With regard to the stat cards, the purpose of the cards is to have an authoritative statement of what the stats of any character in your squad. I'm having a hard time seeing the rationale for requiring more than one of a card under whatever circumstances.

Suppose I have three custom mouse droids. One card lets me prove a mouse droid has Defense 20 just as well as three do. If my customs don't obviously look like mouse droids any confusion for my opponent isn't helped by my having any number of cards. If you don't know what that weird red blob I'm playing with is, the cards I have sitting in front of me won't help you identify it.

Multiple cards can be part of a system for tracking status, but even then you need something further. If I have 3 Jedi Weapon Masters I need to clearly keep track of how much damage each has taken and how many Force Points each has spent. Three cards don't help unless there is a way to identify each card with each figure. I put a little colored sticker on the model's base and a corresponding colored sticker on the relevant card's sleeve. I could just as well have a colored plate with tokens on it that corresponds to the marked model though.

I guess I'm not seeing the rationale for ever having the rule that "X customs need X cards". A rationale other than Wizards wants to make sure it's gotten its money. Wizards is out of the picture now, there isn't a reason to maintain the rule.

If you want mouse droids you have to pay for them, it is not up for discussion see:

Well you're obviously entitled to your opinion, and if you don't want to talk about it you don't have to. What I'm asking just is what the rationale for it is.

IE boosters are $7.50 at Target. That's half the price of a normal booster, and even if you don't get a Mouse Droid, there are a bunch of useful R/VR in the set. Besides, I've never paid $10 for a Mouse Droid. If you look hard enough, you can find them for cheaper. You just have to be patient and diligent. Just because some people in the community can't afford to have 20 of them doesn't mean we should lessen their value by introducing a new v-set figure or just allow you to customize a bunch and use just one card. This is still a collectible game, whether it's still alive or not, and some money has to be invested in the game for you to get good pieces. Additionally, you don't HAVE to run a squad that has 10 mouse droids in it. There are plenty of squad types that don't need it. And you can always borrow some from somebody at major tournaments! I have 14 Mouse Droids, and I'll never use all of them in a single squad. I'd be more than happy to loan them out at Tournaments, and I'm sure many other people would too.

Seriously? $8 mouse droids is out of the "everymans" budget? Do you play any game other than SWM? Even playing 14 Mouse Droids (what I played at GenCon last year, and probably a reasonable max for a single squad), that's $112. To play my GenCon squad, if you're buying only singles, it's about $150. I have a friend who plays Magic The Gathering, and has a deck with 4 copies of Tezzeret, Agent of Bolas in it. That's a $35 card (http://www.trollandtoad.com/pd3097612.html?associateid=97_1). So he's playing $140 for just 4 cards in his whole deck.

That's the price of these kinds of hobbies. Yeah, if you want to be on the cutting edge of competition, it's a little expensive. On the other hand, if you're just screwing around at the kitchen table, or not really playing to be competitive, you can almost certainly take $20-$30 and make a reasonable squad. You might even be able to make a tier 1 squad with that little amount (interesting discussion there: what's the best squad you can make with a $25 limit).

The fact is that compared to pretty much any other game out there, complaining about an $8 piece (even if you want 10 of them!) is pretty laughable. You want to play SWM seriously? You're gonna have to make a little bit of an investment. Just like you would if you were to play Magic, or Warhammer, or War Machine, or Axis & Allies, or literally any other game out there. And SWM is by a wide margin one of the cheapest games out there.


You also say that SWM is "dead" product. I'm assuming by that you mean that it should be cool to not buy new pieces, since there isn't a producer (WotC) behind them now making money on it. The problem with that is that there still ARE people that are making money on SWM and need to make money on it. Troll and Toad, Auggie's, Miniature Market, etc. are still selling SWM, and that needs to continue or no one will be able to get ANY miniatures anymore. Say we allowed customs to be played in place of mouse droids, and the price dropped to $1 a piece. That puts a pretty big cut into those retailer's pockets. That makes SWM a less viable product for them, and it's just 1 more reason for them to stop carrying it (past the fact that, you know, the game is discontinued anyway). Then you won't just have a problem getting the mouse droids that you need, you'll have trouble finding a place that will sell you ANY piece.


Also, you say "...who are you to say I have to buy a product...". You DON'T have to. If your local tournament decides to let players proxy in something for mouse droids, cool. We actually do that at our store. If you're playing anywhere other than an officially sanctioned SWGPA tournament, you don't have to follow their floor rules. The only time it should really matter is at Regionals and GenCon, which are the most competitive places you can play. If you're planning on playing there, you really shouldn't be expected to not have to drop a little money on your squad. Otherwise you're really just trying to have your cake and eat it, too.


Lastly, another reason to not allow customs without cards is that players who DID pay for their mouse droids get screwed. One of the players here in Atlanta found a bunch of $8 mouse droids online and decided to go ahead and buy about 20 of them, so now he's got a total of about 30. He loans them out constantly of course, and pretty much only bought that many so there would be enough for the rest of us (I had to borrow 7 from him for GenCon and 4 for the Maryland Regional last weekend). That's $120 worth of mouse droids! Now, say we start allowing customs, and mice drop to $1 a piece because there's no real demand for them now. Suddenly it's just $30 worth of mouse droids. Do you think that's fair to him? It's not. Sure, he didn't buy them to re-sell later, and he doesn't really worry about how much they're worth, and if some v-set pieces are created that make mouse droids less needed and the price drops due to that, so be it. But if we create a new rule SPECIFICALLY to lower the price of mouse droids, that's really just screwing him over, as well as every other person who has paid the current price of mouse droids. So asking for a rule to lower the price of them is really just selfish, and it's pretty much you saying "I can't afford these, so I want the value of EVERYONE'S to drop so that I can have some!". Those people who have mouse droids generally went out of their way to get them. You being unwilling to do so should not devalue the fact that they are.


So that's the rationale. Like Bill said, this was also discussed on the SHNN last night, so you can listen to that if you want to hear some more opinions on it.

The point of fact is we as community are keeping this game alive, it is no longer a collectable or money making game. Wizards already have there money.
Do you want the game to continue? Yes.
But only if your collection is still worth something?
That’s a great attitude for any body who was introduced to the game on the last official set.
It’s a blinkered idea fostered on what the game used to be not what it is now.
If we get to the 5 V-set, what happens then with that attitude? We won’t make this mini a proxy playable piece because it will de-value it in my collection?
If you've paid for the minis, great you can use them! What about the next guy? He cant get them because they dont make them anymore, so he cant play? Even if he can make them?
So it turns into anyone who can afford the game, well done!
Those who cant, tough luck!

There is still money involved. Note that I mentioned online retailers selling miniatures. If we allow any proxies and the price of minis drops, they'll stop carrying them. Now it's literally impossible for anyone to get new miniatures, because no one is selling them. How is that a better scenario?

If it ever gets to the point where the barrier for entry is too high, and allowing proxies appears to be a way to fix that problem, it will be reconsidered. But like I said, we aren't there now. Changing the rule now is silly, and only affects Mouse Droids. Changing it now would literally only be done to because of the mouse droid discussion, but you're acting like it effects every single piece. It doesn't at the moment. Please don't exaggerate the issue.

No one is having an issue finding mouse droids for sale. I just spent about 2 minutes checking and found 43 for sale across a few websites. The problem people are having is being willing to pay for the mouse droids, which I already covered is a baseless argument because even at $8 a pop you're spending less to play SWM then you would almost any other game. If we ever DO get to a point that an important piece like mouse droids are ACTUALLY impossible to find, then the rule might be reconsidered. But right now there are plenty of mouse droids out there.

Based on your quote which implied its not a "collector's game", I don't feel it was.



Even though based on other games that have been cancelled over a decade ago but are still being playing aren't having this issue that you insist is going to happen. There is an active SWCCG and an active STCCG group here in Atlanta, and they've been dealing with a player's committee designing new cards for a long, long time, and they don't have these problems.




Not only is it not happening now, but it's unlikely that it will ever happen. If it ever does, the rule might change. But it probably won't, so it's silly to take a course of action that certainly has downsides just to prevent a problem that might or might not happen in a few years.



I don't think you're trying to, either, but if the action you suggest is taken that will absolutely be the result, I guarantee that.



It's not the only thing keeping the game going, but it is a big reason that minis are even for sale online (or anywhere, for that matter).

Are you saying that if customs were allowed the demand for singles wouldn't drop? If so, that's untrue, because if you could use any customs then you would just buy a couple cases of miniatures and some greenstuff and now you can play any piece that exists, and as many of them as you want.

Are you saying that if the price of singles did drop retailers wouldn't get hurt by it, or that if SWM becomes less profitable retailers will be less inclined to carry them at all? If so, I don't think you're thinking the issue through entirely.

Thats the problem with post, you never get the inlfection right.

(sigh)

The well for our platic crack habbit will run dry, it is only half full now.
The Custom V-sets is keeping it alive.
Yes, we all need the 'it' figures and I have them all bar 3

Would it be easier on you if I said you were right and I was wrong?
Thats not the case. Both of us have very valid points.

edit

Haha, I'm not taking offense, I just think you're wrong.

I don't particularly care if you agree with me, and I don't really expect to change your mind, I just think it's very important for both sides of the discussion to be given their due time. I honestly think that a rule change allowing any and every piece to be proxied without a card for each custom would hurt the game much more than it would help. You might not agree with that, but there could be people out there who would agree with you just because there is no counter-point if no counter-point were presented. Again, I don't care if you agree with me, or if anybody does, as long as their decision to disagree with me was made after considering both sides of the discussion, which means both sides must be presented. Please don't get offended at me providing the opposition to your position, because it's important for everyone that the opposition exists, and I certainly don't have a problem with you opposing my position.

Like I said multiple times, you have concerns that might be valid in the future, at which point they will be heavily considered by everyone involved. I think that changing something which will cause problems now to potentially fix something that might or might not happen in the future is a poor course of action.

You specifically asked for the rationale for why the rule was made and why it is remaining for now. I think I've quite thoroughly covered pretty much all the bases of that rationale.