It’s Simple, We Kill the Batman: My Thoughts and Feelings on Wave 11
I’m conflicted.
It’s official, wave 11 has confused me. When the wave dropped I was super excited. There were all these cool ships that I could play with, especially Nym in his Havoc (serious nostalgia trip back to the Jedi Starfighter game on PS2).
This was going to be it! The wave where I finally bring back Jake Farrel and do well with him again. Chuck in Jess Pava for some reliability (and an actual X-Wing) and we’re good to go.
The best thing about it is that these ships have been everything I want in the game. I have an arc dodger with proton rockets, a jousty X-Wing and they brought an ex smuggler along for the ride.
So why am I not happy?
After my knee jerk child like excitement I popped my head up and took a look on the different X-Wing groups and podcast that I frequent. The general feeling on wave 11 seems to be a mix between ecstatic joy and the coming of the apocalypse!
People were excited by the new shiny but were also nervous about the strong combinations of ships that are starting to rear their heads in the new meta-game.
After playing some games against Denym, Biggs Lowrhick Miranda and quad TLT aggressors it felt like the shine was coming off the outer coating and revealing something nasty within.
These lists were tough old beasties and I could fast see a scenario developing where I would see these on every other table at a tournament.
A Dragon’s Cry
Another harbinger of woe riding the crest of this new wave has been Dee Yun of the Mynock Squadron Podcast (who you should totally check out).
If you believe the internet opinion, the state of the game has gotten to a bad place and this has taken it’s toll on Dee. I hope he continues to play X-Wing in the future and manages to get over his bump in the road. He does however make some very good points about the game, as do the Krayts (yes I did just agree with them…)
Sometimes it feels like you aren’t really playing X-Wing. Your opponent is playing their own game in which you have no input to whether or not your ships live or die.
So what’s the problem?
The other worry I have had about wave 11 is the large encroaching tournament that I want to do well in. If I’m going to be making an attack run on the UK Nationals then I will need to be fully prepared for all the nastiness people could throw at me.
With that in mind, I went back to my drawing board of lists and tried to figure out a golden bullet for the emerging wave. What is good against everything? What would allow me to climb to victory?
I went digging through List Juggler and the new Meta Analyser to check out all the tournaments around the world, as well as looking at recent blogs by Phil GC and others, all to see what was floating to the top of the pile.
After numerous conversations with Ed Holmes and Ian Connell about how to kill DeNym and doing my best impression of Samwell Tarly. I decided that the best thing to do was to bite the competitive bullet and fly it myself.
I logged onto vassal, the following phrases bouncing around my brain.
‘It’s the best thing in the game right now, I won’t have to try that hard to learn it. It’s the one thing that keeps on beating me so I might as well learn how it flies.’
Turns out I was wrong…
I got myself set up and took a series of batterings that would be the envy of any self respecting chippie. It would seem people are quite good at killing the most popular ship in the meta-game right now!
If you can’t beat them… Don’t even think of joining them!
So here I come to my 2 AM epiphany and the overarching point of this article. I started this journey into wave 11 super excited about using new ships and old ships combined.
Somewhere along the way I got so sidelined by my quest to win all the things that I had lost the sense of enjoyment I had at the start of the wave. In fact, the one or two games that I did win when using DenNym just made me feel a little dirty. I could see myself sucking the fun out of the games for my opponent as I explained exactly why Dengar likes to crash into things and shoot your one remaining ship twice.
And so I return to the beginning...
I’m putting Jake Farrell back on the table. He’s ready and willing to wreck face and is not scared one bit about all the PS 10/11 aces coming to launch cruise missiles at him. (Or at least that’s what he says …)
I’m looking forward to every game. I’m looking to beating Dengar and Nym back with the hope of rebellion. I’m going to practise with my list and take it all the way to the top table of the UK National championships.
So I’m sorry.
Be better than me. Fly what you want to fly and don’t just jump on the bandwagon because someone else beat you with it. Practice and get excited by what you want to fly, because it’s awesome!
As some small green guy said:
Fly casual all
Oli
