FFG OP twitter reports:

65/80 total players with

41 Rebel (33 Spectre)
19 Scum
5 Imperial

Curious if those 15 slots are just no shows, un sold tickets, or more likely a combination of both. Anyone know if tickets were still available leading up to the event?

FFG neutered our numbers from last year, but 65 is still almost half as many.. that's.. not good.

This has to be the most unhealthy meta since 4x4 as well. Scum hunters were bad two years ago, but at least then there was even like a 8-10 point variance in each list. Here it is literally 1 point variance, with I am going to guess the vast majority just running motivation anyway.

51% total spectre is less than we expected, but still horrible for the game. 63% of the total lists are Rebel with 80% of Rebel lists being Spectre.

And no word from FFG about anything coming down the pipeline, which I know many of us were foolishly hoping would come out of Worlds.

We got a revamped OP play plan that will try to draw players out of their homes and into the store for Campaign play, which could possibly translate into an increase in playerbase. But at the same time, the player base is bleeding out heavy due to the lack of communication about new product from FFG. I also think the prizes they are offering for these kits are way less than desirable, not even alt art anymore outside of the DT, just this extended art on cards nobody uses.

IA's darkest hour?

2 hours ago, FrogTrigger said:

IA's darkest hour?

... after dark all cats are leopards.

When worlds got announced we planned on going, 3 of us at least, maybe 4.

Then the limited 40 spots (for 80 total with 40 reserved for event winnters) filled up instantly

Then Specter Cell got boring to play against

So we pretty much gave up our plans for Adepticon back in January. Last year's Worlds, I am told, was amazing and at FFG HQ.
What a mess this year is with Specter Cell and the smaller Worlds tournament.

Not like any of this is a surprise.

Question is, will they say "hmm, only 65 at World's, there's clearly no demand for this game and we should not bother with it any more" or "hmm, only 65 at World's and 33 of those are SC, we clearly need to nerf SC right now and start putting out product so people get excited about this game again"?

14 hours ago, FrogTrigger said:

Curious if those 15 slots are just no shows, un sold tickets, or more likely a combination of both.       

In my case I was in the wait list for months and I got an email on 9th March to see if I was still interested in participating.

Even though I could finally make it, IMHO that's a very short notice to plan a trip like this.

Yeah as some said above I don't think the issue was lack of interest or even Spectre. They released only 40 seats with no notice whatsoever - by the time some players who wanted to go found out about it, it was already sold out. At the time the tickets were released there hadn't even been an official announcement from FFG that it would be at Adepticon - if you weren't on the various facebook groups/forums/slack channel to see that Adeptcon had posted it in their schedule you may not have even heard about it. And yes they eventually did contact people on the waiting list... like 3 weeks before the tournament. If we're talking flights, hotels, getting time off work, etc., three weeks is not nearly enough time.

If they had made it open to 150 people or whatever, and made it known what was going on ahead of time, I wouldn't be at all surprised if we had seen double the numbers we got.

And now, might I add, they've announced that next year's Worlds will be invite-only (regionals winners, etc.) Seriously guys? Talk about shooting yourselves in the foot.

I only live a few minutes from the convention center, so I stopped by on Thursday to try and get some answers about the "wait" list since I wasn't seeing any responses online. The person at the FFG booth running events told me there was still 8 players on the Wait List, and I would be considered a walk up if I wanted to try and play on Saturday. Honestly I didn't really feel good about having to wait and see if all 8 got in, and then if I didn't wasted my time. If I had any idea so many people weren't going to show up I would have gone. I only play casually, so it would have just been for fun, even if I got shredded by SC.

So update to the thread, final was SC Mirror with @brettpkelly taking the much deserved win. Grats Brett on the win, long time coming.

Interestingly VPT made final four, and a scum VP list with freaking LOTH CATS made top 16 lol, awesome. Otherwise I believe there was a han heroes list and the rest was SC, 12 or 13/16.

Now worlds is over, we've all speculated this would happen in the slack, will be interesting to see what FFG's next move is now.

Can we get participants sharing their lists?

2 hours ago, Trevize84 said:

Can we get participants sharing their lists?

As disappointing as it is to see such homogeneity among figure lists thanks to SC, I'm curious as well. Were there any unexpected command cards or anything that gave an edge beyond raw skill?

My deck was way more defensive compared to others. Tried to complement my extra armor with defense:

Otl

2x pummel

heart of freedom

force surge

deathblow

negation

brace for impact

stealth tactics

brace yourself

take init

force rush

urgency

strength in numbers

force push

I think stealth tactics is the most overlooked card in the current meta. With Kanan's reroll the math on ST is really good

3 hours ago, brettpkelly said:

My deck was way more defensive compared to others. Tried to complement my extra armor with defense:

Otl

2x pummel

heart of freedom

force surge

deathblow

negation

brace for impact

stealth tactics

brace yourself

take init

force rush

urgency

strength in numbers

force push

I think stealth tactics is the most overlooked card in the current meta. With Kanan's reroll the math on ST is really good

Thanks Brett. Is this a SC+Motivation? Is motivation on Kannan?

Also, I'm interested to know what's your considerations on Rebel Graffiti and Tools for the Job. In my tests I found Force Surge and Deathblow quite situational. Deathblow in particular, looks to me weaker than a Positioning Advantage.

17 hours ago, ManateeX said:

At the time the tickets were released there hadn't even been an official announcement from FFG that it would be at Adepticon...

They tweeted it out at 5:45 on a Friday, 2 days before tickets went on sale on Sunday. That’s the time to dump news that you don’t want to take questions about.

7 hours ago, brettpkelly said:

My deck...

Like this?

https://tabletopadmiral.com/imperialassault/ac84a581a4a79da97a0000000000009d2d2d0163c5b6813a35873972c277

On another (still unsurprising) note, SC mirror match for the final must surely be the death knell for SC - just like 4x4 got nerfed back in the day. Surely?

12 hours ago, Trevize84 said:

Thanks Brett. Is this a SC+Motivation? Is motivation on Kannan?

Also, I'm interested to know what's your considerations on Rebel Graffiti and Tools for the Job. In my tests I found Force Surge and Deathblow quite situational. Deathblow in particular, looks to me weaker than a Positioning Advantage.

I was running Extra Armor, putting 2 blocks on Ezra and 2 on Kanan every round (on fluctuations i should have spread them out a bit).

Cutting Rebel Graffiti and Tools were both very tough choices for me. The math on Stealth Tactics is very good against SC, especially with the Kanan reroll, so I knew i wanted to squeeze that in. Cutting Tools allowed me to run 2 extra one cost cards, but I had to cut a 0 cost. My last 0 cost card was between brace yourself, rebel graffiti and officer's training. I felt like the VP's weren't going to matter as much in the mirror compared to getting more survival.

My two point options I had to choose between Tools, Force Surge, or Dying Lunge. I felt like Force Surge would allow me to spread damage out to kill multiple figures in an activation which is very useful, especially since I was putting two blocks on Kanan every round to give him a little extra survivability. Deathblow was the last card into my deck. I was seriously considering Primary Target since it has higher maximum damage output, but it's a lot more situational than Deathblow so i decided to go the other way.

My strategy was basically to catch opponents off guard with how much defense I could muster against their Spectre extensions and it ended up paying off in the end!

Man, the Empire needs some help.

16 hours ago, Bitterman said:

On another (still unsurprising) note, SC mirror match for the final must surely be the death knell for SC - just like 4x4 got nerfed back in the day. Surely?

You would think. Although if they aren't making any more physical content for the game the may not give a crap anymore...

If SC gets nerfed, do Ejets not become viable again and help the Empire return to glory?

Does anyone know how far the best non-Spectre-lists got?

6 hours ago, mischraum.de said:

Does anyone know how far the best non-Spectre-lists got?

A Vader/Palp/Thrawn list made the semi-final, but there's a bit of a caveat in that he didn't play against spectres in his top-16 or top-8 games.

The list that beat the most spectres in the tourney was a scum VP list that included elite loth cats with beast tamer. He beat six straight spectres in the tournament round, including eventual champion Brett. Unfortunately, though, he lost to yet another spectre in the first round of the cut.

5 hours ago, ManateeX said:

He beat six straight spectres in the tournament round,

Wow! Why didn't anyone mention this amazing list before! Do you know what exactly the list was?

4 hours ago, Mandelore of the Rings said:

Wow! Why didn't anyone mention this amazing list before! Do you know what exactly the list was?

It was David Gao out of England, and his list was:

• 7 - Sabine
• 6 - Onar
• 6 - Hondo
• 6 - Loth Cat
• 6 - Jabba
• 4 - Greedo
• 2 - C-3P0
• 1 - Temp Alliance
• 1 - Beast Tamer
• 1 - Black Market

With command cards:

• 3 - On the Lam
• 3 - Assassinate
• 2 - Heightened Reflexes
• 2 - Tools for the Job
• 1 - Primary Target
• 1 - Black Market Prices
• 1 - Strength in Numbers
• 1 - Deathblow
• 1 - Negation
• 0 - To the Limit
• 0 - Celebration
• 0 - Rebel Graffiti
• 0 - Element of Surprise
• 0 - Take Initiative
• 0 - Positioning Advantage

I didn't play him (I wasn't running spectre myself) but I did watch parts of a few games. His big play at the start of the game was to focus up one of the loth cats and then save them for the last activation. With their natural 5 speed, beast tamer and pounce, one of his cats could get across the board to hit someone 13 (!) spaces away on the first turn with their auto-pierce 1. Better yet, since they were melee, line of sight wasn't a thing he had to worry about. All the spectre players had practiced approaches on all the different maps and knew the hiding spots where they would be safe against every other lists, but then here comes this cat flying up out of nowhere to kill their Zeb or whatever.

Even if the cats go down in one hit (which sometimes they didn't, especially if the opponent got cocky and tried to take them with hera or chopper), by that time they'd usually more than made up their points value. After that he just tried to take out what figures he could and relied on rebel graffiti/jabba/hondo/celebration/objectives to race the other side to 40.

That is a truly awesome list! I love it!

2 hours ago, Ram said:

That is a truly awesome list! I love it!

Update if you're curious: he's playing the list again in the UK Nats right now, once again he played against nothing but spectre and once again made the cut (which takes place tomorrow). Go cats go!