The idea is fine there should be a reference point on defininf power pieces. However, if the sole idea to design is if it is going to see play or not than there is a problem.

When designing the power of the piece itself is important, but what is more important is the power of a piece within a squad. For instance Talon. By himself he is not much, in a sqaud he is devastating, same thing as Thrawn.

Look at the Corellian Legend that I despise so much. That Han, by itself is powerful and makes Wedge powerful. However, building a squad around him has proven to be very difficult. His power level in a squad is not that high.

Building pieces to be put into armies is difficult to do. Deaths_Baine is the best at this IMO, he designed Legends Streen and it is a masterful design. Perfect balance and very very fun in Legends. Anyway, point being that for pieces to see playing time competitively they have to be tier 1 by themself and make squads or tier 1 in a squad.

Boba Fett has been seen in many different forms in the NZ tournament where a ton of top players are players. He is a tier 1 piece by himself.
Thrawn is tier 1 and has seen lots of different variations same as Talon.

I guess what I am saying here is that TimmerB's definitions of power levels creats a designing system focusing on competitive play and I dont think that is necessary wanted or desired all the time.
Nor do I think 1 piece should be able to do as much Boba Fett and make squads tier 1 automatically (Unless it is a power 11 piece and those should only be the best of the best of the best like Thon, Revan, Sidious, Luke, Yoda, etc.)

I am going to assume that was given as a for instance and was just thrown together, lol. I am pretty sure tim would be the first to say we do not need multiple "faction defining" pieces in each set.

I think those three pieces are 3 of the best pure attackers in the game, and are at least a 9. GMA double/twin is always very strong, and all those pieces have placed in the final in GenCon in the last three years (Skybuck in 2012, Rex in 2012, Jarael in 2013). I don't even think Mira has replaced Dash, she's just very good in the current meta with Force Sense and she has some awesome tech, but her damage ceiling is lower and she has no defensive abilities; I don't think she's any stronger than the other pieces on your list, she's just very good in the current meta, and popular because she's new.

Right throughout this game, the problem has been that the best tech pieces have generally been stronger than the best attackers, which means that tech heavy squads generally beat squads of strong uniques. Currently Seps and Imperials are two of the best factions, but it's largely due to access to tempo control, initiative control, and other cheap tech, more than that their attackers are better than other faction's attackers; Thrawn tends to work best with the fringe attackers that everyone has access to, and I think the top Sep pieces are mostly a problem because they have access to an awesome tech backline of San Hill, Lobot, Gha Nachkt, and the MTB.

Unique, self-contained attackers are very rarely the problem in this game, but they get way too much focus - Mace, Satele Shan, Han Corellian Legend aren't the problems in this game, Daala snowtrooper swarms, Commando Droid Officer, and Klat Assassins were.

This just goes to show that everyone has their own definition for each power level...

I completely agree jen'ari, if yall haven't adopted something like this already for legends it could be very beneficial.

I think many people are misunderstanding the scale I posted.

A side note- I didn't create the concept. I believe Deri was the first to introduce it to the vsets. Regardless - we don't need to keep referring to me when referencing this.

I was not trying to force this on anyone. It's just a GENERAL GUIDE. As stated several times, it is not meant to be hard and fast. It's not a perfect science, and hitting the power mark is not always accurate, but it helps to know what you're aiming at. It's flexible, and it need not be exactly this. I have found and many other designers agree that it is a very useful exercise to do after the set list has been made, but before stats start to be posted.

A core reason for it is to LIMIT the number of power pieces, not require them. There has been a huge outcry by the community as well as many designers that power creep has gotten out of control. A set containing over half it's pieces as 9s and 10s is out of control. Most designers innately want to make powerful pieces, but we need to put our egos aside and be more in control of power creep.

I think a major problem is NOT ATTEMPTING in any way to have a power level in mind. I ENCOURAGE designing tier 2 and 1.5 pieces. There are some designers who like to design fun pieces and bring back unused WotC pieces. They are actually in the minority. Even those designers that do like to design those pieces still have to understand the impact on the competitive game. If it doesn't impact it (tier 2 or below) - then no problem! But even the designers who like to design these types of figures have still put out power 10, 11 and even 12 pieces. This is why we need a system like this.

More than anything - it helps when it comes to play testing. Without a power level that you are aiming at, the only recourse for play testers is to prove something is "broken". Not an easy thing to do. But if several play tests come back calling a piece a 9 or a 10, and you were aiming at casual (5,6 or even a 7) - then you need to scale back. Having too many pieces at the top end without a power level target means at best everything is pushed back ONLY to a 10 (just under the "broken" cap), and even then some slip through. Not to mention then you are still top end heavy, warping the game.

I agree with this 100%

Giving boosts (directly or indirectly) to overly-broad groups is detrimental to this game at this point. Sub-factions are awesome!

Imagine if the CDO's CE only effected allies NAME Commando Droid. SOOOOOOOOO much better.

How about the Neo Crusader Officer? Imagine if the CE was limited to Neo Crusader followers? That would be great! People might actually use the Neo Crusaders OTHER than the officers! Future sets could make cool Neo Crusaders to work with them too!

We as designers need to STOP and think REALLY HARD whenever we make a CE or other boost that is for all followers, and we virtually NEVER need ones anymore that are for all allies.

Pieces that are meant to boost a certain subfaction, but then are not limited to that subfaction, really miss the mark - and frequently end up broken! Of course people will use the best pieces around, and not limit themselves to that subfaction, even if that was the intent.

So we just need to design boosts with a smaller net. Subfactions (and limiting boosts to only within them) is a great way to do this. Not the only way, but an excellent way.

I thought he copied it to the first post, but he didn't copy the whole list.

As a fellow designer on set 10, I have to say that this worked out really well for us (generally). I had a hard time wrapping my head around it at first, just because there's so much variance in how people define power levels. I think the combo posted above hits it pretty well, but the main thing is not so much to have so many pieces at such and such a power level. The main thing is just to be aware of what you're aiming for and then to check in throughout the process and make sure 1. that the mark you were originally aiming at still makes sense and 2. that you're actually hitting that mark.

On set 10, it went something like this:

We agreed on a "bell curve" distribution from level 5 to level 10.

We decided who would present the inital stat blocks for each piece in the set.

Based on the first two, each person had an approximate number of pieces at each power level they were responsible for (this obviously had some variance, as certain pieces lend themselves more to certain levels, and certain people were more or less interested in designing at certain power levels.)

Each person took their list of pieces and assigned an initial level (or range) to each piece. This was clearly understood by everyone as a starting point.

We posted initial stat blocks, bearing in mind the power level we were aiming for, typically including our thoughts or where the piece fit in the game/faction and what we were trying to reflect.

As we went through the process, there were multiple checks and rechecks to see if we were about where we were supposed to be. Oftentimes, one of us would feel stuck on something, and we would refer back to our initial thoughts on where the piece was supposed to fit and how powerful it was supposed to be, which helped a lot in getting back on track. Some pieces were relatively easy to move through the process, some ended up a little bit more powerful than we originally thought they would be, a few less so. But having that matrix in place was really helpful, at least for me.

Now, to be absolutely clear, I am not saying, and I don't think Tim was saying, that every set of designers needs to implement this in exactly the same way, or that the team as a whole should set something down in stone and say every set must be done this way. The main idea is just to add some organization and, even more important, some mindfulness (*metaphysical buzzword alert*) to the process, so we don't wind up overwhelming the meta with a bunch of overpowered pieces OR releasing a set full of things that are ALMOST good enough. I don't know if we succeeded on 10, but I think we came up with some really cool stuff that will shake things up, even at levels 6 and 7.

TheHutts mini of the day list illustrates it brilliantly. I agree with his ratings 95% of the time. When I don't it's usually a small quibble of 1 point up or 1 point down.

I'd rate Dash Rendar RS a 9 or a 10 as a point of reference