Regional Preparation Thoughts & What to do about Nymranda (and future similar problems)

So its a given that for a variety of reasons I don’t get to play as many games as I would like, and my skills in x-wing are certainly not top level. I have been playing the game for a long time and enjoy the game immensely. Not just winning, but watching opponents out manoeuvre me, the great community we have in the UK, and seeing new players joining the ranks as well.

I don’t enjoy it when my dice desert me, or if there is a ‘Negative Play Experience’ doing the rounds. TLT’s were that for a while, Attani mindlink was a frustrating experience to be up against in certain combo’s.

Right now, in the UK, there has been, at the first UK regional, a perceived problem with Nymranda, the Captain Nym and Miranda Combo, with its ability to sling bombs forward, launch Harpoon missiles, and even to some extent turtle up and regen if things don’t go so well.

I say perceived as we have only had the one UK regional so far, and others across the globe don’t appear to have ‘suffered’ as badly. This may be a factor of differing local ‘metas’, which I find unlikely as most tournaments are either streamed online, or exceptionally well reported and so lists travel the globe quickly.

So people in the UK are busy building Nymranda counter lists. Lists that block before they move, high PS alpha strike lists, stress inducing lists. All have merit, and all have weaknesses.

And this is the issue at the heart of the problem. X-wing is an evolving game of Rock-Paper-Scissors-(Lizard-Spock). As new ships drop with their new upgrades people find new and exciting combo’s that break the game in new and exciting ways.

The new ships and their  upgrades are playtested. My feeling is, however, that the emphasis on playtesting is the ships and their interaction with existing cards. The thing that seems to slip the net is the interaction between new upgrade cards and existing ships and upgrades. Now maybe thats how the playtesting is done. The testers will be excited to see how the new stuff works against existing lists and ships. The testing scenarios are likely to be one player has the new ship(s) and the other uses an existing list. I don’t know how much ‘all wave’ testing is done, or if a testing group is only given access to a single ship rather than the entire wave, but it does appear that there is not the emphasis on testing each component in existing lists. Time may well be a factor. (Working in IT I am well aware that the testing phase of a project is the one that gets cut first.)

I, however, suspect there is a lack of emphasis on that. When the TLT was spoiled my first thought was how great it would be with the BTL Title on the Y-wing giving you 3 front arc attacks EVERY ROUND (you had someone in arc)! 

It was brutal against low agility ships, the Ghost fell off the board under its death by a thousand papercuts goodness. Even ships with more green dice could struggle under the weight of the number of attacks. Arc Dodging and Auto-Thrusters were the way forward, and are very much the nemesis of the low agility Y-wings.

The TLT equipped Y-wing became a staple with the Stress Bot, double stressing caused Aces all kinds of problems.

The Harpoon missile is another example were the card is ok (possibly undercosted, or should spend the TL to fire) , but with Alpha striking ships it is extremely problematic.

So anyhow, back to regionals !

I suspect the next regional will have less Nymranda than were present in Cardiff. Its not an autowin list – nothing is, but in the hands of a capable pilot its odds are better than average.

But with the counter lists out there, I think we will see less Nymranda in the cut, and it will be the luck of the draw, quite literally, that defines who meets what, and whether Player A with their Nymranda meet a strong counter list with Player B, or if Player B will end up against another Nymranda counter list that Player C is flying.

As usual we will see the usual suspects doing well. These players will be the people who can put the hours of playing in, against a variety of opponents and lists. Practice does make perfect. X-wing is a dice game, there is luck involved, but there is a huge amount of mitigation that can be done by positioning your ships better than your opponent, by having an optimal build that synergises all of your options, and knowing what your opponents ships are capable of, both in terms of whats on their dial, and how their upgrades and abilities interact.

In the meantime I will attempt to get more than one game with a list I am looking at before my first regional in early Feb! (and no, I don’t know every dial, nor do I know every upgrade, so I will be asking questions should we meet across a table 🙂 )

TTFN

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If you’re looking for tournaments near you head over to the 186th Tournament Calendar.