Jawa Trader, from Alliance and Empire





The Jawa Trader isn't completely awful for 9 points, but noone's ever going to use one, since WOTC all but obsoleted it with the two subsequent Jawas that they released.
- For 1 more point you can get a Jawa Scout, which loses Cunning and Evade but gains Stealth, Spotter +20, and significantly better stats with 20 extra hit points.
- For 4 extra points you can get a Jawa Scavenger, which trades Evade for Stealth, upgrades Cunning to Cunning +20, and adds Accurate Shot. Accurate shot is huge against key droids like R2-D2 Astromech, which makes the Scavenger easily the most popular Jawa, as a potent Lobot reinforcement.
Not completely incompetent (it would be a decent reinforcement option against droids), but WOTC's own power creep has made it obselete. 3/10

You summed this one up pretty well. Maybe i'd use this piece in a booster draft, but that's about it. The Jawa Scavenger made most jawas obsolete.

Eh, I agree it fails the IG-86 test (as usual).

Electrostaff can activate living characters, so it's not so bad, especially with twin being pretty much a given in Seps.

I'd give it more like a 4.

That makes it 3 times as good as the Commando Droid. Bet one of these could take out three Commando Droids.

Ki-Adi-Mundi, Jedi Master from Destiny of the Force





The original Ki-Adi-Mundi was from Clone Strike, and like the majority of Clone Strike pieces, had been well and truly outclassed by power creep by the time the first v-set was released. With a damage ceiling of one melee attack at +10, he was hopelessly outdated, despite Anticipation and an interesting CE. This new version feels like a loving remake - they've taken everything from the original Ki-Adi-Mundi, added 20 hit points, 1 defense, and given him double, improved his CE, and given him some more attacking punch with Opportunist and Sweep - a nice package for 34 points.

While he can get overlooked amongst the plethora of choices of mid-range Republic Jedi, he's still a solid piece, and Weeks' Ki-Blast squad enjoyed some popularity in the Destiny of the Force era; the squad ran Ki-Adi-Mundi along with Yobuck, Panaka, Captain Rex, and Ferus Olin. He's a competent attacker with Opportunist and Sweep, and his Anticipation and the option of an extra activation in a phase are both useful tricks for a squad to have up its sleeve. It's interesting to note that his CE combined with Opportunist is a slightly uncomfortable mix, which means that it's often a choice between taking advantage of one or the other of his options; I'm sure the designers built him with this tension purposely. Ki-Adi-Mundi, Jedi Master is a nice remake of a piece that needed it, 8/10.

I like running republic jedi squads and have overlooked him. I will pick him up and add him in...he looks like fun. I like that he has opportunist. I just wish he didn't have a ce so he could benefit from GMYoda's boosts.

A often overlooked tactic with thie Ki Adi is that he actually brings in Revan's swap ability to the republic. He can move 12 squares (14 with a FP) use his CE to activate Panaka (thereby activating Panaka's CE) and then swaping in your person of choice with Ki Adi. You can get some really good deep strikes with R2 Astromech droid.

Mandalorian Crusader, from Vengeance (http://www.bloomilk.com/Character/1157/mandalorian-crusader)





For some reason, the Mandalorians suffered from a lack of cheap grunts under WOTC - after the 8 point Taung Warrior, which came out in Masters of the Force and was mostly ignored, their next cheapest piece was 13 points. So this useful little 7 point piece is a great addition to the faction. The Crusader's stats are in line with the average 7 point piece, which means that it's not going to last long, but it brings two very useful Special Abilities - Splash helps it to clear away fodder walls (especially as it can access twin easily in the Mandos), and Crack Shot helps Mandos to put dents in big tank pieces. It's a really helpful, well thought out piece, that's going to be considered for most Mando squads. 10/10.

Ugnaught Tech, from Force Unleashed





The Ugnaught Tech is another piece that Wizards obseleted themselves - if you're running a droid squad and want a repairer, you're going to use Gha Nachkt everytime, since he's got 30 hit points, and is almost always going to end up cheaper with his rapport for droids. In this case, perhaps replacing him was justified, as 7 points seems too much to pay for Repair 10, a weak ability; even though it is useful in Lancer/Sidious squads for repairing the damage on a pawned Lancer. But the Ugnaught Tech isn't ever going to be worthwhile with a cost of 7 points; the Ugnaught Demolitionist has the exact same stats and a much more useful ability (Satchel Charge) for 3 points. 2/10.

Yeah, Repair 10 is just too weak for 7 points, but as the cheapest piece with Repair 10 he does have a slight niche, so 2/10 seems justifiable. But really he could be 3 or 4 points and be fine (or maybe Repair 20 at 7 or 8 points).

Here's a summary of all the ratings from the first week, broken down into WOTC and v-set, using the "Spinal Tap" scale:



Average rating for WOTC pieces: 4.1 (standard deviation 3.3)
Average rating for V-set pieces: 7.3 (standard deviation 2.7)

It's only a relatively small amount of data so far, but the graph is what you'd expect - the v-set pieces tend to be more highly rated overall, which makes sense, as they tend to not have as much filler as the WOTC sets, nor have they been burned off by powercreep like a lot of early WOTC pieces. At the same time, the one power piece we've covered so far is from WOTC (General Whorm Loathsom), and it's easily stronger than any of the v-set pieces we've seen so far; twin to all followers for 20 points is obviously ridiculous.