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Hello all, normally I don't care too much about winning or losing. But tonight I played against the broken-est list yet. These are friendly games, so some stuff is ok, but he pulled out;

Han, with gunner and marksman, and Wedge with outmaneuver and r2-71 (the droid the gives you free target lock and boost)

So brought out Fett with a Nav and Echo with a Nav.

Long story short, I got spanked!

So we played again, this time I went with a swarm, 8 ties. the falcon was killing one tie a round and wedge was close behind.

So then we switched to missions and tried the prototype ship, he dropped han and brought a smuggle and an E wing.

I ran my prototype as a tie advanced and Echo, with 2 tie/int to cover. Well wedge killed them all again. So we tried again. This time he dropped the E wing for two B wings. I took the shuttle as my prototype and the PS 5 bounty hunter, with Echo ( I really like Echo), well by turn 2 it was all but over.

So my question is how do you beat the broken wedge, and broken han combos. I taught the guy how to play and got him hooked into the game. But the games are getting out of hand. He is looking up tourney lists ( self admitted) to play against me.

I don't want to ask him to not play the lists as they are legal list, so how do I beat them?

Also some quick rule questions. Can you boost for free if it is not an action on your bar? Also, if you are moving through an obstacle and there is a ship on the other side, do you stop your movement at the ship, or at the front edge of the obstacle. He moved through the obstacle but had to stop while still on it. I told him he should have to back up his move to the edge since he can't complete his move. He said he could keep going, so that now his ship can't shoot and mine can't shoot at him because of touching.

These "combos" aren't even close to broken. Wedge hits hard but defensively is no better than a rookie pilot, just shoot him and he dies. Han is reasonably durable with all those HP but can be extremely vulnerable to crits and dies very fast if you get a whole swarm into range 1. Focus everything you've got on one target at a time, don't screw up your maneuvering, and you should win pretty easily. Also, if you're having trouble learning the game don't play phantoms. Echo is great if you're doing everything right, but is weak against turrets and has very little margin for error. If you're still making newbie mistakes and can't consistently dodge arcs it's just a quick way to lose almost half your list.

Can you boost for free if it is not an action on your bar?

Yes, if it says "perform a free boost action". If it just says "perform a free action" you are limited to the actions you normally have available. In the case of R7-T1 (which I assume you're asking about) you do not need the boost or target lock actions on your action bar to use the free actions it grants.

Also, if you are moving through an obstacle and there is a ship on the other side, do you stop your movement at the ship, or at the front edge of the obstacle.

Unless this is some kind of special obstacle that blocks movement through it you treat it just like any other case of maneuvering into an obstacle. The ship will stop when it hits the other ship and fails to complete its maneuver, regardless of whether or not this puts it on an obstacle. Then, if the base overlaps the obstacle it will lose its action (if it somehow didn't already from bumping a ship), roll a red die and suffer any damage rolled, and be unable to attack until it leaves the obstacle.

He moved through the obstacle but had to stop while still on it. I told him he should have to back up his move to the edge since he can't complete his move. He said he could keep going, so that now his ship can't shoot and mine can't shoot at him because of touching.

He was completely correct. Obstacles do not in any way stop movement, they simply punish you for hitting them. Though losing your action and attacks and potentially suffering damage makes deliberately landing on an obstacle a rather poor strategy in most situations.

Sadly neither of those are particularly broken. Not much in X-wing is even close to broken just really strong. There is a 'Counter' however for the Han+Gunner+Marksmanship strategy that as an Imperial player you have ready access to and may or may not know of. First, Echo/Fett probably isn't the right route. Both strong pieces but not much cohesive strategy to these two alone other than "shoot them and pray". Likewise 8 Ties can be terrifying but six TIEs plus Howlrunner is an actual cohesive strategy list. So first bit of advice, try to get more efficient squadrons on the table first. Redundancy never hurt anyone. We can talk some lists later.

That said you can make the Han powerhouse significantly less frightening with a quirk of the game flow. Basically you let him hit you. Bear with me. Say you bring an Interceptor with Push the Limit. Unless it's Soontir Fel you'll move before Han, so just try not to bump and aim in his firing arc from the turn before, that part is the basic easy 'duh' part. As your actions take Focus and Evade tokens unless your Boost/Rolling completely out of range. Then when he fires you'll have something like this:

He rolls
Hit, Focus, Blank...Rerolls all for Han
Hit, Hit, Focus, Marksmanship up to Hit, Hit, Crit

Now lets say you roll
Evade, Focus, Blank

Your gut reaction may be to spend both tokens and not take the crit. This is a bad idea, BECAUSE, gunner lets him attack again but this time you will have neither those tokens to spend, nor the guarantee of a decent defense roll to use them with! Instead you have to make the decision as to which token you'll spend on this roll so that just the crit is taken. If it's the first incoming attack of the round I'd probably go with the focus if I know I'm going to get shot at again with at least a guaranteed evade. If it was his last attack of the round I would use the evade and keep the focus for my attack. Final Analysis: Let him ding you a little so he doesn't slam you a lot. Not fool proof but it edges life in to you. Live ships still shoot and still can dodge.

With Echo the 'Counter' is a little different. If you equip a Sensor Jammer to her, when Han attacks or activates Gunner, you get priority right after he rolls but before he can use Hans reroll. So make him reroll a crit, or a Focus that will become a crit, then he can't use Han's ability on that die for that attack. Take an Evade as your action and you should do alright for a while at least. Again just edging out little bits of advantage. Shaving the pencil real thin.

Is this helpful?

KnuckleWolf wrote:
With Echo the 'Counter' is a little different. If you equip a Sensor Jammer to her, when Han attacks or activates Gunner, you get priority right after he rolls but before he can use Hans reroll. So make him reroll a crit, or a Focus that will become a crit, then he can't use Han's ability on that die for that attack. Take an Evade as your action and you should do alright for a while at least. Again just edging out little bits of advantage. Shaving the pencil real thin.

This is wrong. A sensor jammer just turns a hit into an eye, which means if Han has marksmanship active it does absolutely nothing (and potentially makes it worse for you, if your opponent didn't roll any other eyes to turn into the single marksmanship crit). The card that re-rolls is elusiveness, an EPT, which lets you take a stress token to force a single re-roll. This is very bad on a phantom because it prevents you from recloaking with the advanced cloak (assuming Han does in fact shoot first), severely limits your maneuver options next turn on a ship that lives or dies by how unpredictable it can be, and prevents you from taking veteran instincts to get the PS required to shoot and immediately re-cloak before most ships can fire back.

Whoops my b. I was mixing them up. What I get for three am posts. Not terrible idea Stygium Particle accelerator still works in that situation

Thanks for helping me out with this.

While Peregrine was a little curt in his response, it was still helpful. However to point out, I am not a newbie at the game, I just don't have time to sit around figuring out killer combos, what with a life and all. So I was asking for help, not to be chastised.

I have taken what your posts have recommended and I am looking at a better list that works together. When facing wedge and han, the PS doesn't matter as I'll be moving first no matter if it is a PS 1 or 8. I will see what I can come up with and post the outcome later next week.

To sum things up, I was just hoping that this game that I love so much, would not turn into warhammer 40k. Where it is people arguing over where a comma is placed and "I don't care if it is fun or not, I must crush you no matter what".

Not all of us play to win by using every little dirty trick/combo that we can, some of us just like to have fun.

Again, thank you for the help.

Yeah, you need to play with folks who have a similar mindset. It's entirely possible to show up for what you hope is a friendly game and just get trounced by someone with a finely-tuned squad. If you or your opponent are running a Phantom, you should know that a "friendly" game is not what you're going to get. Likewise, if you see Han Solo with Gunner and C3PO, there will be blood. You may have to voluntarily handicap yourselves in order to have a good time, or play a scenario other than the standard 100-point deathmatch.

For some great examples of effective combos, check out the squad lists in this thread:
http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/105107-2014-regionals-results/

 DagobahDave wrote:
If you or your opponent are running a Phantom, you should know that a "friendly" game is not what you're going to get.

Nonsense. The phantom is good, but not that good. There's nothing stopping you from having a friendly game with them, unless by "friendly" you mean "I want to take a bunch of random ships, not think about my maneuver choices, and just throw some dice mindlessly until one of us wins".


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Big Joe wrote:
However to point out, I am not a newbie at the game, I just don't have time to sit around figuring out killer combos, what with a life and all.

Honestly, we're not talking about killer combos here, we're talking about basic strategy. And you're not going to earn many friends by implying that anyone who can figure those things out doesn't have a life.

Not all of us play to win by using every little dirty trick/combo that we can, some of us just like to have fun.

Fortunately that is not something you have to worry about in this game. There aren't really any dirty tricks or overpowered combos, if you're consistently losing to something it probably has more to do with your own bad choices than your opponent finding something overpowered.

Big Joe wrote:

While Peregrine was a little curt in his response, it was still helpful. However to point out, I am not a newbie at the game, I just don't have time to sit around figuring out killer combos, what with a life and all. So I was asking for help, not to be chastised.
...
To sum things up, I was just hoping that this game that I love so much, would not turn into warhammer 40k. Where it is people arguing over where a comma is placed and "I don't care if it is fun or not, I must crush you no matter what".

Not all of us play to win by using every little dirty trick/combo that we can, some of us just like to have fun.

Honestly, there are no broken combos in x-wing. There are some better and some worse choices, but a good player with a bad list will beat a bad player with a good list every time. And, unlike warhammer an average player will always have a chance to beat a good player, or lose to a bad player.

X-wing is not a game where you sit around working out killer combos, or using dirty tricks. There are some good basic lists to go for, but it does not take much to put together a passable list. Yes, you could spend hours refining and honeing your list, swapping between different load outs, or working out if you are better going for a skill 6 pilot with 2 points of upgrades or the skill 8 with the better skill, but those are marginal advantages, and could all be wasted depending on what your opponent brings.

The biggest thing in X-Wing is learning where your ships will end up and getting them to work together. Start by working on focusing fire, then on keeping out of firing arks. Don't worry about turrets for now. Just learn how to maneuver. Put the phantom away until you have these improved these skills. The phantom and the tie swarm both require finesse to get to work well IMO. Better off with 3 interceptors. I don't play Imperials, but this is the impression I have had. Easy to learn with, forgiving and not to much going on.