I looked around in different forums on here and Gamers, didn't see anything like this, so .....

Gen Con's come and gone, Reginals, Tournaments and Championships played so whats the consensus on where the factions stand? I saw a lot of Sep and Vong squads in my local Reginal and I've seen the discussions on what won in general but is there a feeling on who's moving up/moving down in the pecking order? I'm curious who needs help from the next few V-Sets.

1 Imperial :Thrawn still dominates the scene, and with double ysalamiri they now can repel bastilla.
2 Republic: Many Options as weeks said. Alot of movement and power when played right
3Seps: Lancer is still the gatekeeper to me. Poggle bombs are coming up quickly though to go along with it
4 Old Republic : Bastilla and Aton/ carth kick butt and have very few squads that can get a good hit on them.
5 Sith: as weeks said, but including all of their new commander effects and exar ghost.
6 New Republic: Gaining more options as the game continues. Jaina and some of the new jedi are pretty good. Not just solo charge anymore but not much else either.
7 Rebels: though they have not gained alot to make them more competitive they were the oldest most competitive faction and still have the competitive squads they once had. Pluss the new "Iconic" figures that allow you to swap them.
8 Mandalorian: Getting better than how WOTC left them, but at the same time they need more help. The last set was a big boost for them however.
9 VOng: though the Yommask gave them hope, i beleive that the vset team has kind of left them floating where they are. Nen Yim was a big boost too along with the quednaks, but the fact still remains that they are not tearing up the meta.

I'd seen that many thought the Rebels had sunk quite a bit, and while I never thought the Mandos were never better than mid level, I was under the impression the Vong had stepped up to upper mid range; they sure beat the heck out of me last game; then again the way I rolled, my Grandmother could've beat me with her eyes closed

If we aggregate the six lists submitted so far, including Sashlon and Ultrastar's below, the results are:
1= Republic
1= Imperial
3 Separatists
4 Old Republic
5 Sith
6 New Republic
7 Rebels
8 Mandalorians
9 Yuuzhan Vong



I was keeping stats of the Regionals this year, and the Vong did really well at some of the early Regionals. They won the Missouri Regional with a Nom bomb squad, and two Jedi Hunter squads placed at the Pacific Northwest Regional. In a big NZ tournament (LowerHuttACon in March 2012), Vong squads came in 2nd and 3rd as well. They can be dangerous, but they're limited; the Nom bomb squads are in trouble if the other squad has Lobot and can bring in Momaw Nadon, while the Jedi Hunters squads are super effective in a Jedi heavy meta but struggle against other squad types like shooter based squads. At LowerHuttACon, the other squads in the top 5 were all Mace squads, so it was ideal conditions for the Vong squads to thrive.

I also think the Mandalorians are pretty decent now - the gap between the best faction, and the Mandalorians, who are down in 7th or 8th on peoples' rankings so far, is much narrower than it was before the v-sets, and they can compete against lots of different builds now.

For me as of now its....

1. Separatists
2. Imperial
3. Republic
4. Old Republic
5. Sith
6. Rebels
7. New Republic
8. Mandalorians
9. Vong

The problem is that most Nom Bomb squads are hardly competitive anymore. You can't throw a bunch of 4pt workers at an squad anymore and win. The reason is that most top tier squads have Lobot. It is really easy to bring in Momaw Nadon/Treadwell droid to completely nerf a person's squad. A lot of squads in Gencon also had HK-47 Assasin Droid, who has disruptive and that really hurts Nom Bombs. Maybe if the Vong got a peice that lessened Lobots stranglehold on the faction's best squad build would we see them more in competitive play. As it is now, there are just to many options to counter the Vong Nom Bomb swarm. I have seen a Nom Bomb squad with Cad Bane do well, but that squad is a bit to fragile to withstand other top tier squads.

Battle Ready might be an interesting idea in the Vong.

Here are the average ratings of everyone's opinions so far.

1= Imperial: 1.75
1= Republic: 1.75
3 Separatist: 2.75
4 Old Republic: 3.75
5 Sith: 5.5
6 New Republic: 6.25
7 Rebel: 6.375
8 Mandalorian: 8.125
9 Yuuzhan Vong: 8.75

I'm a little mystified about why the New Republic are so low. With the rise of the Separatists, and probably less Mace around, I think they're strong again. They have lots of useful tools, like Dodonna, Disruptive, sturdy pieces, and good ranged defense (Wedge, stealth on Mara and Ganner, Absorb Energy on Corran), and I think they can deal with a lot of situations.

With those bottom 4 factions, this is what I think (and a lot of it is just me aggregating what other people have said on Bloomilk or on Sith Holonetwork News):

New Republic - I think they can hang with the top five factions just fine, and I'd personally jump them ahead of Sith in the pecking order. They have some really good tech pieces - Dodonna and R2-D2/C-3PO are both great. One thing that was bought up on Sith Holonetwork News last week was that some of their newer pieces, like Corran Horn Jedi Master, might be slightly overcosted. The huge number of Mace squads have been negating Mara Jade Jedi over the past year, but she could be back in action depending on how the meta shakes out. The main thing that the v-sets have given them is more options, so it's not just Ganner/Mara squads the whole time; they have a much deeper bench now, and can build around other pieces like Anakin JM.

Rebel - I'm mainly repeating what Echo24 says, as I don't really play Rebels. According to him, they are squishy, have low attacks, their damage output hasn't kept up with most of the other factions, and they can struggle against Bastila when she cancels out their Commander Effects. Their big hope is to out-tech and out-activate other squads, but even that's hard to do against, for example, a beefy GOWK/Mace squad where they just can't get through their high hits points and defense fast enough. I do like the Red Squadron Ace squads though - we've been seeing a lot of them lately in our local competition, and they've been performing really well.

Mandalorian - I actually like Mandos a lot now - all the four new pieces are a big help, especially Mandalore the Vindicated who's a really beefy Disruptive piece with a lot of damage output. It's hard to make good squads with him though, as most of the good Mando support pieces are relatively squishy like Scouts, Gunslingers, Gunsmiths, and Scientists, and they can't hang in with him for long enough. They're almost exclusively a non-melee faction, whereas most of the factions rated above them have more of a balance of melee and non-melee pieces. But I think they're good enough now to be a threat to most other squads - they've come a long way in the v-sets.

Yuuzhan Vong - their two main squad types both have counters - Nom bombs get pwned by Momaw Nadon and Jedi Hunters are great against Jedi but struggle against most other things. It's a difficult balancing act with Vong, because they're already so good against Jedi that they could end up dominating the meta if they do ever manage to hang in with heavy shooter squads. They might always end up being the low ranked spoiler faction.

I'm sure the design teams are aware that some factions are still lagging - the Rebels, New Republic, and Mandos all got a lot of love last set, and it's entirely possibly that there's still a great Anakin Solo or new Han squad out there waiting to be discovered.

Agreed. Hate squads shouldn't necessarily be competitive against everything. Vong is nearly a hate-faction (against force users). Good to have them to keep Force users from running crazy, but I don't need to see a tier 1 Vong squad.