OH MAH GAWD!!! STOP TAKING Y-WINGS!!!

ScottieATF said:

First of all, i stated that i speak for a limited play group, yes, but i don't say anywhere this must be true for everyone. Also i am not accusing people, like you do here. I am just stating and defending my opinion as good as i can, and i am not in for a flamewar with anyone here, i won't play this childish game. To anyone here, stop insulting people that simply have a different opinion than you. Most did not, even if they disagree with me, but some just can't restrain as soon as they are on any forum. It's a known phenomenon. If you disagree, state why and don't get personal. Otherwhise you prove nothing but your lack of manners.

Second, where do you or does he take the evidence from while you accuse me of having none? Is there any central database that i have not discovered? If there is please feel free to point me to it. Until then personal experience from our game groups and local events is all anyone has at the moment. I have looked up results for Kessel run events in forums. But there seems to be no central database with locality, participant number, everyones exact squadron, pairings and so on. There are certainly varied results, but you can't generalize from them any more than you can from the results of your own gaming group. There are tournaments with 6 players, or some where they write the majority of players is rebel, or imperial or whatever…

We simply have no reliable data, and in that case i decided to trust my guts and observation. And hey if you tell me, Y-Wings are awesome, not overcosted and the last thing they need is a buff, i would like to believe you. Take them and play them to victory if you can. But in my corner of the world, not me not anyone can make them, or perhaps even the rebel faction as a whole really work, and that is a fact for us. And that's why i started the thread. I had the best intention of pointing the game designers to a flaw that was very obvious for me. I am honestly surprised that people don't agree with this.

Perhaps it is also not the Y-Wing or rebels being too weak but the Tie swarm being too strong. I am also not the first one to state this, that's for sure. There have been a lot of people saying this in different forums. And there were even mathematical tries to prove it in other forums. I found them rather impressive too.

But the bottom line is, if everyone says Rebels are fine, i can accept this, even if it is in complete opposition to my experiences. I think i will watch or do some Vassal games to see who is right of us… Only a high number of test games can tell in the end. And Wave 2 will of course bring a lot of changes too.

One thing I have tended to notice:

I have seen several threads in the last few months of either "TIE Swarms are overpowered" or "The Rebels are underpowered". I am going to make an assumption that the people making these threads are involved in gaming groups where Imperials dominate Rebels regularly?

I am finding in my gaming group a balanced game, with Rebels and Imperials being about equal in wins, including Rebels winning the KRT (3 rebel players, 3 imperial players and Rebels picked up 1st, 3rd and 6th)

My personal experience though is quite different, and my insights will hopefully get people thinking (even if they disagree).

I have personally played 25 games as Rebels, for a record of 24-1. Of those games, I have played about 16 games with a 3 ship build, and 9 games with a 4 ship build. My only loss came with a 4 ship build. - This is why I tend not to respond to alot of the "you have to have 4 ships to be competitive" doomsayers.

Now, if "the rebels are balanced, they are just harder to play/have a steeper learning curve" then you would expect me to have a similar record as Imperials, however my Imperial record is 2-10 (with one of the 2 wins coming as the KRT final).

I believe that my personality and natural play style suits a 3 ship rebel build. So I pose this question to you.

Is it possible that in your gaming group, a larger portion of the group have a personality and play style that better suits an imperial swarm, and therefore they are more comfortable using, and experience more success using an Imperial build?

This is not saying the game is imbalanced, and not saying that people who are finding imbalances just can't play as well as others around them, but rather that some people are better suited to playing rebels, and some better suited to playing imperials. In my corner of the world, we have a nice mix. In your corner of the world, perhaps you have more of one than the other.

Thoughts?

A very useful, friendly and constructive post. So thanks already for that.

In my group it is not really a lack of balance between rebel and imperial players, just that a lot of the rebel players start to get frustrated since they lose all the time.

of course i have to say there are a lot of pretty conpetitive players in my group and all of them understood pretty fast that the Swarm was a very powerful build. In friendlies we don't play it anymore really.

Perhaps that in other gaming groups, a lot of the guys playing imperium don't play real swarms. I am talking about 7-8 ship swarms here to be clear. And you have to buy quite a lot if Tie Fighters for this, not everyone is ready to do this. 5-6 Ship inperial lists are still powerful but beatable. So my question is what kind of list do your imperial players play.

Also swarm lists can be beaten by more elite imperial lists. The only thing is that Rebels have no chance against a swarm in my experience wether it is 3 or 4 ships. I also think we have very competent rebel players so i don't think that's the reason.

ForceM said:

ForceM said:

ForceM said:

I was you back about 2 months ago. I think most of us predominantly Rebel players were.

It's probably the reason the tone got intense in here so quickly. I can't speak for everyone else in the thread that's given some solid advice and tried to explain things for you, but for me personally, I was beating myself more than the Swarm was, but since I was only ever playing against Swarms, I figured it must be the Swarm, not me. After all, this game is supposed to lack depth according to the internet, it's supposed to be some lite little miniatures game- it can't possibly be my nearly 10 years of miniatures game playing letting me down, right? It couldn't just be the learning curve that every game has… 

People are trying to help you, but all your replies have more or less boiled down to "No, that's not been my experience.", so I'm going to try a different approach. 

You say the Swarm is a powerful build, and I'm not going to disagree- it's a solid build for several reasons. I'm curious though, in your opinion, why do you think it's a powerful build? Why do you think so many people in your club win with it so often? What aspects make it so effective?  

Secondly, let's look at your game- are there aspects that you could improve? Do you lose actions due to collisions when playing Rebels? Do you have trouble infliciting significant damage, i.e. downing ships in a timely manner? Do you have trouble staying alive? Do you maneuver/ move effectively? What's your deployment like- do you drop your ships in one big pile in the middle? Do you then scream forward at the fastest possible speed towards the TIE Swarm? How long do your games usually last? At what point in your games do you generally feel like a point of no return has been passed and you're definitely going to lose to the Swarm? Do you feel that Pilot Ranking plays a role in your losses at all, i.e. do you find yourself doing things in the wrong order, or to put it another way, do you wish you could select the order your ships move or shoot rather than be restricted by Pilot Rank?

I have played both sides. I have 8 Ties and i gotta tell you we also switched armies. My friend has more than 15 years if miniatures gaming, i have 13.

On tournaments, swarms have the problem that they do go to time whem faced with other imperial builds and swarms. This is due to 2 attack dice vs 3 agility and evasion. Rebel vs. Rebel is quite the contrary and over very fast and the better player there or the more lucky one stacks 5 point wins easier. Imagine Wedge vs a Y-Wing that just cant dodge XD. That may explain tournament standings to some extent.

For my plays as imperial, i play a 7 tie swarm with Mithel and Howl with Swarm Tactics mostly. As Rebel i have changed my lists frequently since i just could not win against the swarm. Best results were with 4 X-Wings. Luke, Dreis and 2 Rookies with equipment and Wedge, Biggs and 2 Rookies with some equipment came in best working for me. But i have tried everything from 3 ships with torps to 4 Y-Wings…

I have a very good eye, i produce crashs with other ships sometimes, but i can not remember when i hit an asteroid the last time.

As a Swarm i clump my asteroids in one place or in a row in order to get as much free space as possible. As Rebel i try the opposite to hinder the enemy.

Tactically, as the imperial i try to present the academy ties as target while keeping Howlrunner on range 3 in the initial engagementbut in buff range. Then i focus the most dangerous target, or Biggs if i have to. In most cases I plain win the initial clash since i have more ships, more attack vs. Defense dice than Rebels can have. In most cases the weight of my fire kills one target initially. While the rebel player can kill 1 or if very lucky 2 targets. So i keep the odds in my favor in any case. Then when the manoeuvers begin, i try to obstruct high skill pilots eith my academies, preventing actions and killing targets of opportunity while playing defensively with evade most if the time, except there is no way he can shoot me. Then i might barrel roll for positioning or just focus for damage. I K-turn only if i really have to of course.there is really no secret about it. Guess what your enemy will do just as he does. Most of the time, attrition and your superior numbers will win the game for you. Also it is very not hard to make him crash into your academy ties since they have skill one, which is one of the tricks the swarm has to offer.

As a Rebel i position in acvordance to my list of course. Keep Garvenor Buggs close to the target you need buffed/protected. I tend to keep X-Wings together since your only chance really is to ficus fire and kill a lot initially to even the odds. I sometimes make 2 groups too. With Y-Wings i tend to flank and shoot important targets with the ion cannon unless i can of course get a good shot with my primary weapon or finish off an enemy. What can i say i still think the odds are against you. As soon as we get real close i try to use the fact i can do straight or easy left/right while ties cant. You can make them overshoot and i don't like rushing towards the enemy in order to use my better firepower to inflict damage. I also try to avoid K-Turns since a stressed ship is a good target… Oh yeah of course i try to fight in the asteroid field to make him crash or hinder himself. But this hives him opportunities to provoke crashs too since you are predictible when avoiding asteroids. Y-wings can also circle asteroids to avoid getting shot, while playing catch and using the ion cannon. What can i say it is never enough to win against an equally skilled player. It is difficult to damage evading ties and they dish out damage you can hardly avoid… So you lose.

Well Vorpal, you talk about it being a death sentence to a swarm pulling them through the asteroids. But a clever player can avoid fighting you there or also just position his asteroids smartly. I also don't lnow how you can avoid being shot out of space even in an asteroid field. Superior firepower and evading stays. And you can even get Howlrunner there, i have done it. Could you give more detail how this can beba death sentence perhaps?

ForceM said:

Not to speak for Vorpal, but, it's because it usually is. You hide behind the asteroid field doing like 1 straights every turn until he either flies through it and at the very least breaks formation, or he takes the long way around trying to avoid where again, he at least breaks formation. You take advantage of the broken formation by either attacking TIEs that no longer benefit from Howlrunner, or if Howlrunner is up front, you focus fire the hell out of her and then pick everyone else off now that they're suddenly less effective. 

Just curious, how long have you been playing X-Wing? 

I have played it since start december. That is when i could get my hands on enough ships to start up.

So what you do is avoid the firepower of all combined Ties and Howlrunner buff by hindering manoeuvers

I mean yes this all sounds well and good but the imperial player can place 3 asteroids himself (when i play ims i usually place them along one board edge, sometimes even my own board edge because that way i can clear the field in one turn, then i am free to manoeuver). So all you have is 3 asteroids. I suppose you place them somewhere midfield to get a maximum out of them. When i played rebel i tried to make Biggs hang back somewhat behind an asteroid to get an extra defense die. But generally, those asteroids did not block lines or shots enough to save me in the end. I am also aware that Ties cant go as slow as rebel ships, but most of the time, a skilled imperial can get through the field with relative ease without completely breaking formation. It is not a must to have very ship in howlrunners range every turn to win. So this divide and conquer works to some extent but for us it does not make up for the dice advantage imperials have.

Also, what action do you usually take for Ties? Evade i suppose dince to us it has proven the superior skill and outlasting the rebels is a very powerful tactic.

ForceM said:

On the next turn, your opponent has cleared the asteroid field, but you get to shoot before the vast majority of his or her ships, so by the time the swarm gets its first "real" shots in, it's down two or three ships and no longer poses a credible threat to 4 Rebel ships.

It doesn't always work--sometimes the asteroid placement is too sparse, sometimes the dice hate you, sometimes you make a maneuvering mistake and screw up your own timing--but as I said upthread, it works often enough that when combined with the complexity and expense of running a swarm, it's been a while since I saw someone try it.

***

And as far as actions, Evade is actually not a great choice unless you're dodging missiles/torpedoes. I've written extensively about it here, but the short version is that if you expect to take multiple attacks Focus is just as good on defense and (of course) better on offense.

The poor Y-Wing got double-dipped.  In what must be an effort to match "canon*" it was given a lousy 1 Agility AND a maneuver dial strictly inferior to the X-Wing**.  I think everyone recognizes that the 1 Agility radically reduces the benefit (i.e., true squad point value) of all that bonus hull and shield.  Damage reduction and miss chance act as multipliers on the effectiveness of hit points.  I've found time and again that a 5 HP, 2 AGI X-Wing takes no less shooting to kill than a 8 HP, 1 AGI Y-Wing.

Personally I think the Y-Wing would be an A-OK ship if it were just errata'd to cost fewer squad points across all its pilots.  Let's say 2 fewer.  I have my gripes about the "canon," obviously, but really none of it matters in the end.  Heck, fun game design needs the Y-Wing to be its own beast too.  Nothing need ever be useless or overpowered in a points-based game, because you can always just alter the point cost as required.

I'd like to improve its Agility but somehow I think fans would have an easier time swallowing errata to a little black corner number than a big green central number.  Plus an Agility boost could actually make the Y-Wing undercosted unless the squad point cost were increased anyway!  Errata to the maneuver dial might make me happy but woof that would be a pain in the rear to implement.

Gentlemen posters here are calling it a support ship and that's both correct and peripheral to the true issue with it.  If a Y-Wing with Ion Turret is a useful member of the Rebel team and absolutely worth its point cost, great.  A naked Y-Wing remains a stinking heap of trash.  So, my solution is to simultaneously decrease the cost of all Y-Wings and increase the cost of Ion Turret to match.  That way an "Ion-Wing" costs the same, fair number of points it does today.  The naked Y-Wing becomes a viable option - a crappy but appropriately cheap extra body on the field.  The game is enriched by the addition of more viable options.

*a very silly idea.  I understand the point of making a Star Wars-branded game feel "Star Warsy," but adherence to "canon"/theme over a game's play needs is why people call a lot of FFG's product "Ameritrash."  Further, what's "canon" anyway?  I don't recognize the "authority" of jack squat except for the six three movies - that is, "Star Wars" is the movies to me.  And nothing in the movies really says to me that Y-Wings are slow-moving space trucks.  Sure, they did some fine fiery exploding in the first trench run, but the X-Wings did an awful lot of blowing up too.  Fans have different interpretations of what "Star Warsy"-ness really is.  Jay Little stated this at GenCon last year.  It's why they're making three different SW RPGs, each with its own thematic focus.  So, claiming "canon" as a controlling reason for anything in a game, as opposed to a contributing factor, is foolish.

**and no pilot with a dang elite talent icon, which is a pet issue I'm going to harp on probably forever.

Okay, now that is very different, so you suggest to be totally defensive and dependant on asteroid placement i do believe it might work. Of course it also depemds very much on your enemys skill since it is a divide and conquer strategy. You need to be out of  range of at least half of the enemy to have an advantage. Your fire needs to be concentrated while you deny it to your enemy. It can work in don't doubt that but you need a lot of skill (i would say more than to play a swarm efficiently) and still luck.

But hey i dont want a method to beat it 100% i just want balance. If that is achieved i will be happy.

I have read the evade thing too. I am not convinced, but i know focus is very flexible. It requires a lot of discipline to constantly evade or to keep focus for defense. In my experience evade is a big advantage imperials have even if they focus one Tie. Think of it as a free shield every turn. Try to play like that a few games, especially in a swarm. It makes the game slower but you might see you can outlast rebel formations.

Thank you anyway for your answer. It is in any case helpful and well written.

Man, I had a long reply written out earlier, but either the board or my  connection became unresponsive and I couldn't recover it. 

Anyway, Vorpal hit a lot of what I was going to say about the Swarm and asteroids anyway, but one thing- when you talk about asteroids on the board edge, you don't literally mean that, right? You know the rules for placing asteroids, right? Because in the context of this thread and what we've been discussing, it makes something of a difference. Secondly, and I apologize if this comes aross as condescending or whatever- it's not my intent, but you know how Actions and tokens work, right? I'm probably reading way too far into your posts, but the way you posed your Actions on TIEs question kinda made me wonder if you and your friends aren't using a single token throughout the duration of a round rather than discarding it after use. 

As for your Actions on TIEs question, I don't know- it's purely contextual. If I feel like I have enough guns focused on a target to get through the shields, I'll Focus with everyone present. If I don't, I usually just hedge my bets and Evade although in light of Vorpal Sword's post, it would appear I need to rethink that strategy. 

Making a TIE Swarm that uses Howlrunner spread out is one of the best ways to neuter/ nullify it. I've meant to write a post about this on my blog, but one of the best strategies for making this happen has been to split a 4-ship list into two 2-ship groups, with one ship more forward than the other, set them pointing towards the center of the play area at about 30 degree angles on deployment. If you've dropped a few asteroids so that not only does the Imperial player have to choose between which group of ships they're going to go after, they also have to worry about splitting up their force even a second time, that's usually enough to make things get interesting for them- collisions, Pilot Rank gaffes, etc. 

Many times when I do that 2 group deal, I'll have Luke with Swarm Tactics in front of a Rookie within Range 1 to benefit on one side of the table, and a couple of Red Squadron X-Wings on the other with various upgrades and droids to taste. I like this setup because if he comes after Luke, he's got to contend with two PR8 X-Wings with two PR4 Red Squadron X-Wings coming in from at least the flank, and quite possibly the rear depending on how quickly he advances. On the off chance he goes after the Red Squadron X-Wings first, well, it's just vice versa. I really prefer the Red Squadron X-Wings to Rookies as the folks around here use Academy and Obsidians in their TIE swarms quite a bit. 

If playing a setup like this still doesn't work, try giving Luke R2-F2 and have him activate the droid's ability as an Action until the rest of the squadron have cleaned out a few TIEs. He works well as a kite in this manner too. Bonus points if you can fit in Garven Dreis to give him a Focus too, but far from necessary in my experience. I'd sooner spend the points on R2-D2 for the trailing Rookie, but again, that's probably more just my playstyle than actual tactical advice. 

If you dig using Wedge more than Luke, I'd suggest giving R2-F2 a try on him sometime. Wedge's ability conveys an attack bonus anyway, so it shouldn't completely neuter him if he uses his Action for something besides Target Locking or Focusing. I think R2-F2 works best on Luke for obvious reasons, but he really has the potential to help out anybody who isn't just completely screwed by giving up an Action. 

I almost always include 1 Y wing in a list, and thats just because Dutch is so awesome he is hard to pass up on.  I find I tend to use between 1 and 3 Ys per list, partially because I'm a fan of them, and partially because I find them to be really, really good with the Ion turret against most opponents.  Keep in mind that outside of range 1, it takes 4 Ties to kill 1 Y wing, and thats if they roll nothing but hits and you don't roll a single evade.  At range 3 with asteroids in the way, its very hard for Ties to land hits on a Y-Wing.  

Recently, when I've been setting up my asteroids, I aim for a center table deployment.  Sometimes, my opponent will cooperate, and place their asteroids in the center, but if they are playing a swarm, i tend to find that the asteroids end well away from the center of the table.  My first asteroid goes center of the table about a 5 movement and a 4 movement away from my opponent's deployment zone.  My second and 3rd asteroids are placed 1 away from the first closer to my side of the table, making a triangle from my first asteroid.  This gives mea  pretty safe area to advance behind the asteroids.  If my opponent picks a side, I deploy to keep the asteroids between us.  If he deploys dead center, I deploy straight across from him.  The goal is to advance toward the asteroids enough that the first pass puts them between your opponent and you. You're flying Y-Wings (with R2D2 and R5-D8 in my typical lists) so you can afford to take an asteroid hit most of the time after the first pass with enemy ships.  Hopefully the asteroid field will break up enemy formations, and sometimes you'll get lucky with the ion shots (I've had Horton Ionize a tie, which had to float into an astroid and ended up taking a critical hit).

Once the first pass is over, I survey the field.  Its not uncommon for me to pull a 3 or 4 maneuver to continue to open the range between myself and my opponent or just fly straight with my R2D2 Y-Wing to recover a shield.  Either way, i want to not be too predictable - i can shoot 360 and my opponent cant, so as long as I don't stick somewhere that is going to get me shot by multiple ships at range 1 I'm good.  What tends to happen as the game progresses is you start pulling apart formations by ionizing ships and can scatter opposing ships even more when you make a 3 bank when he was expecting you to take a 1 the other direction.  As you ionize enemy ships or isolate them getting them to chase you, you're killing them with your cleanup ship(s).

The cleanup ships are the ships you use mid to late game to hunt down ionized ships -  a Rookie X-wing is probably the best choice, but a gold squadron works if you can line up a range 1 shot with the primaries.  I've also had decent luck using Horton as the cleanup ship because he doesn't need much support - if he is shooting at range 2, you can either focus and have a pretty good chance at 2 hits or fire a torp and finish the ship. I try to keep the cleanup ship out of the fight early in the game by deploying at the very back of my deployment zone and moving slowly.  Depending how the first wave progresses I can burst past the asteroids with a high speed move if I am worried about the cleanup ship getting ganged up on, or I can pick on an ionized ship that is coasting from the first wave.

Even if you don't shoot at an ionzied ship with directional fire, its out of the game for at least 2 turns - one from the ion coast, and then another while it turns around to get back into the combat.  If they don't K turn, it can be a third turn before they are shooting at something again.