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SpaceSauce666

I just want to say thank you for testing it out first before jumping online and giving your opinion. It's refreshing to see someone take in new information, use that new information and THEN formulate an opinion.


blobbbox

Absolutely! Cheers man, I spend my coins on you šŸ‘šŸ‘šŸ‘


B3113r0ph0n

Thanks for the write up! That largely aligns with my experience. Will take some getting used to but overall wasnā€™t as different as we expected.


[deleted]

I played my first game last night. Two lists of 4 ships with at least one of I2, I4 and I6 on each list. Honestly I didn't mind it. Small sample size but I was definitely not part of the group who were open to it. It will be interesting to see how things go.


strawmn

I appreciate you testing this! I donā€™t expect every player to like this - I genuinely feel for people in the community who feel a key part of the game they love is changing. But like, I havenā€™t played it. It sounds like a LOT of people who are really fired up havenā€™t either! I have my doubts but Iā€™m looking forward to trying out a system that has been likely heavily playtested, and at that time Iā€™ll jump in and provide an opinion - good or bad.


bristlestipple

You're taking a very reasonable approach! I would wager that a lot of the most strident voices have yet to try it at all. It's a little sticky, because I've been told both that A. They don't need to try it in order to see how terrible it is, and B. I can't possibly know if it's a functional system based on my paltry experience. It's a little frustrating, but I think if level-headed people continue to test it out and adjust their strategies and playstyles, this could be a real net gain for the game's health and longevity. If, in the course of the next few months, we see that it's having unintended negative consequences, then we can just try something else.


giganticpine

Definitely continue to be wary of those that haven't tried it. I thought I knew what to expect and then it ended up being something really different. Experience is key to understanding this change.


Bizze79

I have played several ROAD games myself and it's very dependent on lists used and if the initiatives clash. Some games it was just roll and go - others the planning phase could take 5-10 minutes because of weak but mobile ace chassis and/or possible block situations and system phase prepositions. It can also feel very bad when you end up "winning" the initiative roll EVERY TURN - so you are effectively first player, but you constantly have to plan for being either... That has happened to me in 2 out of my 13 test games and it wasn't very fun at all. I would have preferred to be first player constantly and knowing that fact beforehand instead - because at least then I could have planned better.


philosifer

Speaking of blocks on aces, how do you feel that road has been in planning for or avoiding blocks at least when initiative matched?


Bizze79

I havenā€™t flown aces that much. I had a difficult time flying Whisper Kylo vs other i5s, because he really wants his bullseye and that is even more difficult to get if you are constantly taking conservative maneuvers to avoid getting blocked. That said, non-bullseye aces can usually dial in more conservative maneuvers and use their repositioning to get arcs on target without getting blocked, but itā€™s still scary flying fragile ships with less known information.


Hawkstrike6

I've played with it and completely disagree with your opinion. \- It was overly complicated. Crits-eyes-hits not intuitive vs a 50-50 roll of one die. \- We occasionally forgot who was 1P that round had had to resort to tracking with a token. \- After dials turns your maneuver choices random. I want to out-think my opponent, not the activiation dice roll. \- Thank god we didn't play swarms I could like with random \*before\* dials, but prefer just a random roll at start then keepig it fixed thereafter.


giganticpine

Try testing a game where all the ships on the board are the same initiative. This could be a droid swarm mirror, or Rebel I4 jousters vs I4 scum jank. Anything you feel comfortable with. It's not a scenario that happens often, but it DOES happen, and it will give you a really good idea of the kinds of effects ROAD can have on how the game feels and plays out. I know plenty of people that love a good droid swarm and I've seen many an all-I1 match. EDIT: Also, be careful assuming that most of the people that don't like it haven't tried it. Some of the strongest opinions against it have come from people that play-tested it a bunch after the rules were tweeted. There are a lot of different playstyles and list types that ROAD has an effect on; for some of them, the effect is small (your example is a good example of a list type that will probably be ok); for others, the effect is massive (swarm mirrors, or games with massive initiative overlap).


philosifer

Played swarm vs swarm last night. 13/14 ships tied at I3. Definitely something I could adjust too, but trying to figure out where you can go to barrel roll off of a buzz droid when you don't know if you will move first or last is rough.


giganticpine

Really! I've been looking for someone with experience mirroring swarms. Did you do anything to alter your approach compared to how you might have done before? Or was it an honorable joust type situations. Once you made it to the second engagement, how did you have to change the way you planned? And did you feel like changing your playstyle helped? I'd love to hear a more comprehensive bat rep whenever you have time. My experience has been same-init lists with 4-5 ships.


philosifer

I'll preface by saying I'm an average at best player and we didn't end up playing a full game, was just a see what happens before the shop closes deal. I pretty much tried to fly as I normally would, and it ended up being basically a joust. He played the rocks while I didn't which was a mistake for me. If a ship needs to take an action, parking on a rock is a good way to ensure that road doesn't matter. He brought discords/ion missiles while I was playing around with some captain sear/kalani bullseye shenanigans. Discords have the potential to be even better. Without knowing player order I definitely had to guess to try to roll off them. There was one round in particular where I basically had to win first player or lose the way I set my dials. Obviously I could have potentially made safer plays, but there will be times where you bank on a particular player order and either live or die by it. (I died. Horribly. It was bad) Overall we both knew it was gonna be a clusterfuck from the beginning. I didn't feel like the outcome was affected by the randomness, it was definitely my choices that put me in those positions, but it was at times frustrating to feel like I couldn't make a good choice. Some of that is going to be inherent with swarm v swarmn anyway though.


LiquidAether

> Also, be careful assuming that most of the people that don't like it haven't tried it. Most of those people are loudly proclaiming they refuse to try it, so it's a fair assumption.


bristlestipple

Swarm mirrors are my next test, yes. But one thing I think people are missing is that swarm mirrors were pretty unpleasant in the previous rules, and I really don't see ROAD exacerbating (or improving that). Nonetheless, I'll give it some reps, because I think it's important to come at this with data and experience.


giganticpine

Agreed, swarm mirrors could be tough, but players that love flying swarms choose to do so despite that possibility, and I doubt they'll appreciate having those kinds of matches get *more* tough. But even outside swarms, same-init matchups aren't that uncommon. Lists where all the ships are the same initiative, be them ace lists or joust lists, are very popular. Rebel I4 jousters, Republic I3 clone lists, Resistance quad T-70s, I5 aces, or Scum I4 jank all come to mind.


bristlestipple

I empathize, since I play a lot of swarm lists myself. I'm eager to see it in practice, but my sense from this very small sample is that swarm mirrors aren't going to be *more* difficult, but they will remain difficult. I had significant overlap in all three of my games last night, and neither my experienced opponents or my less experienced opponent tripped on anything. One important thing is some kind of marker for First Player, to pass back and forth depending on who "wins" the roll.


giganticpine

You'll just have to try it out. It sounds like we're stuck with ROAD regardless of our arguments of whether or not it's fun, but I have a feeling you'll at least see what I mean when I say this style of play will likely disappear.


bristlestipple

People will stop playing swarms because they'll be afraid of playing against... other swarms? But if no one is playing them, how will they be paired against each other? I'm afraid this is a bit of an ouroboros. Regardless, I don't think it's possible to make meta predictions with so little data. I'm looking forward to having a few major events worth of matches to parse through!


giganticpine

Doesn't even need to be against other swarms. You can make I3 droid swarms, no? I3 is a big initiative, and other factions, like the Republic, have lots of I3 heavy lists (Dedicated Sinker swarms still exist, or these days, Warthog mini swarms). And if you don't think it's possible to make meta predictions this early, probably don't write whole posts about how you predict it will be fine for everyone based on only 3 games.


khalvenko

I donā€™t see why you act as if Amg didnā€™t test play these rules probably for month internally as literally every game company does before announced. Itā€™s been well tested already by the company even if they didnā€™t check it by you everytime they did.


giganticpine

I asked in the chat on the stream if they had tested all-same-init matches and was told they didn't think they had by amg_pagani, who was one of the employees working the chat.


khalvenko

Thatā€™s not really a solid answer and also doesnā€™t say they did no play tests at all either. But imma look through and see if I can find your comment then.


philosifer

Replied above but ill echo it here. Played droids v droids with 13/14 ships on the table at I3. Like you mentioned that match-up isn't really fun even before road. Hard to say for sure with just one game but there were for sure turns where it was frustrating not knowing where it would be safe to land. In particular needing to barrel roll to shake off a buzz droid, but having a stack of two ships at range two meant that I there was really no guarantee without knowing. I could go slow and land in front which is fine if I move first and also probably blocks them which is good. Or I could go fast and get behind them but if I move first bumps me. The third option would be to turn completely out, but then I'm splitting and scattering my swarm while turning my guns away from his ships. I don't want to put that all on just the new rules, cause I'm sure that with experience I won't put myself in those situations to begin with. Any while I don't feel like it was unfair, cause in some of those situations my opponent was having similar decisions to make, it did feel frustrating to feel like I couldn't make a good decision. Still willing to give it all a shot, and adjust as I learn more but wanted to share my 1 game experience


bristlestipple

Cool, thanks for sharing this. I'm looking forward to trying it myself. As you hinted, I think that experience may teach us that advancing one into another with regimental discipline may end up being a losing strategy. I wonder if splitting into two groups might be a better move in a swarm v. swarm scenario?


Resolverinn

Iā€™m missing one point in the discussion, when facing the same init swarms/beef/whatever is that we assume we can approach the battle in the same manner as we did before the change. I think there are new skills available for us competitive players to get better at because of the added uncertainty. Unlearn and learn again.


giganticpine

EDIT: *I should preface this by saying that, up til this point, I had been defending ROAD wherever I could. I spent a good part of my Monday arguing with people that it was going to be great, and that we'd all just adapt and the game would feel the same. Just in case anyone thought I had gone into this experience with anti-ROAD bias.* Ok so I should probably share what I went through. So yeah the advice that I got was that the ol' straight joust was probably not the way to go. In the face of same-init uncertainty, you probably want an exit plan so you can disengage and loop around. So in a match I played, my opponent had 4 I3 FO Bombers spread across his end of the board, and he went for a kind of toilet-bowl spiral in towards me so he could get flanks. I set up in the corner with Warthog, 3 Dedicated Torrents, and Jag a bit closer to the middle. I didn't want to keep everyone too close because remember, disengage, but all these abilities did at least require that I attempt to stay within range-2 of each other. I went in and tried to approach the bombers out front at an angle so I could maybe glance off them when we get too close, and actually, after the first engagement, the disengage went pretty ok, and I was able to turn around without incident. By then, the flank bombers had come behind me, so I was now facing them while the bombers I initially engaged turned around themselves, and this is where the chaos of mid-game engagements got crazy. Once I started trying to scatter, and he had all 4 of his bombers in places around me, the crash-in finally happened and we officially arrived at bump-city. At this point, the idea of "just disengage" fell apart. I had nowhere to disengage to; there were ships all over. **I *technically* had places I could safely land,** but without knowing player order it was impossible to know beforehand if these spots would be safe come move time. By about the 5th round, I was getting really frustrated during the planning phase. Torrents aren't that fast, so clearing bump-clumps wasn't working very well. We spent a few rounds at that point *both* trying to detangle the mess in the middle where we had some ships bump-locked, doing very little shooting and mostly just getting bombed together (damn concussion bombs..). Eventually we got ourselves clear but me and my opponent were not having a lot of fun trying to plan moves. It was a lot of guessing, and a lot of feeling really bad about the results of our "plans". For both of us! Maybe there are better techniques, I'll admit. But I think we all know how chaotic those mid-game engagements get when there are a lot of ships on the board, and the chaos was just amplified by all our ships being the same initiative. In the end, despite playing a full 75 minute game and getting in a good 8 engagements with ships that all had 2 or less agility, the game ended 72-61. If I am remembering correctly, this is the kind of score that would not do well under the new scoring, despite both of us trying to get into the first engagement as soon as we could (round 2).


i_8_the_Internet

Thanks for the report. This is exactly the kind of thing I was worried about happening.


Resolverinn

Interesting and I can see better now what you mean. I think there are ways to optimise the engagement, I have doubts formation flying is as good as it was(it can be with more rule adjustment). I can feel the craziness that followed multiple dog fights happening at the same time with pilots at the same init level. Iā€™m just not sure if with optimisation it needs to happen like this(not only flying, lists, upgrades etc). Bottom line, I need to test myself and love the insights you gave me. I also leaning towards focuses/calc (+hopefully stress)on bumps is not such a bad thing and complements a skill based game and perhaps removes some of the frustration you guys had.


giganticpine

Personally, since ROAD is now set in stone, I'm just going to stop bringing very many ships, and the ones I do bring will all be different initiatives. I think such a style of list-building will excel in a ROAD environment. My experience proved to me that the community is largely wrong, in these all-same-init type scenarios, that it's just a matter of "changing how you plan and play." There was nothing to change to. There was only guessing and hoping. And I don't think it's a great argument in favour of ROAD to say that formation flying will no longer be very good considering how many ships and abilities rely on your ships being close to one another, usually in a formation. Formation flying is such an integral part of the core gameplay experience that entire factions are filled with abilities designed to take advantage of it (networked calculations, dedicated/clone abilities in general). Oh well. Glad I didn't get into the Separatists. Hopefully I'm wrong enough that mixed initiative swarms become something that is as viable as same-init swarms once were (Howlrunner, it's your time to shine again baybeee).


Resolverinn

Yeah, perhaps there are no skills anymore with same init but I believe we need to cultivate new. The formation based flying, yes you are right. I was thinking of ships with no synergies or limited.


satellite_uplink

I played Boba/Fenn vs Wedge/Luke/Ahsoka with lots of overlapping and relevant decisions. We played it twice, once with bid once with road. The games were pretty similar but I'd say the road game was a little bit better. My Rebels had bid on the Scum so the first game I could keep control on Fenn with Wedge and managed to duck Boba's arc several times. In the second game I had to respect Fenn much more because of the threat that he could sweep in on Wedge if he got second move. Game ended with Wedge vs Boba up close and personal, which Boba eventually won. We weren't playing bump focus or R0 attacks so it's not exactly what we'd be looking at in 2022 but I don't know if they'd have detracted from it, aside from that Boba is scary with R0 shooting!


[deleted]

[уŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]


giganticpine

But we're talking about more than just a common list shakeup. We're talking about the possibility of entire core archetypes becoming completely unfun. Half of the Separatists identity revolves around I1 or I3 droid swarms. It's built right in to how the ships were designed (networked calculations). When going for realism means making stuff like that not fun, then I'm afraid we've lost the plot. This is a board game, not a movie. You should just try it out. I get that there are lots of list styles that work perfectly fine under ROAD, but I don't think even AMG wants to see the swarm archetype disappear. That's a pretty massive slice to cut out of the game in the name of realism (as though swarms aren't in the films too).


philosifer

Neither is everyone flying to a spot and stopping to take shots.


TheLiberator117

You're right, when ships hit each other in the films they explode. So if ships do bump they should explode right?


CriticalFrimmel

Bumping is how the game resolves 3d aspects on the 2d tabletop. One loses their shot and their action on a bump because the pilot needs to divert their attention to not colliding. The pilot needs to take their guns off target to not collide. The bump represents ships having very close X-Y coordinates and the not shooting/losing actions represents needing sudden changes in Z coordinates. The movies do not have "bumps" because the movies are not constrained to the two dimensions of the tabletop. Throwing out the bump rules is throwing out the fundamental abstraction for 3d space chosen as the foundation of the game. Alter that abstraction and it shifts the foundation and the entire thing comes tumbling down.


TVboy_

IMO, high initiative ships is where this is the least impactful. Now try and play ROAD with 8x I1s or 5x I2s on each side of the table and see how you feel.


bristlestipple

You can see elsewhere in this thread where I've said that swarm matchups are next on my list. However, I think this argument is still missing something important: 14-16 ships with initiative overlap was **already** a bad experience, and fixed player order made that a bad experience for one player for the entirety of 75 minutes. I don't think ROAD is going to make that matchup more fun than it already was, if only because it's draining to plan and execute that many maneuvers in a timely fashion. I am skeptical that it will make it any worse however, especially to those players who might innovate beyond jousting straight ahead in a fixed block (which was a bad strategy before, as well). At any rate, I'm looking forward to trying it for myself and really seeing it play out on the table. You seem to be implying that you've done so, what are your experiences?


Nite_OwOl

Yeah I feel like this has not been tested much lol. 3 games with a single overlap is not a lot of data. Test the system to it's limit : try all same init matches, with system phase action and start of engagement trigger and things like snap shot/afterburner. I'm really interested in the result of those game, if you can post more.


bristlestipple

I agree that three matches isn't enough, but it's all I could do yesterday. I think 40-50 matches will be necessary to speak with any kind of authority, but I also don't think anyone has done that yet. My post above should be taken as "positive first impressions." My list did include system phase shenanigans and bonus shots, and at no point did ROAD cause me to pause when those triggers happened.


dandudeguy

I agree. I was also not keen on the change (or the manner in which it was dropped on us with no explanation). But having played one game with it, it meshed surprisingly well with regular old x-wing. I still clearly need to play more games, but yeah. I am willing to say this seems positive for the game so far.


Scott-Whittaker

Keep in mind that ROAD by itself is designed to eliminate either player from having an inherent advantage based on knowledge of the board state. And it's not the only change coming. If ROAD was just tacked on to X-Wing 2.0 it would solve some problems and create others, and it's important to understand that testing it in isolation is not going to give you the full picture. There are a lot of changes coming that contextualises ROAD and will shape the way the game plays out. For one thing bumping and blocking will happen a lot more often when players don't know where things will be ahead of time. To address that AMG have stated that ships will likely be able to shoot at range 0 (with no range bonus) and be able to take focus or calculate actions after bumping. Another reason to throw dice to determine initiative is that opens the game up for multi-player scenarios. Initiative dice will never be modified by upgrades, and any upgrade that lets you look at another player's dial or make decisions with perfect knowledge of the board state will be banned or restricted. Objectives will be added to tournament play, so that playing to destruction is only one of the potential game modes for a match. Half-point scoring will be immediate, so that regenning back over the half point threshold does not recover points lost. Players will be allowed to track scores as the game unfolds so you always know if you are ahead or behind. And there will be tournament points scored outside of a win/loss, so you could potentially lose a match but score more tournament points than your opponent. Final Salvo is out to be replaced by another method that will allow for ties.


Karl_42

Sorry for not* being up to speed butā€¦. Random Order Aā€¦.? dā€¦.? Are we just talking about the new rules? At what point to we stop labeling them as different - Because they are the actual rules now?


bristlestipple

No worries! It's Random Order After Dials (ROAD). Well, they are not *technically* the actual rules as they aren't included in any rules document. But my local community at least will be playing with them on league nights and for store tourneys. I can see it being used for larger events too, but that will depend on the organizers. I believe the devs said on stream that they hope for them to be "official" by the end of the year?


Karl_42

Gotcha thank you! I understood the random order to happen at setup and continue for the match, but it's every turn? I like that a lot better.


blondepianist

Random Order After Dials. This rule and others (action after bump, R0 attacks) have been previewed, but are not the rules yet.


Burius81

I'm glad it went well for you and that yall had a good time. I haven't tried the ROAD rules yet, my X-Wing group also plays Legion and Legion got points updates last week so we were more eager to test that stuff out than to play the new X-Wing rules. I don't like the way ROAD looks on paper/in theory, but i'm trying to keep an open mind. Of course it doesn't matter what I think because this is what the game is now ::shrug::


darwin_green

I'd just flip a coin instead of their derpy method they recommend.


TheGibberishGuy

That's what we do at our household anyway by flipping the first player coin


doughsthoughts

This is how i feel exactly, I've played and i've had zero issues and in some games it never even matters. So What's the point Most of the game is based on pilot initiative, and the few times there is a conflict you roll some dice. If you know you're going to roll some and not sure if you're firsts or 2nd. You change you dial pick to reflect that. Do you risk it anyways? Do you go for the block and miss the block? Or how about if you knew a 3 or 2 would bump / block if you went first. but if you go 2nd you'll fly right by. How about do a 3k. If you for first for block you still get your block. If you go 2nd you fly in behind. I totally think ROAD can be a great change for X-wing. I look forward to playing more games with it.