X-Wing: Worlds 2018 Meta-Analysis – Scum & Final Meta Stats
With all the excitement about buzz about X-Wing 2.0–and I’m feeling it as much as anyone—it’s easy to forget that we just went through Worlds.
The announcement of the new edition completely swamped the year’s biggest competition. (Hey, FFG, maybe do things in the other order next time?) That news makes any 1.0 discussion seem positively passé.
1.0’s Final Meta
Nevertheless, I see some value in going through with my annual Worlds meta-analysis. It’s not necessarily because we expect to see these things again. In fact, a number of the key strategies we’ll see won’t work at all in a few months. No, the point here is put a stake in the ground, to give us a marker of where the game was in the last days of 1.0. We can see this year’s Worlds as the ultimate evolution of 1.0, the embodiment of its most extreme tendencies. Perhaps in examining it we can see what made 2.0 necessary. Indeed, by doing so we can come back in a year and check 2.0’s success in accomplishing its goals. How can we appreciate where 2.0 takes us if we don’t know where we’ve been?
Let’s put a bow on 1.0 by diving deep on its last hurrah.
As usual, all cards referenced can be found on Yet Another Squad Builder–and, boy, the days are numbered where I–ll be using that disclaimer! Soon it’ll just be snarky comments like, “And if you can’t remember what that card does, look on yer app, ya lazy git!”
Scum & Villainy
Scum had a rough time of it at Worlds, with only one Scum pilot making the top cut and only six meeting our six-win threshold. Quite a turnaround from last year when they were fully half the field! Of course, even at the time their go-to ship was the Jumpmaster, and you might have heard what happened to that.
Truth be told, the Jumpmaster’s fall from grace ended up being more severe than I’d expected-but whether that’s an artifact of people *ahem* jumping ship, of the nerf being that severe, or the Rebel meta being that oppressive is an open question. It should be pointed out that Jumpmasters are still hanging around in some Scum lists and doing work. The same could not be said for Fenn Rau.
The terror of last year’s Worlds was nowhere to be found. First, his action economy took a hit with the Mind Link nerf. Then the PS race escalated, and Fenn—since he relies on on his EPT slot for actions to function—found himself behind the curve. Then the Sheathipede introduced two things Fenn couldn’t deal with: stress, and high-PS coordinate actions. Fenn Rau was woefully ill-equipped to deal with this.
Without the Jumpmaster or Fenn Rau carrying Scum, the faction-with one notable exception-has fallen on hard times. (Asajj-Latts has taken more of a lead role in the faction, but it’s not like anyone knew that was coming.) There was one Scum list, however, that exceeded all expectations, and did so because it was uniquely equipped to bust the Rebel bunkers:
- IG-88B (Aggressor) + Ion Bombs + IG-2000 + Tractor Beam + Ion Cannon + Push the Limit + Advanced Sensors + Rigged Cargo Chute + Autothrusters
- IG-88C (Aggressor) + IG-2000 + Tractor Beam + Ion Cannon + Push the Limit + Advanced Sensors + Rigged Cargo Chute + Autothrusters
All hail our robot overlords!
Ion is a delightful answer to the stress bunker problem. That list features a two-agi ship that habitually stresses itself and two one-agi ships; it’s highly vulnerable to ion cannons and tractor beams. A control effect that’s successful gives the formation player an agonizing choice: freeze the formation (everyone does a one-ahead to stick together, forfeiting position) or break it (destroying the synergies that make it effective). There’s not a good answer here.
Conditions were right for ion control to make a splash; what they needed was the right platform. Brobots provide it. The fact that Stress Bunker can mitigate damage like nobody’s business doesn’t help when the Brobots only need to sneak one hit through to have their effect.
A control list like this is at risk of losing damage races, especially to turreted ships. It has a trick to fight that, too: the tractor beam. The Brobots can throw ships on to rocks to steal their shots away, or fling them at table edges to fly them off the board. You don’t have to chew through nine HP and a Reinforce token if Low flees the battle!
None of which is to say that the list is anything like easy to fly. There’s a reason only one player managed to pull it off. But, by the same token, it’s no fluke that said player was able to do it. His list has answers to all manner of problems posed by the current meta, and he flew that list with rare grace. All the congratulations are in order.
The list is fascinating for another reason: it’s all old stuff. It’s got one Rigged Cargo Chute (wave 9), two Tractor Beams (wave 8), and one Ion Bomb (wave 7). Everything else is Wave 6 or earlier. In a Worlds dominated by the shiny things of the past 14 months, it’s fascinating to see a winner that could have competed at Worlds 2016.
Ah, but could it have competed at Worlds 2016? Or, to put it another way: would it have been competitive at Worlds 2016? Brobots as an archetype would have been (and was); but this style of Control Brobots? Against a field of Dengaroos and pre-nerf Palp Aces? Heck, would it have even been competitive last year in the face of Parattani and alpha strikes and Dancing Fenn Rau and Biggles? It would have had a much harder time, to be sure.
What that means should be encouraging to all: a list that would have been bad became good; this fact was recognized by a canny player who leveraged that fact to great advantage. Even in a world where power creep is real (Harpoon Missiles simply are better than Concussion Missiles, etc.), combinations matter, and problems are solvable.
Of course I’d still be hollering for nerfs if 2.0 weren’t on the horizon.
Lightning Round
· The most-played waves (by percentage of list) were, by far, 12, 11, and 7; then, lagging well behind, 8 and 9; then, down in the abyss, 4, 6, 5, 3, 2, 10, and 1.
· Even that doesn’t do justice to the disparity. Out of the 118 ships in our sample, only 3 were from waves 1 or 2; only 21 (or 18%) were from waves 1-6, i.e. the first half of the game’s existence. Just more ammo for the assertion that Wave 7 is where things came unglued.
· To put it a different way: 22 of the game’s ships had no representation at all. You expect some degree of absence from less-reliable, jankier things (Quadjumpers…) but this degree of exclusivity is unprecedented.
· Miranda Doni never left home without a Twin Laser Turret, Bomblet Generator, and someone in the crew slot (either C-3PO or Intel Agent). The majority of builds also gave her Harpoons. The game is short on rock-paper-scissors type interactions when ships can be All the Things.
· Amazingly, despite the number of Bomblet Generators, there were only two Sabines in the mix, a sharp drop from previous years. Apparently Bomblet Generator is so good it doesn’t even need boosting!
· Want to know where people see power in this game? There were more crew slots than ships in this sample. Exactly *one* crew slot went unfilled across all ships and factions, on a Scum HWK.
We already know a lot of what we’re seeing here gets Force-choked in 2.0. There’s an across-the-board squashing of shield regen strategies. Every shield regen ability or card we’ve seen thus far has taken a severe drubbing to its functionality. When 2/3s of Rebel lists have some kind of regen component (mostly the 16 (!) Mirandas), it’s hard to take issue with that decision.
We also know that the Emperor is getting nerfed significantly in 2.0. This should surprise no one! Palpatine, even after the nerf that had people prematurely calling him “dead”, is still a powerhouse; he’s significantly responsible for the power creep we’ve seen in the years since his release. Ships and lists since wave 8 have had to, as a design requirement, have some method of dealing with a hyper-maneuverable ship with Autothrusters, focus, evade, and a guaranteed evade, with the latter being action-independent and global. Palp is everything 2.0 is trying to scale down, manifested in a single card.
Bomblet Generator is getting nerfed; Inqi is getting gently nerfed; Twin Laser Turret is nowhere to be seen; I wouldn’t count on R3-A2 or Lowhhrick coming through in anything like their present forms. Even ships that had spottier presences at the top tables, like Jess Pava and Corran, are taking hits to abilities that were too (for lack of a better word) *easy* to maximize. Upgrade cards, as a class, are being aggressively deemphasized.
~I don’t know what Worlds 2019 will look like. All I know is that it’ll look nothing like this.
