5 hours ago, Wazat said:

Yikes, that got extreme and personal fast. What exactly did he say that led you to that reaction? It feels like you're greatly overstating what he said and how he said it, at least in this thread.

He constantly derails threads to the point they all devolve into his long form nonsensical ramblings interrupted by other people trying to get a word in. Literally any thread he posts.

@Wazat thank you! That's perfectly said! I only laugh react because the cat commentary was too funny 😂 Flurp and I had one discussion one time about something completely unrelated to this topic. Ironically they convinced me in a way to join the meta on RZ2s, leading a week or two later to the above SC game and a sweet top four spot. I've even thanked them and gave some credit in a few threads since for the data that gave me the idea. That was months ago now though. Don't know where we went so South. Absolutely right on with the typing thing. Sometimes I wish we had a video forum instead to some that issue. To clarify one thing though, the sarcasm you just quoted about 'this topic again' was intended as a jab at the topic itself, not at any one.

//

I think you've got it distilled to a more of an essence though. There are times when the disparity of being able to run and being able to pin down get really far apart. And yeah that can suck black hole strength. But this is where we usually get stuck on the conversation when it's come up. Because as I believe you've pointed out, there's not much you can do with it if we can't define that line. Best I've head was from others that am objective system being more centralized. Even the ones we got so far though don't help much. As a riff on my earlier smaller board comment, maybe an environment card that shrunk the board after a certain turn would be an option? Like, borrow a bit from PubG and the like with the shrinking map to force the combat?

@Flurpy I can't help but sympathize. Legit, I've been to that point with a few folks on this forum myself over the years. Pretty sure I'd have written more reacts like yours at them if I could have stopped cursing long enough to do so. I certainly said a few unkind things over the years. It's super irritating to see a few names pop up, I get it. Over time I've found a lot more common grounds to go with the opposing sides with those folks though. On more than a few things I've been posting in their arguments favor even. Anymore I hardly even remember who I hated to see in a thread. Maybe in time we'll find a few more things to agree on, maybe not. Until then, scroll on by, or write what you want about the topic. Beyond that I don't know what to tell you bud.

@theBitterFig I really like what you said about aesthetics and degree. That's spot on. I'd offer the same thing to you that I did wazat, an environment card that shrinks the board after a time.

Re: Chess and Go. If your looking for a weird crazy game to watch between all the chess, you might enjoy watching a Go match where they use the Great Wall strategy. It's super risky and unorthodox because it opens with a tengen, drops five stones scattered across a midline, then intentionally starts a bunch of fights and tries to chase them all to the middle of the board which is a dangerous place to be anyway, only to link up with the early insane stones to get the play advantage back on a group and then run that into the end game. A friend of mine in the club I played with for a while loved trying it because it's so crazy and offered hilarious complexity and stupidity in the same breath. Watching masters pull it off though is awesome.

@Flurpy I get the frustration when you're seeing the same people talking and it feels like the thread is getting too esoteric to be relevant or going wildly off course. This is one reason why I avoid rules arguments when able; rapidly goes off into la-la land with people parsing minutia, speculating wildly, and reading volumes into single words of rules that were not written for that kind of analysis. And then everything becomes deadly toxic fast with personal attacks and textual shouting matches.

1E arguments over how to interpret cards like Targeting Synchronizer drove me crazy, and eventually led me to ban all rules arguments from the x-wing wiki. We'll happily answer peoples' questions based on what we know (or answer that we don't currently have an answer because it's an open rules question at this time), but if they want to battle for a specific interpretation they like, off to the FFG Rules Forum they go! Take that inevitable rambling, rules lawyering, and toxicity to FFG's doorstep not ours; we admins are too dang tired to entertain it.

@ForceSensitive A shrinking table is an interesting idea. You hit the 45 minute mark and it shrinks by a 1 or 2 maneuver length next round. Then at the 60 minute mark it shrinks again. Actually it'd almost certainly have to be round number based or one player has an incentive to slow-play their planning etc phase decisions to get to the shrink sooner, which worsens instead of improves the problem.

At a minimum it could offer an interesting play mode that pushes things into the center for the final hurrah, and puts a fire under the rear of cagey ace lists and other lists that would normally drag it out (or provides a game mode where those lists are less frequently played). Though get it too small and it'll just be a traffic accident in the middle and nobody can k-turn, so we'd need to dial in how much shrinking occurs and when.

This could be a neat game mode!

I'm drawing off a concept from an Armada objective card. The concept here is your dogfighting between two opposing fleets and the increasing fire fight between them is slowly hedging in your zone of operations. If your going to disengage you risk running into the cross fire. Total spitballing here. It would need a lot of editing. As a game mode, or option, I'd be okay with the concept. But not as the norm.

Environment Card, Firing Lanes.

At the beginning of every odd round starting with the first, the player without the initiative assigns a objective token to a board edge. At the beginning of every even round the player with the initiative does the same.

At the end of the round, for every ship at range one of a edge with an objective token, or range two of an edge with four or more roll attack dice equal to the number of objective tokens on that edge and the ship suffers hit/crit accordingly. Do this for each board edge separately*.

*I added this because thought it would make hiding in corners far more dangerous.

The thing about X-Wing that we all like to dissuade ourselves of is that it was never meant to be a seriously competitive game (in the sense of big events, rankings, etc.). It's in the same family of what are generally deemed "beer-n-pretzel" games (and an "Ameritrash" beer-n-pretzels game at that), which is not a pejorative term. But it does mean X-Wing does not really have the mechanistic infrastructure to scale-up well to a truly robust and resilient competitive game.

While X-Wing at least avoids problems of imprecision like "true line-of-sight" or "tape-measure movement ranges," it is still a game fundamentally rooted in precise locations and arc/range measurements in a reality where physically determining those 'close call' situations in a truly objective way are impossible in practice. Couple that with the imprecision that emerges from incorrect placements using the movement tool (be it unintentionally sloppy or intentionally malicious to cheat an advantage, like not putting the maneuver template totally flush against the front or rear to cheese an arc, dodge an arc, or avoid an obstacle) and the jostled game states that frequently happen when pieces are bumped/nudged by hands, sleeves, elbows, and dice and it's pretty far removed from any sort of board or miniature game that uses clearly delineated squares or spaces on a board to handle movement or range.

Couple that imprecision with the variance/randomness of X-Wing (it's got red dice variance VS green dice variance, on top of critical damage variance that can, ship-depending, range from flipping a "no effect" to a "lolz, you boned" card, on top of the match-up variance that results from random pairings each round where you might see a list you're stacked against or a list that is a big counter to your own).

Now, take that imprecision+randomness cocktail and sprinkle in a substantial lack of inherent game structure. Take X-Wing. It has no objectives. It provides no incentive to either player to actually engage the enemy (such that doing anything but out-waiting the opponent until they engage you on your terms is seen as sub-optimal play), AND the game has no standard length. It lasts "75 minutes," but that can translate into anything from 7 rounds to 20 rounds depending on the lists involved and how fast (or slow) the player(s) choose to be. Even Armada, FFG's game hot on X-Wing's heels, learned a few things and made all games the same 6 Rounds while introducing Objectives to encourage/force/reward engagement. The distinct lack of structure and incentive here has long been an issue for X-Wing and the competitive community. "Fortressing" has been a hotly debated topic since the "Millennium Fortress" dual falcon debates way back in Wave 1 BGG threads. Speed of play / slow play is similarly contentious. Some players see strategic smart-play where others see a try-hard spoiler of the game's spirit. Some see malintent rule-bending where others see a very slow, methodical, reflective player (or perhaps an indecisive analysis-paralysis case) . And these are debates that the community have literally been having ever since the Wave 1 pre-release "Kessel Run" tournament events marked the birth of competitive X-Wing.

Yet, those major glaring structural issues (e.g. slow play and lack of engagement incentive) are known issues that FFG OP and the Devs have neglected to address for 13 waves of First Edition and didn't dare address when they had golden opportunity to do so in Second Edition. So, they seem to me like aspects of the game that do pose a hurdle for the robustness of competitive X-Wing, but that FFG is unlikely now to ever address. So, for better or worse, they are the perpetual controversies within the competitive community.

@AllWingsStandyingBy you got applause from me. Cheers!

23 hours ago, theBitterFig said:

*For the record, as long as the ace culture of a lot of pre-fight drain circling followed by extended fleeing exists, I am 100% fine with the mobile fortress. I think it's utter BS to ban that, while aces do their own version of engagement avoidance.

I think this is a big part of what this discussion comes down to. Both sides have the right to be stubborn and wait till they get the engagement they want. If one thinks some lists have that right and some lists do not have that right, it seems that a need to question the holder of such an opinion's concept of fairness arises.

And shoutout for the excellent post by AllWingsStandyingBy. I'd also point out that the new hotness Legion like Armada has both objectives and a turn count.

I think as an alternative play mode, begining each round that starts after 30 mins, during end phase, if at range 1 of board edge roll 1 attack die suffer damage. Then 45 mins its range 2, then 60 mins its range 3.

A simple mechanic to incentivise sticking to the middle, also makes obstacke a bigger issue and also favours low agilty ships over aces to a degree as each individial hit is more imoactful.

Perhaps the ship coudk defend, but if so i think the attaco dice rolled shouod scale with the range e.g. r1 1 dice, r2 2 dice r3 3 dice., that might be too brutal vs 1 agility ships though.

Any further thoughts on this idea are welcome.

I wouldn't base it on play time, or else it incentivizes slow play all over again as certain players deliberately drag things out to get the board to shrink "sooner" in the round count.

Rather, rounds represent the true passage of time in X-Wing. The 75-minute timer is a crutch acknowledgement of the real world limitations imposed on the game, to keep players from being trapped playing a single round for too long. And the clock's disconnection from rounds is part of the reason it can be exploited by slow-playing lists.

X-Wing may need to start adopting a round limit of 6 - 10 rounds or something, though I don't know what that limit should be. It stands to have benefits or penalties on some list types and thus is likely to be controversial; lists that can endure punishment for a few rounds before collapsing benefit, while more squirrely lists that want to lead their foe into the asteroids before pouncing suddenly can't afford the rounds as their opponent drags it out to make the squirrely list come to them.

I don't love the idea of penalizing players who need a few more rounds but play very quickly (they know what they're doing and their dials are down quickly, they move their ships rapidly, etc). As long as they're not run-away lists, they shouldn't be penalized. Really, setting match goals other than elimination/points and adding round limits will fundamentally alter the game, and we can't avoid creating winners and losers in the process. I wonder where the line would need to be drawn... Probably a major reason X-Wing hasn't gotten the same treatment as FFG's other flagship products.

But returning to the shrinking scenario:

You could have one side of the board, or two adjacent sides for a corner effect, be the side that's becoming unwise to visit. Either a capital ship battle is sweeping through the player's battlefield, or a sun is blasting out superheated plasma or some other weather phenomenon, or asteroids or doomed station debris are drifting into the battlefield. But it also works as an "all sides are under threat" zone as chaos crashes in on the players from all around.

Placing obstacles densely (or marking an area as a dense obstacle field) seems like a neat way to start closing in the battlefield. Superheated gas clouds (which roll 1 or 2 dice and damage on a hit/crit, in addition to strain and missing action), asteroids, debris, etc are moving in so densely that merely flying into the zone is treated as an obstacle (and vultures etc can't attach, it's just too chaotic in there). Players know it's coming and know to avoid being there as the danger zone expands.

Definitely plays to the advantage of some lists of course, so it works best as a scenario not the way to play. But it sounds like a fun game mode!