I'm sorry, but if you're playing a game where the winner is determined by whoever wins initiative, rather than making smart teams that make mediocre pieces good, we're arguing on two different levels.

The game isn't about who has the most expensive piece that can ravage the board and crush the will of your opponents.
The game is about taking a pud piece like a Super Battle Droid or Imperial Knight, and experimenting with ways to make them more competitive.

It isn't black and white. If you think that the game revolved around Pud Pieces vs. Power Pieces, then you aren't understanding from where the opposition is coming.

Example:
Super Battle Droid is garbage on his own. He is what we can consider a worthless 10 point piece.
But throw in a Droid Sargeant, Officer, Supreme commander Grievous, and Loathsome, and guess what? That piece has +10 Atk and 30 Damage with 4 shots.

Tactics. It's a tactical game. SWM wasn't designed so that everyone can run around with Boba Fett Bounty Hunter and Darth Bane. That's why other pieces exist. And yeah, they might not be great on their own, but when players are given tools to MAKE them good, suddenly that Battle Droid because that much more of a contendor.

Another way to look at it...

The WotC game is balanced for a typical collection of 100-500 pieces. You'll have a few power pieces, but they're spread out across factions so only 1 or 2 are probably in each game. A game also includes plenty of horrible pieces as filler. You notice that some pieces are better than others, but the games still work.

However, for someone with access to all of the pieces, there were only a handful of competitive squad types. Anything else was too weak to be viable. The majority of WotC pieces were never used - the game in that sense was unbalanced.

The Vset game is balanced for everyone having access to every piece. It has to be, since everyone who uses the Vsets has access to the whole PDF. There are still plenty of underpowered pieces that don't see play (most WotC pieces), but there are way more than just handful of viable squad types at the competitive tables. More balance.

I was first introduced to this game after WotC got out of it. If the v-sets didn't exist the competitive scene for this game would not exist. The weekly playgroup that I play at wouldn't exist.

If you don't like the v-sets don't use them. Go play Han, Leia, Dodonna and ERC's against a Black and Blue squad. Maybe throw in a little Kybuck action if you are feeling particularly daring!

This is just silly. One thing I will say unequivocally about these types of threads/debates that get all chippy: the biggest problem the people complaining have is their own bad attitudes. Nobody is making you use the v-sets, you just want to complain and rip everyone down and that benefits no one.

And here is another HUGE THANK YOU to all of the designers, playtesters and anyone else who contributes to keeping this game moving forward! I appreciate you immensely and love playing this game.

I'm getting the impression that you think the big beatsticks are the best pieces in the game, and a squad with a handful of them thrown in is the best kind of squad. Is that right? If so, I have to disagree, and I would disagree at every point of this game's history. I do 100% agree that the most fun squads are ones with a lot of synergy, so that they are better than the sum of their parts. I think those squads are not just more fun, but also stronger. Your point about the Super Battle Droid is taken, but do you realize that a squad of SBDs isn't bad because it gets beaten by big ole beatsticks, but it's bad because SBDs are bad? You can do a squad similar to what you described with the IG-86 droids. Throw a few of them in with a BDO, Whorm, a Battle Droid Sergeant, and a Geonosian Overseer and you have a very popular squad that will honestly beat most beatstick-based squad. The IG-86 is a mediocre piece in a vacuum, but throw in some great commanders, and it's one of the strongest pieces in the game.

It sounds like you consider power creep to be the creation of bigger beatsticks, in which case I just disagree with your definition of power creep. Power creep is the creation of more powerful pieces; I actually think Poggle the Lesser is one of the more egregious forms of power creep from the v-sets. Poggle isn't anyway close to a beatstick, and doesn't boost anything to beatstick-level power. He's about taking some crappy pieces and making them awesome with a strong CE.

Let me try one more time:

What I am saying is that, yes, V-Set beatsticks break the game. You can disagree all you want.
They break the game because at base value, they wipe the floor with any team that DOESN'T have a big beatstick in their squad.

Why do you think there was such a kickback from GOWK? Because he crashed the game into the ground.

One of the things I think people fail to grasp is that the V-sets primarily added to the top to middle tiers whereas the WotC pieces ran the gambit from top to bottom with more emphasis on the lower tiers. Why would WotC make bad pieces? Because they are a business and the game is a collectible one. If a person has to buy more boosters to get what they wanted, that's all the more profit for WotC.

As the V-set designers aren't hampered by corporate overlords whose only goal is profit in mind, they were able to sit down and go "Why can't we make a set where every piece is decent and playable?". And they've done that. It only looks like massive power creep to some because they can't see the level of disparity that already existed with WotC pieces. But those people need to ask themselves, when was the last time they sat down and thought Bail Organa, Komari Vosa, or some Mon Calimari Knights would be the perfect addition to their squad?

I've brought these up in past discussions about this sort of thing and I'm bringing them up again:
http://www.sirlin.net/articles/balancing-multiplayer-games-part-1-definitions.html

These are a set of articles by a notable game designer about how to balance an asymmetrical multiplayer game. It's worth a read.

[/quote]
...I'm almost at a loss for words. So was it ACTUALLY too long for you to read? Because that's nothing close to what I said. You could have summarized it as "I see you're using SBDs. Have you considered using IG-86s?", which would have still be kind of a jerk thing to say, but at least it would be kind of true. I was trying to point out that the type of squad building you seemed to like (high synergy pieces, not beatsticks) was still alive and well. My point was that you DON'T need beatsticks to make good and/or fun squads, but you seem to have taken the exact opposite from it.
[/quote]

I read every word. I summarized what you told me for the sake of time. My argument is that the beauty of SWM is that you have the ability to take bad pieces such as SBD and make them good.

Your argument is that SBD's are innately bad and should never be played because, dude, why play them when you could be playing Darth Zannah.

I do not play this game competetively, so I'm a bit of a layman when it comes to topics like this, but I really want to add my two cents.

In the end, this is a game. Also, it is a random chance game. I have competed in various things not related to SW minis and I know how frustrating losing can be. But in the end, if you want to compete in tournaments it is entirely your choice, and if the game designers make pieces you don't like, you just have to deal with it.

I think pieces like GOWK are broken. But I also think that, in all honesty, most V-Set pieces are fine for what they are. I simply don't like many of the SA's they have, like the lightsaber style abilities, but they aren't game breaking.

So you know what I do? I don't use them! Nobody makes anybody else use the V-Set pieces. I play casual games, and I am under no obligation to use V-Set pieces unless I want to. And for those that play in competetive tournaments, you must realize that all things change and there will inevitably be pieces made that you don't like.

Having intelligent conversation about "power creep" is fine. But this is a minis game, and this is Bloomilk. We really shouldn't post derogatory comments about each other from behind the safety of a keyboard. SW minis should be fun. Life can suck bad enough on its own. We don't need to polute Bloomilk's forums with flaming or trying-to-win-the-argument comments.

No, that's not my argument! I don't even think Darth Zannah is very good! My point is that you can totally play Super Battle Droids, but they're worse than IG-86s. My point has nothing to do with beatsticks.

If your complaint is just that some pieces are better than others, then I'm afraid you will be disappointed with any and every collectible game out there. Do you play any others? Magic, or HeroClix, or even something like Warhammer? Because in all of those games some "pieces" (where pieces is cards, or models, or what have you) are just better than others. That's just part of games. If you read the articles written by Sirlin that Emperor Dragon linked to above (good choice by the way, ED; I don't agree with everything Sirlin writes, but in general he knows what he is talking about), it explains these things in better detail.

You lost credibility the moment you mentioned Warhammer, arguably the most balanced tabletop game period.