It went undefeated at the Owensboro regional in all 7 rounds, with a field of 30 players from six different states attending.

A special ability that steal's the commander effects of the other team? lol, yeah that would be awesome.

If you don't like Dodonna, then put an accurate shooting bounty hunter on him and kill him in the first two rounds, it's pretty simple folks.

If you don't like Rieken, then it becomes VERY simple: You run NR with disruptive from 2-3 pieces (Kyle, Han, etc) I shoot you, I evade, no you don't, sith spit!, yeah that's right you sit still and take my shots.

What about an ability like this: "Enemies within 12 squares may only be activated if at least one other piece is activated during the same phase, unless a Commander Effect or Special Ability prevents them from doing so or they are the only character left to be activated in the squad."

Basically, put it on something cheap, and something with low HP, but word it so that it would have to be run near the front of the squad in order for it to work. Would make it so that opponent's would have to activate two pieces if they wanted their melee beatstick to be able to attack. Isn't a perfect solution, and perhaps encourages tempo control squads to play too defensively. Just another idea though, and perhaps something to tweak a bit.

I still feel that the Sith, Vong, and Mando factions have bigger problems to deal with than tempo control though. Dean, I see your point now about the difference of being out-activated by 2 vs. by 10. I still think that point has a minimal enough impact that removing Dodonna from the game entirely isn't necessarily the right answer. I still think Rebels and NR without Dodonna will come out on top of Sith/Vong/Mandos in most matchups, but it's because of other factors, not Dodonna's influence. OR suffers from some similar issues too, but Lord Hoth's CE helps with it a bit.

As others have pointed out, Rieekan is quite obviously not the biggest issue. On the one hand, it's caused Melee to be a bit more prevalent in the game, which is fine with me, honestly. And most NR squads are running around without Wedge, so there's further proof that Evade/Mobile isn't the be-all-end-all. Of course, I think both Luke RC and Ganner obviously have a bit to do with that too.

the vong are actually a tier 1 faction in the hands of a player who knows how to use them.

Are you this type of player who knows how to use the Vong as tier 1?

Please shoot me a PM on swmgamers.com with a time you would like to play a game on Vassal.

Thanks in advance for teaching me how to play the Vong. :)

The restricted map list is as balanced as it can get, and doesn't truly "favor" either.

I think there are a few competitive Vong options, though most of them are based on Nom.

Um, which map are you referring to? I don't see any heavy range favored maps of any kind on the list. Shooter squad players have been choosing any of them based on personal preference and claiming shooter superiority on it, but I hardly see any consensus on it. Further, several of the so called shooter maps are ones that I've personally used with Vong over the years. I really question your point here. I don't see Rancor pit (a shooter favorite) or Jedi Temple as particularly problematic for the Vong (and those seem to be the most commonly chosen "shooter maps" on the current list - although as I said, there is hardly a consensus on it).

Further, every squad can be favored or not favored on a map, depending on the matchup. You seem to be arguing that this is more so with the Vong. Personally, I don't see that as their issue at all. The problems with the Vong are many other things, not the map list. The map list actually benefits them a great deal compared to in the past. Also, a shooter map should have 0 issue for Nom based vong squads. In fact, these squads are perhaps better on them. Now, dealing with disruptive in those cases, is a much bigger issue - and that's my point, it's other problems, not the maps that keep the Vong out of being tier 1.