"Where are those transmissions you intercepted?" - Meta-Wing.com

Community member Haslo has put together a fantastic web tool that builds on the excellent Listjuggler database that Sozin created a couple of years ago.  That web tool is called Meta-Wing, and basically I'm a massive fan.  I use it regularly and it's underpinned some of my recent articles, such as on the ARC-170 or when I explored how TIE/sfs are being used.

That link again: meta-wing.com

If Meta-Wing is not already bookmarked in your browser then go ahead and set it right now.  I'll wait until you're done.

Ready?  Ok, good.

Meta-Wing has been been gradually gaining traction and awareness over recent months and I wanted to take the time to properly introduce it to everyone, and clear up some common misconceptions.  What it is, what it does, how to use it, what it's good at doing and what it's bad at doing.

What is Meta-Wing?

To understand what Meta-Wing is really requires understanding what Listjuggler is, so let's take a step back and do that first.  Listjuggler is a website most commonly used by TOs to enter squadlists from their tournaments so that everyone can see what people played.  You can go into Listjuggler and browse through recent tournaments, checking out squads, pilots, loadouts, it's a really handy database.  

Meta-wing is a data aggregator that imports all of the squad lists that have been entered into Listjuggler and lets you sort, search or rank that Listjuggler data.  

Plain English... what does that mean?  

Well If you wanted to know something like "how are people using Roark Garnet?" and were using Listjuggler then you'd have to click into every tournament and look to see if Roark was being played, note all the squads and upgrades down, click on the next tournament and look for Roark again... basically it's going to take ages.  Meta-wing has already done all that for you, though, so that all the squads using Roark are aggregated together and you can look at them all side by side on one page.  

It's all just much more convenient to get into the data and find out what you want to know.

Limitations of Meta-Wing

There's three really important things to note about Listjuggler that should be remembered all through everything you're looking at in meta-wing, though:

• Not every tournament is entered in Listjuggler.  You're not seeing a complete picture from every X-Wing tournament being played, and indeed it might be weighted towards certain regions, stores or TOs that run tournaments more frequently, or are more rigorous in entering their results on Listjuggler.

• When a tournament is entered in Listjuggler it's rare for every squad to be entered.  Most commonly you'll get TOs entering only the Top 4 or Top 8 squads and this means you're not seeing every squad or ship that's being played, even from the tournaments that are entered.  Even at the World Championships, for instance, only the Day Two lists were entered and even then it wasn't quite all of them.

• Meta-wing doesn't add or amend the Listjuggler data at all.  If it's entered wrong in Listjuggler then it's wrong in Meta-wing. Errors are rare but they do happen, and when you start aggregating data up those errors become difficult to spot (thought fortunately they also become a small part of a larger sample size).

So if meta-wing is only getting an incomplete picture that represents just a sample of squads from a sample of tournaments then what's the point?  Is it even worthwhile at all?  Is it just 'noise'?

While Listjuggler and Meta-wing only represent a portion of all the X-Wing squads being played it's a pretty significant portion.  It's not a perfect picture but as a perfect picture is impossible to get hold of it's probably the best we're going to get.  It does mean that there's a couple of things to bear in mind whenever you use meta-wing for analysis of the metagame, though...

• Meta-Wing is relatively good at saying what is doing well.  Because many tournaments are only entering the Top-8 cut lists meta-wing's sample size is weighted towards the top end of the metagame.  If something keeps doing well at tournaments then meta-wing keeps seeing it and becomes more and more confident that it's actually good.

• Meta-Wing is relatively bad at evaluating the rest of the metagame.  Because Meta-Wing doesn't see many TIE Punishers or Kihraxz Fighters it's got a lot less data to go on.  There might be TIE Punishers just missing out on the cut to Top-8 all over the place while Kihraxz Fighters are only ever on the bottom tables... but Meta-Wing doesn't know that, it just knows that there's not many of either ship making Top-8.  This also means there could also be some really great rogue strategies that Meta-Wing either doesn't see at all, or assumes is a fluke result because it only sees it once or twice.

• Meta-Wing can't factor for player skill.  Did a list win because it's good, or because the player using it was good?  Meta-Wing doesn't know, it just knows that the list won.  As sample sizes increase we have to assume that this factor is evened out to some extent - if 100 players all won using Dengar then they can't all have been super-elite players, it's safe to assume Dengar is pretty good.

Meta-Wing Ranking and the 'Magic' formula

There's probably one aspect of Meta-wing that draws more attention, misunderstanding and arguments than anything else: the 'Magic Ranking' that it applies by default to most of the searches you do.  

Before we go any further, one of the most common misconceptions about the Meta-Wing ranking is that it's a measure purely of popularity.  Many people assume that a ship that appears 80 times is ranked above a ship played 60 times, above a ship played 30 times... etc.  

Meta-Wing is better than that, and it attempts to create a ranking system based on how successful the ships/pilots etc have been in the data it gets from Listjuggler.

• The ranking system isn't perfect.

• Despite its flaws the ranking system is pretty good - it gets a lot more right than it gets wrong.

The ranking system is based on the 'Average Percentile' score for the thing you're looking at, which Meta-Wing calculates by looking at all the times it sees that thing in the data and where it finished, eg. if I list got played once and won the tournament it played in it would get a 100% percentile score.  If it finished second it scores lower, lose a semi-final it score lower again, etc etc.  Meta-Wing grabs all the results it can find in the Listjuggler data and gives you the average performance for that ship/pilot etc.

But Meta-Wing isn't finished there, because it also understands that not all tournaments are the same.  Meta-Wing takes the 'Average Percentile' score as it's base and then adjusts it for two factors - how many samples there are in the data, and how large the tournaments are that the data is coming from.  

This isn't a perfect system but what it's trying to do is downweight results that are either random outliers, or are only doing well in small tournaments where it's assumed the quality of opposition is a bit lower.  These are both things I tend to agree with.

The result of this algorithm is output as a 'Magic' bar, and the ranking system is based on that.  It's not a ranking of popularity, it's a ranking of success that assumes repeated success in big tournaments is a better indicator of quality than infrequent success in small tournaments.  Meta-Wing's 'Magic' ranking system rewards things that are being repeatedly successful or successful in big events, and suppresses results from things where it's less certain they're representative of true strength.

Meta-Wing rankings reward success, not just turning up

Both these 'Magic' factors are optional and can be turned off, by the way, but they are applied by default.  I find it can actually be quite informative to turn them off and see what pops to the top of the rankings - you tend to find some unusual squads that have been doing well, just in small events or haven't been picked up yet by many players, so it can be a good source of off the wall ideas!

In the end, I find the best way to approach the Meta-Wing ranking system is that it's very helpful but to try not to get too caught up in precisely where everything falls in the rankings.  So you find that your favourite pilot is ranked #4 instead of #1... well before you begin an angry rant take a deep breath and remember where that ranking comes from:

The average results of that pilot.  Of some of the squad lists.  From some of the tournaments.  Played by some players.  Some of whom are good and some less good.  That a computer then either promoted or downvoted based on how confident it was that the samples were relevant.

Meta-Wing ranks things.  It's trying to be helpful.  Usually it IS helpful.  Don't let that get in the way of you using the tool to help you, because Meta-Wing does so SO much more than rank things.


Using Meta-Wing

The front page of Meta-Wing does a great job of introducing the sort of things the website is good for, but I'm going to lead you through a specific example of the sort of things I've used it for, and things that Meta-Wing has taught me along the way.

I blogged recently about my 'Nettling Imps' squad (Quickdraw, Backdraft, Vessery) that I've been flying to good success and which a few players picked up as the basis of their squad.  Well, that squad was entirely born from my use of Meta-Wing.

Let's step back in time a little and set the date filters on Meta-Wing to about what they would have been when I was starting to make this squad at the beginning of May, looking at data from Wave 10 (when Lightweight Frame came out).  

At this time I'd pretty much never played with my two TIE/SF and the perception was that the Imperial fleet had nothing left after the Palpatine and TIE/x7 nerfs had shattered it's best weapons.  However I'd just written a piece about the ARC-170 that I was pleased with (using Meta-Wing to find loads of examples of how they were being used) and wondered if I could repeat it from a standing start with the TIE/SF.

So I turned to Meta-Wing... and found to my surprise that the TIE/SF was actually the highest-ranked Imperial ship in this timeframe (after the Lambda Shuttle and TIE Defender, which had both recently been nerfed).  The TIE/SF was being played about as often as the ARC-170 that I liked, and was actually winning significantly more (34.4% percentile vs 30.4%).  So I clicked the TIE/SF link to drill further...

The dedicated TIE/SF page then had all the information right at my fingertips to explore what was making the TIE/SF tick for players, which was handy because I was coming into this one pretty much cold...

This told me a few things.  Firstly that like 95% of all TIE/SFs being played were one of the two named pilots.  Secondly it told me that Quickdraw was proving to be the stronger of the two, although there wasn't a whole lot in it.  The final take-away I had from here was that the Omega Specialist was hardly being played (in 11 squadrons vs 140 Quickdraws) but when it was getting used it had actually done better than Backdraft in terms of Average Percentile - I couldn't be sure that this was a true reflection (you can see how much Meta-Wing downweighted the 'Magic' score for the Omega Specialist for only having 11 results) but as the Zeta Specalist was SO much worse maybe the EPT slot was the valuable part of the ship, not Backdraft's pilot ability?

Meta-Wing also showed me all the various squads it could find that had used the TIE/SF...

I had two major take-aways from this.  Firstly although the TIE/SF was winning tournaments (indicated by the fact that the 'Cut' score was 1 - it finished first in the Top-8 cut) those tournaments were actually pretty small most of the time.  That's not a good sign so I scrolled down in search of larger events and what I started to find was that in the bigger events there was a lot of evidence that Quickdraw and Colonel Vessery were making for a really powerful combination.

Quickdraw/Vessery/Palp, Quickdraw/Vessery/O.Leader, Quickdraw/Vessery/Sabacc... it seemed like anything you put with Quickdraw and Vessery could be pretty strong.  The second take-away from the data, though, was that in each case the cost of fielding the Quickdraw/Vessery combination was forcing players to compromise a little and bring in a cheaper third ship.

I'd seen enough to start formulating a plan, but Meta-Wing had a little bit more to share to help me out because it also listed & ranked all the upgrades that had been used on the TIE/SF.

• The average percentile result for the TIE/SF is 34.4%.  Three quarters of all TIE/SF equipped Fire Control System and the percentile score for those is 37.8%.  The percentile for the quarter of ships that didn't take FCS must be AWFUL for it to pull the overall average down to 34.4%!  I need to equip FCS, this tells me, it also me that an FCS-equipped TIE/SF should have been ranked a bit higher in the ship rankings.  There could be an upside here...   

• Expertise is played by less than 20% of pilots but has a great Average Percentile result.  Having the action economy of free Target Lock (from FCS) and free Focused attacks (from Expertise) was key to success, as was saving your Focus action to defend yourself!

• Supposedly important cards like Lightweight Frame and Pattern Analyser might be luxuries - they weren't much different from the average 34.4% Average Percentile score.

This was all really good information that helped to set me on the path to my finished list, but checking out the bottom half of the Upgrades list told me more again.

• Homing Missile/Guidance Chips was played rarely but had been the single most successful TIE/SF archetype when it was played!  This had gone almost entirely under the radar, and still largely has (although you may be about to see a lot of Cruise Missile/Guidance Chips combinations for 2pts less).  Remember how higher up I said that Meta-Wing can miss rogue strategies that work, just because it doesn't see them very often?  Well, this is what that might look like.

• Sensor Cluster didn't add anything much.

• Primed Thrusters were as good, or better, than Pattern Analyser.

Knowledge is power.  An hour earlier I'd known nothing about TIE/SFs but now I knew an awful lot more, thanks entirely to Meta-Wing.  

Incomplete data?  Yes.  

Just some tournaments not all?  Yes.  

Just some of the lists not all of the lists?  Yes.  

But despite all those limitations Meta-Wing had still provided me with information that DRAMATICALLY cut down the dead ends and trial and error needed to get to a working squad.

Meta-Wing had told me that TIE/SF are actually good, especially Quickdraw and especially when paired with Colonel Vessery.  This might sound obvious now but at the start of May I was jumping onto a bandwagon many people didn't even realise had started rolling yet.  It had told me the pilots to use and the important upgrades (being able to modify my attack dice without actions).

But while all that was just using it to copy other people's good work (not necessarily a bad thing) Meta-Wing had also suggested to me that there was a weakness that I could look to fill, if only I could find a way to fit in a third tough ship instead of having to scrimp and save points making my TIE/SF scary.

If I only I could find a way to modify my attack dice, but at a low cost... 

And Nettling Imps was born.  I had the finished first cut of my squad list on my screen within an hour of opening Meta-Wing, ready to head to the table and try it out.  Without this tool the amout of work I would have needed to do in Listjuggler to get the same result would likely have taken days, if I'd ever bothered to do it at all.

Thanks Meta-Wing. Thanks, Haslo!


Off You Go!

Right.  Go and play.  Meta-Wing knows what's been working from Wave 11, it's just waiting for you to find out.  Don't be hanging around here.

Also, if you're a TO then it would amazing if you could get into the routine of posting your results on Listjuggler.  The world is watching!



*** Bonus Section: Advanced Meta-Wing ***

Meta-Wing is a little gem in its own right, but I've found that for those who know their way around Excel there can be some more to unlock.  I won't go into too much depth here because I think a lot of the fun is in working out what you want to know how and how to find it out, but here are some quick examples of things I've done in the past by downloading Meta-Wing data and cleaning it up/playing with it.

Upgrade Flexibility (click to embiggen)

Historical Ship Rankings (click to embiggen)

The Changing Metagame - Top-10 Pilots By Month (click to embiggen)

Pilot Differentials - Which Pilots OutperformTheir Ship? (click to embiggen)

Enjoy!  And remember to thank Haslo if you see them around...

The 50th Episode - The One With The Flashback Clips

Happy Birthday to me, happy birthday to me!

No, it's not my actual 50th birthday but this post marks my 50th Stay On The Leader blog post!!!  In time honoured American sitcom I'm celebrating that milestone by taking the opportunity to put my feet up and run a cheap episode that's just a clip show of the best bits from past episodes.  

I get a lot more readers today than when I first started out, so hopefully some of this will be new to you and taking a click back through my best bits will be well worthwhile.  So let's head down memory lane...

BLOGS FOR THOSE JUST STARTING OUT

• Flight School 101 -  My very first blog!  In which my mind gets blown by all the implications of the 1 Forward template being the same length as a small ship base.  Yes, I really did start at square one.

• Buying Guides for Rebels / Imperials / Scum - my buying guides have been a perennial favourite, each of them viewed thousands more times than any of my other posts.  The Rebel and Imperial guides have recently been updated with new sets and info, and hopefully I'll get round to updating the Scum guide very soon (hint: buy the Punishing One expansion).

• X-Wing Dice For Beginners Part I and Part II - from when I was first wrapping my head around the game mechanics these remain a hugely useful pair of blogs that I still use in my thinking for pretty much every game I play, and every squad I build.  The basics of how X-Wing maths works, and how you can use them to help you make better squads without too much effort.

• Rookie Pilots - Chasing Critical Hits - starting my 'Rookie Pilots' series, why cards that focus on critical hits can be a trap to lure in new players.

• Rookie Pilots - Ignoring Dice Modification - learn to balance positioning on the table with using your actions to make your dice count!

BLOGS FOR THOSE TRYING TO GET SERIOUS

• Variance, TIE Interceptors and Novak Djokovic - my first really serious strategy blog, diving into the detail of how dice variance changes how you should view the game.  When to avoid unwanted variance and when to go long and make variance your ally.  Oh, and how to win $10,000 from playing tennis.

• How To Lose At X-Wing - one of the most unexpected titles for maybe my most important blog.  Learning how to lose means learning to be honest about WHY you lost, and how to respond to that defeat so that you're stronger in future.

• Understanding the Metagame - it's a word you probably heard bandied about a lot, but what does the metagame actually mean.  What does it mean to you, and ultimately do you even care?  Does it even exist?!?

• The Puzzle of Squad Balance - my most recent blog, which looks at how the pieces in your squad need to come together and work in harmony to pose a tricky puzzle for your opponent.

BLOGS WHERE I LOOKED AT THE FUTURE OF X-WING AND BASICALLY SORT OF NAILED IT

• Jumpmaster, He's So Hot Right Now - as the now infamous Punishing One expansion hit stores I looked at precisely why I thought it was going to become a big deal, breaking down why the Jumpmaster 5000 was going to revolutionise X-Wing by finally making torpedoes good.

• Attani Mindlink - The Next Big Thing? - can you believe I did it again?  In my defense although I was hyping up Mindlink pretty early I was only reporting on what others were already doing and saying "hey guys, I think there's something about to happen here".  Those paying attention to my comments section below the article would have seen the very first public discussion about Paratanni, which was yet to become a household name.  Also: Pacific Rim is shit.

• A Magic Perspective on Draws in X-Wing - it seems so long ago, but an FAQ last year threw the cat among the pigeons by making it legal to agree to draw a match with your opponent without ever setting a single dial.  As the Drawpocalypse threatened to become a reality I looked to my friends in the Magic: The Gathering community to explain why FFG should just remove draws entirely from X-Wing.  Then shortly afterwards FFG removed draws entirely from X-Wing.  Yay, we won!

• Introducing 'Super Miranda' - after a strong showing at Worlds 2016 I set out to explain why Miranda Doni was positioned to become the best ship in the Rebel fleet, and one of the most potent and challenging threats you can face from any faction.  K-Wings, Sabine Wren, Conner Nets... the future was here.

.

AND... BLOGS WHERE I ACTUALLY GOT TO PLAY SOME X-WING!

• Beginners Guide to the T-70 - my first X-Wing crush was the super-versatile T-70 X-Wing.  I returned to the ship to blog about it a second time when Heroes of the Resistance brought some exciting new pilots.

• Top-16 at UK Nationals with Slaughterhouse - my signature elite TIE Swarm, the Slaughterhouse, took me into the Top-16 of my first ever major X-Wing tournament.  I recount in detail two intensely tight games from the sharp end of Nationals.

• Introducing Phoenix Squadron - still one of my favourite squads to actually fly, the fast-moving and focus-hurling shenanigans of Snap Shot A-Wings and the brand new Operations Specialist!

• Eight Falcons In Four Rounds - I use a casual tournament to set myself a real challenge by playing EIGHT different YT-1300 ships in just FOUR rounds!  What worked?  What didn't?  What would I try differently in future?  And just how the hell did I win a game with Outer Rim Smuggler?!?!?

• Auxiliary ARCS - Rebellion's Most Versatile Ship - a long love letter to a ship I originally ignored but which has gradually won me over, the ARC-170.  All the pilots are great and I explain why they help the ARC to become an essential part of the Rebel arsenal.

• Flying the Special Forces TIE Fighter - and all the way bang up to date with my current squad, rocking the newest brand of murderous H-based ships!

50 NOT OUT

50 down, with plenty more to come.  I've had my wobbles with X-Wing and at one point felt like I'd never make it to my 50th blog.  Thankfully I've managed to rediscover my mojo and I'm looking forward to many more blogs to come, which I hope you'll join me for!

I'm just going to leave you with one last link, to one of my very favourite (and stupidest) blogs!

Thanks for reading (so far)!

-
Dave

"All Too Easy" - The Puzzle of Squad Balance

There was a really good blog I read recently by 186th Squadron member Oliver Pocknell, which was all about the importance of getting your target priority right and making sure you kill the right ships first.  Target priority is certainly something that can easily win or lose you a game of X-Wing - it can be the difference between facing an endgame monster of a ship at the end of the game in a 1-on-1 duel you can't win, or eliminating it right off the bat while you've got enough guns to make short work of them.

In this blog I'm going to look at the flipside of this equation, though, which is the more subtle art of how you can influence your opponent's target priority to your own benefit!  In part this has been inspired by my view of the many different versions of Quickdraw loadouts, and we'll get to him later as a specific example, but it's something that I'm increasingly aware of in virtually all of my squad designs.

Setting The Puzzle

In short, the individual ships in your squad come together to form a target priority puzzle that you're posing to your opponent.  Your opponent is trying to unpick where the weak point in your squad is and where the greatest threats are, so that he can get his target priority right.   Not only is every every pilot card or upgrade that you add to your squad changing the puzzle you pose, but it's also a puzzle where each individual piece affects how the other pieces are viewed and used in trying to solve it.

This is all going to go much easier if I use some examples, so let's go for it and use the 'Nettling Imps' squad that I blogged about a few weeks ago.

Colonel Vessery - Adaptability, TIE/x7, Twin Ion Engine MkII
Quickdraw - A Score To Settle, Fire Control System, Lightweight Frame, Special Ops Training
Backdraft - Veteran Instincts, Primed Thrusters, Fire Control System, Lightweight Frame, Special Ops Training

 I think you classify a ship's defensive attributes & performance in four rough categories: 

• Endurance - this is a pretty raw measure of just how much damage a ship has to take before it's destroyed (eg. Hull + Shield).  It's a passive form of defense that only really works to deter opponents from attacking when the threat the ship poses isn't worth the effort of chewing through the amount of hit points needed to destroy it.  Upgrades like Hull Upgrade, Integrated Astromech or Chewbacca crew would fall under this category.

• Resistance - this indicates how good a ship is at 'resisting' or cancelling incoming hits entirely, either through having lots of green dice, defensive tokens or other upgrade effects like C-3PO, Latts Razzi or Autothrusters.  I'd also class most shield regeneration effects as Resistance as you're reversing the effects of incmoing damage as though it never occurred.  Good Resistance defenses tend to be a better deterrent against attacks than Endurance defenses because the opponent faces a greater risk that his attacks will be entirely wasted.

• Intimidation defenses are relatively rare in X-Wing but there are increasingly examples of ships and upgrades that will punish an opponent for attacking you, like Dengar, Quickdraw, Kylo Ren, Rebel Captive etc.  These sort of defenses can be extremely effective at deterring attacks if you can make your ship 'spiky' enough, and especially if it can be paired with Resistance defenses so that an opponent risks dealing no damage and being punished for even daring to try!

• Agility defenses are different to the others in that they're not necessarily properties of the ship's build but also of how you play it on the table.  It covers the obvious repositioning abilities of things like Boost and Barrel Roll to avoid being in arc of an opponent, but it also covers the broader art of simply flying ships more defensively - running away from bad situations, hanging back at range 3 or behind asteroids for extra green dice.  The amount that your ship wants to use Agility defences is often a result of how strong their other defences are.

So let's look at how this example squad's defenses stack up under these four categories, and I'm going to pretend I'm playing 'Top Trumps' and arbitrarily score them 1-5 on each.

Colonel Vessery has 3 Agility and Focus & Evade tokens thanks to TIE/x7 title, meaning the TIE Defender has very strong Resistance to incoming attacks.  Six hull is pretty average for Endurance, and although the Defender is a quick ship with a barrel roll action it's quite predictable if it wants to benefit from that free Evade token so it doesn't naturally use Agility a lot.
Endurance:3, Resistance:5, Intimidation:1, Agility:3 - TOTAL 12

Quickdraw's pilot ability is all about Intimidation, with opponents often very reluctant to try and take a shot at him in case they only succeed in stripping a single shield.  That Intimidation is backed by a decent Resistance with 3 green dice (thanks to Lightweight Frame) which are usually focused as Quickdraw has Fire Control System and A Score To Settle to use modifying his attacks.  More cumbersome than a TIE Defender, with a bunch of red maneuvers he doesn't want to use as he'll lose his defensive Focus, Quickdraw scores quite badly on Agility.
Endurance:3, Resistance:3, Intimidation:4, Agility:2 - TOTAL 12

Backdraft is a TIE/sf like Quickdraw so most of his defensive attributes are the same.  The main difference is that he loses Quickdraw's revenge attack so there's no Intimidation factor.  With weaker defenses Backdraft will have to rely on dodging as many shots as possible with his limited Agility, which Primed Thrusters helps with a little, but it's only a marginal benefit.
Endurance:3, Resistance:3, Intimidation:1, Agility:2  - TOTAL 9

Let's return to that original idea of my squad being a 'puzzle' that I'm setting my opponent for him to work out how best to approach a game against me.  When you put those three pieces of the puzzle together it turns out I've not really set a particularly difficult challenge because I'm actually 'telling' my opponent to shoot at Backdraft as the other ships in my squad have much better defenses.  The damage output from my three ships is very similar so the opponent isn't having to make his decision based on which of my ships are the biggest threat, or the thing he simply can't allow into the endgame, so he can simply chase the softest target.

It meant that I had to take my flying style for Backdraft and artificially fly it more defensively than I otherwise would (let's say I flew it defensively enough to rate as Agility:4) but that this had an impact on how much damage Backdraft was doing.

Time and time again this was what I was finding in my table experience - I would protect Backdraft as much as I could but it would either cost me in shots & damage he was dealing, or I'd misjudge my defensive flying and Backdraft would be wiped off the table relatively early in the game.In another squad, alongside ships that weren't such unappealing targets, Backdraft possibly wouldn't have been such a weak point but in this squad he was giving me a problem.  

It was time to explore other options, and I found an answer in an unexpected place:

Darth Vader - Juke, TIE/x1, Advanced Targeting Computer, Twin Ion Engine MkII

Vader's double action allows him to have the same Resistance from 3 green dice with Focus and Evade that Colonel Vessery benefits from.  He's got one less shield than the TIE Defender so less Endurance but as his defensive tokens aren't tied to any particular moves, and he can Barrel Roll & Evade, he rates more highly on Agility - particularly as I'm going to be playing him quite conservatively.
Endurance: 2, Resistance: 5, Intimidation: 1, Agility:4 - TOTAL 12

What Darth Vader gives me is a third ship that rates very highly on defense and that's going to pose my opponents a less obvious puzzle to solve.  In some ways it means there's often not a clear right or wrong answer, but in practice it gives me the opportunity to tag my ships in and out with positioning in order to spread my opponent's fire.  For example Vader might get into range 1 and take a shot and lose a couple of shields, but he'll then speed out to Range 3 while Vessery comes into range 1 to take his shot - does my opponent spread his fire between two ships or risk wasting it entirely on Darth Vader with 4 green dice and Focus & Evade?

What's especially interesting in this particular case is that it means I took Darth Vader because of his Resistance score, when classically Vader has been considered to live on his Agility thanks to Engine Upgrade giving him both reposition actions per turn.  In my experience of playing with Vader my damage output is overall a bit lower than it was with Backdraft in the team, but because he's not a soft target I'm winning a lot more games 100-0 that I would otherwise have won 100-33 with Backdraft in the team.

Generating Aggro and Holding Threat

Defenses are only one side of the puzzle you're posing to your opponent, though, so let's pick up a different squad of mine as an example of how your Offense can affect the opponent's decisions.

Norra Wexley - Push The Limit, Kyle Katarn, R5-P9, Alliance Overhaul, Vectored Thrusters
Endurance:4, Resistance:3, Intimidation:1, Agility:2 - TOTAL 10

Thane Kyrell - Tactician, R2-D2, Alliance Overhaul, Vectored Thrusters
Endurance:4, Resistance:2, Intimidation:1, Agility:2 - TOTAL 9

Gold Squadron Pilot - R3-A2, BTL-A4
Endurance:4, Resistance:1, Intimidation:1, Agility:1 - TOTAL 7

First off, pretty much across the board you can see that the squad is less weighted towards repelling the opponent's firepower than my Imperial squads are.  With more health I've rated the Rebel ships more highly on Endurance, and although they've only got 1 green dice apiece I've rated them a little more strongly on Resistance due to both ARC-170s bringing regeneration astromechs, with Norra picking up another point for the defensive side of her pilot ability.  Vectored Thrusters gives them some sort of repositioning so I've said for Agility 2 just to be kind.

Although the overall 'defensive score' is lower the puzzle this squad poses the opponent isn't really about the defense but about how I'm using offense to pull my opponent's attention to where I want to go.

When my opponent looks across the board my biggest damage threat is Norra Wexley as she hits harder than anybody else, and she's also the best endgame ship I have with her combination of regeneration and extra defensive Evades from her ability when I need them.  That all makes Norra the obvious first target for my opponent and although I've scored her an arbitrary '10' for her defence so much of that is wrapped up in Endurance, which as I originally explained is most effective as a deterrent when pretty inconspicuous and not worth focusing on.  That's not my 40+pt big gun Norra Wexley!

And that's where my Stresshog Y-Wing and Thane come in, because the threat of all those stress tokens pouring out of the rest of my list pulls aggro away from Norra against a huge number of people.  That makes the puzzle I'm setting the opponent that much harder to solve because they're balancing many more factors:

• Is there an immediate damage threat?
• Is there something I can't kill 1-on-1 in endgame?
• Is there something I can kill quickly?

Returning to my Imperial squad for another example... let's say I was hypothetically going to replace my TIE/x7 Colonel Vessery with a TIE/D Vessery armed with a Tractor Beam.  I don't have the points to do that in my squad, but as we're dealing with hypotheticals lets spend some extra hypothetical points and make it happen anyway.

Colonel Vessery - Adaptability, Tractor Beam, TIE/D, Twin Ion Engine MkII
Endurance:3, Resistance:3, Intimidation:1, Agility:3 - TOTAL 10

What that's creating is now a much simpler puzzle again for my opponent as TIE/D not only knocks Colonel Vessery's Resistance rating down by removing the Evade token but it also makes him a much more tempting target as it's both a bigger damage threat (thanks to Tractor Beam) and a bigger chunk of MOV (3pts more than an /x7 Defender).

And yet there are Imperial squads making good use of TIE/D Defenders so what's going on?  Well it's because the pieces have to form a coherent puzzle for the opponent.  Drop an offense-weighted TIE/D Defender into a squad that's otherwise about defense and you'll make it a clear first target, but that same TIE Defender in a squad designed to deal maximum damage, say with Quickdraw and Pure Sabacc, and it makes much more sense.

There's yet another good example in recent Imperial squads that's less about what you're asking your opponent to shoot at first and more about the opposite - persuading them NOT to shoot at something first.  Omega Leader is a fantastic ship in endgame, which your opponent knows so he's going to try and destroy it first.  But if your pair Omega Leader up with some high offense ships then there's a good chance that will draw the enemy's attention away from Omega Leader in the early game.

The end result of all this is that ships/pilots can be perfectly good on their own but your squad as whole may not add up to the sum of its parts. If you've not got a grasp on the puzzle you're posing the opponent then it's very easy to put great pieces together into something that doesn't actually make sense.  Instead of working together and complementing each other your squad can be working at cross purposes to each other, leaving you with hard work to do on the table to try and keep everything in line.

There was another great example of this in a squad a friend of mine made the other week.  He took the Expertise/K4 Dengar that won Worlds, which is demonstrably a really great ship, and then stripped the torpedoes off it so that he could afford to bring Asajj Ventress with Push The Limit, Latts Razzi and Engine Upgrade, another demonstrably great ship.  These two great ships, combined, were basically... it wasn't good.  In removing the torpedoes from Dengar my friend had unwittingly reduced the 'Intimidation' factor that was preventing people from just punching Dengar in the face until he was dead, and then although Asajj was incredibly tough with Latts Razzi on board she wasn't actually getting fired at until Dengar was dead, and didn't have enough firepower to draw attention away from her teammate.

Two great ships, one lousy puzzle.

It may not be something that convinces you that you need to change your squad loadout, but understanding what the puzzle is that your opponent is trying to solve will at the very least inform how you fly your ships.  In my original example switching in Darth Vader for Backdraft wasn't as simple as a direct 'upgrade', but it was something that came about because I had an understanding that I was having to fly Backdraft very defensively anyway because he was the weakest link in my squad.


The Many Faces of Quickdraw

Finally, I said at the very start of this blog that it was inspired the many different ways I've seen Quickdraw used, and I think you can explain a lot of those changes when you see the rest of the squads that's he's being played in.

All five of these Elite Pilot Talents are commonly equipped to Quickdraw and all have proven successful at various times in various squads.  Quickdraw's loadout is having to flex to the ships in his squad and an expectation of whether Quickdraw is going to be an early target for your opponent, in which case a cheap EPT is preferable like Adaptability or A Score To Settle (in itself a great way to play with your opponent's target priority) in order to minimise your early losses.  That's what I'm using in my 'Nettling Imps' squad and I know a few players have picked my squad up as a base, with at least one of them finding success and winning two store championships in recent weeks with a slightly modified version...

• Quickdraw - Adaptability, Fire Control System, Lightweight Frame, Special Ops Training (33)

• Backdraft - Veteran Instincts, Fire Control System, Lightweight Frame, Special Ops Training (32)

• Colonel Vessery - Juke. TIE/x7 (35)

In other squads where you think your opponent is going to have other targets in the early game then it came make sense to really maximise Quickdraw and spend more points as he is a safer place to put that investment.  Those are the builds that might decide to load up on something like Expertise & Pattern Analyser, or even the more aggressive Homing Missile & Guidance Chips.

• Quickdraw - Expertise, Fire Control System, Sensor Cluster, Lightweight Frame, Special Ops Training (39)

• Pure Sabacc - Veteran Instincts, Adaptive Ailerons (23)

• Colonel Vessery - Juke. TIE/x7 (35)

And finally if the rest of your squad is really aggressive and drawing attention from Quickdraw you might decide you want to be able to force your opponent into triggering Quickdraw's second attacks!  That mean either using the combination of Rage and Electronic Baffle to remove your own shields, or by using Draw Their Fire to protect a more vulnerable colleague by sucking damage onto Quickdraw.

When Lukasz Golonka took Quickdraw into 3rd at the Lothal Open earlier this year he was so confident that his opponent would be targeting the huge threats from rest of the squad that he could play a dedicated 'support' loadout with Targeting Synchroniser and Draw Their Fire, and didn't even spend points on Lightweight Frame!

• Quickdraw - Draw Their Fire, Fire Control System, Targeting Synchroniser, Special Ops Training (35)

• Carnor Jax - Veteran Instincts, Royal Guard TIE, Autothrusters, Hull Upgrade (32)

• Tomax Bren - Crack Shot, Ion Pulse Missiles, Concussion Missiles, Extra Munitions, Guidance Chips (35)

What the many faces of Quickdraw do is demonstrate perfectly how important it is to strike the right balance between the parts of your squad to set the opponent the toughest puzzle possible.  Mix these pieces up between their respective squads and they wouldn't work anywhere near as well.  It's the same pilot, and in most of the cases many of the upgrade cards are the same, but Quickdraw is a fascinating example to me of how just changing a single EPT slot can make him fit into different roles for the squads he's a part of.

It's something I'm aware of more and more when I look at successful squads, such as the Norra/Shara/Jess list that John Proctor won Stele Open with, where the switch from R2-D2 to BB-8 on Norra was not exposed as a weakness because  he had both Jess Pava drawing aggro with her Stressbot and Shara Bey contributing Evade tokens with Jan Ors.  Another great example of a squad that understands what it's telling the opponent to do and trying to use that to it's advantage.

Understand your squad, and understand what it looks like from across the table.  It will help you to load it out correctly, and it will also help you to fly it correctly.  Take control of the puzzle you're setting for the opponent and success will come more easily.