As a full-disclosure, it isn't my intention in posting this to spark an argument, to belittle anyone, or to hold my nose at tournament players. I would strongly encourage everyone who posts on this to speak respectfully while at the same time voicing honest opinions.

First, I want to thank the V-Set guys for everything they've done so far. I am glad there were dedicated players that were willing to put valuable time into continuing the game for players like me, who don't necessarily have that time, but still want to play. The V-Set does keep the game fresh. While I may loathe some pieces, the fact that they exist for me to loathe in itself is a blessing.

In light of the last GenCon, I just wonder what we can do about some of the NPE. Reading several players reflections of the game, the overwhelming feeling I get is that NPE is live and well in the form of major activations, as well as the double-swapping issue.

So I guess what my question is, why are we so stubborn in simply changing the rules of the game, rather than trying to design pieces to alleviate NPE? For example, we could put hardcaps on the number of units per team. In D&D Miniatures, there used to (and I believe there still is, a hard cap of 8 units, unless otherwise stated.) We could also allow only, let's say 2, mouse droids per team, if not ban them altogether.

Now, I know, I said ban and that's probably immediately evoked rage, but think about it. Pieces other than the mouse droids have been coming out with Relay Orders, or even, and I like this quite a bit, abilities that give them Relay Orders when they have LOS to enemies. I think this is genius, and this is potentially the way we can phase out the curse of the mouse droids. By giving each faction a relatively cheap way of bringing in Relay Orders, while at the game time removing Mouse Droids, we can introduce new meta to the game, and force players to play smarter.

As for double-swapping, I wonder why we haven't taken a look at limiting Booming Voice before. This way, players will have to risk bringing commanders up close, rather than keeping them in safety. It will also prevent people from boardwide swap.

I think the main point of the V-Set nowadays is to keep the game fresh. What better way to keep the game fresh than by tweaking with the core rules, rather than desperately scrambling to plug a leak, only to have another one spout up.

Again, I pose these questions not as a means to start a flame war, I just think we could all spend some time doing some soul-searching here.

The TL;DR here is: Why not just try changing the rules?

Thoughts?

Ultimately, you're going to phase out somebody's play-style. While not necesarily THIS one, there are people who play in such a way (looking at double-swap, tempo control, swarm) that others would consider their play-style. I don't have much of a problem against swarm myself, as I was running snowtrooper swarms since WotC, it was merely an example.

But again, at the end of the day, if significant progress is to be made on dragging the game back to a fun experience for most, rather than a few, I think someone's play-style will have to get axed.

That is one of the things that killed D&D though. Your example although valid sort of disproves your point, to a degree. I do think that it is possible to curb the activation average without creating a hard cap. One thing is to stop giving well established out act and smash squads the keys to the kingdom. Ie more tools than they ever should have.

Also, after talking with 4 members of the balance team over the weekend I believe we are no longer dead set on keeping things the way they have been. There are several "classic" NPE's that are tabled for discussion and will get a chance to be on the chopping block.

I may print this out and frame it. You my friend summed up everything I have been feeling towards the state of the game for a couple of years now. I keep hoping things get fixed, But I have come to grips with the plain and simple truth that its not going to happen. Mass acts needs some massive work, game wide. Even If there is a floor rules update that fixes the mouse situation, there will still be vong swarms, and daala swarms, naboo swarms, and it's just not fun. The balance team needs to go after this issue aggressively. They need to go after act control, and booming voice.

Start handing out CE's that cannot be relayed or something. Make players have to bring the commanders into the fight. Enough of this being able to keep all of your Commanders safely on the other side of the map.

I want to play at regionals and at gencon. I dipped my foot I, the water with the NZ vassal tournament, and After feeling out the meta, I knew there was no way I was going to attend. 27/28 activation single swap (or even double swap) Boba. No thanks.

I'm tired of looking for a reason to play your version of this game and being disappointed every single time. Fix this garbage. The meta is worse than ever. 4 of the top 8 squads imperial swap. 5 of the top 8 feature Boba Fett. Stop making excuses and address this. We have seen this imp build dominate both NZ and America.

In my opinion both the Imp Gov. and Boba both need changes made to them. Boba Fett outshines every other shooter in the game, and regardless of what faction I'm running, I would rather run Boba over that faction's top shooter. That Boba Fett has set the game backwards. He should be a high 60's piece, maybe even a flat 70. He is that good.

Personally, I am not playing anymore standard minis until some major issues are addressed.

I don't know if you can quite prove that it was the 8 figure hard-cap that killed D&D minis though. I think what solidly killed D&D minis was how quick wotc was killing to nail the coffin shut when they realized that they could just sell the pieces for the RPG.

Again, my point isn't necessarily to come up with a definitive answer -- let's be honest, even if I had one, it wouldn't be taken seriously, since other posters have basically just come out and said that I'm not taken seriously as a non-tournament goer. Rather, my use of the example is to show other other games in the past have done it.

In terms of the continuation of D&D minis, I think their "V-Set" did it 100% correct by adjusting point costs to combat power creep.

What specifically would you like to see done?

I agree that this was a problem. i Played it round 2, and it was ridiculous. Now that Being Said the suggested change toi Rapport Fixes this Issue. (Not allowing Rapport to lower below 3)


I do Think Boba Is under-costed. If he only had double he would be about right. That would also be a legitimate comparison to Cad at that point, also i think he should cost 55.


The Other Pieces i think need a change are:
Imperial Governor (Change it to affect Imperial Followers)
Dodonna (Add in the LOS retirement)
Neo-Crusader Officer- (Change CE to Followers)

I'm always in favor of the floor rules change adding a minimum cost of 3 points per piece. That seems like it fixes Gha - and to a lesser extent, Lobot - without having to outright ban them from the game. That allows Gha to help the Seps, and Lobot to still be useful tech, without every faction having access to the 2 pt mouse filler. (And I would like to add that, if Gha goes, I think Wuher should follower - after all, Wuher's main purpose was to trip up the Mouse Dump, right? There's no need to shut down the Battle Droid Reserve Swarm if the Battle Droid Swarm is not a problem).

I think it could be interesting to add in some very specific Tempo Control. Maybe a CE like this:

"If your opponent activates two characters with the same name as each other in a phase, they must activate a third character with that name if they can."

Or:

"If your opponent has more characters than you at the beginning of a phase, they must activate three characters during that phase."

Or:

"If you activate only Unique characters in a phase, you can increase or decrease the number of character you activate that phase by 1."

We need to be somewhat careful about counterbalancing the NPE squads, lest we arrive at a meta dominated by squads of two or three beatsticks and an override piece, but what if the counterbalancing was achieved via very specific - but very powerful - tech.

Take Talon Karrde or the Kota's Militia Officer. Karrde gets Ysalamiri if you run all Fringe. The Kota Officer has a really powerful CE for a very small group of pieces. What if we added more stuff that requires you be extremely specific about squadbuilding? Like, a Rebel Commander that makes Rebel Trooper Swarms viable (maybe via Rapport 1 and Prideful), but has restrictions in place such that you can't run it as an 'out-activate and smash' squad, but rather as just a large squad of combat-worthy grunts.

Take a look at Hive Mind.

(Each phase, after each of a player’s normal activations, that player activates 1 extra character with the same name, if able. Ignore this ability if this character has less than 5 Killik allies.)

The overall point I am trying to make with this post is that I don't think any major harm can be done to the game, in light of the sorry state it's currently in.