6/4/2023 0 Comments Turretz game strategyThe Turret pillar was effectively a shorthand for "running while I kill you" ie, full attack efficiency irrespective of arc.Įach player then, during the game, adopted one of the three pillars as their strategy. In V1.0 the three pillars mostly worked because all three options described a game strategy - ie they were all actions - jousting, arc-dodging etc. I think it will be important to define the differences between a list style (eg a jousting list) compared to a capability (eg a turret). Your ships spontaneously changing roles like this isn't something that the Three Pillars allows for and yet it's clearly a valid and important part of X-Wing strategy.Ī very interesting article. I remembered listening to Jesper Winstrom talk several times about his CLT Jedi squad on the 186th Squadron Podcast, and about how often he would joust with his supposedly fragile Aethersprites on his way to smashing into the top cut at Worlds 2019. Three Pillars says "An X-Wing is a Jouster" or "a Fang Fighter is an Arc Dodger" and this completely ignores how roles could change once you got to the table and saw your opponent's squad. More importantly I have a fundamental problem with the fact that the Three Pillars assigned its labels to a ship during squadbuilding. I also don't like that it struggled to cope with hybrid strategies that became more and more popular - where did you class the likes of Super Dash, who was a Turret that could Arc Dodge, or Jumpmasters who could Joust and had Turrets? If ships like these weren't a natural fit into the Three Pillars, and then we needed to talk about adding fourth or fifth pillars for things like Bombers or Support, were the 'Three Pillars of X-Wing' just a small part of the story? Watching the TIE Aggressors do so well made me think that the turrets weren't a strategy in themselves they were actually a part of the Aggressor's jousting arsenal, enforcing that opponents couldn't avoid engaging with the Aggressor's efficiency at trading dice.īut there's a lot about the Three Pillars of X-Wing that I don't like.įirst of all, I don't like that it actually stopped being right several years ago, at least in terms of describing a Rock-Paper-Scissors metagame even if the concept of categorising ships into these pillars remained broadly effective. The impact of turrets, and wider firing arcs in general such as the Auzituck, have been on Oli's watch list for a while and the Aggressors picking up a big win brought it to the fore again. The second thing was a conversation that I'd had with Oliver Pocknell while we watched TIE Aggressors win the Coruscant Invitational, the closest event we had to a World Championship in 2020. Maybe 'aces' are ships that are too expensive/fragile to be flown any other way. The strong connection between Ace % and their cost per point suggested the relationship may actually run in the opposite direction and instead of ace status being about what the ship CAN do, it's about what they CAN'T do - afford to joust. Most of the time when players argue about what constitutes 'an ace' it's about abilities and attributes of the pilot and their ship - can they double reposition, are they high initiative etc. This provoked an interesting thought in my head. I want to try and turn my hand to X-Wing now, prompted by a couple of different thoughts and conversations I've had which eventually coalesced in my thinking to be two sides of the same coin. I had the same obsession when I played Netrunner, and I contributed a few defining strategic concepts like breaking the game down into three clear phases, and my way of understanding how ICE worked for the Corporation player. Seeing through the surface of a game to the mechanics underneath is what keeps me playing games and it's stayed with me since I left Magic. The edition of The Duellist magazine that introduced the theory of 'Card Advantage' to me had more copious highlighter use and frantic notes in the margins than any of the textbooks I was supposed to be reading for my degree (I flunked my degree but got to play on the Pro Tour, so the writing was on the wall). When I played Magic: The Gathering in the 1990s I was around when these sorts of game concepts were being properly discussed and dissected for the first time as a nascent internet pulled a scattered group of very smart people together and turned them into a community for the first time. These are some of my favourite topics to think about when I decide to devote a lot of my time to a game.
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