First, thank you to all the veterans for describing what they feel "tier 1" is, and to Bill for explaining further what a gatekeeper squad is. I feel elucidated.

So here's my next question. Was one of the goals of the V-sets to create diversity in a way that there may be a slight increase in the number of tier 1 squads, but a much larger increase in the gatekeeper squads?

Partially! We want lots of different things to be playable, and I think we managed that quite well. One of the big goals has been to make as many factions playable as possible, and there are certainly more playable factions now than there was a year or two ago.

Having lots of gatekeepers means squad design is much more difficult because it's hard to know what you're going to play against. However, that just means that to do well players will have to be better, because they'll have to overcome their squad's bad matchups. If there were no bad matchups for a certain type of squad, you could use that and make things relatively easy. Now it's likely that you'll have at least one hard fought matchup that's against your favor and you'll have to be a better player than your opponent to win it.

Yes, I like these definitions quite a bit.

And by those, I would agree that an average Mace squad falls into Tier 1.5; it definitely has a few matchups that are Tier 1.5 or better that it wins <20% of the time. I don't think it has an auto-loss against any of them, and I think it does well enough that it doesn't lose to "most" other Tier 1 or Tier 1.5 squads, so it's better than Tier 2.

Yes, that is definitely enough to win a regional with it or even do really well at Gencon with it, especially if you're a very good player (disparate skill levels can easily make those matchups where Mace wins <20% of the time into much more likely wins). That doesn't necessarily make him Tier 1, though.

It may be that you misunderstood my initial point when you countered.

I will reiterate, what I said was, "Even more importantly, no one is playing anti-Mace squads either. That should tell people all you need to know. The meta doesn't need to prepare for Mace any more than any other squad, and it's still not dominating. This is entirely the opposite of GOWK a couple of years ago where the entire Meta was shifting around it."

I highlighted the most likely missed points in my statement.

Maybe I wasn't clear enough. "anti-Mace" would be the near hate level, but also squads that are designed at the very beginning to beat Mace as the most important gate-keeper squad. We aren't seeing that at all in the same way as the past.

"Preparing for mace any more..." - I'm talking about all decent squads here, things you are likely to see at an event. You might or might not consider Mace in your squad design, but it's not what I hear players saying is the overriding factor in what they choose to play or not play. Again, this is unlike the previous era.

"Entire meta shifting" - people were playing Tier 2 hate squads on a regular basis. I played GOWK at Chicago, and played against 4/5 rounds of tier 2 type squads, the 5th game was against another GOWK. Something like 70% of the players were either playing GOWK, or something they designed entirely to beat/compete with it. As it was, I still lost twice to the hate squads, both because of perhaps the worst luck I've ever had on one particular day (failed 21/24 saves on GOWK and Dash against Jonny, and Jonny's Gungans made nearly every save, even when at 10hps based with GOWK, and Jonny intending them to die. The second was a lose to a Vader Unleashed and Palps on throne where I rolled a series of 7 straight 1s while trying to finish off a 10hp Vader for the win. Other non-top tier squads I faced that day was a Vong JH squad designed to kill GOWK with preventing rerolled SSM (of course he couldn't hit Dash who ran through the JHs over like 6 straight rounds). Another was a Rebel force push squad, designed around direct damage.

That is a far cry from what we are seeing with Mace. And that, and that alone was my only argument and piece of evidence that Mace is not broken at all. One regional win means very little in the grand scheme of things.

actually in this case, it wasn't. Vader pulled off 3 more grips at 10hps because I literally couldn't roll a 3 over 3 rounds. the one that made us laugh the hardest was when all was said and done, I still had once last weakling (maybe ug, who knows) that needed a crit. Game was over, I still rolled it, 1.

Not to get into it too much, but if I remember correctly, it was actually 5 straight 1s, needing 2s to hit, then Wicket died, and I needed 3s, where I managed to still fail another 2 in a row.

Also, I was talking about the attacks, not consequetive rolls of the dice. There were inits, and whatever else in there I'm sure. It was 7 straight attacks, , the first 5 at least were 1s (was using combined fire to assure the hit). Vader managed to kill a full hp Dash, and finish off my GOWK hiding behind him with 40hps remaining, because I couldn't hit. Had wicket in range, Dash had opportunist, and I had combined fire on two shots, so those needed 2. I rolled 4 misses with Dash, that was no joke. Obi moved up, rolled a 1, rerolled, rolled a 1 (so I guess that's 4 right there.) was out of force.

Vader went again, finished Dash, a stormtrooper (Evo maybe) finished Wicket, leaving my 40ish hp GOWK. He double attacked, missed all 3 attacks. In total, I know there were 7 1s rolled in that span of 2 rounds by me on attacks that needed low numbers to hit. We counted it. But they may not have been directly in a row, could have been other dice rolls. Either way, 7 times with 2 characters against Vader with 10hps, I did in fact roll 7 1s, with two characters over 2 rounds attacking Vader. And I'm well aware of the odds, that's why I brought the scenario up. The two of us playing the game couldn't believe it either.

I got a good laugh at this. I think we all do this where we either exagerate a little or misremember. Like last night, I was using Critdu( who I love using).... I rolled 7 crits on 2 figs including Anakin Sith Apprentice( Actually I rolled 3 on Ani and 1 on Aurr-Sing.....) Anikan ended up Taking Mace down with the Djem -so(They both Killed each other.............
I'm not sure what my point was.... Either that I though by the end of the game that I had rolled 10 Crits with Mace or that He went down so fast with Ani-Sith Apprentice(The one who costs 46 pts!

He played a squad with nine guys in it. Nine guys. One of them is a great attacker, one is an OK attacker (GOWK), and one is an indifferent attacker (Foul). If the great attacker doesn't roll some crits, the squad has a good chance to just lose every game. Mace-GOWK is not a low-skill squad. You live or die on how well you use Foul, R2, and positioning to keep your guys alive and kill whatever your opponent has that you can't deal with (Jaster Mereel, Weir, etc.). The great strength of the squad is that you have this fantastic mobility to put Mace in the right place at the right time, while also pushing GOWK up to support.

Was the OR squad I played at Owensboro low skill? That squad has eleven guys, no movement breakers, a beatstick who turns into rubbish at 60 HP, and two 80 HP shooters with no defenses whatsoever. There is a difference between a squad that is straightforward and a squad that is easy to play. Intricate squads are often hard to play, especially for a beginner, but running Lord Vader with Mas Amedda is exponentially easier than running a Mando squad where you have to keep mouse droids within six of your cloaked dudes without letting your opponent draw LOS to them, or playing Black Sun cannon and trying to juggle Czerka scientist range while not getting your fragile-ass dudes killed.

Going back to tiers, I would argue that GOWK-Mace is tier 1.5. I don't see how it consistently beats, well, a lot of stuff, starting with Nom Bombs, going through YVJH swarms and Iggy swarm, and ending with Stealth 'n' Blue. My OR squad is tier 1.5, at best, because it can't consistently beat Mace, among others. But it is worth remembering that we judge competitiveness, and tiers, in the context of our current meta. RIGHT NOW, I think you would have to be crazy to play that OR squad at a regional, because there is such a high chance of facing Mace and getting rolled by it. But maybe in a few months, everyone will be playing, I dunno, Rebels, because Rebels beats the pants off Mace, and then suddenly Kavar and friends looks pretty decent again. Similarly, lancer doesn't seem like a good choice right now, because of, you guessed it, Mace, even though it beats the living daylights out of Weir and several other squads.

Heck, Rebels went from dominating the game to "Is there even a faction called Rebels in this game," all over the past year.

Mostly I'm glad to see different squads being played and winning things, and as long as we don't end up with a rock-paper-scissors meta where the game basically gets decided before the map roll, it's all good.

That's what you've been getting at??? That's obviously, almost tautologically true! Of course Mace has effected the meta! He's a piece that a lot of people play, that will always effect the meta! No one has been arguing that people don't play Mace; that's obviously and empirically true. Lots of people play Mace. If there is ANY piece that lots of people play, no matter how good or bad the piece is, it will effect the meta. That does not in any way, shape, or form effect how good the piece actually is. Popularity does not by any stretch speak to strength. He's a neat piece that is easy to play but hard to master who is also a fan favorite character, that's like the perfect storm of a popular piece. Bad players will play it because he doesn't take a ton of thought to do at least alright with, good player will play him that if you're exceptional with him you can get exceptional results (like Hinkbert has done). This doesn't mean he's super strong or tier 1, it just means he's popular.

What you've said up until now is that Mace is tier 1 and that he's a very powerful piece. That's obviously debatable due to the fact that he's been played by plenty of people at regionals and only 1 player has been good enough to win with him. If you had been saying "Hey, that Mace Windu guy has really effected the Meta!" then I think basically everyone would agree with that.

There is a slight difference to having strengths against Mace vs countering Mace. If you see a Vong squad, is that made to counter Mace, or is it just a Vong squad. I have yet to see much shifts in squads to counter Mace.

The thing is, it isn't just Mace. You are seeing a few decent big beats in squads. What works against Mace also works against those. Once I see people building around Saesee Tiin, Durge JH, or a beefy droid, then I will believe that Mace specifically is being countered.