Considering his 60 hitpoints and 0 defensive capabilities and that he can't move then hide/lock a door yes, I would say that in a tournament format there is no reason to reach for the old atton over the new atton rand. If we are playing for fun sure run that would be an awesome fun squad to play and play against.

I am not saying I would replace the old atton with the new atton in that squad I am saying that I would replace your entire sqaud with the new atton, carth, bastilla squads because I believe they would do better against more squads then your old one.

I totally agree with the above post. But it makes me feel like typing.



Borken! Borken! Borken! Borken! Borken!

FIRST OFF, +10 to what TINT gold, baby, pure gold



@ thehutts- You made me almost fall out of my chair! to forcin' funny!

when I 1st read "Borken", I tried to think what the he11 "Borken" meant

then I LOL at myself for not realizing it was a typo(or would that be a tpyo)


YES! I too demand no more cries of BORKEN!

Do you realize the sheer impossibility of what you're calling for? It's not even possible. And therefore, since it's not possible, we are proactive about it (rather than reactive or surprised) and we ask ourselves, "If there were going to be 4 or 5 top pieces in this set, what would we want them to be?" We don't then inject them with steroids, but we do focus our work on those pieces to ensure that they offer something valuable and new to their faction in a way that is also healthy for the game. During the design process we have regularly said among ourselves, "We aren't planning this piece to be a power piece, so we should probably tone it down a bit." Why do we do that? I promise you that it's not to pi$$ off the fanboys who want their uber Ragnos or Nihilus...it's because we're trying to restrain the powercreep--which is inevitable in set design.

People CAN play their Ragnos and Nihilus squads all they want! And actually, in Tile Wars this year my Mace squad got stomped by a Ragnos squad. But seriously, where did this notion come from that all the pieces in a set need to be equally competitive with each other? It was never the case in the history of the game, even back in the earliest of the WotC days. Honestly, it's just unrealistic. And dropping the set number from 70 to 10 won't change that...something will always rise to the top.

I just need to add something here. Mixed into this thread (and other threads) have been a lot of complaints about Bastila (and the Yammosk, and others).

Here's the thing - they were very intentional pieces in V-set 1 to bring the 4 "lesser" factions up to speed. They were purposefully aggressively costed and meant to be foundations for the squads.

OR, Vong, Sith and Mandos couldn't even have a hope of competing at the top levels where WotC left them. The designers gave them each one (or more) UBER piece to try and get them up to speed.

One of the biggest things plaguing the game at that time was activation control - so it gave each faction a way to compete with it.
-Bastila nerfed CEs, and since all activation control was CEs at the time, she leveled the field in that respect.
-Manolorian Counter-Intelligence Officer brought black-ops which directly nerfed activation control
-Yammosk allowed you the option to steal activation control
-Sith they went a different route, and gave them the ability to be more aggressive. With Darth Revan SL, you can move and swap in one turn, then use the fig you swapped with in the same phase. Get into their face quick. And they have the beef to last a bit longer.

So those pieces had to be made, or else those factions still would not even be close to competitive at the top levels. (Mandos still really aren't IMO). Show me a top level squad last year in one of those factions that didn't have the cornerstone piece. There aren't any.

OR would still suck - EVEN WITH SATALE SHAN, without Bastila. Does that make her OP or underpriced? Probably. It still needed to happen, or else nobody would play OR.

Each faction now has their thing in the top tier. Some more than one.

OR nerfs CEs. THAT is their thing, and it's due to Bastila. What would their thing be without her? Uh, sorta non-descript force powery kinda beefy jedi? Yeah - it doesn't cut it.

Vong steal a CE. That is now their thing. They couldn't compete without it. Show me a Vong squad without a Yammosk and I'll show you a better one with a Yammosk. They needed that. (and still they struggle)


So I'm sick of people complaining that V-set 1 pieces are so broken when the INTENT was to make the lesser factions compete, and they were so far behind they HAD to get something huge.


Now - after V-set 1 there were certainly pieces that anyone can argue about, and I agree that some were kinda ridiculous (mace, naboo, Jaq, etc)


But let's just leave V-set 1 out of the argument, because in some ways it was simply giving a huge boost were it was needed most. And if that didn't happen, nobody would even be playing those factions competitively. (and this conversation about Satele would be moot!)

So back on topic - yes she is nuts. She's fanboy crazy and undercosted. She'll be a staple for a long time and very competitive. So figure out a way to beat her (there are many). If everybody plays her, then it's actually the biggest advantage you could hope for if you play something that beats her.

I was laughing when I got through TheHutts post, but with this sir, I believe you may have won the internets!

+123 to TimmerB!

ur last post

a very good point.

I applaud the design team members that have shared how their process works.
guess I'm a little SWM-curious

That is one of my favorite series of Silrin's articles. I have some disagreements over some of the things that he claims, and I think he's probably held in higher regard than he necessarily deserves by some players, but that really is good stuff.

I also am really fond of some of PATV's Extra Credits episodes on game design; they generally focus a little more on computer games, but there is good stuff there for tabletop games like ours, too. This one: http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/perfect-imbalance is about a concept called "Perfect Imbalance". I think that we have actually achieved and are currently maintaining a "cyclical imbalance" system, and in general new sets are pushing that cycle around. We don't have a mathematical balance like the Jedi Curve (SWM never had anything like this when WotC was designing it so we can't really introduce it), but as long as there are many and effective counters to things, it will be difficult for anything to throw the game too far out of whack. It would really take something in Sirlin's "God Tier" (like GOWK was at 150 points) to do that, and I don't see anything close to that in the game now.