So I've tried to bury it down deep, but I can't help but throw it to the forums. What is a real answer to the absolutely, completely broken Smugglers? (and I don't mean wins 10% of the time deck, or forces them to win at Dial 6 rather than Dial 2, I mean something that actually gives them trouble deck)

I realize that there is no deck that wins 100 percent of the time, but new Smugglers might be as close to it as possible, and unless they have all of their dashes, and freeholders and Lando's as the bottom cards of their deck, they DO NOT LOSE.

I enjoyed the topic that was posted about a week ago about having fun with this game and enjoying the theme of the game, but if you want to play competitively at all, there is really no other deck to play, and that is annoying.

Also with this, is there a fix? I know we haven't seen all of the force packs yet, and scum could make winning more difficult for smugglers, but with all of the black blast damage, and non unique freeholders with a tactics and elite, it is hard to imagine any cards that could balance this game the way it needs to be. So what comes out? Erratta that makes one of the sets a one set per deck set? You can't really make anything unique at this point, or change its icons... This is very open for discussion.

While I don't agree that they are "broken" I have been contemplating this. I do think that Scum is a good answer to Freeholder decks. Use capture effects to get rid of the Freeholders and use Corrupt Officials to stall out their destruction of your objectives.

I don't think any errata is needed for anything. Just need to keep in mind the cards are playtested as a cycle all together but the release is spread across a 6 month time period.

I'm confident that the bigwigs on the circuit will figure out something. We need more of the cycle before we can really start worrying, anyway.

S&S are not broken. That affiliation has some good cards right now. As was mentioned, innovative deck-builders have already found some clever solutions and defenses against currently popular S&S builds.

We haven't even seen another Force Pack and people are whining something fierce. Good players are still doing well at events; this is evidence that there is no crazy broken element at play, leading to essentially random results. I actually enjoy that the last couple of packs have gotten us to do some really creative innovating. It has, in my opinion, been a great thing for the game.

No errata needed. Not broken.

S&S are not broken. That affiliation has some good cards right now. As was mentioned, innovative deck-builders have already found some clever solutions and defenses against currently popular S&S builds.

We haven't even seen another Force Pack and people are whining something fierce. Good players are still doing well at events; this is evidence that there is no crazy broken element at play, leading to essentially random results. I actually enjoy that the last couple of packs have gotten us to do some really creative innovating. It has, in my opinion, been a great thing for the game.

No errata needed. Not broken.

If that is the case, then these "Grossly Overpowered cards," Should have been split up, especially with regionals happening at the time of the release. Smugglers already were the affiliation to play in tournaments for LS, but now they just become more so. They should have given us Freeholders, and then released Dash in June or July Before the late regionals or GenCon. That way maybe more people are playing different things and then come back to playing Smugglers, or maybe not. Now it seems as though there is no hope. (I know there are more force packs coming) I have trouble getting people to play this game as it is at my local store, the fact that they have released such a strong set so quickly together doesn't help my cause, and keeps people from buying anymore force packs.

My Darkside deck from this weekends regional in London.

This deck claimed 2nd place for me.

In the final we went to a true tie both dark side win and then onto a third game.

2 x Death and Despayre

2 x Defense Protocol

2 x Dark Trooper Project

2 x Tattooine Crash

1 x Generals imperative

1 x Corporate Expliotation

1 x Endless Reserves

1 x Trandoshan Terror

This deck did very well for me only losing once in Swiss rounds and in the final on the third game.

It stood up well to the freeholder decks. Minimum dial loss was 9.

I don't think they are broken but they are really strong.

Looking at the regionals I think most of them had a top cut and 6-7 of the players in each top cut were running smugglers mono.

Is that bad? Isn't that the same thing we had with sith control last cycle? These cards punish sith control and I expect cards in the future to punish smuggler hand size manipulation. In the mean time there's a lot of counters in the meta, don't let people get you down when experimenting around these cards.

-A lot of people have brough up endless reserves and corporate exploitation.

-Jabba also works great for hodling the force and letting you dump a card on your opponents turn.

-People scoff at Vader's command & Imperial blockade but it works wonders

-The magic play 4 freeholders first turn is mostly either hyperbole, or bad play by the dark side, it can happen but it's not that frequent.

People can ask for an errata and maybe one will be needed (who knows?). Like everyone else has said the cycle is play tested as a whole, so nothing would change before then. Once the light side and dark side have more options the smugglers meta that is dominating right now will die down like the Sith one before it.

We held a Season 2 tournament last weekend and the "Freeloaders" deck were 9-1. One of our players even played crap objectives with Dash and the Freeloader's pod and still won 3 games.

I did manage to beat the deck with a Sith Control, but honestly I just out played my opponent.

A fast TIE/ Walker deck beats it, small Scum beats it, and a very good draw on a Sith deck beats it.

I would LOVE to be a playtester (or atleast be curious to who/how FFG selects who playtests). Being someone who has playtesting experience in CCGs, I would have caught this undisciplined strategy. I know the Freeloaders have evolved since their initial conception, but still could have been curbed a little.

Is that bad? Isn't that the same thing we had with sith control last cycle? These cards punish sith control and I expect cards in the future to punish smuggler hand size manipulation. In the mean time there's a lot of counters in the meta, don't let people get you down when experimenting around these cards.

I think that is the issue. They continue to make singular answers. They need to find a way to balance the game as a whole. I love the game, but to just keep making one faction the dominate one makes it boring and one dimensional. I hope the next force packs have answers to balance it, because it needs to be a whole game balance, not just a LS/DS balance like they did with smugglers and Sith.

I did manage to beat the deck with a Sith Control, but honestly I just out played my opponent.

A fast TIE/ Walker deck beats it, small Scum beats it, and a very good draw on a Sith deck beats it.

I would LOVE to be a playtester (or atleast be curious to who/how FFG selects who playtests). Being someone who has playtesting experience in CCGs, I would have caught this undisciplined strategy. I know the Freeloaders have evolved since their initial conception, but still could have been curbed a little.

I agree with you. I feel like beating it is too based on luck now. you can still outplay your opponent, but now it is pretty much based on whether or not you draw amazing and they draw poorly.

Bit presumptuous saying you would have caught something and assuming the playtesters did not ? Perhaps you simply haven't seen all of the pieces of the puzzle yet. Remember FFG decides how the packs are split up, not the playtesters.

Game is not unbalanced. Everyone just needs to relax and let the cycle finish up.

The real issue is that these sets got bombed on us in a short timeframe, leaving not enough time to prepare for regionals.

FFG has been quite good about previewing things well in advance of release this cycle. Lots of time to proxy and practice.

Bit presumptuous saying you would have caught something and assuming the playtesters did not ? Perhaps you simply haven't seen all of the pieces of the puzzle yet. Remember FFG decides how the packs are split up, not the playtesters.

Game is not unbalanced. Everyone just needs to relax and let the cycle finish up.

I wasn't saying I think the game is unbalanced. I am not judging the playtesters directly either. I am offering my experience to FFG. I was asking how/ who they are? Why did they pick them?

If this is a card that will eventually in the cycle be fixed by a counter card that is fine, but why have this card released in time to make such a dramatic impact on the tourney scene? I would have suggested this to be in the fourth-fifth expansion pack. And I understand the PT can only suggest that and not actually have any control per say.

Overall, I think this game is probably: 20% draw, 20% luck, 60% skill. Based on the fact that all players have all the cards.

Bit presumptuous saying you would have caught something and assuming the playtesters did not ? Perhaps you simply haven't seen all of the pieces of the puzzle yet. Remember FFG decides how the packs are split up, not the playtesters.

Game is not unbalanced. Everyone just needs to relax and let the cycle finish up.

I wasn't saying I think the game is unbalanced. I am not judging the playtesters directly either. I am offering my experience to FFG. I was asking how/ who they are? Why did they pick them?

If this is a card that will eventually in the cycle be fixed by a counter card that is fine, but why have this card released in time to make such a dramatic impact on the tourney scene? I would have suggested this to be in the fourth-fifth expansion pack. And I understand the PT can only suggest that and not actually have any control per say.

Overall, I think this game is probably: 20% draw, 20% luck, 60% skill. Based on the fact that all players have all the cards.

I agree with you about the release time. They released both sets back-to-back, they should have released them further apart. My issue with this set is it changes from 20%, 20%, 60% to 40%, 10%, 50% when you are the LS and about 50/50 draw and luck as the DS playing against the LS, I mean you have to have some skill, but if they draw poorly you have a chance at winning, if they draw even decent, you lose Dial 6.

Maybe they intentionally released those sets together so that when the new force packs are released you will be ready to build counters to it. It could be they wanted everyone to know that it is a strong build. If it was released later in the cycle we would so have less time to come up with decks that can win against it.

Maybe they intentionally released those sets together so that when the new force packs are released you will be ready to build counters to it. It could be they wanted everyone to know that it is a strong build. If it was released later in the cycle we would so have less time to come up with decks that can win against it.

Not sure if this is sarcasm, but... what?

I think the "whole cycle" arguments are true, but don't necessarily answer the point. "This sucks" is not really adequately answered by "It's going to suck for the next 4 months, but it might get better then".

I honestly don't think the problem is necessarily whether it's beatable, it whether the game provides any variety or depth right now. I played 5 matches at our last regional, and faced a total of 7 different LS pods. It was the same game over and over. Dash, Freeholders, Han, Lando... every single game. Heck, I played it too, except I went with a Jedi splash for the last pod. That turned out to be a mistake.

Beatable or not, the meta for this game has bounced from one single-dimensional aspect to another. Maybe it's a mechanic issue, maybe it's a design issue, maybe it's a testing issue, maybe it's a packaging issue... But whatever it is, it's doing a ton of damage to the reputation of the game.

You have to keep in mind that not all metas are like that. Seems more a US thing. Ours certainly is not that one dimensional.

You have to keep in mind that not all metas are like that. Seems more a US thing. Ours certainly is not that one dimensional.

Variety! Good.

Beatable or not, the meta for this game has bounced from one single-dimensional aspect to another. Maybe it's a mechanic issue, maybe it's a design issue, maybe it's a testing issue, maybe it's a packaging issue... But whatever it is, it's doing a ton of damage to the reputation of the game.

So if this deck is beatable why is everyone running it. I've found free-holders solo smugglers to be a challenge but far from un-beatable, just like Sith control was. If people look outside the tiny scope of DS cards they are used to using there's a lot of fun options to splash that help against these solo smuggler decks immensely. Until the meta (as a whole in the US) starts to adapt these counters people will continue to run smugglers shenanigans.

So if this deck is beatable why is everyone running it. I've found free-holders solo smugglers to be a challenge but far from un-beatable, just like Sith control was. If people look outside the tiny scope of DS cards they are used to using there's a lot of fun options to splash that help against these solo smuggler decks immensely. Until the meta (as a whole in the US) starts to adapt these counters people will continue to run smugglers shenanigans.

"if this deck is beatable why is everyone running it" assumes that the only dominant option would be a truly unbeatable deck. But that's not the case. Smugglers right now are head and shoulders above anything else the light side has to offer. It is beatable, but it's less beatable than anything else out there.

There are two ways of looking at this, that the new smugglers Meta has made the game one dimensional by forcing (in a sense) players to use it, or that it has caused an imbalance of the game. Going to any regional the last thing I would play is the new smugglers set. Why? Because everyone is going to try and beat it. Why not throw sleuths at them when they expect it least, or some other faction and blow them out of the water because they decided to defend against what everyone else was running. The reason it is unbalanced (and really one dimensional at the same time) is that in order to win a game against Meta, you must run the perfect DS deck, but that leaves you wide open to anything else anyone runs. Obviously in a perfect world anything you play could compete against anything they play, but Star Wars has gone another direction. In order to play against what they are maybe playing, you must build a deck perfectly for that build, which pretty much leaves a wide open door for anything else to ruin your day. Perfectly imbalanced. I hope the next packs coming out give the ability to defend and give a chance to win against anything, rather than make you focus on one build.

The reason it is unbalanced (and really one dimensional at the same time) is that in order to win a game against Meta, you must run the perfect DS deck, but that leaves you wide open to anything else anyone runs.

But you can run a deck that hinder's solo smugglers and can still be played competitively against other deck-types. It may not be an "strong win" like sith control but to assume that to beat smugglers you can't beat anything else is a silly idea.

We're reaching or have already reached the point where no one deck will beat every single other deck. Which is the way it should be.

The reason it is unbalanced (and really one dimensional at the same time) is that in order to win a game against Meta, you must run the perfect DS deck, but that leaves you wide open to anything else anyone runs.

But you can run a deck that hinder's solo smugglers and can still be played competitively against other deck-types. It may not be an "strong win" like sith control but to assume that to beat smugglers you can't beat anything else is a silly idea.

I think the biggest issue is Sleuths and Meta... A deck that plays against Meta probably isn't strong against Sleuths and Vice Versa. Smugglers have the two best ways to win, and to build against one, sets you up to lose to the other, unless Scum picks up the pace. I think there are ways to beat it, but overall I think maybe people complained about the LS not being able to win like the DS could. They made cards that have now shifted it to the LS is much stronger IMHO, and really makes you choose between two builds. Sleuths or Meta. Choose your game dominating build.

Again, my hope is that in the next force packs that changes, but I think the game relies too much on people wanting to change rather than the game allowing the change to happen.