http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4834

Check out the article about it above.

I think they should have not restricted those objectives. Yes they are powerful and get really broken when you draw the right cards, however; there are ways to stop this from happening. Plus the number of cards out is too small to start restricting objective sets.

After playing in the regional this weekend, I hate to say it, but I agree with this decision. I wasn't willing to push too hard in one direction or another, because I think the game is young and I trust the developers. However, at this point in the game, even if there are decks that can do well against this deck, I think having a deck that is just so obviously better than any other light side option is extremely bad for the health of the game.

The real problem is that this deck closes down the option pool. By being far and away the most consistent and powerful light side deck, it makes running anything else tough. This means both light and dark side decks get absurdly similar. The nice thing about a restricted list is that if in a year this becomes a lot less potent because of the options the other affiliations have, they can easily unrestrict these cards.

After coming away on Saturday from the regional, instead of looking forward to the next one I was dreading having to go through another day of smugglers in every single game (both me and my opponent). At the end of the day, this combo turned the game into something dramatically different than it was before and as it stands, I support this decision.

Super excited to see what happens to decks for the next round of regionals!

Wow! This was fast, but I can only imagine that FFG saw the consistent complaints and groans from everyone who went to tournaments. I think is is a good choice, I would have even accepted one of each, but this also helps. The direction of the game "to indirectly quote from Zach" was so changed that is just became boring and too frustrating to even think about. Regionals are really going to be shook up now.

I think the "death" of these two sets came because they were released 1. too close to each other. I mean I know that they play off of each other, but had they released them as book ends to the cycle I think people would have been happier with it, and 2. Maybe premature in the life of the game. The game was still pretty young, and did have a lot of cards just yet, and to drop something like that really creates a best way scenario in which you focus only on this deck because it wins the easiest.

I am a bit disappointed about the design process. That is not an absurde combo of objective sets that somehow lead to a killer deck.

Too soon. Bad decision.

After this last weekend at Regional's I whole heartily agree with Fantasy flight on this. This is the best option currently to fix the broken state of tournament play. As Zach stated he, myself, along with most every other player were playing this deck as it was too strong not to, and if you did not play it, you would be playing with an artificial handicap compared to the other players. I did not loose a single lightside game and made Top 8 out of 32 players. All but one deck out of 7 matches was the same lightside game. This also piginholed the darkside deck to very few option if you wanted to be successful in having a chance at winning the match much less darkside games.

I agree. it is better to have more diverse deck types than avoid some restriction just because the game is so young... Even young game can become very boring if there is "only one way of winning". Those pods are good even they are restricted. Only the really powerful combo is somewhat diluted.

Hopefully they revisit this decision once the whole cycle is out. The playtesters must have thought it was fine in that context, or else they were totally asleep at the wheel and a serious reevalution of the process is in order. It's not like the game has been running for five years and the combo comes from combining something new with an old set from the first year nobody uses, it's all part of the same set of cards that were tested together.

I was holding to the belief that in testing with the whole cycle, it was more balanced and the developers had a plan. Now we can see they underestimated the combo. It's a little disheartening that such a crazy combo got past the testers, but I still appreciate they've admitted to their lack of vision, and have done something to correct it.

Let's hope this restricted list stays a short list.

May the 'edge' be with you

You don't know that's true. Remember playtesters test the whole cycle together not in packs. Perhaps these sets should have been released in 1 and 6 instead of 2 and 3.

I don't like knee jerk reactions like this so soon into the life of these cards. Also, a restricted list like this is a really inelegant solution moving forward. If they ever wanted to restrict another light side combo by adding 2 more sets to the restricted list it would also restrict the running either of those hypothetical sets with either of these. Eventually, that could represent significant collateral damage. This is a "solution" that really only works well with a single combo.

Not necessarily. It could be maintained as a list of restricted *combinations*. So, say pods A and B form one abusive combo, and C and D form another. Each combo gets restricted as a unit. So, you can't run A and B together, nor C and D, but you're free to run A and C.

Not necessarily. It could be maintained as a list of restricted *combinations*. So, say pods A and B form one abusive combo, and C and D form another. Each combo gets restricted as a unit. So, you can't run A and B together, nor C and D, but you're free to run A and C.

That is of course a solution, but that's not how the FAQ rules are currently written, which is that there is a single restricted list which you pick one set from. Sure they can change the rule in the future, but that's just evidence that the initial solution has issues.

You don't know that's true. Remember playtesters test the whole cycle together not in packs. Perhaps these sets should have been released in 1 and 6 instead of 2 and 3.

You keep clinging to this, but I don't see how it isn't blown out of the water by the actual fix. If everything was going to be better next week, or even in two months, I have a hard time seeing them choosing to create the restriction. Are they going to undo it in two months when the big fix arrives?

What's more, if they saw the combo, and fully appreciated what it could do, and had a fix, releasing them in this order makes no sense at all. You're basically arguing that everyone saw that this would be a massively game-breaking combo for 3-5 months until the fix arrives, and said "Yeah, that looks good!"

We may not know where the screwup happened, but I think it's pretty obvious at this point that a screwup happened. "They intentionally broke the game but only for three months" was only viable until they saw the need to fix it.

I agree with dbmeboy. It's very much a knee jerk reaction

Restricted list is a very inelegant tool

TheGas that seems a reasonable idea for it something like this remains around. Personally I hope it goes away sooner rather than later.

For now I am satisfied with this change, and am certainly glad that combo has been removed. It was a good decision to eliminate this problem before the remainder of the regionals. I don't want to end up with a huge restricted list like AGoT either, but if that game sets any precedent for SW, things may be removed from the list after an appropriate errata is made.

Problem with AGoTs list is that not all of the cards or even the majority are there due to "brokenness" but to encourage diversity. I don't want to see that ever happen here. At least with this one while I don't agree with it I can at least understand the reasoning better.

After thinking about it a bit, I've got a few more reservations than I did originally, but I definitely think that something needed to be done, at least as a stopgap measure for now. I know I'm mostly a casual player, but I've had my fair share of very, very unfun games (of Magic, for instance) where people use decks that autopilot themselves like this one did. Not an experience I would wish upon (most of ) my enemies.

restricted lists aren't permanent. We could get this combination back one day, but after losing (and winning) on turn 2 at last regional due to explosive draws despite good DS turns I rather hope not.

Notice how everyone (or at least nearly everyone) who played in a regional with those two sets supports the change? I did and I support the change. The combination of high-level players and a deck that's clearly better than all others is just not good. A restricted list is an excellent solution. When answers and alternatives arrive they can remove them from the list.

To those saying this was too soon, I wonder if you have played in a regional thus far. I played in a 30+ person regional already. The field was over 25 smugglers with the two restricted objectives. The other light sides were either sleuth scouts or random jedi/rebel decks that didn't get near top 8. This is horrible for the environment when all the players realize and know you have to all run pretty much the same decks to win. So this is far from a knee jerk reaction, ignoring regional results so far where this seems to be happening at all of them would be turning a blind eye to a problem. I have no doubt they will revisit this later but right now this combo is a problem and it is obvious.

To those saying the restricted list is inelegant, I can say this is a very good way to restrict cards and has worked wonders for Agot even allowing them to shape the meta when the card pool gets huge. In the end this is much better than banning cards, and is better than reducing them to 1 per deck which would just make it a strong but random combo. Yes down the line you can run into things such as wanting to run two restricted objective sets that aren't broken together, but its a small price to pay to have every card playable. Also I have no doubt this will be revisited later if it turns out to not be as big a deal down the line, however it has been obvious that in the meantime we needed these objective sets restricted.

The frustrating thing to me is that sometimes people in the card-gaming community can't step back and see the pattern...

So, now everyone will just play whatever the new "best deck" is, and the community will start complaining about that...

All that this move does is force the community to deck build for about 3 days...things will settle and we will again have a small group of dominant LS and DS decks.

*edit:

And it begins; people are already whining in the online community that now Sith are too good again...

I must confess that I am not optimistic that these cards will ever be removed from the restricted list. If something comes up later that can completely nullify "Holding all the Freeholders," and they are allowed back into tournaments, wouldn't we just see those two decks? This archetype will always have explosive potential that is just too good to pass up and even if other cards bring it down, it still outplays many of the other decks available now.

Granted ... I haven't exactly ... you know ... played with or against this deck so I may not have everything straight.

Still, restricted lists bug me. I'm the kind of guy who plays by tournament rules even in "casual" play, so if they start restricting things left and right, I'm going to be very irritated. I was hoping we'd be well into the third or fourth cycle before anything like this happened if it were to happen at all.

All that this move does is force the community to deck build for about 3 days...things will settle and we will again have a small group of dominant LS and DS decks.

The problem is that we didn't have a small number of dominant LS decks - there was basically one. I played 5 matches at the regional. I faced a total of 7 different LS pods. Every single deck ran Dash/Freeholders/Han/Lando. The last was one of the Falcon, Chewie, or Sleuths, depending on flavor and preference.

Settling down to a small group of dominant LS decks will be an improvement.

I did play at the Fremont regional and got top 16 with a bye from the store championship and was not running the dash/freeholders combo. I played one person who had that combo deck and it did not work for him. What I imagine the situation was before the cards where released was that the playtester's did recognize the problem and was like holding all the cards and freeholders are really strong and that this should be looked out. But however FFG ignored that advice and was like it this is the answer to all those dark side sith control. Since now Smugglers has a nice punch and can destory objectives out right. Now FFG is like well we should have changed it or listened to the playtesters and well we can't change it now or do reprints the cards. We have to unfortunately have to create a restricted list. Hopefully through the playtesting FFG be more likely to consider the advice the playtesters give and do in house testing to determine that something is broken or too powerful that it should be changed before production. I hope that in the future this does not happen again and maybe one day these restricted cards can now be playable in a tournament setting.