I know the chess clock won't work; in fact, I said so when I brought it up. My whole reason for bringing it up, though, was to highlight the problem of one player taking 40-45 minutes while his opponent gets 15-20. The chess clock would solve that--even though it would create many more problems. So let the record show that I do not seriously think that a chess clock is the answer. It simply points to a problem.

I've already made several serious comments which could help the game, and I'm actually serious about these ones:
1. Seriously, just straight up BAN San/Ozzel/Dodonna. They've been a problem for a LONG time and nothing we've tried from a design angle has worked. That's because of a flaw inherent in the game itself, a flaw which they abuse.
2. Failing that, use the Black Ops SA (currently only on the Mando CIO) on more pieces...or even better, on a useful 5-8pt Fringe piece. Hate San/Dodonna out of the meta. It will have a harder time vs Ozzel because the Imps can choose to bring him in during setup (and after Reinforcements), but it would at least help.
3. Institute squad size limits. The 500pt Epic format would be a complete headache if there was no activation limit, but with its limit of 16 activations, it's a pretty exciting format. At 200pts, I'd suggest 12-14 acts, as a start...including Reinforcements. Interestingly, I think this would also decrease people's reliance on Lobot, since his best use is often for the tailoring of your fodder choices (whether Ugs or Mice or whatever).
4. 10pt Gambit; these points are only attainable by a piece costing 10pts or more. Great suggestion by the OP of this thread.
5. 10pt Gambit (as above), AND the squad with fewer pieces on the board gets 15pts each round they have gambit, rather than 10.

I think we need to realize that we are having problems here because of problems inherent to the game itself. The mechanic of "everyone activates all of their pieces every round" will always produce a situation where the person with the most toys wins (lol). This isn't a meta issue...it's a core game issue, so I seriously doubt it'll be solvable by any Design Team (it certainly hasn't been so far). That's why I suggest that we look at other options.

That's surprising that you're supporting Dodonna, because most people think he is the worst of the bunch, since he has no inherent downside. Dodonna with Tantive troopers is an issue in Rebels.

I disagree about the NR being unable to compete without Dodonna. The only reason they really need him is in order to compete with all the other high-activation tempo control nonsense that's out there, or else to do it themselves. Solo Charge is based on out-activating and then tossing Mara deep for 80dmg after everyone has activated; then win init with the MTB (who is easy to bring when you have oodles of mice on the board) and assault for 120dmg. The whole mechanic depends heavily on the out-activate-and-smash dynamic which we're trying to address here.

The problem with counters to dominating hard swarms is they also affect ALL squads and other swarms. Bastilla was designed to counter CE heavy squads so OR could compete, but she also shut down all squad CE's. So we got all these new abilities and pieces (squad discipline, prideful) designed to counter or ignore Bastilla.

I believe if a character limit were in place- a greater variety of swarm type squads would be playable.
If squad A is more swarmy than squads B and C then everyone plays squad A.
If all squads were made equally swarmy then all swarm squads could be played.
I call this my theory of swarminess

Act control pieces shouldn't be banned and definitely wouldn't need to be if we had an activation limit.
Act control is the bread and butter of "paper" squads, take it away and those squad types really lose their only edge.
The Real problem is that after my small act squad is out-activated it gets uber pounded on by a dozen heavy hitters.
No "rock" type squad can survive this kind of firepower. If my opponents squads were reduced to a reasonable number or I could play a rock squad that had a chance of surviving, then let them out-activate me.

I wouldn't have a problem seeing more counters like the Black Ops SA. I remember at the Kentucky regional in 2010 I was complaining to Dennis, Boris the Dwarf about Act control. He said not to worry because they were designing a piece to take care of that problem (the mando CIO) Sadly, it didn't help.

I am a HUGE supporter of squad size limits. However, I wouldn't nurf reinforcements and hurt good pieces like Lobot or Valenthyne Farfalla. Besides, reinforcements are the only way some squads can compete in certain matchups.

Sometimes it feels like our community is divided between two camps.. Guns and Sabers.
Some people, like myself want to play smaller act saber squads of powerful Jedi or Sith.
Other people, like a few of my friends want to play larger act gun squads of troopers.
Whenever one of those groups can't enjoy playing our game, I think we have a problem.

I completely agree, before this game I played magic. If made me furious that things cycles out and I essentially wasted money... (That's how it felt anyway). Also they are just a pain to play against, not overpowered in my opinion.

Keep in my that making a character limit(act limit implies that you could have more character, but not be able to activate them all in a round) would make anything with reinforcements more powerful.

I will say i am not against a cheap fringe solution. I think Black ops has been underused, thus far at least. Since at the moment it is only on one piece. I think it would be well served as a 10+ point piece with defensive abilities to help. This way it would not be an auto-include but it would be feasible to bring in via lobot.

I am fully against banning figures. Especially WotC ones. When there's a V-set "oops" (Slave Driver), we can take steps to correct it - but leave the game mechanics and figures that WotC left us with alone.

As far as an activation cap, some of the worst games I've ever played were when both sides had even activations. It creates stalemates. Very often the first to move loses. When squads have different number of activations, they play out to their strengths. Calling for activation caps is short sighted and has worse repercussions than where we are currently. It would shrink the meta drastically and frankly would become boring. 200pt limit in and of itself keeps it in check. It does get out of check in 500pt Epic, and that's why a limit is needed there. But for our bread and butter - 200pt games, we can never have an activation limit. Out of all the suggestions in this thread I am far and away most opposed to this suggestion.

I don't think changing gambit areas, making them larger or moving them are practical at this point. It would be confusing to many and it could be abused. Giving a different amount of gambit based on other factors (whoever has less activations, higher pt piece in gambit, etc) is likewise impractical, confusing, and could be abused.

I'm not opposed to more black ops, but I am opposed to it in the fringe. Republic still competes at the top levels, and doesn't have any activation control or black ops. They have crazy movement breakers, death shots, and sturdy mass killers to keep them competitive. Giving black ops to them would be broken.

We actually have a wonderful spread of flavor in different factions, and giving anything that is currently specific to a faction to a cheap fringe piece would diminish individual faction flavor and turn them all into a bland stew.

I'm all for more creative counters.


The only one of the ideas expressed in this thread that I would personally consider being on board with is the thread topic - 10pt gambit.

I'm intrigued by it, and at first thought I could get behind it. I'd want to think it through a little more thoroughly before wholeheartedly backing it. Obviously a 10pt figure would be needed to gain gambit - those 2 ideas go hand in hand.

I'd be okay with increasing gambit to 10 if games would be guaranteed to get their full hour. If someone can destroy an entire squad in the hour, I think they should get credit for a win even if the opponent manages to race to 200 points first. This is especially true if gambit goes up to 10 points.

Wow, some of my comments have really created a stir!
One question: Why?

This statement about leaving the WotC stuff alone has been repeated dozens of times, but for the life of me I can't understand why. WotC left us a flawed game, and these tempo control pieces further abuse that flaw, so I don't understand why we can't correct it.

I'm not interested in nostalgia or whatever else...I'm talking about gameplay. How many times, in the many surveys have we seen over the years where we ask people what their most disliked aspect of the game is, have people mentioned Tempo Control (and activation abuse)? I'm just guessing, but it seems like about 75-80% of the responses mention that one first. Other big problems have been SSM and a couple of other less significant things. The biggest and most common NPE in this community, by far, has been Tempo Control (coupled with activation abuse)...so I'm tired of listening to "nostalgia" as the excuse.

Apart from the nostalgia of the WotC days, what is the reason for not addressing the flaws in the game?

I don't think they are flaws