If you don't play anymore, why do you care at all?

Furthermore, if you don't play anymore, why are you here at all?

Lol, ignore Jonny.

So de-powered Daala won Michigan Regional? Sounds like the errata was fair enough!

Tim was involved with the change other than that I don't care.

And having just been owned by a Daala Raxus swarm, I'm not entirely sure that the errata was enough. Time will tell.

There are a number of approaches to beating a Daala squad:

* Out-swarm them. The troops are basically going to hit once and die easily. If you can trade a 3-5 pt piece for a trooper, you win. Or even 6-7 points but don't have to have as many commanders boosting them. Nom bombs. Tantives. (I think the PA finals versus the Tantives was an evenly matched skirmish.)
* "Scissors" squads. Daala is a "paper" squad... paper thin on hit points per piece, but covering the whole board. With a scissors piece to take out a bunch at once, the squad gets decimated. Yobuck/Lancer are the epitome, of course. Momaw works well against Raxus Primes. Lightsaber Sweep/Lawnmower squads, Chain Lightning could also do the trick. (Though the Force bubble could hinder that.)
* Take out the commanders. Deep strike or suppression. Commanders are vital for the trooper swarms, so if you can get them it's huge. Deep Strike is difficult past so many troopers, though. Disruptive or ABM can hurt them, too. But of course the Force bubble is a factor, and Disruptive is only range 6. However, there are too many troopers to fit them all in the Force bubble along with the commanders.



Part of the 'problem' with Daala is that she matches up extremely well against traditional builds that are very popular:

* standard, balanced squad: 2-4 offensive threats, all in the 20-50 cost range.
* "rock" squads with one big threat.

I think she does qualify as a gatekeeper, but there are plenty of other gatekeepers. Uber-defense Mace, Yobuck/Lancer, Poggle, Cloaked Mandos. Anything that is Tier 1 that is different from a "normal" build could be considered a gatekeeper, and Daala is that.

Daala won 3 tournaments, but two of the squads had a loss in swiss, and in PA I won by avoiding a matchup with urbanjedi's double lancers. He lost by 1 point in the semifinals. If he had won, I don't think I would have had any chance against the double lancers in the finals. So while she has 3 wins, Daala hasn't walked through unscathed.

Gatekeeper: yes
Is she still a problem? I think it's too early to tell.


(Side note: Did Jar Jar really take out 7? I thought it was 5, but I lost count. Whatever it was, it was my first time really hating Jar Jar. Thankfully, I hadn't really had to play him before.)

One thing Daala does to the meta that maybe not everyone likes is that she adds another viable 'extreme' squad.

Paper: Swarms. Paper thin (low hp) but covers the board.
Scissors: Swarm killers. Cuts up the paper squad.
Rock: Big hitters. Crushes pure scissors squad. Loses big to pure paper squad.

If Lancer (at least the double Lancer) is an extreme Scissors squad, Daala (at least the Barebones version I ran) is an extreme Paper squad. Daala is probably the first viable pure swarm squad that doesn't rely on death shots or self-destruct. Instead, it relies on the 12 square reach of the troops. She will have more trouble with a Lancer/Yobuck than the Naboobians, but she makes up for it by being stronger against traditional builds.

That advantage was a big part of my decision to take the Bare Bones Snowtroopers to PA regionals (21 with minimal commanders) instead of something like what Lou won with (12 troops with Pellaeon + 2 more commanders). The 21 will have more trouble against certain squad types (e.g. I had no Accurate to shoot past a Mouse wall and Chain Lightning would have been deadly), but against most traditional builds it's a strong advantage.

(Although the biggest part of my decision to take the 21-trooper version is that I didn't want to have to make a Pellaeon decision every skirmish.)


Klatooinian Assassins with any movement breaker would cause a problem for Daala squads. Not a huge problem because they're just 12 point pieces, but they can very easily trade in their favor. They can easily kill any trooper they can see, but if they can base multiple troopers, every trooper they base is automatically dead. Either they die from Self-Destruct or they die from an AoO trying to run away. If there's one kill and then base 2, or just base 3 to begin with, then the Klat wins that exchange.

not necessarily true, the guy running 21 troopers could just decide to use the 3 that are based to combine fire and refuse to ever kill the klat assassin, leaving you to kill one trooper a turn with the klat. if the game only goes 4-5 rounds by the time his happens the person running the troopers won that exchange :)

you don't have to take an attack of opportunity

But a game should go more than 4-5 rounds. And if I can use one of my guys to neutralize 3 of your threats, I win that exchange every time.