Jabba was, but not enough. He was grossly overpowered, and they made a minor adjustment, but he’s still overpowered.

I agree with your overall point, but you can’t play Jabba with ANY fringe commander now and still get his bonuses.

Talzin was the insane combo, there are still some others that could have been good.

Was it enough? No.

Jabba was just an incredibly poorly thought out design and ridiculously overpowered.

Bib Fortuna was also modified, but not nearly enough. It should’ve been that you can’t move any piece with bib Fortuna‘s commander affect more than once in a ROUND. But it ended up being that you can’t move any particular piece more than once in a PHASE, which is barely any detriment at all. You can still move to different pieces in a single phase, and then move those same two pieces again the next phase, and again, for as long as you have pieces in position to do so. You can still play the leapfrog game.

Regardless, it was never a problem before Jabba. Jabba was the issue from moment one, and still is.

And to be clear, that is not to take anything away from Joe (gandalfthegreateestwizard). It is a very well put together squad, and he has played it expertly

100% The squad is great as much as the player

I played against him and you are right Gandalf plays expertly so you don't know how much is just the player. But the amount of movement and protection from the movement that can happen is insane. With enough practice the movement is more than anything else. It needs a change of some sort. If people want to break it they would.

Both have the same option, so neither has an advantage.

That is not true at all. One person might have free time for the next week and the other person might be backed up at work from taking the last 3 days off.

It wasn't just Jabba who needs to be addressed. In a conversation after their semifinal match, Gandalf and Timmer agreed that Timmer's squad (Talzin, Panaka, Padme, Silri, Hunter) would have a good chance of beating the Jabba squad if they could play it again. If Tim had won that match, you'd be talking about how Talzin needs to be addressed. I think they both do, in some way, and Bib too. But that conversation is for later.


As for the issue of one of the finalists getting extra practice time against the other's squad: this is really not a cutthroat competition. There is literally NOTHING on the line, no prize at all, other than the honor of being the Champion and getting to design a piece. The VassalCon Championship is certainly one of 3 the biggest events of the year (along with the other 2 Championships), but at this point in the game it's all about our enjoyment of the game and of exciting competition. Both competitors are excellent, stand-up guys, and both readily agreed to postponing the Final match until they could find a good time. Gandalf had to leave and offered to concede to Jason, but Jason said he wouldn't feel right about winning the Championship that way, since Gandalf beat Jason's squad so badly in the Swiss. I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill. The Final match will be fair and neither player will feel cheated by the other.

You understate the importance significantly. Winning VassalCon is an opportunity that only comes around once a year, and while you have won the top tournament plenty of times, there are several players who haven't and would love to. Three tournaments get to design a piece, but VassalCon is pretty clearly the biggest of the 3. It's the only one that brings in players from around the world.

We started when we did to accommodate those players from around the world. If we started at 1, Gandalf would almost certainly not have been able to play. And yes that is just one player, but in the past, we've had 6-8 New Zealanders and 19 players. So it's important that the opportunity is there.

+1.