So, i've been thinking...

With the recent spoil on Admiral Trench, there seems to be, more than ever, a push for competitively feasible squads based on a large number of weaker minions. Star wars has always been about huge battles, and these battles aren't possible without your average grunt of the galaxy. When you translate this to SWM, you start to run into a bit of a problem.

When the game was originally released, it was based on a 100 point build. This meant that the activation counts were much smaller. In the 200 point game, and with the growth of power from Rebel Storm to V-Set now, the cost of pieces have been driven down, and the number of activations is at an all time high with the 2 point mice/geonosians. Typically speaking, after you hit around 15 activations, the NPE rating goes up exponentially as you add more activations.

The V-Set team has done a wonderful job in allowing the grunt to shine. I think there is a delicate balance needed though. If the nonu-nique pieces are too powerful, you lose the feel and spirit of star wars. Having Mace Windu slaughtered by a bunch of klatoonian assassins is something of a disservice to the character, and conflicts with some of the core themes of the franchise. Making it so that Mace Windu can never be defeated by grunts makes the grunts not worth playing. So where do you draw the line? You either end up with over powered non-uniques, or swarms of less powerful ones that make it impossible to play anywhere near a full game during tournaments.

I feel like, in order to get the game to continue to run smoother and offer options, we really need to approach the problem from outside of the box. I've suggested it before, and people seemed to have mixed feelings, but I would like to highly suggest that we delve into some additional options. Using well written, tested, and thought out rules does help create checks and balance (home run on not allowing Trench to affect cyborgs), but it doesn't fix the underlying problem, which is that swarm squads don't make the game fun to play for the majority of the community. In an attempt to even make them usable, we ended up with poggle-bombs, 12 point klat-splat, naboo death troops, and 18 square charging snow troopers.

I am still a proponent for unit options. Hear me out. I know that this is not a mechanic of our game, but we're making new mechanics all the time, and they've worked out well for the most part. Having a unit rule would allow the combination of multiple grunts into 1 unit with better stats. 20 storm troopers runs you 100 points and leaves you plenty of room to still add commanders and beat sticks on top. That's 20 activations for only half of your squad.

Now, if we had a unit rule, and could break some of those 20 troopers down into "units" (4 troopers = 1 large unit, 9 troopers = 1 huge unit), we've all of a sudden got squad building options and a much more manageable situation in terms of activations. The game is going to run much faster, and if a bonus is granted for having toops in a unit, your storm trooper unit could theoretically be stronger than a single storm trooper, at a cost of activations.

This would address some other issues. For example, lets say we have this 20 storm trooper squad, and you land a match against a Lancer squad. Since the lancer's release, this would pretty much be an auto loss. If instead, after revealing squads, you could combine your storm troopers into units, you'd have some options. In this case, a "large unit" might have 40 hit points (speculative mechanics). No good, still can be killed by a twin lancer, but against a different opponent, that could have been an option. However, a huge unit of troopers with 90 HP could survive 2 lancer sweeps as long as none lands acritical hit. All of a sudden, your trooper based squad is no longer an NPE. The Trooper player gets to have a fighting chance against the lancer player, and the lancer player doesnt have to endure the trooper players 20-40 activations.

I assume this might be too far removed from the original game rules for a lot of people, but I do think that if we're ever going to figure out how to handle the issue of overpowered grunts and activations, we do need to approach the problem from an angle other than new SA's and CE's. Trying to patch this with new abilities is just going to create more problems... either some factions will have the support they need while others do not, or all factions will have a solution through a fringe piece which typically means you've invented and auto-include.

Final note, what about just stamping an activation cap onto the game and calling it a day?

One final final note: Star Wars Saga Edition, WOTC's roleplaying game that was designed to be used with star wars miniatures actually had rules to support just this. It allowed a story teller to continue to use troopers against higher level characters by combining the troopers into squads. This made the troopers funciton as a single more powerful piece, but also addressed the problem that if you wanted to use troopers against higher level characters, you typically had to do so in greater numbers to provide any real threat. Adding troopers would bog down combat, so this rule was specifically designed to address the very issue we've been running into with SWM for years now. I have the books at home, and if memory serves, it did something along the line of granting HP and bonuses to stats, as well as adding the equivalent splash to the unit's attack (to represent many characters firing). Saga edition and SWM had a lot of cross overs and similar rules, though they were not rule for rule the same. SWM is much simpler in it's mechanics, but i feel like even at its core, Saga Edition basically has the blueprints we need to expand on this.

I'm not in favor of new rules in the rulebook, but you could create squad characters and a special ability that lets you combine into a squad character during setup.

Stormtrooper Squad
Cost: 20
HP: 40
Def: 20
Atk: 8
Dmg: 20
Base: Large
Splash 10
Coordinating Together: -1 Attack, -1 Defense for every 10 Damage on this character.
(numbers off the top of my head)

On some Imperial Officer of some sort:
Squad Organization: During setup, you may remove 4 medium troopers from your squad and replace them with a large trooper whose name contains Squad.

This is a terrible idea. Why do we want to give swarms squads access to swapping out for pieces that can survive against their counters? I mean honestly i would just run the exact same daala squad i was running add in this guy for something and then boom, i gain access to something that will save me against my counter.... lame.

The OP has me intrigued because it talks about the spirit of the game. I keep saying it: stop playing “a” game and start playing “star wars”. I appreciate the competitive spirit of people and not asking them to stop thinking about how to outsmart the opponent. When we talk about the out activation mechanics and the resulting NPE I always addressed the attitude of the gamers. But now I think of it as competitive players using a game exploit. The rules allow it and in that game universe it is acceptable.
So it is in the core mechanics that the change has to occur. In the same way that changing the initiative rules have had a positive impact to game, the mechanics for activations has to change.
Initially the game was about having a few mechanics and using them. So it would be having very expensive Darth Vader vs a bunch of rebels that could hardly hit him but had many tries at it.
The new design theme is to pack more into a squad. So the squad needs activation, door control, movement breaker, big damage burst etc. all in one squad. We have now super commanders that grant so much for low cost.
Out activation and spinning useless pieces is now cool because that lets you circumvent in a clever way all that your opponent brought to the table.
So my point is that the only way to address a “game exploit” is with a hot fix. The design team has to own up to the exploitable mechanics and address it. Whatever it takes. And it needs to be addressed now. Not in V-set 17.
So whatever it takes could be that pieces at a cost of less than 10 must all activate in a row. Or pieces that are the same name and point cost must activate as a unit. Or whatever you want it to be.
The point is out activating is a game exploit so address it as such by denying the game mechanic.

Cheers

I agree with the above that this an issue and changes need to be made, however I don't want to see 'patch pieces'. Our squads are clogged up enough as is with all the counter pieces, I don't want to have to give up points that I could spend on an actual piece for a hard counter to a squad I might not even face (and lobot only has so much reinforcements). I'd rather see a fundamental change to gameplay.

Keep the game how it is. In my opinion the community has stayed strong and (mostly) supportive of the v-sets and all the great work the designers are doing because of the rock-paper-scissors squad types. When you talk about mace windu getting killed by grunts and injustice to the character, Wotc did injustice to LOTS of characters (Guri, Kreia, Darth Revan, I could go on.). I don't think we need an activation cap; we have it in most of the 500 point tournaments and that's how I think it should stay. We also don't need another boost to the Daala squads in the form of the suggested storm trooper squad mechanic. We already had to errata daala squads; we don't need to make them that much more powerful.

I don't think that it is a good idea to eliminate swarms completely. When the buzz droid was released, I had very mixed feelings on this. The Lancer and the other strafe/galloping pieces have long kept swarms in check, and to some extent still do. Swarms aren't that powerful. They look really good on paper but other than Dalaa and the snow troopers or maybe the Geonosians/Naboo, every other swarm falls apart to disruptive, Bastilla, or one of the many area effect abilities/powers. So I think what needs to be done, if anything (I'm also finally leaving things as they are because it has never been more balanced) is to create counters for the overpowered teams already like the Jar Jar that just came out or something that will harass Dalaa.
Options:
A counter to charging assault
A cheap repulse piece like the Ugi Jedi but fringe
A counter to self destruct within 6

And going along that line of thought

Swarms are my favourite team to play following reserves and huges (which really need the help, maybe give huges crush like the ATAT so they can handle swarms better) and should be a viable option over just bringing heroes.

Yes, but if they're so "viable" that they make it impossible to bring heroes, then they're too viable.

After trying to reign in the Lancer for years, I don't think we should un-do that. Swarms don't need a hard counter... just more soft counters. As mentioned, what makes swarms strong isn't the swarm... it's the Charging or the Self-Destruct or the Cloaked or the Death Shots. Make counters for those.

But also soft counters for swarms. More 'scissors-y' pieces. The main scissors pieces just devastate swarms and makes you build an all-or-nothing squad. We should have more pieces like Momaw that drop in as a minor scissors counter, but aren't going to be auto-wins against swarms.

Soft Swarm Counter Trooper
Faction
Cost: 14

HP: 40
Def: 17
Att: +7
Dmg: 20

Double Attack
Blaster Flurry 4: Replaces attacks; choose 4 target enemies, ignoring cover. Make one attack against each enemy at -10 damage.

(In whatever his faction is, he probably has a +4/10 boost.)


Elite Soft Swarm Counter Trooper
Faction
Cost: 25

HP: 70
Def: 18
Att: +10
Dmg: 20

Double Attack
Blaster Flurry 6: Replaces attacks; choose 6 target enemies, ignoring cover. Make one attack against each enemy at -10 damage.

(Numbers just thrown together, but hopefully the idea makes sense.)

That doesn't even need to be non unique. Reverting to base stats only is something that would heavily favor melee and Jedi.