We played a themed game last weekend, OR vs. Sith and I swear almost nobody used any WOTC pieces except for Uggies and Mice.

I was OR and ran

33 Bastila Shan, Jedi Master
30 Arfan Ramos
28 Mira of Nar Shaddaa
25 Sylvar, Betrayed Jedi
48 Zann Consortium Defiler x2
20 Blizz
15 Momaw

I went 1-2 (1st game I was rusty as heck and rolled my usual; bad. Second game I lost a much closer one and it would've been less than 13pts if he hadn't killed Mira on the last roll. Won the last game ...)

But I digress; I saw a Boba, Lobot and that's about it. I actually miss the innocence of playing with some of those WOTC pieces. The game was so much simpler 8 -10 years ago. I found my "Ultimate Missions" books last night and it made me think about this; have we made the game too complicated? You'd almost be laughed off the map if you only fielded a WOTC squad today.

I love a lot of what the v-sets have done, great how they've managed to make so many competitive factions. However, when I DON'T want to play a competitive game (just wanna play 200 points with my neighbors, friends, family etc.), we usually just break out some of our older favorites that WotC made. Something awesome about just putting out the same squads we did when we started; Gundark 'swarms', Bith BSVs and Fringe scum (Gotal Fringers lol), Darth Vader, Sith Lord who TERRIFIED us back in the day, an X-1 Viper in any given squad, Republic Commandos and General Windu, the old terrible Grievouses (Wheel Bike?) with RotS Bodyguard Droids and whatever Droid support you feel like that day... Even Universe Luke, JM (sometimes against Tsavong Lah and YV Warriors lol). Just whatever pieces were in our limited collections when we stared mostly. Don't worry about Tempo control, no need for lots of override, no stressing over gambit. If we're playing a CASUAL game, we go all out to make it that way lol.

The v-sets in my opinion are the only reason there is a competitive scene for this game now, but anytime I just wanna have a relaxed casual game, they are a bit difficult to keep up with, having so many different options each with so many different and new abilities, which takes away a lot of the 'relaxation' and 'fun' for such matches. So in those cases, we rarely pull out any v-set stuff.

So, v-sets: Awesome! Casual games WITHOUT v-sets: Simpler and ALSO awesome. Sure, the teams have less variance, and one may be better than the other, but there's also less unwinnable matchups (less rock paper scissors etc.)

Just my opinion

One thing we DO use v-sets for in casual games sometimes is pick one of our favorite really powerful V-set pieces (usually with a good CE or whatever) to lead an army of some of our older scrubs, so then the squad has some more function, but it's just v-sets we're more familiar with and still mostly simple WotC stuff so it doesn't mess with the flow and casualness of the match. Sometimes we even each pull out one EPIC piece

I think if you're playing or and sith, you are always going to see vset dominated squads at this point. I think it would be a different story in factions that were more favoured by wotc. Factions like Imperials, rebels, and nr tend to have a healthy helping of wotc pieces in their current top squads.

From NZ Championships top 4 this year:

Winner - Imperial - only v-set pieces were Imperial Governor (23 points), Marn Hierogryph (21 points), Boba AfH (50 points). So 106/200 points were WOTC.

2nd place - NR - only v-set pieces were Luke GH (48 points) and Marn Hierogryph (21 points), so 131/200 points were WOTC.

Semi-finalist - Imperial double swap - only v-set pieces were Imperial Governor, Boba AfH and Mira (28 points), so 99/200 points were WOTC.

Semi-finalist - Imperial Daala - I can't remember exactly what was in the squad, but I think it included Daala (27), GARY (16), Pellaeon (16), Needa (11), so 130/200 points were WOTC. I'm not totally sure about Pellaeon, which would make the WOTC proportion even higher.


GenCon top 4 looked a bit different - the Sith squad in the top 4 would have been almost entirely v-set.

I think the high activations were the biggest problem with last year's meta, and tempo control and Gha Nachkt's mouse dumps were the dominant mechanics, along with movement breakers.

Power creep has probably been a little more than desired in the v-sets, but the top WOTC squads, or slight variations on them, can compete if they get the correct meta. I still think there's been way less power creep from MotF to the most recent v-sets, than there was from Rebel Storm to MotF, and we're now 5 years into v-sets, so it's a similar time frame.

One thing that v-sets have done is create more extreme builds - which I guess isn't that surprising when you're trying to add more and more builds to the meta, some end up more extreme.

I use WotC pieces too, just not the cards