Why would it be overpowered? I don't buy that if one is overpowered, that a counter to it is overpowered. If the game survived Override, the game will survive Bastilla.

There's been a lot of interesting points made on both sides of this (both right and wrong), and I'd like to talk about a couple of them before I express my own views on Bastila.

First I think we need to all agree that this discussion really only involves competitive play. If you are just playing for fun and fine a piece to be too strong or not to your liking in some way, I hope you play with a group of people that hears your opinions and will either agree to not play her or house rule her in some way (assuming you have a valid argument). This is GREAT. That kind of attitude is what makes gaming groups awesome, and I hope everyone plays with a group like that. The only time a too-strong piece is really, truly a problem on the level of needing to be banned or errata'd is on the level of competitive play. In all other environments, it can be dealt with in a way that does not change the game for everyone, and just changes the game for the people who have a problem with it.

On that note, f you think she (or the v-sets in general) reduces the overall variety of squads that can be played, you really must just not pay attention at all to the competitive aspect of this game. Before DotF, there was VERY little variety in the competitive world; there as literally maybe 4 top tier squads, and they could easily beat pretty much everything else to the point that it was not worth playing anything but those things. The v-sets have made many more squads playable to the point that I think there are easily 10+ top tier squads that have the potential to win big events, and they are represented in every faction. Bastila is a big reason for this; she forced people to start thinking outside the Commander Effect box, and helped make OR playable. Now you can play a CE heavy squad and still do alright, basically just hoping you can win any non-Bastila matches and out-play your opponent well enough to sneak out a win against her (something that's 100% possible, a heavy CE squad isn't necessarily an auto-loss to Bastila, it's just an exceedingly hard game), or you can play a squad with few or no CEs and just not worry about her and just win all the games you can. That alone adds more variety to the game. And if you want to make the argument that "Oh well that's just the top tier, my group doesn't play top tier competitive tournaments so Bastila hurts us more", to that I say: correct it yourself. Make a house rule or gentleman's agreement to not play Bastila or something to that effect. Problem solved. If you don't like that, then (and this is going to sound really harsh, but please don't take it personally) try to get better at the game. She can absolutely be beaten in the top level of play; if you're not at that level, either accept that and bring the game down to your level with bannings/house rules/whatever, or pull yourself up to that level.

I also have to disagree with the idea that she's not incredibly hard to beat, and doesn't hate some styles of play out of the competitive scene. She IS really, really strong. Running Yobuck or a Lancer to go attack her is often more easily said than done, especially against a good player. This goes double for squads that don't have movement breakers that big. Downplaying her power shouldn't be the argument against her being too good, because it's just not true. For 33 points, she is one of the strongest pieces in the game by point value. If she just had her stat card without ABM, she would be a reasonable buy at 33 (maybe a bit overcosted, but not even a ton). Giving her one of the strongest abilities in the game pushes her into the upper tiers of "best pieces around". I find this pretty hard to question. So if your argument is that she's fine, don't argue that she's fine because she isn't a really strong piece; argue that she's fine because she's a really strong piece but that's ok. That's a pretty reasonable argument. OR needed a really strong piece, and oh boy did they get it.


Now, I don't like Bastila. I don't think she's "too strong", don't think she's broken, and don't think she needs errata or should be banned (I'm 100% in favor of having as little banning or errata for balance in the game as possible. As a designer, that's super important to me). She is one of two designs, though, that I genuinely dislike (the other being Poggle the Lesser, I think being able to get more 2 point figures was just a bad idea). I think that denial abilities in general are pretty cool; I like Never Tell Me The Odds, I like Black Ops, I like Disruptive. But these aren't on the same level as ABM. I really think that NTMTO and Black Ops take away fairly important parts of your squad, but not as important as ALL CEs. Yeah, you might have spent 9 points on Dodonna that now are basically worthless against Black Ops, that sucks. Yeah, now Thrawn is a little less awesome because of NTMTO, but that's ok. Those are denial abilities that deny something that nearly any squad can handle getting denied. Disruptive is obviously balanced because it's just a range of 6; if your Disruptive piece is close enough to be Disrupting important stuff, it's close enough to get attacked and therefore get killed. You can also just kind of maneuver around Disruptive. Basically, it's denial you can avoid.

ABM, however, is denial that A) can completely wreck a squad by taking away a TON of its power, and B) is denial you really can't avoid. Ysalimiri is kind of avoidance, like a weird anti-Disruptive bubble while surrounded by Disruption, but that's only on 2 pieces in 1 faction, so there just isn't enough of it (I like the idea of Fringe Ysalimiri, but agree that it would have to be on a very high cost piece so it's not an auto-include). It takes away varying amounts of power, but unlike NTMTO which can range from useless (your opponent has no init modifiers anyway) to moderately strong (your opponent has a really strong init modifier and planned on using it a lot). ABM ranges from moderately strong (EVERYONE gets +10 damage, even if your opponent has no CEs whatsoever) to absurdly, incredibly powerful (you get the +10 damage and your opponent has a lot of critical CEs). It also doesn't really take a ton of skill to play. You stick Bastila in a room and start meditating. Yeah, when exactly you use it matters and where exactly you put her matters, but the difference between the skill required to use Bastila effectively and the return in effectiveness you get from Bastila is really out of whack. She's just a really, really strong piece. And she's crazy cost effective, too.


Now, remember what I said: she's not unbeatable. Similar arguments can be made about, say, General Rieekan, another one of the best pieces. Or the Lancer Droid, which I think is the biggest negative play experience in the game, much moreso than Bastila. Or probably Thrawn, or Dodonna. She isn't too powerful for the game, but she is absolutely in that top tier. I think she's undercosted (just like the other pieces in that top tier) and I don't like her design in general, but she certainly hasn't broken the game.

so I put here with all the cards in card games that dont let there opp do anything like skip a turn or stun you for the whole game or put you out of play.

My heart stops for a little bit when I have to play vs those type of cards. I put her 10x worse because its not just for one turn its for two turns than she has a pretty good shot at doing it again like the next turn. I really just wish if it was a one turn thing and could not be played the next round. So it still stall games out but not as bad as she is now.

Right now if I bought a fun squad to a local event and have to play vs her. I have a good shot at losing vs the 10 year old. That I have beat when she was 6. I am sorry but this should never happen if your the better player locally vs younger people. Yes I have not lost locally since Mark from the podcast beat me with Loda in like 08. I lost bad vs the OR the last time I played locally and have not played minis other than Regionals and have only played OR because of that. Before that lose I was like 200 to 250 and 4. I only counted my loses.

I just dont know how I can beat GOWK or Bastilla locally without planning for it. This is a big reason I dont get play anymore. Sorry I like to win and just feel she and SSM stop that from happening locally. I use to be able to play anything and do good not anymore. I have a zero problem with her on a big scale since I would have a answer to her in some way.

While I understand what you are saying, I am not sure I completely agree. Others (including Baine in the above post) have pointed out the limitations she brings to the OR builds moving forward. But I think about the otherside as well - what she does to ensure some characters can really never be useful. There are so many pieces that can only really be fixed through CEs she will just eliminate over the important rounds anyway. Those pieces are now either forever pretty useless no matter how hard you all work, or will lead to an endless supply of new one-off micro-specialized SAs to fix something a simple Commander Effect would have normally done.

Like I have said no problem with her as a piece just design issues, think about this, we now have bastila who can give everyone in her squad +10 damage and an 18 point sith piece that can give allies +10 damage if they have melee and no lightsaber, that hurts the design capabilities of fringe pieces a lot. I mean you could have a perfectly fine melee fringe piece in the rebel faction but oh, dang in sith he can do an extra 20 points of damage against adjacents with bandon and the sith alchemist and in old republic he gets an auto +10 while they lose all commander effects. These are issues that now have limited future pieces.

I would've favored slowly progressing OR towards faction competitiveness rather than throw a power piece right in the mix in the first set and have to take much slower steps in the subsequent sets. I believe that Bastila is very undercosted. 33 points gets you a game-changing ability: boardwide disruptive, boardwide +10 damage to all attacks. Add that to the fact that Bastila is a capable clean-up fighter herself, and you have a piece that should easily cost in the low 40s, if not higher. The Yammosk is another in the group of massively undercosted pieces. Does it bother me that the Vong and OR are more competitive now? Absolutely not. I'm the first person to admit I loved seeing Rebels knocked off their high horse at Gencon this past year. I just think it could've been a more gradual progression towards faction viability. We would've avoided a lot of "sticker shock" so to speak, lol.

All that said, I love the vsets and look forward to V-set 10, years down the line!

Your earlier point about how we broke the game was borderline insulting, but this one is fair, so I'll comment on it. You all are correct, designing Bastilla the way we did does in fact limit future designs, there is no way around that. But put this in context. It's absolutely no different than Whorm, Thrawn, Reeikan, Mara Jade, Jedi, Lancer, Vong Jedi Hunter, Yoda on Kybuck, R2-AM, Captain Panaka, Cad Bane, Dash Rendar DS, or any number of other cases of top tier competitive type pieces. Further, I'd add to that list things we've created like Exar Kun FS, Yammosk, Mando CIO, Ben Kenobi, Atton Jaq Rand, Darth Revan SL, Jaina and Jacen Solo, Darth Zannah, Poggle the Lesser, and even more others.

Every piece to some degree affects future design, as in "this must be considered when designing". Any top tier competitive piece obviously even more so than something thematic and fun (for example Thrakan Sal Solo). This is quite obvious.

But it's not as hard as you make it sound. We've managed quite well with now 3 (and 4th is well under way, 5th has been started) designing with Bastila in mind. It's really not hard at all. Actually, it makes designing the OR much more like designing the other more competitive factions. Or are you actually trying to suggest that Mithrawn (sp) is not at least equally powerful to Shan? If you were, then we simply see the game in very different modes.

The difference is simply that OR had no synergy before. They had good pieces, nothing that brought them together. Perhaps instead of complaining about the OR being equally competitive to the others (they are clearly not ahead, but simple caught up), we should be looking at the flavor. This is exactly what ABM should have been. Or perhaps some of you are simply not aware of how powerful Shan was, or how Battle Meditation literally turned battles that were unwinnable into victories. We take this all very seriously.

And here's the very biggest issue. I will not accept any complaint that begins with "This hurts casual play". Sorry, casual play by definition can handle it in the most effective manner. I would not play casually with a lancer - period. I won't play against you, or with it myself. Why on earth would I chose to play with or against Bastila if I wasn't prepared in a casual game? She's a competitive piece. She's exactly like 100 other pieces already in the game before we started.

And as for the dismissal of Exar FS as a great Sith counter. I'm sorry, are you not aware of the piece? It is far from as simple as using a FP to dismiss. Dark Aura is awesome, as is drain force - heck if you drain force even once from Shan, that eliminates the possibility of most of rounds 2-5 being covered by ABM. Further, as I recall, you can use force points to reroll a failed save. Tell me, which character is going to give up its turn to spend a force point, to get a character with force points of his own 2 chances to fail a roll of 11? I will happily allow you to do that with someone until the game is over. Sounds great to me.

No counter to anything powerful is perfect and will work 100% of the time. Nor should they. We call that hate. Reposte/djem so/counter attack are great counters to the lancer. But they aren't 100%. You will fail sometimes to make the saves, and make the attacks. Which is how it should be.

But dismissing one of the best counters to Bastilla because you don't know how to run it is flat out stupid. This is competitive play we are talking about. Anyone running Sith will be including Exar just as competitive players will include Bastilla. And pretending he doesn't nerf the heck out of her about 70% of the time is flat out ignorant.

I can agree with you on some points, but I honestly do think she is better then Thrawn, Reikan, panaka, etc. You can shut down their commander effects with disruptive, Look at Solo Charge it did great against these squads simply because you could stop their swaps, bonuses, etc from a piece with disruptive. Now the thing about disruption is that you have to get that person into the fight to use it. Bastilla however can literally never move a square and cripple entire squads.

I agree with you on your point about the difference between casual and competitive games, it should be an easy fix for the casual player, just create house rules or agree to not use her period.

But to act like Bastilla is not a screw up of the Vsets is a joke. I am becoming more and more a fan of the Vsets and I am participating in the play testing for set 4, and I absolutely love where Vset 3 took us and love where Set 4 is taking us. (By the way thanks Bill, for telling me to stop complaining and get involved, I have thoroughly enjoyed the process of playtesting and giving/getting feedback.)

"unbeatable Shan squad" is clearly hyperbole. Taking hyperbolic statement literally is an error. I'm characterizing, not making a literal claim. No need to take me to task on my reading comprehension. I'm quite able to follow the discussion.

But as for getting involved, I commend you on taking my advice. You deserve the praise for putting your money where your mouth is. Many others have not done so, and I don't mean that as idle praise, but very sincerely.

As for the specific comment, don't worry, even without Vassal, I've already promised to take Sith to at least one regional this year. Hopefully I'll get some games with OR.

As for past success, I played Sith in the Team tournament last summer. I didn't face OR unfortunately, but even with just DotF, I went 2-1 and my loss was entirely dice related (7 or so crits in the first two rounds by my opponent).

Shan was not a "screw up" however. In fact, quite the opposite. She's exactly what I would have wanted (I was lead PT, not a designer in that set mind you). I don't know what makes you think she was a screw up? Perhaps you misread something somewhere, or you've overexaggerated her power, I really don't know. We wanted a tier 1 piece to help the OR catch up in DotF, and one that would handle Rebels, as well as match the accurate to canon of Battle Meditation. Now, if you don't think the OR needed that, you are welcome to play the OR without her anytime you want even with our other creations and see if you can compete in a top tier tournament. My prediction is at best you'd be looking at trying to get to .500. The OR just isn't that good of a faction from top to bottom.

And I will back up the statement that she is no more powerful than any number of other pieces. Because she is flat out not beating those other pieces in competitive play more than 50% of the time. Sorry, but until that happens, you cannot make that claim. And since we can be 100% sure that Bastila alone isn't broken (as in being the only thing that can win a tournament more than 60% of the time - which is the only definition I accept for competitive play), we will always know that moving forward if such a thing would occur that it would be in fact a combination of factors.

Or perhaps you aren't aware that Ian had multiple down to the wire games at Gencon. Perhaps you think he was winning every game in 30 minutes or less. Or perhaps you don't realize he's a great player, but he still lost a game. If I recall, he was in 5th or 6th place entering the top 8. Sometimes its your day.

If Shan was as powerful as you all claim, OR would have not been the out of nowhere winner that it was.

Well, I could go back and add quotes but I wont because I am lazy lol. But I am fairly certain that Echo has said she was one of the biggest mistakes of the Vsets along with Poggle the Lesser, I am also pretty dang sure Grand Moff Boris said she is a mistake over on gamers website. There are a lot of people out there that feel like she was a mistake.
Granted I am not arguing for her to be banned or even making her less powerful by changing it to work until the end of the round instead of until her next activation. After helping in the process of playtesting these pieces it is just easier to keep things simple, this is the way she works now, and that is pretty much that, but I think it is worth at least hearing these people out because out of this discussion I have seen what look like some pretty awesome abilities/ideas to help tone her down... Namely that force phantom ability, that ability someone was talking about giving to Luke, and force confusion (I think it was) all seem like cool ideas to look into.