far easier to craft scenarios at higher point totals.

Somewhere in the middle could be dogfights + objectives. Maybe these games need to happen at a slightly higher point total (300 points?) to be viable, because the 200-point-dogfight is also a shackle on the ability to be creative with victory conditions.

Yeah, I do agree to an extent

Xwing's limited model count makes dice rolling FAR more of a factor because a single roll can utterly **** game flow by making 33% of a list invincible or autodead (think aces like Soontir)

Larger points totals would be neat, though I'm loathe to go up to epic table sizes (not a lot of tablespace in NYC :(, i think 4' by 4' is the max reasonable size)

Would still need to up price on i5+ though, otherwise we'll just see even more of it spammed

On 11/26/2018 at 10:56 AM, gennataos said:

This is the primary reason I've always been a proponent of the Second Edition format...a limited format promotes exploration of all the nooks and crannies. Hopefully Hyperspace format will deliver that.

I just played in a 2nd edition tournament and there was no variety

boba / coordinate shuttle plus fenn dominated

btw - I used wedge / luke/ Dutch (and loved it)

1 minute ago, freakyg3 said:

I just played in a 2nd edition tournament and there was no variety

boba / coordinate shuttle plus fenn dominated

btw - I used wedge / luke/ Dutch (and loved it)

Yeah, yeah. I've heard it a ton. It's not the point. The point I was quoting was that most people don't bother to explore things outside of the obviously good. Most of us just dismiss stuff outright.

On 11/26/2018 at 10:19 AM, JJ48 said:

Really? Feels like a lot of options to me. Have you tried 3x Lambdas ?

No, because I have not bought 3 Empire conversion kits.

2 hours ago, ficklegreendice said:

Larger points totals would be neat, though I'm loathe to go up to epic table sizes (not a lot of tablespace in NYC :(, i think 4' by 4' is the max reasonable size)

4x4 would probably be plenty. Or even 3x4, because that can allow for long vs. short set ups. While I play 6x3 a lot, it can be too much space. I get around it by deploying out to R3 (and sometimes even R5 for one side if running long-ways).

I also play on a dining table with a leaf put in to get the space.

1 hour ago, Quarrel said:

No, because I have not bought 3 Empire conversion kits.

Their dial didn't change from 1E, and as long as your opponent doesn't mind the names on the bases not matching, you can just use Decimator bases for the extras.

I think 7 factions, especially if they are all reasonably deep and varied, is going to be really bad for this game. Right now you can build a list with a reasonable assumption of what you might be facing, or have to deal with. It wont be perfect, but you can make take-all-comer lists where you can win with good flying and dice luck.

From my experience in other tabletops, once the number of factions balloons, you have 2 possibilities: Either you are allowed to bring a 2nd list (see Warmachine), which turns the game into a much less accessible hardcore game, and often leads to that additional list being a hardcounter to the most weird/unconventional faction that your other list cannot cover, or (see almost any other tabletop) you just build for the top factions and hope that luck of the draw prevents you from going up against dark horse lists and the weird factions, because adjusting your list (we are talking about SUCH a small model pool in this game) to account for, say, First Order lists would drop your chance of winning against the top meta significantly, so your only way of having a shot at the title is being lucky and not being matched vs. a good First Order player.

As an event organizer, I have seen this come up plenty of times in huge (150+ players) warhammer events - the tournament winners were almost always building lists that would be auto-losses against some of the dark horse armies present, they just got lucky and didnt get them as opponents. Quite often, the No.1 would have lost terribly to the No. 35, but they never met in match-ups. This makes people (rightfully) mad and devalues tournament wins, turning the game into chaos, rather than skill-based competition.

6 hours ago, Kaiju said:

I think 7 factions, especially if they are all reasonably deep and varied, is going to be really bad for this game. Right now you can build a list with a reasonable assumption of what you might be facing, or have to deal with. It wont be perfect, but you can make take-all-comer lists where you can win with good flying and dice luck.

From my experience in other tabletops, once the number of factions balloons, you have 2 possibilities: Either you are allowed to bring a 2nd list (see Warmachine), which turns the game into a much less accessible hardcore game, and often leads to that additional list being a hardcounter to the most weird/unconventional faction that your other list cannot cover, or (see almost any other tabletop) you just build for the top factions and hope that luck of the draw prevents you from going up against dark horse lists and the weird factions, because adjusting your list (we are talking about SUCH a small model pool in this game) to account for, say, First Order lists would drop your chance of winning against the top meta significantly, so your only way of having a shot at the title is being lucky and not being matched vs. a good First Order player.

As an event organizer, I have seen this come up plenty of times in huge (150+ players) warhammer events - the tournament winners were almost always building lists that would be auto-losses against some of the dark horse armies present, they just got lucky and didnt get them as opponents. Quite often, the No.1 would have lost terribly to the No. 35, but they never met in match-ups. This makes people (rightfully) mad and devalues tournament wins, turning the game into chaos, rather than skill-based competition.

Anyway more factions means more fun and bigger playerbase (casual players). I've met lot of ppl waiting for Separatists to jump into X-wing: they wanna play last tables having fun yelling "Roger Roger!" while sticking robots to asteroids

For competitive players, maybe FFG will be willing to change tournament system. Mynocks tested interesting format during their tournament (can't recall how they called it: 2 losses Swiss? Double elimination?) that prevent being kicked out by hitting weird Dark Horse in one battle.

On 11/26/2018 at 11:52 AM, SOTL said:

Will ppl please stop talking about Attani like it was some hidden gem? It exploded almost immediately that Scum with green turns on their dial were printed.

THANK YOU!

16 hours ago, Kaiju said:

I think 7 factions, especially if they are all reasonably deep and varied, is going to be really bad for this game. Right now you can build a list with a reasonable assumption of what you might be facing, or have to deal with. It wont be perfect, but you can make take-all-comer lists where you can win with good flying and dice luck.

From my experience in other tabletops, once the number of factions balloons, you have 2 possibilities: Either you are allowed to bring a 2nd list (see Warmachine), which turns the game into a much less accessible hardcore game, and often leads to that additional list being a hardcounter to the most weird/unconventional faction that your other list cannot cover, or (see almost any other tabletop) you just build for the top factions and hope that luck of the draw prevents you from going up against dark horse lists and the weird factions, because adjusting your list (we are talking about SUCH a small model pool in this game) to account for, say, First Order lists would drop your chance of winning against the top meta significantly, so your only way of having a shot at the title is being lucky and not being matched vs. a good First Order player.

As an event organizer, I have seen this come up plenty of times in huge (150+ players) warhammer events - the tournament winners were almost always building lists that would be auto-losses against some of the dark horse armies present, they just got lucky and didnt get them as opponents. Quite often, the No.1 would have lost terribly to the No. 35, but they never met in match-ups. This makes people (rightfully) mad and devalues tournament wins, turning the game into chaos, rather than skill-based competition.

More factions is good for beer 'n pretzels gaming.

But yeah its absolute trash for a competitive game.

So I dont think it's bad for the game as much as it's bad for one aspect of the game that I think gets played less? I could be wrong but I thought the casual side of swing was the bigger one.

More factions means more $ though, and that's all that matters in the end

More factions is bad for the game in the same way more ships is bad for the game. It's obviously going to lead to higher variability and less predictability, but for a lot of people, that's precisely the appeal of a game that allows for list building. If you don't want that, maybe stick to Star Wars Chess?

Good. Down with the meta! If people have to account for variety from 7 different factions, maybe they won’t play the same 4 lists all across the tournament scheme.

I discussed this with a friend recently and I determined that there are 2 branches of metas:

- 3 rounds

- 4 rounds or more (especially with cut)

This was present in V1.0, but less so. In V2.0, however, it is becoming very apparent in part because there is half points on every ship. What is the difference between both?

In a 3 round tournament, you need 3 victories to win. It does not matter if you win 102 to 100 or 200 to 0. If you lose once, you won't reach the top and it ends there. A list like 4 bombers + jendon works pretty well here; it will get the job done and has a high success ratio.

In a 4 round tournament, the same above list might need to win every game because of how horrible its MOV is (it is trading blow for blow). In V1.0, both me and another guy lost to a 4 y-Wing tlt... and yet both of us reached the top 4 and our mutual opponent did not. We had all lost a game, but MOV was a key factor in determining who would reach the top.

That's why when list building, I not only look at the success ratio of my squad, but also at how large an MOV gap I was able to get. Best way to get ready for the regional.

2 hours ago, SpiderMana said:

Good. Down with the meta! If people have to account for variety from 7 different factions, maybe they won’t play the same 4 lists all across the tournament scheme.

But thats the exact opposite of what happens. If you have to account for an overly large number of factions that you cannot possibly plan for in detail, as in any other tabletop game this has happened, it leads to utter stagnation precisely because you never know what could happen, so people settle on THE list of THE faction, usually a hugely resilient brick, or some sort of control list (which you can see in TCGs as well - control is almost always good for uncertain matchups, but its always a pain to actually have to play against it all the time) and dont dare to go outside the bubble.

Players playing in tournaments, or generally playing to win, only dare to experiment under "real" circumstances if they have a feeling they can roughly guess what they are going to be facing. Good experiments come from REALLY good players thinking/knowing they have identified a possible approach to the game that differs from the usual, yet can tick the right boxes for success. Its never the randomly thrown together fun list of a player who doesnt even bother looking at what they are going to face - those lists we will never hear about, because they might get 1 or 2 wins, but never score the event.

Beer+Pretzels/Casual-Wing isnt affected by either IMO. The meta just doesnt apply there, or the player skill itself is such a big difference, the relatively smaller power differences of the list dont influence the outcome as much. IMO, casual tabletop has a habit of vastly overestimating the relevance of list building/selection over player skill.

But yes, more product means more money to an extent. I suppose its possible there are a handful of people not playing X-Wing, or not buying more, because they want an unreleased faction. I have my doubts this would be the case if they had never announced them, though. I think 1.0 had all the relevant factions that make Star Wars actual Star Wars.

On ‎11‎/‎25‎/‎2018 at 9:57 PM, JJH_BATMAN said:

What do guys thing is the current Meta? I know the point of 2.0 is that "everything is viable" but there are things like barrage bombers that seem to be really good right now.

Well the question is which format . I guess Hyperspace is supposed to be the completive format but it is as restrictive as 2nd edition. Extended has its own meta. As for everything is viable, well as with hyperspace that is not the case because most of the ships and pilots from the conversion kits are banned.

Arg, darn Hyperspace, it kind of renders this post/topic useless. Maybe I'll start another post, "What do you think will be the Hyperspace Meta?"

I currently like where the Meta is. If I go to a tournament, I will usually see as many different lists as I do rounds. I cannot say that about 1.0 for the last 2 years.