Assuming I'm correct in that assessment, GOWK is acting as a foot in the door for new players. Sloppy play is a given, even without GOWK. And because the more skilled players will already know how to deal with GOWK, the new players will either have to learn how to win with GOWK correctly, or win with an Anti-GOWK. It may take a while for strategy to really come into the game, but in order for the new players to consistently win, especially after the established player base has figured out how to beat him consistently, they will have to learn strategy. Some figures make some strategical thinking unnecessary as it is. Palpatine makes Imperial players not have to worry about running out of Force for the entire squad. At least GOWK's defensive ability only works for himself. By the time they get beyond the basics of gameplay and have enough figures to really branch out, new options may be available.

It honestly may take a couple of sets for GOWK to truly have hit his balance point. It took 3-4 for Thrawn to be meaningfully handled, and not even more powered up. It wasn't until BH that disruptive came out, AE with Luke's Landspeeder and NTMTO, and Force Unleashed with Dodonna, more disruptive, and the MTB.

As far as effective pieces in JA (going by stats), the possibilities include: JBM, Jedi Exile, Darth Plageius, Sith Apprentice, Sidious, Sith Lord, Dark Woman, GMY, Disciple of Ragnos, Anakin Solo, Cade Skywalker, EJA, GMLS, Kol, Kyle CI, Leia Skywalker, R4, and the 3 Vong.

Each of these pieces has either some form of direct damage, or an ability that can be useful against a GOWK Squad.

The Exile gives extra attack and has repulse (though to be honest, the repulse is probably not as good as other options), the JBM is similar to the JWM, and will be useful against a lot, except for GOWK himself. Plageius not only has corruption, but essence of life, making his allies survive a lot longer. The Apprentice and Lord both have a direct damage ability that goes up in value when added to holosidious. Sidious himself has the swap and lightning, the Dark Woman is just good, with her ability to phase through walls and get towards the opponents backfield, GMY can Defense against GOWK, his CE is almost as good, and he can do a lot more damage than GOWK can.
The Disciples are excellent with Direct Damage, and with the support of the Imperial Faction should be great. Anakin has cheap push and Unleash, he's like his brother only better, and is even better when you consider the other figures the NR has now. Cade is a bit fragile, but the heal and essence of life is great support for other NR figures. Pretty much the same could be said for Leia, except she can also Force Absorb. EJA, again with Push, and Impulsive JH can have it's uses. GMLS can simply overwhelm him with attacks or just Force Defense his rerolls. Kol again has push, and is just a nasty figure overall, Kyle CI provides Disruptive to stop his CE. R4 can help negate some of GOWK's CE, and the Vong of course don't allow him to reroll.

Sigh, I read through 8 pages of this Crap. I don't leave much to chance, so i just use Lord Vader and some Diciples of Ragnos. Now thatll kick some GOWK @**

I should have been more specific on the sloppy play. GOWK doesn't encourage growth as a player. If the new player starts out sloppy (which isn't hard to believe), what reason does he have to improve if GOWK is carrying him?

As for the more established players, they are more than willing to abuse GOWK. While the sloppy play might allow the new player some success, it won't cut it against the established players. If they get frustrated (which they very well might), what do they have to turn to? Direct damage? Those squads take precision and skill to run. If the new player has been running GOWK and relying on him, I highly doubt the counter squads are going to be run well. So they are basically stuck and most likely discouraged. How long will they try to learn strategy? Some people just don't have the patience to learn. And if they are losing, it can get even worse.

In regards to the IE Palpatine example, it's a rather poor one. There is not an unlimited supply of FPs. Any player can use those up in a hurry. The good ones figure out where and when to use Palps' FPs. You can't just keep spending Palpatine's FPs on attack re-rolls and such. It is far worse with GOWK and his CE. GOWK simply makes the game even more of a deception for the newer player. Talk about not having to think. Even for newer players, it isn't particularly difficult to keep 1 ally within 6. Also, why would they bother with newer figures when the same ole GOWK squad can carry them? A new player could purchase around $60 worth of minis (Starter, Rex, Dash, R2, Uggies) and be set. That player has absolutely no reason to buy another piece unless it's Republic or Fringe. GOWK is such an illusion that he/she doesn't believe they need to branch out.

Sure, Rob might be looking to balance GOWK in future sets. But that is a problem too. We have no idea if and when that will happen. For newer players, that's over a year down the road. By that time, they might be fed up and bored with the game. With Thrawn, it most certainly did NOT take 3-4 sets for him to be "handled." His true power wasn't unleashed until CotF. Even then, the swap strategy took a long time for players to understand. Plus players learned the strategy of counting squares and keeping their distance. Tempo control became a good counter too (looking at San). Of course just 2 sets after CotF, Rob released a direct counter (which I'd argue wasn't even needed). So that's hardly 3-4 sets to balance out Thrawn. BTW, Dodonna (another Tempo Control piece) was released in Legacy.

In respect to your effective JA pieces, there are a few decent ones that you listed. Not all, though, amount to much in a GOWK run meta. Here's my humble assessment:

JBM - A JWM clone for a weaker faction. A step in the right direction, but hardly a counter against a good GOWK squad. The shooters will rip the JBM into pieces.

The Jedi Exile - The CE is fantastic, but pales when most of those shots are either missing the opposition (thanks to GOWK's CE) or being absorbed by GOWK.

Darth Plagueis - While I love his Corruption, he is going to be eaten alive by shooters. The only movement breaker to help him is Palpatine's swap. However, that little combo costs 120. Not a true solution.

Sith Apprentice - Probably the first real threat you listed. A ranged FP that can do Direct damage is nice. My only caveat - squads with Barriss Offee and Luminara. That damage could be easily healed away thanks to Barriss.

Darth Sidious, SM - The swapping option is certainly a nice idea. However, it looses its luster without direct damage or Overwhelming Force. That's one reason Lord Vader swaps are so popular. Fortunately the Apprentice and Lord are solid Pawn and Swap options.

Sith Lord - Again, another decent option you listed. Probably best in a swap squad with Sid. That's a real threat against GOWK IMHO. The one problem though is the lack of Force Renewal if you go the swapping route. No Holo Sid.

Dark Woman - All I see here is another thorn in the GOWK run meta. She can help eliminate a key commander that might be hiding (Rieekan, Dodonna, Ozzel, perhaps Thrawn). Just another GOWK toy to use.

Grand Master Yoda - I love his offensive kick. Still, I don't see how he does much against a GOWK squad. Plus GOWK's CE dwarfs Yoda's. Also, why in the world would Yoda be Force Defensing GOWK (if that's what you meant)? What a waste of FPs. While GOWK is around, I don't see myself using this piece.

Disciple of Ragnos - Finally, another viable piece you listed. This guy will probably do best when teamed with Thrawn. He desperately needs that movement breaker.

Anakin Solo - I'll buy into Unleash the Force and Force Push making this piece a good option against GOWK. Keep in mind, though, you will have to run Wedge with Anakin. Otherwise he'll never have a chance.

Cade Skywalker - I do admit, he will keep the direct damage users alive. But that's about it. If I am the GOWK player, I go directly for Cade. He probably won't last any more than 2 rounds after the bullets start to fly.

EJA - Like the Disciple, another decent possibility. But again, you better be running Wedge with this guy. If you don't, the EJA will drop like a sack of potatoes.

GMLS - Okay, I love Luke. However, I'm having a hard time seeing what he offers against GOWK. If I am the GOWK player, I will gladly engage Luke with GOWK. While he's busy trying to dent GOWK, the support can destroy what little Luke has with him. The cost alone makes me question his validity as a good counter. Also, Force Defensing a re-roll is a total waste of FPs. There are far better uses for those FPs.

Kol - If it weren't for his Force Push, I'd say he's another wash. Thankfully he does have a form of direct damage.

Kyle CI - I'm not seeing him doing much. His CE is worthless against a GOWK shooter squad. Not to mention he will have a difficult time against those same shooters.

Leia - She'll keep squads alive longer, but I am not sure how she directly affects GOWK. She's a step up from Kyle, but certainly not a great counter.

R4 - This droid is a good way to counter GOWK's CE. That's at least how I see it.

Vong - Again, how do they fare against the GOWK shooter squads? I can't imagine all that well.


That's my assessment of JA. I see, maybe, 8 pieces that do much anything against him. With GOWK, the game becomes a battle of 4 factions - the Republic, the Rebels, the Empire and the New Republic. Three of those four have access to swap to augment Direct Damage squads. Two of the four have Evade to counter the shooters and keep the damage dealers alive. And obviously the Republic has access to GOWK and every other Republic toy. The other factions don't have much going IMHO. That is very sad. Last time I checked, the game had 9 factions (10 if you count Fringe).

Lol, I never said against GOWK specifically. I was referring to a GOWK run meta. If I simply felt they would be effective one on one, I would include more. But this is a squad based game.

BTW, you mentioned 3-4 sets to fix GOWK. If we start now, that is a year down the road. If you were indicating when the Starter came out, we're still looking at around another 4-6 months.



You say that like Anti-GOWK has a legitimate chance at winning. Those squads hardly have a 50% chance at beating GOWK squads. Even as a new player, the GOWK squad should do ok against the Anti-GOWK. That's the whole issue. If a skilled Anti-GOWK player is having trouble beating a mediocre player with GOWK, that's a problem. As for your assumption about them buying boosters, that's an awfully big assumption. Again, why bother branching out in other factions when they are winning with nearly the same squad over half the time? That would be expensive. Even if a Republic or Fringe piece catches their fancy, they'd be better served buying singles. Which I guarantee you, GOWK certainly encourages more singles purchases (since there are so few of the new pieces that will do well in the GOWK meta).



So what happens when GaW is released (3 sets after GOWK) and no "counter" shows itself? Do we keep waiting? Seriously, ban the figure now. That will let Rob know there is a problem. Then if a future solution can alleviate the GOWK problem, DCI simply unbans GOWK. Seems logical to me.



Out of all those powers, I'd say Master Tactician was the most harmful at the time of its release. At that stage of the game, Force Immunity wasn't that big. There just weren't many Force Users that dependent on Force Powers. Hence why Thrawn's Bubble is so huge in today's game of Force Push, Lightning, Corruption and Repulse. The swap portion of Thrawn didn't become an issue until CotF. That truly brought out the cries of "ban."

As for direct counters, I think you forgot about Nym. His Disruptive stood a far greater chance at making a difference than Talon's Disruptive. But it should be also noted that such a "counter" didn't slow down Thrawn all that much. That hardly made much of a difference against those squads. I'd say the MTB made a bigger dent against Thrawn.

But imagine that? Character placement and Tempo Control managed to deal with Thrawn. Sounds like a good strategy to me. Heck, I'm sure a few quick strike squads came to mind too. Ultimately, San squads were (and are) excellent ways of dealing with swap squads. Those were the banes of play for the Thrawn player. While there weren't myriad of solutions, those that were present were effective. Big difference between what's going on with GOWK.

Man I loved the artifact affinity stuff It would have a hard time now with all the artifact hate that came out. It's been over a year since I have followed MTG but when I let it seemed they were coming down alot of artifact removals. Sorry for hyjacking the thread.

But, the meta at the time of Universe was also far smaller. I'll be honest, I never really saw the issue with Thrawn. Knowing I will lose init is about as good as knowing my opponent will win init.

Not an issue when you've effectively out-activated your opponent. You pick away at the swap fodder. While easier said than done, it is easier than picking off GOWK's support. The worst you had to fear was Thrawn's boost to stormies or grans. In this day and age, pesky shooters have Mobile or GMA.

As for Anti-GOWK squads being effective, I think you are overestimating their chances. Of the Push squads that won at Regionals (which I consider Anti-GOWK), I doubt all that many faced off against GOWK every game. Heck, I bet the faced no more than 2 GOWK squads per regional. The other GOWK players end up hurting each other. Again, an illusion is created. Some of the best counters are only able to beat GOWK around 40-50% of the time. And that's with some of the best players at the helm. GOWK effectively makes a player have to run Anti-GOWK to perfection. Even if that happens, you are hardly guaranteed a win. So instead of skill deciding this, a vastly superior piece is dictating the game.

Also, I'm not sure why you keep harping on Force Immunity. Was it nice back then? Sure. Yet its impact is far greater in today's game due to the influx of cost effective force users and intensive force powers. That wasn't the case back in the days of Universe or even CotF. You talk of JH Vader eliminating the Jedi from play. What jedi? Even back in the days of Universe, people recognized the inadequacies of the force users. JH Vader was simply confirmation that Rob had overcosted the past Jedi.

With Disruptive, you mentioned Talon Karrde. I felt it necessary to also remind you of Nym. Of those two, I can bet you Nym was considered a stronger Disruptive option back then. The scary part, however, is that we both agree that did little to slow down Thrawn. So how do we know a similar thing doesn't happen with GOWK? Maybe Rob does throw a counter of sorts out there (ie - like Makashi). It doesn't do a lick of good if that counter is relegated to a poor piece and/or faction. That's part of the problem with Dooku of Serreno.

Unless you were running San, out activating wasn't quite THAT easy. And it also depended on what was being used as swap fodder. Sometimes if you were just able to run a higher HP figure up and do the swap. Or alternatively, you ran Vader JH around to get close, but out of LOS. And just kept the Storm Troopers back enough that they were hard to hit. Once you got to the end of the Round, after your opponent had already activated most of his figures you could safely run Vader up and base an opponent and perhaps make an attack. Next round, you win initiative and triple attack. Vader was enough of a tank that he could probably have taken almost any shot before getting out of there from Thrawn.




From playing GOWK, seeing GOWK played, and playing against GOWK, I have seen some squad (not just Rebel Push) that were able to do quite well against GOWK, several times. The NE regional 2nd place was only in second because he made a mistake in his second round.

I think you are underestimating them. And if we say around 50% of Anti-GOWK are beating GOWK, are we talking equal skill level? Because if that is the case then it means there is a nice balance between GOWK and Anti-GOWK. If 2 players of equal skills with equally well put together squads (one GOWK, one Anti-GOWK) a win rate of 50% means the squads are balanced against each other. If that's true than that means that using well built squads, the difference between a GOWK squad and an Anti-GOWK squad would be a) luck, and b) skill.





I'm not trying to harp on it, anymore than I'm saying it had an effect and added to what he could already do, it basically made him super utility commander.






I mentioned Talon because I usually played NR back then and he was a bit more cost effective than Nym, and because Disruptive did end up being good against him, and was introduced in BH.



Good question. The best way I can think of answering that is to look at past issues and see whether they were resolved and dealt with, and how long it took. As best I can recall, most issues took a few sets and a tweak of the rules. Most of those issues also had maybe 1 or 2 counters, but for the most part didn't. While the things coming out right now may not seem to be the most effective counters, I'm seeing some of the balance coming out faster with this than some of the other issues.

For example. Override. A powerful ability in RS, that many players exploited to win the game, and was only available to Rebel squads. I don't recall exactly when it was done, but by the time I started playing in Universe, Gambit was introduced and got rid of the advantage to the lock out. COTF then saw the ugnaught with satchel charge, and a couple more overriders. So by 3 sets we saw counter #1 and by 4 we saw counter #2 and override, while useful, was not quite as powerful.

Ah but you forget that a meta is never just 2 things, even if those are the "best" options. The problem comes that the GOWK counters are not 50-50 with the non-GOWK counter good squads, they are perhaps 30-70 depending on individual match ups. However, most of the non-GOWK counters, will be less than 50% against GOWK overall. The way these players are getting around those numbers is to do as Sithborg mentioned, using tactics that I think most players would generally look down upon. Let's be honest, if you didn't like lock out wins, then I certainly don't see how you can support using fast figures and activation control to get a points lead and run for time (which is the 3rd option right now for competitive play). I would also argue that most of the GOWK counters are not 50-50 against all GOWK squads. Heck, they aren't generally even 50-50 against any. Some of the decent counters out there, get smashed by certain variants, even when they do well against others. Skill and luck are still factors, but if you can't see the effect on the meta, then I don't know what to tell you.


first of all, this isn't a comparable situation in anyway. The game was not meant to be played competitively, so override only became a problem when you left the kitchen table and started playing tournaments (which WotC did not originally intend). It wasn't until around Rots that this became an issue. Gambit was created at the very next DCI update to deal with the issue, it was not from Rebel storm, that is a rewriting of the history.

Second, what kind of change was Gambit btw? Was it a DCI rules change? I believe it was. It takes a year or more to develop and release an actual figure counter. So if Rob were to design a counter figure like the ugnaught (I believe this not to be possible in anyway for GOWK, but let's just assume it is), we would not see it until summer of 2010 at the earliest. CotF came out 9 months after Universe, and about 13 months after Rots. Waiting around for the magical counter figure is not an option. Sorry, I won't be playing in 13 months if this is the meta I am forced to play.

Third, in the regional, I locked out two different people. The tactics are harder to pull off, and require more strategy than before, but it certainly isn't fixed by the ugnaught. That's just the reality of it. Gambit helps, but only so much. Override is still one of the most powerful and abusive abilities in the game. You can only nerf something like that so much. And while in this case, they have done a good enough job, it was only one ability, usually on figures that are easy to kill. With GOWK, there is very little you can actually do. You resort to one of a couple of direct damage squads, or you get a points lead and hide. That's it, you cannot play the game the way it's intended. That's what makes it such a problem.

I have made several similar posts in several other threads, but still, I say: GOWK is bad. On a game to game basis, he is beatable. However, against everything else, he us a monster. He limits the game to approximately 3 hate squads, that even when optimized against GOWK, only win half the time. He kills the game, and there is no incentive to stop using him as far as winning is concerned. Outside of a ban, there is nothing that can be done against him.