I don't see how anyone can say that this mace is anything but T1.

He can do something no other piece in the game can get close to. If he attacks, he attacks 3 times.
He crits one in 7 rolls (averages 4-5 rolls a round once engaged), triple damage and then flurries. So every other turn he does 120 dmg.
(60 + flurry, + 20 + 20) quite often after moving 10 squares. If he hasn't moved he can hit you back if you are stupid enough to use Djem so or riposte on him.

Name one other piece that can do anything close to that.

Not only that but his base defense is 2nd highest, he has a bucket load of force, he has reflect that he can reroll and access to 4 of the best movement breakers in the game. Also, he has absorb so quite often his triple dmg crits will go undefended.

There may be fun squads that appear to utilize Mace poorly but to say that this figure, which is quite possibly the best figure in the best faction, is anything other than the upper echelon of pieces in this game really leaves me shaking my head.

There really is no debate here.

Is he unbeatable? No, but make no mistake, Mace is one of the pieces released in the Vsets that increased the power ceiling.

He is a meta piece (i.e. you must design squads with him in your mind) and if he doesn't continue to see top level play it will mean that vset power creep has lost control.

The problem is that he does inconsistent damage. Without spending FP (which he often needs for Reflect, Absorb, moving faster, or re-rolling saves) he has a 48.8% chance of getting a crit in his 3 attacks. In my opinion, that's just not consistent enough, especially for a 65 point piece. Like I've said, he's a good piece, maybe even a very good piece, but I don't consider him tier 1 all-around. His variance is too high.

Well, there's Lord Vader, who can do 120 damage after moving. (Sith rage and lightsaber assault)

It's quite tough judging Mace because of his inconsistent criticals, but I can say that he is great even if we don't count them. He has 16 attack, which won't miss hardly anything, 22 defense to keep him alive, 150 HP to do the same, and triple attack with GMA for probably an auto 60 damage. People rarely notice this, but he's got LIGHTSABER RIPOSTE. That means that he can do 100 damage every round to a melee character. With 5 chances on your turn, and an extra 2 chances on the opponent's turn, it brings up your chances for a crit to huge amounts (I'm bad at math), and it's likely that you will get at least 1 crit in that time, doing an extra 40 damage and another attack. So, if we count up the triple attack, riposte twice, we'll say that 1 attack missed, and 1 was a critical, and counting flurry, the damage ends up to being 160. That can easily take out most characters, I'm quite sure!

Agreed your statment can only be considered as an axiom, my play report further reinforces this as being a truism when looking to play competitively.

I think Lord Vader is an apt comparison. Lord Vader, has a LOT of bad matchups. 14 base Atk is going to limit his hits a lot. Add in the reliance on Assault, any good Force Defense/Absorb will ruin his day. Same applies to Mace. Without crits, you are doing 3 hits at 20 Dam a piece. Not bad, certainly. But there are things that can shrug that off. Force Bubble, VCA 6, Advanced or normal Shields 2 will cut into his damage output pretty well. Add in things that can take away his crit damage (Droid, Resillient/Armored Space Suit), he doesn't look as shiny.

Something to keep in mind, from what I've seen, HK-47 Assassin Droid was an MVP at Gencon. Even in squads that didn't fully utilize his options. Beefy droid squads will be coming back, a lot in part to Mace, but mostly with HK and the new Boa-dur, Mace's damage is going to have issues. Mace giving you issues? Toss 2 T1s at him backed with HK's Disruptive. We will see how OR droids develops, if at all, or if Seps evolve into something else to fight Mace. It is something I'm excited to see.

I concur with Sithborg on the return of droids. If nothing else the meta was full of living characters and as such a lot of the valuable pieces hurt living pieces more (Atton, Mace, Kaan). With Mace winning Gencon, and furthering his popularity, I think we'll see a bunch more droids to counter.

Mace also brings force absorb on a useful piece which completely kills lord vader and mara jedi. He also brings in defense against lancers, and is dang good against yobuck. Mace is also amazing against all other beat sticks leaving you to decide to attack GOWK who can prevent the damage, or go after Mace and pray he does not roll a crit on the riposte... Just look at what happened to Corran in (Hinks?) play report. Mace did 120 damage to corran on 1 Riposte, that is bringing a lot to a squad.

That was in Trevor's game against Deri. Against Bill he also got a crit against Yobuck with a Riposte. Lesson: try not to attack Mace with a melee piece unless you can mitigate the damage. Sure, it may be a small chance to crit on a riposte, but when it happens to you, it sucks. (also, this is why Mace vs Mace usually ends in both killing each other)

HA. Echo, you use a Mara army, I will use a Mace army, and we will count who does 120 damage more times

And as for all those pieces that reduce Mace's damage, guess what, they reduce EVERY OTHER CHARACTERS DAMAGE AS WELL. So that is a pointless argument.

The argument against Mace being tier 1 gets more and more ridiculous every time someone argues against him. Now with that being said, do I think he will see any big play with v-set 4 being released? Absolutely not. He had his shining time, this 1 year where he was easily the best piece in the game. But, with the release of this new V-set, there are plenty of what I have dubbed "Mace Hate" pieces legal now. So his play will drop significantly.

But lets face it, No Melee piece has dominated a season of Minis like Mace Windu, where you had to design your squad expecting to play him,and when you did, you had to pray he didn't crit your best piece and absolutely destroy it.
He changed the game so much, the designers had to create solutions to him Immediately so he wouldn't dominate more than 1 year. Which, contrary to how I sound, I LOVE. I don't want something to be dominant more than a year, especially the way he did this year.

I'm a Sam Jackson fan, and a huge Mace Windu fan, and with that being said, I will finish this statement with my favorite line, and my squad name (Which I noticed was used at Gencon, but know that I used that squad name 2 years ago with a terrible MAce )

"This Party, Is Over."

Shmi15

This. GOWK/Mace won freakin' GenCon. It was the only squad type to be represented twice in the top 9 (unless 'Bastila' counts as a squad type). GOWK/Mace is a tier 1 squad. It's not just a Tier 1 squad - it's a gatekeeper. There are lots of gatekeepers right now. And there are tons of tier 1 squads - look how much variety is in the top 9 and in the regionals winners. The variety of winners is great. If you don't want to call Mace/GOWK a tier 1 squad, we'll just call it a championship squad instead.