What beats a Nantex swarm? (tournament analysis)

[5050Saint 2,168]

6 minutes ago, topacesteve said:

they re killers even with the cost upgrade to 35 (the pestanaki aces)

I imagine that they are still good, but have been downgraded to manageable. They had somewhere around an 80% winrate in galaxies if mirror matches were excluded. If that is dialed back to around 60%, that is fantastic.

5 PWAs with Crack Shot seems much more beatable for plenty of lists, and 6 Stalgasian Hive Guards with no talents has a greater chance to be initiative killed by a wealth of I4's that just couldn't compete against the PWAs.

Overall, Nantex feel like a much more reasonable match to come against.

[Sciencius 1,079]

5 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

I imagine that they are still good, but have been downgraded to manageable. They had somewhere around an 80% winrate in galaxies if mirror matches were excluded. If that is dialed back to around 60%, that is fantastic.

5 PWAs with Crack Shot seems much more beatable for plenty of lists, and 6 Stalgasian Hive Guards with no talents has a greater chance to be initiative killed by a wealth of I4's that just couldn't compete against the PWAs.

Overall, Nantex feel like a much more reasonable match to come against.

The nantex are indeed difficult to price. Consider: 
 

Stalgasin 33pt, I3, 2 attack, 3 agility, 4hull, no shields. 

Baron of the Empire 28pt, I3, 2 attack 3 agility, 2 hull, 2 shields. 

- The Stalgasin used to cost the same, and while self-tractor/rotate is powerfull the Tie advanced v1 has a better dial and action economy. Right now I would never fly 6 Stalgasin, when I can fly 6 Barons with Crack+ FCS and bigger bid to let me fly last. There are also 6 ship A-wing lists and the 2 Fang+4 Scyk tractor/ion cannon lists I would rather fly. I think the Stalgasin should have been costed at 31pt to allow for a bid or some of the 1-2pt upgrades. 

- The Petranaki is even more difficult as it was the only 6 ship I4 list, its initiative made it be the top dog, so it needed to be 34pt at least. However in the 5 ship category you now have a lot of other contenders including 5 resistance A-wing ace-lists with a higher or equal initatiave, better chassis that allows you to almost freely rotate your arc (stress-cost but with that dial who cares) and powerfull pilot abilities + heroic. Here the Petranaki does not come out on top. 

I think the answer here is to add the modification slot to the I4 Petranaki, lower its cost by 1pt to 34pt, and lower the price of Gravitic Deflection from 5pt to 3pt. That opens up some interesting possibilities for a 5 ship Nantex list:

Petranaki(34pt)+Targeting computer(3pt)+Gravitic(3pt)=40pt. 
Targeting computer increases the action availability to closer match the Tie v1/A-wing and Gravitic helps when your agility gets reduced to 2 when self tractored.

But also opens up for afterburners for that angeled boost to line up that bulls-eye, or get out of jail. And opens of for combinations of Crack/Predator/Marksmanship/+Gravitic/+bid, which will help it not being crushed, as trust me a 5 ship of 4 hull list with little tools is going to have a tough time staying alive.

Edited November 3, 2020 by Sciencius

[DR4CO 6,234]

39 minutes ago, Sciencius said:

Stalgasin 33pt, I3, 2 attack, 3 agility, 4hull, no shields. 

Baron of the Empire 28pt, I3, 2 attack 3 agility, 2 hull, 2 shields. 

- The Stalgasin used to cost the same, and while self-tractor/rotate is powerfull the Tie advanced v1 has a better dial and action economy. Right now I would never fly 6 Stalgasin, when I can fly 6 Barons with Crack+ FCS and bigger bid to let me fly last. There are also 6 ship A-wing lists and the 2 Fang+4 Scyk tractor/ion cannon lists I would rather fly. I think the Stalgasin should have been costed at 31pt to allow for a bid or some of the 1-2pt upgrades. 

6x Stalgasins with Predator would still have enough alpha-strike to make every single i1-2 pilot unplayable by simply threatening the matchup.

The Nantex is just such a horrible mess of a ship, with so many game-breaking mechanics, that it will only ever have 2 modes: unplayable trash, or oppressive monster. I don't believe it will ever find a home as "just another ship".

41 minutes ago, Sciencius said:

I think the answer here is to add the modification slot to the I4 Petranaki, lower its cost by 1pt to 34pt, and lower the price of Gravitic Deflection from 5pt to 3pt.

Adding the mod slot back to any of these pilots just means we get to "enjoy" Ensnare + Afterburners. I'd rather not have to deal with a ship that can straight-9 and then Tractor me.

[dezzmont 690]

40 minutes ago, DR4CO said:

The Nantex is just such a horrible mess of a ship, with so many game-breaking mechanics, that it will only ever have 2 modes: unplayable trash, or oppressive monster. I don't believe it will ever find a home as "just another ship".

 

This. Sometimes its not a pricing issue where there is a sweet spot. Sometimes a ship just does so little that unless you price it at a ridiculous rating it won't see play because you can't reasonably assume it will ever create value and it needs to be 'more than free' to justify risking MoV, and sometimes a ship or pilot does something so absurd that it totally warps the game and doesn't really allow interaction the second it becomes close to viable.

The main thing they wanted to experiment with using the Nantex was post-manuver options that didn't allow opponent interaction. This, as it turns out, is a super dead end design, turns out that stuff needs to live in the systems phase or allow opponents to block it to be fun. I suspect FFG was kind of... cautiously in that almost all elements that relate to this aspect of the Nantex are self contained: Ensnare may as well have 'Nantex Only' on it, and if the reposition ends up being too strong, the Nantex isn't an iconic ship anyone would be super sad to see go away.

[hargleblarg 611]

1 hour ago, Sciencius said:

Stalgasin 33pt, I3, 2 attack, 3 agility, 4hull, no shields. 

Baron of the Empire 28pt, I3, 2 attack 3 agility, 2 hull, 2 shields.

This is a false equivalency. The v1 and the nantex are wildly different chassis. Those 2 attack dice on the Nantex are attached to a very flexible turret, to say nothing of the 3 dice bullseye. Their dial is actually incredible when you consider they never have to stress themselves.

If anything, the most comparable ship is the rz2. They have similar time on target with their mobile arcs, though the rz2 is still more suited to fly-bys while the nantex specialize in knife fighting The I3 rz2 is 34pts (unless you take the named I3. Rz2 pricing is stupid). So you could make a case for bumping the Stalgasin up even further to 34. Most people would agree that the rz2 is a decent chunk undercosted, so a very similar nantex coming in slightly cheaper is probably fair. An I1 Nantex at 31/32 would let you mass 6 with upgrades, but all ships are different and I find it interesting that there are no I2/1 generics. Interesting enough to be worth not changing.

[5050Saint 2,168]

1 hour ago, Sciencius said:

I think the answer here is to add the modification slot to the I4 Petranaki, lower its cost by 1pt to 34pt, and lower the price of Gravitic Deflection from 5pt to 3pt. That opens up some interesting possibilities for a 5 ship Nantex list:

Petranaki(34pt)+Targeting computer(3pt)+Gravitic(3pt)=40pt. 
Targeting computer increases the action availability to closer match the Tie v1/A-wing and Gravitic helps when your agility gets reduced to 2 when self tractored.

But also opens up for afterburners for that angeled boost to line up that bulls-eye, or get out of jail. And opens of for combinations of Crack/Predator/Marksmanship/+Gravitic/+bid, which will help it not being crushed, as trust me a 5 ship of 4 hull list with little tools is going to have a tough time staying alive.

The problem with the mod slot is afterburners allowing a 5 forward + boost + pintpoint tractor. Not something that can be balanced well. Especially when the 9 forward can drop a tractor onto the enemy.

I'm with @DR4CO. The Nantex needs addressed on a different level than points or slots. Pinpoint Tractor Array needs an errata to say "fully execute" likely to be able to properly balance the chassis.

[Spinland 320]

6 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

Pinpoint Tractor Array needs an errata to say "fully execute"

This.

[theBitterFig 11,640]

13 hours ago, 5050Saint said:

I'm with @DR4CO. The Nantex needs addressed on a different level than points or slots. Pinpoint Tractor Array needs an errata to say "fully execute" likely to be able to properly balance the chassis.

I mean yes, but I think the Nantex should still start at 32 points.  I don't think anything should be 6 per list with 3 red dice and Crack Shot.

[dunhop 165]

The Nantex is by far my favorite ship in X-wing so far. I love the creative maneuverability the designers gave it, but I will agree that they might have pushed it a little too far with not including "fully execute a maneuver". This is an easy errata that has been asked for repeatedly by both fans of the ship and those that hate it (I'm sure it will eventually happen). I appreciate the designer's reluctance to make changes outside of points and mod slots, but this is one of those things that should change because of its negative affect on the game-state.

I doubt this ship will ever be "just another ship" because of the uniqueness of its design and its reliance on the highly debated tractor mechanic (big fan of the spend the tractor token to move an enemy ship theory). I just hope it can get to the point where people aren't walking away from the table once they see it get placed.

The points feel like they are right now. I was having success with the Nantex before the points change so I didn't see a need for a change, but a couple extra points are welcome. The drastic drop was a mistake. They have fixed that mistake. Time to move on. Gravitic Deflection still feels over-costed. I haven't used Ensnare since hyperspace was introduced (and probably wont any time soon). That will probably never find a decent price point until the Tractor mechanic sees some more changes.