20 hours ago, Magnus Grendel said:

I'm a believer in "you can make a viable squad with pretty much any ship" is not the same as "fly whatever you want" - you can say "I want to fly a G-1A squad", but then you'd have to do some careful thinking about how, and build said squad intelligently if you want it to work.

The sad issue is sometimes things just aren't viable. The idea that skill can overcome all is a reactionary impulse to overly slavish metaslaves who claim that say... the Falcon lists are *dead* because they aren't even top 20 anymore! Despite the fact that its in the top 20% of lists even tracked on Metawing and thus is not just viable, but still kinda meta, if not a tier 1 list!

Like yeah, those people stink, but at the end of the day sometimes a ship may just... not be good enough to not get brutally tabled on too many matchups. You can love the YT-2400 to death, practice with it, really tune a list, but the ship is priced (somewhat clearly deliberately) to the point where any list using it just is going to get tabled by a well built list that knows you can just bully it statistically, and it doesn't have tricks worth its cost. If your list just gets chokeslammed by meta lists and has its lunch money taken, its not really viable because getting stomped most games without your opponent even trying to outthink or outplay you because of the raw handicap you put yourself at isn't great. Sometimes a list or ship is, frankly, bad enough that you just shouldn't be playing it even if you like it (I LOVE Dash, but, again, he is inexcusably poorly costed to the point he doesn't even fit in a janky non-competitive list, I have lost games with Dash vs people playing their first ever game of X-wing who didn't even get some of their ships ever on target to hit him he is so mathematically dismal) outside of the most extremely casual scenarios. And it shouldn't be a case of 'grin and bear it, you can make it work' so much as recognizing a given ship needs love (or specific dominant ships need nerfs). What complicates this is that its a gradiant. A ship can be statistically worse than another ship but still be in a healthier state because of some aspect of it that gives it a unique edge, and a ship could be non-meta and poorly statted but not so off meta that it really will make you lose sleep using it.

Only a Sith thinks in meta absolutes, essentially. I would heavily disagree with the idea any ship could be made into a viable squad, but I also think most ships have more use than most people give them credit for as long as they aren't from the non-scum ships from EU novels because holy crud do they do those ships dirty.

2 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

I'm a believer in "you can make a viable squad with pretty much any ship" is not the same as "fly whatever you want" - you can say "I want to fly a G-1A squad", but then you'd have to do some careful thinking about how, and build said squad intelligently if you want it to work.

2 minutes ago, dezzmont said:

What complicates this is that its a gradiant.

Yes and yes.

---

Also, many 1.0 players used to pride ourselves on what we called "flight patterns". Back in the day when ships were rather limited in move pool, like the Lambda or the Y-wing. Part of making these cool lists was mastering the flight pattern all the way from turn 0 to turn 10.

I'm pretty sure the whole Prox Mines and Struts work out similarly too. Wish to see more analysis of this list, as no way am I buying 6 hyenas.

On 12/11/2019 at 6:41 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

I'm a believer in "you can make a viable squad with pretty much any ship" is not the same as "fly whatever you want" - you can say "I want to fly a G-1A squad", but then you'd have to do some careful thinking about how, and build said squad intelligently if you want it to work.

When you take that with:

Quote

What complicates this is that its a gradiant.

I think it becomes more, "A viable squad can include any ship." A ship finds itself on a curve and where you can put it on the curve, on that gradient, determines how "viable" it is.

You are always making tradeoffs in your lists. You're trying to add up how good the chassis is, how good the pilots are, how much you do or do not need to choose first or second player, how bad you're hurt if you don't get your choice, the sorts of things you expect to face (is your local meta full of hard counters to the ship,) how unexpected or novel your list is, the skill levels you're likely to face, how well things in your list fit with and support each other, your own ability to keep that synergy, your own ability to get the most of the ship.

The curve itself is the ceiling. Supernatural reflexes is so many points on Vader because the ceiling is so high. Most of us can only put it somewhere under that curve making it not worth the points. But for any particular meta maybe that under the curve is still far above where the folks you play slot in with their lists.

There were lists I was "getting away with" as much because of who and what I went against as anything on my end. Showed up with things I hadn't figured out yet and got handled pretty easy, figured it out and became the one doing the handling. I read all about the scourge of regen but there is a thread in the squad lists with a guy who doesn't see it (and I don't seem to make it work very well either.)

None of this stuff exists in a vacuum.