Very important to me. Depa without Vaapad Mastery is a huge L. IMO there's always a way to keep function and theme together.

This is what I dislike most. I've played other games, physical and video where you can tell the mechanics were designed and then they threw on a name, whether it fit the gameplay or not, and it just sucks. I agree sometimes it's needed but I think the ugnaught demolionist is the perfect example of this. Override was proving too powerful so they made a 3 point fringe piece that any faction could bring to counter that. To top it off, I believe that somewhere in the GFFA, there's a little ugnaught who's whole job is running around exploding things.

I think theme is very important, but that ultimately function has to take precedence.

I love themed squads, and when that can be supported functionally through all the stuff like rapport, camaraderie, and CEs, I think that's really cool. Even without that, I like when characters are given unique abilities or combinations of abilities that make them really play like the character they represent. I also like when stats are made for characters from a certain point in time, which allows different versions of a character to sort of "cover the bases" of what a character can do, even if not every stat block of that character can do everything. It does kinda annoy me when characters are given random abilities that they shouldn't have.

At the end of the day though, this is a mostly competitive game (I know people see this to varying degrees). There's rounds and points and factions and if you prioritize theme over everything, you end up with a pretty imbalanced game. Sometimes a character really needs to have rival for another character in their faction even though there's no lore reason for it. Sometimes you have to make versions of stormtroopers that can take a hit because otherwise the Imperial faction is just dozens and dozens of different scrubs. Sometimes you really shouldn't give a character with base 20 damage the darksaber ability just because the character used a darksaber.

Thanks for the background, Bryan. I really like this design.

Having played against this Depa, I'm looking forward to building some squads with her! I'm definitely gonna try a fun squad of her and Critdu with a Chag Merc Commander, just to say that I've done it. She can turn Rex into a worthwhile attacker via Synergy +4. I'm also curious to see how she will bit best into a Bad Batch squad. Those are 3 very different squads, and all of them are interesting to me.

While it's objectively true that Obi-Wan was a Soresu Master, not every iteration of Obi-Wan requires Soresu Style Mastery to be thematically correct.

SWM cards are abstractions of fictional characters in a sci-fantasy setting with a finite amount of space.
Objective "truths" or "facts" in Star Wars canon are at times murky at best and sometimes completely retconned.

While she wasn't in Legends, Depa Billaba is considered a Soresu Master in new canon.
The Inquisitor was able to deduce that Kanan trained under Depa Billaba by judging his apparent unique Form III Fighting Style, implying that Depa was a renown Form III specialist.

Disney retconned Depa's Billaba's death scene from what was previously shown in the comic.
In Bad Batch, Depa is shown using Soresu to deflect a barrage of blaster bolts from an entire Clone unit.
Since then she was mentioned by multiple sources as a Master of Form III (Soresu).





It has also been stated in many places as an "objective" fact that Depa stopped using Vaapad after Shatterpoint.


Giving Depa's Bad Batch version Vaapad would have been weird. Giving her Soresu Style Mastery after she was shown deflecting a barrage from her Clones and multiple sources started calling her a Master of Form III . . . seemed legit.

This is what epic character's are for and I, personally, feel that they should be viable options. I would love to play that Vader's Apprentice tbh.

Onto Depa. Yes, there definitely can be iterations where she is not using Vaapad because she tried to stay away from it. If it is showcasing that Depa then Vaapad should not be on her at all. Take it off. If Vaapad is on her, make it mastery.

Also, she is not a Soresu Master. Look, they say all sorts of jedi are masters of this and masters of that, and one of the best swordsmans and bla bla. The facts of who they are show otherwise. You have to do more research and power ranking.

The question is "at what point do you give someone mastery over something?"
Yoda is fantastic at blocking lightsaber bolts and deflecting them, should he get Shien? Should he get Soresu?
Anakin used 2 lightsabers a few times should he get Jar'kai?
etc etc.

When designing you HAVE to keep the history of the character in check. Otherwise we would be giving Obi-Wan Kenobi Jar'kai and Sith Rage for when Adi Gallie died and he fought Savage and Maul.

Designs should NEVER be put in a microscope. The lens has to be broader. This is what Blizzard did when it was in charge (or tried to do). It is why Luke Skywalker, Rebel Commando has levitation but others do not, but the piece is still very much Luke at all times. I don't think he really had use of djem so when he was being the "rebel commando"

I guess I need to clearly define where I put my "zoom" as well as to not add Vaapad onto a piece not using it. I guess the same can be said in times when Vader adopted fighting styles against different opponents as well. However, Lets agree that Depa Billaba was no Soresu Master! and that Han should ALWAYS be a pilot.

So I'm coming into this conversation with my competitive knowledge of SWM stopping in 2010. I've got over 100 custom figures, but (with the exception of two of them) I have every other figure only viewable by friends. I really enjoy game design and usually end up home brewing new content for games that I enjoy playing. I've been making custom Magic: the Gathering cards for over 20 years, I've created two different systems for tabletop role playing games, I've created several modules for existing tabletop role playing games, and practically every board game I own has some kind of custom content for it.

I just love game design and the reason I mention all this is because my vote was for "Important, but can be excused for function". I've learned over the years that being too precise in design can be a bad thing, but being far off the mark is equally bad too. Cramming too much onto a piece to be as accurate to the source material can bog things down, but leaving out signature traits can make it feel soulless.