A couple things on this.
1. I Do not believe anyone has this Mentality. There is a difference between a focus on Competitive pieces, and disliking casuals.


2. I will Reiterate what many people have said before me. Sithborg is the go to person for Rules. There is a reason for that. He has more knowledge than most of us in this instance and needs to be listened to. He is trying to protect the Fabric of the game, not bend the game to his will. If we begin making major changes as the sizing rules, it will lead to confusion as opposed to Adding a special ability to a problem piece.

It may be an NPE for some that smaller figures provide cover to larger ones, but that does not necessarily warrant a major rules change. Not Every NPE needs to be dealt with in the same manner, and certainly most do not need a major rules change. In this case i feel that a Special Ability being added to the mouse droid would be Sufficient. There is no sense in Fooling with so many pieces, and Rules at once as to adjust size categories.

@Darth Reigner, you may not be superfluous, but you are being hyperbolic. Give us a shout-out when the V-set people come to your door and drag you away. Until then try reading the posts. Here, I've bolded the important part.

Hahahaha.

"Bill R. (billiv); Deri M. (fingersandteeth); Jim M. (Darth Jim); Trevor P. (thereisnotry); David M. (Dr. Daman); Graham F. (TheHutts); and Matt S. (spryguy)."

So the guys who have been arguing against changing things are the people on the balance team?! That is classic. Welp. I'm done here.

I'll let you go back and read the other threads. This discussion is not just within the confines of this thread.

Easy. I could ask for players that are objective, that haven't already stated their views on how it doesn't need to be balanced, and I could ask for players who aren't already part of the executive committee on making the blasted pieces in the first place.

Look, I know our banking system is a mess and millionaires are getting away with crimes left and right. That's why we've hired Ben Bernanke and Bernie Maydoff to fix this. They know the system better than anyone. I don't know who else one could ask for.

*shrugs* I like this team.

(Just thought something positive should be said, for once.)

I like this team a lot also!

It will be a while before regionals start up again, so I'd much rather decisions be made thoughtfully and carefully instead of a quick knee jerk reaction like some have been wanting. I feel most people are frustrated by the mouse dump being featured so heavily in regionals and in gencon (I am frustrated by it to) but I know that it is being looked into and that a good solution will arise after careful consideration. I think people need to be patient. I know that in V11 designs were already addressing mouse droid dumps way before Gencon, so these things have been talked about for a while now. I can gaurentee people that these issues are being addressed. I can't go into specifics, but I just want to assure people that the designers in V11 are doing great things thus far in the design process! Give them and the balance team a chance before saying that nothing is being done. Saying nothing is being done can't be farther from the truth!

This is called "house rules". Everybody has this already. Our group house rules regularly. When Jack or I want to test a competitive squad, we let the others know ahead of time, so they can bring a competitive squad also.

But this sort of mindset is what keeps the fence between the two types of gamers in place. There are obviously ways to bend the rules to ones' advantage, that, as a casual player who wants and had tried to be involved in the tournament scene, says, "Why did I just drive 3 hours both ways to watch someone whittle down the clock with his 13 mouse droids?"

I get what you're saying, that as casual players, we can homerule everything, and that's true and fair. But we as casuals also need a higher authority to summon in order to validate the decision, and that falls on the designers. If the situation ultimately boils down to, "I am going to play this, despite homerules, or I simply won't play," well, that's the quickest way to disintegrate a playgroup -- IE, what happened to the 15-strong Quad Cities scene.

So what we're saying is that we do get it, but we need help - help from you.

The second problem is that these cheesy rule-bending scenarios that are currently in discussion, as I said in my first paragraph, prevents a lot of us from entering the tournament scene. It sucks to see, "Well that's too bad, play casual," because we desperately want to be part of the bigger community. But it feels like we're berated for not wanting to tolerate 13 mouse droids, double swap, etc.

Okay, so do that. I'm not being flippant, I really mean that. It sounds a little bit like what the Tennessee group is trying to do with the Legends format, but it sounds like some people want something more "official" than that, but less "official" than standard. If that's the case, by all means, get that up and running. But to expect that to come from the same core group that's trying desperately to keep the competitive game alive seems unfair. If you want something in between, you might have to do it yourselves. It's not that we're not listening. But we don't really have the time or energy to cater to every nuance of how some other groups might like to play when there really are plenty of people who like the competitive game and want it to stay pretty much intact.

If want I said offended anyone, I truly apologize, as that was not my intent. I really am trying to understand what it is that people want/expect to come from these threads.