But how do you use Corruption if you're hiding behind the wall? You can't have your cake and eat it too.

And as I said earlier in the thread, I wouldn't even worry about trying to shoot at Plagueis as you advance. I'd be shooting all your support pieces, Ugnaughts, whatever you put where I can draw an LOS to.

Plagueis' 20 defense will not save him. Does it save any of the other character's that have a 20 defense but no anti-shooter defensive abilities? Does Dooku of Serreno's 21 defense save him against the Rex/Dash combos?

The fact is, if Plagueis moves out to use Corruption on ANYTHING in a GOWK squad, he's going to get shot in return. A good player will make sure that you can't sit in hiding and use Corruption without risking yourself as well.

Even if Plagueis maintains cover, Rex needs 12's to hit, and Dash only needs 10's. So, 45% chance that Rex will hit on each attack, and a 55% that Dash will hit. So, that roughly evens out to each of them landing 2 hits per round. That's 80 damage. That Plagueis can do nothing about. If you lose init, and Rex goes first, he pops you again, for an average of 40 more, killing Plagueis. You don't even get two uses of Corruption out of him. And maybe you do get a 2nd Corruption out of him, well then Dash unloads with Opportunist again. Sure, you can put screening pieces like Ugnaughts or such in the way so that Rex/Dash have to shoot them first, but typically either GOWK or some of GOWK's Ugos or a Human BG or any number of things could wipe out those screening pieces first too.

Saying he has a 20 Defense, and that's good enough for him to survive just doesn't cut it. It doesn't hold up with current pieces that have a 21 defense (Dooku), so why would it be any different with a new piece that is a 20 defense?

U guys are talking like Im only going to have Plagueis on my team,

no he can go out corrupt, sidiouse can pawn a character into position than swap with no shots taken, U will have to get close enough to even see anything so I think your peices would die much faster.

GOWK squades are not unbeatable, so dont hide behind him thinking he is unstoppable, I defeated a GOWK squad with NO auto damage and it was pretty easy, he ran out of FP's than died while everyone else was beat in the begining.

Very well-put.

at the rate things are coming, nothing will beat GOWK, especially a squad with Plaegus. Panaka's swap is less dependant than sids, and the swap is cheap. The classic republic swap will always be the 2nd fastest.( ist is speedy cannon) it will be fairly close though, if both people play it right.

No we're not. We're talking based on playtests with existing pieces that have very similar uses. Honestly, Plagueis is NOT that different from Dooku of Serreno

DP has Parry, DoS has Makashi
DP has a Replaces Attacks/auto Damage ability in Corruption, DoS has Lightning 2
DP has a 20 defense with no anti-ranged defense powers, DoS is a 21 defense and also has no anti-ranged defense powers.



OK, sure, DP has Darth Sidious to back him up and help provide some help. I can't tell if you're talking 150 points or 200 though, but the major measure of how competitive a piece will be is at 150 points, since that's where the Championship is played at. So at 150 points, Plagueis + Sidious is 120 points. Now, you'll need at least 2 Mouse Droids to effectively swap more than once, and you'll probably want something beefy for a 2nd threat, like a Sith Lord, or Jarael, or perhaps a solid shooter. But notice, you only have 24 points to work with. So good luck squeezing in any sort of shooter that will really help you that much.

OK, so say you just go with Swap fodder instead. THINK about the steps you have to take to pull off the swap. You won't be able to do it succesfully more than once against a solid player. Even against a non-GOWK player you won't be able to do it more than once in most cases.

Sidious' CE is limited to 6 squares. So that means either Sidious or a Mouse Droid has to be within 18 of GOWK in order to swap Plagueis in. AND you need to have a swap piece within 6 of the MD. If you play it right, you can probably hide a Mouse Droid around a corner or something, OK, give you that. So, you move up the Mouse Droid, then you activate Sidious, Pawn something, then swap in Plagueis at the end of your turn. Well, if you do it in that order, now you've just given away EXACTLY what you're planning to do, and the GOWK player can simply maneuver a piece or two in the way so you can't Corrupt GOWK as easily.

OK, so instead of doing it that way, maybe you move the Mouse Droid in a previous phase. So instead, in the key phase, you do a Sidious Pawn/Swap, then activate Plagueis to move 6 and Corrupt. OK, so you've put 40 damage on GOWK at this point. Now what do you do? Plagueis is stuck out there. The smart GOWK player has left Dash and Rex to activate until the end of the round, and if you're REALLY lucky, Plagueis survives the round. Of course, if you lose init, Rex unloads on Plagueis again, killing him. If you win init, you have to burn Sidious' swap immediately (that is, if Plagueis is still within range of the Mouse Droid, which can be tricky). Then this round, Rex and Dash run around killing as much of your swap fodder as they can get to with impunity.

OK, so let's take the third option here. You advance carefully enough so that Plagueis is able to activate first, and he runs 6 and hits GOWK with Corruption (again, has to be sort of a dumb GOWK player to let that happen though, IMO). But let's say you pull it off. Now, Sidious activates, and again, either Sidious has to be within 6 of Plagueis, or a Mouse Droid does, so still some tricky positioning to be had there, but you swap out Plagueis. If you had decided to run something like a Sith Lord for your swap piece, well, now it's sitting 6 squares from GOWK, and likely 6-12 from Rex/Dash, AND it hasn't activated yet. Rex probably moves 6, unloads on it with a 75% chance of doing 80 damage, and then GOWK, who is within 6 squares, moves up and makes a single attack to kill it. Heck, even if Rex only hits 3/4 shots, which would be expected statistically, that leaves the Sith Lord with 30 HP left, AND within 6 of GOWK...so GOWK just uses Force Push. Now you have Sidious, Plagueis, and 2 Mouse Droids left in a 150 point squad. And the GOWK player has all his pieces still, at full health no less, with the exception of GOWK at 80. At that point, you can't swap anymore. So good luck getting into position for any more Corruption attacks without getting shot to pieces on the approach.

The only other option would be to run a squad that is DP, DS, a couple Mouse Droids, and then 24 points of fodder. You need pieces you can swap with, and luckily, Grans do well because Rex and Dash can't hit them because of Stealth. So you're looking at 11 activations at a maximum (3 Grans, 4 Ugos for the last 24 points). Well, heck, the lowest GOWK squads have 9 activations typically, and I've seen plenty others with more than that. Not to mention that the GOWK/Yobuck squad that won the Texas Regional would shred any of your Swappers before they get even remotely close. And there are several GOWK builds that have 11 or 12 activations. How do you deal with those? Dash will be left to activate after your last pieces no matter what you do in that scenario.

It just isn't going to work at 150 points.

OK, so you're probably talking about 200 points instead. Sure, I'll concede that the Sdious/Plagueis swap will be more plausible at that point level, but then again, GOWK also has more tricks up his sleeve in those builds as well. Now you're not just dealing with GOWK, Dash, and Rex, but you're also dealing with two JWM in ADDITION! Can DS/DP pack enough support in a squad to deal with all of those? Parry will only help them so much, especially when DS or DP need to roll 12's or 14's, respectively, in order to even hit the JWMs in return.

And again, the true measure of a piece's competitiveness is measured at the 150 point level, because, at least for now, that's how the Championship is played. Most people will even agree that GOWK isn't quite a strong (still VERY strong though) at 200 points as he is at 150 because the other factions have more diverse countering options as well. But you can't just unilaterally say stuff like "Darth Plagueis will be a good counter to GOWK" just because it works at 200 points. And honestly, I don't really even think it will work there either. All the smart player has to do is continually rotate the pieces that you are forced to target with Lightning/Corruption so that the damage doesn't stack up on just one piece. It isn't that hard to do.



Nobody has said he's unbeatable. I've beaten GOWK a few times myself. But everytime that I've beat GOWK with a squad that just consisted of lots and lots of attacks, it was because the opponent was at a skill level vastly inferior to mine. The only way I've beat any GOWK squads where the opponent was of relatively similar skill, was when I was running one of the popular counter squads that have been tossed around (Vong, B&B, or Rebel Push), AND I got fairly lucky with my rolls.

No one has ever said that you can't kill him. We've just said that he's tougher to kill than any other piece in the game has ever been.

EDIT: Corrected a couple typos.

I'm sorry, but you obviously haven't faced a very competent GOWK/Rex/Dash player then. You'll be forced to use Corruption on GOWK or Ugos or the Bodyguard before you'd get to Dash/Rex. Or heck, you might not be able to do any because Corruption doesn't work on Droids, so if I can force you to only be able to target R2 or a Mouse Droid, then you're screwed completely.

And you're still failing to acknowledge the fact that Plagueis WILL NOT survive the 3 rounds necessary to kill GOWK. I would predict that in most games he'd be LUCKY to survive long enough to hit GOWK twice with corruption. There's no way an even semi-good GOWK player would let you kill GOWK with Corruption before Dash/Rex absolutely shred Plagueis. It just isn't going to happen.

I understand you don't believe what I'm trying to tell you. I'm more than willing to get on Vassal and we can proxy pieces and I'll show you that it's MUCH tougher than you seem to think.

If you would have asked me about this a few sets ago I would have probably said Yes but now I say No because the new sets that get released are basically just as overpowered.

Here's a pretty good anti-GOWK squad IMHO.

Darth Sidious, Sith Master
Sith Heavy Assault Droid
Sith Heavy Assault Droid
T3-M4
R4 Astromech Droid
R5 Astromech Droid
Ugnaught Tech
Sith Guard

The SHAD's could do 4 attack's each plus pawn for another 4 attack's and GOWK would'nt be able to do much damage because Shields 2. IMHO Obi would last to long against that.

Well, the SHAD is only a +10 attack, and Obi is a 26 in cover. So the SHAD needs a 16 or higher to hit GOWK.

So, on average, the SHAD is going to hit 1 out of 4 attacks in a single turn. Want to take a guess on how much damage GOWK would actually take from that?

If you guessed zero, you'd be correct.

Even hitting 2 out of 8 attacks, GOWK makes his save against one of them, on average, and then maybe has to spend a Force Point on the other save.

And you're in deep trouble if the GOWK squad is packing a JWM, because he's a 27 in cover, so even tougher to hit, lol.

In contrast, even with cover, Rex only needs 8's to hit the SHAD, and Dash only needs 6's, so the SHAD is likely going to get hit at least 2 times be Rex and 3 times by Dash every round, and with average rolling, that's still 50 damage getting through the Shields per round. The SHAD barely lasts 2 to 3 rounds at that point. Not nearly enough to actually kill GOWK.

All Ive been saying was it WILL be close between those 2 squads, Im not stupid when it comes to this, I dont just let you get line of sight to me, you wont be able to without putting yourself in a position to get killed,

I agree that GOWK should get banned or something, or at least cost 20-30 points more,

but it will be close rex and dash arnt going to be the key factors when they themselves are easy to kill. they have low enough HP that they would die in 1 round.

Billiv15 said pretty much everything I would say.

The reality is, sure, Rex and Dash are weak pieces on their own. But you are proposing to try and kill Rex and Dash with Darth Plagueis and Darth Sidious. Neither of which can attack at a distance further than 6 squares, and neither of which can do more than one melee attack after they've moved. And any competent GOWK player will make you waste your Force Power attacks on pieces other than Dash or Rex.

What we're trying to say is, it doesn't matter how weak they are. You can't just say "Oh, well, Rex only has 70 HP, and he has a 16 defense, so he's easy to kill". He's easy to kill with what? How? What moves would you do that would allow you to successfully kill Rex? And could you do it CONSISTENTLY, from one game to the next. THAT is the true measure of an 'anti-' or 'counter' squad idea. It has to be consistently repeatable. Not something you pull off on a fluke against a player who doesn't know what they're doing.


As for the SHAD squad, again Billiv15 pointed out the problems. And you can't say that you'll be putting Sidious close enough to Lightning GOWK, because then you fall right into the situation I was pointing out earlier, where Dash/Rex blow holes in Sidious. Plus, if you use Lightning with Sidious, then you're not using Pawn of the Dark Side, which decreases even further the actual # of hits being landed on GOWK.



That squad has 8 activations, at 200 points. It isn't horrible in that sense, but even the smallest GOWK squads we're typically seeing win consistently have 6 activations at 150 points, so certainly more than 8 at 200 points. Probably more like 11-12 at a minimum. Plus, we don't know exactly how the R4's ability works at this point anyways, and since the SHADs don't have Accurate, they'll have to shoot whatever is in front, which will sometimes mean Mouse Droids, or JWMs, or any number of different things.