My absolute favorite is actually Ace + Pocket Ace + Scrubs.

Yup, I'm thinking I'll post the poll today or tomorrow.

Maybe I should add " Device Driver (Bombs, Mines, Drones, and other devices for area control and non-attack damage)" as a separate playstyle, as I know at least one player locally who specializes in bomb madness. Especially with droid swarms being so strong, and some new bombs coming out, I should acknowledge area control as a playstyle people pursue. Thoughts?

2 minutes ago, Wazat said:

Maybe I should add " Device Driver (Bombs, Mines, Drones, and other devices for area control and non-attack damage)" as a separate playstyle, as I know at least one player locally who specializes in bomb madness. Especially with droid swarms being so strong, and some new bombs coming out, I should acknowledge area control as a playstyle people pursue. Thoughts?

Not a bad idea for an inclusion though I think it'll be fairly rare. There seems to be a fixation on everything having to boost or block damage to have any "value" from what I've seen. Still, bombers can be fun.

Thanks for the shout-out for my bomb lobbing shenanigans 😉 . At first I thought Device Driver fell more in line with Janky Shenangians , but the area control aspect of playing with bombs is a slightly different variant than just throwing out weird combos. Nothing better than popping aces from a distance as they scramble to get away from the bomb you placed right in their path.

On 6/2/2019 at 12:20 AM, Wazat said:

Hey all, it's time to update the poll on the X-Wing Wiki , and I'd like to ask people what kind of playstyle they like most for their ships and fleets. That entails having a (reasonably) wide list of play styles. I've got this so far:

What's your favorite ship/fleet playstyle?

• Aces (Arc-dodgy, high-init veterans)
• Shark & Remora (Ace or big ship surrounded by scrubs)
• Swarms (Vultures, TIE Fighters, etc)
• Lots of Health and Defense (Rebel Beef, etc)
• Two-Ship Fleets (sometimes with a 3rd filler ship thrown in)
• Munition Alpha-Strikes (Proton Torpedoes, away!)
• Quirky Shenanigans (might be strong or weak, but the crazier the better)
• Primarily Off-Meta (I like ships more the more neglected they are)
• (added) Toolkit Jousters (A mix of jousting and arc-dodging capabilities.)
• Anything Top Meta (I don't have a specific style per se; I go for whatever's strong & popular)
• Everything (I bounce between lots of styles and can't make up my mind!)

Suggestions, please! Help me fill in what I've blindly missed. I'll incorporate broad categories, things I feel are distinct enough from the broadest categories, and probably an item or two that strike my fancy.

(And if you want to vote in the current poll, "What excites you most about Wave 3?", do so now before I replace it in a day or two!)

For those wondering, I'm primarily a Quirky Shenanigans player, followed by... Everything . I love to sample and try new playstyles, and when I'm left to my own devices, I build nonsense like Wullffwarro War Crimes .

How about the playstyle:

Thematic/Cinematic (I fly ships and pilots I like)

Added Thematic too. That's a great addition; I know a lot of players who play for love of theme and characters and will build fleets around that more than around some mechanical theme.

Does love of Arcs get its own ARCtype?

(Seriously, the medium bases REALLY get on my nerves but I can't abandon my long-winged beauties!)

Pictured below, frustration:

25 minutes ago, ficklegreendice said:

Does love of Arcs get its own ARCtype?

(Seriously, the medium bases REALLY get on my nerves but I can't abandon my long-winged beauties!)

Ba-dum-tss!

Okay, everyone! Does the current list look solid to everyone? Any adjustments to language? Any additional options needed?

• Aces (High-init veterans. Usually arc-dodgy; can be "fragile-agile" but not always)
• Toolkit Jousters (A mix of jousting and arc-dodging capabilities.)
• Shark & Remora (Ace or big ship surrounded by scrubs)
• Swarms (Vultures, TIE Fighters, etc)
• Bulk (Lots of Health and Defense, such as: Rebel Beef; sharing damage with Selfless etc; deflecting damage with reinforce or pilot abilities (like Norra), etc)
• Two-Ship Fleets (A scum special, but other factions do it too; sometimes has a 3rd filler ship thrown in)
• Munition Alpha-Strikes (Proton Torpedoes, away!)
• Device Driver (Bombs, Mines, Drones, and other similar mechanics for area control and non-attack damage)
• Quirky Shenanigans (Might be strong or weak, but the focus is on wacky/strange/different; the crazier the better)
• Deliberately Off-Meta (I like ships more the more neglected they are, maybe to a fault)
• Experimental Variety (I don't care whether it's powerful or weak, I just want to experiment with something new every time)
• Thematic/Cinematic (I fly ships and pilots I like, more for thematic attraction than mechanical advantage)
• Anything Top-Meta (I go for whatever's strong & popular. I prefer something vetted and solid over something personalized or experimental.)
• Everything (I bounce between lots of styles and I love most of them, often switching preference by day; I can't stick to just one!)
• Other (Not listed here! Tell us about it in the Thread )

I've been doing some research, and it looks like standard wikia polls don't work on mobile (it's amazing to me how many of Wikia/Fandom's site features don't work on mobile), so I'll probably switch our wiki's polls to either embedded polls (Polldaddy or Apester are apparently supported; anyone have good/bad experience with those?), or to fandom's clumsy "Discuss" feature (which claims it's like a shinier improvement to a traditional forum, but in practice it's not as good; I have not warmed to it).

Maybe I should just stick with the standard poll, and hope that I'm not shedding too many people.

Okay, poll is open on the wiki:

https://xwing-miniatures-second-edition.fandom.com/wiki/X-Wing_Miniatures:_Second_Edition_Wiki

Let's hope it works. Wikia's polls don't work on mobile so I switched to PollDaddy. I had some initial trouble getting the embedded PollDaddy poll to work right, but I think it's up and running now? And it works on mobile, so now we're not excluding those users.

Let me know if you have trouble!

Also, here's the final results for the last poll:

A-wings

there should be a separate poll answer for just A-wings.

I'm really encouraged by the number of people choosing Toolkit Jousters, or trying to describe something similar. Not just because I named the category, but because I genuinely believe X-wing is meant to be played that way. The archetypical X-wing match is something like Vader+mini swarm vs. 3 x-wings with mid to high initiative. And I believe that squads like that being viable is more fun and generaly more healthy for the game.

We're at 99 responses now. I'm impressed at the number of fellow quirky shenanigans players!

Thus far, Toolkit Jousters has a strong lead of 15%, followed by:

10%: Aces, Quirky

9%: Experimental, Everything

8%: Shark&Remora, Off-Meta, and Thematic

From there it drops to only 6% for Swarms (which surprises me) and continues tapering off. I'm surprised only one person has responded with top-meta, but that may indicate that even tournament players have clear preferences in what they fly, as long as it remains viable.

6 minutes ago, Wazat said:

We're at 99 responses now. I'm impressed at the number of fellow quirky shenanigans players!

Thus far, Toolkit Jousters has a strong lead of 15%, followed by:

10%: Aces, Quirky

9%: Experimental, Everything

8%: Shark&Remora, Off-Meta, and Thematic

From there it drops to only 6% for Swarms (which surprises me) and continues tapering off. I'm surprised only one person has responded with top-meta, but that may indicate that even tournament players have clear preferences in what they fly, as long as it remains viable.

I mean look at the Seattle system open. It is impossible to deny Quad Phantoms is top meta, yet it was relatively scarce. Rebel Beef was dominant, particularly the Wedge, Cassian, Braylen, Ten variant, which just that version had more appearances than Phantoms.

So there is something too that. Now, granted, Rebel Beef is also top meta so…

I love experimenting with my own quirky lists. I generally like to have a theme with the lists that I come up with myself. I love munitions too.

I also love toolkit aces. Old Teroch and Vader are my favorite.

25 minutes ago, millertime059 said:

I mean look at the Seattle system open. It is impossible to deny Quad Phantoms is top meta, yet it was relatively scarce. Rebel Beef was dominant, particularly the Wedge, Cassian, Braylen, Ten variant, which just that version had more appearances than Phantoms.

So there is something too that. Now, granted, Rebel Beef is also top meta so…

I haven't played with/against Quad Phantoms yet, but I've played against (and sometimes with) various Rebel Beef lists a lot . Painfully so. And there's a lot of variations, though the Wedge-Cassian-Braylen-Ten variant is quite popular right now. I have one thought as to why Quad Phantoms is scarce: it's both more fragile and more challenging to fly.

Fragility matters a ton even if you're really careful, because dice variance can swing suddenly and violently. Dice don't roll average over the short term, and brutal swings are excruciatingly common. If Rebel Beef suffers a terrifyingly bad round of dice luck, it will generally survive and keep going, often on minimal loss: it relies on total health, not just defense dice, so that really bad (either attacking or defending) round didn't ruin its prospects; it'll try again. Something like Wedge-Cassian-Braylen-Ten has the bulk and the firepower to survive bad rounds and capitalize on good ones. It's not just dice luck either -- bad rounds can come from bad guesses in your maneuver vs your opponent's, or simple mistakes. Bulk is resilient and forgiving.

But Phantoms? They're "fragile-agile". One bad round could eat 25% or even 50% of your list, easily, whether it's from unfortunate situations or bad dice luck in the moment. If that same bad round hits your Beef opponent instead, they might lose 20% of their list, but they could just as easily still have their whole team in play still. And even a really good round of dice luck for the phantoms might fail to remove one of those bulky ships from the table, and you really need to remove those ships. So you really need to bring your list's firepower to bear, and you can't have the opponent taking pot-shots at you at the wrong times. And at any time, dice could just fail you at a critical moment and cost you the game. This happens to other lists, but for fragile ships the stakes are higher and catastrophe more imminent.

Which leads to the second issue, complex flying. It takes practice to not only remember and act on the triggers (decloaking etc), but also learning how to fly the skillfully ships with decloak in mind, knowing when to spend that evade vs keep it, and especially knowing how to manage the approach so you don't just blindly joust with a bulky foe, etc. I have respect for the players flying Empire Aces and perhaps even quad phantoms, because there is a higher barrier to entry. IMO a Beef list is less so; it's not faceroll-easy, mind you, but it's easier than fragile ships.

And the fragility also comes into play in a classic zerglings vs zealots standoff way: swarms lose firepower as their smaller members die, but a group of thicker units can more easily keep its members from dying and thus stay close to full effectiveness. All that jousty mathwing stuff sometimes overstretches its claims -- a lot -- but the basic idea resonates with me. Bulk fleets have a much easier time avoiding overall effectiveness drops due to bad situations, bad dice luck, or a ship getting tactically focus-fired. They can take it!

That's the big reason why Auzitucks and Rebel Regen took a nuclear-powered nerf to the testicles in second edition: they were an anathema to FFG's "favor skillful flying and planning" attitude. Beef lists these days are so much less problematic than in 1E, so it's harder to complain too much.

But they are trouble, and you have to build in response to their prevalence. And man, I'm twitchy about flying fragile-agiles like Soontir. Too many times I've lost them to a harmless range 3 obstructed shot, because that's the time in the game when the dice variation gave me blanks, against the one ship that couldn't take it. You don't remember the tragedies that don't happen, but the tragedies that do tend to really matter.

Now that I think about it, the fact that Bulk and Top Meta etc are rated low in the list, but prevalent in tournaments, isn't surprising. At casual night you play what you love, at a tournament you play to win. Most people have preferences beyond what wins them tournaments and they like to build their own fleets too, and IMO you get kinda sick of your tournament list after about the 4th round. Start pining for your jank lists... (When our tournaments end, the best players in our area are thrilled to play nonsense lists, experimental craziness, whatever's farthest from what they've been flying nonstop for weeks or months).

But this poll is about your favorite fleets, not necessarily the ones you happen to fly the most. ❤️

3 minutes ago, Wazat said:

I haven't played with/against Quad Phantoms yet, but I've played against (and sometimes with) various Rebel Beef lists a lot . Painfully so. And there's a lot of variations, though the Wedge-Cassian-Braylen-Ten variant is quite popular right now. I have one thought as to why Quad Phantoms is scarce: it's both more fragile and more challenging to fly.

Fragility matters a ton even if you're really careful, because dice variance can swing suddenly and violently. Dice don't roll average over the short term, and brutal swings are excruciatingly common. If Rebel Beef suffers a terrifyingly bad round of dice luck, it will generally survive and keep going, often on minimal loss: it relies on total health, not just defense dice, so that really bad (either attacking or defending) round didn't ruin its prospects; it'll try again. Something like Wedge-Cassian-Braylen-Ten has the bulk and the firepower to survive bad rounds and capitalize on good ones. It's not just dice luck either -- bad rounds can come from bad guesses in your maneuver vs your opponent's, or simple mistakes. Bulk is resilient and forgiving.

But Phantoms? They're "fragile-agile". One bad round could eat 25% or even 50% of your list, easily, whether it's from unfortunate situations or bad dice luck in the moment. If that same bad round hits your Beef opponent instead, they might lose 20% of their list, but they could just as easily still have their whole team in play still. And even a really good round of dice luck for the phantoms might fail to remove one of those bulky ships from the table, and you really need to remove those ships. So you really need to bring your list's firepower to bear, and you can't have the opponent taking pot-shots at you at the wrong times. And at any time, dice could just fail you at a critical moment and cost you the game. This happens to other lists, but for fragile ships the stakes are higher and catastrophe more imminent.

Which leads to the second issue, complex flying. It takes practice to not only remember and act on the triggers (decloaking etc), but also learning how to fly the skillfully ships with decloak in mind, knowing when to spend that evade vs keep it, and especially knowing how to manage the approach so you don't just blindly joust with a bulky foe, etc. I have respect for the players flying Empire Aces and perhaps even quad phantoms, because there is a higher barrier to entry. IMO a Beef list is less so; it's not faceroll-easy, mind you, but it's easier than fragile ships.

And the fragility also comes into play in a classic zerglings vs zealots standoff way: swarms lose firepower as their smaller members die, but a group of thicker units can more easily keep its members from dying and thus stay close to full effectiveness. All that jousty mathwing stuff sometimes overstretches its claims -- a lot -- but the basic idea resonates with me. Bulk fleets have a much easier time avoiding overall effectiveness drops due to bad situations, bad dice luck, or a ship getting tactically focus-fired. They can take it!

That's the big reason why Auzitucks and Rebel Regen took a nuclear-powered nerf to the testicles in second edition: they were an anathema to FFG's "favor skillful flying and planning" attitude. Beef lists these days are so much less problematic than in 1E, so it's harder to complain too much.

But they are trouble, and you have to build in response to their prevalence. And man, I'm twitchy about flying fragile-agiles like Soontir. Too many times I've lost them to a harmless range 3 obstructed shot, because that's the time in the game when the dice variation gave me blanks, against the one ship that couldn't take it. You don't remember the tragedies that don't happen, but the tragedies that do tend to really matter.

Last things first: the number of times I’ve had Soontir get one shot from an unmodified range 2-3 shot when I have tokens is… not insignificant. And, unfortunately, I’ve actually tracked my defense dice over a period of time, and they are sadly well below average (over a span of 20+ games, about 30% less paint/ evades than expected) so it is real for me.

However as for ‘ease’ of Rebel beef versus quad Phantoms? Well I wasn’t sold myself… until I played it. 5 or so of my local players went to the System open in Seattle, and all actually went 3-3 or better! But they wanted to train their lists for it, and we all anticipated quad Phantoms. Being one of the big local Empire players in general, and Phantom/ Striker experts in specific, I volunteered for the role of beat stick.

And let me tell you, they don’t care about variance much. They have 5 health and 2 agility, but also get evades. Anything less than 2 double modified proton torpedoes at I5+ will leave 4 modded shots coming back. I will trade shields all day to keep that evade. And, ultimately, it hits hard enough to erase a ship in a turn easy. Even a beefy ship like a Y wing or Scurgg. It can trade favorably jousting most things, even Rebel beef*

Yes, real bad dice variance can cost you a ship, but the fact is that very few lists, and no top Rebel Beef lists, can kill one before it shoots. And the odds of killing two in a round? The only, and I emphasize this is highly unlikely, list that may be able to do so is 8 energy shell droids, but they are very likely to be down 2 before they shoot, which means they won’t be able to kill more than one. And turn 2?

No, the defensive profile of the Phantom is strong. Having put it on the board a ton, usually only in singles or a pair but half a dozen games of quad, it is harder to kill than a typical Emprie ship. It’s about halfway between Empire and Rebel. The maneuver and unpredictability of Empire with the defensive variance mitigation power of Rebels.

There are a few things that scare it. Old T, Palob, Wedge, and Jam are real dangers. Stress is a real problem as well, so Debris is good. But a good player can work to control range, and has a lot of flexibility to force engagement on favorable terms. The biggest weakness in the list is the people chasing top meta, and adhering to a rigid structured movement style that makes them predictable. That can be exploited by a good player on the opposite, if they have ships capable of negating or ignoring their defensive power.

In all my games with it, nobody got more than one dead and one half point Phantom. It is disgustingly good. And when flown correctly, there is nothing I see that reliably can beat it. It loses when flown poorly (over debris, or self bumping), extreme dice variance (not just my dice were 5% below average, in talking 30-40% worse than opponent), or simply brilliant play by the opponent to force the Phantom player to become reactive with decloaks and maneuvers by blocking, or by forcing through obstacles in a difficult manner. Playing it fully convinced me how bad it was. I think the only reason we don’t see more is that few people have 4 Phantoms, fewer still will have people willing to lend one for the list (I wouldn’t), people anticipating a nerf, and people flying it poorly simply because they are choosing it simply because it is ‘strong’, not understanding how it works, and what it needs to do.

*protorp Wedge is a big exception. Wedge is always target priority #1, as the agility reduction is huge

Thanks! I was projecting my TIE/x1 and TIE Interceptor experiences onto phantoms (along with the times I've blocked and erased my opponent's Whisper), and that led me astray.

Toolkit Jousters is still maintaining a healthy lead, followed by Aces and Quirky. This has been a neat poll -- its results have very much surprised me!

We're two votes shy of 200, so this seems like a great time to check in and summarize how things are going.

Other responses:

• All of dem
• Whatever yasb's random list generator gives me

woo, we hit 200!

On the first of next month I'll report the end results and do a new poll. (BTW we're up to 271 votes!)

I figure a good followup poll is "Regardless of what you prefer to fly, what do you actually end up flying the most?". Might be a great contrast to see the difference between what people want to fly vs end up having to take to the table (e.g. for tournaments).

Or something else?

Or perhaps next month could be "Which playstyle(s) do you *least* like fighting against?"

• Aces (arc-dodgy, init advantage, usually evasive)
• Bulk (tons of health, hard to kill anything; e.g. Rebel Beef or Junkyard lists)
• Deliberately Off-Meta/Quirky (I want a proper opponent, not something quirky, experimental, or deliberately weak)
• Device Driver (bombs, mines, and drones for area control)
• Munition Alpha-Strikes (wave of torps or missiles on first engagement)
• Shark & Remora (ace or big ship surrounded by scrubs)
• Swarms (lots of ships, lots of attacks)
• Toolkit Jousters (a versatile mix of jousting and arc-dodging)
• Top-Meta (I always fly stuff that just crumples against the tournament-winning fleets)
• Two-Ship Fleets (a scum special, but other factions do it too)

Thoughts on this?

On ‎6‎/‎2‎/‎2019 at 5:20 AM, Wazat said:

Suggestions, please! Help me fill in what I've blindly missed. I'll incorporate broad categories

I would suggest Heavy Swarms .

Whether you see that as falling into any of your categories is up to you.

Heavy Swarms are multiple (normally 5) ships that pointedly all have 'decent' 3 dice attacks, but aren't individually tough enough to qualify as 'Bulk' (but are usually tough enough not to be one-shotted like swarm components) or numerous enough to qualify as a proper 'Swarm' (but pack a 'proper' 3-dice attack, unlike most swarm components).

They tend to play differently to either, in my experience, as they usually have a decent amount of manoeuvrability (if not enough and certainly not the initiative score to qualify as 'aces') and don't have a 'locked formation force multiplier' like Jonus, Howlrunner or Sinker to form up on

They are often a bit glass-cannon-ey in that their big trick is a " chap with the wings, five rounds rapid " of 5 3-dice attacks per turn.

I mean here, for examples:

• TIE Strikers
• TIE Interceptors
• XG-1 Alpha-Class Star Wing
• TIE/x1 Advanced (the Empire has a lot of them!)
• Khiraxz
• Calibrated Laser Targeting Delta-7 Aethersprite
• Bubblebath Blabbermouth Beelzebub Beeblebrox Bulbazaur Syllabub Bellboy Whatever-The-Heck-Those-Things-Grievous-Flies-Are-Called -22

13 hours ago, Wazat said:

Or perhaps next month could be "Which playstyle(s) do you *least* like fighting against?"

I think that'd be an interesting one. A lot of people (I suspect) have very different views about what squads are fun to play against .