Official Balance Committee Changes
Please follow this link for a full listing.

Announcements
• Conversations were held concerning; Swarms, Out-Act-Smash, Booming Voice, and Diplomats. The general opinion is that those issues would be better addressed by our design teams, at this time. (NO CHANGE)

• See-Threepio (C-3PO)
Discussion over See-Three-pio started early 2017. The 2016 GenCon championship’s squad featured Threepio.
3PO was present in every Rebel squad played during the 2017 Regional and GenCon season. He’s become an NPE to some and a favorite of others. The balance committed voted upon the idea of changing 3720 to 1 to providing Stealth instead of Cloaked. We did not reach a majority. (NO CHANGE)

• Morrigan Corrde
Suppressive Fire was discussed and it was decided that she requires no change at this time. We will continue to monitor. (NO CHANGE)

Floor Rules Changes
Prideful and Talon's CE both require certain squad building restrictions to be met to activate the benefits. There are mechanisms by which characters can be added/gained that break those conditions. Here is the ruling:
• If squadbuilding restriction are met, you get the bonuses.
• You lose your bonuses if you do something to intentionally add something to your squad that breaks the restriction. (character "replacement" effects can undo this ie Pellaeon)
• This would also include TTTDS, making Rakghouls, bringing in Reserves, etc.
• It would not include losing your Nimbus (so is defeated and no longer has Independent Outfit).
• You temporarily lose your bonuses if an enemy joins your squad (but not caused by you), but you get the bonuses back if they're defeated.

Reserves (Do Not Stack). Players may only benefit from one instance of Reserves per Initiative.
When a player rolls multiple Reserve numbers during an initiative, they may only add characters via one chosen character’s Reserves Special Ability that round. (Unanimous 7/0 Balance Committee Vote)

Reserves premiered in the 2005 3rd expansion, Revenge of the Sith, as WotC was pushing movie scenarios and its RPG game. Ultimate Missions: Revenge of the Sith played heavily on Reserves. Reserves were later sprinkled throughout subsequent sets and were fun but mostly unreliable in tournament play.

V-sets have pushed Reserves beyond WotC standards and they are an NPE for participants of organized competitive play. In 2014 Reserves were cited as one of the biggest problems with Daala and its removal was voted by the community as the most popular errata. The intent for this change is to curtail potential abuse/ NPE of Reserves and to allow designers freedom to create new and exciting Reserve pieces.


Card Errata
Director Orson Krennic
Rival now includes First Order
Rapport 3 instead of Rapport 5.
Second Commander Effect no longer gives Cunning Attack.
Third Commander Effect will now be ignored by Attacks with Lightsabers.

The VSet-14 Design team met concerning missed details in his design thread. The intent wasn't to allow a F.O. squad. The design team revisited the design and agreed upon errata.

Eighth Cortex Shaper
Add Exterminate to the list of SA being given through Specialization.
Specialization (Unique Yuuzhan Vong allies gain Evade, Exterminate, Retaliatory Attack and Willing to Serve. Ignore this ability if an ally counts as having the same name as another ally.)

The Vset-14 Design team missed details in this design. Exterminate was always intended to be given out by its Specialization.

Praetorite Vong Scout
Remove Praetorite Vong Warrior
(Unanimous Balance Committee Decision)

The Father
Add Followers as a requirement to A Family in Balance:
A Family in Balance (Your squad must only contain exactly two other characters of any faction; both must be Medium Followers with Force ratings. An ally who spends Force points only once on a turn may spend this character’s Force points instead of its own. This character is defeated if it activates with no ally with a Damage value greater than 0.)

A Father Squad won the 2017 Canadian Regional and took 3rd in the 2017 World Vassal Regional.
The intent of the designers was to create a fun “thematic” Tier 2 piece. The concern for players and designers with The Father was potential for creating "NPE tank squads" and limiting the future design of melee Force Users.

The Togarian Black Sun Vigo
CE Changed to, “Black Sun Commanders gain Grenades 30 and Grenade Launcher.”

This squad has won major tournaments in the US and NZ. It placed 3rd in 2017 Chicago Regional.
Squads of 25ish Klat BST with Grenades 30 twice with Tarpels or SD with Nom Bomb squads have
had a negative effect on the game. Unfortunately, there was not an easy elegant fix without rewording of the Commander Effect.

Jango Fett, Mandalore
Reduce Solitary +4 to Solitary +2

“Jangolore” is a popular/ hated character among players. He's won a regional and placed in the top spots at GenCon.
In Spring 2017 we began an investigation of “Jangolore.” In the initial design he had Sniper and a "King of the Hill" +2 defense +2 attack ability. The designers decided to test Defensive Stance +4 since they wanted him to give it out via his CE. Several playtesters were pushing for “Jangalore” to be better. Sniper was changed to Accurate Shot after playtester claims he'd be unplayable without it. The potential +10 damage from Resurrector was completely missed or not mentioned. King of the Hill was later changed to Solitary +4 without serious discussion of his getting a 28/32 defense. Many players in 2017 expressed concerns that his "tankiness" was too extreme.

Wait a minute. So all of that and Unkar wasn't even brought up? Like all of the people asking for a ban/outright redo or even a reasonable errata on him just get ignored. And instead we are now adding a third (this time always on effect) nerf to reserves because a handful of people don't like it? The reasoning you are giving is because they took it off Daala? Guys, come on we love and respect each other but Reserves was not and is still not the problem with Daala. That's like saying double attack is to strong and needs to be perma nerfed because GOWK.

Could you please tell those people, they know who they are, to stop using their power to ruin everyone else's enjoyment of the game. There are things I hate to play against and are so outright annoying and broken that I can't understand why they have allowed to progress this far, but reserves has almost never performed well, and when it did it was inconsistent at best. Outright suicidal waste of points at worst. But some people love to play it, to bet your whole squad on a chance and then take that chance to try and tailor your troops and make a win with a smaller force that may be all you get.

So brothers what the heck? Why stop there why not just take it off of every single character in the game and just eliminate it along with whatever other things you don't like as well?

A change to reserves like this would have been a bit much before Unkar, now it's just downright ridiculous. Was multiple Voxxyn Queens an issue, let alone a squad? Was a bunch of Black Sun Rodian Commanders? Or Wat/Dooku? Yoda and Kazdan? Show me the data and the reasoning, because there was a majority in favour of keeping them in the game and fixing Unkar instead.

Those squads I listed about made truly thematic fights every single time, every dice roll tense, the enemy squad storming your gates to eliminate your reserves pieces while they were weaker. Or more clever players controlling gambit and picking off the troops as they slowly amassed. Instead of so many out-activate and smash, super strafe, GMA out and away, auto damage to the extreme, or shut your entire Squad and change the game forever Bastilla.

The only piece that actually needed to be actually looked at and adjusted was Pong Krell, but instead of toning him back with an errata you guys one, two and three punched all reserves out of the game entirely. Might as well just re-release all of the cards without the reserves ability since it's gone now. And the part about "allow designers freedom to create new and exciting Reserve pieces". No one will ever play reserves again ever for any reason in the state of the game you created.

I was waiting and hoping you guys would bring balance back to the game but you've gone and finished destroying it here. It was fun sharing in the official regionals talk, posting, experiences with you guys, and spreading the influence of VSETs up north but I think it's time for us Canadians to start looking at our own rules for our area. Feel free to ignore our future posts/squads.

Dissappointed and let down in the North.

+1. I don't see how Reserves teams are an NPE. Can anyone actually name a squad focusing on Reserves that is actually Tier 1? Clearly they didn't need a nerf. I may be new to the game, but things like this and Unkar (both Junk Boss and Wager) seem like questionable decisions by the designers and balance team. Making fun, not usually Tier 1 builds unplayable for no apparent reason.

GG said it best already, just wanted to spout my support in the fact that a hard counter was premature, that designers made a "mistake" with Pong Krell and than used power overrreach to destroy a playstyle. I am sorry that the "elite" did not fix this. Overall I feel that things have been settling really nicely and the powers at be have been listening. But trust is hard to build and easy to knock over. This knocks it over pretty well.

Not even a mention of Unkarr Plutt (we were told on numerous occasions that he was being looked into) is betraying the trust of everyone really. Especially GG and a play group in the North who were (rightly) disgusted by the hard counter to begin with but were gentlemen and patient about it. They threw their trust that representatives in the powers at be would have their back, but they got no such support.

I would hope that Unkarr was just forgotten in the write up and he was actually fixed. A whole group ignored? sounds familiar.... I really hope that you all reconsider. One person's desire to fix a past mistake (timb) is not more important than a whole play group or community trust.

But seriously, what kind of bone head move would it be to lie to the community? Did you (powers at be) think it would just go away or if you waited a while it would blow over?

infuriating is the correct word for that.

+1, easy solution.

Edit: I’m also very surprised that Unkar didn’t even warrant a line of discussion. This community is tiny now, there’s no reason that these kinds of concerns from one of the biggest and most active playgroups still around is just not addressed. The fact that Reserves actually got further nerfed on top of that is baffling.

GG, please just ban Unkar in your group and continue to contribute and be involved here.



Also, Krennic probably should have just been banned too. Nothing should get 4 erratas at the same time.

Lobot is an NPE in the same way reserves is. You receive 20 points of hand picked pieces after you see your opponents squad that then allows you to hard counter any of their tricks and gimmicks. Reserves does the same thing, except there is an amount of randomness to it. Some players enjoy this and some players can't stand it. It more depends on where you fall on the whole Timmy Jonny Spike spectrum than much else I think.

A reserves squad completely trounced the squad I ended up winning Gencon with, when we played the second game at the Ohio Regional. Wasn't even close, and I went undefeated with that squad at Gencon last year. The first round I barely edged him out, but only because he didn't roll reserves the first 2 rounds and failed to roll reserves 1 of the other rounds. In 6 rounds he rolled 3 reserves, but only 1 of them came in the first 3 rounds. That squad was definitely tier 1, when you even had a low ball amount of luck.

I will post more on Unkar and BC later today.

Awesome, you have 1 example, of 1 squad beating you. And you didn't enjoy it so... Its banned? I can go on about all the squads I find to be NPE's also, and we can just start banning all of them so we can all have the same experience.

Or is your experience more meaningful than someone else's?


And I agree 100% about Lobot. I hate Lobot, and think he is the biggest crutch piece anyone can play with, because he is available to all factions. And Lobot is bad because there are so many SPECIFIC options, under 20 points, that have been designed to counter certain play styles. Which is just crutch designing for bad players IMO.

I can only respond one way...

blasted. Should never have used Blast Bugs against you!!!!!

Then why wasn't this done? I don't want to be picking and choosing rules because at that point I may as well play a different game if we have to go through each set and say this rule is dumb we aren't using it and this character is broken. It kind of kills the competive theme and air of legitimacy when we are forced to correct game imbalances like this.

And to Frenchy, but you could say the same for any dice-based ability. Disintegration for example, is that an NPE? It's normally worthless but in one of our tournaments semi-finals a brand new player using Boba dropped one of our most experienced player's Bane second round of the game. Experienced player was pissed and for sure it was an NPE for him but is that enough of a validation to eliminate it? You could make the same case for anything that triggers on crits, or vapaad, or initiative-based abilities. But if you want to eliminate luck entirely than your left with direct damage GMA, and you might as well be playing chess then.