32 minutes ago, Mistborn_Jedi said:

3. R4/Advanced SLAM -- The Fireball has limited blues, which makes the turn after your Tallon predictable. R4 gives you 6 more blue maneuvers and really opens up flying him. And who doesn't want to do a 3 straight, use Leia to make the Tallon SLAM white, dump the Weapons Disabled and then get an action! There's room for Heroic on here too if you don't want the bid.

R4/Adv Slam is great. Even if you don't remove the weapons disable it means you can barrel roll after a slam which really opens things up.

Unfortunately Leia cannot reduce the difficulty of a slam maneuver since her trigger is revealing a dial.

On 1/12/2020 at 9:23 AM, arctic_rogue said:

This?

...

(36) Nodin Chavdri [Resistance Transport]
(2) R4 Astromech
(6) Ion Cannon
(6) Korr Sella
Points: 50

I ran this Nodin last night. It's bad. Really bad. If it is coordinating (which is why you are bringing it) it can never stop or back up. Nodin basically has an ability that switches off the entire point of the ship which is the wonky dial. It's like flying a B-wing with coordinate and no options to turn around. I'm just sticking with Cova-Leia from here on out (it's only 5 more points).

29 minutes ago, Rettere said:

Unfortunately Leia cannot reduce the difficulty of a slam maneuver since her trigger is revealing a dial.

Good catch, thanks for pointing that out.

Well I am very much in the R5 camp and I can explain why.

1) You have the point for Heroic while still having 199. I am yet to field any Reistance ship with a talent slot that isn't Heroic. To me it's the best EPT in the game. It really smoothes out the bad dice variance and when Kaz drops to 2/2 it's the most efficient use of Heroic after Finn

2) R5 is cheaper than a Hull Upgrade and a straight up upgrade. The way I play it use it on the first turn to bring him back to full health and the second charge to return to full health if the opponent halves him. Not only does this make the damage threshold 4 instead of 3, each regen is one more damage where Kaz gets his ability. Also R5 on the first turn in huge against I1 swarms. Now they have to commit to Kaz to bring him down to 2 dice. And commiting to Kaz is exactly what I want from the opponent.

3) Bucket is like R5 but with more variance. Sure one game he will save you from dying, the next game he wont ever trigger. I prefer stability, especially in a Efficiency list.

4) Advanced SLAM/Coaxicum Hyperfuel/Kazs Fireball are all traps in my opinion. You SLAM to run away not for some fancy manouvers. At least thats how I play him. In a 3 ship list maybe load out Kaz, here he is a cheaper version of a Black Squadron Ace with a better dial.

59 minutes ago, Mistborn_Jedi said:

You may remember I took Cova/Jess/Bastian/Red to LVO and did well with it. I've been looking at Kaz as a replacement for the Red, like @Flurpy 's UK list. Only a few games in but I think he's strictly better and improve the list

Wouldn't Kaz be situationally better than the RSE (in this list)? Opposing a lot of low initiative ships would make him worse, right? I know @Flurpy beat a droid swarm and other lists with low-init ships, but from what he said of those games, his opponents didn't necessarily play the approach well. I also don't know if those low-init pilots were even shooting at Kaz. Last, he didn't have to face 5X, scum I1 swarms or I1 fangs, etc.

Anyway, I think it's dependent upon what you feel you need to tech against. I could see Kaz as higher init tech being better since that's probably what the list would struggle against....but it could come down to the match-up gods.

Just now, gennataos said:

Wouldn't Kaz be situationally better than the RSE (in this list)? Opposing a lot of low initiative ships would make him worse, right? I know @Flurpy beat a droid swarm and other lists with low-init ships, but from what he said of those games, his opponents didn't necessarily play the approach well. I also don't know if those low-init pilots were even shooting at Kaz. Last, he didn't have to face 5X, scum I1 swarms or I1 fangs, etc.

Anyway, I think it's dependent upon what you feel you need to tech against. I could see Kaz as higher init tech being better since that's probably what the list would struggle against....but it could come down to the match-up gods.

Yes. That's why R5 is essential. Now he gets 3/3 against I1 until they damage him.

But he is worse against swarms than RSE I agree. On the other hand I need help against aces not swarms with this list. So I would rather have a slightly worse ship against swarm and have a slightly better ship against aces than the other way around. Since I think swarms are harder to play at a high level anyway its either going to end with me winning anyway, or the opponent will outfly me and then RSE won't make a difference.

5 minutes ago, Flurpy said:

Yes. That's why R5 is essential. Now he gets 3/3 against I1 until they damage him.

But he is worse against swarms than RSE I agree. On the other hand I need help against aces not swarms with this list. So I would rather have a slightly worse ship against swarm and have a slightly better ship against aces than the other way around. Since I think swarms are harder to play at a high level anyway its either going to end with me winning anyway, or the opponent will outfly me and then RSE won't make a difference.

Yep, totally makes sense. I think this brings up the question of...expectations? Would either choice be more or less likely to help you get into the cut? I think I'd agree that Kaz would probably help more to get you into the cut, but match-ups could really play a role. Now you're in the cut, where I would assume swarm players would know what they're doing better, so the RSE would be better. BUT , it doesn't seem like there are a ton of good swarm players out there...so back to Kaz?

Well full disclaimer. I included the Fireball because, as I have mentioned, before, the Fireball is me and I am the Fireball. No other ship speaks to me. None. So it was more of a question of how can I make this work, not if this is the best.

That being said I do think I accidentally stumbled upon a really efficient 45 point ship.

As for the cut, I think Kaz performs better in the cut. He has a higher celling that an RSE and a properly flown Kaz can contribute more to the list than a RSE.

22 minutes ago, gennataos said:

but it could come down to the match-up gods.

9 minutes ago, gennataos said:

but match-ups could really play a role

This is so true, and took me playing in a lot of tournaments to really understand. Variance in X-Wing isn't just in the dice, it's in the pairings as well.

2 minutes ago, Mistborn_Jedi said:

This is so true, and took me playing in a lot of tournaments to really understand. Variance in X-Wing isn't just in the dice, it's in the pairings as well.

Yep. I for one think I had incredible match ups this weekend. Couldn't have asked for better ones if I tried.

12 minutes ago, Flurpy said:

Well full disclaimer. I included the Fireball because, as I have mentioned, before, the Fireball is me and I am the Fireball. No other ship speaks to me. None. So it was more of a question of how can I make this work, not if this is the best.

That being said I do think I accidentally stumbled upon a really efficient 45 point ship.

As for the cut, I think Kaz performs better in the cut. He has a higher celling that an RSE and a properly flown Kaz can contribute more to the list than a RSE.

I endorse all of this.

10 minutes ago, Mistborn_Jedi said:

This is so true, and took me playing in a lot of tournaments to really understand. Variance in X-Wing isn't just in the dice, it's in the pairings as well.

Where we met, GenCon 2018, I benefited greatly due to a my rookies facing a lot of Zealots, like yours.

18 minutes ago, gennataos said:

I endorse all of this.

Where we met, GenCon 2018, I benefited greatly due to a my rookies facing a lot of Zealots, like yours.

I remember. My worst loss of the tournament. Of course let's not forget you had the skill to take advantage of those good match-ups.

The fickleness of the Pairing Gods really hit home for me at the end of 1.0. We had 2 big regionals in the NW 2 weeks apart. I ran the same list (Plot Armor...oh how I miss Dash) and many of the players in the field were the same so very similar meta. In one of them I played against 3 opponents using weaponized stress, which Dash hated. 2-4 for the day. In the other I only saw 1 stress list, and finished 4-2.

What do people think about this?

Jessika Pava (51)
Integrated S-Foils (0)

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)
Integrated S-Foils (0)

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)
Integrated S-Foils (0)

Rose Tico (26)
Intimidation (3)

Jarek Yeager (33)
Intimidation (3)
Total: 200

View in Yet Another Squad Builder 2.0

The other option would be to swap Jess and the 2 blues for 3 red's with heroic. Could also trade Rose for Vi Moradi.

Right, that’s about as much of an excuse to ramble about 5 Resistance ship builds as I am going to get.

All the other hobbies are on pause, nobody wants to go drinking with me on a Tuesday afternoon because they are oh so grown up, my girlfriends not here so here we go:

5 Ship Resistance Builds

Some ground rules so this doesn’t turn into a post of biblical proportions.

• This is the XXX+ thread so all lists will have XXX in them (maybe some light XXCova build because I want to sneak in Cova)
• Hyperspace legal, because most still build for Hyperspace
• No A-Wing, partially because I don’t like them in non-5A/Ace builds, partially because I don’t have enough experience with them to know what’s good.

What that means is that we are left roughly with the following pilots

• X- Wing: Blue Squadron Recruit (BSR), Red Squadron Experts (RSE), Pava, Bastian (the rest are too expensive, not good enough or not legal)
• Fireball: All
• Pod: Rose (the rest are too expensive, not good enough or not legal)
• Transport: Cova

XXXX+ Builds

Four RSE leaves 24 points no nothing there. Four BSR leaves 32 points which are kinda awkward. Just enough to not be able to include Yeager but too much for Rose. So with that the only XXXX+ I can see kinda working is

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)

Red Squadron Expert (44)
Heroic (1)

Red Squadron Expert (44)
Heroic (1)

Rose Tico (26)

Total:200

5 Ships, 3 mid-range initiative ships, and two blockers. Its a worker list similar to 5X, but I don’t really see it doing that well against 5X or our own Thicc Boys (4 Hull Upgrade Heroic RSE) and it’s going to struggle against the same things any other beef list struggles against.

XXX+ Builds

So many options its almost useless to discuss it. Not saying that will stop my rambling, but still.

The minimal build of three BSR leaves 74 points and that is something we can work with:

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)

Rose Tico (26)

Kazuda Xiono (40)
Heroic (1)
R5 Astromech (4)
Advanced SLAM (3)

Total: 200

Going minimal on the X-Wing opens up the possibility of a Rose + fully equipped Kaz. Feels like a strictly worse version of XXX Poe, something we know is good.

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)

Kazuda Xiono (40)

Jarek Yeager (33)
Heroic (1)

Total: 200

Changing Rose for a second Fireball gives us options. Kaz can join in and become the 4th jouster while Yeager acts as a flanker, or both can flank the 3 X Wings. Better than the Rose version, still think its worse than XXX Poe.

Red Squadron Expert (44)

Red Squadron Expert (44)

Red Squadron Expert (44)

Kazuda Xiono (40)
Heroic (1)

Rose Tico (26)

Total: 199

Seeing those RSE without Heroic physically pains me, but now we get a block of 4 I3 jousters and Kaz as a flanker. It’s probably better than the previous two but I
won’t run it just to save me from the anxiety of waiting for that blank roll.

Red Squadron Expert (44)
Heroic (1)

Red Squadron Expert (44)
Heroic (1)

Red Squadron Expert (44)
Heroic (1)

Jarek Yeager (33)
Heroic (1)
R4 Astromech (2)
Advanced SLAM (3)

Rose Tico (26)

Total: 200

The “Let’s pretend this Yeager is an Ace” build. I am completely not sold on it. Maybe I am wrong, time will tell.

Lieutenant Bastian (47)

Jessika Pava (51)

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)

Jarek Yeager (33)
Heroic (1)

Rose Tico (26)

Total:200

What happens if we try to upgrade to named X-Wing pilots. A bunch of problems and nothing good.

Red Squadron Expert (44)
Hull Upgrade (5)

Red Squadron Expert (44)
Hull Upgrade (5)

Red Squadron Expert (44)
Hull Upgrade (5)

Colossus Station Mechanic (26)

Colossus Station Mechanic (26)


Total: 199

3 BSR and 3 Colossus Station Mechanic are 202. Shame that would have been fun. With these 5 ships, it just feels like you are loading them up with stuff just to load them.

XXCova Builds

Pattern Analyzer is illegal which means Leia is mandatory. Heroic CovaLeia with two BSR leaves us 60 points. Not much.

Cova Nell (38)
Heroic (1)
Leia Organa (Resistance) (17)

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)

Jarek Yeager (33)

Rose Tico (26)

Total: 199

A straight-up downgrade from my Kaz’s Jousters list (which I am totally going to try and get the name on MetaWing). In general, CovaLeia is surprisingly fast with the ability to go 3 banks and 4 forward and still be a 3/2 ship so you want to use that. Get that block moving fast across the board, and Rose is slow. So no Rose

Cova Nell (38)
Heroic (1)
Leia Organa (Resistance) (17)

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)

Blue Squadron Rookie (42)

Jarek Yeager (33)

Colossus Station Mechanic (26)

Total: 199

Clutching at straws is an understatement here. No. Just no.

Conclusions

• All the above-mentioned lists are clear downgrades compared to Thicc Boys, XXX Poe, and Kaz’s Jousters.
• A Resistance 5+ ships salad has to rely at best on 2 X-Wings. The most obvious choice with a swarm around her is Pava. Bastian is out since he wants to be shooting last, which won’t happen in a low initiative swarm. Poe might be interesting.
• The A-Wing obviously has a place in these lists, I am just not knowledgeable enough about them to place it.
• Extended opens up two key pieces in Finn and Logistics Division Pilot, but that’s too much variables for one post.

In short, following breaking down these lists, I am not convinced that there is a 5 ship Resistance list in Hyperspace with X-Wings (that isn’t built around A-Wings) that outperforms the three 4-ship builds we already use.

20 minutes ago, Flurpy said:

nobody wants to go drinking with me on a Tuesday afternoon because they are oh so grown up

Come visit Seattle, I'll happily go drinking with you any afternoon of the week!

20 minutes ago, Mistborn_Jedi said:

Come visit Seattle, I'll happily go drinking with you any afternoon of the week!

Dont say it twice, I am planning on making Worlds a vacation week, and am more than happy to booze cruise through that entire week

Flurpy, I'm interested why your aren't considering any other pseudo-mod upgrades in any of your lists. Outmaneuver, Adv Optics, Intimidation?

I'm also wondering about Vi Moradi since a 5 ship resistance list will be doing a lot of blocking. I haven't had Rose on the table so I don't know how good she is.

1 minute ago, Rettere said:

Flurpy, I'm interested why your aren't considering any other pseudo-mod upgrades in any of your lists. Outmaneuver, Adv Optics, Intimidation?

I'm also wondering about Vi Moradi since a 5 ship resistance list will be doing a lot of blocking. I haven't had Rose on the table so I don't know how good she is.

Well a couple reasons:

1) In general I am not big on upgrades. For me to take an upgrade it has to directly benefit that specific ship and synergies well with it. Unless its Heroic, that is just mandatory.

2) The more ships you have the less points you get per ship, the less points you get per ship the more that upgrade has to be essential.

3) With 5+ ships most of your ships will be low initiative generics, all pseudo-mod upgrades benefit aces more than generics.

For example Intimidation on Rose. Rose wants friendly ships in front of her to trigger her ability. Intimidation wants her to block. Getting a block while at a same time having a friendly ship in arc is quite impressive to pull of.

But thats just me, just because something doesn't work for me doesn't mean it wont work for you. I mostly write these things for my own benefit, to put thoughts to paper. I dont claim to know what I am doing

9 minutes ago, Flurpy said:

Well a couple reasons:

1) In general I am not big on upgrades. For me to take an upgrade it has to directly benefit that specific ship and synergies well with it. Unless its Heroic, that is just mandatory.

2) The more ships you have the less points you get per ship, the less points you get per ship the more that upgrade has to be essential.

3) With 5+ ships most of your ships will be low initiative generics, all pseudo-mod upgrades benefit aces more than generics.

For example Intimidation on Rose. Rose wants friendly ships in front of her to trigger her ability. Intimidation wants her to block. Getting a block while at a same time having a friendly ship in arc is quite impressive to pull of.

But thats just me, just because something doesn't work for me doesn't mean it wont work for you. I mostly write these things for my own benefit, to put thoughts to paper. I dont claim to know what I am doing

That's not exactly true for Rose. If you want to use her as a blocker then having a shot isn't necessarily what your aiming for. Any return shots require the attacker to have your friendly ships in arc so she can still get her defensive mods with her mates behind, but close by.

Get your point tho.

6 minutes ago, Tyhar7 said:

That's not exactly true for Rose. If you want to use her as a blocker then having a shot isn't necessarily what your aiming for. Any return shots require the attacker to have your friendly ships in arc so she can still get her defensive mods with her mates behind, but close by.

Get your point tho.

Thats a good point, for some reason my brain switches off and refuses to actually play Rose correctly, I always thinks its Roses arc for both attack and defence

3 hours ago, Flurpy said:

Thats a good point, for some reason my brain switches off and refuses to actually play Rose correctly, I always thinks its Roses arc for both attack and defence

It's something I hammered in during UK SOS. She is useful for drawing fire and her ability offensively is good for stripping tokens so my X's could capitalise.

Ended up taking this the first day.

Talli's Rosy Reds

(44) Red Squadron Expert [T-70 X-wing] (0) Integrated S-foils (1) Heroic

Points: 45

(47) Lieutenant Bastian [T-70 X-wing] (0) Integrated S-foils

Points: 47

(26) Rose Tico [Resistance Transport Pod]

Points: 26

(44) Red Squadron Expert [T-70 X-wing] (0) Integrated S-foils (1) Heroic

Points: 45

(36) Tallissan Lintra [RZ-2 A-wing] (1) Heroic Points: 37

Total points: 200

Lost my first game in the last dice roll, was unlucky, good game for both of us. After that I was on a roll, was 3-1 coming into the 5th round but lost that one due to my own poor engagement choice. Ended up dropping out after that.

You obviously did very well on all accounts!

13 hours ago, Flurpy said:

This is the XXX+ thread so all lists will have XXX in them (maybe some light XXCova build because I want to sneak in Cova)

Whether I like her or not, I consider LeiaCova to be a derpy Xwing. And she's growing on me...

12 hours ago, Flurpy said:

For example Intimidation on Rose. Rose wants friendly ships in front of her to trigger her ability. Intimidation wants her to block. Getting a block while at a same time having a friendly ship in arc is quite impressive to pull of.

I agree with @Tyhar7 . Ryan Farmer talks about his store champ win with "Farmer's Fireballs", that's 5 colossus mechanics, Kaz, and Rose. He really emphasized the value of ramming Rose into the scrum as blocker - and to use jam with her! He said all her shots were 3dice attacks and nobody wants to shoot her due to the defensive rerolls.

e: I completely agree on the rest though

I don't know, I fing hard to consider rose a good blocker due to her dial and the amount of red actions she has got.

Sure, people won't probably shoot at her, but why would them? Once you are stressed you are out of the game for a couple of turns.

Am I missing something?

Kudos to @Flurpy For the amazing HS primer!

I don't like very much resistance in HS since you are mostly stuck with jousting lists who hope to roll better than your opponent, but to be fair that's basically HS in a nutshell.

Another not competitive but playable archetype might be Kaz cova and 2 black squadron ace to be all ps 4 to ps kill most other generics

I gotta put Rose on the table sometime....

1 hour ago, Sunitsa said:

I don't know, I fing hard to consider rose a good blocker due to her dial and the amount of red actions she has got.

Sure, people won't probably shoot at her, but why would them? Once you are stressed you are out of the game for a couple of turns.

Am I missing something?

Kudos to @Flurpy For the amazing HS primer!

I don't like very much resistance in HS since you are mostly stuck with jousting lists who hope to roll better than your opponent, but to be fair that's basically HS in a nutshell.

Another not competitive but playable archetype might be Kaz cova and 2 black squadron ace to be all ps 4 to ps kill most other generics

I mean yes. That's kinda the point.

I know I like to joke that I am a bad player, but there is truth in that. I am not a good X-Wing player, but I managed to find a way around that limitation.

I joined this thread some 7-8 pages ago and even before that my list building for competitive lists was always "what's the most efficient idiot-proof list I can make. "

The perfect example for that is Top 8 in Italy against Alessandro Mazzi. I use this example because I know you're from Italy so you will know him. You know how good he is, you know how much better than me he is. I went into that match knowing the only way I win is through dice. And the only way to win through dice is to not allow a situation where he gets to win by being smarter. He was flying 4U , which meant he wins the joust unless I roll like a maniac, so naturally I went straight at him with no regrets. You can't outmanouver someone if all you can do is get blocked.

A lot of my games end up in a straight joust because I aggressively force it. The more I can force the game to be decided by dice the happier I am. Because it turns out I am a lucky player. So I use that. Some players win by being good, I win by rolling better.