I recall losing a game because of a Diplomat Wall. I was playing Skybuck and my opponent was playing Thrawn-swap (Cad/Arica)...normally that matchup is heavily in Yoda's favor. However, in this match Yobuck couldn't reach a single thing, while Cad obliterated my guys from safety. So yeah, 4 little Diplomats (Lobot's reinforcements) won that game for my opponent.

Also, I'm a guy who often plays melee squads--either melee-only or melee-centric.

Having said that, I think Diplomats are fine as they are. Many squads have ways to get over the wall (acrobatic, leap, flight) or just delete it (area damage, indiscriminate, etc). Additionally, it is quite difficult to keep Diplomats alive for long when they're being used in a blocking role. Yes, they can block a 1-square-wide passage or doorway...but then they're often susceptible to being sniped (even by a low-powered scrub shooter).

I think we recently addressed the way that some other characters (ghosts, etc) interact with the Diplomat SA, and that's probably enough.

An old 'strategy droid" whirrs in the scrapyard...
overhearing the conversation of people in the junkshop,
the old clone wars era relic comes to life.
It might be just a spontaneous emission from an over-built vocabulator,
but, perhaps some may find it of use.

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First, Congratulations on your win.
Thankyou for the earnestness on this and several "negative play experiences".
Diplomat is quite an asymmetric win factor to games, much as "Override" was in the original pre-VSet Era.
Door Gimmick Squads etc... where, people could just Gambit Camp and TKO, that kinda thing...
(If that is reminiscent of prior threads on the subject of Diplomat etc,
that's because that's a stance I've taken toward Diplomat for some time)


Upon reflection of the Wayback Machine/ Web Archival...
I'd have to agree with that prerogative

If only Diplomat were like a "call of juarez" 'duel" / 'like a mental battle between Diplomat",
so as, it functioned more like Sniper, it made the piece with Diplomat have to attack the other piece with Diplomat if it could...
something more like Mercenary or Sniper, and less of a "Temporary Wall that Blocks Line Of Site like Door Gimmick Squads".
Which only weighted targetting priority or like Force Alter, was a way to make attacks less likely to succeed
(thereby forcing you to use more ranged attacks at Diplomat or close to melee etc).

I am also reminded of prior discussions with Surf_Rider56 etc,
about what SWMinis is, and may not be,
about the difference between the Star Wars Role Playing Game and other boardgame rules frameworks
and the 'simplicity" of SWMinis...

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Yeah, that does go a long way to preventing the "Door Override Gimmick" levels of
asymmetric mismatch for the avg squad composition at tournament etc.

While it's not possible to counter all possible combinatorics of squads you might face at a tournament,
it's a disproportionate P(Win) vs P(Wildcard Mismatch) probabilities of win/loss at squad mismatch like that,
much like certain Glass Cannon squads which performed better than they should have
against Activation Control / Out-Activation Opportunist Squads.