Beginner's Guide to Competitive Listbuilding Principles

For a lot of players, part of the fun in X-Wing is building your own list. Unfortunately, building a strong list is hard, and it's easy to fall into various traps and build a weak list.

If you are a net-lister, you also need good list-building skills. You will have to decide which list you choose and whether to tweak it.

This article will go over some fundamental list-building principles I've come across. It covers what you should think about when you approach building a competitive list and discusses some common list-building traps to avoid.

Play strong lists

The first advice I have for list-builders is to copy and play the strongest lists. 😛

Wait, this isn't what it looks like, let me explain!

One of the most important skills for list-builders is the skill to figure out whether a list has potential after playing it only once or twice. You don't have time to playtest a list for dozens of games to figure out how strong it is. The worst thing that can happen is you spend a month playtesting a list only to realize it's not very good the week of the big tournament. Once you have this skill, you'll be able to quickly discard the weak lists, giving you more time to playtest and tweak a list with actual potential.

You need to know what it feels like when you fly a strong list. The best way to learn is to feel that power first-hand. You'll then be better equipped to build your own lists. That's why my first recommendation is to fly the strongest lists and see what it feels like.

You have my permission to strike this pose after your first time playing the strongest meta list

Against weaker lists, it should feel like you've got reasonable winning chances when you make a bad decision or have weaker dice. You should only be losing when you both have bad dice and make worse decisions. The game should feel absolutely crushing when you have good dice or make better decisions, where your opponent is completely helpless and they're losing no matter what they do.

Against strong lists, you should be able to come up with a reasonable plan for winning the game before it starts. This plan shouldn't rely on favorable dice or achieving a very specific and unlikely board state. When you have bad dice, it should feel like you can pull the game back to even if you make one great outplay. When you get outplayed, you should still be in a state where lucky dice can bail you out and bring the game back to even.

If you really need this guide, you're probably not great at evaluating list strength (if you're good at that, you probably don't need this guide 😊). You might misjudge how strong or weak your opponent's list is, and you may end up with a false sense of security if you play against a very weak list. In this case, the safest thing can be to remove that element by playing against other strong meta lists which have done well in tournaments.

An astute reader may have noticed that you'll need to be able to judge who had better dice. It's really easy to fool yourself on this, so spend some time on the X-Wing Probability Calculator to develop a better sense for much damage you can expect out of common situations. Remember, it's quite uncommon to get exactly even dice, and it's possible for dice luck to even out over the course of a turn or game (although often it does not). 

Do not focus too much on "synergy"

One of the common list-building traps is "Control-F" list-building. Coined by Swim, a Legends of Runeterra streamer, this is where you blindly go all-in on a synergy or mechanic. For example, General Grievous gets a bonus for not being in his target's firing arc. Outmaneuver gives the ship a bonus for not being in the target's firing arc. It's tempting to put them together because these cards have the same words. Another example is spamming the same ship in efficiency lists.

X-Wing is not a matching game

Control-F list-building isn't always a bad thing. In some cases, it will make sense! For example, it's often a good idea to run many copies of the same generic pilot. There are lists where Outmaneuver on General Grievous may make sense. The problem is this is not a reliable way to build strong lists. It may or may not work, and it can distract list-builders from more effective options.

Start from power, not from countering a list

Another list-building trap I often see is when people build a list with the idea of countering a list. This usually doesn't work out. In a tournament, you're not likely to see a particular list more than once or twice, and you may never see the list you tried so hard to counter. Even when they get their matchup, these "counter" lists often still lose!

The problem is this mindset often gets list-builders focused on the wrong thing. The best counter to a list is a stronger list. That's why "counter" lists often lose to the list they tried to counter: they were built around some gimmick that may be slightly stronger against that list, but overall they are simply weaker lists.

The moment you realize you should have played a bigger dynamite

Instead of building a list to counter a list, you should build a strong list that has reasonable or good matchups against the field.

That doesn't mean you should never think about other lists when list-building! You may want to pay special attention to strong ships that are also good against the meta, or at least not weak into the meta. For example:

• Ships tend to be especially weak against ships with one higher initiative, or against arc-dodgers with the same initiative but a bigger bid.
• More evasive ships (e.g., 3-agility ships, ships with lots of defensive mods) are relatively weaker against more attacks, big attacks, and reliable attacks and are relatively stronger against fewer attacks, smaller attacks, and less-modded attacks.

Once you have a strong list, you can also consider adding some tech choices to improve your matchups against certain lists. But start from building a strong list, not from building a list to counter another list.

Focus on matchups and board states

The most important things to think about when list-building are matchups and board states. As Swim says, the only thing a card can do is take a game that was lost and turn it into a game that was won, or turn a game that was won into a game that was lost.

X-Wing is a game with dice luck, and MOV sometimes matters for making the cut. "Win more" does have some value in X-Wing. Still, when list-building, your primary focus is to turn losing matchups and board states into winning ones while minimizing the amount of your winning matchups and board states that turn into losing ones.

As a quick aside, this skill will also improve your strategic and tactical decision-making while playing the game. You have many reasons to develop this skill!

Here are some common situations to consider when list-building:

• You're facing arc-dodgers that move after you.
• You're facing the strongest jousting list in the meta.
• Your opponent has you flanked.
• You've flanked your opponent, and they can choose which part of your list to turn on.
• Your opponent flies to deny you one of your tricks.
• You've lost one or two of your ships.
• You're down to your last ship or last two cheap ships.

When you consider filling out your squad with extra ships, choosing between different pilots, or adding pilots, you should be thinking about how this changes your winning chances in these situations, and any other common situations you may be facing given the expected meta.

For example, if your list is really strong against jousting lists but weak against arc-dodgers that move after you, you may want to consider spending some points to shore up that matchup. This can be a good idea even if it weakens your matchup against jousting lists a bit. Of course, you should be careful not to tunnel-vision and weaken your good matchups too much for what you gain against weaker matchups.

One of the results of this situation-based analysis is you usually don't want to mix tanky ships and glass-cannon ships in the same list. Your opponent will have an easy time killing your glass-cannon ships first and your tanky ships won't deal enough damage to punish this. Unless you have some way of protecting your glass-cannon ships (e.g., they are very difficult to catch), you should include ships of similar durability-to-damage ratios.

Let's return to that Grievous with Outmaneuver example. Suppose you've got a list with Grievous and a Vulture swarm. If your opponent ignores Grievous and turns on the swarm, Grievous gets double mods while they slowly chew through your Vultures, and you probably win. If your opponent goes after Grievous first, the Vultures may not be able to deal enough damage to punish that hard enough and you'll probably have a good chance to lose.

What happens if you add Outmaneuver to Grievous? Well, your winning situation is even more winning! Now, what happens if they turn on Grievous first? Outmaneuver does nothing, you just handed your opponent more points, and your Vulture swarm has fewer points to spend for offense to punish this. And unfortunately, you don't have a great way to force your opponent to ignore Grievous. Outmaneuver is only a "win more" card in this list and is probably a bad idea unless it's extremely under-priced.

Now, let's consider a list with Grievous, Ensnare Sun Fac, and Ensnare Chertek. If your opponents turn on Grievous, Ensnare Sun Fac and Ensnare Chertek get free rein to tear your opponent's list apart. You're probably winning those games. Your biggest chances of losing are probably when your opponent turns on Sun Fac first and kills him quickly. Outmaneuver can turn those losing situations into winning ones or perhaps even change your opponent's decision of who to attack first, so the upgrade may be a good idea for this list. Of course, you should still consider if there's a better way to spend the points (examples include a bid or Gravitic Deflection on the Nantex, and these will depend on the point cost of the upgrades and the meta).

Remember, even if your list doesn't really need a bid and you have spare points, you don't have to spend them. Since games often end on time, unspent points can be helpful and sometimes the bid will deny your opponent some value. In the Feb 2019 Toronto System Open, I lost my first game by 2 MOV. I'd upgraded a Bandit Squadron Z-95 to a Tala Squadron Pilot with Selfless for 5 points. The Tala died and I didn't use Selfless that game, and the higher initiative didn't matter much either. Adding Selfless with my spare points turned a won game into a lost game. It was still probably the right call over the long run, but you should remember it's not free to spend "spare" points.

Look for value

The best thing you can bring to a tournament is a 240-point list, and the worst thing to do is to bring a 160-point list. As long as the cards aren't perfectly balanced, a keen sense of value is important when list-building.

Don't do this to yourself

There are several common traps you can run into. First, some players try to "chase" value with a weak ship by loading it with upgrades. Unless the upgrade is extremely strong on that ship, usually transforming it into a different ship in some way (examples include Special Forces Gunner for Quickdraw or Advanced Sensors for Guri), adding more upgrades isn't going to fix the ship. If you buy a lemon used car for too much money, adding fancy speakers at fair market value isn't going to get your money back. The solution is to avoid the lemon and buy a good car at a great price.

Second, one of the most common list-building traps is to load too many upgrades on ships. Upgrades are often balanced around a ship that uses them the best, and many are mediocre for their point cost on any ship. Loading your fleet of good cars bought at a great price with speakers at fair market value may not be as good as spending that money on an extra car. You should be especially careful when adding upgrades on cheap ships. The value of most upgrades is multiplicative, which means they are stronger when the ship itself is stronger, but the cost of most upgrades do not scale with the quality of the ship they're equipped on.

Another list-building trap is to run a ship without a staple upgrade. Some ships, like the aforementioned Quickdraw and Guri, depend on having a specific upgrade to be worth their points.

Finally, a trap that often shows up when value isn't considered strongly enough is a list without enough offense. My rule of thumb is to bring at least three ships with 3-dice attacks, or a similar equivalent. 2-dice attacks count for half, and a 4-dice attack counts for 1.5 ships. These ships should also be durable enough to survive one average round of combat. When your list doesn't have enough offense, it often gets hard to play because you can't remove problematic enemy ships (examples include a ship with control elements, or firing arcs to give your arc-dodgers space to breathe) fast enough. This is not a hard rule, especially if your ships are extremely good at arc-dodging, but you should have a very good reason to bring fewer ships.

Unfortunately, outside of playing a bunch, scouring tournament results, or doing lots of math, I'm not sure how to really develop this sense for value. Situational thinking can be one way to approach this. Often, bringing too many inefficient ships or upgrades will ruin some of your matchups for little gain in other situations. Let me know if you have any other ideas!

Conclusions

When list-building, you should be looking to add value pieces to your list, which have a low point cost for the impact they have on the board. As you add ships and upgrades, you should be thinking about your chance of winning in different matchups and board states. You want to add ships and upgrades which flip losing situations into winning ones without flipping too many winning situations into losing ones.

As you list-build, there are many traps to watch out for. Don't tunnel vision on synergies. Build a strong list first, and don't list-build to counter another list. Be very careful to add ships and upgrades that bring more value than they cost, and try to bring enough offense in your list.

Finally, if you haven't done this before, go check out some recent tournament results, pick one of the top-placing lists, and play that a few times. Get a sense for what it feels like to play a strong list. Once you do that, it will guide you in your future list-building. Good luck and have fun!

My E-Wing Recommendations

There seems to be renewed interest in the E-Wing with the latest points drop, and there's been a lot of advice thrown around on how to run them. I thought I'd share my experiences and suggestions flying E-Wings.

I've been running generic E-Wings on and off since shortly before the mid-2019 points update. At first, my list was Crack Shot Wedge, 2x Knave Squadron Escorts with R3 Astromech, and Sheathipede Zeb. After the Knaves dropped by 2 points each, I could fit Leia crew by dropping Crack Shot and downgrading to AP-5. With the latest points update, I think 3x Rogue Squadron E-Wings might be the way to go, along with a cheap filler fourth ship. I still need to test it out, but I think it has the potential to be an A-Tier competitive squad.

What is the E-Wing?

Let's first examine the E-Wing chassis to see what its role is.

The E-Wing chassis is a 3-attack ship that's more durable than X-Wings and B-Wings. Against 3-dice attacks with a single mod, an E-Wing is expected to survive an extra attack compared to the X-Wing and an extra 0.7 attacks compared to the B-Wing without spending mods on defense. The extra durability comes in the form of 3 agility. That means it's more vulnerable to big attacks, it's stronger against weak attacks, it gets large value from focus tokens on defense, and it's more exposed to variance.

The ship chassis ability, Experimental Scanners, is a good offensive ability which gives the ship a chance to have double-mods on your first attack. Having that second mod on a 3-dice attack increases your expected damage from 1.5 to 2 against a 2-agility ship without mods, and from 1.2 to 1.7 against a 3-agility ship without mods. For comparison, double mods is more than half as good as adding a fourth die. A 4-dice single-modded attack averages 2.3 damage against a 2-agility ship and 1.9 damage against a 3-agility ship. It's closer to the damage output of Crack Shot or Juke, which deals 2.1 and 1.9 damage against 2-agility and 3-agility ships without mods, respectively, although Crack Shot is stronger against ships with focus.

There are two downsides to Experimental Scanners. First, you will occasionally miss out on a free target lock when you are too close to a target. This is especially likely to happen if you use an E-Wing to block. Second, it can be partially nullified by your opponent being flying cautiously with the targeted ship. While it is sometimes possible to re-select your target in later turns before engagement, you will still be forced to choose between a priority target which you may have a hard time getting in arc and a more available but less-critical target. Even with these drawbacks, the Experimental Scanners ability is strong.

The E-Wing has good tools for strategic positioning. It has both boost and barrel roll actions. It also has every basic maneuver with only the 1-speed turns being red, and a K-Turn and two S-Loop options for turning around. Further, the boost and barrel roll options can link into a target lock in preparation for the engagement. These options mean the E-Wing has the tools to get where it needs to go before the engagement occurs.

However, the E-Wing does not have great tools for tactical positioning. The ship can't double-reposition. Once engaged, the linked actions lose most of their value. The ship often already has a lock thanks to Experimental Scanners, it's often at Range 1 after repositioning, and it can't link into a defensive action. The base chassis also has low initiative. The high-initiative pilot, Corran Horn, doesn't have a great ability as an ace (namely, something with action efficiency or additional repositioning). The ship probably needs Afterburners to function as an arc-dodging ace, and that's not ideal because pilots cap out at initiative 5 and the ship lacks useful linked actions after repositioning. E-Wings will get some arc-dodging opportunities against lower-initiative ships since they have both barrel roll and boost, but you shouldn't count on them arc-dodging everything as a win condition.

As such, the E-Wing functions most naturally as a premium jouster. It has the maneuverability to reach the ideal position for the engagement. Once the shooting starts, the E-Wing has above-average damage output and durability.

Pilots

The generics come with initiative 2 and initiative 4. The initiative 2 Knave Squadron Escort would probably C-Tier around 53 points and the initiative 4 Rogue Squadron Escort would probably be C-Tier around 56 points. Subtract 5%, 10%, and 15% for B-Tier, A-Tier, and S-Tier respectively.

The currently-released named E-Wing pilots, Gavin Darklighter and Corran Horn, are mostly premium jousters like the generics since their abilities don't affect their roles too much.

Gavin Darklighter's ability is pretty interesting. Because the ability isn't that powerful and because it works on his own attacks, you don't need to use Gavin exclusively with swarms. I estimate the value of the ability at roughly 6 points over a Rogue Squadron Escort even in 3- or 4-ship lists.

Corran Horn is not nearly as strong as his former 1.0 iteration. His double-tap ability is much more situational since it requires a bullseye and he can't run away as easily. In the old days of 1.0, Corran Horn was happy to run away with a focus, an evade, and a shield regen. Today, he no longer has triple mods on defense or the potential to double-reposition. Corran's double-tap ability is only useful when the bullseye shot at the end of the round is more valuable than the shot he'll have next round. I estimate the combination of the initiative bump and the ability is probably worth roughly 8 points on top of the Rogue Squadron Escort, and his role is a (more) premium jouster instead of the points fortress arc-dodging ace he was in 1.0.

Why R3 Astromech?

R3 Astromech is usually a bad card. Most ships want to focus instead of taking a lock, and there's no guarantee they'd have two enemy ships in range to lock or that they survive long enough to use both locks.

The E-Wing chassis solves all of those problems. Experimental Scanners means the E-Wing is guaranteed to get two locks on before the engagement and the E-Wing is durable enough to have a reasonable chance of using both locks before dying.

R3 Astromech grants the ship an extra mod for one attack. As discussed earlier, double mods is slightly worse than Crack Shot against unmodded defenses and significantly worse against modded defenses, but it's easier to benefit from the second target lock than Crack Shot. This is especially true since you gain the benefits again if you can disengage for a turn. Crack Shot is probably worth 3 points, and I estimate R3 Astromech is probably worth around 4 points on the E-Wing.

At first glance, it seems like the R3 Astromech benefit is slightly worse since it's delayed: you only benefit from it over two turns. However, it's actually an up-front benefit in that it almost always guarantees you'll have double mods against an available target on the opening engage. In some cases, the extra damage from the second lock could kill or score half points on that target in the first round, allowing you to comfortably turn on the first locked target next round.

Beyond its mathematical value, R3 Astromech makes flying E-Wings much easier and flying against E-Wings much more difficult. I tested R4 Astromech for a couple games and was struck by how hard it was to choose which ship to lock. I had to think really hard and ended up making some really bad decisions. R3 Astromech can provide a significant mental advantage over the course of a tournament.

The opposite is true for your opponents. With only one lock, you have to announce your target priority. Your opponent can respond by keeping their locked ship safe. With two locks, you can lock a ship on both flanks (e.g., Soontir and Vader against Imperial Aces), or lock both a filler ship and a premium ship against joust + ace lists (e.g., Kylo and a generic TIE against Kylo Generics). It's much harder to keep two ships out of the fight and it means you have a stronger threat of turning your guns on either flank.

Why not R4 Astromech?

Even if you decide not to run R3 Astromech, I would not recommend running R4 Astromech. R4 Astromech is tempting because it turns the 1-speed hard turns white as well as giving the ship blue 2-speed hard turns. An under-stated benefit of R4 Astromech is the blue 2-speed banks. Sometimes, you'll want to turn and move faster than a 1-speed maneuver the turn after being stressed, and R4 Astromech lets the E-Wing to do that.

That said, R4 Astromech is a luxury that usually does not fit on the E-Wing. As premium jousters, E-Wings usually want upgrades that improve their damage output or durability. Blue hard turns can improve damage output and durability if the ship has a good linked action. For example, the TIE Advanced v1 benefits from its blue turns more than the TIE/fo Fighter from its blue turns (except Scorch) because of its linked reposition to focus actions. R4 Astromech really helps Poe Dameron because he wants to be stressed every turn for additional mods and the option to double-reposition. Unfortunately, the E-Wing does not get added value from being stressed since it doesn't have a good linked action, so R4 Astromech doesn't do too much for the E-Wing.

R4 Astromech can also be useful for ships that don't have blue banks or turns to one side. For example, Dengar would love to have R4 Astromech. It's probably also useful for BTL-B Y-Wings. However, not only does the E-Wing already have blue 1 banks, it also has both a K-Turn and two S-Loops to adjust its facing on the turn-around turn so it can most likely use its blue straight options the following turn.

That leaves the 1-hard turns. It's a great maneuver to have, but it's unnecessary. Plenty of jousting ships work fine without the 1-hard turn. With some planning, it's rare that doing a 1-speed hard turn instead of a 2-speed hard turn will make a significant difference in your games.

Overall, I think people tend to overrate the value of having a good dial on jousting ships without linked actions. Most jousting ships can do their jobs as long as they have a high-speed turn-around maneuver (Tallon Rolls don't count), a 1-straight, and a set of banks and turns. Outside of some combo which gives the E-Wing extra power for stress, the R4 Astromech is probably worth only 1 point on the E-Wing.

Other upgrades

As a premium jouster, the E-Wing doesn't need a ton of upgrades to do its job. Outside of R3 Astromech, I'd recommend using spare points to bring better and more ships rather than adding extra upgrades on an E-Wing.

Until Crack Shot goes up to 3 or more points, it's a strong consideration for any small ship with a Talent slot. The E-Wing is no different.

Elusive is OK on the E-Wing, but it competes with Crack Shot and with other ship upgrades. Half of a Shield Upgrade is worth about 3 points on the Rogue Squadron Escort. You can come out ahead if you use it at least twice, but you may have a better place to spend the points. If you bring it, don't choose bad maneuvers to chase its effect.

I've seen people include Fire-Control Systems on their E-Wings. I don't recommend it for a couple reasons (with one exception, see below). First, the benefit itself is marginal without a bonus attack or some reason to keep the lock, such as ordnance or the TIE Advanced x1 ship ability. It only increases your chance of keeping your lock by about 40 percentage points. It's also reasonably common to kill the target in one round with multiple double-modded attacks. Corran has a double-tap ability, but it's not likely to be used frequently enough for FCS to be worth the 2 points. Second, the E-Wing has the option to disengage to re-acquire locks, making it less of a priority to hold on to a lock. 

I'm skeptical about Proton Torpedoes on the E-Wing. It gives you a scary alpha strike, but it's very expensive. You may be better off bringing more and better ships. Advanced Proton Torpedoes is both very situational but also relatively cheap. I think having Advanced Proton Torpedoes is the only case where Fire-Control System could make sense. R3 Astromech is probably an auto-include if you bring torpedoes.

Some other upgrades which IMO aren't great:

• Predator: The benefit is normally lower than Crack Shot, and Predator is uniquely bad on E-Wings because they're likely to have rerolls already.
• Daredevil: The E-Wing is mainly a jouster and not an arc-dodger, so it doesn't get too much value from this.
• Outmaneuver: This is best on super arc-dodgers like Guri, or on very tanky ships like TIE Defenders. The E-Wing is already more of a glass cannon so it's hard to get value from this.

Wingmates

This is the most points-dependent section of this article, so I'm not going to give any specific suggestions. Ideally, you want to run strong ships, and that's going to change with every points adjustment. However, I do have some observations on what types of wingmates the E-Wing likes.

Thanks to its double mods on offense, the E-Wing leans towards being a glass cannon ship with a relatively high damage output for its durability. It's even more of a glass cannon if it takes R3 Astromech. Glass-cannon ships work best with other glass-cannon ships and work poorly with tanky ships that have a relatively low damage output.

The E-Wing has a couple quirks in how it flies. First, it's a ship that wants the option to disengage to reacquire locks. This means it wants wingmates who can also disengage. It's no good if the E-Wings fly off to reacquire locks only for their wingmates to get isolated and destroyed.

Second, the E-Wing likes extra actions but only after the engagement happens. Coordinating a damaged E-Wing gives it focus and evade on defense. Coordinate also gives you opportunities to pick up another set of target locks or reposition with a mod. However, unless you only have one E-Wing in the line of fire, the E-Wing doesn't make good use of coordinate in the first turn of the engagement because it will already have a focus and lock. If you coordinate an evade token on one E-Wing, your opponent will just shoot the other one. That means if you bring a coordinate ship, you want a non-E-Wing ship to get value out of that first turn's coordinate (I used Wedge as my primary coordinate target).

Finally, the E-Wing isn't the ideal blocker. It has an above-average attack that's sacrificed if it blocks and it has poor linked actions after a reposition. Pairing them with cheaper blocking ships can shore up this weakness, or you'll want another way to deal with arc-dodgers like a high-initiative ship.