41 minutes ago, GreenDragoon said:

would you say... they should just not be so selfish and die once they’ve led a decent life, which is what mankind has done for millennia and isn’t a drain on the future waves?

Soontir's lived for two editions and got to a ripe old initiative of six. He's lived a full life and is it really that bad if the meta kills him off?

7 minutes ago, jagsba said:

Soontir's lived for two editions and got to a ripe old initiative of six. He's lived a full life and is it really that bad if the meta kills him off?

It was a childish jab at someone else, from the dumpsterfire thread.

For what it's worth, I still enjoy playing him. He was not a viable choice for much of my 1.0 experience of PalpDefenders, Dengaroo, Parattanni, GhostFenn and so on. Token stack on Soontir, unlike Whisper and force users, is very limited. 3 hull are a single bad roll, and that makes him exciting. Vader and Whisper are much more relevant right now and in 2e in general.

1 hour ago, jagsba said:

Soontir's lived for two editions and got to a ripe old initiative of six. He's lived a full life and is it really that bad if the meta kills him off?

I wouldn't say it's a bad thing. However, it's almost a staple of any game with a meta to have a few pieces that are always just good: any League player will (probably) agree with me that Lee Sin is never really a bad pick, and Soontir is that consistent goodness for X-Wing. He's never been bad and he's sometimes really good. It's just a thing that happens, and it might not be worth trying to change.

53 minutes ago, Npmartian said:

I wouldn't say it's a bad thing. However, it's almost a staple of any game with a meta to have a few pieces that are always just good: any League player will (probably) agree with me that Lee Sin is never really a bad pick, and Soontir is that consistent goodness for X-Wing. He's never been bad and he's sometimes really good. It's just a thing that happens, and it might not be worth trying to change.

All I'm saying is we have to accept the new reality, if we have to let soontir succumb to the meta in order to open up xwing as normal is it really that bad? Think of the economy built around xwing. Hard working small xwing businesses that are suffering because we're trying to keep soontir safe.

3 minutes ago, jagsba said:

All I'm saying is we have to accept the new reality, if we have to let soontir succumb to the meta in order to open up xwing as normal is it really that bad? Think of the economy built around xwing. Hard working small xwing businesses that are suffering because we're trying to keep soontir safe.

Perhaps my point wasn't totally clear-I'm fine with Soontir failing if the meta requires it to open. However, if he's not totally oppressive, I don't think there's much point in trying to tear him down-he can just be consistently "pretty good."

There's more to playing X-Wing than playing aces.

Soontir has already fallen a step or two as he was the weak link in triple aces. He’s not bad but the conceit that he’s some mad outlier worthy of bringing down hasn’t been true since way before Second Edition existed. Is it still 2016 where Boom Owl lives?

18 minutes ago, jagsba said:

All I'm saying is we have to accept the new reality, if we have to let soontir succumb to the meta in order to open up xwing as normal is it really that bad? Think of the economy built around xwing. Hard working small xwing businesses that are suffering because we're trying to keep soontir safe.

That’s the problem with this example. I see no indication that for X-Wing to live, Fel must die.

9 minutes ago, Chumbalaya said:

There's more to playing X-Wing than playing aces.

True. But playing aces is still a part of X-Wing.

Just now, Stay OT Leader said:

Soontir has already fallen a step or two as he was the weak link in triple aces. He’s not bad but the conceit that he’s done mad outlier worthy of bringing down hasn’t been true since way before Second Edition existed. Is it still 2016 where Boom Owl lives?

Could be a matter of local metas too. Locally something could be a monster because it's not facing enough counters, or there's a player there who's really fantastic with it.

I can tell you, the tournament players in my area make aces look outright oppressive. They're just very, very good with 'em and they're always practicing to hone their craft. It's gotten to the point where I won't fight them most of the time because the lists I like to run are just ace snacks, plain and simple. I do well against most other fleets with my casual jank, but aces are almost an auto-win, and even when they're not, they're a lot more frustrating to fight. Add to that the lack of fun in dealing with a list that runs away all game and plays as cagey as possible until it can get an opening or time is called, and I just stopped bothering; I'll play someone more my level, or a good player who's running something like beef or swarms or something not-aces. But aces (and to some extent vulture swarms)... I direct them to a different table when I'm playing my casual garbage.

...

I love all the hate Soontir gets. Its exactly what I want when I place him on the table. Come, waste your time killing my 53pt ship because you wake up in sweat having nightmares about 1st ed. palp aces.

Not just anyone can pick up and fly soontir. He is really bad in the wrong hands, and really good in the right hands. I think he is costed appropriately, as building him into a super ace: Shields Upgrade, Targeting Computer, EPT puts him in that 65-70pt range that feels right for a 3hull menace

A couple of thoughts...

First, I’ve read all four pages of this, and I’m a little puzzled that the discussion coalesced around whether Soontir Fel was too cheap. When I started playing (not terribly long ago, granted), I was told that I should try flying Soontir... he’s fun, he’s potentially powerful, but he’s high-risk, high-reward, very skill-based, and just barely justifies his cost, considering that one mistake followed by a little variance in the dice, and he vanishes. That’s what I was told, and he’s lived up to every single one of those statements... especially the last.

Second, is Poe really the gold standard we want to use for how aces should behave, and be costed? As a player who really enjoys playing with and against aces, Poe seems pretty wanting, especially considering that his cost quickly runs into the 80+ points range, and yes, he can show you a remarkable turn here and there, but much of the time, he’s... just a really expensive X-Wing.

Third, as people *keep* pointing out, if you make i6/i5 cost too much, to the point that they’re sufficiently weakened, some other bogeyman just fills their vacancy . This is what a metagame does. If you have several successful top-tier archetypes... aces, swarms, salad, ace & miniswarm, say...and you remove one of those, then one of the others simply moves into a more dominant position, and the players who aren’t keen on playing the new hotness are left with even fewer tools to combat that newly dominant archetype.

Fourth... like it or not, this is Star Wars, and part of it being Star Wars is that many (if not most) players will want Luke, Han, Vader, Obi-Wan, Anakin, Boba Fett, Kylo Ren and other marquee characters to be strong options... often in combination. Sure, to some extremely competitive tournament players, names may not matter... to those guys, Boba Fett may as well be named “Limited Medium Based i5 dude who rerolls lots of dice and has a great dial... no, I’ve never seen The Empire Strikes Back, Why?” But most players will want to have lists that run Anakin and Obi together (for example) be viable. Luke, Han, and Wedge? awesome, let’s do it? Is it even good? Who cares? It’s the Heroes of Yavin! If you start limiting the numbers of i5/i6 guys in one list, you lose those “theme” players. “Dirty Casuals” may seem like acceptable losses to hardened tournament vets, but that’s the sort of wrong thinking that leads games to bad places. And I think that’s a probable (if unintended) consequence of pricing aces away, or just hard-limiting them.

Finally... I really have to wonder what the original poster sees as the ideal X-Wing game. He doesn’t like ships with high initiative and excellent text, he doesn’t like ships with more than X number of upgrades, where X seems to equal some arbitrary number between 1 and 3. He also doesn’t seem to love swarms. I’m left with the feeling that he simply has a preferred way to play, and when frustrated that it struggles in a certain context, decides that the problem must be that everything his style or list struggles against must be oppressive. Should all X-Wing games be two lists of 3-5 i4 ships with unremarkable game text and incapable of double-repositioning facing off? Because everything else under the sun seems to be in the crosshairs. And I really am honestly asking: when is X-Wing “fun?”

@Cpt ObVus Agreed

14 minutes ago, Cpt ObVus said:

First, I’ve read all four pages of this, and I’m a little puzzled that the discussion coalesced around whether Soontir Fel was too cheap.

Yea, that came about because of the claim that he should cost 70 points, which none of us could reconcile with our experience with Soontir. I encouraged Boom Owl to provide some example lists with a 70-point Soontir, and lists with equivalently more expensive top aces like Vader etc (and to nail down what a pilot like Vader should cost under this change so we could discuss that), but didn't really get an answer. That's basically where discussion of the topic more-or-less ended, save for some back-and-forth on soontir. We can't reach an understanding with Boom or even really productively discuss it further, and there's been some... unnecessary hostility and name-calling, so the thread seems to have fully run its course.

At this point, IMO, there's nowhere to go.

this clash of worlds is hilarious!

The real world and wherever Boom Owl lives.

50 minutes ago, Cpt ObVus said:

Should all X-Wing games be two lists of 3-5 i4 ships with unremarkable game text and incapable of double-repositioning facing off?

1 hour ago, Chumbalaya said:

There's more to playing X-Wing than playing aces.

that sounds like communism son, I ain't having any of that in my free country

The problem with all these people attempting to save soontir by closing down the meta, is they don't understand that more soontir's will die if we close the meta. We need to reopen the meta and accept that some soontir's will die.

I would like to say, definitively: I’m not looking to start any conflicts or flame-wars or anything else with any other forum members. Not here for the drama. I just guess that Boom Owl and I have differing opinions on where the game is and ought to be. And that’s okay. I’m just offering one man’s opinion.

3 minutes ago, jagsba said:

The problem with all these people attempting to save soontir by closing down the meta, is they don't understand that more soontir's will die if we close the meta. We need to reopen the meta and accept that some soontir's will die.

Ooof, dark, man. Really dark...

1 minute ago, Boom Owl said:

I can't even imagine what's going to be going through mods' brains when they try to parse this conversation together later...