Over the last year I have heard complaints about a few specific items and some issues continue despite efforts to change them done by various committees over the last 12 years. Going all the way back to the WOTC era we have been talking about Activations and the impact that they have on the time constraints of the game. At the end of WOTC the stacking of Commander Effects was a hot topic. The stacking of CEs has now turned into a more specific discussion about the stacking of damage. 60 damage in a round use to be a big deal, over time that has become less of a big deal because many characters are now doing that without aid of a commander. It is not unusual for a follower to be dishing out 90 to 160+ damage on its’ turn. Not to mention any other canon shot or additional turn mechanic your opponent may be incorporating into their build. This makes it difficult for the beloved melee characters to advance and slows down the game overall. In recent history there have been discussions about gambit and the impact that it has on the game. In response to all of this I say, let’s roll it back to 150 point squads.

In the before time, in the long, long ago, before the V-sets, Wizards had set the build total to 150. In the competitive game we played 150 for several years. 2010 was the first time that the build total was increased to 200 for the championship. The immediate response that we saw from the new design teams was Bastilla. An overpowered answer to the question of CE stacking. The ability to add an additional 50 points of buffs or additional firepower to your squad created an immediate change to the way that we built our squads. We could begin to exploit a series of combos that created increasingly bad matchups. Characters that you could field for 5-20 points could now easily be throwing out 60 damage. Bastilla overcorrected away from that and then the response was Daala. Now those 5 point characters could do 80 damage with a huge adaptable range. Let’s take out those 50 points again. This will leave less room for fluff and damage stacking. Look at the top squads from the last 10 years. Cut 50 points out of them. What do you cut? Do you give up damage dealers? Do you remove wasted activations? Do you drop a commander that gave a bonus that maybe you can live without? When building a squad from the ground up, once you have the basics of what you are wanting to accomplish you should be able to fill out the rest of the squad rather quickly. In the heat of a game, you will have less interactions to keep track of on your team and on the opposing side.

Fewer points= fewer pieces. Aside from some very extreme squad architypes most squads would end-up running 16 activations or less. I image many squads may only contain 6-8 characters. This should lead to an easier field to keep track of and manage. We currently have over 2,000 characters in the game. That is a whole lot to try to commit to any sort of memory. Some squads have a serious number of triggers to keep track of. Those usually are not fun to play or play against in a long day. In the Star Wars universe (and the one we live in) a squad is usually comprised of 4-12 individuals. I think we should try to emulate that in our squad building. Focus on a few powerful individuals or a small swarm. Even if 2 high activation squads meet, moving should take less time. Games should almost always end in under an hour. Even on Vassal. This could shave over an hour off the world championship. In live events it can mean more steak tacos 😊. I call that a win!
At 150 points, Gambit is reduced to 8. An average game sees roughly 5 rounds of gambit scored. That means that you should end up with 40 points which should cover a wide variety of characters. (Bastilla, Thrawn and Mas, Talon, Captain Pancake, Boss Nass, the Yammosk, etc.) A larger number of characters would be able to score gambit. Most of these characters are utility pieces that you would play anyway. This might make them useful enough to get in close to the action.

The change to 150 would be a change to the basic floor rules. It would not require any errata. Nothing new to learn. If the change does not improve the situation, we still have other options that we can look at. I believe that it is a simple change that would help cut down on some or all of the above issues.

Vote Yes! On proposition 150!

Interesting proposition! My vote is yes on 150. It might change up the meta even more. I agree that the damage creep has been rather insane, but also keep in mind that the damage mitigation has also increased to be just about on par. If people are doing just 20 damage, even with double twin, it means hardly anything against a Mandalorian with Beskargam or a Vong with VCA. 30 dmg seems to be the minimum to actually threaten people with built in damage reduction abilities.

I think people will still play Jabba because he is just so cost effective, but he have 50 less points to use on a really good attacker like Boba or Embo. He can still have them in the squad, but that means if they die, you have lost 1/3 or close to that amount of your squad build points.

I'm all for going back to competitive 150 to see how it plays in todays game. We can go to 200pt in the future again if we need to.

This will probably happen since design did not take into account 150 pts. It has been designed for 200. But I am interested in it and will participate in tournaments if that happens.

Interesting. I'd be willing to give 150 a shot, just to see what happens.

I still think that damage-stacking is the main problem right now. Losing 50pts from the build total will serve to limit that, but will only bypass the problem, not resolve it...the moment we hold another 200pt tournament, we'll have the same problem that we have now.

By escalating the damage-output so much, we have surrendered more of the game to chance than ever before...if you fail even one Evade or Deflect save your main piece is reduced to half health. That's far too much reliance on the dice.

I have thought some more and do not really think it is a great fix unless we already have a ton of information on the meta. Right now we kind of know where the power lies in 200 and can adjust accordingly. I am not saying dont do it. I just think that major adjustments are warranted either way if you want what I have heard called 'balanced factions" (indoctrination from TN). As for design ideas and things that might help. I think the lightsaber protection is a great idea, but force points are too valuable. Make it a Special Ability. Jedi Sense: This character only takes the base damage from nonmelee enemies.

Actually, we've just had a 150pt event at VassalCon. It was filled with melee-heavy squads. In fact, the winning squad was UrbanShmi's 5-act squad with Cin Drallig, Serra Keto, General Skywalker, R2, and Sev. Serra (who has Acrobatic) was hitting for 40dmg hits via Anakin's CE, and all three of the main attackers had Parry/Makashi. At least in a melee-heavy 150pt meta, I wouldn't be surprised if this squad is one of the top ones. The question will be whether or not people can come up with a good counter to it, that can also handle the other things that will get played at 150.

I've often enjoyed 150 and done well at 150 in recent years because tanks do so well at that point level. There is not enough space in the squad to fit all of the insane damage output or tank-busting tech that shows up in 200. I think that the Sith do have a lot to work with at 150. The Nexus makes it painful for enemy characters to engage your Sith dudes, and it also gives FP to fuel rerolls for failed saves, and even gives bonus movement when needed. Also, the new Tulak Hord is excellent and will likely find a few good builds at 150.




+100%! I've said this for years; if something truly is broken or bad for the game, then I think the answer is to fix it directly, rather than by creating a tax piece (that is, if you want to compete then you need to pay the points to bring X piece, which counters the current overpowered tactic).

I think the idea is that people should be able to play what they want (within reason) and still have a chance to be competitive. Some people really like Vong, so the thought is that those people should be able to play Vong without having to sacrifice their competitiveness. And truly, the game flourishes when a lot of different squad types are able to compete.

Personally, I'm just in it for the games. I don't care so much about the names of the figures, as long as they do what they're supposed to. I know the flavor is way more important to other people, I just want to be able to come up with something I think is cool and have it not get utterly crushed by everything.

I would be very interested to see how things "balance out" in the 150-point meta.

@darthjim

I fully agree that some factions don't have to be as powerful.
However, each faction does have pieces test should be payable in competitive realm.
Not having a playable Luke is the largest silliness ever.
Not having a playable Han is too.

Rebels or New Republic.e

Not having a playable Bane, laughable.
Not having a playable Yoda or Mace
Not having a playable Dooku

Etc etc

The game is best when the best people are playable. It just happens that the best people cover most of the factions.
So balancing the factions should bring out all of those characters in a competitive way (would be my vision)

How fun would it be to have a great Luke Skywalker vs Darth Bane match up?
Or Nomi Sunrises and the Jedi's of the time vs. The Rebel Heroes? Then it would be fun.

I'm hesitant about going back to 150 due to all the years of design work for 200.
However, since we can't get anyone to agree to an activation cap @200 . . . 150 constructed is worth consideration.

Remember the reason we were given for going to 200 constructed?
It was to fit "that" additional attacker or commander players were complaining about running out of points for @150.
Yeah, but that's NOT what those 50 points ended up being spent on . . . they were spammed for 2-point mouse droids.


One idea I had was . . .
You build up to 150pts and then add 1 additional character so long as your build total remains 200pts or under.

So you're forced to spend that 50 points (or more) on a single attacker or commander and not on extra activations.

Yeah, the only way I see making Bryans idea of a flex character work would be to not announce the build total until after squads have been turned in for the event. So you would build for 150 and then choose a couple of "flex" options kind of like reinforcements and then once the tournament build total is announced you have to either play your 150 point squad if that is what was announce or you run the same 150 but get to choose 1 of your flex options. Seems like a convoluted way of doing it, but feasible and could be fun.