to the playtesters. Without them, this piece would not be done yet.

Considering Anakin is a melee duelist I do not see any reason why normal djem so couldn't be on there if Soresu was not Mastery. but if this piece is made for the purpose of destroying shooters chances, than it has done it's job ;)
I think that with Anakin in the mix a tad more offense is warranted, since he is, after all, Anakin

I love that the meta is trying to let melee users have a strong place.

My biggest issue is this. I am facing Anakin (on the piece), and am shooting Anakin. Anakin does not have Soresu Style Mastery...

My other issue is this
Obi-Wan: "Hey, Anakin, hold my hand we are about to jump exactly 25 feet."


I love love love RDE!! Standard has done a good job with that and with Teamwork, Kind of like Legacy's Attuned with the Force, which is one of my favorite ideas. Love it!

I also enjoy the Sweep ability on him, Fits nicely!

all the points brought up here, and many more were discussed. lots of suggested iterations. However, there was a very specific intent with this piece as Weeks pointed out so the end result is more towards cost and gameplay than theme.

It was competitive against top squads even when map was heavily against it. It does have several Achilles heels and it will be interesting to see if it has the intended effect of the meta in next years regional season.

In sealed, you get this piece, you probably win.

If it helps think of the duo as still really young Anakin. He's just sticking next to Obi because he's learning still. Once we dropped djem so that's how I imagined them.

It would be nice to have an inside the mind of the designers that included all the pertinent content in one package.
Perhaps the heated debate could be edited, but it does make reading Obi/Ani's development really exciting.

As you can see already in this thread, there are differing opinions on many aspects of this piece. It is an extreme piece, there is no doubt about that. That tends to cause polarizing opinions. Some will completely love this piece. Others will absolutely hate it. Thus is the nature of minis design in general, and the more a piece pushes the envelope, the more that viewpoints will be opposing.

Effects on the meta are always very hard to predict.

Will people play this piece? I have no doubt.

Will it dramatically shift the meta? Remains to be seen.

I am genuinely interested to see in what ways this piece does effect the meta.

There are several other pieces in the set that directly and subtly aid melee. So if a shift in that direction happens, it will be hard to tell how much inpact each specific piece has.

This piece was extremely hard to try and get balanced. It's true that it was playtested many times, but that was over the course of many many iterations. The final version was playtested a few of times. And as always, nobody knows what the best squad with Ani-Wan (Or is it Obi-Kin?) is yet. I suspect there are synergies out there not yet explored. And it's doubtful there will be ONE best build. Certain builds will be dominant against certain squad types and not as effective against others.

Map rolls will loom large when playing this figure, or against it. Some maps put them at a huge disadvantage, being a large base melee piece. Other maps allow them to use their large base and insanely good defense as a big advantage.

I do like how excited many people are about this piece. If it reinvigorates community members that have been waining, than that is certainly a good thing. Though this piece will undoubtedly turn some people off, it's all of our hopes that it is less than the number of people it excites.

I truly am fascinated to see how this piece is played, how it's combated, and what effect it has. You get to a certain point designing any piece (especially ones where the envelope is being pushed) where you just have to let go and release the fig and see what happens.

There are several pieces in vset 10 along with this one that I am axiously awaiting to see how they are recieved. The true indication will be over the next several months to a few years before we can really see. Hindsight is always 20/20, but accurately predicting future metas and the effect of extreme pieces is nebulous at best.

Can't wait to see what the future brings.

I think that ani-obi will be helpful for melee but shooters are so much better then melee it will not fix the issue we have in our game. Plus they cost so much you will have to choose between door control or support units.

I like what David and the design team have done here despite the fact that the squad that I ran in NY is a shooter squad with no force users. Having viable jedi squads in competitive play again is important. (Even if it sends me back to the drawing board lol.)

Keep in mind that when designing a piece for competitive play that sometimes theme and flavor must take a back seat to playability. I'd much rather see a piece like this that doesn't quite hit the mark thematically but puts jedi in the mix of things. Theme and flavor priorities are just fine in other formats.

One more comment about flavor:
Anakin was a practitioner of the Shien Style (free LS Reflect to send 10dmg back to the shooter). The designers thought that giving the Duo SSM -and- Shien would've been too much, which is how Ranged Defense Expert was born, because it represents the Shien abilities that Anakin brought to the table. So really, RDE is quite flavorful...it's a reflection (pardon the pun) of Shien Style, which Wookieepedia says that Anakin practiced.

Furthermore, RDE is a cool ability that can be used again, and that's always a bonus.