The discussion of OR options was led into from discussing options against GOWK. There was a statement made that removing GOWK's ability to use the Force was essentially pointless.



I stated that while the OR would still probably lose, getting rid of GOWK's ability to use the Force is not pointless, and a bunch of us started getting into a conversation about whether or not it really would be effective.

You hardly explained anything other than saying that it would lose and would be pointless to continue the discussion, and that we should then move on. Unless you made a point somewhere else on some other thread, which I haven't seen.

By the way, I am testing against GOWK against that OR squad. I've done 2 run throughs so far. First without severing, then with. Aside from some differences in luck, the OR has done about as I expected, and did better when I let Nomi Sever him. She did die, as expected, but I plan on making another couple of run throughs, and will make a few more with some other squads in which I will test out how well he does when he's unable to use the Force.

Make no mistake, I am still talking about GOWK, but right now it's in the context of possible counters.

No, I said the above. And it's true, getting rid of Obi's FPs isn't significant. He still has a 50% chance to ignore any damage you put out and I also stated, several times now, that you are basically trading Nomi to try and pull it off. It isn't significant to winning a game (I should have added that caveat, but I thought it was obvious). Even if you manage to pull it off, you are trading Nomi for it, and that won't be enough to allow you to win, because now you are fighting a 150pt squad vs 200, or 100 vs 150, and all you have done is take away Obi's force, but he still has better parry and evade basically.

Do you understand now what I am saying? You are better off keeping your Nomi points and spending them on other OR or fringe options than trading Nomi for a chance at Sever. Going for the Sever will all but ensure the OR loses. At least with things like Atton Rand, or Mira, or Lucien you have a shot at surviving a few rounds and/or eliminating some of Obi's support. Nomi will do neither and therefore, will not help you win (in fact I am arguing that going for Sever actually helps you lose worse than if you had done something else), and therefore, getting rid of Obi's force isn't significant, as I stated the first time.

I am glad you are testing it now, because that makes these conversations much easier. What is clear in my head, isn't always easy to make clear to someone else without play experience, and even some times with it :). The major point being, that Obi's force isn't his primary defense or power. It adds to an already overpowered figure, but it isn't the main issue. Sure, technically removing his force makes him worse, that much is obvious. But this is a squad game and Obi always comes with a pumped up powerful squad. To win, you not only have to deal with Obi, but his support as well, and that's why Nomi would be a sacrifice as soon as she tries for Sever. Not to mention her odds of even getting it off without dying first are pretty low, and that Obi can often simply be towed away or just take the AoO since odds are you are outactivated.

With your 6 activation Revan squad, there is no way you are going to pull it off in tournament play, unless the opponent simply forgets Nomi has the ability, and rolls poorly where Nomi survives the oncoming assault when she moves into position.

Does that explain the problems better?

I played in a 300 point tournament this past Saturday and this is what I brought:

Thrawn
Mas Amedda
Vader, Legacy of the Force
Twi'lek Black Sun Vigo
Boba Fett, BH
Jarael
Admiral Ozzel
Lobot
4 181st Imperial Pilots

Lobot Reinforcements:

Wicket
4 Uggy Demolishionists

1st round was against:

GOWK
General Windu
Jarael
R2 Astro
Anakin Skywalker, Jedi
Boba Fett, BH
Twi'lek Black Sun Vigo
Uggy Demolishionist
Genoharrdren Assasin
Mas Amedda

I ended up wiping out his whole squad and only losing 2 of my uggies by the 6th round. He came close to killing Vader, but by that point his Boba, R2, Windu, Twi'lek, and Jareal were already dead.

GOWK was the last to go because I just ignored him the whole time. He built up his FPs this whole time (so he has 8). He went through all of them in one round. The Double-Twinning from my Boba and the 181st pilots were just getting through to him too much and made him bleed his FPs.

GOWK is not that hard to beat. You don't neccessarily need to go after him. Yeah he is a great shield, but he doesn't have a lot of offensive capability. Kill his squad, and who cares about his CE at that point?

Sincerely,
Jester007

cant we all just?..........................get along?

Let's all just get real here for a minute. Everyone should know by now there are really only a couple of squads that have a chance at taking down GOWK and this squad is not one of them. No offense to anyone but come on. I am not the biggest fan of Billiv but this one is pain stakingly obvious. You are all welcome to play test this thing but if you want to spend your time more wisely you should consider playing one of the squads that can work. I would love nothing more than to have OR work but at this point in time it won't so lets move on.

Well quite simply, that just isn't true. It has nothing to do with "can't stand to get beat...." It has to do with what is good for the game and good for the community. GOWK restricts things too far, and the game will suffer if that restriction is left in place for too long. Players get bored, and if they are bored too long, they start playing other games. Broken pieces kill games if they are left in place for tournaments for too long - or at least stop people from playing tournaments because they don't like to play every game against the same 2-3 squad designs.

I really wish people would stop saying is has something to do with our inability to beat GOWK. That really isn't the issue, and it isn't even on the radar. Its the exact opposite actually. I know what it takes to beat GOWK, and the only two viable answers are not good for the game. Those answers are, GOWK hate squads - generally big direct damage force powers, and a highly mobile squad that uses tactics that I bet most of you would despise if it became popular at your LGS - kill support, run and hide from GOWK until time. That's it. That's what the game becomes if GOWK stays. JA would have almost no effect on the meta if he remains. Saddly, the same would probably be true for future sets as well. That's the problem. We know what it takes to beat it, and it isn't enough to keep the game viable as a tournament game. Therefore, you do what every tournament game does when they see this kind of super restriction, you ban the piece responsible for it.

Yep, that's clearly all I do ever.... What a load of crap. In case you hadn't noticed (which you should since you say you read all of the boards all the time) I am not posting on wotC any longer. But I don't see you over there helping new players, offering advice on squads, answering questions, or any of the things I used to do. Yet here you are calling me out as if that was your job.... Lol, Hilarious!

Some people enjoy different aspects of the game and have different time restrictions and other responsibilities. You enjoy helping with rules questions, good for you and I appreciate you having done that. While choking off discussion may not be ALL you do, it certainly seems to be a big part of it lately. And it's not just you, it seems like someone will start talking about it, some others will jump in on it, and then someone will try to jump in and steamroll the conversation.

So then, back to GOWK. He is still a pretty blasted hard nut to crack. But I'm beginning to think that just trying to break through Soresu and killing him (or just killing everyone else first) may not be the best way to go (for some factions anyway).

Now, before someone jumps in on what I'm about to say, please realize that I'm saying this for everyone whose reading these forums. I don't expect this to be completely brand new for everyone here. On a whim I played him against that OR squad again, but I tested it without him having his CE, and the battle went the other way completely (there were some lucky, and rather unlucky rolls). Compared to the other games, despite the rolls, the battle was tough, but GOWK didn't really add anything for the Republic squad other than getting in the way of the OR, which he did quite well. It really came down to the loss of the +4/+4 that changed the game around and made hitting Nomi and Revan that much harder for the Republic squad. To the point that GOWK was really only able to act as a meat shield.

Which brings me to my point. Without his CE, GOWK is really limited in how much he can contribute to the squad. He can't easily be hurt, but at the same time he's a 55 point figure pumping out at most (not counting crits) 40 damage per round. Thus, the Rebels and New Republic have a way of dealing with him on a more indirect basis through Disruptive.

FYI, the Republic build was GOWK, Dash RS, Rex, JWM, Doombot, CLObot, Panaka, Mas, and an Ugnaught. I don't have much of JA yet, but if you have a suggestion for a better GOWK build, I'll try it out.

True, he did get errata'd into it, but apparently how he is now is how he was supposed to have been from the start. I'm not really sure why he made him as nasty as he did. At this point I would prefer it if he wasn't as powerful as he is.

What I do know however is that this really isn't the first time a figure came out and pretty much singlehandedly changed the way the game was played, and we ended up having to just play through it. I'm curious about your opinion on the subject (not that I mean to take a huge tangent here) about whether in the context of the first 4-5 sets whether Thrawn was broken as well, maybe I'll start a new thread about it if it looks like the conversation might go somewhere.

What worries me more than anything else though is the recent drop in quality and increase in card errors. Part of that may be due to WOTC's ability to proofread and need to deal with the economy, but it does bring up the question of whether or not it is extending into the development as well. If it is and that led to GOWK, then maybe a ban is necessary. If on the other hand, this was planned as a way of restructuring aspects of the game and redefining the way the game is played, then banning him will leave a hole in part of the gameplay that GOWK was meant to fill.

Looking at the last few sets since the 40 pieces started coming out, we've seen a significant increase in the number of low cost figures with direct damage and the overall direct damage ability of force users in general. There's also been a rise in damage mitigation from regular damage. This is especially true in JA with the Disciples of Ragnos, the Felucians, Plageius, and etc, which in an age of mobile, GOWK and Evade are probably one of the easiest and quickest ways to do it.

It almost seems like Rob wants the game to give more significance to direct damage and Force Powers. But I don't know for sure, I don't have a direct line to him. I'm expecting that by the time GAW comes out we'll have devised ways to more or less neutralize him and, while he'll continue to be a powerful piece, his overall impact will be more akin to what Thrawn is now.

Thrawn was definitely more of a finesse piece, but if we're talking experienced players v experienced players, he could have just as much of an impact, and there were a lot less ways of dealing with Thrawn when Universe came out then there are now, and it was a lot easier to protect him and keep him away from shooters since there were only a few accurate shooters and any Force User that tried to get close was basically nerfed.

GOWK is definitely a lot more forgiving than Thrawn was though. A Thrawn screw up might leave him in a position to get killed, especially now. While a GOWK screw up doesn't necessarily mean death for GOWK. I suppose you could say that Thrawn traded a stronger effect for less survivability.

At this point I'd have to say my disagreement with you and some of the others isn't that GOWK is or isn't broken, as much as whether the benefits outweigh the risks of banning him. If there were no real way of dealing with him and what he does, and it didn't look like there was even any attempt to change that, I might be more inclined to agree with you regarding the ban. But as I see it now, there are more ways of dealing with GOWK now than there were for Thrawn, there are more figures coming out that will deal with him, and while he makes the game more predictable, he also makes the game easier for new players to build a squad and learn the game (I'm gonna elaborate on this one a bit more).

I'd say there are 3 basic groups of players for SWM; Incoming Players, Current Players, and Outgoing Players. In order for the game to keep going, some combination of increasing the ability for new players to join, keeping Current Players interested, and making changes to make the Outgoing Players Incoming Players are really what they need to do. If the current pool of players has shrunk, then they need to bring in new players. With something around 700 figures, a new player trying to get in and compete with well established players is a pretty high plateau. Putting a truly powerful figure like GOWK in the starter, and most of the pieces he would work with in the newest set brings down the initial investment needed to get in. I'm guessing WOTC is banking on this to get more people involved in the game. Now the meta as it stands is much more restricted since GOWK came in, but if it means the game can have more staying power by allowing GOWK to exist and us adjusting to the changes in the meta it may be worth it until the sets continues to the point where GOWK's influence is lessened.

I can tell you right now that at least at my venue, there are more people playing and more people getting interested in the game. GOWK is probably going to be one of the pieces that they can use to build a squad to start with and get playing earlier.