We've reached 255 votes. As many folks familiar with computers know, if one more person votes it'll overflow and reset to 0, and the Y2K bug destroys our modern tech-dependent world.

I for one plan to rebuild society around the worship of force tokens, and striving to make the Kimogila meta-dominant. It will be a difficult path, perhaps futile... but ultimately, fulfilling.

I voted for timewasters and deilberately off-meta.

Timewasters - have always been a HUGE problem for xwing and continue to be so. All regen just needs to go away or be costed to Luke Gunner prices.

Deliberately Off-Meta - I dont mind playing against test lists to see if combos work, or new upgrades, etc. But those super quirky "I will never face anything remotely close to this **** ever again, anywhere" (like someone hit the random button on YASB) just feels like a waste to me, but I only get a couple games a week in, and want to face strong lists to improve my own. So if I get wrecked, or if I wreck those super quirky lists, it helps me not. If I played 5+ games a week, I probably wouldnt mind so much.

Honestly, right now? Not much. I didn't mind Quadjumpers, quad Sigmas, or the pre-nerf Boba. I've struggled against Rebel beef, but never had an unfun game against them. I guess the only list I genuinly didn't enjoy playing against was a quad Protorp Bomber squad with Jendon. Basically, if my opponent rolled well and/or I rolled badly, I lost. Vice versa, I won. Too many arcs to dodge on the initial approach, and the Bombers just folded if they had to knife fight.

So I guess my vote goes to munitions alpha strikes.

1 hour ago, wurms said:

Deliberately Off-Meta - I dont mind playing against test lists to see if combos work, or new upgrades, etc. But those super quirky "I will never face anything remotely close to this **** ever again, anywhere" (like someone hit the random button on YASB) just feels like a waste to me, but I only get a couple games a week in, and want to face strong lists to improve my own. So if I get wrecked, or if I wreck those super quirky lists, it helps me not. If I played 5+ games a week, I probably wouldnt mind so much.

Unfortunately you'd hate playing against me, since weird experiments and off-meta nonsense are my mainstay (Ello Asty shenanigans, Wullffwarro War Crimes, second edition's triple Auzitucks, Torani tapp'n, etc). It's often weak against the top meta, but a lot of fun in a more casual setting. But I also wouldn't be offended if you asked me to pull out something more serious, or wanted to play against someone else. I'm not the best test for tournament practice. We have some local guys who are very dedicated to preparing for tournaments and challenging themselves, so they tend to play each other and I kinda stay out of their way.

Also, I'm glad that option is getting some votes. I tried to cover lots of bases that I hear people talk about or figured someone would want represented, and hopefully I didn't miss anything really important or list anything that's not a real consideration.

21 minutes ago, Okapi said:

Honestly, right now? Not much. I didn't mind Quadjumpers, quad Sigmas, or the pre-nerf Boba. I've struggled against Rebel beef, but never had an unfun game against them. I guess the only list I genuinly didn't enjoy playing against was a quad Protorp Bomber squad with Jendon. Basically, if my opponent rolled well and/or I rolled badly, I lost. Vice versa, I won. Too many arcs to dodge on the initial approach, and the Bombers just folded if they had to knife fight.

So I guess my vote goes to munitions alpha strikes.

Agreed, I've found munition alpha strikes are very all-or-nothing, and everything after the start of the game is not fun for one player or the other. If that initial pass doesn't take a large chunk of the foe's fleet off the table, they're in real trouble (they typically don't survive for a 2nd pass). But if their alpha-strike does land hard, it'll cripple their foe and there's maybe not much they can do after that. It all hangs on a bad approach or bad dice luck screwing over either player right at the 2nd or 3rd round.

In my own games I've found separatist droids do better since they don't have to lock, and they often have tokens to pass around to soak and deal damage more effectively. But droid players tell me they still feel very random: feast or famine based on that dice luck of who buckles when and how the approach plays out. And they want to fly in groups more than other alpha-strikers generally do, which makes them predictable and easier for aces to outmaneuver. Droids are the most common fleet I encounter now that rebel beef is neutered, and I tend to dread fighting them because they're kinda boring, IMO. Though cheap grappling struts have breathed new life into their playstyle (I've enjoyed the recent game I played against grapple strut droids + kracken Grievous).

I keep wanting to fly passive sensor gunboats, but my heart tells me no. Whether it's effective or not, it will probably not be great fun for my opponent (and might be boring for me). I don't like games to be boring for either player, a big reason I shy away even from republic beef now; consistently my opponent was straight-up not having a good time.

I hate defensive lists. It may not be as bad as First Edition, but they can still exist. Either innately tough ships/pilots, or a list with a relatively easy to get off combo that grants them extra defense almost every turn.

I'll admit, it's partially my problem. I'm terrible at list building, and I'm not good at flying well enough to intentionally stop a combo. But it's super demoralizing when you're trying to learn how to fly and you finally line up a perfect shot, and you still get nothing done because the other player just brushes it all away. I'm okay with losing a lot, especially while I'm still learning, but not having accomplished anything at all is not a good feeling.

As we approach the final week of this month, I'd like to consider what the poll will be next month. Thoughts?

Perhaps something related to the new points and ships.

How does one access the poll? I was trying on a mobile device as well as on my desktop, and the link just took me to the wiki homepage, with no poll in sight.

As for the list types,

Time Wasters - I play strictly casual. Since we never have time limits anyway, this type of list would be infuriating to face.

Bulk - I'm not sure I've ever faced one of these, but it doesn't sound too bad.

Aces - As long as they're not too heavily modded, they're not bad.

Munition Alpha-Strikes - Never seen it

Top-Meta - <sees it on the table> Ok, you win. Who else is up for a game?

Heavy Swarms - I really want to play against this type someday.

Device Driver - Never encountered it

Light Swarms - Only faced one once. It would have been downright fun if I hadn't been flying Scum.

Two-Ship Fleets - Wipe them out. All of them.

Toolkit Jousters - Sounds fun

Deliberately Off-Meta/Quirky/Casual - Who could possibly not like these?

Shark & Remora - Sounds fun

Other - Trolling (Lists designed to just harass the opponent and ensure that win or lose, they don't have fun) - Do I even need to say why I dislike these?

On 7/18/2019 at 12:57 PM, wurms said:

I voted for timewasters and deilberately off-meta.

Timewasters - have always been a HUGE problem for xwing and continue to be so. All regen just needs to go away or be costed to Luke Gunner prices.

Deliberately Off-Meta - I dont mind playing against test lists to see if combos work, or new upgrades, etc. But those super quirky "I will never face anything remotely close to this **** ever again, anywhere" (like someone hit the random button on YASB) just feels like a waste to me, but I only get a couple games a week in, and want to face strong lists to improve my own. So if I get wrecked, or if I wreck those super quirky lists, it helps me not. If I played 5+ games a week, I probably wouldnt mind so much.

You have a good way of describing that. Yeah, xwing time is precious.

7 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

How does one access the poll? I was trying on a mobile device as well as on my desktop, and the link just took me to the wiki homepage, with no poll in sight.

Did you scroll down below the Products section? the poll is there for me on Chrome mobile.

Yea, on PC the poll is on the sidebar on the right side, about a page down. On mobile you have to scroll down a few pages to reach it, just because of how Wikia mobile arranges things.

10 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

Did you scroll down below the Products section? the poll is there for me on Chrome mobile.

I see a section marked "Poll" with a link back to this thread, but no actual poll.

On 7/18/2019 at 3:57 PM, wurms said:

Deliberately Off-Meta - I dont mind playing against test lists to see if combos work, or new upgrades, etc. But those super quirky "I will never face anything remotely close to this **** ever again, anywhere" (like someone hit the random button on YASB) just feels like a waste to me, but I only get a couple games a week in, and want to face strong lists to improve my own. So if I get wrecked, or if I wreck those super quirky lists, it helps me not. If I played 5+ games a week, I probably wouldnt mind so much.

Oddly enough, limited gameplay time is precisely why I play weird, oddball lists. I only get one or two games a week, when I'm lucky, so I want to maximize variety. Otherwise, I'll never even get around to using most of my stuff!

3 minutes ago, JJ48 said:

I see a section marked "Poll" with a link back to this thread, but no actual poll.

Odd... you may have to ask your browser to show you a non-mobile version of the site. It might not be playing nice with CrowdSignal.

Try this: direct link

If not, you may have to vote on another device? Sorry about this.

4 minutes ago, Wazat said:

Odd... you may have to ask your browser to show you a non-mobile version of the site. It might not be playing nice with CrowdSignal.

Try this: direct link

If not, you may have to vote on another device? Sorry about this.

I tried again, and the whole site looked different, and the poll appeared.

No need to apologize. It was clearly working for others, so the issue was likely on my end. (Maybe anti-virus being overprotective with plugins?)

I really can't stand the following play styles.

1) Damage Sharing, High Hull/Shields lists.

2) Lists with "screw you" abilities that have little to no cost to use. Torkil Mux being my prime target.

Other list types to me is like Rock, Paper, Scissors. Just try to be the rock to his scissors and everything is fine. Overall, lists that don't really let me play the game piss me off.

8 hours ago, Woobyluv said:

Other list types to me is like Rock, Paper, Scissors. Just try to be the rock to his scissors and everything is fine. Overall, lists that don't really let me play the game piss me off.

I remember Magic The Gathering eventually becoming super-frustrating because so many players loved shutdown decks (any deck that says "I get to play, and you get to watch, now shut up and watch"). Legacy/Extended lent itself too well to turn-2 wins and total shutdowns, so once I couldn't keep up with standard I drifted off. I'm grateful x-wing isn't that breakable... and requires skill to play even with netlisting.

I think that's why Handbrake Han got nerfed -- FFG is being proactive against lists that require hard counters to even play against. I'm told unless your list was properly tailored for picking it apart, you couldn't really do much to stop it. Same reason why shield regen, kylo + blinded pilot, reinforce, arc-dodgers, PTL, etc are so nerfed in 2E.

Ideally, even in a rock-paper-scissors matchup, paper can beat scissors if plays the smarter and more skillful game. If we're ever actually reduced to rock-paper-scissors, the game dies because that's not what we're here for. Happy beeps though -- I don't think FFG will let that happen.

On ‎7‎/‎18‎/‎2019 at 3:36 PM, Wazat said:

We've reached 255 votes. As many folks familiar with computers know, if one more person votes it'll overflow and reset to 0, and the Y2K bug destroys our modern tech-dependent world.

I for one plan to rebuild society around the worship of force tokens, and striving to make the Kimogila meta-dominant. It will be a difficult path, perhaps futile... but ultimately, fulfilling.

COUNT	PERCENT
		COUNTRY	OVERALL
Time Wasters (expensive ship designed to grab a points lead and run away, to win on time)	58	22.75%	22.75%
Bulk (tons of health, hard to kill anything; e.g. Rebel Beef, Republic Beef, or Junkyard lists)	40	15.69%	15.69%
Aces (arc-dodgy, init advantage, usually evasive)	30	11.76%	11.76%
Munition Alpha-Strikes (wave of torps or missiles to kill something on first engagement)	29	11.37%	11.37%
Top-Meta (I always fly stuff that just crumples against the tournament-winning fleets; I prefer casual play)	24	9.41%	9.41%
Heavy Swarms (typically around 5 ships give or take, moderately bulky and with stronger attack, and/or might double-tap with veteran turret gunner; sometimes overlaps with Bulk lists)	19	7.45%	7.45%
Device Driver (bombs, mines, and drones for area control and non-attack damage)	14	5.49%	5.49%
Light Swarms (lots of little ships, usually weak attack and/or frail, but lots of shots)	11	4.31%	4.31%
Two-Ship Fleets (two tough ships with great attacks and abilities; sometimes a 3rd filler ship is thrown in)	10	3.92%	3.92%
Toolkit Jousters (a versatile mix of jousting and arc-dodging)	6	2.35%	2.35%
Deliberately Off-Meta/Quirky/Casual (I want a proper opponent, not something weird, experimental, or deliberately weak)	5	1.96%	1.96%
Shark & Remora (ace or big ship surrounded by scrubs)	5	1.96%	1.96%
Other:	4	1.57%	1.57%

You should have included control - people hate to play against it - especially ion control.

I voted for time wasters and bulk. With limited mods, trying to chew through some ships if their green dice are hot is a pain. On the flip side, if my red dice are bad, that can be equally frustrating.

I've not a giant fan of time wasters or two ship lists; though this is largely due to an utter drubbing I received at the hands of Fenn-Guri last night.

It's got a big enough bid to reliably guarantee Fenn moving last, and Guri moving after everything other than an I6. Guri is almost impossible to block due to Advanced Sensors (and can almost certainly guarantee landing in range to get a free focus), while Fenn can easily close to range one due to his dial and action options. It's an awfully nasty puzzle to attempt to solve (which wasn't helped by laughably poor defense dice on my side and very good attack dice by my opponent).

I almost picked big ships that run away, but I prefer mini swarms, so I can block them.

I went with Aces as they are just annoying to deal with.

Not heard of Shark and Remoras before. I always called it Mini Swarm or Heavy Hitter + Mini Swarm.

6 hours ago, Wazat said:

If we're ever actually reduced to rock-paper-scissors, the game dies because that's not what we're here for.

Agreed. Of course different lists will have an advantage over others, but if it gets to the point where you can just look at both lists and guarantee a winner, then what's the point of actually playing?

9 hours ago, Wazat said:

Ideally, even in a rock-paper-scissors matchup, paper can beat scissors if plays the smarter and more skillful game. If we're ever actually reduced to rock-paper-scissors, the game dies because that's not what we're here for. Happy beeps though -- I don't think FFG will let that happen.

This. I don't mind being at a disadvantage, but as long as I feel I can bring any (broadly sensible) squad and have a fighting chance, I'm fine.

Not facing ships which can autothrusters/evade/palpatine to magic 3 evades out of completely blank green dice or autothrusters/lone wolf/Poe against every single attack goes a long way to dealing with that.

We have 360 votes with still a week to go! The last poll ended with just 314, so we're picking up a lot more votes. Thanks everyone!

My current plan for the next poll is:

Overall: How do you feel about Wave 4 and the July Points Update?

• ++ Very Good : It's made the game better. I like the new ships, problem fleets became tamer, and/or existing fleets and ships I like got better.
• + Mostly Good : It hurt me a bit, but overall the result has been positive. I'm willing to bleed in a couple places for a better game.
• ~ Indifferent : I wasn't really affected by this update. I've not seen the problems it's fixing, and I wasn't hurt or helped by the fixes. The new ships don't matter to me.
• ~ Torn : It's hard to pick a positive or negative review, since it's been a very mixed experience for me.
• ~ Still Uncertain : It's not that I'm ambivalent, I'm just reserving judgement until the meta shakes out a bit more, or I get to try new things.
• - Mostly Bad : There's been some good to it, but overall I dislike what the update or new ships did to the meta.
• -- Very Bad : It ruined my favorite fleets, or changed the meta in ways I strongly dislike. I don't feel like anything equally positive came from it.

Three flavors of ambiguous results to feel out why people feel that way. Might be too much though. I might remove "still uncertain" since someone can just wait to vote for a week or two while they decide.

Poll will be single-vote instead of voting for several options.

Thoughts on this poll and its wording? Would you add to, remove, or reword these options? Or would a totally different poll be better? Feedback, please!

1 minute ago, Wazat said:

We have 360 votes with still a week to go! The last poll ended with just 314, so we're picking up a lot more votes. Thanks everyone!

My current plan for the next poll is:

Overall: How do you feel about Wave 4 and the July Points Update?

• ++ Very Good : It's made the game better. I like the new ships, problem fleets became tamer, and/or existing fleets and ships I like got better.
• + Mostly Good : It hurt me a bit, but overall the result has been positive. I'm willing to bleed in a couple places for a better game.
• ~ Indifferent : I wasn't really affected by this update. I've not seen the problems it's fixing, and I wasn't hurt or helped by the fixes. The new ships don't matter to me.
• ~ Torn : It's hard to pick a positive or negative review, since it's been a very mixed experience for me.
• ~ Still Uncertain : It's not that I'm ambivalent, I'm just reserving judgement until the meta shakes out a bit more, or I get to try new things.
• - Mostly Bad : There's been some good to it, but overall I dislike what the update or new ships did to the meta.
• -- Very Bad : It ruined my favorite fleets, or changed the meta in ways I strongly dislike. I don't feel like anything equally positive came from it.

Three flavors of ambiguous results to feel out why people feel that way. Might be too much though. I might remove "still uncertain" since someone can just wait to vote for a week or two while they decide.

Poll will be single-vote instead of voting for several options.

Thoughts on this poll and its wording? Would you add to, remove, or reword these options? Or would a totally different poll be better? Feedback, please!

Looks to me like it covers the key options.

Final two days of the most hated playstyle poll! 381 votes is nothing to sneeze at.

I'll start preparing the next poll so it can go live on the 1st.