Yes Lansing had snowspeeder 4th

Ever see Veed or Tarkin or Mar Tuuk see play? That is why. Dodonna is the main problem, because Ozzel and San have drawbacks.

And I rarely go to time when playing San. I play just as quickly with him, or facing him, so yes, it is a player problem if it goes to time.

And quite honestly, the main issues that the Sith, Vong, and OR have has little to do with tempo control, as they have a lot more issues than just that.

well then you are missing my entire point.

It is not about being activated by a couple of pieces. That is not a big deal. But effectively the way I see things is. If you have a Dodonna squad with say 14 acts and I have 14 sith pieces. You are able to move 7 pieces without any regard to my being able to respond in any fashion.

If you have 16 acts without Dodonna and I have the same 14 you get to move 2. I cannot see how you are missing the difference.

If there were pieces like Doombot and Yobuck in the 4 lesser factions this point is moot. As the ability to move 38 spaces nerfs the low hitpoints of the rebels. But since this is not true the low hitpoint of the Rebels are devastating. The longer the game goes into the alloted the time the bigger the issue will become for the player. Being as there is absolutely zero drawback on a piece like Dodonna I dont understand where you cannot see a problem. With San or Ozzel there always comes a point in a game where you are wishing you could do 2 just for that turn. Well for a cheaper cost (shocking I know) than San or Ozzel you get your wish with Dodonna.

The Mandos Pieces are very similar to the Rebels in a that they are low hit points. So when you add Dodonna in and the ability to say activate 7 - 9 pieces in a row with no response plus they already have the lancer to deal with... Can you tell me who in their right freakin mind is going to play them?????

The Sith live on huge hit points with zero deflect or evade. So when you face a faction that can cheaply get 7 activations in a row with a movement breaker like levitate. You can be looking at your big beatstick taking 120 dmg before he has a chance to even think about responding to all of that. So again if I want to gamble and think I am that lucky forget Gencon I am going to Vegas or Atlantic City.

I can go on but I think you get what I am saying.

I find the whole I will hide my pieces and so will you kind of a silly thing. There is a huge difference between 2 activation before I can move a piece again versus 7-9 pieces moving. But hey what do I know?

EDIT: But hey to prove your point that Dodonna is not a big deal. Put your argument to the test. Show up this year at Gencon play in the Championship with ZERO tempo control. None at all. No Dodonna. No San. No Ozzel. Nothing no tempo control at all. If it is not a big deal in any way for you or Nickname I will see you at the Final 8 table on Sunday.

Hm. Think you're missing my point as I don't disagree the the latter paragraph. (But I do think Sith with 14-16 is not enough.)

The minor factions are clearly weaker in the top end game. However, I don't think in the theoretical situation of Dodonna not existing they'd do much better. We've already started to see exactly what I said would happen if the champs were switched to 200. The field narrows down considerably as the top players concentrate on this new format and begin isolating the power combos and dropping all the stuff that can't compete. Activation counts have crept up. Play speed has slowed down. By the time the process completes, I think we see very similar patterns to the prior 150 champs barring the slight improvement for melee due to some solid new options in the last few sets and the less punishing map list and I think that would be equally true of 150. So that's the general situation...

Now to the specifics of no Dodonna. We'll stick with your Sith example. The Sith uniques are pretty expensive and we'll assume the only reason you go Sith is to access at least one of them so it's pretty clear any top Sith squad is going to be out-activated by the top Rebel squads that easily pack in 15-20 activations and remain effective. It doesn't really matter much if you're out-activated by 2 or 7 (from your example) because only 2-3 of them really matter. That's the huge hit from Han or Luke along with the Leia/Bothan combo on it typically. The other stuff is incidental--maybe a shot from a ERC or Chewie or something--all nothing to worry about. I dispute that a Sith player can easily catch up on activations barring mistakes from the Rebel. Rebel will tend to keep his advantage because he understands the importance of that edge and doesn't tend to need to sacrifice scrubs to maintain a lead.

But that's all just theory. I don't think any faction has a significant problem competing outside the very top end of the game. At the top end removal of Dodonna would not let the minor factions compete against Rebels. It would hurt Rebels against Imp/Seps, and hurt NR against the other major factions but other factors still eliminate the minor factions from making the grade for top level play and particularly don't help them much in respect to fight Rebels--I'd argue they're helped more against NR actually in that case.

I think the answer to your final questions remains the same--while the gap may close a bit removal of Dodonna is not enough to bring these factions to the point where top players would feel confident they could go 6-1 vs 4-3 with them. They just lack too much other stuff outside of activation issues.

Where is there anything in the conversation about "making things better" and where is there anywhere that I've said I'm opposed to making things better? :)

All I said is that the theoretical removal of Dodonna would not allow the minor factions to compete with Rebels in the current championship environment.

That's the entire extent of my point.

Removing him does not "break those rebels" as in the OP, and to be honest, I don't even agree with the premise that the rebels are the dominant faction, though they are the deepest.

I'm not advocating ANYTHING about what may or may not be done in the future, or stating any opinion one way or the other about what I personally think should change nor even saying if the metagame would be better/worse in my opinion if Dodonna never existed.

If someone asked if I think the game would be better if Dodonna never existed I would say yes, it would pretty clearly be better. But he does exist and I'm not in favor of bannings and don't think he reaches the level of ability modification that GOWK reached (ie the slipperly slope that GOWK change opponents predicted would be the eventual results of such a change to GOWK--who's next, Dodonna?)

I've long since posted in the thread on Gamers about what I'd like to see in a V-set that an inventive way to deal with activation control (not just a NTMTO direct counter) for the factions without it would be on my list. I'm not sure how that got tangled up into a poll option called "take away Dodonna"...

I think Mandos might be able to give Kybuck a run now. But yeah, Lancer is death. Dodonna is irrelevent to their competetive hopes at the top.

you know saying rebels wont make top 8 at gencon and then saying NR will is kind of silly.

NR is just an extension of the Rebels generally almost the same tech for a slightly higher cost. At times the same tech or piece. So when you mention Rebels you are talking essentially about NR too.

Judging by the squads at Owensboro I can see that Dodonna was hardly used by anyone (that is sarcasm by the way).

You will see much of the same at Kokomo also

It kind of reminds me of last year when it was either gowk or gowk hate that seemed to be winning everything, but this year its dodonna. Now im not in favor of banning any pieces in any way. I also realize that the people who were in the finals of these tourneys most could do well with any faction.

I do think that Dodonna is an issue, if only because i believe his style of act control is wrong. There is no reason to not play dodonna in your squad, Ozzel and San both have reasons to and not to play in your squad. With San hill if your playing 12 acts there is no reason to have him, with Ozzel if your running cunning shooters there is no reason to have him. Dodonna is in EVERY rebel/NR squad because there is no way to get stuck with him, there is no counter moves you can do like you can against ozzel/san AND he is cheaper then both.

If his kind of act control is around then every faction needs some kind of act control or a counter to it. Why should i take Sith to a tourney if im trying to win it? there is no reason i would LOVE to have a meta where it really is "wide open" like its suppossibly is this year. I guess its "wide open" to any dodonna squad.

I say all this directed at the piece (dodonna) not the players who play him.

I problem with dod is the mind set people have when they play him. They are starting to use him like San squads and forget they can do two early in around. When i play imps or republic vs rebels I just set traps making people act there minis early. This works on about 85% of the players out there but there are 15% that will figure out how to not kill the piece and still keep there han or speeder unactivated.
All of the lesser factions cant set traps as good as the imps or Republic because of movement. So I think if the OR got some type of movement to go with Hoth and the Sith,Mandos got some type of CE that isnt a direct counter but works overall to counter dod like the lancer/yodabuck did to the mtb or what zuckuss can do. The OR should get some force powers and disruptive too. I really think the vong should be able to steal or borrow limited CE's.

I want to chime in here for a second. First let me say that the discussion seems focused on the number of "activations" as opposed to "phases." It's an important distinction, and while some of the comments seem to bare that fact in mind, I think it's worth saying out loud. A squad with 16 characters (which is different than activations, but more on that in a minute) and no tempo control piece (ie Dodonna, San, Ozzel, etc.) starts the game with EIGHT PHASES. The same squad that includes Dodonna starts the game with 16 PHASES. Twice as many. Wow. Yes, that is huge.

Secondly, when people talk about activations, they typically refer to the number of characters on a squad. That is not entirely accurate. As Nickname points out in the quoted section below, Rebels have options like the Bothan Noble that grant free attacks. This increases the activation count IMO, but is often overlooked. Consider Gray's Slow Speeder squad. He had something like 18 characters (meaning 18 phases) and in at least 2 of those phases he was making 3, possibly 4 attacks. Couple that with the fact that some of his characters have Twin and that number just goes up.

Third point, and then I'll get into addressing the actual comments is that there is another important distinction that needs to be made. Tempo control does not specifically mean Dodonna, and any counters to the concept that come about through the V-Sets, well I promise you it will not specifically target any one of those characters by name.



Nor do I, if we are talking about the game as it exists today.



Actually, I don't think game speed has dropped off all that much. Most players are playing faster at 200 than they did at 150, from my experience at things like Coolecticon in November and our regional yesterday, which both events had a fairly wide field of players from a diverse area (as opposed to a regular Saturday tourney with the locals). That said, I do agree that power combos are being figured out and that is a trend we will continue to see going right up until August.



Removing tempo control levels the number of phases, but you are correct that the Sith don't have an equivalent OR a counter to something like the Elite Rebel Commando, not even through Fringe options. Coupled with the fact that they have no way to protect themselves against a multi-range attacker like Yoda on Kybuck or the Lancer, well obviously it's going to take something more than just providing a tempo control counter. Can that happen with the game as it is if Dodonna were simply banned? Probably not? Is it something the V-Set team is aware of and working to address? Absolutely to the first half of the question and hopefully to the second half.



Agreed. For a while I thought that General Skywalker and Yobuck were designed with tempo control counter in mind. If you can overrun the swarm before they activate, you'll be fine. But the problem is that most of those pieces move first, and spread out way too much for the Yobuck/Lancer squads to get rid of all of them, and then your opponent can still do what he/she had planned anyway since you don't have any pieces left to activate at the end of the round.