I really like those new commando droids. At 30 points for a pair they arent cheap but I can see some pretty big havock being doled out.

I'm really looking forward to be able to use my custom Embo (courtesy of Leshippy) a great addition. Flim, Squib Trader and GGHoH are also going to be alotta fun!

Shield bot?

I am too lazy to look up the name at that time of day. But, shield bot has a nice ring to it.

Mid August. Gencon debut.

Because for 16pts you get 8 Special Abilities. That is why. Compare him to the Gungan Sheildbearer and try and make an argument that he is not undercosted. This peice is very aggressively costed, and to much so, imo. The good thing, is that he won't be doing a whole lot of damage. The fact is though, he still does more damage than the gungan. The gungan has only 3 special abilities for 18 pts. I can't think of any reason's why this piece was deemed nessesary for a faction that is already overly competitive. I understand why it has what it has. It just seems like an over-representation of the character. You don't need to put 8 Special Abilities on character that cost's 16pts with rapport. In fact, I hope the designers learn from this and never do this again. As is, I don't think it will break the game, but it will definetly give the seps yet another compettive peice. And the line of reasoning to make this piece as good as it is escapes me, when other factions need more help than the seps.

One thing to consider is that playing this piece means 1 less IG-86 in the Sep squad, which I think is a good thing. If you play the sniper as well, 2 less IG-86 or the loss of other support. Considering what you give up, I don't think either of them are undercosted.

I could see the spotter being useful to help the living Seps that tend to get shot to death before they can do much. (Dooku, Aurra, Maul etc) That is definitely a good thing, IMO.

Here are my thoughts on the BX Spotter. There are basically only two reasons to play him.

1. To give the Sniper the extra 20 damage (worst case scenario on each shot) and +4 attack. Lets assume the sniper has rapport 3 for this guy too. So what, we are paying out maybe 30-40 points for what will probably be an accurate, sniper twin attack that will probably be for 40 damage per shot, maybe 50 if he has deadeye. I think that is a pretty fair deal. For that you have to burn two activations, and have the tech to grant twin attack to the sniper (unless he already has it). But still, 30ish points for a 80-100 damage shooter that will probably have to stand still to do it and use up two activations. That is just like any power shooter. Trade GMA for the sheild so you can risk standing in the open for a round.

2. The Shield. As mentioned to protect the sniper. But also to help protect any melee beats you want to charge in and protect. For that, you have to spend then, an extra 16-19 points to help protect the melee beat, and keep them together. It makes sense to then use a sniper as shooter support, but if the Shieldbot is running around with Dooku, then the sniper is vulnerable.


Either way I say good. He gives the Seps an extra ranged option. A ranged option that has its drawbacks. So we might see more DIVERSITY than just using IG-86s.

He may even encourage the emergence of different Grievous commanders, if you really want to use his vibroblade and get double attack with it. This is also a good thing. It encourages more DIVERSITY of separatist squads.

Lets be honest here though, he probably won't. People will probably stick with twin attack. It is more powerful, and works better with the faction.

So I don't see the issue here. We have two separatist minis this set (I'm assuming the Sniper is also in this set) that could possibly encourage the emergence of new separatist squads. Why should the designers waste separatist slots on crappy minis just because they need to concentrate on other factions? They promised us every faction every set. Where is the harm in giving the seps two little minis that could maybe shake the faction up? It has been noted that they are an already competitive faction. So it is easier to come up with minis that could allow for the invention of new competitive squads. The factions that need more attention require much more care and can't be rushed into the top tier level. But with well established factions it is okay to say "here, have a little tweak, see if anything new emerges."

We just need to give it time before we can do things like that with each faction. Some of them still require work before we can get a diverse selection of competitive squads from each faction.

We also have to be very careful with the over-comparrison on what WotC did. They largely designed their pieces in a bubble, playtested in an office with a handful of people and then released them (or so I understand). Vset characters are designed by current top players of the game, and playtested by a truckload of people. (I can also add that our playgroup tested this piece and we've been relatively happy with the changes that were made for this piece.)

In the end, the only real way to know for sure is to unleash the piece on the meta and see if it wins GenCon 2013. We should bookmark this and go back and see...

On one hand, I agree that 8 special abilities on a non-Unique is a little ridiculous (even if some of the abilities don't really "count"). On the surface, it seems a bit "fanboyish" and similar to a lot of "Hey, look how much I can shove on a single piece" customs.

On the other hand, everything is relative, and there are a lot of factors at play here.

Comparing a piece to a single other piece (as in the case of comparing this dude to the Gungan Shieldbearer) is always a risky proposition, since many pieces are outliers in one direction or another (witness, for example, the generation of ludicriously powerful customs based on the foundation of "I used the Jedi Weapon Master as a starting point!").

Even if you DID want to use a single character as a point of comparison, all characters are not created equal, because all factions are not created equal. A blunt example: A faction might have access to Twin Attacks but not Extra Attack, or vice versa. Another faction might have ready access to both, but many of the pieces are a bit weak. In these cases, Twin Attack doesn't have exactly the same value... In the case of the Seps, they have ready access to both Twin and iterative attacks, but this is often offset by the fact that the best pieces in the factions are droids, with limited access to commander effects (and, among other effects, general lack of synergy with the Fringe).

Then there's internal synergy within a faction. As his been noted, Shield-Bot doesn't exactly play to the strengths of the faction. In fact, it's virtually useless to one of the strongest pieces in the faction, the IG-Lancer. It's pure speculation, but I'd go so far as to speculate that the game designers might have intentionally tried to build a powerful paradigm for the Seps that is not reliant on old tactics. We've seem something similar with the new Leia, where there's a potential shift back to the original trilogy heroes in Rebel squads.

Speaking of the game designers, another factor to consider is that WotC isn't calling the shots any more. The new gang have different game design philosophies than the dudes at WotC did (and one of those differences, for better or worse, is often more text on the card), so three sets in, comparing things to how they used to do it in the old days is a slippery slope of frustration.

Now, I'm not passing judgement on whether Shield-Bot is priced correctly. I'm also not saying that Mando is necessarily wrong... Just saying that there are tons of factors that weigh into something like this... and I suspect that even MY long-winded message scratches the surface of all the considerations the poor game designers have to balance!

At the end of the day, it seems to be a cool piece that offers something new to a sometimes-stale faction. Let's enjoy and embrace it rather than wondering if it should be priced 3 points higher! :)