Hi,

A couple of my friends and I used to play during the first 3-4 expansions. Unfortunately I can't find much on what the best squads were at the time. Does anyone have any links/info to successful teams from this era? I know this is prior to a lot of the "better" figures being released, but we're interested in buying some minis and playing again.

My background is competitive tcgs, so I'm used to finding a lot of data on how metagames evolved from set 1 - current, but given the fact that SWM is dead and gone now... Makes this a little challenging.

Any help is appreciated!

That's really interesting. I joined after this. Hard to imagine the game without Mas, and swap squads with no CE extenders.

Just looking through the first 4 sets, Doombot and Aurra Sing, and thrawn stand out as the most competitive options. As Hutt's said, R2 is still an auto include for the republic faction.

Dead is a relative term. This community still plays. Online tournaments throughout the year. And gencon championship every year.

Those articles are exactly what I’m looking for. Let me know if you can locate them. :)

I’ve had my eye on Boba for sure. Will try and look up some of the other figures you mentioned too. I can just barely picture what those minis look like.

Back during that time, the game was 100 points, so there wasn't as much variety since you couldn't fit more than 1 big guy or 2-3 mid-range characters into the squad, but 2 main squads dominated.

HAL (Han Solo, Aurra Sing, Lobot) and Operation Dirtbag (Boba Fett, Aurra Sing, R2 Astromech, Filler).

Accurate Shot and Override were much more powerful in the early days of the game and a squad without access to one or the other struggled in the competitive scene. As such, the game revolved around 3 core shooters, Boba Fett, Aurra Sing, and Han Solo (Both versions), as not only could they consistently hit their targets, they had free range of who to hit. Even the big Jedi like Mace Windu and Vader struggled heavily as by the time they could catch the shooters (if they even could), they'd be down half or more of their health and would still need 2-3 rounds to kill the enemy. Additionally, because initiative rules at the time had the first phase moving 2 minis instead of the 1 nowadays, a player with those squads after winning initiative, would be able to shoot and run with little fear of retaliation or unleash a massive amount of damage and cement victory.

It was the release of the 5th set that really shifted the meta, as with it, 3 big gamechanging pieces came out: The Ugnaught Demolitionist, Mas Amedda and the Jedi Weapons Master. The Ugnaught gave cheap door control to everyone which allowed other factions to be able to play without being as afraid of a lockout loss. Mas Amedda's Booming Voice made spacing less of a concern and allowed players to better maneuver their squads without having to keep linchpins in danger. Finally, the Weapons Master was a happy accident; Originally designed as a unique rare, Cin Drallig, the Weapons Master got turned into an uncommon, but did not get recosted for losing Unique. This led to a low-cost melee unit that both had survivability and damage potential and could have multiples on the field; He basically obsoleted almost every melee unit from the previous sets. However, it was needed, as with the shooter heavy meta, melee units were just glorified meatshields, taking up shots so the more competent fighters could kill without taking damage back. From then on, melee units were much more aggressively costed as they needed to compete with the JWM both in combat and appeal, creating the lovely side effect of making them viable in competitive play.
The other big shaker with CotF is that the game scene shifted from 100 points to 150. This allowed players to have more tech to make some good combos and also to not just revolve around 1-2 characters doing everything.