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So yep, reserves are still dead. Echo do you know the reasoning behind this piece? Why it was made to crush reserves? Or what warranted it? It just feels so cold to be given a Voxyn handler last set and then it be useless and unplayable along with it's queen and the rest of the dice gamblers one set later.
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I think... I think maybe the point wasn't to nerf Reserves, but rather to nerf init control. Init control on its own is potent, and its okay to nerf it, but Reserves as a squad type can't really exist without Init control. I think it is an unfortunate side effect, not the main point.
On the other hand, he gives -9 to init instead of -10, so that obviously counters Immediate Reserves.
Yeah, I really don't think he needed to be a Lobot piece? But I don't even see Lobot all that often anymore...
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That's odd too that a random alien trader is able to shut down Thrawn/Revan and the tactical geniuses of Star Wars, but if that was the intent there are other ways to do that. Never Tell Me the Odds and increasing cost to 21 would have worked way better, still have shut down master tactician/recon/tactician/smugglers luck but at least would have allowed anticipation and sense the future and more so not being able to be causally brought in to cripple a playstyle.
Nerfing initiative abilities and -9 to your enemy doesn't stop Thrawn from out-activating and swapping, all it does is kill a barely there play-style that was struggling to even be playable.
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Anyways I probably hijacked the thread enough and will just accept things as they are and hope the balance committee has a look at this guy. Apologies and I do think there is some great stuff in the set and looking forward to getting the cards and trying out some new builds. Especially the Vong/NR hybrid builds.
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Okay, big fan of Lightsaber Protection now that I see how it actually works  . I thought you used it on an attack-by-attack basis like Force Bubble, so it was just kinda... meh... but for the entire turn is pretty great! Glass Cannons beware!
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General_Grievous wrote:So yep, reserves are still dead. Echo do you know the reasoning behind this piece? Why it was made to crush reserves? Or what warranted it? It just feels so cold to be given a Voxyn handler last set and then it be useless and unplayable along with it's queen and the rest of the dice gamblers one set later. I was not on the design team for set 14, and there was a lot of private discussion about the set, so I don't have a huge amount of insight into most of the decisions. I know that some designers are strongly opposed to high variance abilities like Reserves from having any place in competitive play. I'm also fairly certain that Jason's Reserves squad was unknown until well after Unkar was done, so that had no impact on his design (unless it was brought up privately).
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Unkar math versus Master Tactician (roughly - I may have missed some odd cases).
MT normally wins init 95% of the time.
Against Unkar, MT still wins init about 79% of the time.
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Is it possible that Lobot might be the most broken piece in the game? 
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FlyingArrow wrote:Unkar math versus Master Tactician (roughly - I may have missed some odd cases).
MT normally wins init 95% of the time.
Against Unkar, MT still wins init about 79% of the time. And... Don't forget, When the squad wins init 79% of the time, now its free, meaning you no longer have to sacrifice a piece to win init. So we killed reserves and only punish MTB with a 16% reduction in init control. 
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FlyingArrow wrote:Unkar math versus Master Tactician (roughly - I may have missed some odd cases).
MT normally wins init 95% of the time.
Against Unkar, MT still wins init about 79% of the time. So your saying there's a chance
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Echo24 wrote:I was not on the design team for set 14, and there was a lot of private discussion about the set, so I don't have a huge amount of insight into most of the decisions. I know that some designers are strongly opposed to high variance abilities like Reserves from having any place in competitive play. I'm also fairly certain that Jason's Reserves squad was unknown until well after Unkar was done, so that had no impact on his design (unless it was brought up privately). Better to have their arguments in private than out in the open like so many other sets have done. Also, I don't think the play testers and other designers need to be in on every detail of their process. Set 15, your set Daniel, has been more selective than any other on who can see the designers work. And on if this squad was known, your fairly... wrong, Jason played almost the exact same squad at Wisconsin 2 years before. So it's been on the radars
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Caedus wrote:FlyingArrow wrote:Unkar math versus Master Tactician (roughly - I may have missed some odd cases).
MT normally wins init 95% of the time.
Against Unkar, MT still wins init about 79% of the time. And... Don't forget, When the squad wins init 79% of the time, now its free, meaning you no longer have to sacrifice a piece to win init. So we killed reserves and only punish MTB with a 16% reduction in init control. Wrong way. The guy with Unkarr LOSES init 79% of the time.
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atmsalad wrote:Set 15, your set Daniel, has been more selective than any other on who can see the designers work.
I'll take credit for that. I asked playtesters (even playtesters who had access to previous sets) to do at least 2 playtests before seeing the design forums. It worked great - we had a flurry of playtests submitted early on. But anyone who has submitted the PT reports can now see the forums, as can the other designers. We haven't seen much PT recently, though. Hopefully that's due to GenCon prep and we'll see it pick up again after GenCon.
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atmsalad wrote:
And on if this squad was known, your fairly... wrong, Jason played almost the exact same squad at Wisconsin 2 years before. So it's been on the radars
Sort of. No main board MTB and no Clobot, and was more focused on dumping 15 mice then actually doing stuff. And I didn't have any idea what to actually bring in for reserves against stuff.
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FlyingArrow wrote:atmsalad wrote:Set 15, your set Daniel, has been more selective than any other on who can see the designers work.
I'll take credit for that. I asked playtesters (even playtesters who had access to previous sets) to do at least 2 playtests before seeing the design forums. It worked great - we had a flurry of playtests submitted early on. But anyone who has submitted the PT reports can now see the forums, as can the other designers. We haven't seen much PT recently, though. Hopefully that's due to GenCon prep and we'll see it pick up again after GenCon. Oh it will pick back up. Work has just been crazy but I have a few squads ready to test and some time this Weekend woot
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FlyingArrow wrote:atmsalad wrote:Set 15, your set Daniel, has been more selective than any other on who can see the designers work.
I'll take credit for that. I asked playtesters (even playtesters who had access to previous sets) to do at least 2 playtests before seeing the design forums. It worked great - we had a flurry of playtests submitted early on. But anyone who has submitted the PT reports can now see the forums, as can the other designers. We haven't seen much PT recently, though. Hopefully that's due to GenCon prep and we'll see it pick up again after GenCon. I want to PT. I said i would for the next set coming out, didn't know that was already happening. Think I was told to wait until late august early september
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Echo24 wrote:
I was not on the design team for set 14, and there was a lot of private discussion about the set, so I don't have a huge amount of insight into most of the decisions. I know that some designers are strongly opposed to high variance abilities like Reserves from having any place in competitive play. I'm also fairly certain that Jason's Reserves squad was unknown until well after Unkar was done, so that had no impact on his design (unless it was brought up privately).
atmsalad wrote:
Better to have their arguments in private than out in the open like so many other sets have done. Also, I don't think the play testers and other designers need to be in on every detail of their process. Set 15, your set Daniel, has been more selective than any other on who can see the designers work.
disclaimer, i have no idea what goes down on the other forums or what it means to be able to see the forums, or what it means to be more selective in who sees the forums. What does you don't think the play testers and other designers need to be in on every detail mean? but the bold part is the most concerning to me. Everyone knows that I have my version of what is fun and what is not. But... I am also a community man. So poll goes about lightsaber, a big discussion. Well it is kind of split. I think balance team should look into it but at that point probably not going to happen for a change, and that is justified because the committee was split. (I will still campaign for a change every now and than after people have had time to listen to my astounding logic). But if I was a designer I would not make a piece with Battle judge (all attacks using the special abilities lightsaber, double claw attack, or that use a lightsaber are counted as melee attacks). It just bypasses the community at large. This is just one example of this happening by the way. Soft counters come out for all sorts of stuff that are "just because"
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Caedus wrote:FlyingArrow wrote:Unkar math versus Master Tactician (roughly - I may have missed some odd cases).
MT normally wins init 95% of the time.
Against Unkar, MT still wins init about 79% of the time. And... Don't forget, When the squad wins init 79% of the time, now its free, meaning you no longer have to sacrifice a piece to win init. So we killed reserves and only punish MTB with a 16% reduction in init control. This, so much this. And just because a designer doesn't like a play-style shouldn't give him the right to wipe it out of the compeitive scene. There are plenty of style's I don't like and think have no place (out-activate and smash as well as board-wide strafe being big ones and ones that actually push towards unbalanced) but for all of them there was only soft counters, not a complete and utter removal like this. I have stood up for the designers and the awesome job that has been done up until now and I get that mistakes happen (Bastilla, Daala, etc...) and they get corrected, squads become to powerful, and a soft or hard counter gets created. But this is something brand new and needs to be addressed before this becomes the norm of removing styles of play entirely on a a single designer's whim. No justification, no "dominating the meta", no evidence or logical based thinking, no group discussions, no balance committee issue. This is a massive change to the game, removing a part of how the game itself is played and immediately making dozens of pieces obselete and unplayable based on an individuals preference and feelings. Reserves and immediate reserves have been part of the game since WOTC era, and over the years how many major tournaments has it won? One regional with the strongest of the reserve options. A single win in my opinion doesn't justify even counters as the very fact of how a reserve team functions in a timed game is usually its own counter. But if it was a true group issue (which again this piece was created before that regional) then soft counters are developed to deal with that specific team/build. Never Tell Me The Odds, Wuher, Sense the Future, MTB, these are counters. Completely breaking and wiping out a play-style, that is someone with too much power bending the game to be what he wants.
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urbanjedi wrote:Caedus wrote:FlyingArrow wrote:Unkar math versus Master Tactician (roughly - I may have missed some odd cases).
MT normally wins init 95% of the time.
Against Unkar, MT still wins init about 79% of the time. And... Don't forget, When the squad wins init 79% of the time, now its free, meaning you no longer have to sacrifice a piece to win init. So we killed reserves and only punish MTB with a 16% reduction in init control. Wrong way. The guy with Unkarr LOSES init 79% of the time. Yes, that's a better way to put it. If Unkar does a wager, he loses init 79% of the time (even if the opponent has no init control).
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Ok set 14... What can we do with you.
Squad time.
How long does it take to get pieces into squad builder?
Is that something I (community) can help with?
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