X-Wing: Rise of the Two Ship Meta
As the change in the scoring system for X-Wing settled down after the introduction of Margin of Victory lets look at the biggest thing to come in to this new meta. The Two Ship List…
Hi all,
Kris here again with some more X-Wing Chatter for you all.
As most will know FFG changed the Tournament Scoring system to have Margin of Victory as the first tie breaker from the old Strength of Schedule that they used to use. Over all I am all for this change as it does put your overall placing more in your own hands as there were cases where a poor quality first game match up can ruin your chances of high placements with no fault to your piloting. Having a random draw where your opponent from round one went 0-4 really hurt your chances meaning that the last couple of places for the cut were normally decided by the person who’s early round opponents did better.
MoV however places it firmly back in to your own hands, if you dont give up a lot of points and/or kill lots of your opponent than you get more of a say in how you place, it become not just about winning games but how you win them.
Rise of the Two-Ship Meta
It is with this in mind that the Two Ship Meta started to emerge.
Now I have to admit that I had messed around a little with the Two Ship list with my ironically named Defender Swarm which you can read about my adventures with here but it is with Wave 5 that it really comes in to its own.
The counter intuitive part of this new competitive meta is that with the realistic prospect of Timed Rounds the durability of some of the large ships coupled with the control or damage output of a single second ship really helps to control not necessarily how many points you can take but how many points you give up.
The Early Lists
My first competitive encounter with this type of list was in the Canadian Nationals last year where I faced off against a couple of 2 ship Firespray/Phantom lists. As I said at the time on Nova Squadron Radio this, in my opinion is a weak variation of the 2 ship list as I am comfortable facing off against Phantoms and in both games I played I for the asteroid placement I was looking for and so negated the impact of the Phantom and my list was geared towards outputting a large burst of damage on to a single target. So while I see how the Firespray/Phantom list should work it has quite a few bad match ups.
At the same event though the Twin Falcon list of Jeff Dunford took first place and showed how you could play two durable ships to get through the swiss rounds, the fall off in the untamed rounds and a lack of damage out put makes the later untamed matches more difficult but when you can look at a list, reliably say I am willing to sacrifice x amount of points by letting the ship die as I know I can kill y amount of my opponents list. These type of trades require a very controlled play style but it then becomes very hard to get around in a timed game.
Enter the Decimator
The evolution of this type of play came in with Wave 5 allowing the Imperials access to their own monster in the VT-49 which has good match ups against the other large ships and as they already have access to some good ships to take on swarms like Echo, Whisper or even Fel you have ships than can handle less favourable match ups if you can fly your support ship with skill and anyone who has played X-Wing for a time know how powerful an End Game Fel or Phantom can be.
The Rebels however seemed to be a step behind now with the HLC Outrider seeming to be the way to go, the problem for me came in the lack of that End Game support ship meaning that if Dash could not get the job done it was a hard match up to win.
This is where the E-Wing has found its home, as a Manoeuvrable, 3 attack ship that can take advantage of lots of options it is a perfect fit especially when you look at the likes of Corran Horn who can dart in and out of the fight without a loss of efficiency on his damage output.
The challenge though is the balance between the two ships and the points spread of them both, ideally you want to have a 50/50 split on all aspects so that there is no easy choice for your opponent on who to target first, the closer you can bring the two ships in power level the more control you can have over who your opponent shoots at as you can bait more effectively if the only deciding factor is the relative position of the pieces on the table.
The Two Ship Future
Scum are going to have lots of fun with this as when the IG-88’s hit the table with 2 identical ships we should see skilled players gracing their way to 12-0 wins and than the cuts being decided purely on player ability. This may seem like a very dull way to play a game but as an analogy to sports look at some of the different styles of play in Soccer (I have lived in Canada for too long I could call it Association Football I suppose…) the Italian leagues have always been both praised and criticized for their defensive focus while leaves like the EPL or La Liga are much more exciting to watch. It is not wrong to play that way and it takes just as much skill and for me shows the balance of the game that this type of play style is just as acceptable as the 4BZ raw Red Dice approach.
It may be a controversial view but the type of Meta that we are seeing evolve at the moment excites me as none of the old net lists have suddenly become bad and are all still capable of taking events but the competitive nature to the top level play for X-Wing is maturing in a way that parallels e-sports and even real sports where it is not just the components that win the game but the style of play couple with the execution.
Now I know it was a wall of Text this time but I wanted to try a serious editorial for a change so if you would like to share your thought on this topic I would be happy to keep it going in the comments as there are lots of lists and styles of play that can evolve from the state of the game at the moment.
Kris
