Whenever the Old Republic faction comes up people always mention Master Thon and how he is a good movement breaker for the faction. My question is, Really?

Lets break Thon down for a minute.

First off his stats are pretty good

150 HP
20 DEF
15 ATT
20 DAM

really high HP, standard Jedi Defense and Damage and a good +15 Attack.

On his SA's he packs

Unique
Melee
Twin
Charging assualt +10
Light Tutor
Mount

Twin is good that means he can always move and do two attacks. And when combined with Charging assault +10 it means he can always move and do up to 50 damage. Not amazing for 64 points but its not horrible.

Light Tutor means a lot less in OR then it does in say Rebels or Republic. Republic has a fun chain you can build with Dark Woman and Qui-Gon JT. Pick a scrub, train him up, now he's awesome. It carries much less value in OR but giving pieces like Bastilla JM another fp for meditation seems somewhat useful.

I'll get to mount in a moment.

Force Powers
Force 2 (good) Renewal 2 (OH, nice) Master of the force 2 (Excellent)

Force Defense
Lightsaber Defense
Force Repulse 4

now Force Defense is excellent. cancelling something from 6 away is always a good thing. Lightsaber defense comes standard nowadays and is an excellent power. Repulse 4 is awesome! a bunch of dudes try and pound on Thon and he can push all of them off him and away.

So with all these abilities he should be awesome right? Not really IMO. Thon suffers from an issue that has nothing to do with his abilities. Thon is bad due to one issue, its almost an issue with the game and not with him. Thon is a Large Base. Now if your used to RPG's like I am, being Large is a HUGE (yay puns!) advantage. You get reach, more damage, and have a better STR overall. However being Large in minis is almost certain doom.

Take for example on most of our maps their are 3 square hallways. You have some guys that Thon can get to but you also have an uggie in the middle of that 3 square hallway. Thon now has to attack that uggie in order to get to your guys. Thon also doesn't have a higher speed then normal. So that means he is stuck moving 12 when he is attacking, or spending force to move faster (up to 16 squares).

The arguement here is "Well duh Weeks, stick a shooter on Thons back! No more uggie blocking issues!" While true you can use it that way, remember how Mount works. If Thon can be targetted your shooter can be too. So Thon, being Large and thus easier to target is now carrying a shooter on his back who is now much easier to shoot. But wait!, theres more. That shooter also can't get off Thon's back until Initiative. So if you have an opportunity to run Thon in and do damage your also setting yourself up to lose that shooter Thon is carrying by exposing them to the fight. Thon is built to be a melee beast, shooters are not.

So for example you have Soldier Carth on Thon's back. Thon runs in to do some damage on an enemy beat. Now Carth can be Targetted by your opponents full force and his only benefit to riding Thon is cover. So Mount is best used to haul something like a Jedi Seer. You run up to Thon and the Seer gets a free whack at you. Still not as good as hauling a shooter but you take what you can get.

Next up. Thon's force powers. Thon has renewal 2 and master 2. Those are both great. But say you need to get Thon's slow butt into battle. So you spend a couple force points. Most games last less then 8 rounds (or even less then that) so if you engage in round 3 you have 8 force if you havent spend any. Or if you have your down to around 6 which is more likely. Thon has only a 20 Defense so most shooters will be able to get damage on him. So you spend a few points on defense here and there and now your down some force. Ok so its thon's turn and, crap another uggie in the way. Use your shooter to kill the uggie and thon runs in. Now you can Repulse or go for damage on something. If you repulse your probably out of force points, or if you attack your only targeting one piece and doing max 70 damage (asuming bastilla is active).

So you choose repulse and wipe out all those blockers. Now you have 0 force and you lose Thon. Or you choose attack and do 70 damage to one of my guys. I shoot you back without fear of reprisal because now youve burned your shooter just to get Thon past one of my guys. Or earlier in the round you could use Thon to repulse my one uggie to get passed him. See where I'm going here? no matter what you choose Thon is out of Force Points.

So effectively, Thon does up to 70 damage on his turn for 64 points. That's if you spent the 33 for bastilla which puts you at 97 points out of the gate. He can only move 12 and is Large, so any rough terrian or cover slows him down even more due to him taking up 4 squares. Mount either gets another melee piece into play (which if your running another good melee piece your build is around 130+ by this point) or gets a shooter killed by exposing him. Also by using Mount your telling your opponent to not worry about Repulse for a round. Your not going to damage the guy Thon is carrying. Especially when your only getting fodder kills for it.

Thon's force gets used to either get him into play and actually fight stuff or to keep the zillions of shots directed at him from sticking. Again Large base in minis = doom.

All of this data I'm come across playing with or against Thon. I've yet to win a game while playing him, and I'm unbeaten vs him. Any 64 point beat that gets beaten because he cant move around an uggie in a large hallway I'll pass on. Even if that werent the issue 50 damage on his own is pretty poor. For 64 points I want a little more pull from a piece then one I can run for in the 40s.

I really couldn't figure out why I disliked Thon so much, but speed 6 and Large base is the issue. I can't see myself ever playing Thon again with pieces like Kavar, Vandar, Belth, and Nomi around.

Thon was a good try for something differant. But in practice he just doesn't hold up.

Agreed!

He should have had Trample.

Shame really, as he is a neat piece, but can't argue with the above points.

Anyone ran him with a mouse on his back so he is always in range of the senator for extra attacks?
Cloaked ally on him? (Genoharadan maybe?)

Has anyone tried putting Momaw Nadon on his back? He has stealth, and can clear out any blockers up to 6 squares away - although of course, all you need to do to counter that is to put a blocker 7 away.

And there should totally be a Special Ability called Trample! Like you can walk over a 10 hp piece and remove it from the board. I'd like to see a large or huge piece with Stable Footing and Trample.

From the same set, the Leviathan is much worse off than Thon too - huge base, lower defense, no defensive abilities.

Cool, I didn't realise you couldn't War Throat from up there.

Awesome breakdown. This is the kind thought that should go into making all minis/characters. Thon wouldve been an amazing continuale viable option for OR sqauds, had they had this critique in his making/development

uggy demos! first they defeat Bastilla!
NOW they hinder Thon!
is they anything these lil' pig-men can't do?
I heard a rumor on Bespin, that some ugnaughts can blow open doors.
all this with a +0 attack

All this fuss over a talking dinosaur. Just because LFL approves it into creation, doesn't mean you have to accept it.

The large base issue is definitely something WOTC created, but maybe in the future specific characters could have abilities that allow them to deal with low Hp characters without wasting an attack. Maybe something like the burst lightning on Maladi or a cleave like ability that allows a character to defeat a low Hp piece but then continue to move and end with an attack.

Personally I have been disappointed with large base pieces since Maul on speeder was made so it be great if they could be made to be more competitive without altering the basic rules.

If it's any consolation, the original design of Thon was something like an 80+ piece. My main job on him was to pair him down to a reasonable cost while attempting to maintain his main qualities. I also am pretty sure I was the one who came up with and wrote the rules for mount (with Scott's help as always).