And see, in my experience, Rieekan is more of a problem for the Mandos than Dodonna is. Dodonna is easy to deal with, IMO, for the Mandos, because you just build your squad with Boba MC, and then a mix of Scouts and Gunslingers. If you've got both Cunning AND Opportunist, and the Accurate to pick your targets, then activation control doesn't make as much difference.

The move to 200 points honestly helps the Mandos a good deal. Heck, a Mando squad took 2nd place at the Colorado Regional. I think they had a small turn out, so may not be the best indicator, but like any faction, in the hands of the right player, it can work fairly well.

Honestly, I would probably consider running Mandos myself if not for Yobuck/Lancer. Rebel/NR don't scare me that much in running Mandos. It's the darn Pawned Lancer that really hoses you.

Aye, I personally don't like Dodonna, as he basically enables the rebels to shoot first. Unless theres extreme movement breakers, the oppoment can spend the time twiddling his thumbs while the oppoment hikes across the table, only unlike San Hill he can switch and start activating 2 figures with impurity. I just think his premise is a case of a figure making the tactican rather then the other way around.

Either way, even if you don't need him, he's always good reguardless on whether you use him as a fancy door opener or waiting till the other guy runs out of activation so he can pepper him. You can run a squad without him, but he doubles your squad size when needed whenever he wants to.


As for Mandos, Sith, Vong and O.R.

The former is stuck as a very one track faction, high cost, high quaility non-uniques is outdated by the game itself by Yobuck, any squad that can out activate them. They are cool, just difficult to use and outdated by the times.

Sith are probably the most competive in my opinon simply because of Sith Sorricery, able to move 12 spaces and half a 1/2 chance of activating any guy in sight, with the guys with Master of the Force having 3/4 of activating a none force senstive and being effective against force users as well. Thats pretty extreme activation control on another level. While the Sith themselves lack, the fringe provide the rest of the firepower they need.

Vong are the same as Mandos, very one track faction that is fragie. Most factions can simply crush them by going for the senstive, well grouped bits. They were never made to be useful, just to be a gimmic faction. :/

O.R have just been permently overpriced with no sense of unity, just like the OR infact XD

If you just change him to what i posted "at the start fo the round the player controlling this character must choose to activate 1 or 2 for the entire round, at the next initiative the player may choose again."

Thats just one idea. Shinja had a great idea in his costum set for the other droid from KOTOR 2 (not hk-47 or T3-M4) his ability makes it so no ce's that determine how many figures can be acted can work as long as he is in play. Its a solid idea the guy costs 16 points so he aint free, he is fringe he has like 30-40 hp or something like that. He wont need to be in every squad but it makes the rebel player accually have to do something in a game besides spin mouse droids. It also gives Sith, Vong, Mando's, and OR a chance to accually get some shots in.

The best thing it does is give you the ability to nerf the HUGE crutch that is General Dodonna.

the Landspeeder is just too much it needs to be stopped. Who cares about dod or Rieekan that darn Landspeeder is just broken.

I didn't have a problem killing the landspeeder. Its killing the han leia one two punch after wards.

If you're main complaint about Rieekan includes the fact that he has Recon, then you aren't playing against him correctly. Unless the squad matchups are really lopsided (i.e. Opponent has no Accurate), then Rieekan should hardly ever be sticking his nose out to even get Recon. That's a last ditch option for him, IMO, and most of the time a solid player puts him somewhere to get Recon, Rieekan dies shortly thereafter, or at least he should.

The granting of Mobile/Evade could somewhat be a discussion point for nullifying, but certainly not because he has Recon. Besides, with both the Rebels and NR have such great Disruptive pieces, I find more often than not, that I end up losing access to Mobile/Evade anyways a lot of the time.



Once again, as usual, I will call you out on this. Tempo control should have NO impact on the speed of the game. It doesn't matter if you spend 30 seconds each for activating pieces on two different phases thanks to San/Ozzel/Dodonna, or if you spend 1 minute to activate two pieces in a single phase. The simple fact is, whether you have tempo control or not, it should NEVER take you longer to play your games than if you don't have tempo control. If you think tempo control is causing you or your opponent to play slower, then your problem is not tempo control, it's your play speed itself.

Don't blame tempo control pieces. Learn to play faster.

I hate to go on a rant about this, or point you out individually in it, because this applies to lots of people. I just get tired of people accusing tempo control pieces like this and using it as an excuse to play slow. It's not the piece's fault.

You do realize you're responding to Johnny, don't you? lol

Funny enough, I played the Landspeeder last night. I still think both the Landspeeder/Snowspeeder are things to be somewhat concerned about, though perhaps not as much as last year. Ganner makes a big difference in that, because Mara was one of the biggest dangers for the Snowspeeder but always had a tough time catching up to it: not any more! But I had fun with the Landspeeder, and it's bag of tricks is still strong.

Neither of them are a point of concern for the Rebels though, IMO. At this point, we haven't even seen a Landspeeder/Snowspeeder squad make top 4 at a Regional, have we?

I think Indiana will have them. Last even they had, everyone of their top players were playing it, so odds are good someone will make it.

As for the idea that tempo control makes you play slower, well that's hogwash. It's 100% completely on the players themselves. You as a player are choosing to take longer when you play tempo. There are a variety of reasons for this, that have been discussed ad nauseum, but suffice it to say, there is no legitimate reason that tempo control makes you take longer to play. Lou and I played a Dodonna vs San Hill game back in the days of no reason not to play slow, and finished the game to completion in 15 minutes at 200pts.

well Jason I will just disagree there.

I can build competitive Sith and Mando squads that sit on 14-16 activations. So you are saying that isnt enough minus Dodonna? Well I will just disagree completely with that assessment.

In the end if you think you can only go 4-3 or 5-2 at Gencon with a lesser faction versus a chance of going 7-0 or 6-1 with one of the main factions then you are going to play the main faction. Minus Dodonna you have a chance to level the playing a field some more. Kind of the same reasoning for the restricted map list isnt it? Keeping things fair and out of gimmicks or maps and leaving the win and losses to the player's abilities.

No, I think Nickname's point was that it's not that uncommon for a Rebel squad to run 14-16 activations even without Dodonna. For instance, the squad StriderRe80 took 2nd with at our Regional is 16 activations WITH Dodonna. So if you just drop him for more activations, then you've got 18.

So NN's point was that you could still run into problems of being out-activated when running squads in the lesser factions, simply because the Rebel faction is built around cheap pieces, and lots of them.

As for the 2nd part of your message...we all know that going 7-0 at GenCon is not necessarily a good thing. :P Seriously though, We've always had at least 2 5-2 players in the top 8, and this year I suspect it will be more than that with the 3/2/0 scoring system. If you think you can play a 'lesser' faction squad and finish all of your games in under an hour each game, then why wouldn't you give it a chance? Finishing 5-2 with 15 points would almost guarantee you a spot in the Top 8.