Wow, there's a lot of perspective here, and it's clear you've given this a lot of thought -
there have been similar threads emerge over time - and this is a topic that is orbited a lot in the afterlife of SWMinis.
I note some of the recurring themes to those over time, including some all the way back from Gamers and WotC forums, there've been a fewer centred on similiar reflections.

thanks for moving what is sure to be a fun discussion to a thread of its own outright -
as the comments on the pieces are a little like 'tweeter' or something - a character limit and all makes in-depth stuff virtually impossible,
without the chance of misunderstandings.
that, and it's more scope than just the piece in question (that piece being a metonymic representation of a trend reflected).
this way - we've got a complete blank slate to express ourselves much better than the limits a character limit etc impose

With all of that preamble aside,
as someone who initially did "not like green eggs and ham" - who didn't play using any non-WotC figures,
I have slowly come to use VSets more often - particularly after TheHutts and kezzamachine reflected on some stats averages,
so please take this reflection with the appropriate amount of pool salt hehe
to this day - I still play Dynamic Duos (something of a dying format?), tile wars, 200, 250, 350 and 500.
I digress, Reading those charts that theHutts had compiled made for an interesting read -
as the charts at that time, to V9,
were less of a gap in the set-to-set VSets than there was in WotC set-to-set.
There was a slight bump in the first 2 vsets, but that was of a less magnitude than the bumps WotC had.


To this day, there are many locals who refuse or have never heard of VSets,
and we have to accomodate this at tournaments, by instructing players
to have both a WotC set only, and an inclusive of VSet list etc.
They have to have the backup ready just incase

where am I going with this?
what is the 'spirit of the game'? what is the object?
to have star warsy fun, and a little competition or a recreation of a battle? some strategy and all,
yet not "TKO" or 'MTG-rotations" of fashion, ostensibly,
nor the extreme of RPG'ing...

luckily, in non-tournament situations,
agreed house rules can resolve many of those issues,
where errata or interpretation don't yet exist.

That competitive drive - "I win, you lose", drives the meta,
the meta? it's the NP-distribution of which combos are more likely to win than not.
the more pieces, in theory - the more combos etc,
though as there's a set that are very similar, it seems to narrow the meta.
In theory, it would be that people could form equally likely to win squads. We're very close to that optimal "sweetspot" at present,
thanks to some errata and the careful choosing of which pieces do what for each faction.

To me,
pieces like TK421 etc,
which flaunt 'unique' thanks to a technicality,
by allowing 2 uniques on the same squad,
that kind of thing is annoying.

Having force immune squads able to steal CE's and use the force, it's frustrating hehe.

Having proliferation of direct-damage/autodamage abilities, and a limited force pool...
that essentially nerfs melee in favor of ranged and direct damage,
that's annoying.

having more of your squad tied up in 'hobson choice autoinclude meta-insurance' pieces,
that's funny. at some point, it will probably wind up like
xiangqi or 'qinyin/Go',
with all the meta mapped and 10p dan's being the hall of heroes hehe


Having a mousedroid obstruct for targetting is annoying, providing cover? psssh, comically inaccurate.
having 2pt droids, a little excessive, even as a CIS fan through and through.
luckily, errata happened, and brought most of that into question and new errata formed.
Mousedroids (and small objects) are de-facto considered non-obstructing in many house rules,
as though the attacker had 'sniper', based on a base-size to base-size comparison chart
brought up at a previous reflection similar to this present one

It helped to reduce negative play experiences, -which especially for newer people to the game
(who may have played RPGs or other tabletops, or maybe never even a tabletop game before)
- retains the players we have, and encourages more fun, rather than counter-intuitive "win at all costs" mentality,
which can be found in other game systems etc...

Turning to your reflection, kkj,
upon some standards for tournaments,
such as having map rotations as part of a squad list, for a per-round in the round-robin,
our local tournaments resolved that earlier,
by forcing all players to use only the maps specified and provided per round
(so, players essentially at the tournament did not have to supply maps).

That seems to have caused the least sidetracks since then, and that was a good 6 or 7 years ago.
It makes themed league play fun, as it removes that asymmetric factor from 'random map'.

To the question of "attacks with lightsabre counts as"-
many houserules treat them as 'both' - ie, anything that can be used against either of the two,
may be used against "attacks with lightsabre" - deflect, reflect, redirect, block, defense - it's all fair game.
The southside gamers group went the other route, with Errata to the effect of "all with lightsaber +10" delete and replace with melee attack, and blaster |appropriate damage here|. So, the cards are considered to be printed with melee by default, unless the player specifies they're using Blaster 20. This route preserves the asymmetric scenarios of 'gun v sword' etc, which was hotly debated at the time and since hehe

more to follow shortantly in part 2

Well, kobayashimaru (Thats a Star Trek test, right? Saw it in the 2009 Star Trek :P ) first of all thank you for comprehensive post! I think i have to admit i didn't understand everything, there's a lot of game-jargon in there and i am actually not a gamer at all. Granted, i play Star Wars Miniatures, Imperial Assault and Star Wars Armada, but i wouldn't consider myself a gamer, so please take into consideration that i know pratically nothing about other games and tournaments because i never played SWM competitively. Just playing with the same guy since 8 years. Furthermore i'm German, so sometimes it's hard for me to figure out all the professional english even though my english is pretty good :D

I did not completely understand how this map rotation works but if it works, thats great :) To me it never made sense that two fighting factions would not know on which battlefield they would fight, so we house-ruled to first choose map and then build squads.
Regarding the "lightsaber-counts-as-?"-aspect, beeing able to use both deflect and block (etc) against it is also a good solution, as the character would probably choose the weapon which grants him an advantage, like using a blaster against Dooku who would obviously be a beast against a melee attack.

Now for vehicles, i think most of the offical ones are actually kind of solid but limited because of beeing huge. The AT ST for example seems fine to me, although i would give the ISP 100 hp instead of 70. (But nothing else, i think he's fine like that. He does not have to be Captain Rex, which is on my "too strong"-list anyway)

To me it just kind of hurts seeing people bashing on the old figures and treating them as "unplayable" or bad designs. They seem to forget that this game was very balanced from RS-UH. As i said before COTF set the tone for stronger miniatures-reboots, like maul champion and the JWM. With A&E it all just became worse. I love all the sets, but never really liked it when new figures just completely replaced old figures. That is just bad game design and a cashgrab to get people to buy all the new stuff in my eyes. Kind of like yugioh, which i played in the past. Yeah its a colletibles game, but still. Now that the game is OoP things can be changed and do not have to stay this way.

What are your thoughts on my ideas regarding doors? Do you think it's a rule that could work? I played it with my friend and it was kind of cool, my Elite Rebel Commando closed the door in front of vaders face, so i could retreat and get into position. He had to waste 1 turn to shoot down the door with his troopers. I tried to make the rule so that override would still be useful, but not as gamebreaking as it is (btw wasn't "gambit" introduced just because of this?) and that characters with satchel charge would still be useful as they can open doors much faster. Though i think that 30 hp per square is too few with a defense of 2, maybe 50 hp would be a better choice.

Looking forward to hear your opinion on this :) Also, i like to hear if other SWM-Gamers had similiar ideas, maybe we can use this thread to establish some rules and stuff. :)

Where do you get 2,500 from? There are about 1500 pieces in the Bloomilk database altogether, and there are slightly more WOTC pieces than v-set pieces.

I think adding new pieces is just a lot more interesting - the v-sets have now been around longer than WOTC was. I think that anything that's kept the game going this long should be congratulated. While the game has gradually shrunk, it's not surprising for something that's 6 years out of print. If there were no v-sets, I'm pretty sure this site would be defunct or a ghost town, and you'd have noone to discuss the game with.

I do think the complexity can be a problem sometimes, especially where English isn't your first language, as can be the creation of extreme squad types, which I think is the v-sets' biggest failing. But generally they've done a great job of making all 10 factions playable in tournaments, and constantly creating new and interesting characters. Even if you made WOTC Old Republic playable by toning other pieces down, they'd still be very bland and uninteresting. I can't think of any interesting force powers or movement breakers that they have. It's much more interesting getting new toys to play with instead.

"Most people realized that you couldn't have a singular piece be the epitome of a core character without overloading the card."

I don't think that is true, look at General Windu, he's the perfect windu characterwise. Or General Skywalker. And Darth Revan. Also, if you allow me the comparison Imperial Assault can handle it with 3-4 abilities per character and they feel very true to the character.

Referring to your point of "filler" characters, thats one of the reason i made this post. Recosting bad figures so that at least each piece has a purpose to play. Not some just beeing completely worse than others or some beeing just completely better than most others.

There should be 1,514 characters (ignoring reprints) according to my reckoning - and that's including 18 Epics and the 200 point Imperial walker which aren't included in normal play.



I don't really think they're getting more and more ridiculous - the tone of the v-sets has been pretty consistent IMO, and you're using hyperbole to get your point across. I think the two most confusing rules issues in the game are Bombad Gungan (a WOTC ability) and Con Artist (a v-set ability).

According to my workings in Rolling Mini of the Day (where anyone can argue with my ratings), v-set powercreep is way smaller than WOTC. It's there, and a couple of the sets probably threw in a few too many powerful pieces, but it's smaller than WOTC's. Right now, with the v-sets, all 10 factions have competitive builds - that was never there with WOTC, and it's close enough to a consistent power level for me.

I think sometimes newer players have a tendency to equate the number of Special Abilities etc to power level, but often the strongest pieces are ones that do one important thing very well (eg General Dodonna).

You're also dealing with a shrinking community - there's no point fracturing it into little subgroups, and it's clear that most Bloomilk players use the v-sets - there was a poll a few months ago which illustrated this. It's also worth noting that the French and German playgroups ignored the v-sets, and just ran out of steam with no new pieces - they tried to change their tournament rules to open things up, but as far as I know the game's pretty dead there. The v-sets have provided the only longevity for the game as far as I can see, they've kept a central community intact for six years.

Oh thats interesting. Yeah i haven't found any other players here in my town, munich. As much as i have read from german forums, german players were mostly casual players. America surely has a greater community for the game and there were no translations so maybe that was another reason. Do you know any german players?



I understand you point completely. Worth noticing here is that i never played competitively, because i never had the option and because i never found a german community. And i am not sure if i would even enjoy competitive play, as i am mostly interested in having fun with thematic squads. So while i can fully understand that competitive players want more than those few options, for me squadbuilding options are almost unlimited, simply because i don't think competitively when building squads. Most times its just like: "Hey i want to run some Kashyyk Troopers with General Windu" or "Lets try Rebel Trooper Swarms" It is only frustrating sometimes if those few top pieces make for an unbalanced game. But as it's just casual play, most times we can agree on telling the other player that you're using GOWK or Yobuck so he can prepare.

I think i am just totally not a competitive player, as i have been building squads with clone troopers and rebel troopers for all this years haha.

@kkj
indeed,
Kobayashimaru is the name of the unwinnable test
all prospective Starfleet aspirants must undertake as the culmination exam of their training.
(also, technically any boat/water displacing craft from the town of 'Kobayashi" is also a Kobayashi-maru )
Kirk cheated in the TMP continuity, the Starfleet Academy games, and in the remake movies.
its important as a hypothetical test, so that people know the profile and character of crews,
and can assemble teams that won't have critical incidents while on mission.

though I digress,
if you study games at EJC,
knowing german is as an advantage - especially for games as Go(pinyin), Xiangqi or Chess.
many who have studied these games in-depth, have been from those background and write in german, later transliteration to english etc.
there can be bias to the game
and that is what the VSet (and custom makers) strive to keep at back of mind,
to make fun pieces.

Zugzwang/e is probably the feeling involved in the different kinds of play -
that "compulsion to move", or change, which the change in meta causes...
it is interesting how SWMinis has tried to resolve zugzwange etc.

there were a few reflections from leadadventure.de, and a few german-language sites for the game.
yet, for some reason, alternate language cards were rare from the data I can gather -
maybe this is why it was a less popular game?
(that, and it was not as well advertised as it could have been hehe)
The tournaments at Essen and Berlin though were good and had photos;
there seem to be less events run in de though.
There was a lively competitive scene in Germany - it probably died out somewhat
as fewer newer players were brought in.

though I digress,
turning to the topic of having target-able doors -
this has been an idea touched upon a few times on Bloomilk and elsewhere.
Momir Farooq made a few rules for such, and over some playtesting,
having the regular doors at 70HP (enough for 2-3 heavy attacks) tended to make things interesting.
You need a token to show which doors are destroyed,
and some players dislike what this change does to Override or to Satchel Charge, Shatter Door etc.
Heavy blast doors need more HP, and a tougher defense maybe 18ish?

what happens with targeting the door?
is it possible to critical hit a door?
what happens with splash damage?
how does force push etc work with a door, if the damage exceeds the HP of the door?
these are some situations to think of ahead of time, as that house-rule can change a lot of interactions,
especially in the case of 'nom bombs' squads etc...

A friend reflected to me once,
'SWMinis is SWMinis: it is not SWRPG, W40K, AT43 or other games; it is it's own game"
and that is the fine line to tread when making mods or porting things into SWMinis from other games.
Conversely, there is nothing preventing people
from using SWMinis as proxies in other games systems or pastiches,
such as SW-W40K etc.

SW-W40K, 11th ed variant,
has a lot of rules which emulate that increased layer of complexity you're looking for, kkj.
As does even the early Rogue Trader rules,
if you want a little more complexity, but plays essentially as SWMinis.

another 'mod' some use,
is to forego maps and use rules/tapemeasure,
with terrain etc.
That may seem a simple change, yet 3D terrain can make a world of difference.

good luck, kkj,
and you'll have to share what you come up with,
and how it goes.

@all,
thanks for what has turned out to be an interesting
reflection on the history of SWMinis.
seeing how folks play SWMinis,
what they think of its past,
and where everyone sees SWMinis taking paths in futures,
that's a testament to how much everyone enjoys the game
no matter which way we all play -
SWMinis is here to stay,
it'll be around for a long time

First, I'd like to say to the OP that I, for one, appreciate the whole tone and manor of his post. From time to time we all can be drawn into an emotional response to someone whose comments we disagree with, and I can see great care was taken to try and avoid turning this post into a flame war. I am not a designer (Ok, one piece, but more on that in a minute) but I truly appreciate their dedication to creating pieces that will contribute to the overall enjoyment and quality of our game. That goes for both Vset and Legends designers. I appreciate their efforts because, after designing just one piece, I see how difficult it is to balance canon accuracy with game power balance while also trying not to overcomplicate new introductions. The latter, in particular, is why I quoted the OP in his opening paragraph. One of the benefits to winning the National Championship last summer at GenCon was that I got to design one piece. Within an hour of winning I knew what piece I wanted to design, and knew the focus and scope of the piece. All were very simple; it is by design a very one-dimensional piece. The designers assisting me in making this happen all see the same focus and scope. The problem is trying to keep abuses of the piece from blurring that focus. The result of which on this one single piece I've designed is now trying to figure out if everything can fit on the card. All of that, ironically, is to keep the piece 'simple'. (Singularly focused.)

That all being said, I can certainly understand the OP's frustrations in the very wordy and complicated nature of the explanations of some new abilities. (By 'very wordy' I refer to volume, not superfluous nature of definitions. The design teams also include individuals dedicated to the accuracy and economy of the definitions. In many ways these individuals do an even better job than the designers.) I just want to OP to know that the reason for the complicated nature of the cards isn't simply to introduce new 'cool' abilities to the game; more often it is to preserve game balance.

Why not keep things simple, as suggested? Well, as it has already been stated, those groups trying to continue without creating new pieces are no longer playing the game. Competitive play drives the interest of the smaller group of players left. So, although some new abilities add to the complexity of the game, it seems to be necessary. I can't see a way around it save for what the Balance Committee can fix.

For the casual player, there are always house rules. I see a lot of good ideas in the OP's post in this vein. My suggestion for the casual player is to pick and choose from the WotC, Vset, and Legends sets to cater to the likes and needs of their groups. These days we need to do creative things to keep the seats filled.

It's still in play-testing - hasn't been released yet!