Hype-ing for Hope-erspace

Yes, its another opinion on Hyperspace. No Wait! Come Back!

Undoubtably one of the biggest changes to X-Wing 2.0 was the formalisation of variant formats, and the idea of the "Hyperspace" ship/upgrade rotation for major events. It's caused....debate. But it's now properly upon us, and Club Night is full of U-Wings, for goodness sake, so it's clearly having an impact. We've got our first event this time next week over a Element Games in Stockport, so naturally thats what we've been talking about pretty solidly.

It's my blog, I can talk about what I want to!

So first off, where do i stand on Hyperspace?  I think its necessary for the long-term health of the game, but I'm also not sure it's there yet. Mostly I think it's a result of two core concerns. Firstly, with 7 factions it would be ridiculous to have 4 that can field 3-4 ships and 3 that can field over a dozen each. Prequel and Sequel Trilogy players would feel rightly aggrieved at a massively limited toolset compared to their Classic/Legends equivalents. Secondly, it puts the idea of rotations firmly, centrally, into the game, and will help massively with game balance and bloat going forward. This means that Hyperspace will remain a narrower, but hopefully tighter and better balanced competitive format. 

That said I also worry that the pools remain a little too shallow at the moment. Each faction seems to have two or three build archetypes at best, and I'm not sure that's enough. We all seem to want diversity on the tabletop and maybe we need 5-6 ships a faction to achieve that. But it's early days, and lets not forget that 1.0 was frequently extremely samey on the competitive scene. In the meantime however, I need to be ready for next week. 

I'm....almost prepared, I think. I've been flying the Resistance 5s for a few weeks, including two tournament events, to get a bunch of table time on them. I'm finding them a great mix of "actually quite good", which isn't my usual list building style, and "really fun to fly" which is my main requirement. Practice is also reducing the "bandwidth" on the A-Wings, which hopefully means that my decision making won't deteriorate as badly over 6 games as it might. Launch Bay Next tells me I've logged 12 "proper" games with an 8-4 run-rate, and if I can keep that up next week I'll be pretty happy.

Hmm, feels like there is a blog on Tournament Expectation in there somewhere, maybe next time.

Looks great on the table, too. Fly Pretty! 

The Teenager, meanwhile, has been struggling to find something that works for him. He's had fun with the dual-Silencer list but it's also just not performing for him, so it's gone back in the box for now. This means he's been trying lots of different things, usually made up the night before, and usually being sort of OK, although I did at one point yell across the hallway "....or you could just actually flying something good?!".  it's a change for him, I think - he started 2.0 pretty strongly, landing on a good, performing list (4-LOM, Palob, Teroch) before switching over the First Order stuff when it came out. Since then he's not "clicked" with a list.

Which is kind of the opposite of my 2.0 experience; I took ages to find a list that didn't just get shot off the table, and that's kind of tough to get through. No-one likes losing all the time and it gets in your head in a sort of negative feedback look, switching lists that underperform to other lists that underperform, and now time feels short for him. That said, there is hope - he's rediscovered his love of the TIE Striker. And after a quick call out to our local club, he now has 5 of them. With Prox Mines. Which is...pretty scary, actually.

Which means, I think, we're both sorted for next week. May the Force Be With Us.