excellent discussion!
how far back are we talking?
a while ago, maybe 2 and a bit years ago...
folks were annoyed about mousies providing cover etc.
also, several threads on "why is SWMinis not star warsy anymore" and
"who nerfed melee"...
thankfully, there was an errata for championships preventing points below a certain cost
(which annoyed swarm squads etc)
and steps are being taken to make SWMinis VSets 'more hands on and star-wars-y".
Melee will be a long time before being what it was in the Black n Blue era... though I'd argue that'd be going too far in favor of melee...
TheHutts' data convinced me to give V-Sets a go,
and a lot of strategy tips, so over time,
I've eased up on the criticism (whatever floats the SWMinis boat)
I've come to slowly introducing folks to them.
That mismatch between a VSet and Non-VSet squad though, does come up more often than folks think
(its a real what-the? as to why folks don't search for custom SWMinis or the forums ehehe)
large activation mis-matches have been annoying autolosses to
"unprepared" squads which have not included their hobson's choice counter to act/tempo control,
since San Hill or Tarkin back in the day.
its a sub-set of "autoloss by mismatch".
Its a form of stalling for time at the abusive end (which arbiters will hover over).
however, being a CIS fan, there is nothing more awesome than having a swarm of 1pt reinforcement droids plug away at and defeat a unique etc...
what causes high-acts or swarms?
Daala swarms, Gizor Delzo or Poggle+Gha+Wat or san or lobot etc droid squads
those were potentially nasty -
and were hard to prevent, as that's a meta combo that was unforeseen...
further - its in that sweetspot for the 'hobson choice autoinclude' which a squad has to have in order to survive in competitive settings;
swarms are risky/flukey mostly
so to design a counter to it, is at the cost for countering other squads...
add to this, the abundance of undercosted reserves pieces, such as Lobot etc,
and more with the VSets, of Fringe faction,
and that is another factor to where acts are coming from.
we've gotta look at why bother with high-acts anyhow
The traditional advantage was: more angles of attack, more survivability, more options in field.
vs
lower average defense, lower damage output, lower hp.
That kept the incentive away from the swarm or high-acts, as it was too fragile relative to other builds with synergy.
particularly, in the case of high act v low act,
conditional abilities such as Cunning or Advantageous become auto-on and reliable,
as opposed to situational in other matchups...
Over time, the swarm or high-act squads could get more damage output and more survivability, to be competitive with other squads...
As to the question;
do you see more acts being a strategy in use or increasingly used in your local meta?
Yup... same old players, same swarm tactics, same flukey chance.
The act-disparity is only a surprise once or twice in that case,
rather than at tournament.
If the game is nearing balance, and a lot of meta options are out there,
then I think the number of acts shouldn't matter -
the cost of the 'autoinclude' pieces to counter tempo or high-act meta squads,
will come down,
and it will make those mismatches between high act and low act squads still playable,
not the auto-win/auto-loss proposition they once were...
some new pieces seem to still increase the number of acts via rapport etc,
so I intuit a 'ban/errata' discussion in the future on a few.
If that putsch to make SWMinis "MtG lite" keeps up, it will probably bridge some of the problems from MtG into SWMinis...
apologies for the novella,
I am looking forward to hearing what others think on this