Not asking any specifics, but I was just curious what people are planning on running faction wise this year. And what groups are you guys expecting to be OP (Over played) This will be my first Gen Con experience so I'm pretty pumped about it and just wanna know kinda what to expect.

Yeah I know its far away, but with no new sets coming out before then, I figured people may have some idea of what they like and what people they play against run.

The most popular stuff at GenCon will be what does well at Regionals or things that can beat what does well at Regionals, so at this point most speculation should be about Regionals.

As far as that goes, I expect Seps to be quite popular, specifically either Lancer squads or IG-86 swarms. Rebels have been a favorite for a while and are still pretty strong, but DotF did actually make them a much less safe choice. Skybuck is still a strong choice and I'd expect them to be there, and pretty much the same NR builds as last year will be seen this year (and will still do fairly well).

So pretty much everything that's been good in the past is still good now. However, I think there will be at least a handful of strong Mando squads with Jaster, probably with a combination of Scouts and Gunsmiths. Vong will have a little more representation than usual but I don't really see them making a splash at the top tables (although there's a chance they will surprise me). OR has a good chance to sneak one or two squads into the top 16, as does Sith.

After writing that I realize how incredibly un-helpful it is, because I pretty much said "It will be the same as last year, but maaaaybe not". I don't think the meta has shifted a whole lot, because before DotF is was:

Rebels

Republic
Imperial
NR
Separatists



Mandos
Sith
OR
Vong


And now it's:

Rebels
Republic
Imperial
NR
Separatists
Mandos
OR
Sith
Vong


See those gaps there? And how they aren't there anymore? That's what DotF did. It didn't really shuffle anything around (although I do think that OR overtook Sith), but it got rid of that big gap, making the bottom 4 a slightly more likely sight.


We will see what Regionals holds though in the next couple of weeks, because like I said, that will be the real identifier for what will be seen at GenCon.

I'm waiting to be impressed.

And I'll just remind you that 1 of those 3 repeaters, ran an entirely new squad, on an entirely new map, he'd never played on before in both instances. While the other two simply ran the same squads from Regionals and Gencon of last year 2x :).

But yes, I think generally, that's a great point to make. Now that the lesser factions no longer have the huge gap that Echo pointed out, a good player playing the lesser factions can compete just fine even against the top tier played by a top tier player.

Oh and my Sep squad from Michigan included 4 DotF characters, the Mando squad from K-town included 4 as well, although which 4 did vary because I was using Jaster for reinforcements.

And R&R will add more options to the "lesser" factions (when do we stop calling them that?) which will continue to close that gap. I know a couple of Mando pieces I would have loved to have had in my reinforcement box :)

Most importantly for my squad would have been this one.
54. Mandalorian Sniper :)

This was a great event. I played the only Vong squad there and ended up going 2-3 there.

I totally agree with urbanjedi's statement above that this is still about skill and not entirely up to the faction of your squad.

I only run Yuuzhan Vong in big events.

Generally, you will do better with a squad you are more familiar with. You can copy a squad, but you will still need to play it to get a feel for it.

Some good discussion about this on the SHNN last night (I got on right at the tail end but just finished listening to the recording). I'll say that my choices of OR being 3 from the bottom faction and Vong being the lowest probably has a lot to do with our local meta here in Atlanta; OR has actually gotten a fair amount of play lately (and done well) while Vong are still getting beat up pretty badly when they are played. Bill mentioned why Vong are still weak and why I think they are the weakest: they are still more or less a melée faction. Sure you can play fringe shooters, but with no support those shooters will usually be better in another faction. Another issue is that since Seps are being played so much lately, Vong have a lot of trouble against these droid squads. To me it feels like with Vong you either play Nom Bombs and get rolled by Disruptive/It's a Trap!, or you play almost anything else and get rolled by Lancers or other high movement squads. Without good movement breakers OR good shooting support, it's just too hard to catch up with squads that have either or both.