4 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

Yes, we are. The z2 is in a really awkward spot right now. On one hand, it's extremely capable. One or the few sips that can successfully run a mono-chassis build. It also counters the theme of the game 'arcs matter' as it is entirely too capable of maintaining arc, and range control, and action economy. On the other hand, it's kinda the only thing holding up the entire faction. Their large is a bust, their X is good but doesn't have the same consistency and is expensive, their shuttle for rid of the only played pilot card, and fireballs are yet unproven even if promising. So currently, yes, there's other bigger issues. But eventually, assuming you fix those, this one will still be here.

How is the RZ-2 any worse than any ship with a turret? Or even just two arcs like the Firespray? Do you also have an issue with those? What about the resistance bomber? It may be bad, but it can cover three arcs with guns and one with bombs - do you see that as a design fail?

Lost Obi-Wan to a one-shot in round 3 of LVO to a turreted HWK shot: HHC, BBB, Direct Hit.

Lost Obi-Wan to another one-shot in round 5 of LVO with another BBB defense roll.

I rolled three green dice with Obi-Wan (as opposed to four or five) maybe eight times in five rounds of LVO ... and managed BBB at a 25% clip. 'Cause X-Wing is all about skill and positioning.

A few years ago at a Store Champ or Regionals against chewbracca, I had an IG-2000B facing his Decimator with 1 HP left, for the win.

With primary, I rolled no hits, Predator into ... still no hits. Then HLCed no hits, Predator into ... still no hits. Nine red dice, zero hits, for the game and tourney loss.

1 hour ago, Matanui3 said:

How is the RZ-2 any worse than any ship with a turret? Or even just two arcs like the Firespray? Do you also have an issue with those? What about the resistance bomber? It may be bad, but it can cover three arcs with guns and one with bombs - do you see that as a design fail?

No I do not. Because in all but one of those cases the designs are not efficient enough to allow the ship to perform well as a mono-chassis build as readily. Of the ones you mention only the Firespray seems to get that from time to time in 3xBounty Hunter. And I haven't even seen it of late.

For the bomber, despite coverage doesn't actually get a ton of alpha, is easy to block and grapple, easy to predict and is action starved most of the time.

Compare that to a z2 that can handily arc Dodge, range control, and is getting mod buffs from AO and/or Heroic.

Largely my point is that the ship is unthematic in the universe and to the game. It spends more of it's time shooting behind it, than it does in front. And for big gains. My stance is that the rear shots for that chassis should come at more of a penalty. Easy way, no mods.

On 3/4/2020 at 11:49 AM, wurms said:

I think it may have been a 1st ed. Rule. I remember at a regionals, this happened to someone and T.O. ruled he has to keep the roll if other player doesnt allow you to reroll. Coulda been T.O. was misinformed too.

This is one of those rules where what they settled on is statistically 100% fair, but an unethical player can angle-shoot the rule.

How? The unethical player knowingly rolls one too many dice ... if it comes up okay and nobody notices, great. If it comes up okay and someone notices, well, still no worse than before. But if it comes up bad? The unethical player himself can "notice," and regretfully re-roll the whole thing, with one fewer die.

A better rule would be that if too many dice are rolled, the non-rolling player decides whether they are re-rolled. It's still completely fair -- aside from the possibility of nobody noticing, but that's just sometimes gonna happen -- but it's not angle-shootable.

3 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

This is one of those rules where what they settled on is statistically 100% fair, but an unethical player can angle-shoot the rule.

How? The unethical player knowingly rolls one too many dice ... if it comes up okay and nobody notices, great. If it comes up okay and someone notices, well, still no worse than before. But if it comes up bad? The unethical player himself can "notice," and regretfully re-roll the whole thing, with one fewer die.

A better rule would be that if too many dice are rolled, the non-rolling player decides whether they are re-rolled. It's still completely fair -- aside from the possibility of nobody noticing, but that's just sometimes gonna happen -- but it's not angle-shootable.

THIS!

This is what I was trying to explain. Hope it makes things more clear for you @GreenDragoon . I did not explain it nearly this well. But that is the exploit. And it works.

PS: thanks Jeff.

9 hours ago, Flurpy said:

I mean not to toot my own horn, but I made cut at UK SoS with X-Wings, Transport and Fireball, then went on to get a World Invite with a Fireball, Falcon and an A Wing after in the Worlds Qualifier. I think Reistance is in a spectacular place right now, with various different builds and all ship types making cut left and right at all major events. I'm not sure what data are you looking at.

I can only speak to local experience. As always. Congrats though. You've had far better luck then we have locally with the faction.

6 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

A few years ago at a Store Champ or Regionals against chewbracca, I had an IG-2000B facing his Decimator with 1 HP left, for the win.

With primary, I rolled no hits, Predator into ... still no hits. Then HLCed no hits, Predator into ... still no hits. Nine red dice, zero hits, for the game and tourney loss.

Its almost hard to believe this lol.

2 hours ago, ForceSensitive said:

I can only speak to local experience. As always. Congrats though. You've had far better luck then we have locally with the faction.

It's not about me. Check Metawing. Reistance is not CIS level but there are plenty of pilots at the top.

Not sure if this qualifies but I had salt thrown at me. Phasma Reinforced R3 takes an Incoming proton Torp. H/H/H/C. Rolls natties,1 for the Reinforce passed last damage to a partner. No damage.....

Scarif base pilot carrying Sloane with a shield upgrade . During a 2v2 400 pt match. All 400 points of opponents ships shoot at The Reaper. Rolls enough evades to last with 1 hull. Everyone was in shock it survived allowing the opponents to start being chewed up before anything else took damage.

11 hours ago, Jeff Wilder said:

A few years ago at a Store Champ or Regionals against chewbracca, I had an IG-2000B facing his Decimator with 1 HP left, for the win.

With primary, I rolled no hits, Predator into ... still no hits. Then HLCed no hits, Predator into ... still no hits. Nine red dice, zero hits, for the game and tourney loss.

Fair, you were trying to cheat. If your recollection is accurate.

Predator is for primary only.

7 minutes ago, Cerebrawl said:

Fair, you were trying to cheat. If your recollection is accurate.

Predator is for primary only.

Not in 1.0 it wasn't.

3 minutes ago, DR4CO said:

Not in 1.0 it wasn't.

Ah, my bad.

9 hours ago, Flurpy said:

It's not about me. Check Metawing. Reistance is not CIS level but there are plenty of pilots at the top.

I don't often use the stat trackers, but you piqued my interest, so I checked. The top performer is indeed a Trade Fed Drone. From the faction though only three pilot cards appear in the top twenty from the CIS faction. Worth noting that in the top 20 best performers 5 of them are Rz2s. A full quarter of the top 20 is one chassis from one of 7 factions. The only other ship from the faction to show up from the Resistance is Poe down at 17th, only just above the lowest placed z2.

Of 6 ships in the top twenty from Resistance, 5 of those are Rz2s.

To support your point you could say that the Resistance is doing well, granted, only tied with Scum in terms of pilots in the top 20. But an important distinction is that the Scum faction had the diversity of four chassis among their six entries, not two like the Resistance does. Again, even there, 5 to 1 ratio is their A-wings.

(*As an interesting tangent, since it's been discussed earlier up thread, three of the six Scum pilots in the top 20 are Fang Fighters. Just more evidence to how solid the Fangs base is, it includes both it's generic pilots. Just throwing it out there.)

So when we ask why is the resistance doing well, clearly, the Rz2s are pulling the most weight for the whole pile. Even scanning down to say the top40 on that list, they only have 3 Xwings, a Sixth RZ2, and the third chassis from the faction doesn't even show up until 38. Their best large doesn't appear as the fifth best ship in faction until 79th, as I said, it sucks right now by comparison. The new Fireball does show up a few times before it, as I said, promising.

So thank you for the data, it supports my case. The RZ2 is in fact, the most consistent performing chassis overall, and far and away the best performing chassis in it's faction.

Link for reference: https://meta.listfortress.com/pilots

10 hours ago, Blail Blerg said:

Its almost hard to believe this lol.

Ask chewbracca! My bad dice stories are, as Geordan used to say, pure "journalism"!

21 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

Ask chewbracca! My bad dice stories are, as Geordan used to say, pure "journalism"!

I tell people never blame dice.

But id have a severe mental breakdown if that ever happened to me.

You are a strong man.

9 minutes ago, Blail Blerg said:

I tell people never blame dice. But id have a severe mental breakdown if that ever happened to me. You are a strong man.

You've never seen me alternately weeping and laughing maniacally at a tournament, obviously. I dunno about "severe," but I know that variance has broken my will to live several times.

BTW, the thing against Sam was "only" 1-in-512. That's somewhere around, I dunno, 10th in my "dice probability" stories.

This isn't salt (because it turned out good), but in my first ever major tournament (2014 Regionals in Burlingame), I had not one, but two full games in which I rolled only one natural evade. (Full disclosure, I was playing three 1-AGI ships ... and I won both games.)

I spent a focus token to get a single evade on a low initiative Upsilon, then promptly rolled 5 red eyeballs on my attack.

I know that's only a 1/1024 chance, but it taught me a valuable lesson.

31 minutes ago, fantomenos said:

I know that's only a 1/1024 chance, but it taught me a valuable lesson.

... What was the lesson?

19 minutes ago, Jeff Wilder said:

... What was the lesson?

Roll blanks on your green dice so you won't be tempted to spend tokens like that.

1 minute ago, fantomenos said:

Roll blanks on your green dice so you won't be tempted to spend tokens like that.

Anti-natties is a valid strategy.

53 minutes ago, fantomenos said:

Roll blanks on your green dice so you won't be tempted to spend tokens like that.

Or perhaps just “don’t bother with an evade on an Upsilon”?

I felt bad for my opponent last week. I was playing 5As all with Heroic. Normally I'd expect Heroic to proc 1, maybe 2, times in a game. In that game it proc'd 7 times. And each time the reroll resulted in either hits or evades. Poor guy. To his credit he didn't get salty at all.

1 hour ago, Matanui3 said:

Or perhaps just “don’t bother with an evade on an Upsilon”?

This is the correct answer. The focus is so likely to deal more than one damage on a 5-dice attack I would never even think about saving 1/12 hp on the Ups for it.

19 minutes ago, ClassicalMoser said:

This is the correct answer. The focus is so likely to deal more than one damage on a 5-dice attack I would never even think about saving 1/12 hp on the Ups for it.

I don't believe you. No time left, your Ups has taken 5 damage, the score is 25-0, your favor.

(Moral: Never say never.)