Hi everybody,

The CCL Season 1 tournament is over! Congrats to Kdubb, who won with an undefeated record.

I plan to run a second CCL season early next year. But for now, it’s time to look back at the first season with a critical eye. What worked? What didn’t? How can we make the CCL season 2 better than season 1?

There are a few topics I think we definitely should cover:

1. Should all cards/ships from season one carry over into season 2?

2. What cards should we update, and why?

3. How many cards/ships should we aim to make in season 2?

4. Should we change the way submissions work?

5. Should we change the way voting works?

6. How can we streamline discussion and improve league organization?

Chime in with your thoughts about these topics and anything else you think is relevant below.

Here’s what I’m thinking:

1. Should all cards/ships from season one carry over into season 2? : We shouldn’t carry all cards over into season 2. Related to my new ideas about submission, I think we should eliminate any card that has card text identical to actual FFG cards. TC-4, for example.

2. What cards should we update, and why?: We should look into updating the Assault Gunboat, which was fairly dominant in the CCL tournament. I think some tests need to be run to find out where it falls on the full game’s power curve. We should also consider ships and cards that were not used in the CCL tournament; some may be in need of an adjustment. I’m looking at the SS3K yacht, and TIE Avenger in particular. Ideally we should be evaluating every card, but that might be a bit of a pain.

3. How many cards/ships should we aim to make in season 2?: I think we should aim for fewer cards in season 2. I think in season 1 there were so many submissions and candidates that we couldn’t really take a close look at a lot of them. It’d be easier to digest a smaller number of card submissions and candidates. I think we should aim for about ½ as many cards as we had in season 1.

4. Should we change the way submissions work?: One problem with submissions in season 1 is that ship and upgrade cards that were designed to work in tandem were submitted and considered separately. I think we should reformat submissions to be the equivalents of ship expansion sets for the first round of voting. After the first round of voting, then we could dissect each set of cards and make changes as we think necessary. It might also be a good idea to assess one expansion at a time so we can really focus.

5. Should we change the way voting works?: I think voting was mostly fine; with the changes to submissions, I don’t think we’ll need a significant voting update.

6. How can we streamline discussion and improve league organization?: I think we need a better-organized system to compartmentalize and track all discussions. Probably one master thread with links to the rest would be the best way to handle things.

Some thoughts I had on the card creation process after season 1 that I think would be good guidelines/rules for season 2:

1. No abilities that can cause stress to an enemy ship during the activation phase before that ship has activated (This was before the latest FAQ. With the change to how red maneuvers while stressed work now, this probably isn't needed)

2. No cards that duplicate existing upgrades or pilot abilities as is (exception being the same pilot in a different ship)

3. No global titles (a la hutt cartel and death mark), titles should be limited to a single ship (or ships that fit the same restriction, like x-wing only for t65s and t70s, or tie fighter only for ln/fo/sf)

4. No global upgrades that replace one upgrade slot with another (a la torpedo loadout), should be limited in the same way as titles above.

5. All pilots for the same ship (whether new or existing ship) should have the same statline (attack, defense, hull, shields) and upgrades slots (excepting EPT)

6. Allow titles to be part of a ship submission instead of separate upgrades (especially given the precedent of autoinclude titles for ships like the arc170, tie/sf, u-wing, etc)

To answer your discussion points:

1. I agree we shouldn't carry over all cards. I would say any that violate the guidelines above (if they're used) should be dropped (#2 would drop biggs and tc4, #3 would drop hutt cartel and death mark, #4 would drop torpedo loadout, #5 would either drop - or require a change to - Aeron Azzameen, #6 prevents issues with ships designed to go with titles - like the luxury yach - from having the ship make it into the league but not the title). I would be tempted to drop everything from season 1 and start with a clean slate. if people want some of the same ships in season 2 - like the Gunboat, it could be resubmitted as a full expansion with balance tweaks. Did anyone actually fly the avenger or luxury yacht? Similar to resubmitting ships, any upgrades (or pilots) people wanted to keep around could be resubmitted as part of a full expansion where said upgrade or pilot would make sense (e.g. Talonbane in a starviper could come as part of a StarViper fix expansion, jabba could be included in some scum large ship expansion, etc). I think it would be easier (and take less time/effort) than trying to cherry-pick what to keep, what to keep after tweaks, and what to drop. On the other hand, if we don't start season 2 until early next year, could possibly use the time in between to make said tweaks/drops.

2. The ones I listed above should either be dropped or tweaked. Gunboat could use some tweaking. The Kihraxz alpha strike with the combination of several custom upgrades was pretty strong, though if the tropedo loadout gets dropped it changes things. Luxury yacht ended up being underpowered without the titles.

3. For season 2, I like the idea of full expansions, in which case I vote for 1 expansion per faction, and possibly a fourth expansion taken as the best/most popular/whatever of all expansions after the top per faction is picked, so it could be any of the 3. One of the issues this season had was no custom ship for rebels, so they were stuck with a few pilots or upgrades to pick from if anyone wanted to fly rebel. Might need some form of committee (similar to last minute balance tweaks in season 1) to make sure nothing substantially over- or under- powered wins for any of the factions (for instance if one factino doesn't get many or good submissions, need to decide how to deal with the eventuallity).

4. As i said, I like the idea of full expansions. 4-6 pilots + upgrades for a given ship. Possibly allow an aces style expansion if you're doing a fix (or fixes) to allow 2 different ships wtih new pilots and upgrades, but only for existing ships (so you could, for example, have a scum aces pack with the starviper and kihraxz. or a rebel pack with a t65 and y-wing or e-wing or whatever someone wanted to do). New custom ships would be limited to the normal 1 ship per expansion. The main danger of the 2 ship pack is you have to balance both now instead of just looking at 1.

I would probably also limit the number of expansions a person can sumbit so we don't have people submitting 10-20 ships while someone else is submitting 1. Maybe allow max 3-5 per person, something like that. Enough that you can submit several ships if you have multiple ideas, but a small enough number that it doesn't overwhelm the voting options with too much to choose from and you have more time to make sure each submission is as good as possible instead of just throwing out as many ideas as you can come up with.

5. Similar voting system would probably be fine with expansion submissions. Another advantage is you don't have to do separate rounds of voting for ships, pilots, and upgrades. You can vote on the expansions as a whole, then after you know what expansions we're getting, decide if/what tweaks need to be made to those specific expansions.

6. A master thread would definitely be a good idea. I spent a lot of time searching the forum for "custom card league" and trying to find the right specific thread for what I was looking for at a given time. Even better if we could get it as a pinned post (dunno if there can be multiple of those?)

1, 2. I don't think all cards should be carried over. There were a lot of dumb cards and stuff that shouldnt have even made it to begin with. Personally i don't mind the idea of a clean slate, but you need to add a clause that V-Wings, Gunboats, TIE Avengers, and Yachts are specifically prohibited, otherwise we'll just get a thousand more of those submissions, gunboats specifically, and i mean, this all gets way less interesting when we're just fighting the same stuff next time because thats what won the popular vote. There was so much jank stuff in Season 1 that maybe a clean slate isn't an awful idea.

3, 4. I think that expansions ABSOLUTELY NEED to be a requirement for the next season. That would solve so many logistical and balance issues all in one fell swoop. It'll severely limit the amount of cards we need to manage and solves this problem imo.

There should probably be 2 categories for submissions: Ship Expansions, and Aces Expansions, each split into sub categories for each faction. There MUST be one Rebel ship, one Imperial ship, and one Scum ship, and then a fourth extra ship which is the highest voted that isn't one of the three already voted in. For Aces, only the three expansions, one per faction, and nothing more.

I would also agree with Vander that we need to limit how many expansions one person can submit, because that was a very clear problem we had during Season 1. You should be able to submit a maximum of 2 expansions total, of either type. If we're not getting enough submissions as a result, increase it to 3 per person.

5. It seemed ok. I don't think it needs to be changed too much.

6. Yeah, a master thread would make everything so much easier. It was so difficult to balance all those many threads.

I seems like half the cards you're complaining about are mine. I know you're getting some of them wrong, like Death Mark which was changed to a unique title. I can't find what TC-4 is supposed to be similar to, but in any case that must have been some useless committee you had that was supposed to go through after the voting and fix problems. There should be no reason to drop or delete anything after appointing that committee; I know I offered a very different variant of all the cards that were quotes from existing cards. The solutions were offered but you're still bitching because you ignored those solutions. Did that committee actually do anything?

Not carrying cards over from season 1 is no solution to anything as people will just submit the same cards, you have to create a library to store past seasons, for reference and use.

Hutt Cartel might be worth more than 1 point but otherwise I see nothing wrong with it, other than it could have said you can equip 2 titles. A faction-wide title deserves its niche in scum as they have a lot of sub-groups like Hutt, Black Sun, Zann, etc.

Criticizing the stats Aeron Azzameen seems phony considering the difference with Outer Rim Smuggler. There are plenty of reason for ships to have variances in Hull stats, other than the Hull upgrade.

Creating expansion sets of cards in future season would make it easier to vote right here on the forums, using likes for posts with the sets, rather than having people tap their 400-1000 Facebook friends elsewhere.

Yeah, kinda interesting how the cards we're talking about are yours.

I seems like half the cards you're complaining about are mine. I know you're getting some of them wrong, like Death Mark which was changed to a unique title. I can't find what TC-4 is supposed to be similar to, but in any case that must have been some useless committee you had that was supposed to go through after the voting and fix problems. There should be no reason to drop or delete anything after appointing that committee; I know I offered a very different variant of all the cards that were quotes from existing cards. The solutions were offered but you're still bitching because you ignored those solutions. Did that committee actually do anything?

Not carrying cards over from season 1 is no solution to anything as people will just submit the same cards, you have to create a library to store past seasons, for reference and use.

Hutt Cartel might be worth more than 1 point but otherwise I see nothing wrong with it, other than it could have said you can equip 2 titles. A faction-wide title deserves its niche in scum as they have a lot of sub-groups like Hutt, Black Sun, Zann, etc.

Criticizing the stats Aeron Azzameen seems phony considering the difference with Outer Rim Smuggler. There are plenty of reason for ships to have variances in Hull stats, other than the Hull upgrade.

Creating expansion sets of cards in future season would make it easier to vote right here on the forums, using likes for posts with the sets, rather than having people tap their 400-1000 Facebook friends elsewhere.

Death Mark's problem was that it was a title that could go on ANY ship. Not that it could go on every ship at the same time. I got nothing wrong there. TC-4 is word-for-word Captain Yorr's ability. The ONLY thing the committee was there for this season (and it only happened last minute due to a couple things that were noticed) was to stop the worst of the overpowered cards.

Some of the cards from last season people CAN'T resubmit as-is if we put some rules in place. And personally I have no problem with resubmitting versions of existing cards if they're part of a full expansion they make sense in.

The problem with hutt cartel is it's a title that works on any ship. Every other title in the game is limited to a single ship.

Critisizing aeron is in no way phony. ORS is an outlier and a mistake. it was created by a different design team, and the designers who have made most of the ships int he game since then have said it was a mistake (I'm pretty sure) and have NEVER done the same thing. Note that the new generic falcon has the same stats as the unique pilots. If you want variance in ship stats, it can be reflected with titles, such as the Punishing One adding attack dice or the Virago adding upgrade slots. Or the mist hunter adding an upgrade in a slot you don't even have.

Pretty sure no one had 400 friends voting on anything. I also like that this is coming from the guy who I think had the most stuff get in

Can we get the results, batrep and lists from the tournament ? (for those who submitted cards but who didn't had time to participate in the league)

There are a few topics I think we definitely should cover:

• Should all cards/ships from season one carry over into season 2?
• What cards should we update, and why?
• How many cards/ships should we aim to make in season 2?
• Should we change the way submissions work?
• Should we change the way voting works?
• How can we streamline discussion and improve league organization?

1-2 : the clean slate sound good.

3-4 : i like the "full expension submission" idea. We just need to establish how many ship we put in this "CCL wave" :

• only 1 ship per faction ? (no aces/epic pack) pro : limited number of card, maybe reduced the risk of power creep (less cards, less interaction) con : it will be hard to put cards for the old ships. Maybe we could allow "Old ship/New pilots expension".
• 1 ship AND 1 Aces/Epic pack per faction ? pro : fix and news toys for everybody ! con : too many cards.
• 1 ship per faction AND 1 epic Scum or 1 aces pack (any faction) ? One faction get an advantage.
• 1 ship per faction, 1 epic/aces Scum AND 1 aces pack Rebel or Imp' ? One faction get a disadvantage. And we still have many cards.

For the limitation of expension/people, despite a ratio of ship/person, i'm scared to see some people submit 3-4 ship for the same faction and finish the submission period with 30 ships in a single faction and the 2 other with only 10~15 ships. I think 1 expension per faction for each person could be okay : you can still submit multiple ships but keeping a banlance between the faction.

Similar voting system would probably be fine with expansion submissions. Another advantage is you don't have to do separate rounds of voting for ships, pilots, and upgrades. You can vote on the expansions as a whole, then after you know what expansions we're getting, decide if/what tweaks need to be made to those specific expansions.

6 : +1 for the master thread.

you have to create a library to store past seasons, for reference and use.

Just to get this out there early; if I think anyone is being overly combative or disruptive, I'm reserving the right to exclude them from this season. Ya'll don't pay me enough to be referee and event runner

So please be polite

I seems like half the cards you're complaining about are mine. I know you're getting some of them wrong, like Death Mark which was changed to a unique title. I can't find what TC-4 is supposed to be similar to, but in any case that must have been some useless committee you had that was supposed to go through after the voting and fix problems. There should be no reason to drop or delete anything after appointing that committee; I know I offered a very different variant of all the cards that were quotes from existing cards. The solutions were offered but you're still bitching because you ignored those solutions. Did that committee actually do anything?

Not carrying cards over from season 1 is no solution to anything as people will just submit the same cards, you have to create a library to store past seasons, for reference and use.

Hutt Cartel might be worth more than 1 point but otherwise I see nothing wrong with it, other than it could have said you can equip 2 titles. A faction-wide title deserves its niche in scum as they have a lot of sub-groups like Hutt, Black Sun, Zann, etc.

Criticizing the stats Aeron Azzameen seems phony considering the difference with Outer Rim Smuggler. There are plenty of reason for ships to have variances in Hull stats, other than the Hull upgrade.

Creating expansion sets of cards in future season would make it easier to vote right here on the forums, using likes for posts with the sets, rather than having people tap their 400-1000 Facebook friends elsewhere.

Death Mark's problem was that it was a title that could go on ANY ship. Not that it could go on every ship at the same time. I got nothing wrong there. TC-4 is word-for-word Captain Yorr's ability. The ONLY thing the committee was there for this season (and it only happened last minute due to a couple things that were noticed) was to stop the worst of the overpowered cards.

Some of the cards from last season people CAN'T resubmit as-is if we put some rules in place. And personally I have no problem with resubmitting versions of existing cards if they're part of a full expansion they make sense in.

The problem with hutt cartel is it's a title that works on any ship. Every other title in the game is limited to a single ship.

Critisizing aeron is in no way phony. ORS is an outlier and a mistake. it was created by a different design team, and the designers who have made most of the ships int he game since then have said it was a mistake (I'm pretty sure) and have NEVER done the same thing. Note that the new generic falcon has the same stats as the unique pilots. If you want variance in ship stats, it can be reflected with titles, such as the Punishing One adding attack dice or the Virago adding upgrade slots. Or the mist hunter adding an upgrade in a slot you don't even have.

Pretty sure no one had 400 friends voting on anything. I also like that this is coming from the guy who I think had the most stuff get in

Yeah, also the guy who had the most anomalous voting records on his cards, who only pitched a fit when one of his many, many cards DIDN'T make it in, despite the very large amount of his cards that did. Almost as if he expected... no, knew, that his cards were guaranteed to make it past voting.

Despite a lot of those cards either being bad copies of official FFG cards or just otherwise dumb, like Aeron, or the universal titles.

Interesting.

I also like how he's directly insulting and degrading those of us who actually put in the time and effort to run this league, and putting us on blast for not doing something that we specifically said the committee was not going to do.

Can we get the results, batrep and lists from the tournament ? (for those who submitted cards but who didn't had time to participate in the league)

There are a few topics I think we definitely should cover:

• Should all cards/ships from season one carry over into season 2?
• What cards should we update, and why?
• How many cards/ships should we aim to make in season 2?
• Should we change the way submissions work?
• Should we change the way voting works?
• How can we streamline discussion and improve league organization?

1-2 : the clean slate sound good.3-4 : i like the "full expension submission" idea. We just need to establish how many ship we put in this "CCL wave" :

• only 1 ship per faction ? (no aces/epic pack) pro : limited number of card, maybe reduced the risk of power creep (less cards, less interaction) con : it will be hard to put cards for the old ships. Maybe we could allow "Old ship/New pilots expension".
• 1 ship AND 1 Aces/Epic pack per faction ? pro : fix and news toys for everybody ! con : too many cards.
• 1 ship per faction AND 1 epic Scum or 1 aces pack (any faction) ? One faction get an advantage.
• 1 ship per faction, 1 epic/aces Scum AND 1 aces pack Rebel or Imp' ? One faction get a disadvantage. And we still have many cards.

Another point is, "do we allow epic ship ?" The League is a 100pts tournament and it's sound odd to allow epic ship in submission when they can't be present (only their crew) during the match.For the limitation of expension/people, despite a ratio of ship/person, i'm scared to see some people submit 3-4 ship for the same faction and finish the submission period with 30 ships in a single faction and the 2 other with only 10~15 ships. I think 1 expension per faction for each person could be okay : you can still submit multiple ships but keeping a banlance between the faction.

Similar voting system would probably be fine with expansion submissions. Another advantage is you don't have to do separate rounds of voting for ships, pilots, and upgrades. You can vote on the expansions as a whole, then after you know what expansions we're getting, decide if/what tweaks need to be made to those specific expansions.

5 : it seemed good. We just need to discuss the balance of some submission before the vote (not like the reajust of Aeron post-vote on season1)6 : +1 for the master thread.

you have to create a library to store past seasons, for reference and use.

Yeap. With note of the players who played and encontered them. That's way we will know which was good and which sucked.

I like the idea of limiting submissions to one expansion per faction. That way you can still submit up to 3 ships, but like you said, it lowers the risk of a bunvh of people making several expansions for the same faction and leaving the others lacking as a result.

If aces packs were mde to be a separate category, maybe allow 1 per faction plus an aces pack, but you could also make an argument for the aces pack to be considered for whatever faction it contains

I like one expansion per faction, with one ace pack. But with only about 4 new upgrades per expansion; I want to keep the total card count manageable. Or, if we develop each expansion one at a time, we could have 1 new ship and 1 ace pack per faction.

I'll be getting started on the Xwing/Ewing ace pack.

Before I get too far, though, what are people's thoughts on this?

I can swap it to Limited Modification and add "you can equip another modification", but be basic idea is a blanket "EPTless pilot" buff.

I'm gonna keep fleshing out my existing Aces packs. Like the ones i had for X- and Y-Wings, A-Wings, and E-Wings. I'll probably also finally finish my Scum Aces packs for the Starviper and Kihraxz.

I like one expansion per faction, with one ace pack. But with only about 4 new upgrades per expansion; I want to keep the total card count manageable. Or, if we develop each expansion one at a time, we could have 1 new ship and 1 ace pack per faction.

I actually like the idea of getting the same number of upgrades as we would in a regular wave + aces expansion. We just have to work hard to make sure that every upgrade is exciting and something that could see use.

I like one expansion per faction, with one ace pack. But with only about 4 new upgrades per expansion; I want to keep the total card count manageable. Or, if we develop each expansion one at a time, we could have 1 new ship and 1 ace pack per faction.

I actually like the idea of getting the same number of upgrades as we would in a regular wave + aces expansion. We just have to work hard to make sure that every upgrade is exciting and something that could see use.

I basically agree, but keep in mind that we usually get several reprints of upgrades in each expansion. I should check but i think we get an average of 3-4 new upgrades per expansion. Mainly, I want to prevent an overload of upgrades that keeps us from giving each card a proper analysis.

I like one expansion per faction, with one ace pack. But with only about 4 new upgrades per expansion; I want to keep the total card count manageable. Or, if we develop each expansion one at a time, we could have 1 new ship and 1 ace pack per faction.

I actually like the idea of getting the same number of upgrades as we would in a regular wave + aces expansion. We just have to work hard to make sure that every upgrade is exciting and something that could see use.

I basically agree, but keep in mind that we usually get several reprints of upgrades in each expansion. I should check but i think we get an average of 3-4 new upgrades per expansion. Mainly, I want to prevent an overload of upgrades that keeps us from giving each card a proper analysis.

For wave 10 it looks like we have:

Sabine's TIE: 4 new upgrades, 1 old

Upsilon Shuttle: 6 new, 2 old (4 new and 1 old all come with 2 copies each)

Quadjumper: 6 new, 1 old (1 new is shared with upsilon)

TIE Striker: 3 new, 0 old

U-wing: Looks like 8 new, 3 old. Also has some multi-copy ones.

Maybe 4-5 max new upgrades for a small ship, and 6-8 max for a large?

I like one expansion per faction, with one ace pack. But with only about 4 new upgrades per expansion; I want to keep the total card count manageable. Or, if we develop each expansion one at a time, we could have 1 new ship and 1 ace pack per faction.

I actually like the idea of getting the same number of upgrades as we would in a regular wave + aces expansion. We just have to work hard to make sure that every upgrade is exciting and something that could see use.

I basically agree, but keep in mind that we usually get several reprints of upgrades in each expansion. I should check but i think we get an average of 3-4 new upgrades per expansion. Mainly, I want to prevent an overload of upgrades that keeps us from giving each card a proper analysis.

For wave 10 it looks like we have:

Sabine's TIE: 4 new upgrades, 1 old

Upsilon Shuttle: 6 new, 2 old (4 new and 1 old all come with 2 copies each)

Quadjumper: 6 new, 1 old (1 new is shared with upsilon)

TIE Striker: 3 new, 0 old

U-wing: Looks like 8 new, 3 old. Also has some multi-copy ones.

Maybe 4-5 max new upgrades for a small ship, and 6-8 max for a large?

Aces packs will be harder.

HotR had 12 new upgrades, 7 new pilots, and only 1 old upgrade and 2 old pilots(both being generics).

For instance, if i count everything new in my Partisan Veterans pack i have planned, that's 6 new pilots, and 10 new upgrades, and possibly more upgrades depending on how i feel. But i think we do need Aces packs, because if we don't we get the same problem we had, which was that only the new ships or the updated ships get used because those are the best now. The more we can spread the custom card love to, the more diverse and interesting season 2 will be.

I'd say maybe a 10 upgrade limit on Aces packs. Seems legit to me.

I like one expansion per faction, with one ace pack. But with only about 4 new upgrades per expansion; I want to keep the total card count manageable. Or, if we develop each expansion one at a time, we could have 1 new ship and 1 ace pack per faction.

I actually like the idea of getting the same number of upgrades as we would in a regular wave + aces expansion. We just have to work hard to make sure that every upgrade is exciting and something that could see use.

I basically agree, but keep in mind that we usually get several reprints of upgrades in each expansion. I should check but i think we get an average of 3-4 new upgrades per expansion. Mainly, I want to prevent an overload of upgrades that keeps us from giving each card a proper analysis.

For wave 10 it looks like we have:

Sabine's TIE: 4 new upgrades, 1 old

Upsilon Shuttle: 6 new, 2 old (4 new and 1 old all come with 2 copies each)

Quadjumper: 6 new, 1 old (1 new is shared with upsilon)

TIE Striker: 3 new, 0 old

U-wing: Looks like 8 new, 3 old. Also has some multi-copy ones.

Maybe 4-5 max new upgrades for a small ship, and 6-8 max for a large?

Aces packs will be harder.

HotR had 12 new upgrades, 7 new pilots, and only 1 old upgrade and 2 old pilots(both being generics).

For instance, if i count everything new in my Partisan Veterans pack i have planned, that's 6 new pilots, and 10 new upgrades, and possibly more upgrades depending on how i feel. But i think we do need Aces packs, because if we don't we get the same problem we had, which was that only the new ships or the updated ships get used because those are the best now. The more we can spread the custom card love to, the more diverse and interesting season 2 will be.

I'd say maybe a 10 upgrade limit on Aces packs. Seems legit to me.

For aces packs make the limit per ship. So 4-5 per ship if they're both small, couple more if one is large (and don't limit it to 5 for each ship, just that many total max, so ~10 like you said)

Currently, I draft a Ewing/Yt-2400 "Mon Calamari veterans", the Rogue Shadow and a "nubian starfighter" for rebel

Aces packs will be harder.

HotR had 12 new upgrades, 7 new pilots, and only 1 old upgrade and 2 old pilots(both being generics).

For instance, if i count everything new in my Partisan Veterans pack i have planned, that's 6 new pilots, and 10 new upgrades, and possibly more upgrades depending on how i feel. But i think we do need Aces packs, because if we don't we get the same problem we had, which was that only the new ships or the updated ships get used because those are the best now. The more we can spread the custom card love to, the more diverse and interesting season 2 will be.

I'd say maybe a 10 upgrade limit on Aces packs. Seems legit to me.

For aces packs make the limit per ship. So 4-5 per ship if they're both small, couple more if one is large (and don't limit it to 5 for each ship, just that many total max, so ~10 like you said)

I like it. Allow up to 3-4 old cards (both pilot and upgrade) could be nice to add some flavor on the expension (example : add "intimidation" if you put a pilot with bump effect like Oicun).

For wave 10 it looks like we have:

Sabine's TIE: 4 new upgrades, 1 old
Upsilon Shuttle: 6 new, 2 old (4 new and 1 old all come with 2 copies each)
Quadjumper: 6 new, 1 old (1 new is shared with upsilon)
TIE Striker: 3 new, 0 old
U-wing: Looks like 8 new, 3 old. Also has some multi-copy ones.

Maybe 4-5 max new upgrades for a small ship, and 6-8 max for a large?

Or restrict people to archetype. I think it's the same process when you create an Xwing expension and when you create your own Magic, the Gathering Set : you not only design fresh new cards but you also think of the lore around them, the flavor of each type of card, the reprint to emphase the whole set, the ambiant text of all cards, etc. So, what if we let the people choice between multiple archetypes like those we can buy ?

• interceptor/protectorat type = 6 pilots + 2 new upgrade (up to 4 with condition card and/or double)
• "Classic" small ship type (HWK-290, Quadjumper, etc) = 4 pilots + 4/5 new upgrade (up to 8 with old cards, condition card and/or double)
• "Heavy" small ship type (starviper, Kwing, etc) = 4 pilots + 4/6 new upgrade (up to 10 with old cards, condition card and/or double)
• "Classic" Large ship type (any ~30$ large base) = 4 pilots + 6/8 new upgrade (up to 14 with old cards, condition card and/or double)

I'll be getting started on the Xwing/Ewing ace pack.

Before I get too far, though, what are people's thoughts on this?

I can swap it to Limited Modification and add "you can equip another modification", but be basic idea is a blanket "EPTless pilot" buff.

it can be sweet. From my point of view, it will be cool for rebel filler so, maybe put it unique. I see just 1 problem with this card is the 11pts Bandit squadron pilot : You can swap the card to ept or put a restriction like "Only pilot Value of 3+". something like :

The thing with putting so many upgrades in these packs is that last season we had a lot more upgrades than we had thoughtful discussion on those upgrades.

As a result, we had a lot of duds. Cards that made it into the extension but necs saw the table. Having fewer cards makes it more likely that we have a good discussion about each card and they actually turn out to be useful in the game.

How did it work out? Is there some sort of summary? What was the stand out's from it?

The thing with putting so many upgrades in these packs is that last season we had a lot more upgrades than we had thoughtful discussion on those upgrades.

As a result, we had a lot of duds. Cards that made it into the extension but necs saw the table. Having fewer cards makes it more likely that we have a good discussion about each card and they actually turn out to be useful in the game.

I think duds are inevitable though. Even in the current game, there are still plenty of dud new cards. I think if we put a heavy cut on the number of cards implemented, while we may have fewer duds, we will also have fewer playable cards. Another issue we had is that there just weren't enough players to get every card on the table. If we try to do some soft marketing, I feel like this could really take off. I was actually pretty confused why we had such little participation this season. I think the main hurdles are-

a) Players who would want to play are simply unaware of it

b) vassal is seen as too much of a hurdle

c) more vocal contributors intimidate others

I feel like the first point is something we should be able to overcome. Maybe we should get in touch with those who are in charge of the vassal league (Earthworm and Sozin) and see what we can do to work alongside them. They have a RIDICULOUS amount of participants. So much so that if we had that many participate in this, we would have trouble with organization (a good problem to have and one with more minds in play, I'm certain we could figure out. We could even do a challonge page like the vassal league does).

The other 2 points I feel are always going to be issues. People don't like vassal or are not willing to take the time to learn to use its less intuitive interface, and there is always going to be at least a couple people who have strong enough opinions that it deters some from looking in to the project.

Along with what's being discussed, something I really want is for a mock FFG preview to be written up for each expansion. I think it would be really fun and possibly even pull in more interest. At least for me, one of my favorite things of this game isn't even related to actually playing the game- it's reading and discussing the latest preview. We can post this preview on Team Covenant and link it here and have some light hearted discussion about what combos we see, what we think will work best, and do our best to treat it as if it was a real preview. This would be a great way to "reveal" the expansions that win the vote.

b) vassal is seen as too much of a hurdle

This is the biggest issue for me.

On 3 separate occasions, I have followed instructions for installing/using vassal and getting this to work for me, with absolutely minimal success.

The concept of Vassal is great. The implementation and learning curve is abysmal.

How about this? While it does nothing for increasing Vassal participation I believe it handily solves a lot of the other problems and on top of that is a neatly organised process.

Before the tournament, create a panel of three judges. This consists of:

• The overall organiser of the tournament.
• A high level competitive player: ideally one who designs their own lists and therefore has a keen understanding of the game balance.
• Someone with a good understanding of thematic design and Star Wars lore.

The Custom Card League consists of two competitions: the Design Competition and the Custom Card Tournament. The judges cannot participate in the design contest. Ideally they should not participate in the Tournament either to ensure impartiality but if need be they may step down from the judge’s panel after the Design Competition to enter the Tournament.

In the design competition teams compete to design a full X-Wing expansion pack. There are four categories: Scum, Rebel, Imperial and Ace Pack. The winners of each comprise the custom card pool for the tournament.

Stage 1: Ship Nominations

Players nominate ships for each category. After a week* of nominations the ten most popular nominations in Scum, Rebel, Imperial and Ace Pack. are put to a vote.
The ten most nominated ships are voted on by the community either by simple majority or a ranking system. If any category lacks enough nominations the judges select new ships such as to make ten. The judges also break any ties in the nominations.
The winners of each category become the selected ships for the Design Competition.

Stage 2: Design Competition

The judges then post the winning ships and the number of each component in each expansion.

• Small ships usually contain a new small ship, four pilots and five different upgrade cards or a new small ship, six pilots and two different upgrade cards.
• Large ships usually contain four pilot cards and ten different upgrade cards.
• Ace packs contain two new ships. They often have a new generic pilot and always have new named pilots for each ship. They contain ten different upgrade cards.

The judges will clearly specify how many generic pilots, named pilots and upgrade cards each expansion has: this is a contest of quality rather than quantity.

Upgrade cards must be useable and have a useful effect on the ship they come with as with an official expansion.

The community then has two weeks* to design and playtest their entries for each category. Entrants may form teams or design alone. While works in progress may be posted on the forums it is not recommended if entrants are worried about plagiarism. Cards must be made in and exported from Strange Eons or equivalent and sent to the organisers before the deadline.

Stage 3: Expansion Voting

The best three in each category based on design and balance are selected by the judges. If the judges believe they mix and match cards from these three entries without editing them to create a fourth entry. This is called the Combined Expansion. It is meant to embody the best of each entry in the eyes of the judges.

These entries are then put to community vote based on a ranking system: the highest ranked scores four points, the second three, the third two and the last one.

The highest scoring of the original three expansions wins. The Combined Expansion cannot win the contest but if it ranks highest it is used for the Tournament.

Stage 4: Custom Card Tournament

The four winning expansions (a Rebel ship, an Imperial ship, a Scum ship and an Ace Pack) then become legal for the custom card tournament.

so coming back to expansions, i really believe that we need to take the time to make sure we get an Aces expansion per faction. Unlike in the full game, the more expansions one faction has, the immediately stronger that faction will become, more so than all the rest. Even more so with Aces expansions, because that's 2 ship expansions worth of pilots and upgrades. We NEED to balance the factions out with that regard, otherwise it's simply not fair to the factions that don't get an Aces pack. We don't want another Season 1 Rebels situation.