Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Episode 10: The Silver Lining of Online Play (Featuring Greg Kash)
100 Plays1 year ago
A long time ago… in a windy city, far, far away… Your hosts Nick, Andrew, and special guest Greg Kash, chat about the implications of overpowered SL cards, the silver lining of online X-Wing, and the Nickel City X-Wing Draft League!
Follow the draft league and the action, follow NickelCityXWing on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/nickelcityxwing
Join the reserves for NCX Draft League Season 6: https://forms.gle/A6WA5vfG3g8zhXYt5
Become the ultimate supporter of 312 Squadron and get awesome perks! Check out our Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/312Squadron
Support our partner StrataStrike by using this link and checking out with code “312Squadron” for 15% off store-wide! https://www.etsy.com/shop/stratastrike/?etsrc=sdt
Hey, join the conversation, hop into the Discord! https://discord.gg/xknEegJw67
You can follow us live for weekly content on our Twitch channel: http://twitch.tv/312_Squadron
Like our page on Facebook for updates on future and current things: https://www.facebook.com/Squadron312/
Catch replays and edited content on our YouTube Channel: https://www.facebook.com/Squadron312/
Editor's Note: I said that Upton Sinclair's book "The Jungle" may not take place in Chicago, I was wrong. It does take place in Chicago's Stockyards.
Recommended
Transcript
Podcast Introduction with Special Episode
00:00:02
Speaker
You are listening to the 312 Squadron podcast. My name is Nick Sperry. And I'm Andrew Kuba.
00:00:08
Speaker
I'm Greg Cashmadian. We have a we have a special podcast episode today.
Pandemic Impact on X-Wing and Online Play Rise
00:00:13
Speaker
As you guys know, you know, Greg is here. We're going to talk about, honestly, I think something we don't talk about as much anymore because we're a little more removed, quote unquote, from the pandemic. But online X-Wing, you know, it being the savior of the game and getting a lot of people to unify together from across the world playing X-Wing on online. And we thought, who else have Greg on to talk about?
00:00:36
Speaker
online X-wing. So Greg, thanks for jumping on with us. Yeah,
Bowling Anecdotes and Greg's Grandmother's Perfect Game
00:00:40
Speaker
no problem. Thanks for having me and thanks for moving it to later so I could do my bowling league without having to be like, Hey, everybody, you need to move. How'd you do? That's fun. Well, listen, I don't want to brag, but we're, we're the first place team and we pulled out another undefeated sesh tonight. So that should only increase.
00:01:00
Speaker
Wow. Congrats. That's awesome. That's dope. Nice. Congrats. Awesome, man. Well, we'll definitely have plenty of time to talk about bowling. The greatest sport in the universe. My grandmother was an avid bowler. Oh, really? Yeah. It's so interesting. You're so specific. Your grandmother is so like it didn't. Your mom was in a bowler, though, and not much of a bowler. OK, but your grandmother was.
00:01:21
Speaker
My grandmother was in the local paper in Mantewak, Wisconsin. She bowled 300 once, too. But yeah, very, very. Grandmother bowled a 300. She did. Yeah. Yeah. This was probably in like the 50s or 60s. Really? Yeah. With rubber balls that don't hook. Yeah. Bowled a 300. Yeah. No, like she was in the newspaper and stuff, too. Yeah.
00:01:46
Speaker
When I bought my 300, I was in the newspaper as well, but it's common now. Back in the day, those were super rare. Oh, she was so excited about it too. Just to get into a little more detail,
Chicago Food Debate and Greg's Known Topics
00:02:01
Speaker
she ended up suffering from Alzheimer's when she was later in life. My dad had put together a book for her that was the story of her life.
00:02:09
Speaker
And so when she could like read through that when she was having, you know, like more like an off day and when she would get to the park, she was like, oh, she was like I was a bowler. She got really excited because she's like, I love bowling. And then she was like, wait, I was good at bowling. And so it was it was always sweet whenever she got to those those newspaper articles. Yeah.
00:02:29
Speaker
Well, that's awesome. Yeah, that's tough. It cannot be overstated how hard it would have been to bowl 300 with like the technology in the in the balls they use. Yeah, I didn't even really know like how how bad it was compared to now. Yeah, I just knew the preliminaries of like lane waxing and how like if you're an experienced bowler, if you go on a lane that's like wax for new players where it's mostly in the center, it can really throw you off.
00:03:00
Speaker
Oh, yeah, we could we could maybe there's an opportunity to start a bowling podcast. You could do a spin off. Yeah, exactly. This is the hard hitting X-Wing content everyone comes for. That's what everyone comes to the Internet for. They're like, man, where's that bowling content at? Yeah. Well, there's a few things you can go to to go to you, Greg, on NCX for talking about tax evasion. Of course. Of course. Bowling.
00:03:27
Speaker
Yeah. And your hatred for any sort of food that is, you know, that Chicago claims is big Chicago food. Those are three guarantees. It just makes no sense that a city that is otherwise perfectly fine hitches its wagon to some of the worst food choices on the planet.
00:03:47
Speaker
It's such a take. I mean, we clearly disagree with that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's just so bad on that back and forth. We could definitely go and talk about our favorite why we love Chicago food so much. But we
X-Wing Points Update Discussion and Reactions
00:04:02
Speaker
do. I do want to address the elephant in the room that is excellent related and that the fact that we kind of got out of the nowhere surprise.
00:04:11
Speaker
Points adjustment like a I want to say it was like a a kind of a quasi You know like meta Nerfing like a light meta nerf points update. I was yes you things that they changed, but it was interesting I'd call it more a tweak a tweak. Yeah, that's good. I like that a points tweak I wouldn't full call full-on call it an update if you don't touch a whole faction It's not an update
00:04:36
Speaker
Yeah. If you don't touch a bunch of factions, right, there is there are no changes to Separatist either. No changes to F.O. at all. Very minimal changes to resistance. Basically, it really felt like they just put a target on Hans back. Yeah, they were like, Han, you've become a menace.
00:04:55
Speaker
Yeah, Han, I think they've nudged people to use the standardized bombers over the barrage rocket bombers. Now, I think this more just it's just an easy choice to make now, even if, yeah, before it wasn't that difficult of a choice to make. Well, the conspiracy theorist in me is they only nerfed Han because they're releasing the BOE.
00:05:16
Speaker
They don't want people to play the BOE stuff and it doesn't vibe too well with having an eight point or seven point Han.
00:05:27
Speaker
going in there, dominating the meta. That's my like conspiracy city. I was going to say that's an interesting one. Yeah. Again, no, no proof of that. That's just my thought process was they were like, everyone's going to fly this if they fly rebels, but we want them to focus on some of this new stuff because we need to move some product. I was going to say the some of the new the new ships that are coming out in Battle vendor feel very pushed.
00:05:53
Speaker
Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna try not to go on a huge rant about that. I'm sorry. Yeah, I honestly know we're gonna do probably Yeah, we're gonna do a little bit of a dive into that I just got fret note of I just got fresh off streaming two games for our team league It's our final week of the regular season and this last game was a really entertaining crazy game but with a six-ship Republic board for this list and
00:06:16
Speaker
It was a mass. It was just if anybody needs a video reference as to why it's so freaking good and kind of just broken, you could watch this game back because it was ridiculously strong in this game. But that's neither here nor there. What overall, if you guys were to give a grade knowing. So let me back up real quick.
00:06:35
Speaker
With the optimistic hope that we get another more full scale points update in like May or June, what would you give this points tweak? Like what letter grade would you give it? Greg, I'll ask you first, then Andrew. What do you think?
00:06:52
Speaker
I don't want to be harsh, but this points tweak is nothing for me. It's a C. It's just fine. Cool. Thank you, I guess. Thank you for releasing points of the ships that you want us to use and an occasional tweak here and there. It's not like I hate it. It just doesn't move the needle for me as far as a points of
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, I would agree with that. I would say like CC minus. I feel like at the beginning of the year, you know, Han was so meta warping that it created like the Republic arcs list and like around it, it created the literally and it created like a lot of the resistance lists that are out there. So I think it needed to be tweaked.
00:07:47
Speaker
This is so light of a like like of a tweet because I feel like if you're gonna do Han then you know that that's gonna really leave a void for you know for Republic like
00:08:00
Speaker
I don't know what you follow it up with because if you if you tweak, you know, Republic too hard, then F.O. becomes, I think, you know, a real contender faction for being the best. So I think it was fine. I think it needed to happen. It did feel one sided, though, where it was it was basically mostly centered on on rebels as a faction.
00:08:25
Speaker
for all the I was kind of just thinking that I feel like it didn't balance anything. Yeah, it just nerfed like one specific thing. But for me, I just think and maybe I'm like maybe this is just like I'm not good at X-wing. So like this is just my thought process. But like the same thing you can put on you put used to put on Han.
00:08:46
Speaker
I'll put it on Lando and yeah, I'm shooting at one initiative lower, but I'm also coordinating while doing it. Yeah, I don't get the, the, the rerolls or whatever for being near a rock, but target lock focus still pretty good. I actually, it's better than Hans ability for your first shot. And then your second shot, you're still focused. It doesn't, for me, it's just like, that's not a big downgrade. In fact, it might be an upgrade with Lando's coordinate ability.
00:09:16
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, yeah, the only the only thing I can think of for like the six is that because everything like I five I think is the minimum of where you really want to be right now is that those road rules become more important. You have less information positioning wise if you're if you're going to move on. You know, it's it's a better at six, but Lando is also fine.
00:09:42
Speaker
It's it's going to be the world of Lando, whether it's the standardized battle of Endor Lando or it's the 21 loadout point. Build your own Lando. Either way, Lando is going to be popular. I mean, if you're dead set on doing the Bash or Bashan, the Bistan double tap. I really don't think like the the downgrade from Han to Lando is like a massive leap. No, I mean, you take it. Yeah, you take it.
00:10:10
Speaker
The initiative matters a little bit, but yeah, I'm sure there will be moments where you, you would miss it. You'd rather have a Han, but it's not, it's not overall like breaking the entire archetype of the list. Right.
00:10:25
Speaker
It was kind of the same with like the one update they did for resistance where they took a load off point off of Zori and they took our load off point off of Lulu. And it's like, you know, you're pretty much you're only you're missing a dorsal turret and that's fine. Like it's not also doesn't break the archetype there.
00:10:44
Speaker
For those that for those that missed me, I'm going to in the podcast description, I'll post the video.
Resistance Faction Changes and Card Nerfs
00:10:50
Speaker
We did a live reaction, a live reaction and uploaded the replay to YouTube so people could like we could go through if you want to go through it on a pilot by pilot basis to see everything that was changed. We'll link that basically for those that maybe are like we're talking so in such specific cases, it might be confusing us to maybe what the overall vibe of this points week was. But TLDR
00:11:14
Speaker
Basically, Hans loadout dropped to 15 from 20 so that he can't do best and perceptive copilot anymore. That combo alone is 16 points. That doesn't fit the barrage rocket bombers sat salvo. So looking at Reimer and Tomax, they lost loadout so that they can't take bomblets. So saturation salvo and barrage rockets. You can only do barrage rockets and like marksmanship or some sort of.
00:11:41
Speaker
Cheap talent. And then for some reason, Zori and Lulu lost loadout and resistance. And I think Jess lost one, which doesn't really change her outlook at all. But strangely, they they looked at rebels and said, OK, Han is a problem. They looked at empire and said saturation salvo is a problem. And then they they they passed over scum completely and didn't even I mean, because it wasn't a buff. It seemed like this was nothing in scum was a problem.
00:12:09
Speaker
Yeah, well, that's the thing. But because because they've decided that we're only going to nerf things and buff anything, like we'll wait for that to do that later. They passed over scum. They passed over F.O., which I think is a pretty balanced faction right now. And then they looked at resistance, which I think is like you could argue is a middle of the pack. And we're like, we're going to change two things that do not need changing. And I thought that was really bizarre. Well, I have a theory as to what they changed.
00:12:37
Speaker
I have a theory for, I mean, for Jess anyway, is that because everyone was taking jamming beam, but no one was using it ever. And I'm sure someone just looked at it and said, you know what, let's just save a card space on the table and just not, you know, make people have to bring out a concert about card space, though. All right. Like, I don't know. That's right. That's my theory.
00:12:58
Speaker
I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know about that. I think that's a little bit of a reach. Personally, that's my conspiracy theory. Yeah. I mean, you're not going to get many people to like grab the pitchforks for that conspiracy.
00:13:10
Speaker
I think it's good, it was a good change, because I wasn't using the jamming beam, so it's one less card I gotta bring. I feel like there's a little bit of psychology involved. The second anything gets nerfed, even if it doesn't actually impact it, people still have that in their head that this card got nerfed. Maybe they're like, all right, we modify it, and maybe we take the pick rate of these cards down a little bit, just the way people think. It's not... Yeah, it makes it look like you're doing something.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah, so I just I guess I'll just throw in my letter grade. I give it I think a C is fair because it if it were anything higher than they would have made a lot more changes. And I think a C is just like, yeah, they didn't completely disappoint me, but they didn't nerf everything if they were some of the things they fixated on.
00:13:59
Speaker
They didn't use that same consistent logic across Republic. They had me lost a couple loadout. And it was a big work. But that was that was the big one. But the only one I would have it would have pissed too many three arc was 70 players off to see oddball go up to five points, for example. So they just said, we'll hold off. Worlds is about to come up. We don't want to get too crazy, which is my reasoning for not doing something like this right before a world championship. Just like,
00:14:25
Speaker
waiting, but honestly, I was kind of I was a little surprised they did anything but release the new ship points like same stuff point. That's what the truth is because it's so close to the world.
00:14:37
Speaker
But Greg, like the trend of like the last two scenario packs, they would not update anything else when these would come out. They would just say here's the point. So I was pretty surprised. I'm not like when I say it to see again, I want to I feel like I get kind of labeled an AMG hater because I will speak out when there's stuff I don't like. And lately to me, there's been a lot more not to like. Sorry about it. But like.
00:15:01
Speaker
It wasn't like I don't think it was bad. No, it just to me, it was wasn't an update. It was a minor, minor tweak.
Standardized Cards Power Debate
00:15:08
Speaker
Yeah. And I have it's just it was a C. It happened. It's there. Yeah. And I'm fine with it. Honestly, I mean, to be fair for me, I've been talking to the podcast. I think that this tweak was a long time coming. It was it was going to happen eventually because you got to do something about.
00:15:24
Speaker
Han and about, you know, like some of the other more beautiful pieces, I guess, that would be in like Republic. Yeah. I mean, it's unfortunately, the abusable stuff is is is printed into a large card several times. Yes. It's like harder to, you know, unfortunately, that's why as as much as a proponent, I am this is a good segue.
00:15:47
Speaker
into the battle of and or side of this conversation as much as of a proponent I am of standardized cards. I run a list right now that has three as for now for standardized cards out of five. So like I'm not, you know, going to try to come off as a how would you not? They're so strong. They're really good. So we're going to get to that. Yes. Yeah. So real quick, real quick. Hold on a lot. Is that.
00:16:09
Speaker
the design space is even more challenging and very risky because of especially the approach they've had recently of over designing and getting a little too lazy with what they put into these because once they're in there, they're there and they have expressed even to me like they don't want to rata things if it's the last like last thing they want to do.
00:16:32
Speaker
So my question to you guys as we open up the second part of the points tweak conversation with and or coming out is our standardized cards becoming too good like and good meaning like just the power creep with what one single pilot can do. Is it becoming a little problematic? I think it is. I'll get I'll chime in after you guys, though. Who goes first?
00:16:58
Speaker
I mean, I do. Yeah, you go. You go. Yeah, I can go for it. I was going to say, you know, I'm even going back to the previous conversation with the standard, the regular loadout bombers being nerfed. Now, that really didn't affect that many people because I'm also taking the new death fire. I'm taking the standardized Tomax Bren anyway.
00:17:22
Speaker
Like they're so good, even compared to the saturation style of barrage rocket bombers. I don't think though they're becoming too good. I mean, I do like the design space with standardized cards where they can do things that would be outside of the normal ship chassis.
00:17:40
Speaker
And I honestly, I think it just comes down to where, where their points are in relation to their standard ships and standard loadout. I do think it's the same pilot counterpart, like
00:17:53
Speaker
That's where it gets like like build your own Vader Luke versus the ones that actually get played. That's where I mean standardized Vader is going to be is right now. Yeah, much better and easier play because it's a cheaper point. Like I do think that they are being pushed by AMG and they really want you to use the new standardized cards. I can see of a world where.
00:18:12
Speaker
the standardized cards maybe in later metas or as they get older their points start going up and then we can reintroduce the build your own versions of those pilots back in but I definitely see from initial release that these cards are very much pushed and hey we want this we do we like really want this to be part of the meta
00:18:30
Speaker
I think you can see that with the TIE Defender with new Colonel Jedon. You can have a five die pro-torp and it's six points. It's the only six point defender. And I think that they're really signaling to the community, hey, we want to start seeing this in Empire lists. So I think it's too good. It's good initially.
00:18:50
Speaker
But I feel like they're not becoming too good and I don't see them being problematic over time because I think that always more than anything are easily are more easy adjusted than build your own. I disagree, but go ahead, Craig. Yeah, I also strongly disagree, but maybe maybe for a different reason than you, Nick, I feel.
00:19:13
Speaker
that they're so incredibly strong because if you take a look at like Soontier, right? Soontier Battle of Endor, five points. Soontier, like customizable. Go to your town Soontier, five points. All right, no difference there. You're thinking, ah, well, you know, the Soontier, the focus ability and the bullseye really good, blah, blah, blah. But if you like to assign loadout points,
00:19:43
Speaker
to what this soon to your fell has for the battle of Endor or battle is a battle over Endor or battle of Endor. Battle over Endor. Yeah. Sure. That's the the the abilities on this interceptor.
00:20:03
Speaker
It's gotta be like 30 loadout value worth of ability where the customizable one gets 10. Like this ship is crazy. It's great, like it's so good. It's just incredibly good. And if you were to do like say take Vader.
00:20:23
Speaker
Right? So Vader customizable, lot of loadout, 21 loadout. You can get everything you really want on it, but how much of it is actually hate and afterburners is what, like 12 points? Is afterburners eight?
00:20:37
Speaker
Yeah. And then hate is for. Right. So that's 12 points. And then I missiles is three. So that's 15 going out. So you get six more. You get six more loadout points, which you're going to spend two on for sure. Fire control.
00:20:54
Speaker
but then what else are you gonna put on that? I feel like you have to put shield upgrade. If you're paying an extra ship point, you gotta put shield too. Yeah, that's a great point because I forgot that he gets a shield upgrade. He's got the shield upgrade, yeah. That's like another eight points. That's 21. Worth of value. So honestly, if you think about it, they kind of have the same value, but the standard loadout is a point cheaper. If that's not better, I don't know what is.
00:21:24
Speaker
It's the same ability, same everything, except, you know, unless you're a huge fire control system stan.
Evolution of X-Wing Pilot Abilities
00:21:35
Speaker
I I I did some I've done a little bit of research here in the back end while you guys have been talking about this. I want to even for the live audience want to show you guys just kind of maybe the evolution of our our scenario packs and our standardized pilots and kind of maybe talking about trends. So I'm going to start with Battle of Yavin.
00:21:56
Speaker
which is the first one that we got. Really cool thematic on scenario pack that introduced at the time a lot of, you know, a good balance of new standardized pilots with abilities that entered the meta. Some of them have stuck around and a lot of them are not really getting played anymore.
00:22:14
Speaker
So I'm going to start with rebels. I'm going to highlight two of them specifically. Again, this is not, you know, not limited to these two, but just for the sake of this conversation to T-65 pilots. We have Jack Porkins in Garvin's race. So Jack Porkins is ability is after you receive a stress token, you may roll one attack die to remove it on a hit result. You suffer a damage. It's the same ability as the build your own customizable Jack. And these are his three.
00:22:43
Speaker
Three upgrades, advanced proton torpedoes. Cool. We know what that does. R5D8. What is that? That's a regen droid. Spend a charge for as an action to fix a face down damage card or you can repair a face up for an action with a charge as well.
00:22:59
Speaker
His last upgrade is unstable sublight engines. Basically, when you die, you do a one straight boost. And then maneuver, rather. One straight maneuver, and then every ship at zero to one suffers damage. It's like Dead Man's Switch after you do a one straight. Garvan has literally two upgrades. His ability, after you spend a focus token, chooses friendly ship at one to three. That ship gains one. Same ability. Advanced proton torpedoes.
00:23:22
Speaker
As well, we know what that does. R5K6, same ability with the R5D8 droid, except this one just has a different name. Again, action, spend a charge or a pair face down or face up. Cool. That's pretty easy to wrap my head around. It introduced a couple of interesting things in the design space. They were popular with Rebel token sharing, coordinating, all that stuff. Four points each. They were lower initiative. They seemed pretty fair.
00:23:50
Speaker
So at this point, the trend is for Battle of Yavin is like, OK, this is pretty easy to understand. Like it's, you know, there's some new upgrades or different names, similar things that we're familiar with. It was kind of getting our feet wet with introducing these things. But there's a lot of sameness there, too, like new stuff, but some old stuff with new faces, new twists. Right. Can you guys agree on that? Like that's kind of pretty pretty pretty. Yeah, exactly. Pretty thematic. Right. And yeah.
00:24:20
Speaker
I mean, even see the chorus on two is a lot more tame. Yeah. So well, OK, so that's so. Yeah. So moving on to the next part of this evolution, see the chorus on. I'm just going to do one pilot for Republic Republic is really the menace of the meta right now in terms of this scenario pack.
00:24:36
Speaker
the droids, the CIS, they exist, but they're nothing really too strong. They're just, they're there. They're fine. I'm just going to look at Oddball. Siege of course, not Oddball. Same initiative at initiative five. He has four points. And he is, the first thing you see is talent.
00:24:55
Speaker
is selfless, a rebel only talent. So, OK, we're going to start giving faction specific talents to factions that aren't in that aren't that faction. So selfless, you cancel crits. If you're the attack arc, you basically suffer a crit to cancel a matching result. Better entail gunner for the double tap front than back.
00:25:14
Speaker
and then R4P Astromech for decreasing the difficulty of your basic maneuvers. Pretty basic, again, is ability. This is where it starts to get a little problematic for me, is that he has an ability. It says, after you fully execute a maneuver or form red action, you may choose a friendly ship at range zero to three, and an enemy ship at range zero to one, the chosen friendly ship, gains a lock on an enemy ship.
00:25:38
Speaker
They're like, OK, well, that seems pretty good. We're not done. Born for this. While another friendly ship arranged zero to two defends, if you are not strained, it may spend your focus and evade tokens as if that ship has them. If it does, you gain one strain token. It's like, OK, so the upgrades are easy to wrap our heads around, but the ability has two abilities, and one of them is sharing tokens.
00:26:02
Speaker
Okay, seems pretty good. That's actually kind of a lot once you put it all together and then triple it with two other pilots. Bear with me, guys. I appreciate you listening to me mansplain. Lastly, going over to Battle of Endor. I'm picking on Lando for this one. This is where it gets a little nutty.
00:26:21
Speaker
Seven points, same price, different ability. Again, we're starting to see the abilities are starting to change here. It was Battle of Yavin was the same. Siege of Coruscant was similar. Battle of Endor completely different. You wouldn't even recognize them if they had a different, you know, unless they had the same name, which in these cases they do.
00:26:36
Speaker
Yeah, his ability at the start of the activation phase, you may spend one charge. He has two non recurring charges. If you do choose an initiative from one to six, you activate at that initiative this phase. So I mean, that's really actually super interesting and cool and seems kind of crazy. The fact that you get to
00:26:55
Speaker
Get to just choose when you move during the start of the activation is pretty cool. Going to be kind of wild to experience that once I start playing it or against it. But then he has a secondary ability high stakes. After you perform a red action, you may roll an attack die on a hit or crit result. Remove one stress in his action bar is different now as well. He has focused lock evade red boost rotate red coordinates a red focus.
00:27:25
Speaker
It's like that's okay. So you could potentially white coordinate to white focus. And then he again bear with me guys. He has five upgrades. Ace in the hole. Two charges at the start of the engagement phase. You may spend one charge and gain one jam token to perform a barrel action.
00:27:46
Speaker
Nine nub. You decrease the difficulty of your bank maneuvers. Same ability as the standard crew. Nine nub. Millennium Falcon title. While attacking or defending, if you have a non-lock red or orange token, you may reroll one die. That's a completely different ability than the standard title for the William Falcon. It's a trap. While defending, if there are more
00:28:07
Speaker
If there are more other friendly ships than enemy ships at range zero to one, you may reroll one of your blank results. And I'm not done. Aaron Kraken, upgrade after defending if the attack hit, you may gain one deplete token to perform a bonus primary attack targeting the attacker. Oh my god, I'm exhausted from reading through all of that. Can you guys see a trend?
00:28:32
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, they definitely stepped on the gas right after the bomber squadron pack. I think was when that came out was the first indicator that these ships were going to start getting nutty and battle over end or talk about the bombers.
00:28:45
Speaker
They're all they're all wild. Yeah, it's it's a lot. It's it's a lot like it is. It's a lot. So we are all three people have been playing this game for a while and know how to play this game. Can you understand? Let's let's shift our mindset for a second to being a novice player or a newer player or someone who's trying to teach new players. This is ridiculous.
00:29:06
Speaker
Yeah. Or God forbid you're playing against these ships and you have to remember all these abilities. Like there's going to be a lot of new players that are going to get got by Lando's. I get to pick when I move ability.
00:29:17
Speaker
And so, you know, it's it's I don't like to I mean, I'm trying not to do the whole hole in two point versus no. But because things were just more simpler, some were more simple in two point. Oh, I usually could roll up to a table with my opponent and kind of understand everything my opponent was trying to do with their list. At this point, it's not it's not possible in my head to wrap my head around everything that their list can do. So I just ask them a million questions every game. This stuff is the reason for that as well, because it's it's just too much to remember.
00:29:45
Speaker
especially when they have the same names of things that already exist in the game but different abilities like Falcon titles different the action bar is different like I think something things should stay the same like the action bar for example I just
00:30:00
Speaker
They're playing with different ideas in the design space. Some of them I think are creative. And I think, you know, if I were a designer, I'd want to mess around with others, I think can cause things to get really muddy. And then there are instances where things are just, there's too much and are too good. All thrown into one pilot. Like where, where do you stop? Like with backstabber and mauler, it's like afterburners predator, afterburners, crack shot discipline, we're done. And then this is like five upgrades on top of two abilities in a different action bar.
00:30:29
Speaker
And they it's, it's, it's again, like, why would you fly anything else? Because like Jack porkins battle of Gavin, right? Like, yeah, maybe, maybe it's the X-wing at four points. I want to fly, but like, there are so many more options. Like I got an I five for four with fame. I got, you know, Colby and I can take an illicit.
00:30:59
Speaker
It's just like, it's kind of funny.
00:31:05
Speaker
how increasing choice kind of takes away choice almost. Because if you're actually trying to win, you know, you gotta you have to take the efficient things in the list. Like you can't like be ignoring all the efficiency that other players are getting. Yeah, absolutely. I soon see your gains of focus. You're as soon as 30 abilities. Yeah, I mean, you know, or boost for free after they shoot. Come on.
00:31:32
Speaker
Like this is, this is where they have to control the points. So there's two ways that I can see having like more of these standardized ships with a billion abilities is okay. One is a meta that has fewer ships. So it's, I think it's all right to have 40 abilities. If you're, if four ships is like the most that people are going to usually be flying. And the other one is like.
00:31:56
Speaker
you either got to make these shifts of the billion abilities a point higher where you're actually paying for that.
00:32:03
Speaker
more efficient ship to balance out later on. I think that this might just be a temporary thing where they want people to play with it and enjoy it and love it on initial release. I can definitely see all of these ships being. Oh, man, I really hope so. In points. I mean, it was the same with Defender Vader when that came out. You know, it was. Yeah, but this is standard. The standardized card stuff is all kind of unprecedented because they they haven't changed the points for any of them still. Right. Yeah, that's true. You think of one standardized pilot that they've
00:32:31
Speaker
Altered the points for after release. I don't think they have done a single one yet. They they haven't yet But I mean to be fair, it's only been the it's like one drop. They dropped on ball down Yeah, I guess click click click what up to four I'm very much over the it's only been X amount of time arguments because I've been hearing the it's only been for like three or four years now
00:33:02
Speaker
It's been long enough. Yeah. I mean, so, so, Andrew, I do want to say, like, I appreciate the optimistic. Like, I can be a pessimist about this stuff. I appreciate you being like, I think they want to get people to buy it and play. This is a business. We have to remind ourselves of that. There's a but there's balance in business. Sometimes our conflict of interest, you know, like they.
00:33:24
Speaker
They want I appreciate the the optimism about, oh, yeah, they want to see how they want to sell it. They want to see how people either want people to bring it to worlds and we'll see how it does. And then they will assess and and make.
00:33:34
Speaker
The changes with the 20 point scale, changing up a ship point from five to six or four to five or three to four or whatever is just such a jarring shift, right? That they kind of have no choice but to keep it the same or drop the cost if they're worried about it not being played. Yeah, getting in late. That I mean, that's what it is, right? Because if you make Lando that Lando eight points, now it's unplayable.
00:33:58
Speaker
And that suits your six points. It's like a five. He's like, wow, he's like, you can do everything and he's five. He's awesome. Six points, six liability. Same prices as Vader. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I would love. I honestly, I think would be really good for the game. They bring down build your own Luke and Vader the same price as the others and just drop their honestly makes it interesting. That's what they should do. It's ridiculous that.
00:34:19
Speaker
Vader the build your own Vader isn't one isn't the same points as the as the as the other ones because the other ones have way more loadout value just like like you were saying they pulled up great for free right exactly so yeah
00:34:35
Speaker
There's no reason why the build your own Vader and Luke couldn't be the same price because people would still take the standardized cards anyway. So as a player, you say that. Yes, I totally agree. I'm advocating for it. But as a designer, as atomic mass games, the reason is, well, we want people to buy the standardized packs. That's exactly what it is. Yeah.
00:34:54
Speaker
Yeah, which, again, business and balance, they don't always, you know, they don't always coexist perfectly. That is there's again, there's some great benefits to standardized cards and there's some serious drawbacks introducing them into the game in this way, the specific way, because it basically forces people, as Greg said, more choice means less choice or more obvious choice to use one over the other. So.
00:35:19
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think to answer like our standardized cards becoming too good, the trend shows that they are, in my eyes, just looking at how things have evolved in the Battle of Endor stuff that we know about, you know, shield upgraded A-wings that can reload their rockets and fire four rockets in one game, you know, stuff like that, for example. It's just like, oh, that's that's really good. And then you find out that they have three or four more abilities. And it's like, well, wouldn't that be enough?
00:35:45
Speaker
Like Jen did I six defender can spend a shield to apply the range bonus. Great. It has other abilities. I can't remember at the top of my head, but he could also he also has a proton cannon. It's like, well, is that necessary?
00:35:57
Speaker
Like maybe he's a proton cannon that you can juice up. Yeah, you can spend the shield. And so I woke up the rock side of bed this morning and I went to the NCX excellent discussion chat to Vets and Bitch about how worried I was about gender. And a lot of people were being very reasonable being like, I don't think you can take damage. You can take damage. You can die.
00:36:19
Speaker
But I'm like man like I just the thought of like half the stuff that people are playing getting one-shotted by this defender because it's rolling a Double-modded five dice Proton kid. Yeah, I'm already I'm already trying to plug him in lists. I I love defenders though. So
00:36:34
Speaker
But yes, it's going to be very annoying to fly again. It's going to be fun for you and awful for anybody that has to play against it. No, because I'm going to fly against him, too. Like, he's going to be a very real part of our lives. But then again, you know, these other Suuntyir and Lando are going to be a big part of our lives, too. So, yeah, I mean, I think they're yeah, they're becoming good. They're extremely good, that's for sure.
00:36:57
Speaker
yeah uh man it's just i i don't know why i i think today i just like i genuinely guys i lost sleep over this what is wrong with me like i was like not sleeping thinking about like man like i'm i'm i just like really took a step back and thought about it was like dude because you care too much
00:37:15
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, too much. You care about that. I'm always sleep over this. No, I'm I'm I'm enjoying. I'm going to enjoy like I'm curious what the scenarios are because playing Battle of Yavin was so much fun. I love that scenario so much. It was such a good idea. It looks really cool. Yeah. So I'm just excited just to play that scenario. Yeah. And you know what? Just just, you know, ban them in any other form of play. But the scenario there to make you feel better.
00:37:42
Speaker
The I did lose sleep over what I was going to be, what list I was going to build for Gen Con, because I was so scared of Han that I spent all night theory crafting lists and then ended up with resistance. And then you like barely played against Han, too, right? Yeah, I didn't like see Han at all, which is what I did. I did. I played one game against Han and then I torched it. Yeah. Right. But at that point, I already lost two games. Now you're going to have to be scared of.
00:38:13
Speaker
Yeah, or well, honestly, if you can't beat him join him, that's, uh, that's where I'm at with them. I mean, that is, that is where it is. I mean, we saw from like the captain's draft empire and rebels were the two most picked factions from the captains.
00:38:29
Speaker
And this honestly speaks to where they're choosing to do these standardized cards and scenario packs, I think, more than anything, is that they're feeding these factions who do standardized cards, but they're only picking Rebel and Empire and Republic. And those are the three biggest ones. Yeah, and CIS on a technicality.
00:38:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, but they need a lot of help. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And again, we'll dive into this more. Yeah. It's a multi episode conversation. It is true. And I think it's at this point where some people were kind of dismissing this talk as like, oh, you're just anti AMG. You're just a hater. This is a very real conversation at this point to have that is super reasonable.
00:39:12
Speaker
I we all play this game all the time. Greg and I stream this game all the freaking time. If we hated the game, man, we wouldn't be in such a romantic relationship. It's been so much time with it, but it's we complain because we care just how much like just like imagining the amount of work we do with this when people are like, oh, you don't even like the game. Like, are you kidding me? This is like a full time job on top of.
00:39:41
Speaker
my actual job and I don't get paid. Yeah, honestly, it's not like it's a game that's got like millions of fans either where, you know, there's a lucrative streaming and content like side to it either. Yeah. Yeah. It's just it's pure love. Like I do want to shift a little bit into talking about the online side of the game as we are. We have full access to all the things that we're complaining and give singing our praises for on the online side of things.
00:40:10
Speaker
2020, obviously, it feels like it's it's it feels like it was, you know, it's a forever long ago, a fever dream that both feels long ago and feels like it was just yesterday. Somehow it's paradoxical. But you're bowling.
00:40:24
Speaker
Yeah, you're for bullying and for a lot of me about it. Yeah, honestly, probably the one of I mean, before the transition transition to two point five, like one of the best things for X-wing, one of the probably one of the best years for X-wing, because it got a lot of people together in ways that nobody would have expected thanks to a tabletop simulator. And before that, before covid, we had vassal and we've had
00:40:48
Speaker
two mediums, not exclusive to those two. But in terms of the this just the volume of people playing this game on those two, those are the two main ones like fly casual, of course. Shout out to fly casual as well. Yes. Yeah. Either way, it kind of saved X-Wing and got people to play X-Wing way more than they ever have because, you know, you have once a week you go to the game store. Sometimes you're busy. You can only go once or twice a month. You play one or two.
00:41:14
Speaker
games, people were playing five games a day or more and playing stuff they didn't even own, being able to practice things and get casual games and join leagues. All this stuff was born out of online X-wing. Greg, you said you'd played vassal a little bit. You played X-wing on vassal? Yeah. I discovered the game with you. We've talked about that before.
00:41:38
Speaker
That thing, but I learned actually how to play on vassal. That's so wild. I would, I wouldn't have guessed that. That's, that's so, that's interesting. When, when, when did you start playing? I'm really, really bad with time. I was like, that was the only way to play online for a while. No, TTS was already a thing when I started. Okay.
00:41:58
Speaker
Yeah. Well, Vassel was a way to play and it was like, it was easier to like set up. Like it wasn't like such a thing. Like, you know, it wasn't like, I didn't have to like launch TTS. It was kind of its own little standalone launcher thing. Yeah. It was, I liked Vassel. It was not a bad.
00:42:19
Speaker
To me, it was like the chess.com of X-wing. It was 2D down. You had the little crackling little keyboard crackling sound effect when the dice were rolled. Because if I'm not wrong, I believe that Vassal started off as a war hammer platform, and then they expanded other tabletop games. The infrastructure wasn't initially set out for X-wing, but they were able to graft X-wing onto it pretty well.
00:42:44
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, and then we evolved, you know, tabletop simulator has been around for a while, obviously, man. Yeah. Thanks. Shout out to all the amazing people who for free moderate and, you know, mod and created and designed everything to be able to play X-wing on tabletop. And people shifted over to this much more visually appealing, three dimensional, more immersive online.
00:43:05
Speaker
way to play the game. And, you know, I think I think Basil was like more technical. But like, yeah, if you're trying to replicate how it actually felt to play in real life, then TTS is like the closest thing you can online. I would agree with that for sure. Yeah. And TTS is my go to when I play online now. Yeah. Yeah. Sure.
00:43:26
Speaker
I, working with GSP, I helped with several of the, you know, Galaxy's events. And, you know, Dion Goldsquadron took on like a pretty big responsibility in being what they saw themselves as the one to kind of uphold X-Wing and keep it going during uncertain times because, you know, the whole two week stay at home turned into years. And you just didn't know when, you know, the end was in sight.
00:43:52
Speaker
Um, you know, at that point, a lot more people, like I met Greg, um, through galaxies. Um, he commentated at one point with Dion. And that's how I met Greg Sam, um, with candid clarinetist at the time. He was streaming X-wing all the time. It was pretty popular. That's also how I met him. Um, we all kind of came together. I love that Dion was, was kind of including different streamers and platforming them on his.
00:44:16
Speaker
on on his during his events. And I mean, these events, guys, like they pulled in like hundreds of people, like, yeah, I think at one point like a few hundred people all over the place from all over the world. Like, yeah, people are talking about, you know, getting up at 4 a.m. or 2 a.m. in their countries to get on and play these tournaments.
00:44:35
Speaker
It was it was something else, man. And so, Greg, like, I mean, we'll get in the draft league in a second. But like, what do you feel like there was a source of inspiration on like becoming like an online X-Wing streamer or was it like what what kind of got you into doing that?
Greg's Streaming Journey and Draft League Creation
00:44:49
Speaker
Well, honestly, what happened was my birthday is March 16th and New York got locked down.
00:44:58
Speaker
on March 15th. Oh, wow. So my first the first stream I did was on my birthday and it was just born of I have nothing else to do. I had to cancel like I was having people over for like a party, you know, and I had to be like, yo, no one can come. We're all going to die if you come. So don't don't come over. Yeah.
00:45:20
Speaker
Uh, so it wasn't like, I really wish I could say like I watched ESPN. I just knew in my heart that this was what I wanted to do, but it was more of like, uh, I've just always been super into tech and I just got really fascinated by like.
00:45:36
Speaker
all the technology involved in streaming and like the amount of production and stuff you can do. And especially in the beginning, especially like over the course of COVID, all these companies kept coming out with new and better things for streaming. And it's kind of slowed down a little bit.
00:45:53
Speaker
Now, because Stream obviously got so popular over the pandemic for obvious reasons. Podcasting, too. Yeah. Just all the technology and stuff. I would say that was more the draw for me. It was like this whole new world of stuff I could play with and I wasn't spending money on anything else because I wasn't ever going out, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's true. I mean, what do you feel? Do you feel like when you started doing it that like
00:46:20
Speaker
the audience reception or the people, the few people that kind of trickled in at first, like on the onset that that was enough motivation for you or like what really motivated you besides the fact that you couldn't really like go anywhere? Because like if you feel like you're wasting your time with anything, even if you can't go outside for a while, you might not. You might shift to something else, right? Like what mode would you keep going? Well, I think so. I mean, if you guys don't know, like my background is a stand up comic. So I had kind of done
00:46:50
Speaker
the whole performance thing for caring about how much audience and stuff there was. So maybe just because of that, having done that before, it wasn't all that important to me. I wasn't gonna be discouraged by a lack of numbers.
00:47:11
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to say I've done enough open mics to to like if there's two people I'll perform. Yeah, there's two people in this call that used to do stand up comedy and it's how many. Yeah, like how many barsh bar like open mics have you been to where they're just like the all the patrons are like, Oh, no. Oh, yeah. No, this was happening tonight. I mean, I would tell even it's awful.
00:47:31
Speaker
I would tell other like comedians, like don't try to get anyone's attention. Like you just talk to the people who are looking at you, do not try to like, you know, accept what it is and go at it. But yeah, but yeah, that's saying like, as long as one person's there, I'm performing. Yeah, I get it. Yeah. So it's like years, years of my life I spent doing that. So in the beginning when it was three people and they were all like the group I played X-Wing with in real life before the pandemic, you know, that was fine with me.
00:48:00
Speaker
And it just kinda, it slowly grew. And I think maybe the only thing that I did originally that kinda helped me out when there was the original influx of everyone knew was I was pretty strict about keeping a schedule. So everyone knew Tuesdays and Thursdays, NCX was gonna be live.
00:48:27
Speaker
And you've done a good job of that, because that has been something I have failed at and just not taken seriously until more recently. And even then, it's hard. It's super hard. It is. Yeah, especially when it's not like, again. It's not lucrative, right? We're not doing this for the money, but like it would be a lot easier if you were making money doing it. Right. Like, yeah, like, yeah, this is it's like that's why you go to work every day because you're making money. That's what keeps you motivated to go. That's the only reason I have a job. I would not have a job if it didn't pay me.
00:48:57
Speaker
So like, but with streaming, I've always said that like, I don't care if I make money, but I also don't wanna like lose money hand over fist.
00:49:07
Speaker
And like, if you add up all the equipment and stuff, I've spent money on, like, I mean, I gotta be in the whole thousands of dollars, like just thousands. But like, for those of you guys wondering, like- But you're getting the value from it, like- Yeah, absolutely. But like the gaming laptop we use for in-person streams, that alone was like $2,500, guys. Like, you know, just like, that's just the way it is. And I'm happy to spend that money, but man, it's a lot.
00:49:32
Speaker
It's so weird because the laptop I use was $3,000. And for most of the year, it's my dice cam. It could be literally any crap computer, but the couple times a year you're on the road and you need that streaming PC, it's the best investment you made.
00:49:59
Speaker
Dude, I brought it to LVO because I needed to do some admin stuff and it saved GSP stream. Yeah. That's what I'm saying. Like, just like imagine, like, imagine it happened. There was no coverage of LVO at all for that first day or whatever. I don't know. It's.
00:50:16
Speaker
I don't want to talk about too much about money because I feel like every time I say it, I just sound completely disingenuous. But but I'm here. I'm going to back you up, though, when you talk about it. I'm here with you to talk like I got you. Well, yeah, I mean, we used to we talk about this all the time. And then when Sam was streaming, you know, we kind of we had our own little thing going on where we would just talk to each other about like the. Yeah, that was great. The trials and tribulations of it all, you know. Yeah.
00:50:42
Speaker
all the behind the scenes stuff. What's what's great is that I so Greg you go a lot further than I do or you are so you have a breakdown in one of your discord channels about money and money and money out what you spend it on whatever and like obviously I think everyone appreciates and respects that but I understand having that feel like feeling
00:51:03
Speaker
uncomfortable. Everyone feels uncomfortable to some degree, feel like talking about this stuff. But in this exact setting, it is nice to know that everybody here who watches what we do and appreciates it, they're like, no, we want to help you. We want to support you. We appreciate you doing this. Well, I just want people to know that when they
00:51:25
Speaker
I want people to know that when they subscribe, they're not just throwing money so I can have a cheeseburger. It's like, I'm using this money to like make the experience better. Like, you know, the money goes back into the stream. I'm not cashing out and trust me, my father would love me to. He does my taxes, he's not pleased.
00:51:53
Speaker
I mean, to be fair though, you also deserve a cheeseburger. I make enough of my job that I can live. And for me, this is a hobby. It's probably a hobby I spend too much time on, but it's a hobby nonetheless, but it's still like, for me, it's like a creative outlet since I don't do stand up anymore. It's kind of like,
00:52:20
Speaker
the fill-in there for me, you know, like that kind of thing. Yeah, same. No, honestly, it's the same for me. Speaking of this, I wanted to hear more about like the move from the initial online events into like, how'd you come up with the idea for like the draft league and the specific leagues? Honestly, draft league was, I really wish I could say it was some master stroke of like genius programming.
00:52:48
Speaker
But it was just kind of like, I felt like things were dying down a little bit and it was just a way to get like people involved. And it was a fun thing. It was something I've always wanted to do with, cause I'm just a big sports fan. So I really wanted to like kind of marry the idea of like sports and X-wing.
00:53:07
Speaker
And it was also like I kind of felt like it was something that really hadn't been done. Like team tournaments have been done, individual tournaments have been done, but I hadn't really seen like this kind of like structured league been done. You know what I mean? Yeah. I felt like it was a niche niche that I could fit. Maybe for those. I mean, most people are going to be like are going to know what the draft league is. But can you like what can you just say? What is the draft league?
00:53:34
Speaker
So it's loosely based off like American team sports, although it draws from a lot of sports, mostly football, hockey, a little bit soccer, but it's a, it's a tournament. We're up to, I think 20 teams now. And actually you get drafted at the start of the year. So captains will draft you into a fashion and then you have your team.
00:53:57
Speaker
There's trades, you know, there's draft pick trades, all that stuff, just like any sport. And then you each week, your team will play another team in a best of seven series. And we keep all sorts of stats and we have champions and it's grown to this whole big thing now. How many people know?
00:54:19
Speaker
One hundred and sixty. I was going to say, yeah, that's bigger than XTC, dude. That's the biggest online structured X-wing thing that exists. And with 20 teams, I mean, that is like an actual sports league.
00:54:31
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, the first season was four teams, 20 people. And then it just, you know, I think people found it fun. I do think, I think there, and this was like never the point, which is kind of embarrassing, but like, I do think this is like a really good way for people to play X-wing because you have like your own, like supported support group there to help you. Like I'm the only one who can see every team's like private chat.
00:54:59
Speaker
Cause every team gets their own like chat in my discord and whatnot. And it's just like, it's basically like 20 small communities with people who are actually invested in seeing you succeed instead of just investing and getting their viewpoint across. You know what I mean?
00:55:14
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, I've I've I captained for two seasons and I'm coming back to play again. And I mean, you and you definitely played a huge role in inspiring me to do that. The three and two team league because we've done seven seasons of online leagues for three one two. But the team format is just so much more exciting and it makes coping with losing better when you have people like you support group around.
00:55:37
Speaker
But like, get better at the game to talk about your games lists. Just have that community. It makes it. There's just a lot more layers to just like getting a casual game. And like now I think it helps with like burnout, too. I think because like even even in like a league where you're playing like a one on one thing, you're like, OK, I'm two and four. What's the point of me going on?
00:56:01
Speaker
But if you're two and four and then the next week you have a big game and it doesn't matter you're two and four, all you need to do is go one and oh that week. You're more into it, you know? Like it's, it gives you more reason to be involved. Well, at the same time, if you lose, you know what? You lost one game in a series.
00:56:23
Speaker
your team can still, like you losing doesn't mean your team loses. So it's in a way less pressure and in a way it makes every week kind of its own thing where the last week doesn't really play into it. Yeah. No, it's, it's, it's such a, like, I mean,
00:56:43
Speaker
I'm gonna put you on the spot. If there's any reason why you deserve some kickback for your streaming and everything, it's this, man. The backend admin stuff and then all the intros and all the stuff that you do to keep this going and a well-oiled machine that's punctual, it's insane. And I'm only getting a little dose of it with what I'm doing for our league, but to the scale and size of what you're doing.
00:57:09
Speaker
And it's free. Everyone is free to play, which is awesome. You know, it's I'm not saying it should be pay to play to enter. But yeah, like, yeah, sub sub NCX, guys. Several times people say you could like charge for it. But for me, it's like it. What would to what end? Yeah. But, you know, like I don't first off, I don't want to discourage anyone from doing it. And even like five dollars to, you know, I don't know everyone's only five dollars.
00:57:36
Speaker
Yeah, you know, but like I'm not like, you know, I can easily envision someone who watches Twitch because they can't afford to go out that night. They don't have the five bucks to to go out and get a beer or whatever, you know, like, so I never wanted to be like that discouraging. Also, just like putting up them. I don't know what I would do with the money like.
00:57:57
Speaker
Yeah, for us, I let the players vote. I said, you guys want prizes? It'll be this much money we can pull in for prizes. And people voted. And that's just we did do a pay. But we had a couple of people that were like, oh, do I have to? I'm like, no, it's all right. You don't have to pay like it's fine. You don't want prizes. You don't have to pay. It's no big deal. But yeah, giving them the choice and putting the money towards something. Yeah. Well, we do like the we do like the fundraiser, right? Like, right. Not everyone in the league contributes to the coin and they'll get a coin. And yeah, like part of me is like,
00:58:26
Speaker
But like another part of me is like, you know what, we raised it. Again, I'm not I'm going to every time I've done the coin, I've lost a little bit of money, not a ton, just a little bit, just because shipping is so stupid. That's man. I have a whole I have a whole like I know Nick feels me on this.
00:58:44
Speaker
But shipping is just the stupidest thing we've ever invented as a society. We don't do it. We don't do it. And then things bounce back when you pay the the appropriate amount of money for the post. Or like you specifically pay like they make you pay for these certain stamps so they don't run it through the machine or whatever. And the people get it and they're like, my envelopes torn. Nothing's in it. And you see on the bottom like the run through machine print scan on it. And you're like, but I you made me pay extra.
00:59:12
Speaker
at the window, you told me I had to pay extra. And this raised my cost two hundred and fifty dollars so that this wouldn't happen. And I have you have no recourse. I can't be like, I want to refund. There's that's not a thing with the postal service. Oh, it isn't. I use those bubble mailers now. They're awesome. And that's one of the reasons why I was like, I can't take a chance anymore of this stuff. I already had a few of those instances of like bubble mailers. Dude, I.
00:59:41
Speaker
I shipped a bunch of coins. I got so lucky that people are very helpful and I sent all the European ones to one person and they're gonna distribute them for me. Wow, that's nice. That was $60 in shipping just to send all those coins to one person, which is a lot. But if I had to send that individually to each thing, just the amount of time it would take to fill out the customs form for each coin would have been tragic.
01:00:06
Speaker
Oh, yeah, I was going to say, I don't think there's any Patreon that has European subscribers knows the pain of filling out those customs for us. I mean, I think we've gotten a bunch of new patrons, but they're all not in America. And I'm like, if you guys want to if you're in America and you want to sign up, you can.
01:00:27
Speaker
Yeah. I don't know if you guys want to move to America, just immigrate real fast so I don't have to do this shit right now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're so easy to immigrate to. Yeah. Flat it off. I could put three or four stamps and it doesn't bounce back 95% of the time because it doesn't weigh anything but a coin. I'm literally going to have to take like a day trip to Canada.
01:00:49
Speaker
to ship things in Canada just to save like a little bit of money. Because like the international stamp is like 250 or something for the bubble envelope size. At least you get a fun adventure out of it. Well, I live I live pretty close to like going to Niagara Falls. Canada is not that big of a deal. But like what am I going to be at the border? Be like, listen, I'm going to tell you exactly why I'm coming to Canada. You're not going to believe any of it. I run an X-wing stream. X-wing. It's a Star Wars miniatures game.
01:01:19
Speaker
Listen, you have to start with what Xwing is. Yeah. It paid for these coins. This is somewhat related, but not to me personally. There's a small bit of southern Vancouver that is technically the United States, but you can only access it through Vancouver. And they have this little peninsula is just filled with PO boxes because people in Vancouver get
01:01:49
Speaker
things from the U.S. shipped there through Amazon because then they don't have to pay for any of the customs or the extra shipping. So then they can go to this little island and then pick up their Amazon orders and then take it to this little peninsula and then take it back into the city. So smart. Yeah. So seriously.
01:02:06
Speaker
Getting getting back to quickly, just like we were a little off topic, but still connected to the draft league, like going back to it real quick. Did you when you first did season one, which was was it eight teams, Greg, four teams, two divisions or teams? Oh, it was only four total, four teams came. Yeah. And then it went to twelve. Right. Or was it eight the second season?
01:02:27
Speaker
It went I know it went 20 to 48 players to 112 to 70 something and 112 now 160. I don't remember that. It sounds like eight teams for a season two if there was like like exponential growth, though. Yeah. Well, it started the first couple of seasons doubled. I was like panicking. Yeah. OK, so speaking of did you anticipate that like.
01:02:49
Speaker
After the first season, based on the success and the fun that people were having, but on a small scale, did you anticipate that it had the potential to grow to be this big? No. Every season, except maybe after the first season, I thought it was going to contract. But you weren't willing, or maybe not to phrase it as you weren't willing, but you didn't think about a cap on players on the size of the league. No. The only time we capped the players is...
01:03:14
Speaker
When it's coming down to the end of signups and like you have a certain amount of teams by then, you know what the ideal number of players is. Like in our case, we had 18 teams. We were going to end up with each team having nine players and that just wasn't very efficient. So by going to 20, we could go to eight players each.
01:03:37
Speaker
and that gave us 160. So I capped it at 160, but that was like a week before signups were gonna close anyway. It wasn't ever like the stated goal to get to 160. It's just kind of how the math worked out to make it even. Yeah, that makes sense.
01:03:51
Speaker
I remember when I talked to him about this, he's like, well, one of the reasons he's like, I think it was precious. And he said, well, you know, Greg started the draft league so we could like consistently get get players on stream X-Wing games in. Yeah, I mean, that's definitely a struggle. You know how hard it was to get people to play? Yes, it's I mean, sometimes last season, it was still a struggle. It is hard to get people to because the thing is, like, people want a time.
01:04:17
Speaker
But I used to do times. The first couple of years I streamed, I used to do like, okay, game one, 6.30, game two, eight. But then game one would end at seven. And I'm sitting there for an hour on a wait screen or whatever. So now I've just been like, game two starts after game one. Game one starts at 6.30. I can't tell you a time for game two. It's hard to get people to commit to that. And I don't blame them, but it's also like, oh man.
01:04:47
Speaker
You know, but like, how are you how are you going to give content like for the game if you don't have content to stream? It's just I feel like one of the most brilliant side effects or benefits really of doing organized. You know, organized play online, whether it be me selfishly getting games from your league to stream on mine when I have openings that I need to fill. I know that there's probably people like to get on our stream of our own for you and your own and vice versa. You stream some of our stuff like
01:05:16
Speaker
It makes it so much easier because people are actively looking for the games to be streamed versus you having to beg them to play on your stream. Now they're like, I want my game on stream because I'm it's like a it's a it's a happy little side benefit, right? Because like their team wants to watch the game.
01:05:31
Speaker
they're teams invested. So you have two teams of people that are invested in watching this game already. So yeah, of course they want it to be on stream. And that is a good, I mean, that benefits us. And I mean, I'm not gonna lie and say don't like, yeah, that's of course a great benefit.
01:05:49
Speaker
is that I want people to play in my, play, I want their games on stream and I want- Play my thing, play my thing, watch the stuff. The less work I have to do, like tracking down, begging people, like, amen, hell yeah. Yeah, I mean, it also adds to it feeling more like a sport, like a sports event with teams and stuff like that too. That's just like making it into esports is very cool.
01:06:14
Speaker
Well, I'm sure I've told you this before, Nick, but that's how I've always approached it, approached like the testing is I'm like a sports announcer.
01:06:24
Speaker
announcing a thing like I'm trying to be entertaining. Yeah. While the game is happening, I'm not trying to be like the there's you know how there's play by play and then there's color commentary. I'm trying to be color commentary, not play by play. It's all color commentary. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's why I took it even. There's just so many times you can be like and whisper goes for straight. Boy, there's so much downtime between rounds and X videos. That's the thing. We're preaching to the choir there.
01:06:51
Speaker
Oh, when people are taking, you know, when it's like an important turn and it's a 15 minute planning phase, it's like, that's a long time. You could talk about what everyone could do for 30 seconds, a minute, and then you have 14 or 15 minutes left still. I mean, like, that's why, Greg, I took it even one step further. I like created these like standing animations, like.
01:07:10
Speaker
for I first did it with the draft league and that I did if I've done it for our league. I even put like a CNN intro to make it seem like super epic and like I stakes because I'm like, yeah, let's lean into that. Like, let's let's be like do the color commentary and like make it this whole thing. And it's a show like we're supposed to have a good time. Everybody can see what's going on in the game.
01:07:31
Speaker
I think there is a subsect of people who really want you to like go in and do a deep dive on like the possibilities and be drawing on the screen and like X's and O's and stuff like that and strategy and whatnot. I think like, and those people deserve to be heard as much as anyone else. I just don't think I'm the guy that's gonna be giving you exactly the best information.
01:07:58
Speaker
You know, but yeah, I do always enjoy the random person who just doesn't know NCX is like, oh, it'd be nice if you guys like talking about the game and everyone just like, nah, it's always like a YouTube comment. That's like you guys didn't talk about the game at all.
01:08:16
Speaker
Welcome to NCX. The thing is, people are talking about the game in chat. That's where you got to be on Twitch to get the in-game commentary. In the worst case, it's just muted. It's just with X-Wing, you're seeing the whole board.
01:08:34
Speaker
You are like, I'm not seeing anything that anyone watching is not seeing. You know what I mean? Like, like if it's Greg Olson in in the booth and he's like looking at a football formation and he sees something like he sees something that I don't see, like he knows the safety is going to drop back and do that. And yeah, he can add insightful commentary there. Right. But I'm looking at two ships of X and like we all know they're heading towards each other.
01:09:03
Speaker
Like there's no yeah, there's no like cover three in X-wing. You know, it's not that intense. Like it really is. Yeah, it is strategy, but it's not like, yeah, how often are you like shocked by a move? Maybe. Well, I mean, like the right. I mean, the thing like, I mean, if it's closer to anything, it would be it would be like football. But there is even more downtime in X-wing than in between like football play.
01:09:30
Speaker
When people are actually on the field, most of football is everyone sitting on the sidelines and discussing what they're going to do next in the huddle. And there's also a lot more players and stuff going on. When you only have five ships but you have about three minutes plus in between each dials down to moving phase, most of the game is just ships executing what they've done on the dial.
01:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, right. Yeah, I mean, being entertaining is definitely a big lift that you're going to have to do with the with the game anyway. Greg, besides the obvious, like there's more people playing, there's more people in the discord. Like how what is the overall if you had to like summarize like the impact on the Nickel City X-Wing channel like that, the draft league has had like.
01:10:16
Speaker
What has really stood out? I mean, it's the only it's it's kind of become the identity of my stream now, I think. Right.
Draft League's Impact on Nickel City X-Wing
01:10:25
Speaker
Like what you're best known for. Right. Yeah. It might be the only thing we're known for. Like it's so weird because like when we talk about like growth on Twitch, I feel like we've kind of like there was a period where like it's like when you're comparing it to covid where everyone was at home and they had to there. That was like a rapid period of growth.
01:10:46
Speaker
And then it kind of stopped when everyone went back to real life. And like, I think you see it across the board on Twitch, but especially in X-Wing, numbers went way down. And the only thing that's kind of kept the channel, even like keeping pace from where it was, has been the draft league. But I mean, like, again, I'm not complaining, but it literally takes up all of my free time.
01:11:13
Speaker
Yeah, it just I mean, so it's just a lot of shit to do. And like I've hopefully this season like automated a lot of it. So I'm hoping it gets like a lot easier. And shout out to James Ritter for helping me with that. Yeah, James Raptor Ritter. Like this ties into like the pitfalls or maybe the downsides of running a league this big.
Logistical Challenges and Team Logo Conflict
01:11:35
Speaker
Like what do you feel? Beside I mean, besides the fact is just like it's so time and intensive like
01:11:43
Speaker
Are there things that have come up that are just like, I'm not saying that this should be soapbox or just complain. I know that we all have things that we're like, Oh man, I wish this was easier. This is better, faster, whatever. But like, what, what do you think are some things that are maybe not, not things to complain about, but are just like really challenging?
01:11:58
Speaker
with maintaining this, not just for a single season in scope, but like continuing to do this for like however many seasons this thing goes on. I mean, it's just, it's just hard to like marshal everyone and get everyone on the same page. Everything would be like super easy if I said like, this is like the format I need stuff in and then people actually listened and did it.
01:12:18
Speaker
Man, if I wish to pin post in discord, I like actually felt confident when I pinned a post that people would see that it was pinned to know where to look. I would feel like I would I would get a few more hours of sleep every week. Like, you know, that feeling where you're like, oh, I'm pinning this like people will be able to go back and see. It's like, no, I like I already know a lot of people are going to ask the same question over and over again. I see it every like hour in your discord. Well, there's just there's small things that vex me a little bit like we have the the captain's
01:12:46
Speaker
each all have teams and stuff. And rightly so, they're represented by their team name and logo and everything. So like a lot of captains want to say and stuff, but like for me, it's like, I kind of know what I'm going for. And I kind of know what like the vibe I want for each team to have. So when it doesn't line up with a captain, we're going back and forth. I have to be like a little bit of a dick and be like,
01:13:14
Speaker
Like, do you see like every other logo in this league, how it has kind of the same design language and stuff like it's cohesive. I need everything to like fit into that. You know, like, yeah, it's just little things that like, I mean, right. I'm like, I don't have time to like argue with you on this all day. You know, yeah, right. Yeah. There's always going to be just like a little bit of friction when, when it grows to as big as it's been.
Future Activities and Draft League Focus
01:13:41
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I mean, so my last question is like, is actually this episode is awesome. I love the format of this one and how we're doing it. This kind of almost like an interview style. We do the show. Are we going to circle back to how bad Chicago food is, though?
01:13:56
Speaker
At the end, I'll give you I'll give you a minute to squeeze it as much as you can and about how much you hate it. But my last question is like, what do you have? Maybe not just specific to the draft league, but for Nickel City X-Wing, like, do you have future plans? Is it just continuing to do this? Is there anything that you've been inspired by or would like to do?
01:14:18
Speaker
You would alluded to in the past doing more of the next swing. I know you have done that plenty of times before, but like anything. Yeah, so I I don't have like a vision board or anything, but I do. I would like to do some aerodome streaming. It's a game that just came out. It's I would say similar to actually, I mean, it's obviously very different, but it's similar in a way.
01:14:43
Speaker
And Star Wars Unlimited is coming out, which is a CCG from FFG. We have too many three-letter acronyms in this world. I say it's NCX. I would like to stream some of that as well.
01:15:03
Speaker
Those are both things that are gonna have a heavy overlap with a lot of people in who are involved in X-wing anyway. So it's not like a wild, a wild swing. And I don't really have any like, any like concrete plans for anything with them other than I would like to do them. It really just comes down to like how much time I have to do it. And like, I'm not gonna,
01:15:32
Speaker
Obviously the draft league takes priority. So I'm not going to like sacrifice like tomorrow. I want to do aerodome because there's going to be no, there's no point to doing X-wing really when the draft league draft is next Tuesday. Yeah. I don't, I don't know what that I'm sure. Oh yeah. I'm sure we'll come up with something. Are there ways for any new people to get involved with this league or when would the next season or when could, um, our listeners get involved if they wanted to try out for the draft league?
Joining the Draft League Process
01:16:02
Speaker
So you can still sign up for it, but you go to the reserve list with 160 people. It's just impossible to think that we're not going to have drops at some point in the season. Last season at 112, I think we had like four or five drops.
01:16:19
Speaker
So, you know, we still need people for the reserve list or and that's where that's where teams are instructed to go first. So like say they each team has eight players and there's only seven games a week. So one player a week gets a bye. But say another player is like, oh, my my dog is sick. I can't make my game. Then teams are instructed to go to the subs or reserve players to find someone to fill in from there.
01:16:45
Speaker
You can still fill in and kind of be part of it. Yeah. And, you know, that's pretty much the only way to be part of it right now. But like, yeah, no, it's still like you're welcome and just hang out like the draft league general channel is not like lock. You can hang out in the league and be like a. Correspondent, you know, find yourself a niche or have fun. Yeah, become
Discord Community Engagement
01:17:10
Speaker
a fan. Pick a team.
01:17:11
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. I did. I did show my my L.A. friends all the logos. And we have it. We have an outlaw's day one fan. Oh, awesome. Yeah. Shout out to the Tinder gods.
01:17:26
Speaker
As as Nick's team gone and mostly forgotten, but universally and I loved that logo. Yeah, universally bad. Yeah. So it got to that point. Tinder support not getting back to us. So that was a guy. Good stuff, man. Yeah. But you get photos verified. Yeah. Couldn't get photo verified. It wouldn't work. Too many mass reports from bots. You know, that's what it was. Totally.
01:17:50
Speaker
Uh, but yeah, no, I mean, it's a great conversation about the draft league. Definitely. If you guys, um, if you have, if you are interested, you should check it out. Uh, the, the discord NCX discord is always popping. Like there's just so much going on. There's all these cool, different niche places. You can talk about, um, your favorite hobbies, politics, you know, your paint jobs on your ships, draft league, obviously everything in between. And now we also obviously X swing conversation. Also people are willing to, um, talk bowling and food.
01:18:20
Speaker
Yeah, food, the food takes are good. There's always a lot of a lot of food takes on a lot of food takes, both in the Discord and during the live streams where you can expect some great food in the Chicagoland area. This is my really bad segue, by the way, is not just adjacent to Chicago.
Adepticon 2024 Location and Schomburg Commentary
01:18:40
Speaker
Schomburg in this is a Chicagoland suburb that is home to Adepticon 2024, AKA for a sex with players. Worlds 2024.
01:18:49
Speaker
The LCQ tickets are as good as sold out. I think there might be a few left as they expanded the number of people that could play in it. Andrew, I know you signed up. But just for those of you listening, especially live right now, if you are on the fence or thinking about it or we're holding off on doing it later, you got to do it now. You are running out of time. February 26, I believe, is the final deadline for registration for the entire convention as well.
01:19:16
Speaker
Do you love chain restaurants? May I recommend Schomburg, Illinois? Yeah, man. It's the number one chain per capita for sure. It's not Bloomington, though. Bloomington is Bloomington is the is number the highest restaurants per capita, but not necessarily chain restaurants. Wow. But yes, Chicago has the highest bars per capita of any major city.
01:19:40
Speaker
Yeah, you have to drink after eating that crap food.
Chicago Food Origins and Quality Debate
01:19:43
Speaker
Ooh. Okay. Well, all right. So, yeah. You said that cut off, Mike. You were kind of quiet, too. Like, you're trying to, like, put that in there. I'm scratching my foot, but I couldn't let it go too long. What issues do you have with Chicago food? Literally name Chicago food. I have an issue. Let's go with the hot dog.
01:20:00
Speaker
All right, the hot dog. First off, the hot dog is a New York thing. Putting celery salt and salt peppers on it is not enough to make it Chicago. It is so stupid that you guys take something and you're like, look at us. Look at this stupid little celery salt because we can't afford real salt.
01:20:20
Speaker
It's harder to come by than regular salt. We're so great. Why? That doesn't make it better. So the Chicago hot dog was boring. If people wanted celery salt, it would be available in grocery stores nationwide. But no one wants it. It'd be nice. I mean, yeah. So the Chicago hot dog won. We got that from our German ancestry, which in Polish. You got that from New York City. You got it from yet. You think the hot dog is German, my guy?
01:20:49
Speaker
It's called the Frankfurter. It's called the Frankfurter. Yes, it's called the Frankfurter and it was from the Wisconsin Germans. Chicago is home to the Chicago Stockyards. We have the largest meat processing facilities in the country stemming back all the way to the early 1800s.
01:21:08
Speaker
are mid-1800s. The Vienna beef factory in Chicago is actually USDA factory number one. It is the first factory that was ever certified by the USDA. Is that the first factory where all the kids died and they had to actually create food standards?
01:21:27
Speaker
Well, they were the first one. This would be after that process. I don't think that fact that factory was built before like the Upton Sinclair novel. And that didn't take place in Chicago. But yeah, I mean, it wasn't great. But the Chicago hot dog itself was a depression era food. And that was I can see why way.
01:21:47
Speaker
to get basically have a protein that had vegetables on it for most people. And that's really where it exploded in popularity. But I mean, we use the mustard basically because it was a lot more readily available from the German and Polish residents in that area. The Heinz factory is in Philadelphia. So, you know, ketchup is more has been always traditionally more of an East Coast thing. But that doesn't make it, you know, better or worse. But the Chicago style hot dog actually has like a
01:22:15
Speaker
history behind it. I think it's also cool that the sport pepper, which is the unique pepper that goes on the Chicago hot dog, is pretty much really an Alabama and Chicago pepper for the longest time. Listen, making your food more Alabama is not a way to sell it.
01:22:33
Speaker
I mean, having a little hint of Alabama. Yeah, I don't. I have nothing against that state. The barbecue there is very good, though, too. So all right. This could go off the rails, but I was that was a good little way to to tie the bow on this very exquisite and diverse conversation that we had about all these different things. So that's right. But also it's you can put catch up on a hot dog. It's fine.
01:22:58
Speaker
We yeah, we give you we give you permission. I don't want it. I don't think I don't ask city's permission when I make food. No, you should. You should. You should. You should. You should consider doing it starting now. Yeah. Yeah.
Worlds Event Promotion and Merchandise
01:23:13
Speaker
All right. Thank you, everyone, for listening to this episode. We are excited to see you guys at Worlds coming up soon. Andrew and I will be there along with a few other 312 locals. We even have some world specific t-shirts that we put up on our merch store.
01:23:29
Speaker
If you want to check that out, we'll put a link in the description. Thank you to Strata Strike, who has partnered with us for years now and is helping us create some amazing swag for our Patreon. You can use discount code 312Squadron, that's 312 capital S, and then all lowercase Q-U-A-D-R-O-N for 15% off everything on their Etsy store.
01:23:50
Speaker
Make sure you catch us on Twitch when we're live. Go and check out Greg's channel. For some reason, if you haven't been following his channel, Nickel City X-Wing, they stream X-Wing and other games. X-Wing always Tuesdays and Thursdays as the draft is coming up the next Tuesday or it'll have been a week ago once this comes out. Just a five hour draft.
01:24:11
Speaker
Yeah, it's going to be a long one. Yeah, I'm going to tune in for a while until I. I mean, it's kind of the same as like those NFL drafts. So I think that that's going to be pretty cool. It's going to be fun. At least the NFL won't split it in days. I'm not willing to do that. You know, they're not. Yeah. And then lastly, thank you to all of our patrons. I'm going to do a quick shout out to Mike David, Dean Digicind, William Dale, Matthew, Adam.
Conclusion and Farewell
01:24:36
Speaker
Brendan, Michael, Justin, Mark, John, Joshua, Daniel, Alex, Stephen, Matt, Peter, Andrew and Scott. Thank you all so much for being patrons of 312 Squadron. Really do appreciate the love and support. You guys are amazing. Make sure you throw some of that love and support over to Greg as well.
01:24:53
Speaker
Donate a million subs gift a billion subs. There you go. Actually you are if you were to if you had that money And you work it you were like I'm gonna give Nicole City actually this money. Just donate it. Do not give it directly. Yeah Unless you for some reason think Amazon needs half of it
01:25:13
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Exactly. You got it. All right. Thank you so much for joining us today and taking time to come on our podcast. We really appreciate it. Yeah, no, appreciate it. It's fun as always. I mean, like, listen, I'll say talk to you guys at the time. It's not a big deal. Heck yeah. Well, my name is Nick. I'm Andrew. And I'm drag. Whoo. See you guys. Coach.