The Midwest Scrubcast

The Midwest Scrubs are here to reveal some official misinformation on how many points FFG's recently revealed ships will cost. How much will Jango be? How many Brutes will be able to fit in one list? Brought to you courtesy of Mark Sandford's X-Wing Cost Prediction AI. https://midwestscrub.wordpress.com/2020/06/11/predicting-pilot-costs-with-the-power-of-ai/

This week we're following up with and/or diving deeper into some recent conversations from the blog about theoretical ship changes that Matt proposed for the StarViper and the E-Wing. This format seemed like a good one for clarifying some of our positions on the changes, as well as evaluating some other alternative suggestions we got from the community. Original articles are here:  https://mi...

The scrubs start off discussing the considerations for handling the cautious return of in-person X-Wing. Completely unrelatedly, we also discuss Things We Learned By Playing Weird Creative Lists in TTS League.  Timestamps: [00:01:00] In-Person X-Wing | [00:18:00] Things We Learned in TTS League

Arch Alliance's Mark Sandford returns to the podcast to share a little project he's been working on. What a relief, actual X-Wing content that the pandemic hasn't put a damper on! Mark is trying to use computer brains to analyze X-Wing pilot costs, and it might reveal some good-value pilots or even give us a window into the future... If you want to see the AI model behind all this for yourself, yo...

Nope, it's just about a bunch of scrubby Star Wars fans having fun. With so little excitement on the X-Wing scene, we'll just ramble for a while about how much we miss all of you, and then critique the last season of Clone Wars. This is fine.  

With COVID-19 preventing a lot of table time (not to mention in-person recording - sorry about any quality issues!) the scrubs are focusing more on the list-building end of things for this episode. Join us as we delve into the Astromech slot. Will we come up with a reason to use any of these faction-specific named droids that don't see meta table time?  Timestamps: [00:05:30] Ships with Astro...

Since Adepticon is on all of our scrub minds, we decided to take this episode to focus on tournament prep and etiquette for big events: an especially important subject given the recent spread of COVID-19. 

Emily did some math trying to compare base ship stats across all 7 factions, and she made her dubious co-hosts talk about it with her! But don't worry, we didn't spend the whole hour rattling off numbers and discussing the relative merits of the factions - there's some Boba talk and a roundtable on "how many times do you test a list before you decide if it works" in here too. The stat sheet we wer...

Let loose without a responsible adult in the room, the guys have some conversations about...things. Something about the TIE/ba, something about Hyperspace...I'm not even going to timestamp this, have fun!

Special guest Mark Sandford of Arch Alliance joins the cast to talk about recruitment and community growth as we break down the results of our recent "Why Do You Play X-Wing" poll. A visual representation of the results is available here on the blog: https://midwestscrub.wordpress.com/2020/01/29/poll-results!-why-do-you-play-x-wing?/ Timestamps: [00:02:00] Poll Results: Why did you start playing X...

The cast reminisce about the previous year, and air their joys and grievances about the recent rules update. Gas clouds have consequences for players! Nantex have consequences for rules references! Timestamps: [00:04:00] 2019 Retrospective - Bests and Worsts of the Year | [00:44:00] Some opinions on the Jan 2020 rules changes

Special guest Mark Myers returns to help us ramble around the topic of two-ship lists. Second Edition hasn't exactly encouraged low ship counts, but several of our cast members have spent a lot of time trying to succeed with only two ships on the table. Is it really nothing but pain? Is there a place for it in Second Edition? Does double-repositional ace play constitute an NPE? The answers to thes...

The cast ventures deep into the darkest depths of metawing to talk about some ships that have been chronically under-performing throughout Second Edition. Why do they suck? And what if anything might revive them? Timestamps: [00:03:00] General Impressions | [00:04:30] Bottom 5 Countdown to the Worst! | [00:54:30] Worst Performers per Faction | [01:07:00] Honorable Mentions of Terribleness To see t...

Special guest and fellow Arch Alliance member Mark Myers joins the cast to take on some topics that hit close to home for him and (most of) the rest of us. Where do you find the balance between fun and winning, especially as a competitive player?  Timestamps - Self-imposed restrictions: Mark [00:01:45], Matt [00:12:50], Dan [00:22:15], Clint [00:30:10], Emily [00:45:00]. Flying what you love...

The cast visits a few more hot topics in X-Wing game mechanics, and then joins the rest of the world in giddy fangirling over Aces High (which, it turns out, is a really enjoyable format for local casual tournaments). SPOILER WARNING: stop at the hour mark if you don't want to hear about the Mandalorian. Timestamps: [00:01:00] Sense and Perfect Information | [00:29:00] Bidding | [00:41:00] Final S...

Fresh from a good showing by Arch Alliance at the St. Louis Grand Championships, the cast members report back on Warfaire Weekend. Special guest Tim Oursler fills in for Matt Cary, who lost his voice after co-commentating on the Gold Squadron stream all day Saturday (no big deal).

The Scrubcast team comes together to question all of FFG's life choices. Or a few of the more contentious ones anyway. We tried to keep it as low sodium and level-headed as possible, focusing on logical arguments and well reasoned suggestions for improvement. Did we succeed? Judge for yourself! Topics covered: [00:02:00] Gas Clouds || [00:19:00] "Fully" Execute || [00:32:00] Regen || [00:52:00] Fo...

Matt Cary reports back from World's, the surprising results of the top 8 are analyzed, and Dan fills us in on his run to the final table of the Springfield, IL Hyperspace. [00:01:00] Matt's report | [00:27:00] Top 8 | [1:00:00] Springfields

[Please excuse our sub-par audio quality; we promise it gets better in future episodes!] The Midwest Scrubcast members introduce themselves, discuss what makes a scrub and how to (try) not to be one, and talk lists for the upcoming Hyperspace in Springfield, IL. Timestamps: [00:01:20] Scrubcast host introductions | [00:05:45] Ways to scrub off scrubiness | [00:30:00] Springfield, IL Hyperspace lis...