The thing is, you want Trooper swarms to be bad against strafe/gallop. They need a squad type that they are bad against.

There is bad, and auto lose. You either make them immune to Strafe/Gallop, or you increase sub 10 pt pieces HP to 50, or you increase the amount of Death Shot CE's there are. I think we can all agree that the last 2 options are not a good idea. Strafe/Gallop pushes some bad design decisions if you wish to make it remain viable.

And I'm not advocating whole sale immunity to what makes swarms difficult. Sweep, Grenades/Missiles, Repulse, Blaster Barrage, Furious Assault, plus other area effect abilities. Strafe/Gallop should have a role in the game, in deep strike and fodder killers. I would love to see my Tusken Swarm return, without just handshaking my opponent when I see Yobuck, Lancer, or whatever new Strafe/Gallop piece is being used.

I look at Jedi Reflexes and Covert Ops Training. The goal with these abilities are 100% clear. But, it hurts a lot of other things as well (not to mention Jedi Reflexes has created an interaction with Strafe that seemed to piss a few people off). I don't hate Strafe/Gallop. But I would like to see the traditional swarm make a bit of a comeback.

It involves the timing of Strafe, when you start adjacent and try to strafe someone adjacent. Let's just say, there was vague precedent for either ruling.

Trooper squads are a bad idea for this game. I'm very against these type of builds. This clearly wasn't the idea Wizards had when they set out designing things. You can look back over the meta of the wizards era and it was built around the heros of Star Wars, not the troopers of Star Wars. I don't care how much in sync trooper squads are, they should never be able to take down a squad of Force Users/heros of the saga. Horrible idea for this game. And it's not a good way to draw in new players.

"so yeah I'm kind of interested in this Star Wars Minis game you play, what's some of the top squads?"

You start naming off squads like Naboo Troopers, and you watch their eyes just glaze over with boredom.

I agree that Naboo Troopers shouldn't be super competitive (they were outmatched by Battle Droids after all), but that doesn't mean all troopers should be removed from the equation. The original Stormtrooper in RS was costed aggressively because they're an iconic part of Star Wars. As it stands in the game, a room full of troopers wouldn't make Han and Chewie run the other way, let alone actual scrub-killers.

Did Wizards have a "meta" concept in mind at all when they designed this game? I do agree that the focus was on the heroes. --> Lucas

That does not mean that trooper builds shouldn't stand a chance. Neither am I saying they should be just as strong as all of the best squads. Let's not bring the Naboo into this, as most agree that their power level was a mistake (to be fair, squad combos that did not get enough testing).

A trooper build should lose to many of the strong squads. Losing to single pieces on the other hand, just sucks.
As has been stated, there are enough other ways to handle swarms.

My opinion.

Yep, that was a rhetorical question. ;)

True, but its very clear that they wanted it to be a hero Driven game. Just look at who were the best figs early on, it wasn't troopers.

TBH, i'm not sure what the hell they wanted with the early release of the game. Seems like they wanted to make money by the RPG and selling of SW figs in a collectible format. But how they marketed it it was almost like they wanted it to fail. At least I don't think they wanted it to be more successful than the D&D mini's line but the power of SW really made that a one horse race.

Regardless, Trooper swarms should have a place but it should be a swarm commanded by a "hero" like vader or a prominent Jedi.

A squad of faceless troopers wrecking shop isn't really the most exciting game visualization.

+1 to this

I love the idea of swarm squads but you need someone well known in those squads generally to make them work, and i am fine with it that way. Now if an all non-unique troop squads begins to dwarf the Meta than we have a big Issue.

This, 100%. I always hear people dissing swarms of troopers, but that is absolutely a strong "Star Wars" visualization for many people. Just look at all the 501st costumers who cosplay as just regular Stormtroopers. Likewise, tell me you're a big Star Wars fan and that owning a full set of replica Stormtrooper armor wouldn't be awesome. The troopers in Star Wars were specifically designed to be exciting. I mean, why do you think that the Mass Battles at GenCon always sell out and sell out early?

For some people, Star Wars is just about the heroes and villains. Others were immediately drawn in by that opening scene of ANH, where the unmasked Rebel troopers stood their ground against the faceless and terrifying Stormtroopers.

Also, if you think that a board full of Stormtroopers or even Rebel Troopers or Clone Troopers is less interesting than some more esoteric characters like Mara Jade or Cad Bane, I do think you're wrong. I can't imagine an outsider being more interested in watching Thrawn/Cad/Morrigan vs Thrawn/Cad/Arica than in watching Stormtrooper swarm vs. Rebel Trooper swarm.