I agree on the Republic thing wholeheartedly. I haven't played since Bastilla came out but I can only imagine the combo of double death shots or MaceSpray could cause.

By all appearances and experiences, Bastilla was put together with the intent of giving faction identity (success) and bringing the faction up to speed (glorious success), while making it into an affordable package to fit other pieces in (my biggest issue).

The whole race to competition put on this piece shows:
She was too low in cost.
Too many FPs in her initial pool with the ABM.
ABM added damage along with already powerful ability.
ABM has a longer duration (until next turn) for the force points (3) than its counter part Battle Meditation (for the remainder of the round) for the force points (1).
Mobility for a Meditation effect (yes, this is more flavor but it still balances out the duration of this ability.)

If two of these things were addressed slightly, the piece wouldn't be such a question. Of course, I take the more conservative approach in this discussion vs the more progressive approach.

Would she have been as useful minus the damage boost?
Would she have been as useful if she costed 7 more points? (Atris, which was Fringe, had a similar ability and cost more but still was the same concept- reduce what makes another squad effective)
Would she have been as affective if her ABM ended at the end of the round?
If her force pool was less (FP 2, FR 1) or if she had a finite pool (FP 6), would that have affected her usefulness.

I am not saying she doesn't need to exist. I am saying the rush to bring her into existence for identity vastly overpowered, in my opinion, the need to fully balance her.

+1

Fun squads by definition put themselves out of competition. Otherwise they wouldn't be "fun squads", they would be "competitive squads"

If you are just playing for "fun", then ban Bastila in friendly games.

We're only talking high level competition here. Otherwise you can do whatever you want so the point is moot.

People have to accept that people have different tastes in squads. It's not wrong to want to play the game differently, or to want a particular squad style to be viable.




A competitive squad can be fun. Some squads are just more fun to play than others. (And that will vary from person to person.) It's not wrong to want squads you find to be fun to be competitive. Naturally, by definition not everything will be competitive. You find it more fun to have a meta with 20 viable squads. I agree! I also think it's more fun to be able to potentially stack CEs for synergy in a viable squad.

Then again, I play almost exclusively in a casual setting, so I should probably address that instead. Playing casually doesn't mean you aren't trying to win. It means most of our games are scenarios, campaigns, and sometimes a standard 200-pt game. Even in the standard games, we're usually trying out new pieces, where the goal is to get the best squad that includes new piece X that we like, as opposed to "win-at-all-costs" games that pull out something from the established meta.

Bastila is a NPE for me in our situation, but it's one we've grown accustomed to. I'd like to look for synergy with CEs, etc. But to be honest I usually don't even bother. Bastila kills it anyway. You simply write off strongly CE-based squads from the outset even if you wanted to try them, just like in a competitive situation. Even though we play casually and I don't put all that much work in squadbuilding, it would be nice to stumble on something that's viable on a competitive level. Sure, we could ban Bastila locally, but that would be worse because she's an auto-include for OR - back to a non-viable faction. In the debate between Bastila and nothing, Bastila is better. But there are tons of things that could have been done instead to boost OR without the NPE. The concept and flavor for Bastila is fine - it's just that it went too far.

+1. I actually think that her starting with 2 FP would be good. In round 2 you go up to 4, then down to 1. Round 3 you activate but can't use it, Round 4 you can use it again. If you have more activations than the OR squad (not hard) you get that break between when she activates in Round 3 and when she activates in Round 4. It's small, but you could do a lot there. It also means that when she activates in Round 5 she has just 1 Force Point so it's time to get into the fight. The majority of 4 rounds (most of rounds 2, 3, 4, and 5, with a potential small break between 3 and 4) is still REALLY good. You're right, OR might need a bit better stuff to get to where they are now to make up for it (maybe make Carth or one of the 60-ish point Jedi a little better?), but just that small change would make a world of difference.

I'm also fond of having it just give Disruptive to everybody, then add other good OR pieces like a cheap Black Ops character to take care of Tempo CEs. Everyone getting Disruptive is huge, but this would hurt Rebels a lot less (although it would still hurt them). Instead of just never having Evade from Rieekan and getting shot up by Jaq, you would have to at least run an Ugnaught up to within 6 of the target and then shoot at them. Still really good, but not as good, and a cheap Black Ops character means you still deal with the Tempo CEs that nobody likes.

Reducing the range of CEs is an idea I've heard, too, which is a good one. Making all CEs range 3 (even if you have Booming Voice) would be a big hurt, but not quite as bad as losing them altogether. Of course, then you did much less to the Rebels, since Princess Leia is the only CE they really use that's ranged. Reducing that to Range 3 would hurt them some, but still keeping all their others might not be good enough. Another good alternative to this would be making all CEs range 6 and they can't be extended by Booming Voice or Relay Orders.


There are lots of ways she could be tweaked to still be good but less offensive. Some might require another piece to pick up a little slack, but that's really not a problem at all. Bastilla didn't have to be the one piece to change the faction; Sith moved into competitiveness from being one of the worst factions with multiple pieces (Revan, Exar, Kaan, Jaq, and Bandon mostly) as opposed to just getting a single amazing piece. The development of the Sith faction is really the perfect way to do it in my opinion opposed to the development of the OR faction.

I'll agree that Bastila is a bit over the top, but i hope we won't see a hard counter like Master Meditation. If ABM was just made so that it only lasted until the end of turn, I don't think it would be that big of an issue. You'd have to plan when to use it, instead of just pressing the ON button in turn two.

Republic aren't nearly as inhibited in dealing with her as other factions. Republic have enough movement breakers and fast movers to reduce her overall effectiveness against them. R2 and Foul aren't CE dependent for their passengers. Speeder bikes and Yo-buck are adept at traversing the battlefield.

Of the factions, Republic, by my estimation, have enough firepower to reduce the effectiveness of @&$+*Stilla than say Mandos, Rebels, Sith.

My biggest issue with the way you've been defending her is that you seem to suggest that Bastilla was the only answer. Just look at the variety of competitive squads in the top factions - these technique could have easily been used to make the OR competitive (yeah it may have taken a couple sets, but so what).

Another easy way to up the power level would be a decent movement breaker. I personally would have liked Mount that appeared on Thon to be a non-flight Tow-Cable, then a Tott Doneeta could have a Force power "Beast Tongue" that removed Savage and granted Mount while Tott was in play this would have made the OR potentially very mobile while not attacking what I deem a core element to the game. Obviously this is no longer an option, but it was at the time.

I think you're misunderstanding my point, and it was probably overstated, which might be colored a bit by posts like Tim's about her. Yes, obviously OR is much more than just Bastilla now, and needed more than just her. But I think it's hard to argue that she changes her faction no more than Revan changed Sith. Sith aren't running the tables or anything (just 1 Sith squad got into the top 8 this year), but you CAN make a reasonable Sith squad without Revan. At least much more reasonable than an OR squad without Bastilla. Saying that Revan and Bastilla changed their respective factions equally seems false to me based on that if nothing else.

I mean, just look at the fact that this discussion is happening over Bastilla but has never happened over Revan. She had a much bigger impact. Sure, it's an exaggeration to say that she's the one piece who has changed the OR faction, but she has changed OR more than any other piece has changed any other faction in the v-sets.


Also: Jason, Lou, and I discussed ABM on the SHNN last night. I think we hit some good points about it, and all agreed that 2 starting FP on her instead of 3 would have alleviated a surprising amount of the problems considering it's such a small change. Then we got sidetracked into talking about design experiences and design philosophies as a whole. Go listen!

Can you? You say on one hand there is ONE good competitive Sith squad and then make the claim that they can make other reasonable squads. I'm struggling to think what those are? Sith Sorcery is interesting in tile wars but its never impacted on tournament level.


A lot of the complaints of bastilla is because she stops the opposition having their cake and eating it.

"You mean i can't run 16 squares and twin attack you for 100 dmg now while evading all your shots? Awww, Bastilla is broken!!"

She's a control piece. At least she lets you (the opponent) fight even if its without the CE synergies you wanted. The strafe squads just wipe your squad while you just run more pieces into the pyre not allowing you to do anything.




This what i believe with ABM. You make it work once every other turn, it doesn't work effectively enough and the OR still prop up the bottom. This was play tested at the time so its not like it was just guess work.


Yes she is a main the reason the OR got good. Is she a reason that the game increased in its overall power? Only if the design reaction to it makes it so.