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Episode 2: Super Nova (feat. Chrispy)
129 Plays2 years ago
A long time ago… in a windy city, far, far away… Your hosts Andrew and Nick enlighten the galaxy in a conversation with top X-Wing player Christopher (Chrispy) Patrick! The trio dives into the meta trends of the recent Nova Open Worlds Open Qualifier, breaks down the B-Wing chassis in our debut segment of “Break it or Buy it”, and we address scenario fatigue by theorycrafting interesting scenario ideas!
Help support our friend Chris Tanner over at PlanningPhase Syndicate by donating using this link: https://streamlabs.com/312_squadron/tip to help support medical treatment for his daughter, who was diagnosed with cancer. Thank you for your generosity and support!
Check out Chrispy’s Twitch channel: https://www.twitch.tv/vipersquadron
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Transcript
Introduction and Topics Overview
00:00:03
Speaker
You are listening to the 312 Squadron podcast. My name is Andrew Kuba. My name is Nick Sperry. And I'm Chris B. And this week we're going to discuss the Nova Open, the B-Wing stigma, and our thoughts on scenario fatigue.
New X-Wing Tournament Rules
00:00:17
Speaker
But first, Nick, you have, uh, we got some news from AMG that you're going to want to get into.
00:00:23
Speaker
Yeah, Atomic Mask Games released a transmission about X-Wing. We don't often get a lot of these articles solely about X-Wing. But this one is, I think to many people, maybe not a big surprise. Essentially doubling down on some hard set rules when it comes to your world's invite.
00:00:43
Speaker
As they say here in the article I have in front of me as listed inside the store championship kits these events require a 16 player minimum Tournaments must have 16 unique active players for the winner to receive an invite to worlds Events with less than 16 may award all physical prizes in the kit But the invite and the championship card will not be valid so I know that some folks in more rural less densely populated areas were
00:01:09
Speaker
X-Wing tournaments draw less than 16. Fortunately, those worlds and those worlds invites will not be granted to those folks, even if maybe the tournament started at 16. But you dropped before the event started because that happens. So just something to keep in
Addressing Tournament Concerns
00:01:26
Speaker
mind. I'm I think some people are freaking out about what they mentioned actually later on in this article, which is that too many kits were distributed.
00:01:35
Speaker
So the implications around that, I think some folks think that they won't be able to actually purchase a ticket even if they earned a World's Invite. I would strongly urge you all to back off away from that cliff. I think it's going to be fine. If you earned your World's Invite, you'll have a chance to play and buy that ticket to play in Worlds. Crispy, what are your thoughts on this? Do you have any first reaction?
00:01:59
Speaker
Um, yeah, so I think because they did a, uh, they didn't updated, uh, transmission, right? Like they put an initial thing out talking about the storage advocates and then they put an update out, um, where they answered some questions. Yeah. Cause at first, like they had just like, uh, a tweet saying that basically 16 was the minimum. And now this is like a more official document that's kind of come out.
B-Wing Performance and Improvements
00:02:25
Speaker
Yeah. Um, so I think the initial backlog, like the initial reaction, um,
00:02:32
Speaker
is a lot of people who, you know, their communities can only pull out, you know, 12, 13, 14, and they bought a store kit in hopes for, you know, someone in their community to be able to go to Worlds, right? And not having to just send everyone into the LCQ, which we also just still haven't heard any news about. So it is, you know, having a Worlds invite through your store championship, you know, provides a lot of security. It, you know, it makes you figure out if you're actually going to go to Adepticon or not.
00:03:03
Speaker
So that was sort of the main thing where, you know, they put out this announcement and all of these people that had tournaments with like 13 or 14 people who had emailed AMG and said, hey, like, you know, we tried, we got as many people out as we could. Is this still valid? And, you know, AMG was sort of I'm not going to say entirely accepting, but they were at least taking into consideration the exception. Right. And then this then this transmission came out and everyone thought that those
00:03:31
Speaker
like MG was essentially blacklisting all of them saying, all of those for championships are null and void. And then the updated one did talk about, contact them if you have any questions or anything like that. So I think it's fair to say that
00:03:51
Speaker
I don't think you should expect, because of course there's a line in the sand, whether we can argue whether that's a proper line or not.
Tournament Practices and Player Concerns
00:04:00
Speaker
The store champ says for 16. I think communities should not expect if they have less than 16 to get the invite, but I would hope that AMG honors it if the store shows that they put through a lot of effort to get a reasonable and wide store champ as big as they could.
00:04:20
Speaker
Yeah, I agree with that take. Yeah, sorry, Andrew. They mentioned they do mention that they will you know, you can you can reach out to them. You can email them there. The email that they mentioned for making an exception is I believe it's OP at atomic mass games dot com. Let me just double check that they have that listed a couple of times it is. So it doesn't mean they will make an exception. But if there is a situation where maybe you had one person dropping at a 15 player events,
00:04:50
Speaker
There are chances that they could take a look at that and maybe reconsider and allow you to keep your invite. So a lot of question marks for sure. I think the only thing that I can really stress to people is that if you have your invite and you want it fair and square, you are almost 100% going to be okay. Like, oh, the chances that I get shut out. If you don't want to play Worlds and don't want to go, then you won't be able to play.
00:05:18
Speaker
But if you want to go and you're going to make the effort to go and you have the world's invite, then you'll be able to play. I just do not see them turning people away. I think they're going to have to reevaluate how many tables and seats they have. And if they even do an LCQ, depending on how many of these store champ kits were sent out, because apparently, Asmodee sent out too many. Don't know how many too many, but yeah.
00:05:42
Speaker
That's kind of a kind of a weird line for them to draw. Yeah. I mean, I even mentioned the bus a little bit. Yeah. It's not my problem, but yeah.
00:05:55
Speaker
Yeah, so last thing before we move on, for those of you that do have your World's Invite, AMG doesn't know who has their World's Invite yet, but they're working on a form that you can submit to validate your World's Invite. That isn't available yet. Just stay tuned. They will let you know. We will let you know when that form is available. They say in this article, they're working on it. As long as you have that card and you got your name signed and there's an event link that they can validate that you played in a legal event,
00:06:22
Speaker
You're fine. Like you have that ticket in your hands. I have it on my shelf. My little name crappily scribbled on it. You'll be fine. So yeah, just hold on to that. Don't lose it. It's the golden ticket. So yeah. But we're going to keep an ear out for more news and information on that.
Break it or Buy it: B-Wing Analysis
00:06:41
Speaker
But we can move on to our next segment talking about B wings. So we're going to be doing a little break it or buy it. And the B wings that we want to showcase here today I think I want to pick the ones that don't see a lot of play, and we're going to see where we can do so the rules are, we can each pick one ship, and
00:07:05
Speaker
We'll also ask if they're going to be able to buy it at a certain price, if you want the point cost to go down on it, or if you can break it, keep it at its current point cost, but what would you add to make it more playable?
00:07:21
Speaker
You know, Nick, I can start off the road to you of of all the three that we got. Netrum, Braylon and Gina. Yes. So the viewing viewing is one of the most beloved ships in Star Wars and fans of X-Wing. However, in terms of its results and its performance and its ability to stay alive in the game of X-Wing these days, it is not beloved by us. It's actually mocked in memes quite often.
00:07:47
Speaker
The the viewing is I mean it's it's in it finds itself caught in a meta where the damage race is The ceiling is so high and the floor has been raised very high The the ability to compensate for its one agility, you know, you know poor dial Its ability to double tap should usually has in the past compensated for that But right now we're not seeing it. So in terms of the pilots that you mentioned I think I'm gonna take
00:08:17
Speaker
Let's take I'll take Netrum. So Netrum Pollard. First, I'll read you guys off the B-Wing just so you can visualize with me with the B-Wing, the stat line and dial is real quick. So the B-Wing has three attack, one agility, four hull and four shields.
00:08:33
Speaker
It has a one hard that's red, one bank that's blue and a one straight that's blue, as well as one talent rolls, which is very unique. Only I think one other ship believe has that on their dial in this game. A white two hard, a white two bank, a two straight blue and a two K turn. And then three banks that are red, a three straight blue and a four straight red and nothing else. No four K, no five K. That is it.
00:08:58
Speaker
So, Netrum is initiative three. His ability reads, after you barrel roll, you may choose one friendly ship that is not stressed at range zero to one. That ship gains one stress token, then you rotate 180 degrees. So, I picked Netrum because, as you guys remember, when 2.5 first kind of got unveiled and we had that first Adapticon a year ago, Netrum was in almost every rebel list and rebels were almost 50% of the field.
00:09:27
Speaker
He was four points and he was just a great piece of firepower that filled a list of five to seven ships. They have really unexpected ability too. Like you can, you can catch people with that. So breaker by it. I am going to say buy it.
00:09:45
Speaker
at three points instead of the four that he costs now with almost no loadout. He has 10 loadout now. I would allow him to take like fire control system and maybe a talent for one or two points. So like four or five loadout max. Oh, three, you know, three point B wings. That sounds well, hey, guys, we got we got we got four point arc 170s. So we can have one three point low initiative viewing. They get initiative killed very easily. And, you know, and there's a lot of things going against them right now.
00:10:14
Speaker
Yeah, I would say with some of the bombers that are coming out that are sitting at three points, I think that that would be definitely fair to have a three point B wing just with way less loadout. Yeah, absolutely.
00:10:25
Speaker
I mean, yeah, you've got a whole bunch of one agility eight health ships that are at three points. I mean, just thinking off the top of my head, we have Y-Wings and we have the HMPs who can still put out a lot of offense with missiles. So I think just like make sure that Netrum doesn't have like
00:10:46
Speaker
doesn't have access to a great double tap ability. I would say give them four loadout. So like if you really want to go for it, you can give them proton cannons and try to line up the bulls eye eye three with your lock. Right. Yeah. Do that. So Crispy, are you buying it at three as well? I would buy it at three.
00:11:06
Speaker
I think three four is like, you know, three dash four is a great spot for natural because, you know, if you like, like you said, you could just take like what like FCS selfless or something like that. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Like that's fine. You know, you know what I really want to see that what's nice about this conversation about this idea is that it would encourage players in a really strong faction right now to consider playing different lists.
00:11:34
Speaker
Yeah, because I was thinking, like, if Nettrum were to go down to three, like, then that is in contention for, you know, taking wedge in the A-wing, or, like, if I was riding on, or, yeah. Hole Oaken, maybe, you know, at that point. Yeah, absolutely. Should we throw it over to Crispy to do the next pilot? Yeah, absolutely. You can pick a pilot. We've got Gina, and we've got Braylon Strom.
00:12:02
Speaker
I'll take Gina So Gina is an i5 b-wing Her ability is at the start of the engagement phase. You must transfer one of your stress tokens to another friendly ship at range 0 to 2 So she has 11 loadout. She has talent, sensor, double cannons, torp, a bomb slot, and a mod slot so she has a lot of
00:12:30
Speaker
upgrade slots, not a ton of loadout. I think I would break her by putting her up to 20 loadout. Oh, for four points for four costs the same. Absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't I wouldn't want to go down to three on an I-5. I think that's that's really cool. Yeah.
00:12:57
Speaker
That's very interesting. 20 points, so what are you thinking? You're filling up every spot almost. So, for a four-pointer who is throwing stress on other ships, whether they want it or not, I'm going to want proton torpedoes on her.
00:13:15
Speaker
She's a good i5 ship. She'll walk up, she'll lock someone, she'll throw a proton torpedoes at i5. And then with the rest of her loadout, I would give her FCS proton cannons and what? That's what, a two point upgrade? So maybe like marksmanship or something or hope? You know what? I'll give her hopeful. How about that? Let her boost around.
00:13:43
Speaker
Yeah, and it's interesting. So I think the knee-jerk reaction for most people, maybe when they hear you say, Britt, give her 20 loadout is, oh, well, four points is such a value piece for 20 loadout. It doesn't matter. It's a B-wing. So yeah, Gina's i5. But that ability is pretty tough on most rebel ships, throwing a stress over to somebody and having to do so. It's not so clever like Hollow is, or where you can kind of be more calculated. Gina can kind of end up giving somebody a panic pilot because she
00:14:13
Speaker
ends up in that position and has to give the stress to somebody who's already stressed, who may be bumped and had to focus or whatever with stress. So yeah, I mean, it's definitely interesting. She would become quite a force to be reckoned with just in terms of her damage capabilities, but you could shoot at her three times and she would go down two or three times and she'd go down.
00:14:35
Speaker
Yeah. And I mean, with like nothing really defensive on her, you can just like dive right in there. Like she'll get like one probably final shot at range one. But for four points, I still think that that's a good good buy for you. Yeah. She's already four, right? She's not getting played. So that means it's not enough. It means that even though she's cheap already, it's not it's not enough. So I agree with that. What do you think, Andrew? Yeah. Oh, no, I absolutely agree.
00:15:03
Speaker
I think that'd be a really fun ship to fly, honestly. Yeah, I used to play when I was casually, it was like Gina Moonsong and Ezra Bridger in the gauntlet, just because I painted the gauntlet and I just bought it and spent a lot of money on it. It's like, I got to play it, right? You take it to the game store. It's the best place to showcase it. You throw the stress over to Ezra and he uses his ability. It's cute. You know, it's whatever. Yeah.
Challenges for Low Agility Ships
00:15:27
Speaker
Andrew, we got one more pilot. Take it away.
00:15:30
Speaker
Yeah. So Braylon strum. Now this is five points. Most, one of the most expensive bee wings for an eye for, uh, and it says while you defend or perform an attack, if you are stressed, you may reroll up to two of your dice. So pretty powerful ability there. Um, it's a, it's something where, you know, you want to be stressed, but it kind of gives you a, uh, a free target lock there.
00:16:00
Speaker
Um, and it really wants you to use like those, uh, the, the, um, those red maneuvers where you could, you know, maybe focus into a barrel roll. So a little bit AC at like I for this one is tricky for me. I'm going to go, if it's going to cost five points, which I get cause you have the ability to have a double modded shot, which is pretty powerful.
00:16:27
Speaker
For this, you could buy it at a lower price. I don't think I I think breaking it is going to be. A better might be a better use. With Rayland, I mean, I so I disagree, but I'm curious to hear why. Yeah, I mean, honestly, I don't know. Yeah, maybe buying it at a lower price is is probably the better way to go. It's the same cost as Luke.
00:16:56
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, a five point that's going to that would have to be like your linchpin piece. Four points, you can kind of fill it out with like a combo. But yeah, with that with that well at. Yeah, I mean, a four points, maybe 12 load out because this does not want to take torpedoes. You don't really care about getting the target lock. You really want the focus and then the stress. Yeah, the double move. It's not. Yeah, I mean, even at 12 points, it's not going to be
00:17:26
Speaker
It's not going to be getting like outmaneuver or anything crazy like that. The only thing I think it might be cute if you could maybe put juke on it and do the barrel roll into the red evade. But I think you're just going to be doing that that focus barrel roll as a flanker. So, yeah, I mean, if I could take maybe take this down to four points, I think that would be a lot more playable. Yeah, I agree. So Crispy, what's the
00:17:54
Speaker
What's the biggest issue with Braylon when you fly him? Because I think we all all all viewing players know what his problem is versus 10. Who doesn't have this issue? What is it? I mean, his issue is that he has to be stressed during every engagement, which means that he is locked into his blue maneuvers every day. Can't get turned around. He is like the ghost, but in a small base, like it is tough to get turned around once you're in the scrum.
00:18:20
Speaker
Yeah, Braylon really, really thrived in X-Wing version 2.0 because it was just he was just that game was built purely around the value of each individual piece making up a list. Now we have other factors. B-Wings aren't very good with scenario play outside of assault at the satellite array and chance, which, yeah, is 50 percent of your scenarios. They can't help you with taking scenario actions. I mean, they can sure they can try to take a crate, but it's usually futile because of the way
00:18:50
Speaker
you know, one agility works with RNG. So, yeah, I think they're kind of caught in between right now. They don't really have an easy place in Braylon at five. It just kind of stinks him being that expensive. I definitely agree that him going down would make sense. He should be the same price as Gina. He's initiative four. He's not even five. Five is a risk. Yeah, I mean, because Braylon's not even a shit that really wants that much load out. I mean, it doesn't it doesn't need it. It's the more, the better. But yeah.
00:19:21
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I would even argue dropping him to four and adding another two or three points. I don't think it makes that. I don't think it ends up really busting him in a way. It's unfair. Yeah. I mean, yeah. Play him the same. Yeah. Again, let's you know, let's get people thinking about list building with other pieces besides the same four or five choices. I think that's always good.
Nova Open Recap and Crispy's Win
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, because I mean, the four points, too, you can even though it's an I for you can still fit that with other I fives and sixes also at four points in in rebels still have a have a decent list. Yeah. So Crispy, would you say like in terms of besides, let's just take the outlier of the arc one seventies out of the equation really quick. Yeah.
00:20:01
Speaker
What what agility in this game right now? And let's take Han out of the equation because he's six and double taps and is insane. What what what are what's what's how do you look at how do you look at one agility ships in the game right now competitively? I think that.
00:20:18
Speaker
in a like they fall under the umbrella of like arc like so like if arcs are in the meta and Han is the meta and I'm thinking to myself I need to counter those guys I'm gonna bring plasma torps I'm gonna bring like notorious that strains you down to zero defense dice all of those weapons are really good against arcs and then
00:20:40
Speaker
Just coincidentally also good against every one agility ship in the game. So if the meta is taking against ARCs, the B-Wings just fall under the same category because if I'm bringing plasmas to hit ARCs and magpuls, the B-Wings are going to feel the exact same reaction. They just don't have the back arc. They don't have any of the passive mods are born for this to protect themselves.
00:21:08
Speaker
You mentioned Y-Wings earlier, too, which, you know, the poor Y-Wing man, I mean, when we're talking about break it or buy it, I don't know, throw it away right now, unless it's Holoken. I know it's just tough. Like I. I mean, Lima is holding up scum almost entirely by herself. And Arles Arles is OK. I've tested him a couple of times, but even then, it's just like your I-4, your one agility, you will be gone by the third engagement.
00:21:34
Speaker
And the two shields, the six hole ratio, you can take a just a finishing crit, something that turns you off before you even get a chance to do any work and damage. And then, yeah, just like ion cannons are prevalent. Ion tech is prevalent. Magpoles, as you mentioned, plasmas. It's just spike damage that just just feasts on one and zero agility ships. Yeah. Yeah.
00:21:59
Speaker
So, to the audience, I'll just pose it to all you guys. I hope you guys enjoyed our... This was our first segment of Break It or Buy. It's something that we're looking forward to incorporating into future episodes. If you have any ideas of other chassis you'd like to talk about that are standard legal, heck, we could even go into extended at some point. But for now, we'll focus on standard. Let us know. Give us a shout and we'll definitely take a look.
00:22:23
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. And that's something that especially if you have like pilots that you want to see more of or that you kind of wish were still in. Let us know those two. Well, let's move on to speaking of the meta. We had a big event just happened. We had the Nova open in the D.C. area this past weekend as of when we recorded this episode. And we had two days of Swiss and a second day slash top cut day.
00:22:53
Speaker
Before we jump into talking about what we've noticed and trends and all that good stuff, Chris be our guest today. He won last year's Nova Open, which again, even though it's been a year, I'm going to give you a little bit of a round of applause because that's still a pretty big deal. Murderer's Row getting there and you you played incredibly well.
00:23:12
Speaker
So Crispy, I got it real quick. Just a couple of questions for you. My first question is, what was your experience like at Nova? What was that event like overall? Did you enjoy it outside of playing incredibly well? And what are things that you noticed from last year that are different from this year in
Top Lists and Strategies from Nova Open
00:23:32
Speaker
terms of the event structure slash
00:23:35
Speaker
Yeah, so last year, I think this was the first big X-Wing trip that I went on sort of by myself. All the other big events, like Gen Con was generally the world qualifier that I had gone to in past years. But that was, like my family was on the trip and it was a whole big thing for Gen Con for all of us, so we would go. But this is the first time that I actually went by myself for an X-Wing trip was
00:24:05
Speaker
very interesting um i did manage to sort of room up with some other guys that were you know from my store so i wasn't like entirely like alone and didn't know anyone and by that point you know i had like won some tournaments online at that point so like people knew me um and like greg greg kosh was there and you know we spent like most of the weekend together um so i never felt you know entirely alienated uh and i was flying shaft bombers so i felt
00:24:34
Speaker
I felt pretty, pretty good. I'm a bygone error. What was the list again? Without really going too deep into it, but what was the list? Just raise over it. Yeah, so it was Kylo and the Whisper, Malaris in the TIE fighter, Scorch TIE fighter, and then Dread and Grudge in the Bombers, both with electro-chath missiles and proximity mines. Spicy, man.
00:24:55
Speaker
Very, very nasty stuff. A masterclass on how to have the bombers do whatever you want to your opponent. You did. Correct. You really plugged them up. You did a nice job. And especially taking Ray out. Duncan Howard's Ray in top four. It was a pretty impressive game. See, you know, I don't mind. I do not like Ray. So seeing what you did to Ray was pretty dope. I was a fan.
00:25:18
Speaker
I was just so excited when those bombers came out. Those are still so much fun to fly. Besides the fact that you have to take them off their base every time they come close to something pretty awesome. Honestly, I think that's one of the biggest problems with just FO is all of their ships just keep getting tangled into other people. So what I'm hearing is we need more printed ships for foe that have smaller bases. Give me the Tiderito AMG. I've been needing a new ship.
00:25:45
Speaker
No, seriously. Dude, that's the new faction, bro. That's the new like Sith, the new era Sith faction or whatever they called it. I hate that movie so much. I don't even remember what they called it. Final Order. Final Order. Final Order. Final Order. Final Order. They have one chassis. It's the Tides Dorito. That's right.
00:26:05
Speaker
Crispy, what is it like winning a... Not just winning a tournament, but what is it like winning an event? What is it feeling like? Could you process it? Could you believe that you just won an entire tournament? I didn't really feel anything until I got back to the hotel after the awards ceremony. I was just sort of in a state of shock because it's not like...
00:26:31
Speaker
Like your first instinct after you win something, right? It's just, you know, jump up and down and go, yes, yes. But you can't really do that when like.
00:26:39
Speaker
You just shook hands with your opponent, and he's standing right there. And so I had all that energy packed up, and I really just wanted to let it out. But Katow, fantastic player, awesome guy to play with. We had such a chill, hilarious final game. I think at one point, if you watch GSP's stream back, there's six hands on the table while we're trying to place an electric shaft underneath Ray, underneath a Y-Wing that's on top of a thermal.
00:27:09
Speaker
Where it's just an octopus of arms on the table and we're just standing back just laughing at the whole thing. But no, it was like, like after the game was over, like I talked to Kate off about, hey, you know, here's my thoughts on the game. You know, like I'm not going to like criticize you too much for like, don't just chat bombers again.
00:27:34
Speaker
Just some general advice. And then, I don't know, I just sort of went back to my hotel and I called my parents because they watched it on stream and were very excited for me and they wanted to see all the cool stuff that I got. Yeah, that's so awesome. Yeah, totally.
00:27:57
Speaker
Um, so I have links for for us to to look at the Friday, Saturday Swiss and then the top cut. Andrew, I'd love for you if you don't mind opening up the Friday Swiss and we could talk about maybe the top four to six list that we see on on that breakdown of this fortress and kind of talk about what we see there. I'll take Saturday and then Crispy will have you do the top cut breakdown.
00:28:25
Speaker
All right, yeah, which is great. This is a very similar list to what I brought to GenCon, which is Resistance, Eloasty, Plasma Torpedoes with integrated S-foils, Ferrisphere Paint, Lulu Lampard, Shield Upgrade, Ferrisphere Paint, Marksmanship, Temin Wexley,
00:28:48
Speaker
I'm going to guess the Snap Wexley version, integrated S-foils, R68 with Ferrisphere Paint and Heroic, Kazuda Ziono with Kazza's Fireball Tarting Computer, False Transponder Codes, and Jessica Pava, integrated S-foils, BB Astromech with Ferrisphere Paint.
00:29:06
Speaker
And this is a list that is designed to beat Han and the Republic lists. It wants to joust him and just throw 15 red dice or as many red dice as possible at big, low agility things. And it's really good at doing that.
00:29:26
Speaker
in two things real quick. One, Kazoo also had Notorious. And the second thing is the Snap Wexley variant, I believe, is five points, so it would not fit. So this is the one that gives you the free boost, Temin. I think this is the one that you brought to Genco. Yeah, yeah, that is. I thought that's the Snap one, is the one that gives you the free boost. That is the Snap one. Yeah. OK, then I'm wrong.
00:29:47
Speaker
I mean, no, you were right. It is the free boost one, though. I mean, we're all right. OK, we're all right. Cool. I got it confused. But yeah, we're good. We're good. This is what happens when you print multiple pilots with different abilities. Same names, but different names, different abilities. Yeah.
00:30:05
Speaker
Yeah, Congrats to Ryan. I mean, you went undefeated. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, this list has everything has every initiative. Pretty much you can cover that range. You have Lulu at I-5 and L.O. at I-5, Temens and I-4. And so is Kaz. Jess is an outlier at lower initiative, but lots of staying power. I mean, you know, Jessica and all the pain, man. Yeah. Oh, that first year paint across the list is tough. I mean, that's how you punish your Vader, right?
00:30:32
Speaker
Just give him no good options to lock you. Yeah. And the one person that doesn't have Ferris for your paint is Kaz, who has codes. So, I mean, like, like, like this is very anti lock and a lot of lists and a lot of sort of meta pieces right now, like, you know, just boy, Luke, boy Vader. Right there. Yeah, that's a good call out, too. Yeah.
00:30:53
Speaker
like require locks in order to sort of push out the high damage that they're expecting. And if you sort of punish them for that, like, sure, like they can still take a lock and get stressed, but then Luke's not forking behind you on the next turn and shooting another proton torpedo at you.
00:31:11
Speaker
And then like, like Vader also can't like 4k behind you. So that gives you the opportunity for like, like LO to three, like white three talent behind Vader while he stressed because you know that he's going to be running away for the term that could give, could give you a free, uh, like plasma torque shot on him while he's still trying to clear stress.
00:31:32
Speaker
Yeah, and that's nasty. Yeah, it's this list is really good. I think it's the five T-70 version. I think this proves that the five T-70 version of the resistance list that people have built is not adequate enough. But having a little bit of you have the A wing in there, you've got the fireball and then you still have your your strength with Elo, Tenon and Jess as well in the 70s. So.
00:31:56
Speaker
This is good coverage for Ryan and you codes and false transponder codes and paint, as you mentioned, with Vader and Luke makes it really difficult and they can box you in and then it's hard to take them down. Yeah. And they're and they're chunky enough to where even if you chew into one of them, they can still even try to run away and it's even harder to chase them with those target locks for taking stress. Yeah.
00:32:21
Speaker
All right. Moving on to first order, Commander Mal and this is Cody. And then Commander Morris with Magpulse warheads blackout in the silencer proton rockets, sensor scramblers and lone wolf rush silencer advance optics predator and fanatical. Kylo Ren, a prototype sensor scramblers marksmanship. I know the server maneuver. Yeah, I'd say that's the version.
00:32:50
Speaker
But this is a four-ship list, which is a little more rare these days. They see a lot of five. But it's an efficient list and one that can spread out pretty well, forcing your opponent to pick a target.
00:33:08
Speaker
And I think it allows everyone else to dive in on you. Yeah, I would say, I mean, Crispy, we got one of the foremost F.O. players here. Yeah. What are you what are you making of this? So Cody loves the silencers. I know Cody very well. I have tried to pull him to the whispers. He he will not relinquish the silencers, which I it's admirable.
00:33:33
Speaker
I've been flying it. I think I think that this Kylo build is Very very solid. I've seen it. I think I think I've played against someone with this sort of Kylo build before Where you have the proton torpedoes annuals I have the extreme maneuvers you have both the capability to do high damage from distance and also get in
AMG Scenario Design and Future Ideas
00:34:00
Speaker
there and knife fight
00:34:02
Speaker
with the range one with your force. It's a very, very nasty build. Yeah, extreme maneuvers is just so good at getting you back into the fights. Yeah, hard to run away from that. The ability to flank on that is very, very...
00:34:22
Speaker
Very fast. Like, you know, if you put Kylo off in a corner and your opponent decides we're not going to deal with him and we're going to put everyone else on the far side on the decloak into the five straight into the hard turn. You are zooming into the center board and you're going to get those protons repeated like there is no ship that can hide from Kylo. Well, and if you go into Kylo, Blackhouse got kind of the same thing. So.
00:34:47
Speaker
Yep. Yeah, the practice with lone wolf. So you can basically corner both of them on opposite sides and they can be on their own. Yep. Yeah. That it's interesting. I would imagine he spreads them out a little bit. Like there is no like it's like each corner and then two in the middle ish part of the board. Like Rush and Malris are probably closer to the middle of the board. Yeah.
00:35:09
Speaker
Yeah. Russian Malaris, you're fine sort of ramming them up the middle because if your opponent decides to focus on Malaris, they're like, it could just like nothing could happen.
00:35:19
Speaker
if they just shoot at Malaris and she just keeps rolling and her ability just keeps saving her. But once you start shooting into Rush and you get him up to I6, now he's a real threat. So you
Upcoming Events and Community Engagement
00:35:30
Speaker
sort of just want to leave him at I2. He has Optics, Predator, Fanatical. He becomes very, very dangerous once he gets to I6 and he's able to line up that bullseye more often on you. So sometimes you just leave him at I2 and just ignore him for as much as you can.
00:35:46
Speaker
which sort of just lets him dive in there and just do what he needs to do. He can go for blocks. He can go for range one shots. He can just run in and grab an objective and your opponent doesn't want to shoot at him because he only gets worse if they continue to do that. Yeah, that's true. We've got a rebel sighting for number three.
00:36:05
Speaker
Yeah, this is the standard. I mean, I would call this one of the two standard rubber rebel builds. It's shaken up the meta, starting with Han Solo. And this is a. Vomit blood. Vomit blood. Is that Andrew Bullock? You have to verify that. I'm not sure. I think so. Yeah.
00:36:29
Speaker
Go ahead, Andrew. Yeah, no worries. Hansel, Perceptive Co-Pilot, Chopper, Bistin, Engine Upgrade, and Millennium Falcon. We got the Fenrao variant with Crackshot Predator, Beskar Reinforced Plating, with Kyo, Venzi, with Juke, and Luke Skywalker. I'm going to guess the Battle of Yavin.
00:36:53
Speaker
Otherwise you'd have upgrades. Yeah, this is this is the build. This is the version of the rebels that I would take because I think it beats the wedge a wing Kyo Sabine build. But the key like if if you know so I would take this if I expect to see that build happening a lot with rebel.
00:37:21
Speaker
getting those extra I6 pieces in there. And Kyo with Juke is some, you know, we see her with a couple of different builds. Juke is great just because you're taking that evade anyway. You already have that ford. And you can still run around, do objectives and stay alive. With the force ship variant, you want Kyo to stay alive. It's more important that Kyo stays alive.
00:37:44
Speaker
Yeah, not really sacrificing your damage output. So the other variant of Kiyo is proton rockets. But this one, it makes sense to be taking the evades because then you're basically a bait piece that is hard to take down. Yeah. And when you have a four ship list, too, I mean, it's more imperative that because Kiyo is going to be doing your objectives for you. Yeah, a lot. I mean, I mean, I see Kiyo with Juke a lot and I
00:38:15
Speaker
Probably the scariest versions of Kyo that I've seen is Lone Wolf concussion missile. I personally think that that build is stronger than with Juke. It really depends on how you fly it. If you want Kyo to just run up the middle and be annoying and just create space for your bigger pieces, then
00:38:37
Speaker
juke is fine because your primary action is going to be evade. But the issue with that is, if you get shot at and you lose your evade, you just have no upgrades for the turn. Your only mod on offense is your single force.
00:38:51
Speaker
So you have no, is it like if you just roll poorly, nothing happens and your opponent, like, like juke is a very, um, specific trigger where you, you need to actually be able to have hits. Your opponent needs to roll of A's and your opponent needs to not have focus modifications. Um, and you kept your evade. You didn't spend, correct.
00:39:12
Speaker
I like the lone wolf in the concussion missile because if she does get ignored, which in most games she just does, she has the ability to throw that lock out there and threaten with a concussion missile. And if your opponent does go after her, she still has force, she still has the lone wolf re-roll. And the lone wolf re-roll helps her spend her force more often than just like simply evading.
00:39:39
Speaker
So, I mean, in order to fly her with the lone wolf though, you do need to fly her sort of as a flanker and more of a side objective rather than her diving for the center objective, like on scramble or salvage, you run her along one of the sides where she grabs one of those middle, those ones towards the center and then she turns it for the fight. So it's a different play style. I think the ceiling on lone wolf concussion is much higher for both damage output.
00:40:06
Speaker
And I mean, like, obviously the evade is better than lone wolf for survival, but I like the lone wolf because on defense, you know, if your opponent just rolls one hit into you and you roll like two evades and two blanks, you still have the opportunity where it's like, all right, if there's no other shot coming in, I can just lone wolf this year and just maybe get the eyeball. And now I can start side slipping again. I agree with that.
00:40:28
Speaker
So I like, I highly suggest people to try it out, uh, over Duke, like just a couple of times. Uh, but like, I understand like, like Duke is a very safe option and in a four ship list, being safe is a very important like thing to understand. Like you cannot take a risk of, you know, throwing Kyo out on the side, assuming that she's going to be okay. Uh, and then like, you know, a Kylo Ren just dies on her and she's gone. Right. Um, and so just her like, and
00:40:56
Speaker
having the evade every turn is fine. I just like the option where, you know, if she does get ignored, she has the lock and her defense is not terrible because Lone Wolf helps to cover where the evade is missing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I like that build just because I think that as this this list keeps showing up all the time and probably now at everyone's local tournaments as well. And I think people are going to start figuring it out.
00:41:26
Speaker
how they're going to have a lot of practice playing against this list. And I think that this list, we're going to start seeing Han go a lot sooner. People are figuring out to dive on Han and I think you're going to need more like that three dice gun and more offensive output from the other pieces just anyway as this goes forward. So I think that's great.
00:41:51
Speaker
um yeah i i think for like four like three and four ship lists i think they're like players should look into getting a lone wolf into their list um because i like i think if i had three points it is probably one of the like best value cards like in terms of generic upgrades i think the lone wolf is like
00:42:12
Speaker
in every single three and four-ship list that I have just because like a like a like a re-roll is big and especially if you can put it on a piece that just wants to go do its own thing like different than everyone else you can do that like i like i throw lone wolf on von reg just because i want to sit him off in a corner he'll shoot range three shots in and when he dives in he needs to then you know like if he's diving in like he's on the attack he's not you know having to protect himself he doesn't need the lone wolf for defense he's just gonna lock focus anyway and he's just gonna keep shooting
00:42:43
Speaker
But the lone wolf is there for when he's on an island, he is at his best.
00:42:56
Speaker
I think load off is definitely better. I agree that it's the probably the is the best generic upgrade in the game right now. It's better. It's the new elusive and it's better than elusive. Just got to be far enough away. Yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's a great boon for those four ship lists, too, because because we start seeing everything stripped to five lists. So it's more important that four ship listening have that chance and ability.
00:43:20
Speaker
Yep. Lone Wolf, definitely better on lists that have less than five. For sure. Yeah. Do chances list here another. Yeah. Sort of list. Yeah. Trains Crawford with Kylo Ren. Proton torpedoes, advanced optics, fanatical and instinctive aim. Another silencer, Kylo. It's amazing. I love it. In top four. Where's the whispers? Where they go? Right.
00:43:45
Speaker
The violence for Kylo is seven points still or six? He's seven. He's still seven. Yeah, it's not cheap. But we got Lieutenant Le Hughes making an appearance, which I'm always excited to see. Big fan of Le Hughes with Special Forces Gunner, barrage rockets and marksmanship. And then we have Commander Malaris with cluster missiles this time. Well, actually, that's.
00:44:08
Speaker
Yeah, that's pretty good. And then scorch with fanatical and a crack shot. And then DT 798 with a deteriorating power cells, aka borch. Let's say I called both DT borch because it's like scorched, but just it's different ability. It's slightly different. Or why not just call him dorch or torch or use or use one of his initials? Yeah, because borscht is is lazy. I would say this is why I.
00:44:39
Speaker
Dorch makes more sense because it's a different scorch. Yeah. Yeah. It's the other variety. But with a regen, that's so interesting. Deterior of power cells allows you to regen. The three musketeers with Maurer, scorch, and DT. So it's always good to see them together. Two lists in the top four of Swiss with silencer Kylos, seven point Kylos, which is cool with Brodorps. Crispy, are you a commander Maurer with cluster missiles kind of guy these days? Or are you a magpulse warheads kind of guy?
00:45:08
Speaker
Uh, it depends on how many whispers you have on your list. Okay. If you, if you ha if you have whispers in your list, you don't need magpals. If you have, if you, sorry, if you don't have whispers, you need the jam. You're taking magpals. Yeah. I've been more up on just magpals, especially for, I mean, it's just, it's great in, even in the crates game, like just to have.
00:45:35
Speaker
Yeah, it's enticing to be able to double tap with the cluster missile, get that second shot and have the conversions with malware ability. But yeah, it does depend on the list you're building around Commander Mallory. Also, I mean, I like the magpulse that you can keep it at range one to three. And it's just you always have a three dice gun. Yeah.
00:45:52
Speaker
Real quick, looking through the rest of these is a lot of rebels, a couple more resistance and some empire. I just wanted to give a shout out to Duncan. Everybody knows Duncan Howard, who is number five here in Swiss, who actually flew Adigalia. So he was playing a Republic list with just two Ark 170s, Wolf and Oddball. But he had Adigalia with CLT Chopper and Debris Gambit, as well as Delta 7B Anakin with Predator R4P17.
00:46:16
Speaker
and shield upgrade. So there are a few versions of Republic lists that are kind of sneaking in as as viable and they include Delta 70 Anakin is what I've noticed. But Adi Galia is is a sight for sore eyes because we don't see Adi Galia. Even when Adi Galia came out, Adi Galia wasn't getting played much at all. So yeah, but only three FO lists on Friday and two of them made top four.
00:46:42
Speaker
Yeah, that's also impressive. FO remains strong at one worlds and it's still up there as a top competitive faction. It's not, it's certainly not Rebels or Republic, but it's right there next to resistance is like kind of on the cusp of being at the top there. So still very good and you can still win it all with that, it seems.
00:47:02
Speaker
I'm gonna jump into Saturday real quick and we'll just see real quick what the The most exciting part about Saturday will get to is their number four In Swiss, but we'll start with the top who went undefeated here. We have is this D
00:47:17
Speaker
E I H X wing that I read that correctly Playing Empire so undefeated in Swiss on the Saturday Swiss heat Playing lieutenant laurier with crack shot and targeting computer Major Rimer in the Thai bomber with set salvo barrage seismics and delayed fuses captain Jonas with set salvo barrage rockets and bomber generator and
00:47:40
Speaker
Tomak's brand looks like this is the new Tomak's brand because he doesn't have any upgrades. It must be the standardized Tomak's brand that just came out. Yeah. And Rear Admiral Chiranou, I have to you guys have to remind me what is on Tomak's. It's been a second. We did our last episode on the bombers.
00:47:58
Speaker
But we're out in June to a ruthless death troopers Darth Vader, agile gunner and baffle and dauntless title. I think to Max's plasma torpedoes and a couple other. Yeah, he's the one that throws his bombs to I think I don't think I don't think that's no. I think that's death fire and Jonas that both do that. Tom X has true grit. The new talent where he can at the end of the activation phase, removing non lock red or orange token to gain a strain.
00:48:26
Speaker
He has plasma torps and he has ion bombs, and he has the new ability where after he barrel rolls, he can spend two charges, one recurring, in order to get a focus token. So he is a self-contained i5 double-modded plasma for three points, which is why you bring him. Yeah, three points. You spend the two charges, you get a focus. Okay. Got it. So he can barrel roll into red lock and then spend the charges to get the focus token.
00:48:51
Speaker
So this list is basically just a web of sad times if you get caught in these firing arcs. Rear Admiral Chirnu is not going to go down fast. LaRear is slippery. And then you have the bombers doing what they do with the re-rolls of Jonas, the barrage rocket saturation salvo combo, which has been proven to be incredibly good. Might not be the best. I think people maybe are overestimating it a little, but still, it's very good.
00:49:18
Speaker
And then Tomax, the new Tomax, with the double moded plasma opportunities. Very good against Archon70's, another one at Children Nation.
00:49:28
Speaker
Next, we had wine and shout out to wine and cohort who actually just followed us today on Twitch, which is kind of funny. So he's he brought rebels. He's number two in Swiss. He brought Han with trick shot. Perceptive copout, Bistan and Falcon title. Boy, Luke Wedge in the A wing with marksmanship predator. Kyo again here with Duke and Sabine in the TIE fighter at two point filler with Beskar reinforced plating.
00:49:55
Speaker
So another Han variant, trick shot. I think some people debate on if trick shot is worth it. It depends on how you'd like to fly Han. Trick shot is a great upgrade. But if he's taking a lot of range 3 shots, he's probably not able to double tap as much because ships are farther away from him.
00:50:11
Speaker
But it's a good list. Do you guys have any input on this version of the Rebel on list? I mean, yeah, it went undefeated, which is great. And this is the version that I think is better at scenario objectives. It has a couple more pieces that are a little more durable, so less fragile than some of the Fenrao stuff out there.
00:50:39
Speaker
But I think that this is still a great version of the list that is very hard to kill and deal with.
00:50:49
Speaker
Yeah, I like Fenrao. I thought I was kind of off on him for the longest time, because he doesn't feel as awesome as scum Fenrao, but he's good. Yeah, I like Fen. And honestly, I think that if you see a lot of this version of it, I would rather have the Fenrao version on my side of the table, because I think that is designed to counter this version of Han. Yeah, absolutely. Because the standard build we're seeing on Fenrao, I believe, is Predator, Cracked Shot, Beskar.
00:51:20
Speaker
So like that is a self-contained double-modded shot at i6 where all you got to do is line up a bullseye and you have focus roll and focus boost to help you land or boost roll focus to line that up and then the crack shot on top of it.
00:51:35
Speaker
that opening engage you are getting a monster shot um and then from there you can just feel free to disengage and then just be an i6 in the mid and late game and just clean up other ships uh go for some initiative snipes just be
00:51:50
Speaker
you know sort of elusive and just wait around for the end of the game and like Han and Luke will do most of the battering throughout the early and mid stages of the game and all you got to do is just leaf and round to the end game and he'll zip around and go kill anything that needs just a couple of damage to go finish it off. Yeah.
00:52:06
Speaker
And this version of the list with Luke, Wedge, Kyo, and Sabine. Wedge is a flanker. And then you have Sabine and Kyo. Both are tough to take off the board, especially Sabine with the best car reinforced planking. And they are really great at getting objectives. So even if you do take down Han, you could just be behind on points with objectives. And that's what this list excels at.
00:52:35
Speaker
Yeah, hopefully Han doesn't die, but if he does, it's later in the game and you don't care as much. Right. That's the hope. We got number three. You got Hogue Leader. I'm going to kind of glance over this one really quickly. No offense to a great effort. And just because this is a Paul Hever esque Republic list that we've seen a lot of versions of. We've got Anakin.
00:52:53
Speaker
Yeah, if you listen to our first episode, we talk about it there. We we talk about extensively. And I can see the chorus on four points when we got Padme with R4P plasmas, passive sensors and daredevil. So not the pro-torp version with just pro-torps and plasma and passive. This one's a little different. And then we got the three culprits, the jag wolf oddball trio of arc one seventies. But I'm really excited to talk about is the scum list.
00:53:19
Speaker
Number four, Andrew brought a scum list that made day two. He brought Basque. This Andrew was not at Nova. He brought Basque with Marsmanship and Dead Man's Switch. Fen Rao now only six points in the Fang Fighter with Fearless Enduring. Hey, an Enduring sighting. I actually have always liked Enduring on Fen.
00:53:42
Speaker
and Beskar Reinforced Plating, so kind of double insurance with those crits. Joy Rakoff and the Fang, now only four points of Fearless and Ion Torps, Cad Solas. I have a four-point Fang fighter with Fearless and Beskar Reinforced Plating. And then a Mandalorian Royal Guard. This is the Fang's Out Squad, besides Boss.
00:54:01
Speaker
with Fearless and Beskar reinforced plating. So, hey, I think everyone's saying, you know, Fang Fighters don't really have a shot outside of Fenrao and maybe Bodica, but I mean, hey, this is cool. Did well, nice job, Andrew. What do you guys think? Yeah, I mean, especially for scum as well. Yeah, when I think of fangs, I think of scum.
00:54:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's a it's a fun. It's a fun list, but it is high risk, right? It's wild. It's wild to see here, especially with the Mandalorian Royal Guard. Like I really like to the like the clan Ren versions in clan Ren versions in rebels and rebels over the Mandalorian Royal Guard. I mean, I think it's there's still all right there, I for. But man, it's neat
00:54:57
Speaker
It is. I don't know if I would be able to I don't think I would be able to get four wins out of it with this list. Like there's there's got to be a high amount of skill there. He brought it to prove a point, and I think he did a great job. Yeah, absolutely.
00:55:15
Speaker
All right, so we'll and we'll just quickly do we'll just talk about the winner real quick for the final day because the names that we mentioned they made the top, you know, four eight overall day two. So, Crispy, if you want to talk about Winan's list, congratulations to Winan for winning. We already kind of mentioned it, but maybe why you thought it was good enough to win Nova.
00:55:38
Speaker
Yeah, so wine with the standard sort of rebel good stuff on Luke wedge key of Sabine We saw this list rise fairly early on in the points update and This was sort of what was Did this win sort of another event or like a smaller? Sort of store championship because the list seems like very very familiar
00:56:07
Speaker
Yeah, I'm looking at some of the store champs that this list has been featured. Yeah. So, yeah, like just like Perkop, Bistanon just is insane value at seven points at I6. Boy, Luke being able to download that Proton Torp out of the gate.
00:56:26
Speaker
and then Wedge Kyosamine doing the chip damage, playing great at all the objective games. It's just a very consistent list, and it covers all of its bases. And sort of one thing that we saw to rise up to beat it, right, were the ARCs. And this is sort of where, for the last two world Open Qualifiers, LSO and GenCon, we didn't see anything like this list.
00:56:57
Speaker
get close to the... I mean, Zac Bart made it to the final of Nova with, you know, a list without Han. And at LSO, there were a lot of Han lists, but the list that ended up winning was the Paul Hever anti-pad main triple arcs. And I think for Nova, we did not see a lot of triple arcs at all.
00:57:23
Speaker
I I think that Han just needed the the meta of the triple arcs Or at least you know the initial heat of that to die down to come back up or you know Everyone sort of over correct on the arcs where they're expecting slow ships that they can go line up bullseyes on or whatever, you know, like line up bombs or stuff like that and Han comes back and there are no arcs left for anyone to use that tech on and
00:57:52
Speaker
And so Han just ends up rolling over a lot of people. Yeah. Yep. Yeah. I mean, I know you're good. You know, you're good. I was going to say, I think, you know, Han Han is the meta warping ship. And if there's nothing to check it, it's going to run wild.
00:58:11
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Wynden's a great guy. I've gotten to know Wynden over the last couple of years. And this is just a more fun list than playing. Maybe people are just kind of tired. Like the three arcs, it's just like, ugh, I don't know. Maybe that's just the way I think, though. I know some people don't care how boring or fun or whatever it is. But Han lists are just more engaging than triple arc lists.
00:58:35
Speaker
So just thinking back to Gen Con, Nick, if you remember the Sunday, there were 14 of us. There were seven Republic players. Yeah. At Nova, there were only three out of a top 15. And one of them was Duncan, who was not flying triple R's. He was flying the four shit version. But the other two that were there
00:59:02
Speaker
were flying something very close to, or just were flying the same polyaver list. And if I'm looking through here on roll better as to who played
00:59:17
Speaker
Who played what I think I think wind played One of those lists one of those Republic lists to make it to the top. Yeah, he ended up playing Hayden in the top four so The the Hanla still can beat the arcs. It's just generally you over a long period of games if you're having to play like I
00:59:42
Speaker
arcs like every other game, you will fall once because you may get a bad scenario matchup. You may go up against a good player who just knows how to fly the arcs and knows how to get around Han, where they're going to be able to put you down. But if there's just not many arcs out there, you're just more likely to dodge them and get those better match ups for you to get up to the top.
01:00:07
Speaker
And I think that, you know, we can sort of see the reverse. Right, because we had Andrew who made it to Sunday with the scum list. He did not play rebels during his heat, and then he played two rebel lists on Sunday and lost to both. Yeah. Yeah. When rebels have the text to punch fangs in the face, because Han can just fly away from them and never give them concordia. Yeah.
01:00:36
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. I think having less arc with 70 is that, you know, what kind of response is that in terms of I think it's probably a combination of people trying to anticipate what people are taking against a part of it is probably their disinterest in playing something like that continuously because it's very.
01:00:55
Speaker
Boring. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's also little openings that we're seeing with resistance now coming through, kind of punching through first order, making a good appearance too.
01:01:08
Speaker
I was going to say that I don't think that I don't think the Republic list is boring. I think that it's it's OK. I mean, I don't I don't I don't think that it's boring. I think that it's it's actually finicky and it's a pretty high skill ceiling because if you're bringing the Republic list and you're not going up against Han.
01:01:28
Speaker
You could be in a world of hurt. You have to completely rethink like how you fly that list. And, and if you are flying that against Han too, like, um, you know, Paul Hever has talked a lot about this. It is, you gotta be on point from turn zero. You have to set up your obstacles in the right way. The Han player also has to take the bait on those obstacles and you have to be on point with how you're flying them.
01:01:53
Speaker
They're very easy to have your arcs bump into each other. That's the big one. It's running out of each other. Right. But that's huge. That's one mistake that can end your whole game. So I think that there's a skill ceiling to that Republic list that also makes it a little more preventative for people to be taking it.
01:02:13
Speaker
Yeah, I don't know. I don't agree with everything you said, but I agree that you can't just bring it without any knowledge of setting up and formation flying. I just think that there are lists that have different ships and different initiatives that are just more interesting to me, but that's my opinion.
01:02:36
Speaker
And we all have them. Yeah. Yeah. So any final words of Nova Crispy in terms of the meta then when he won a year ago versus now, which which one do you say you would which one would you, you know, maybe say you prefer? Not the one with Jeff Bowers. OK. Like I I liked it. I liked that meta a lot because it was what I had. It was it was the list that I had made and people were copying it.
01:03:06
Speaker
And it was just running over people. And then Jaff and Proximine's got nerfed to hell. Yeah. I remember flying in it. And it's just like every game, you just had to think about, like, OK, where are they going to put that electro-traff cloud? It's all your fault, Crispy. It wasn't just FO, though. Any ship that could take electro-traff had it. I was flying electro-traff in Empire.
01:03:34
Speaker
I mean, it was just you had to anticipate it like in every game. Yeah. And it's very hard to anticipate the system phase boost into the skilled bombardier launch. Oh, God. Yeah. Because because that that covers a lot of ground. So no, it's a. Yeah, no. I think that this meta is fairly healthy outside of scum sort of just being left to die. Yeah, I think that they have hope. I.
01:04:03
Speaker
So my sister plays scum and right now like we are on a mission to get her a world's invite through a store champ. We've got I think two more opportunities. Okay. We've got a scum list for her. Like I think it's really good. I like I like I genuinely think that it can win. And right now it's just sort of training on that and like
01:04:26
Speaker
like I've been watching some of her games and just she's losing on like minor mistakes or just like these 5050 calls that you know she you know it could have gone either way and it was just you know you just you get on the wrong side of it yep exactly um so no it's we're working on it I think that she's got a good shot at it um so I think that there is some hope it's just
01:04:51
Speaker
Very, very difficult to come by. And if you want to get an invite, just like just go to another faction. It's like way easier. Yeah, too bad for the die hard scumbliers. But don't worry, I think I think they'll they'll get a little more level. It's moving in the right direction. Like I was really happy that some of the top end stuff came down and last points update. I think that was really needed. I think that things are playable again, which like before the last points update, they were not.
01:05:22
Speaker
Yeah, so hopefully it gets better. Yeah, it's it's such a hard faction to balance just because each individual piece is a 2.0 faction. It's such an action. It's built for 2.0. It was so good at 2.0. I feel like it's just it's hard to balance when like the individual pieces are are so good because it's a it's a faction that it could be broken so easily.
01:05:52
Speaker
So moving on to the kind of the tail end of our show here tonight, just wanted to address, we had a question from our audience, Drew Bishopside, good friend of mine from California. We hang out pretty often whenever I go back home and play X-Wing together. He asks, I know we have little say in whether or not we get new scenarios, but with what we've had so far, are we used and are used to, I'm gonna rephrase that for editing purposes, Andrew, I'm gonna say it again.
01:06:20
Speaker
He says, I know we have little say in whether or not we get new scenarios, but with what we've had so far now and are used to, are there other scenario ideas that you guys have ideas for? Do you have ideas for new scenarios? Loaded question. I love it. I think the challenge is for us to not go on for 20, 30 minutes each talking about this, but I'm going to throw it over to you, Andrew, first, what you're, you know, maybe first.
01:06:46
Speaker
Yeah, I'm going to go quickly. So I mean, I still save all of the 1.0 scenarios that came with the ships. And so I like to break those out every once in a while and play with those. I love the idea of asymmetrical scenarios. It's kind of stuff that came out even with the new child of Mandalore, where one side is an aggressor, one side's a defender. And so it can lend to different
01:07:16
Speaker
ways of building ships and lists when you're when you're playing scenarios. And if you can have some of that, it's hard. I think it might be hard to balance for a tournament setting, but something with a little bit of that that asymmetry can wildly change how you approach X-Wing and add a different skill level because you might have a way that you would set up your list if you're if you're playing as someone who's like defending or has to get like a crate or something to the other side of the board
01:07:45
Speaker
versus if you're, you know, attacking from trying to prevent someone from getting that crate to the other side of the board. But yeah, I'll throw it to to crispy any any ideas that you would have. Yeah, so.
01:07:59
Speaker
One thing that I would like to see is, you know, right now we have all these scenarios that give one point per thing, like you get one point for staying in the center, you get one point for being, you know, like having control that satellite, you have one point for getting that great. I would like to see scenarios where you work to get chunk points.
01:08:20
Speaker
Um, for example, like you throw out all of the, you know, let's just say that there was like three, um, uh, objective markers and you put them in the center.
01:08:31
Speaker
And at the end of the turn, you pull it towards your side. You do a two-speed maneuver towards your side if you have the most ships or you perform an action. And if you get it off your board edge, then you get five points. So it's not, I'm going to sit around this thing, and I'm going to get one point every turn. I'm going to put a lot of work to get a lot of chunk points. And the work may pay off. It may not. If my opponent's able to stop me, then I did all that work for nothing.
01:09:01
Speaker
Yeah, but once I get those points, that is points that my opponent can now like, now they can't get right. Like, like I've taken this scenario, like I've taken the subjective marker off the board, it is my points, my opponent will get nothing from it. Yeah, I mean, or even like, you know, like tug of war, like if you get to the end of the game that like if the scenario was like on your side of the but yeah, no, there's a lot of cool ways you can do with that. That's neat.
01:09:28
Speaker
Yeah, so from our conversation that we had the pleasure of having with Atomic Mask Games and them talking about current scenarios and their plans for future scenarios, they added scenarios because they wanted there to be another layer of the engagement phase and what you're going after and an alternate win condition as well for people who maybe get diced or just they're going up against the odds, right?
01:09:52
Speaker
Um, so the idea that you have crispy where it's like you're, you're taking, you're running away to deposit points and come back. I think, you know, it challenges, I'm not saying I dislike it or I think there was anything wrong with it, but it challenges atomic mass games idea of keeping people literally engaging with each other's lists and kind of going towards each other and going head to head. And in a lot of cases, people just jousting these days, not always, but that's what some people resort to.
01:10:20
Speaker
So it's very much contradictory to what we've seen so far, but I'm open to that. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but we don't see anything like that right now for maybe a multitude of reasons. I think maybe that is also one of them. The engagement thing, keeping people engaging with each other. Well, Nick, how would you do that? Do you have an idea for a scenario that would let itself doing it?
01:10:44
Speaker
My idea is, and I don't know how, I'm not going to go into how I would implement it because it would just get messy for all of our ideas, right? But I want an idea that, I want one scenario that introduces randomness, that introduces moving objectives. I think that would be really cool if there was one where
01:11:02
Speaker
They drift or they get introduced later in the game, maybe by turn two or three. And it's kind of like a variable and dynamic battlefield that you're flying on. It's not so cut and dry. This is where everything is. Only in salvage do we get a scenario where things move constantly because crates are dropped and taken off the board and put back and all that stuff.
01:11:24
Speaker
So I think it would be really cool. When we've streamed List Chaos in the past, we've moved obstacles around and it's completely changed the way people have dialed in, said their maneuvers and played their game. And it's been really fun. I think it would be really cool to introduce a scenario where things moved around and it wasn't predictable that you didn't exactly know what was going to happen the next round or when they would appear or whatever.
01:11:50
Speaker
Yeah, I just think that would be really cool. No, I mean, yeah, that's that sounds neat. I mean, Child of the Mandalore has a little bit like experimenting with that with like the the the Beskar one. I think you you you only start with placing like one on the battlefield and then you place the rest with like with your hyperspace markers.
01:12:11
Speaker
But I think moving obstacles would be interesting if you had... It was a bit like a templated way to do it, right? But it would be... Yeah, it's just... Because it makes sense, right? They're moving, it's in space! Like, you know, asteroids move! It would just be... They want realism, there you go. They want thematicness. That would be it.
01:12:31
Speaker
Yeah, Drew, thank you so much for asking that question. That was really, really a great question. And if any of you guys want to ask us in our Discord, we have a part of our Discord dedicated to the show. You can ask us questions and present topics that we talk about here on the podcast. So, Drew, thank you.
01:12:54
Speaker
Real quick, before we wrap up, just want to give you guys a rundown of upcoming events. Those of you guys looking to play in some big events, Golden State Games, which I will be at, is coming up very soon this month, September 23rd, the 24th in San Francisco, California.
01:13:11
Speaker
And then after that, we've got we'll be co-hosting the Dragonfall charity event. Andrew and I will be streaming that in person in Link Geneva, Wisconsin on October 7th and 8th. And then shout out to ourselves because you got to plug your own store champ. We got the Windy City Trials Turkey Trot store champ on November 18th here in Chicago, Illinois. If you're in the Midwest, come out, say hi. Come out and say hi.
01:13:38
Speaker
Last thing I want to plug is we're still doing our fundraiser to help Chris Tanner and his daughter and his family help pay medical bills to help Chris's daughter who is battling cancer. So we just wanted to say that we continue to be with the Planning Phase Syndicate family and Chris specifically, and I appreciate all the generous donations we've gotten so far. We're going to keep it open for a little bit longer.
01:14:04
Speaker
And thank you, everyone, for listening to the episode. And big thank you to Crispy for joining us tonight. We're so happy to have you here. Of course, anytime.
01:14:13
Speaker
Yeah. And when we return, we will discuss the meta fallout of the golden state games world open qualifier that Nick will be attending. So we'll have some, yeah, we'll have some first, uh, firsthand experience from him. And then be sure to follow us on Twitch, where we live stream tons of X-wing, both in-person and online, as well as other games. And then check us out on YouTube for edited content, like us on Facebook for community updates.
01:14:36
Speaker
And if that's not enough self promo, we also have a discord. Click on the link in the podcast description for more information on how you can connect with us. We'd love to be chatting with you guys in there. And then until next time for 312 Squadron, I am Andrew Kuba. I'm Nick Sperry and I'm Crispy. Yeah. Have a great night, everyone. Bye, guys. Thank you.