The T-47? No, wait--I'm sorry I mentioned... *runs for cover*

I'm sorry, but this is just silly. To say that list selection is completely unimportant is ridiculous. That is like saying a good coach will always win even if given bad players in, say, a basketball game. A good coach (or a good player in Legion) can improve a bad team or a bad list, but when given a good team or a good list they will be even more effective. Some units are definitely better than others, making some lists better than others as well. Thought experiment: if what you are saying is true, and units (lists) don't matter, then I could build a terrible, horrible, very bad list and an optimized list, and it would be a fair game. Would you take my bad list I intentionally mangled and play me and call that fair? If list-building really didn't matter, you would think it was fair, but I suspect nobody would really call that a fair game, not even you.

So would you suggest we conflate failure with skilled players? Or poor list-building with skill in a game that is, by definition, partially about list-building?

Things actually seem to be pretty well-balanced to me overall. The only place where I think Rebels may under-perform significantly is in the Dark Trooper to Pathfinder comparison, but I haven't seen them on the table enough to be sure. Pathfinders are just not that impressive aside from infiltrate (which is amazing) whereas DTs are defensively solid units that also function as beat-sticks thanks to their amazing weapon upgrade. Also, that is not a direct comparison. Though they were released at the same time, the units fill pretty different roles. It just seems from my initial experience that Death Troopers are pretty much better at almost everything, and their insane ability to control the board and the pace of the match through superior range and firepower is unequaled by almost any other unit. Time to run more melee up in their grill, I suppose, or send triple flamer-armed death chickens of doom and destruction after them...

I agree with you that no inference can be drawn from a lack of data alone. I also agree with you that anecdotes alone are not enough. In fact, those two factors alone are not significant if we have no other evidence. We do have some data, though. As I mentioned, it is terrible from a per-point analysis of cost-effectiveness. It has done extremely poorly in tournaments and league play every time it has been taken. I would like more data, I really would. Clearly you would as well. However, you are completely ignoring the data we have. What we do have indicates that it has been very bad in competitive play, and that as you move "up" in tournament play it appears less and less as the tournaments get more competitive and skilled. That is indisputable. The sample size is small, but it is very, very bad for the T-47. Alone, a small sample size like this is negligible. What I am suggesting is that anecdotes, personal experience, the analysis of the unit itself, and the existing data (though limited), all stack up to exactly what we would expect: it doesn't get played at serious tournaments. You are free to wonder why, as we have not met your criteria for scientific observation. I, however, suspect I know why. I don't need a scientific study to tell me that poop stinks.

I submit that you are conflating "ridiculous" with "reasonable, but not proven." My premise that the T-47 is bad is not proven in an "innocent until proven guilty" sort of way, but the circumstantial evidence has led me to a reasonable conclusion given the information we currently possess combined with my personal experience. I claim it is a bad investment in a point-based game because (as I mentioned in my post) I have run it. I have run it a lot. I can't give you the exact numbers, because I have not kept them for all of my games, but I can tell you that I do much, much better when I do not run it. What would be ridiculous is for me to claim it is good in the face of that evidence and what I see from others. We don't have systematic data, but I have my personal experience, and until systematic data proves me wrong, it is reasonable to follow my experience. Furthermore, this has also been the experience of everyone else that I know. This has also been the experience of almost every person on this forum. Alone, you might dismiss any one of us as an anecdote, and even a few would seem reasonable to discount if you had evidence to the contrary. When you take into account all of the anecdotes, the T-47's absence from top lists, the fact that it can't break into a meta that doesn't even favor running its true counter (heavier impact and ion weapons), its statistical inferiority on per-point metrics, its failure at the Las Vegas Open and in Invader League, etc... You can claim the evidence is anecdotal. I look at it all alongside my personal experiences with it and conclude that the evidence points overwhelmingly toward a specific conclusion. It is bad. This is a perfectly reasonable conclusion to reach based on all of the above evidence, even if it has not been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt. I suspect if a statistical analysis was possible at this stage it would confirm my opinion. It seems much more illogical from my standpoint to suppose that if we were able to suddenly tabulate all early T-47 games we would discover that everything I mentioned above got it completely wrong, as did my personal experience. Do you, by the way, have any data of systematic use that suggests they are in a great spot as you claim them to be? I suspect you do not, but as I love using the T-47 and love its model, I welcome any information regarding lists that show its effectiveness if they are out there.

While it is true that absence of use does not constitute evidence of a particular cause, it is true that it is often a reflection of a particular cause. You are claiming that because it doesn't appear at the highest levels of play, the T-47 hasn't been tested. This seems unlikely, especially considering the amount of personal testimony, blogs/videos, and statistical analysis that all indicate the community has spent a great deal of time trying with the T-47. This seems to imply instead that it is indeed a reflection of the T-47's effectiveness relative to its cost. The T-47 and its dearth in competitive play seems, to me, to be analogous to unusually short basketball players in the NBA. Short players aren't prevalent at the highest levels of basketball, not because nobody will give them a shot, but because they experience less success in the myriad opportunities they are afforded at the lower levels, so they don't make the cut to the "final round" very often. In a similar fashion, the T-47 has been tried locally by many in run-ups to tournament play, it generally under-performs its competition, and in the end only a few T-47 lists, if any, make the cut. People were trying it, and it wasn't working out, so they stopped trying to use it when winning actually mattered. Maybe the new pilot will help with that, and maybe it won't, but to keep pretending that it just hasn't been given a fair shake to date seems silly to me. Every person commenting seems to be implying that they have tried it. I know I have, extensively. I have used it in about half of my games (sometimes even two of them) because I love flying it. It has yet to impress me, it generally hinders me, I don't think it is good at all (particularly due to objective problems), but I fly it at home and with friends because it is fun to use. I would never fly it if I were planning on attending a tournament. Now that cover-2 is available to counter DLT-spam I may have to test it some more and see if it is appreciably boosted. Pre cover-2 it was simply not good.

Two things: First, tables such as this often add up to 101% or 99% due to rounding of extremely close numbers. I did not make the tables, though, so I cannot vouch for their complete accuracy. Second, I actually agree with you that the probabilities do not possess a meaningful difference. But there is still a difference, especially when aim is taken into account in a cover 2 situation. As you pointed out, an unmodified roll by each sniper team possesses the same expected raw damage outcome on average (with Imperials skewed ever so slightly more toward the extremes and rebels skewed ever so slightly more toward one hit). Once you modify the roll with an aim, the different probability of each of the rebel dice modifies the outcome slightly more in favor of the Imperials, though, mostly due to the less reliable white die and the effect of re-rolls on it versus the more reliable black dice re-rolls of the imperials. I agree that this difference is not really significant (as mentioned above it is around 3%), but it is present and may be where people get the idea that imperial snipers are "better." In cover 2, aim token situations they are better...just not by very much. 😉 I agree with you that the amount by which they are superior is trivial, while others apparently do not.

I agree completely that the difference is nearly negligible. I was simply noting that in cover two and with an aim (the most common sniping conditions) Imperials do come out slightly ahead, so that may be where people are getting it.

As others have pointed out, however, any player worth their salt who has run sniper teams before will never give you a clean shot at both snipers in one activation. Corner hiding one of the snipers is standard play in every match I have ever seen, meaning you can never kill more than one man from the team in a single activation. It isn't the cover that is relevant here, but the line of sight. You can't hit what you can't see, and that dang second sniper never seems to quite poke his head out!

Assuming an aim and cover two on the target, Imperial snipers actually ARE a bit better, though the difference is slight. The table below is from Never Tell Me the Odds, and details how imps with an aim are slightly (about 3%) more accurate than their rebel counterparts, but their higher variance means they are also ever-so-slightly more likely to whiff completely on a target out of cover. DLT-19x on the left, DH-447 on the right.

I went ahead and fixed that for you...

Compare them to sand, throw a hydrospanner or two, and scream about how much you hate them. I once saw this one guy who did that, and he became crazy powerful and almost ruled the galaxy, so maybe it would work for you as well...

I get that you don't like sprues, but you are portraying them as a severe challenge. They are very easy to snip correctly. I have cut out many pieces from a sprue and have never damaged one, nor have I ever damaged myself. You are making it sound like people are destroying pieces and losing chunks of flesh right and left, which in my experience is simply not true. A tool for snipping pieces off a sprue costs 5 dollars and is as easy if not easier to use than a pair of scissors. In my mind that does not constitute much of a barrier. Is it a bigger barrier? Yes. Is it a significant barrier? No.

At first I thought that perhaps you might mean fleshing out. Then I remembered how bad The Last Jedi was... ...so, yeah, flushing out may be necessary. 😉