Feb 8, 2017
In today's episode, we discuss the State of the Game and try to talk Dee down from his wariness of the current Hyper Turbo X-Wing Championship Edition meta-balance. At the time of recording, he wasn't even aware of Range 1 SEVEN dice attacks with Kylo Ren Swarm Leader. Is X-Wing Miniatures spiraling out of control, or is the dumb Dee-ragon succumbing to Chicken Little syndrome?
Fly Better!
Hi guys,
I've been listening to you guys since the beginning, and while I'm still listening to this particular 'cast (State of X-Wing Address), I wanted to mention something that might help crystallize some of what you are feeling particularly in relation to castling/fortressing and the effect that has on the game.
I'll take a page from D's book and start on a tangent, then work back around to the point. I work in accounting, payroll in particular, so I've learned a thing or two about compensation. The purpose of it is to motivate desirable behaviours in employees, but sometimes this falls apart in the execution. An example of this was an anecdote from a South American country (can't remember where exactly) where the national bus/transit company was having issues with the way their drivers were doing their jobs. To motivate what they thought would be good behaviours, they completely revamped their compensation structure such that they were paid based on how many passengers they picked up and that they were able to get through their routes in good time. It sounds good on the surface, but the behaviour it motivated was for drivers to ignore less populous routes in favour of those that generally had more fares, to speed through their routes and drive aggressively to the point of competing with other drivers to get to the more heavily used stops, and in the interests of reaching those stops, not stopping at stops that only had a few fares waiting. The result was that some stops were over-worked while others rarely had a bus come by as well as an exceptionally high rate of traffic accidents. Before long the compensation structure was adjusted again to address these behaviours, but the moral of the story is people will do what you pay them to do, not necessarily what you want them to do.
Coming back to X-Wing, there are a number of behaviours that I don't care for in the game now, which you addressed in this episode, and I also have very fond memories of the wave 3 meta. However, at the end of the day, I can't blame players for playing in any manner that is within the rules as written by FFG. It isn't their fault if castling is their best option in a particular match, it is (and I say this with the utmost respect for FFG and the work they are doing to keep this game growing - as you said in this podcast, I'm only bitter because of how much I love the game) entirely due to the behaviours FFG is encouraging through the combination of ships, upgrades and rules. As I see it, the only ways to address the problems (to revise the compensation structure, as it were) are those you had mentioned: official tournaments with special rulesets that only allow certain waves or ban certain cards, further updates to the rules/FAQ/errata, and eventually X-Wing 2.0.
Thanks for making a great podcast.
Adrian
Pls guys, if you talk about lists (like your own kylo ren shuttle build) I really want to get my hands on them, best READ them ^_^
So would you be so kind and post them? Or link them?
Great podcast! Can you guys link the video you referenced of Daniel winning? I couldn't find it with a google search.