Designers are hearing the community. Players voiced their opinions in these forums and several changes were made prior to our championship. Gambit was increased to 10 points and we adopted the NZ 3-2-1 tournament structure. After our championship designers will try to "fix" Daala. The meta will be opened up again, but until then Daala/swarms or counters to Daala/swarms are currently the only options.

Daala was not a part of some diabolical plan. The designers just wanted to give Imperial players an option other than Thrawn squads. Which I fully support, after years of playing against the dreaded blue dude.
Daala had to be GOOD if she was going to measure up to old swappy blue.

I remember one of the guys in our play test group (a long time Imperial player) saying that Daala was over-powered.
He said, Daala shouldn't give charging..."Rebels run and shoot, Imperials stand and shoot."
But it was probably too late at that point in the design process for his comments to alter the design.

The problem with Daala is that she took the rock-paper-scissors analogy too far.
I don't want my win or loss to be predetermined by the squad-type I'm paired up against.
I'm a competitive Star Wars miniatures player, and I'd rather play rock-paper-scissors at home with my 5 year old son.

Absolutely agree. Hopefully those in charge will wake up and see that enough people just DO NOT like this piece and take the steps to make this game fun to play for everyone and ban this piece, or nerf her to the point where she isn't useful.

I for one am listening. That doesn't mean that I am still not shocked about what was NOT run in NZ.

We made a change to Daala and a MAJOR change to the Slaver (which was actually the bigger problem), and perhaps the change was not big enough. But we did make a concerted effort to make those changes BEFORE the regional season. I was very vocal about not wanting any changes right before GenCon, especially mutliple ones, but clearly I was out-voted.

So what about after GenCon? Obviously we'll look at the results, but my guess is that Daala won't make as big of an impact as it did in NZ. Heck - this meta is so ripe for scissor squads that I could totally see a rock squad making the GenCon top 8. Most didn't expect the Sith or OR squads to make top 8 last year, but they did. But even if Daala doesn't have the same impact at GenCon, that doesn't mean she shouldn't be changed.

A lot of great ideas have been posted. I for one think that as an absolute minimum she needs to lose reserves. Reserves is not a good ability in the first place. It's entirely too luck based, and it can swing an entire game. I think most everyone agrees that needs to go. I'll be the first to admit that we messed up by not cutting that as well this spring.

Beyond that - there are other options. Game-play wise, having rival for Pellaeon or Ozzel would work great - but it would only be for gameplay. I don't know how much you could rationalize it being accurate in-universe. If we wanted to take that concept to the next level, we could give her: Independent (Your squad may not contain more than one other Imperial commander). That would pretty much kill her.

Outside of that - I am currently pushing for more abilities on vset 9 pieces that can help with this (but I am not a designer on vset 9, so it can only go so far as a member of the playtest committee), and I already have a few ideas for vset 10 (which I am slated to be a designer on).

It's really tough when a set decides to push things too far on many different levels. It's like trying to put out fires that just got sprayed all over the place by napalm. There was just too much power 10/11 at once to deal with it all. We are all still trying to find equilibrium. But we learned a lot from it and won't make several of the behind the scenes mistakes that lead us to where we are now. Most of the designers are more committed to not trying to make every piece top level competitive. Most of the designers are more open to listening to concerns about pieces and not so obstinate about their own designs. I for one am very committed to trying to have balance in this game. It gets harder and harder with every set - but the goal is to have top tier options in every faction, and over every squad "type". I think this is the goal of most of the other designers too. Not all of us are on the same page, and there are differing opinions on how to get there. But that doesn't mean that there are not designers very concerned about the general feeling from the community and willing to take action.

Another idea here - add this new ability to her:

Encrypted Orders: Characters in your squad (including this character) may not benefit from relay orders or booming voice.

and make her CE within 6.


So it forces the commanders to get up in the action

What I'd really love to know is from the Daala experts (Graham, David, TJ) how some of the suggestions would effect her squads.

Beyond reserves, commander stacking is really the issue with her from what I can see - that's why I've been brainstorming on how to discourage that.

Rival for either Ozzel or Pellaeon only goes so far. TJ proved you don't have to have either and can still be successful. Not to mention it doesn't make sense in universe. No Pellaeon helps jedi compete. Solo Charge, Kaan Bombs, Thon, etc at least have a shot to kill en mass again. No Ozzel really only helps the factions with activation control, because the activations are already high enough that it's hard to out-activate without it. So - advantage NR, Rebels, Seps, OTHER Imps, (and to a lesser extent) Vong. But it does virtually nothing for OR, Sith, Mandos, and Republic.

I think Independant (Your squad may not contain more than one other Imperial commander)pretty much kills her dead in the water. Once again, even TJ's aptly named "Bare Bones" squad runs TWO other commanders. And I fear what this does is just funnel it all into an even more extreme paper squad of just Daala, the Snowtrooper Officer, and EVEN MORE snowtroopers. But I don't know if people would play that. Don't know what else could be viable at that point.

If we went with Encrypted Orders: [Characters in your squad (including this character) may not benefit from relay orders or booming voice.]
AND make her CE within 6.
Then I think this creates and interesting balance. One big complaint is that your commanders can just sit in the back and you can fire these disposable troopers out that can wreck house. But if you had to have your commanders up in the action - skill comes a lot more into play.

All just theory crafting here though

The word "Encrypted" makes me think "non disruptable" which would be neat, with range 6.

Agreed, except I think relay orders would still make sence for the flavor, plus that will still make daala harder to play and it would lose some acts if they had to use mice and not mas.

Its not hate vs you just know that I have played Reserve squads almost as much as Gungans. So I understand them better than most and did think back in 2010 that my Kazdan squad was tier 1.5 if we had a counter to the MTB since it shut down the squad. Now we do have counters and a lot better opions. So I do think Kazdan maybe could do ok in this meta just have not really built for him. Reserves because of the better options they have now only need them 2-4 times a games. They can more support the squad then be the squad which means a lot since the opp only has to get to 200 and win. Not sure how Gambit effects that but pretty sure it will. So you only have to kill around 150 of the opps squad since odds are you will be in gambit every round. And you can cover the board a lot after than most. might have to look into Kazan again

Sounds good to me, they would need to be more skillful about moving commanders and troopers. Move a commander wrong and get clobbered, cluster too many troopers and your squad becomes susceptible to mass damage effects.

The main thing that needs changed about Daala is that she beats Rock in a couple rounds in about 10 to 15 minutes.
The end result of any "fix" needs to be a reduction in the amount of damage being put on a rock squad.
After the Daala squad out-activates most "rock" squads she still has about 12 to 16 troopers yet to activate.
Those troopers can run 12 squares and shoot with +14/+20 attack for 30-40 damage (sometimes twinning) and dish out nearly 500 to 1000 points of damage a round.

2-3 troopers w/ twin or 4-5 troopers without do 160-180 damage and can kill almost any piece in the game.
4-5 troopers w/ twin or 8-9 troopers without do 300+ damage and auto kill almost any piece in the game.
Then they have still have 5-10 troopers left to activate. No rock squad can weather that kind of damage output.

Maybe we just need something that benefits the player running the lower activation squad.

Here's a solution, and it would be more in line with what the actual thought bomb did in the novel:

Epic Thought Bomb: Force 5, replaces turn: Every character costing 10pts or less is immediately defeated, save 16. This force power ignores Force Immunity.


Of course, the above is entirely tongue-in-cheek. I think that Daala needs to lose Reserves, regardless of whatever else happens. To me, it's the combo of Daala + Pelleaon which really wrecks the rock squads; when pieces can't use force points to defend themselves (or even to attack, ala Kaan, Anakin Solo), it severely limits their ability to compete.