I am not arguing that she wasn't necessary. I am merely stating that the swiftness that this piece was enacted was staggering. We went from having "Disruptive" to ABM. A staggering change. Yes, Rieekan/Dodonna sucks to play against but to nuke the faction with one 33 pt piece? Thrawn/Mas still have the benefit of the Ysilmiri (Sp?) blanket to hide under. Heck, now they have 2.

I understand the reasoning to create the piece. I just never understood the expediency of the leap. I know to make a giant leap for the faction's viability in competition but wouldn't they have been competitive if she was 33 pts with a force based version of Disruptive (Range 6)? Or 44 pts with the current ABM manifestation?

Both Rieekan/Dodonna and Mas/Both Thrawns are bad experiences but, both could be disrupted and both binary components for the experience. Bastilla is solo. There isn't a Bastilla with limited force points/Force Spirit to make the combination tough to play.

To sum up, I find Bastilla's theory sound but her implementation suspect.

Of course, I am not a competitive player any more (partly due to choice and partly due to my current location) so maybe my interpretation is based more on the casual concept vs the competitive realm.

Lots of good points here.

My biggest problem with Bastilla, though, is exactly how she was designed. Board-wide Disruptive was a bad idea in my opinion. And don't start with "THEY NEEDED HER!", because that's crap and untrue. They needed a piece of her caliber; they needed a power 10 piece that could shape the meta and get them competitive. They did not specifically need boardwide disruptive. If you think there were no alternatives to that, I'd be worried to have you on the design team. Sith needed big game changing pieces too; they got Revan and Bandon, then eventually Kaan and Jaq. Sith are now absolutely top tier (getting into the top 4 at Gencon), and don't have anything even approaching the NPE level of Bastilla.

Everyone knows that OR needed a big powerful boost. It's just plain not true that it needed to be all on one piece (Sith didn't have it all on one piece and they're great now), and it's even less true that they specifically needed boardwide Disruptive and that no other concept could have possibly worked.

Here's an idea for what could have happened: Make ABM give all allies Disruptive instead of just canceling everything boardwide. If EVERYONE has Disruptive, that would still be probably the strongest ability in the game (especially with the +10 damage added). Then the OR could get a cheap (10-ish point) piece with Black Ops do you can choose to spend the points to cancel tempo control, since ABM wouldn't be doing it anymore. This would still keep OR very strong and I think they would still be competitive now, but it gives the opponent some options still.

From what I remember, people wanted a competetive OR. People asked for the OR to be brought up to speed.
The OR now have ABM. That fixes it.
So why the hate?

Look at it this way, now they can work backwards and build pieces that are not Bastila and the OR is now and will still be competetive.
Rieekan was/is the Rebel auto add, is to Mas was/is the Empire auto add, is to Bastilla is the OR auto add.

I bet anyone of you can build an epic Rebel or Imp squad without Rieekan and Mas.
Could you build an OR squad without Bastila, not yet, thats the point, not yet.

Love what we've got, hate that we cant get actual 'minis'

Keep up the good work!

She should have been toned down. Start with 1 fewer force point. Or ABM costing 4 force. Something like that.

I'm glad there are counters... Disciplined Leader, Force Light.

A couple more that could be introduced.

Master Meditation: Replaces turn; for the rest of the skirmish enemy Force powers that include the word Meditatoin cost one more Force to activate. (Perfect for a NR Luke)

Master Force Defense: Force 6; Cancel a Force power used by an enemy. (Just make sure it's not on a character with FR3.)

Yeah those are pretty common. Problem solved.

I like the wording. My first thought was, "Why didn't they just say 'without Affinity'?" My second thought was that if it just said "without Affinity" then I would be asking whether it means

* Someone who has the special ability Affinity, or
* Someone who has to use Affinity to be included in the squad.

Good word choice.

The return of Mimetic Combat Processor! Yuss!

Ooh, extreme disappointment. Wyyrlock went to to toe with Krayt. I know we have enough 60 point+ sith lords but this guy needed to be one of those.

Agree to a certain point but the last thing the Sith needed was another high cost piece, however he does seems to be a bit too affordable. I like him though, +1 to the design team for recognizing this gap.

I didn't see any of the discussions before, but I imagine one of the reasons it's been so long to get him is that it's hard to pin down how to represent him. You can do him as a powerful sorceror or his power behind the throne. We ended up with the powerful support version.

Nader sort of mentioned one of the design difficulty of the Sith. Everyone wants their favorite Sith Lord to be a super powerful beatstick. Making each one different is difficult. Not every Sith Lord is going to be a 50+ pt powerhouse.