my agenda is pretty clear...... a leadership council for the game.


Edit* I posted a new forum chat for this.

Lol, I play what wins and im not going to be ashamed of that no matter how much you try to squad shame me Jen'ari. I really thought you would be above that, guess not...

I put input in on Jangolore, Plageous(helped to come up with their CE's), Pushed for more scissors pieces to counter daala and more counters to Strafe. Pushed for 10 point Gambit to weaken swarms and argued that daala should have been changed to charging assault (still OP). Advocated for no 2 point mice, push for measures on the BT to weaken out act/smash, and so much more... But your hung up on the fact that I play out act and smash when I want to win? Alrighty then...

I want to answer for them so here goes:

Why was it a good idea and good for the community to shut down reserves?--- sometimes the community is wrong about what should be good and what needs counters.

Is it because a few individuals thought it was good and what they wanted? or was it for the good of the game in general?---- there are only a few individuals active left in this game so, of course it was only the idea of a few. These few thought it was for the good of the few left.

Why do a small group of people get to decide reserves should be tier 2?---because this group of people get to decide what should and shouldn't be available at regionals and gencon to play against or with.

hehehe tongue in cheek here: these would be my legit answers if I were the designers of this piece:

Why was it a good idea and good for the community to shut down reserves?-- reserves are unpredictable therefore we can't possibly get a good playtest on these pieces because it is to random.

Is it because a few individuals thought it was good and what they wanted? or was it for the good of the game in general?---- because we can't get those good playtests we want to err on the side of caution when it comes to those abilities in tournament settings


Why do a small group of people get to decide reserves should be tier 2?--- we try to do whats best for the competitive players first because they are the ones that travel and spend money. non-competitive players can agree to not use him or allow him in their own tournaments with no effect on their games. but like I said earlier we can't possibly playtest reserve pieces accurately so we wanted to marginalize their effect on the competitive game.


As designers if we have offended anyone with this piece it was not the intention of the piece. we are just trying to maintain balance for the competitive players. maybe we got it wrong, maybe we didn't, we will certainly take this feedback seriously and look at things again. thank you for your comments and posts we are looking at it right now.

Some perspective from someone who watched the set being developed but was not a designer:

As I mentioned, the MTB negates Reserves even harder than Unkar does. If you have a dedicated Reservers squad like Jason's "Ode to General Grievous", you have Reserves on 5 numbers. MTB negates all 5 of those and makes your extra rolls irrelevant, and it works 95% of the time. Unkar negates 2 of those 5 (plus shutting down all the rerolls and stuff), and it works 95% of the time.

More concretely...
Ode on its own: Reserves 44%-76% of the time (depending on whether Recon is active and you have the FP for Sense the Future)
Ode vs MTB: Reserves 2.2%-7.6% of the time (depending on whether Recon is active and you have the FP for Sense the Future)
Ode vs Unkar: Reserves 16.5%-18.1% of the time (depending on whether Recon is active and you have the FP for Sense the Future)

During design, one person raised the issue of Unkar vs Reserves in the playtest forum, and a change was made directly in response to that concern being raised. (The original version of the ability gave Reserves squads a 0% chance of getting Reserves.) That person didn't even do any PT of the piece. If they had done some PT and they continued to have an issue with it, perhaps it would have been changed again. If anyone else had also raised the issue, perhaps it would have been changed.

In any case, dedicated Reserves squads pretty much face an auto-loss against squads with Lobot or Marn, and that's exactly how it was two months ago and exactly how it was two years ago, because the MTB has been around for a long time.

What has changed since Unkar was designed is Jason's genius move of putting the MTB in the Reserves squad. It's been an option forever but nobody ever thought about it (or at least never played it), and it wasn't on the radar during Unkar's design. Without the "MTB-in-a-Reserves-squad" option, Unkar would have very minimal effect on the playability of Reserves - because a better counter already existed. With MTB around, Reserves squads were already unplayable at a competitive level. Or so it seemed... as it turns out, if a Reserves squad has its own MTB it's very playable (and probably Tier 1). Because of that, Unkar does have a significant impact. He keeps Reserves squads right where they always have been... good if they aren't countered but terrible if Lobot can bring a counter.

If Jason weren't such a genius, the reaction to Unkar would likely be, "Dang - Reserves squads are slightly more Tier 2 than they already were. Oh well."

I guess I don't really see the point. Reserves where fine and close to tier 1 (possibly) while adding an MTB. So that is where we are at..

So MTB negates reserves? but.. add in MTB and it doesn't negate reserves. so MTB is not really a counter to reserves. unless they bring in MTB from reserves and you have Marn?

now what is your option to counter the counter and still play reserves?

Even casually this is just a quick bring in from Lobot. No need to plan for a MTB or have Marn. Much much easier.

Thank you, I understand what you are saying now.

I do not understand, I don't expect you to either, why it was so important for another Reserves counter (an easier and just as effective reserves counter) to have been put in place if, at the time, MTB was already such a good counter.

It seems overkill to try and undo past designs (krell) that should not have a certain interaction (both force powers). Especially since the original design of Unkar completely negated reserves.

Unkar is the low activation squads answer to reserves. An MTB would run the risk of eating through your squad. You have to sacrifice about 15% effectiveness in order to not risk eating yourself though, and initiative is most likely lost.

I think an answer to reserves is a bit of an understatement, it's an auto win against it for no cost. There are literally infinite possibilities of different ways to help low activation squads deal with reserves, aside from what already exists:

-Never Tell Me The Odds, cancels out abilities but at least leaves force power mods and the numbers intact
-Wuher, makes droids more expensive and really messes with Kazdan and Sep builds but in a more balanced way

So why not extend on that? Any of the options I listed above are possible options:
-a cheap fringe force user that can spend force points to cancel anticipation and/or STF
-a never tell me the odds version
-Wager but only a -/+ to either teams roll and making it 4 or 10 instead
-or just upping the cost, even into the 20s would still allow Jabba fringe reinforcements 30 to have it in his underused toolbox next to Finn Galfridian

But as is it's crippling

I'm going to add my own two cents to this discussion. I on first glance at the choices voted for a cost change but I think I'm going to revise that choice upon further review. Taking away Con Artist is, I think, an important thing to be able to bring in through Lobot because Marn (this has been discussed to death) completely nerfs a lot of stuff to (Sith Mastermind). I actually think Wager is indeed what needs to be changed if anything (This means I'm also against banning him entirely to rebalance Pong Krell). I'm sure everybody else has done this in their head or something but I'm going to put it here laid out, if for no other reason than to just help me visualize it. Obviously all ways to modify initiative go away with Wager. So that's that. Choosing a 5 as your Wager number means on that getting reserves on a 5 or 15 are out (I'm using Ode to Grievous as the squad example, by the way). Choosing a 0 means that you only hit Lobot's reserves if the roller hits a 20. So that's one very slim chance of hitting Reserves, which like everybody else is saying basically cripples the squad type. There's a few votes for changing Wager to a "50/50 +4/-4 to initiative roll". I'm not entirely sure what that means, actually, but I'm pretty sure it means that you're only affecting your own initiative roll. If so, this is a good decision to help 'save' reserves, but that isn't my only worry with this situation. I think I stand where atmsalad does, where Unkar went overboard but Reserves should not be Tier 1. Reserves running rampant with the recent Eureka moment that MTB counters itself where Reserves are concerned is not a fun-sounding idea. Moving on to the other options. If Wager doesn't affect Special Abilities, then you lose Anticipation and Sense the Future, which severely reduces the chance to get reserves. If Wager doesn't affect Force Powers, then you lose Recon, which is, in my opinion, not severe enough a blow. All that considered, I think I'm more for Making it not affect Special Abilities. Losing Anticipation and Sense the Future makes Reserves not tier 1, but Recon is still a solid chance to get reserves, right? Ode, while hurting without Anticipation and StF, could still be solid just eyeballing it if you had an ARF Trooper in there for more Recon shots or something. I think it should be playtested, but I think my vote is for making Wager not affect Special Abilities upon analyzing it more.

Right, I didn't make it clear but that's assuming your Wager number is correct. This is kind of just a different way of me visualizing it, I think; one of your posts from earlier with the statistics i think is the best benchmark to kick off any discussion about Unkar.