I think the issue isn't so much in new abilities causing complexity as it is with the abilities being complex.....
Star wars minis was designed for fast paced combat, so most abilities - especially in the early stages of the games - were very bland but easy to decipher, so there were no moments where the game is slowed down by someone stopping to read a card.

I think it was roughly around the Bounty Hunters set where things got a little more flavorful, especially with abilities on the unique bounty hunters to represent there individual weapons......

And then towards the very end of the game the abilities became very flavorful but also presented that wall of text that can discourage new players and that add some more complexity to the game....

The v-sets are bad for that wall of text issue (please read carefully, I'm not saying the v-sets are bad, I'm just saying the amount of text on an individual card is massive) because character took a front seat I'm design......

This is both a good and bad thing.

I love complex but flavorful abilities on unique characters, but not on troops......when I use a v-set card its always one of the unique characters that either wizos didn't make or wizos did a shoddy job of making, but I don't think I've ever used any of the troops from the set.

Now this is my personal preference, but with the exception of bad@sses like Mandalorians and ARC Troopers and guys like that I want my stormtroopers and battle droids to suck.....in rebelstorm context, Boba Fett cost the same as 10 rebel troopers, and in the game those 10 rebel troopers have just as much of a chance of taking down Fett as they did on universe (and anyone who read the force unleashed 2 comic knows that isn't gonna happen haha)

I also like my troops to be vanilla (for those of you who don't know the term, in Magic: the gathering lingo a vanilla creature is one with either no abilities or a minor ability.....so a Stormtrooper or even Clone Trooper Grenadier would be vanilla)....I want my troops to be simple because I want to play a lot of them, and when I have 10 guys with 10 abilities the idea of massive squads because somewhat less appealing.

What I would like to see is very complex jedi and bounty hunters and such bit very simple and straightforward troops.....I think the only complex troops should be guys with a reason to be complex, like vong - who by nature defy vanilla - and mandalorians and a handful of rebel commando type guys......I don't like seeing grunts that can single handedly take down my jedi

Does that make sense to you all?


(on a side note, I may be biased towards vanilla guys because I generally like to do battles with two full platoons of clone troopers and a hundred droids on the board....and at that point the simpler the dudes the better)

One it two I can live with, but its the pieces in the v-sets like the old republic gunner that bother me....

I don't care if you make a clone trooper with missiles and one with a flamethrower and one with grenades...don't just stick them all on he same dude haha

When my friend and I do big battles we have enough of Rah individual troop type that if we field say 3 platoons, that would be 12 squads.....of those squads maybe 6 are plain vanilla clone troopers, 1 is kashyyyk troops, one is clone troop grenadiers, one is star corps troops, one is heavy clone troops etc etc......those are the kind of troops I like, you can look at the card and instantly know what he does and what he's good for and it gives enough variety to make the battles interesting


I think the basic numbers for stats can also go a long way towards showing character....for instance, in the later sets most of the clones were built around a package, the whole 20 HP 14 defense 8 attack 20 damage deal, it was the designers way of showing you that they're a cut above the normal guys when you compare them to a stormtrooper or rebel trooper.

I'd actually like to see a guy that has like 3/4 of his cost going into stats and just a handful of abilities, maybe something like a Durge after his armor is shot off where his only abilities are unique, melee attack and savage but then the dude has like 350 hit points, just as a way of showing that he could take a beating

On a side note related to a large ammount of abilities, I think that besides the simplicity for combat aspect of making vanilla troops early on, one of wizos motivators for making guys plain is that they're easier to playtest/cost accurately because with less abilities there are less potentially unseen combos that could absolutely break a mini (similar to the issue where most fringe droids are better than Sep droids because you are expected to play Sep droids with support but IG-88 won't have much support in an imperial squad....if you stick just two maybe three abilities on a guy tops then he's less likely to be broken later on


I think an aspect of character can also go into costing as well.....a classic example is the stormtrooper to rebel trooper comparison......the stormtrooper only needs a 9 to hit the rebel, while the rebel needs an 11 to hit the stormtrooper....the stormtrooper mini will always be better, and in all honesty a stormtrooper was better than a ragtag rebel trooper.....but then the rebels had a lot of aggressively costed heros that the imperials lacked (though yes I know that rebelstorm only is one sided, but wasn't the war for the most part one sided?).....the opposite holds true later for the snowtroopers and hoth troopers....the snowie needs an 11 now while the rebel needs the 9, and I think that may be intended as a way of showing that the rebels are fighting harder to try to save their cause.....

But then I may be overthinking things.... >.>