3 hours ago, Kieransi said:

I would call it in a heartbeat. And I would ruthlessly shame and mock anybody who did it at any event I attended or judged. (NOTE: I'm 6'5", well over 300 pounds, and built like a truck. Ain't nobody going to do anything but meekly accept it from me. I can't globally recommend it, I guess.)

If you don't wanna @#$%in' play X Wing, don't @#$%in' play X-Wing. Jesus @#$%'in Christ.

I've seen this around a couple of times, what's the origin?

Wilder, this is really good to be honest. I'm content with my score as somebody who doesn't get a TON of practice in, I feel like I'm good at 42. Because I'm JUST about average, and I just haven't had a lot of chances to really play. Frankly, Fly Casual has been a huge boon to understanding positioning, range, and learning to accept probability, being objective, and learning to roll with the punches.

But most importantly, how to handle getting punched in the first place. If I can just frankenstein @GreenDragoon 's post real quick...

Spatial awareness: those need practice on the mat.

• Spatial Visualization and Geometry
  • There's a lot of people who are much better than me at really figuring out where their s**t is gonna' land. Thing is, I've gotten good enough to the point that if I cross over an asteroid, it's eight times out of ten because it's a calculated risk and not a huge gaff. But the perfect movement of Simulator has spoiled me.
• Range Control
• This one I'm not that great at. Just last night I lost my X-Wing to a rookie pilot I was training because I didn't turn tightly enough to avoid her arc- I took distance like a big drip instead. This is why I tend to fly inflexible or flexible ships, so I'm either gonna' have to roll with my foe's better ranging or have so much flexibility that it barely matters.

Specific game knowledge: you can learn those by investing time away from the table.

• Rules Understanding
  • This one's tough, but I've gotten better over time. The key thing to do is to, when you're unsure, look it up. There's bound to be an exhaustive thread with a truncated answer somewhere, if you can't seem to figure it out from the book.
• Spotting “Rules-Breaking” Combinations
  Typically this one comes down to, "Now hold on, that doesn't sound terribly kosher..." and seeing how it goes from there. Then disproving it.
• Tracking Scores and Determining Win Condition
  One of the greatest pitfalls in competitive X-Wing is to chase down every ship until destruction, but the truth is you only really need good positioning and half points on as many targets as you can get. This seems to me why regen aces are such a pain in the rear.
• Understanding Target Priority
  • I feel like I'm pretty good at this. Mostly I rely on threat assessment.

Transferrable skils: harder to practice, most people I know have an affinity for them, or lack thereof and simply don't care to improve it.

• Equanimity and Objectivity
  • Largely I imagine just, learning to roll with punches and such is what this means. I feel I'm good at it.
• Basic Probability
  • No math skills here, but if you can reliably guess where your foe's gonna' end up, you'll be fine. That's what I do and USUALLY it works out.
• Patience:
  • I am oh so horrible at patience. I love to rush in and typically, it costs me. This is why I fly high HP generics anymore- they allow me to be foolhardy.
• Aggression:
  • Ditto to the above.

6 hours ago, player2072913 said:

I've seen this around a couple of times, what's the origin?

its a verbatim quote from the OP of this thread.

10 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

Basically this:

The yellow number tells you how many ship base lengths they moved. You see that they can shoot at each other after a total of 11 (if both started in the front of their zone)

Never ever heard of that before..

17 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Excellent points, guys, and I do agree "List Building or List Selection" belongs on the list. GreenDragoon is right ... in my head, I was only thinking about playing at the table.

Whilst I hate the internet's perception that you can 'win' in listbuilding and the tiresome matter of moving plastic spaceships and rolling dice is of secondary importance to the great god " The Tournament Meta ", you can definitely lose at the listbuilding stage, by finding yourself on the wrong end of a scissors-paper-stone matchup, and some squads are better than others. Not just in absolute effectiveness, but in synergy with a particular player's default mindset - characteristics such as abnormally high spatial visualisation or aggressiveness favour particular types of squads.

The other is 'strategy'. This is arguably a composite of spatial visualisation, range control and target priority, but I've seen more games lost at deployment, obstacle placement, and general approach well prior to shooting than almost any other single element of the game. A good half the time, someone goes into the initial shooting match at a serious disadvantage because they've got one or more ships unable to fire, or forced to pull a move which denies them an action for some reason, or with several ships at different range bands so all the enemy get attacks at optimal range but half your ships are at a longer range band.

3 hours ago, LTuser said:

Never ever heard of that before..

It's one of a few good rules for eyeballing stuff. It only works exactly as described if both ships are lined up in a head-on pass, but it's a good rule if you're trying to avoid being in range...

Other good rules of thumb for eyeballing positions:

1. A small base is exactly the same as speed 1 template (Medium bases are 1.5 and large bases 2).
2. A range band is 2.5 base lengths.
   • Since a speed 1 move is 2 base lengths forward (the one speed 1 template plus your own base width at the front of it) a single speed 1 move can't quite cover a range band. If you start mid-range-band, though, a boost will push you one range band closer to the target (or further away, as appropriate)
3. If you do a straight, you will end up (obviously) directly in front of your current position.
   • If you do a hard turn, you'll end up along a line extended from the corners of your base (so if you turn left, eyeball a straight line from your back right corner to your front left. that will run through the back right corner, the centre, and front left corner of your base's final position), slightly closer than you'd have moved in a straight of the same speed.
   • If you do a bank, you'll end up along a line extended in the same fashion from the 'nubs' for template placement (back right, centre, front left to back left, centre, front right), slightly further than you'd have moved in a straight of the same speed.
4. If you don't know where an enemy ship's going, no ship can move outside its own forward arc of fire at the start of the activation phase without using Boost, Barrel Roll or SLAM.

8 minutes ago, Magnus Grendel said:

Whilst I hate the internet's perception that you can 'win' in listbuilding and the tiresome matter of moving plastic spaceships and rolling dice is of secondary importance to the great god " The Tournament Meta ", you can definitely lose at the listbuilding stage, by finding yourself on the wrong end of a scissors-paper-stone matchup, and some squads are better than others. Not just in absolute effectiveness, but in synergy with a particular player's default mindset - characteristics such as abnormally high spatial visualisation or aggressiveness favour particular types of squads.

This, but I'd like to add an extra angle.

List building and the art thereof is an area where I've improved an awful lot. Architecture is a thing for me in almost every thing I do, I like to delve and experiment, make my own thing, find combos others have not.

In X Wing, this amounts to making absolutely tons of squads that I'll never use.

Everything is connected and referential, so my improving my understanding of the game improves my list building and, here is my point, vice versa!

My list building process massively informs my understanding of how these elements will combine on the table and how I can use them effectively, spacially and tactically.

You don't win at list building anymore, but understanding the impact and relevance of every element in your squad is HUGE in informing your decisions at the table.

Simply put, you build a list, you include a bunch of stuff, you look at how that all connects and then visualise how you can fly it to make use of every single thing you've included- turn mapping! . If you fall down on the visualisation of certain elements, remove them, replace with something that better fits the picture.

When you get it right at this stage, it can often just fall into place when you put it on the table and teach you things that you were maybe not fully aware of, or were perhaps just overthinking on. How well this marries with your mapping, or not, helps to show where your avenue of improvement lies.

When I have a list that never makes the table, generally its because the visualisation fell down and I couldn't find a way to bring it back on track. So, I go back to the beginning and use that failure to inform the next build. And so on.

Using a netlist can work the same way, but it's more akin to reverse engineering. The build process is not there. But working out why the various elements are there, through turn mapping and simple use, can also help improve your understanding of the game and inform your own builds.

So what I learned: Start an X-wing Podcast

I rated myself low on the patience category when I realized that I skimmed the discription...

This was very good reading, thank you.

On 2/18/2020 at 11:37 AM, Magnus Grendel said:

If you don't know where an enemy ship's going, no ship can move outside its own forward arc of fire at the start of the activation phase without using Boost, Barrel Roll or SLAM.

That's no longer really true, some ships can move backwards now. But it's true enough!

Excellent analysis. I love your Index. It reminds me the S.P.E.C.I.A.L from Fallout

I would suggest adding the ability to play under pressure (or include it in the definition of Equanimity and Objectivity) . I lost a few important games myself doing some stupid moves at the last round. Keeping your head cool is as important factor as luck.

@Jeff Wilder

I've been thinking about it some more, because none of the 10 reflect where I struggle most: Endurance and Focus. If I were to redo the list then I'd put patience/aggression and equanimity/objectivity/probability into one each, and add Endurance and Focus.

Focus includes a range of things: the ability not to get distracted, but also to set your mind on a goal and follow that - but balancing that tunnel vision with understanding of your win condition, of course. In a way it is the will to win. I've lost a ton of games because I mentally went "ah f* it, I'll just do that" when I completely knew it was a stupid decision. I attribute that to a lack of focus, or a lack of will to win. Determination might be another label that fits.

Endurance is the same on a larger scale. Not just an individual game but for an entire day. This is undoubtedly my worst out of all, and I'm not sure where else this would fit.

What do you think?

3 hours ago, GreenDragoon said:

What do you think?

I agree. I've had numerous games get away from me because I just wasn't focussed enough and overlooked something simple and obvious, or changed my mind on one dial and forgot to go back over the others.

Focus is a key ingredient of success in absolutely anything.

On 3/21/2020 at 10:31 AM, GreenDragoon said:

What do you think?

I would mostly agree, as I do with the earlier suggestion of Listbuilding/Know Your List.

I do think that Probability is sufficiently different from Objectivity/Equanimity that I would keep them separate. As with many of the skills interacting and influencing each other, knowledge of Probability certainly plays into Objectivity/Equanimity, but it can do so in strange ways ... Dee Yun and I both are subject to a little bit of tilt on extreme variance, because we both know exactly what the odds were, whereas a less math-inclined player can just shrug it off. So high marks in Probability does not necessarily equate to high marks in Equanimity, and vice-versa.

So, if I were doing it now, with this feedback, I'dd add two more skills:

Listbuilding/Knowing Your List

Focus/Endurance

... and then this would change, mostly as follows (I did it quick-and-dirty, rather than relying more on a more accurate statistical conversion, but it's fine):

A Fun (But Mostly Arbitrary) Assessment of Your Skill in X-Wing

First, in each of the sub-skills discussed, rank your personal ability on a scale from 1 to 10, where 1 is abysmal and 10 is superlative. Needless to say, try to be objective.

Second, add together your ratings, for a number from 12 to 120.

Third, compare to this chart:

12 to 36 -- You’re either very new to the game, or just plain really bad at it. (FWIW, IMO 99% of players who score here are pretty new to the game.) Evaluate again after 20 games or so, and see where you fall then

37 to 54 -- You are a below average player, and probably don’t play frequently, but you’re not terrible. Either luck or player expectations discrepancies could let you present a challenge to, or defeat, more skillful players.

55 to 66 -- You’re an average player. You usually finish middle-of-the-pack in tournaments you attend, but you’ve probably done pretty well in a couple.

67 to 84 -- You’re an above-average player, and probably feel some disappointment in yourself when you don’t do very well in small tournaments and at least moderately well in larger ones. People don’t feel fortunate to draw you in the first round of a tournament.

85 to 102 -- You’re an extremely good player, and probably the odds-on favorite to win most of your local tournaments. You routinely make the cut in larger tournaments, and you’ve probably made the cut in at least a couple of very large or national tournaments.

103 to 114 -- There are probably only 30 to 40 players this skilled actively playing X-Wing. If you listen to X-Wing podcasts, you’ve heard of 90% of them..

115 to 120 -- Nobody’s this good, and if you scored this high, I can guarantee you ranked yourself too high in Equanimity and Objectivity.

Leaves me in the same spot, funnily enough. I know my lists really well, but my focus and endurance is bad .