OK, so we have heard from a few people that something needs to be done, but we have not settled on what.
These can be yes or no, but feel free to add whatever you like

Do you think that a leadership council will help the following things:

Positive forum? yes
More unity? yes
more community buy-in? maybe
better designs? yes - more accurate and less soft counters and less new abilities
having a clear goal and cohesion amongst sets? yes
More play-testers? not right away
more budget? not right away
more events? yes
better structured pt? not more structured but more effective b/c they will have more power
more focused Balance committee? maybe a tad
more transparency from our leaders? yes
More sustaining of our leaders? yes

I want people to answer the following questions. They are yes/no followed by the open ended why question because ideas are needed so that the right direction can be found. This will work best if people put a lot of thought into it.

Do you think SWM needs clear, defined leaders? Yes

Why or why not? because we are constantly see-sawing. The only staple we have is activation control... we need to find a balance and keep it

Do you think the design team needs an authority that checks them during design? absolutely
Why or why not? and if you are stuck in the middle what is your proposal to the design process?
because we do not want the game to suffer because something slips by that is too hard of a counter or too good or sets a precedent for future designs that does not need to be there, etc. When those things happen, the ripple effects last a long time. It will also help ensure that silly things don't come down the pipe like Watto enslaving Darth Bane

Do you think that having a leadership committee is worthwhile?
why or why not?
Yes, because our "chiefs" are awesome people with good ideas, but other "chiefs" are stopping them from voicing their opinions and going somewhere with them. A leadership committee will have discussions on those things and be able to brainstorm better. They will also define what SWM is for new players and old players. Little things that need to be done will get done.
Vassal updates, A "new player guide" will be written, events will be organized, budget will be public, ideas for advertising for regionals, gencon will be had, new maps can be found and designed for us, SHHN can get a tad bit of help and a push for listeners, leaders can assign everyone some form of job (everyone should be involved in some way, by assignment), etc.

If you think something should be done, but do not think a leadership committee is the answer, why?
Please outline some ideas of what you think should be done.

If there are any other questions you would like answered please type them in red so we can easily see it and refer to it.

I know some of you. I know that you are worried about what others will think, say, or do if you voice your opinion. I know that this sentence seems absurd and yet we know its true. We have all felt the pain of being looked down on by friends, etc for voicing our opinion. However, in a game where the community is the only thing left your voice matters. Regardless of what others think. The community itself demands boldness to say what you feel in a direct matter without influence by outside pressures. If we are going to survive and even grow we need ideas; therefore, we need you to voice your thoughts.

last time I looked on here there were 72 views, now they are 98. So I know people are reading it.


If someone wants to explain why we do not need a leadership committee that would be great as well.


Facts are that it is clear that we need direction and we need leadership.
The old way of "well we just choose" is not giving us the best results.

I challenge those that are silent to speak up and discuss. If you are afraid of losing your "authority" I declare that with a leadership committee backing you up you will have more authority. Especially the PT committee.

I want to know why you are silent as well. You just do not care?
that seems to be the main ingredient to this "vset team".

Didn't care enough to stop Unkarr Plutt, didn't care enough to stop 31 defense, or a 20 attack rating on death troopers, or 10 damage on Baze, or Faith in the Force, or 3720 to 1, or Suppressive Fire.

I just don't understand the resistance to growth and discipline in our game. I see no reason and as of yet no one has said anything that would make me think that we shouldn't have clear leadership.

I don't bloo mail, this is a community, it should be discussed openly until actual leaders are decided on.
Ok can you tell me about the leadership we have?
I will ask similar questions as before.
What do they do as leaders?
What is their philosophy?
What do they stand for?
What rules have they put in place recently?
What have they done to stop design over reach?
What have they done to grow the game?
What is their direction?
Do they change all the time?

Any other information about them?

Apathy for the game from our leaders?! If that's the case...

That's not a leader than. That is the absence of leadership juiceman.

So everyones answer is what if it is not good?
Well tell me why it's so good right now.

Apparently the presence of new pieces every so often is proof leadership exists. That's all I can figure out in this

I don't think a leadership committee is needed. I think the positions we have now are plenty. I will help play test for sets 15/16. If 15 even needs any help anymore.


The absolute only reason a leadership committee would be needed, is if play testing is the same as it was when I was play testing. But, I can honestly say I haven't play tested in a long time, mainly because the previous play tests were not taken seriously, and the voices were not heard. I keep hearing it is different now, so, the Play Testers are this leadership comity.Whats left to be seen, is if the play testers will be listened to when something like Unkar comes around.

From my understanding, no one in play testing brought him up as a problem? So thats not just designers, its the PT comity, and ALL the play testers who saw his stats, and said nothing. Am I correct? I could be wrong about this.


What I would like, more than a "Leadership comity" is for people to take responsibility for whats happening. If a designer continues to be a bad designer, he should not design. It can hurt his feelings all it wants. People lose jobs all the time in real life for poor performance. If, for example, a play tester can show he talked about something repetitively, till they were blue in the face, and the designers ignored him for no reason other than they liked the piece. Then, that individual person should go "on trial" for lack of a better word, and he/she needs to be evaluated. publicly by peers, or in private by some other people. But thats the biggest issue I have. We have bad designs by a person more than once, and they continue to get designing jobs in future sets. Thats the most annoying thing in the world.


All of this can happen without a comity to be made. If you make a comity for this, then we need a comity for that, and a comity for this.

I like this as a line of leadership

Balance Comity - They can fix anything the designers Design

Designers - They actually design

PT Comity - They bring up issues during play testing


Playtesters -They find the Issues

The Forums - Where we ridicule every decision no matter what


I think this is perfect, it just needs to be executed better. No piece should ever be released if there is a question about it. SO this is how I envision this working



1. Play tester finds a problem.

2.Tells someone in the PT comity.

3.The PT comity then tests the problem themselves.

4.A. IF the PT Comity does not think it is a problem, they will then PLAY the play tester who raised the problem, to show them the issue is not there.

4.B. IF the PT comity decides the issue brought up IS something, they then, should report it to the designers.

5. If that discussion is halted in a debate. Then a game should be played, so the designer and the comity person can have physical evidence.

6.If no conclusion can come together, the Balance comity should be informed, and they will view this from a Balance stand point, and a game or two should be played to see what the fuss is about.

All the while, the play tester needs to be brought along who found the problem. Communication between everyone is vital. Documentation on Forums is vital. And "general" Play reports are vital.



This SHOULD NOT be done with every character created in every set. Part 1 should happen often, but it should end at the PT comity. A lot of pieces don't need to be played, just need to be looked at, knowing possible interactions.

Some pieces require 3 days worth of skirmishes.

The one thing I think I disagree with Jen'ari in general, is "thematic" pieces. I agree pieces need to represent the character. And they need to be Unique to that character. But I do think sometimes function over flavor is better. And yes, I do understand you can have both, and be happy with it, but when you have so many pieces available, sometimes you can't be as thematic as you want.

I'm against filibustering a design because it doesn't make you think of Baze Malbus. I could go on for days about pieces WOTC made that are no where near a correct representation of a person. Just check out all the Unique Republic Jedi, lol. They are terrible. I'm looking at a 24 point piece Kiadhi Mundi who has 1 attack, and his only Force Power is Anticipation. Thats about as far as an accurate representation of a character as you can get.


I'm more concerned with the Function of the game, and will always be more concerned with that. I don't want an Obi- Wan with Sith Rage, so don't take this that far. Obviously there are things that are thematic that I would fight against. But function means more to me. Which is why I am Anti-Daala. That could be the most accurate representation of a piece ever in the history of Minis. And I would still fight it, because the function is terrible.

2 cents worth

Sorry to be so late in responding.

My official opinion on the matter: I don't think we need a leadership committee.

I think it might be a good idea to get an official "direction" to pursue, but I don't think an entire committee needs to be formed over it. I think just the general idea of keeping a balance between melee and ranged, and keeping power creep as low as possible, is really all we need for a goal.

It might be a good idea to talk about how to keep the Vehicle fiasco from happening again. I was not aware of how that went down when I first waded into this debate. In that specific instance, I think vehicles are out-of-place in a game based on heroes and infantry, but in general, I don't think we need to be shaking the game up too much, unless it becomes absolutely clear that the meta has stagnated. At very most, appointing a well-seasoned and respected designer to head up each set might be appropriate (I can't really comment much on that without having experienced it myself), but in my humble opinion (dating back to V-set 8), the system has worked so far.

Thanks for starting this discussion! Props to everyone for it being a good one so far!

@corelliancomedian I think your seasoned and will respected designer idea is helpful.



You are in the band wagon of more checks and balances. You want the balance committee to have more power.
I already declared it somewhere that the balance committee is already expanding it's reach. It will soon play the very function we are asking for. It will just take more time if it really it's natural course.


You never have to sacrifice flavor you just have to be able to resolve it out.
Some people reason things out me flexible than others. For instance lightsaber +10. Some day to think of it like using your lightsaber to create a huge opening to shoot them with.
Which is Super flexible thinking.

Ok once again.
What are the goals?
What is the direction?
What is the vision?

Not trying to hot replay here but the fact is that no one knows.

Philosophy is essential. Like a coaching philosophy.
The first thing you do as a coach is look at yourself and determine by what standards, roles, laws, morals, etc you stand for and how they will affect your coaching. What legacy do you want your players to have.
SWM needs the same thing. If you have direction, goals, vision your philosophy will be built into this things.
Most of the time the philosophy behind something is discovered before the goals are written.

So yes I like your idea. It doesn't go as far as I would like to see personally, but it most definitely would help to have a design / play test / who checks the designs discussion.
The balance team is a team that I respect so putting the in charge of checking designs that get to that stage is certainly a welcomed prospect

ya I dont know how much I buy into the concept that this "leadership team" flying arrow is talking about actually does anything worth mentioning during the design process. Either they turn a blind eye or they just don't care to look.

I think Echo is on to a really good idea there.

I would personally make it 2 times and than follow the protocol set out by Richard for play testing so that the balance committee can be called in for hard to deal with design issues that couldnt be solved by the play testers and the designers.
I also like the idea of cohesion as well between sets.
I think that it would be a great idea for 2 or 3 sets of designers to sit down and discuss what they want to do.
For instance, Master Q'anillia it would be super nice if Covenant is also taken care of in set 15 to give us an actual option to play Covenant. that could have been discussed previous to Q'anilia coming out.

I think we are getting some good ideas.

But than again, you get back right into the same problem. Someone puts out a piece, the next set doesn't like it and are bent on soft countering it. Than what? there is still no source of authority on the matter. than the piece that someone else designed gets nerfed and only had one set to be played.
There still needs to be an authority outside the designers that comes in. That committee can be previous designers or whatever, but they need to be able to veto a design.

accountability....

tis the issue shmi15.

how do you magically be accountable? hahaha hasn't happened yet.

that may be the problem.
we need a more varied pool of people