What’s the Meta with You?!
I was listening to the Mynock Squadron Podcast (You can find Episode 65 here) and I heard Dee ask Kevin Leintz ‘So What’s the Meta?’ Now it might be my mockney intonation, or the profound amount of time I spend mimicing New York Hoodlum accents, but Dee’s tone, SoCal beauty that he is, triggered the pun from deep down within me
What’s the Meta with you, ah?!
So this got me thinking. The European Championship is only a month away, Store Champs start fairly soon (gots to get me a Range Ruler yo!) — Where do I go from here?
I’ve spent a lot of time over the last year or so contemplating the meta and I know pretty much my play style and the ships I like. I would consider myself smarter than your average bear in this field. In short, meta-wise, I do my homework.
I know what I hate facing (Hi, Dash!) and I know what I love (right now, it’s trying to make Ketsu’s ability work more consistently) and I know what I miss playing (fragile, fragile, A-Wings).
But what about you?
I decided upon an experiment to explore what the meta means to other people. I started with three simple questions:
Phase one I posted the above in a local Facebook group.
I had a fairly clear cut idea of what I might find. I’d made a very brief list of what I expected to see in my results (more of this later). The actual findings I was given from this first stage were surprising, as they really didn’t match my predicitions.
Phase two was to open the survey out to the Star Wars X-Wing Miniatures Game UK/IRL…and a Little Bit Wider group.
At first, what I thought I might do is dedicate my time to making an outstanding infographic that would look the shiz. But then I realised that though I’m fairly tech savvy, my time would be better spent writing. So here’s the fancy infogrpahic for you.
I make no apologies for its resemblance to a flux capacitor. None.
My opus is best read in the chronological order that it was constructed. The black ink was me recording results from the first survey, the pink was my intial observations of my findings, the green ink is the addition of answers from the second survey.
Let’s start in the top left — ships and pilots you love to hate. I put this in here because of the amount of ‘bogey man’ lists that I’ve come across and the bashing that they’re subject to. There are certain philosophies that are really intriguing and highlight the duality of an X-Wing player but my real problem with ‘bogey man’ lists isn’t the list, it’s the gamer. I’ve written before of my concerns about being ‘That guy’ and I’ve explored the idea of netlisting in many previous posts, but none so good as David Sutcliffe’s article ‘Netlist & Chill’.
I want to be clear before I go any further, my thoughts on this matter are:
list bashing isn’t cool.
I’m grateful to all who helped make this post happen and the overwhelming response I’ve had to this silly idea. I’m no stranger to the odd opponent rolling their eyes or heavy sighing if I reveal a list that involves the new ‘it’ pilot or ship. Thankfully, those experiences are few and far between, although I experienced a fair amount of it at Yavin. As I began colating these results, Seb Brady Regional Winner at Beanie Games of Stockton took to the Mynock Facebook Page to defend his list choice of quad scum TLT Y-Wings.
I get it, the ticking clock aspect of a consistent 1.5 damages per turn, even more so with each extra TLT card. It’s not something I enjoy either but I’m unsure it’s fair to call it a ‘win button’ or say it requires a lack of skill. I’ve been experimenting with twin Scum Hwks over the last few weeks, pairing Palob and Torkhill with Ketsu. Should I feel bad for this? Well maybe, but I could also just own it. I want to make a silly mechanic work and couple it with a solid ship. There. Done. Was that so hard?
I’m not responsible for your play, neither are you responsible for mine. It’s a fun game and we should try our best to enjoy each other’s company. But surely the experience should be reciprocal.
There must be a point deep down within us where we hesitate before placing a strong list on the table (it can’t just be me that does this). Does winning matter to me that much that I want it at the expense of my opponent’s good time? I fluctuate on this, but right now, my resolve on the matter is ‘I know I’m playing something broken, you could be too.’
Speaking of Y-Wings and TLT, I expected this to be amongst the first things to come up on this part of the survey. I was entirely flummoxed when I saw the lack of stress-hog in amongst the love to hate results. In fact, even after opening the survey out to wider group, it still only came up once, and TLT the same.
There was an overwhelming gap where the Imperials should be in the Love to Hate section too. Like nothing. There wern no Imps that people love to hate in my local group. At. All. Even when I posted the second survey, three responses came up with Defenders and one of Whisper. That was it.
Now take a look at the Scum section here. Go on, go up and look. Scroll up. I’ll wait for you to come back.
Now bear with me. Go back and look at the results for the Auto-include section and Scum. I can wait again. I don’t mind.
Did you see it?
There is a direct pattern. You know what, I’m going to go as far as call it a mirror in many respects. The scum ships that poeple love to hate and auto-include are pretty much identical.
It’s not quite the same, but there’s a definite link. What is it that comes up most often? The Jumpmaster.
Even after 3–4 fairly big nerfs, there’s still a fair amount of vitriol aimed at this ship and the combos it allows. It’s a Scum toolbox but one that most people will agree is at least two points undercosted. From:
I roll my eyes everytime I see them in a netlist.
to
[I use it] because it’s clearly too cheap.
I’m not sure what I hoped to prove with this but there is something a little Jekyll & Hyde that the same ship can come up so often across both love and hate.
Love? Hate? It’s all the same once we’ve been assimiliated.
The similarites between Love and Hate are apparent with the Rebels too, with the Arc-170, K-Wings (whether they be Miranda or bombers). I was really surprised to see a lack of Biggs on either list until fairly late in the survey, even then, he’s only mentioned once.
So what of the Imperial problem? They barely appear on the Hate list but there seems to be no real pattern for them on the auto-include list either. The most notable mention right now is Quickdraw, the rest is as varied as Soontir through to Duchess. Does this maybe show a lack of direction in Imperial players? Perhaps when you look at the results of Open Tournaments top 8:
- Yavin seven Scum lists and one Rebel
- Naboo four Scum and Four Rebel
- Tatooine four Rebel lists, three Scum and one Imperial (it was triple Defenders and it came second)
That’s just a selection of three international tournaments but it’s fairly telling.
How do my findings compare to other research? Going back to Stay on The Leader for a moment, David published some meta analysis of his own in February, shortly before the great nerf.
According to David’s data (nice alliteration, don’t mind if I do), the top 5 used ships at the height of the regionals season were:
- Tie Defender
- Jumpmaster 5000
- Protectorate Star Fighter
- K-Wing
- Shadowcaster
It doesn’t look as though much has changed. We all know that data can be skewed and sources must be questioned. I don’t claim to be a statistician (that’s a word, right?).
One final thing of note would be to compare my findings against the X-Wing Meta-Analyser [sic]. Just look at the home page — the three key questions at the time of writing this were:
Which List Archetypes do I have to Expect at a Tournament?
I want to fly Guri, how do I build a squad with her?
Perhaps the most relevant link from the analyser is Which Pilots Perfom Best Right Now?
Not an Imperial pilot in sight, and that was with data being reported twice whilst writing this.
Does this mean the Imperials need some love? Maybe. When I began playing, Imperial Aces were reigning supreme, right now Scum seem to be at the top with a hint of Rebel jank creeping in.
Where might we be in a year’s time? Who knows?
