So at New England qualifiers I saw 16/21 players using a Dash/Freeholders combo with the Falcon. Some added in the Blockade Runner/Sleuths others the Han/Lando pods but it was deja vu all day. And really frustrating to see a game with this many cards limited to 2 variation decks.

As a first tournament experience that was a downer. Everyone was nice and all but I'm hoping this gets fixed STAT.

Until it does though, what's a good dark side counter? Palpatine/Weequay/Jabba/Mara capturing and Tactics icons up the wazoo? Has anyone found a good way to shut this down? I lost all 3 matches to these jokers on their second turn (one guy got an absurd opening hand of 3 Freeholders, One Falcon and two of the drawing 2 cards each event which I assume is just a one in a thousand NPE and not something I can do anything about, he was nice enough to even feel bad for me afterwards)

It's a good deck that you're not going to beat every time, especially when played well, but there are some options out there. I've had some luck with a Scum/Navy weenies deck against it. Lots of people seem to be turning to pure Scum (utilizing the Corrupt Officials to shut down huge Dash strikes). I know Jarrett (winner of the IL regional this weekend) ran a Navy deck (with Executor and Vader's TIE splashed in) that did really well. I'm actually enjoying having so many different Dark Side decks in the meta instead of playing against Sith Control every game. Eventually, a DS deck will arise that truly scares the Dash/Freeholders deck and then the meta will open up even more.

Yeah that was the other thing. First 3 DS decks I played against were Sith Control and 80% the same. I'm told people bring more variety to non-regional qualifiers and regular play and I hope so.

I won the Plainfield regional yesterday with a Tie Fighter / Star Destroyer deck. We had 27 players and I had to play my twin brother in the finals.

What kind of Navy decks were being run that makes you say Jedi would have done well ?

Navy aggressive decks - ranging from TIEs to Star Destroyers, to Hoth builds. Luke Skywalker is a beast at pushing out damage, controlling the board, and blocking since he readies on the opponent's turn (and Trust Your Feelings is good for pushing even more damage). Add in a Han Solo, Chewie, and/or a Falcon in the mix and you're money against Navy. Against Scum, you may have a harder time since they could prevent a lot of your little damage you do each turn (and I thought more people would be playing Scum, hence why I avoided Jedi this weekend).

The metagame is actually pretty fresh, despite people complaining about Freeholders. I feel like with Freeholders being in the environment, it actually opens up the game more as dark side isn't just playing Sith Control - they are fishing for answers to freeholders. It makes it a big collective Rock/Paper/Scissors game and whoever anticipates the metagame better for both sides is going to have better success. To me, this is a balanced game. If you curb Freeholders too much, Sith Control is going to rule again, and that to me is boring (especially if you change Freeholders to an unplayable set - every other deck in this metagame is susceptible to Force Storm and it will be in 100% of the Dark Side decks if that happens).

Balanced in your area. I fought ALL freeholders and Sith Control in 4 out of 5 matches.

Balanced in your area. I fought ALL freeholders and Sith Control in 4 out of 5 matches.

Is it three or four, as indicated in an earlier post?

There are enough people at other events having success against the trends in the metagame including the one you played in, where Jedi won, I believe. The problem is Smugglers are good and so is Sith, so a lot of players just play what they know are good decks and call it a day. This isn't the first SWLCG tournament I've won or done well at, and I know it's just another case of a seemingly powerful deck that 'has no answers against it' and people are thinking it's broken. I personally like to analyze a metagame and break it down. I thought a lot of players would be playing Sith, so I played Freeholders (which is it's best matchup). For Light side, I thought a lot of people were going to play Freeholders, so I played Tie-Fighter / Star Destroyer deck that could race them. To further prove my point, my loss in swiss with the LS deck was because of a navy aggro deck. If more people would run those, they wouldn't lose to Freeholders as often. Other players like TGO had success against Freeholders by playing a Navy aggro deck with Palpatine to give it a little control. Others played Scum (mono or with Sith) and had success.

First 3 and last were Sith Control. Was 5 Rounds of Swiss. 3 were Freeholders/Mains, one was Jedi and one was Freeholders/Unblockables. The other deck was a Capture deck that worked well against an unblockable vehicle which shocked me as that doesn't seem like an ideal matchup

And hey it's possible there was a lot more variety and I just never saw it. That's good, means games will be more interesting. Could have been a bad luck of the draw

At the Plainfield regional, I played against 5 Freeholder decks, 2 Rebel Aggro and a Rebel/Smuggler combo. As the LS, I played against 5 Navy Aggro (all different variations), 1 Scum, 1 Sith/Scum and and 1 Sith. It was actually pretty diverse. I agree with Jarett, a Jedi deck could probably have taken that event pretty well.

So at New England qualifiers I saw 16/21 players using a Dash/Freeholders combo with the Falcon. Some added in the Blockade Runner/Sleuths others the Han/Lando pods but it was deja vu all day. And really frustrating to see a game with this many cards limited to 2 variation decks.

As a first tournament experience that was a downer. Everyone was nice and all but I'm hoping this gets fixed STAT.

Until it does though, what's a good dark side counter? Palpatine/Weequay/Jabba/Mara capturing and Tactics icons up the wazoo? Has anyone found a good way to shut this down? I lost all 3 matches to these jokers on their second turn (one guy got an absurd opening hand of 3 Freeholders, One Falcon and two of the drawing 2 cards each event which I assume is just a one in a thousand NPE and not something I can do anything about, he was nice enough to even feel bad for me afterwards)

I was at this event (and I think Intalked to you a couple times before and during the tourney, to boot) and had some success with my big navy aggression deck. In 4 games (I got stuck with a bye because of avoiding previous match ups and a poor meta-gambit with my LS deck) I faced only 2 freeholders opponents and grabbed a big win and a loss with the dial at 10. I did not see a single freeholder on the table and even saw them being discarded because my opponents knew they were never going to get them for low cost. I ran:

2x Death & Despayre

1x Repair & Refurbish

1x Deploy the Fleet

2x Unstoppable Advance

2x Kuat reinforcements

1x Dark Time for the Rebellion

1x imperial Blockade

1x Endless Reserves

Worked pretty well, overall. In addition to the above, won against dashholder-less sleuths and got brutally shutdown by a Heroes & Legends Luke when it got off to a slow start. Sleuths are actually what did me in against the freeholder deck I lost to. If I had been more conventional in LS deck (I tried a crazy Rebel character deck with Crix Madine, Hoodie-Han & Jan Ors that worked poorly whenever I did not get good objectives and initial draw-which is too often to be truly competitive) choice I might have had a shot at snagging a top eight position.

I was surprised at how much Sith Control I saw there (I mean, with a LS deck like mine I had to be expecting less). It did sound like freeholders had a ton of success against them, though. If that is so I imagine many of those players will stray and try out other counters. I do worry, a little, that what JCMB is arguing is true. Not because it will foster diversity - that is good. But, that it will actually be a rock-paper-scissors of extreme deck types. That would be a false diversity and very dull to me. If I want to know if my opponent has me beat just from list construction within the first five minutes I would not have quit Warhammer 40K all those years ago. However, I remain hopeful that the objective set and mixed affiliation mechanics will allow enough mixing of extremes to allow strong hybrids to be found and played at high levels. Neither Control nor Sith will ever go away but we can hope new versions of both can emerge (and the same is true for strong LS styles, too)

Even if the metagame is a rock-paper-scissors type deal, you can still pull off wins by outplaying your opponent and/or card draws.

A properly balanced game is one where certain decks have better matchups against other decks. If every deck was 50/50 against everything, the game would not actually be any fun as there would be a lack of interest. Instead, with some matchups going 60/40, or even 80/20, you're more interested in finding solutions to decks or cards, or tweaking the decks that have the 20% win ratio to nearing 50%.

And hey it's possible there was a lot more variety and I just never saw it. That's good, means games will be more interesting. Could have been a bad luck of the draw

I was also there (and was one of the rules arbitrators, although I don't think I played you, and am not sure if we met). Like you, I didn't see much diversity, although I think it was great that Jedi managed to pull off the win. I know I got shut down by a first turn repeating Kyle with Heroes and Legends. I had been hoping to see more diversity in the DS, but I think every opponent I faced was Sith, which is how it's been for a long time in this game. Before the new Smuggler craze, Sith was the archetype to beat, and that was a rather difficult task.

I do feel rather dirty for running Smugglers, although I have to say it performed well for me. I used a Sleuth variant, and oddly enough, most of my wins with it came from seeing lots of Sleuths and no Freeholders. It is very draw dependent, though, as I got lucky one game and won with the dial at 1, and then got eliminated in the top 8 by an early Vader, and not destroying any objectives.

For what it's worth, I was running Navy as my dark deck, and it worked pretty well for me. Racing against the yellow cards isn't that hard, although a defensive playing freeholder can be trouble. And if all my units are expensive cards, I typically don't have too much of a board presence and thus the False Report doesn't hurt as much. Although I think I saw one flip up only once all day. For those interested, my dark deck is below:

I Like Big Boats

Imperial Navy Affiliation

Death and Despayre x2

Deploy the Fleet x2

Kuat Reinforcements x2

Victory or Death x2

Repair and Refurbish

Imperial Blockade

As to the more general question of what to do about the yellow cards, I think that's partially what people are still trying to figure out. When they get their god draw, there is very little you can do, but then, that's kind of similar for a lot of other deck types. Unfortunately I think that the Smuggles hit their draws more often, if for no other reason that they're seeing more of their cards. Aggro worked for me, but the standard Sith control worked for the eventual regional winner, who until our round five game in swiss hadn't lost a game with it. Scum is actually pretty good against them with the damage mitigation of the Corrupt Officials, and when IG-88 comes out, they'll have several new ways of not only controlling the board, but closing out games with blast damage. Personally, I'm betting that with the next force pack we'll be seeing more Jedi, and thus less Smugglers.

And it's true to some extent that at smaller tournaments you are likely to see a more diverse deck pool. I know I typically try to stay away from the "big popular" of the moment.

At any rate, I'm sorry you didn't have as good an experience as you were hoping for. Hopefully that doesn't dissuade you from coming out to other events in the area, or possibly making it down for a game night now and again.

Nah I would keep coming and try and do casual play. I am going with a Navy swarm and really trying to find a good combo with Crix/Jan plus my 2 friends who came had a blast (one of em really needs experience players help though, he went 0-8 (bye) and never got his Dial up past 6 and never saw turn 5 as Light Side and destroyed only 2 objectives all day. I am nowhere near good enough to offer anything but very obvious advice

We intend to do regular tournaments. Really why the heck should I complain? First even I went 5-5 which isn't bad at all.

I just complain too much. Explains why I played 3PO in my college's radio adapation

For what it's worth, I was running Navy as my dark deck, and it worked pretty well for me. Racing against the yellow cards isn't that hard, although a defensive playing freeholder can be trouble. And if all my units are expensive cards, I typically don't have too much of a board presence and thus the False Report doesn't hurt as much. Although I think I saw one flip up only once all day. For those interested, my dark deck is below:

I Like Big Boats

Imperial Navy Affiliation

Death and Despayre x2

Deploy the Fleet x2

Kuat Reinforcements x2

Victory or Death x2

Repair and Refurbish

Imperial Blockade

I ran almost the same list. I think I swapped out one Victory or death for a Motti.

In testing Jedi really hasn't been too much trouble, especially if you allow Thunderflare or some Victory class star destroyers to hang back and defend. You end up with 3-4 tactics officers on the board and you are sitting pretty happy. Luke got shut down by Echoes of the force a lot. The big problem I had was a first turn Han sniping all my officer resources. If I did happen to chain Motti, and two officers and Han came to play I'd end up really hurting for resources in later turns.

Here's a question related I don't know - WHY are the Aquaris Freeholders in this game at all, let alone so strong? Best I can tell they are a very obscure 90's RPG reference. Was one of the game designers involved with that or something?

Couldn't the same be said about sleuth scouts?

Their wookieepedia entries are both lacking.:-p

I always chuckle a little when I see people bring up a paper/rock/scissor scenario explanation of any game, because it often happens that those same people have an opinion about when there is one deck that is particularly dominant as well. I believe that many do not understand that these are opposite sides of the game coin and just like a coin it is easier to sit on its large sides vice its thin side. There are just few moments when a game balances on it.

I personally do not have an issue at all with powerful cards like Falcon because they are unique and they are limited in quantity. The issue with both Freeholders and Holding All the Cards is that they can appear in double the frequency and there is no limit on the number that can see play at once or in one turn. This completely changes their power level.

I would be interested in hearing if there is anyone who won games at their regionals after two Freeholders hit the table in the same turn. I can say from my experience this weekend that I did not. I could handle one a turn and in one game two on the table, but if two or more came down at once they are nearly unstoppable.

This is possibly why the Sandcrawler has been popular (as well as other obvious types of cards in Tat Crash that 'combat' Freeholders). I just say keep playing. There have been people who have been winning consistently against them, but there are just scenarios that can't be overcome. This should not be a surprise to anyone, there were situations last year which were similarly dire (think Sith Control pre-Edge).

I personally do not have an issue at all with powerful cards like Falcon because they are unique and they are limited in quantity. The issue with both Freeholders and Holding All the Cards is that they can appear in double the frequency and there is no limit on the number that can see play at once or in one turn. This completely changes their power level.

I agree. Aquaris Freeholders are one of the most powerful Light Side units, but the combination of their ability with Holding All the Cards' effect and the fact that both are non-Unique cards that come in multiples per set in multiple sets is what is really problematic. The combination is very powerful, yes, but the reliability with which that combination can be performed is a large part of the problem.

In addition, Objective Sets in Force Packs are becoming more and more focused on specific mechanics. This is not unique to Smugglers and Spies or the Echoes of the Force cycle, but is especially prominent in the first two Force Packs (and in the third Force Pack, for those Affiliations with only one set currently released).

Sith: Scouring the Empire + Agent of the Emperor (commitment to the Force, Refresh units)

Navy: Dark Trooper Project + Victory or Death (commitment to the Force, Blast Damage)

Scum: The Findsman's Intuition + The Slave Trade (capturing from the Command Deck, control of the Force)

Jedi: Heroes and Legends + The Flight of the Crow (unique units, winning the Edge battle)

Rebel: Forward Reconnaissance + Commando Operations (the Edge battle, units entering/leaving play)

Smugglers: The False Report + Against All Odds (enemy cards in hand, Blast Damage)

Most of these are strong combinations because of the extreme level of synergy both within and between pods. Of those currently released, the Rebel combination is the weakest (noticeably, it has the least synergy between pods and Commando Operations, while strong, is also self-countering) while the Jedi combination is incomplete.

I would be interested in hearing if there is anyone who won games at their regionals after two Freeholders hit the table in the same turn. I can say from my experience this weekend that I did not. I could handle one a turn and in one game two on the table, but if two or more came down at once they are nearly unstoppable.

Agreed. I fielded Sity/Navy Troopers , and a lone Dash (even turn one!) or Freeholders was manageable, but whenever my opponent could play Freeholders at a noticeable discount they could follow up with a scond Freeholders, Han Solo, the Millennium Falcon , or Wookiees , and even strong field presence and high unit damage wasn't enough to stop them. Unfortunately, I never saw a Freeholders played for more than 3 cost.

You don't have to worry about this combo now.