Wasn't the vast majority of top 16 last year Trooper Spies? I don't recall last year being so diverse as you mention it to be. Either way, it's obviously not good PR for the game to only have one faction really represented. It's a tough nut to crack though. We don't want rock-paper-scissor either, so balancing all three factions equally seems like a tall order. With the coming wave and HotE though, it seems that Empire is getting the uniques they lacked - now that those are good enough to play and Rebels also get a small boost here and there. On top, we get the Droid cross-faction list.

I'm very hopeful that next year will see the best of the best of IA meta.

It's funny though, how many proclaimed the Weequays to be a useless version of HKs. I can see the merit to dissolving the Temp. Alliance cards, to break away from the Gideon/C-3PO in Merc. Merc could still get C-3PO - but would have to do it through the eJawa. Taking it down a notch. I'll predict that this will happen anyway though, as it saves you 1 point for a sweet upgrade or something similar and still gives you 2x Focus and C-3POs sweet Evade.

@FrogTrigger

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Think about that, 4/5's or 80% of the games deployment cards went unused. Now to ME, that is not a healthy meta.. but maybe there is an argument against?

I would argue that Bespin was the start of IA really turning around in a good way for Skirmish. It filled out the Spy trait, which paved the way for Spy Troopers and Blaise to be a big hit, and in a point denial meta it was the go-to build.

Jabba fleshed out the Hunter and Smuggler trait, and I would speculate that because Spy Troopers was so played out by everyone involved, the hunt began for another high-level alternative, which Mercenaries had covered.

You could still easily drop a list that runs Blaise, eHeavy Stormtrooper with Targeting Computer, 2x Cross Trained eStormtroopers, 2x Officer, Zillo and it would function as well as it ever did. You'd have Comm Disruption and Intelligence Leak to cancel the big cards, Blaise to raid their hand, and the Jabba wave even added in Call the Vanguard so you can grab a timely free attack with a Heavy Stormtrooper you queued up with Hidden from Blaise earlier.

I would have done it myself if I wasn't all played out with that list.

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the point many were making in the stream chat is that it was an unhealthy representation of the game, a game that had a lot of diversity last year at worlds

Definitely not the best representation of the game, in the sense that a lot of list building does go around on a popularity contest, and since we're mostly here for the Star Wars theme, it doesn't get much more thematic than Jabba's underlings all ganged up together.

Last November I saw a lot of Imperial Stormtrooper builds running around. The top cut wasn't 15/16 Stormtroopers if I remember correctly, but they were still a significant portion of it.

Also, the popularity was bolstered by another thematic motive, which is a whole bunch of Stormtroopers jumping out to suppress the enemies of the Empire, so there's that again.

Heart looks like the big turning point. I was thinking about how game changing these new Power tokens could be, as a way to bring older units that don't see play back into the fold as viable options. Imagine being able to hold an Evade token on an eNexu? That timely use of the Evade also effectively gives it a +1 Block, and that's before you even roll. Couple that with Beast Tamer and you have a pretty long-range melee unit that will live a lot longer than people are used to.

I kinda goofed on the Kevin Bacon comment.

Wonderfully civil comments and discussion by all. Even my robut friend R1H4 thought so...which is what brought me to posting this now.

/respect to all concerned.

I think taking out Temporary Alliance is potentially a very good idea (it is temporary, after all). From a card game standpoint, it seems like an obvious card that might cause problems in the long run. There are basically only three options if it happens:

1) Mercenaries are still the best, but there is now a very strong incentive to play Rebels, which already adds a bit of diversity.
2) Rebel lists become clearly the strongest and everyone plays that. It would be a change, at least, but if that happened, Giden would probably need to get nerfed/banned.
3) It brings the power of Merc lists down enough that the playing field for all three factions is a bit more even, but does not slam the faction into the ground.

All three seem favourable to the status quo.

On May 10, 2017 at 6:00 AM, burek277 said:

I think taking out Temporary Alliance is potentially a very good idea (it is temporary, after all). From a card game standpoint, it seems like an obvious card that might cause problems in the long run. There are basically only three options if it happens:

1) Mercenaries are still the best, but there is now a very strong incentive to play Rebels, which already adds a bit of diversity.
2) Rebel lists become clearly the strongest and everyone plays that. It would be a change, at least, but if that happened, Giden would probably need to get nerfed/banned.
3) It brings the power of Merc lists down enough that the playing field for all three factions is a bit more even, but does not slam the faction into the ground.

All three seem favourable to the status quo.

I don't know if it's going to be ultimately necessary to remove Temporary Alliance. I think the biggest disparity is that Imperials are lacking a way to easily pass around some Focus, where Rebels and Mercs would both fall back on Gideon/C-3P0 or just go Jabba with Mercs, of even combine all 3.

The closest Imperial come to with buffs is using Blaise to throw Hidden around.

Basically 2 out of 3 factions are spending activations on their first turn to Focus other units and hold up before going in on turn 2 with those extra green dice.

The only reason we have Temporary Alliance at all is that in the game's infancy the Imperials and Scum needed a way to flesh out their ranks in order to field a list in skirmish. That's why the Rebels don't have a version, the hero units they had access to were probably considered more than adequate. But at this point, Temporary Alliance no longer brings anything necessary to the game. You can run a variety of Imperial lists, and you can run a variety of Scum lists. You don't have to steal units just to make your army work.

Right now you can point to Gideon / C3P0, and rightly so. But even if those two units didn't exist, Temporary Alliance would still be a problem waiting to resurface. The fact that the Imperials can always grab the two best Scum units, and Scum can always grab the two best Rebel units, all for a measly investment of 1 point is very limiting on design space. It will only cause more problems down the road as the number of options and interactions grows, and there's just no real reason to have it in the game anymore.

Yes that is the problem with TA, it promotes pouching the top units from other factions. If factions can ONLY pick from their own stock it helps to flesh out list diversity.

Yes, I'm not sure TA is needed anymore. It was great when the game was in the earlier stages, but now the factions are becoming more balanced (yes, there's still work to be done!). That being said, I agree that if the Imps had a more direct way to generate focus, it would make things a bit more reasonable. I like what they did with the e-Jets giving them the extra blue if they attack within 2. Things like that make sense to me.

Is there any place to see the lists of top 16??

at our last tournament, I ran a Rancor, dewback, terro and some jettroopers and officers, it was a fun list. I might have had an eNexu in there as well. Creatures are fun, but hard to get going in Merc alone with some diversity because the Wampa is so poorly designed for skirmish. TA isn't broken yet. The WAAC attitude is broken.

On 5/31/2017 at 6:55 AM, buckero0 said:

TA isn't broken yet. The WAAC attitude is broken.

I'm always curious, what is the "cost" in win-at-all-costs? Are you implying that all winners must be cheating if they don't play the game in a way that you approve of? I've heard some people say "fun" is the cost, but competition is what makes the game fun for a lot of people, so I'm interested in people who throw around Waac as pejorative label what they think that actually means.

On 5/29/2017 at 1:29 PM, Morakbp said:

Is there any place to see the lists of top 16??

UP

2 hours ago, Golan Trevize said:

UP

I would have sworn that I posted mine in this thread, but it must have been in a different one. Here you go

Worlds Top 16 2017 (15/15/40)
===========================
[7] Elite Weequay Pirate
[7] Elite Weequay Pirate
[6] Jabba The Hutt
[6] Onar Koma
[5] Vinto Hreeda
[4] Greedo
[1] Temporary Alliance
[2] C-3PO
[1] Black Market
[1] Devious Scheme

-------------------

[3] Assassinate
[3] On the Lam
[2] Heightened Reflexes
[2] Tools for the Job
[2] Squad Swarm
[1] Negation
[1] Tough Luck
[1] Draw!
[0] Toxic Dart
[0] To the Limit
[0] Take Initiative
[0] Positioning Advantage
[0] Planning
[0] Element of Surprise
[0] Wild Attack

Thank!

i know it might be stupid and i never saw how the skirmish works in this , but wouldnt make more sense to have restrictions / bans ?

like i find it kinda stupid a jabba team vs another jabba team. i know its skirmish and etc, but it just look sad. i look at the star wars lcg card example . u cant go light side vs light side or smuglers x smuglers.

43 minutes ago, goncardoso said:

i know it might be stupid and i never saw how the skirmish works in this , but wouldnt make more sense to have restrictions / bans ?

like i find it kinda stupid a jabba team vs another jabba team. i know its skirmish and etc, but it just look sad. i look at the star wars lcg card example . u cant go light side vs light side or smuglers x smuglers.

How could you have a legitimate tourney if everyone doesn't get to pick from the exact same pool of options? Unless each faction/side had mirror characters, that had exactly the same abilities/traits. Even then, you could only have 3 people per tourney as there are only 3 factions.

11 minutes ago, wannabepudge said:

How could you have a legitimate tourney if everyone doesn't get to pick from the exact same pool of options? Unless each faction/side had mirror characters, that had exactly the same abilities/traits. Even then, you could only have 3 people per tourney as there are only 3 factions.

well , it could be a best of 3 . then everyone one could play with each type of deck. but probably would never work , it would just give more diversity to the game. How would only be 3 person in torney ? not everyone would play the same faction . it was just an idea anyway , its kinda sad to see the same team in every game. boring to watch

32 minutes ago, goncardoso said:

well , it could be a best of 3 . then everyone one could play with each type of deck. but probably would never work , it would just give more diversity to the game. How would only be 3 person in torney ? not everyone would play the same faction . it was just an idea anyway , its kinda sad to see the same team in every game. boring to watch

I hate mirror games and I think they should be gotten rid of, but it shows, when there is a bunch of them, that the meta isn't as vibrant as it could be. People who go to tournaments are going with 'a' list or lists they think are going to win. They aren't there for the experience of battling Star Wars factions against each other. If I were to say that one person would have change their faction if two players wanted the same faction, I would be pilloried, but it just shows that there is an advantage to the dominant faction and players would be rightly upset if they thought they drew the short straw and weren't able to play the more dominate one.

11 hours ago, Rikalonius said:

I hate mirror games and I think they should be gotten rid of, but it shows, when there is a bunch of them, that the meta isn't as vibrant as it could be. People who go to tournaments are going with 'a' list or lists they think are going to win. They aren't there for the experience of battling Star Wars factions against each other. If I were to say that one person would have change their faction if two players wanted the same faction, I would be pilloried, but it just shows that there is an advantage to the dominant faction and players would be rightly upset if they thought they drew the short straw and weren't able to play the more dominate one.

Yes that may be true , but that just show the game is not balanced and broken. If there is no variety there's no fun in playing. Sure people will go to win, but seeing mirrors in all games is boring af.

HotE to the rescue! ?

-ryanjamal

Other franchised games have confronted the faction on faction theme breaking issue; tournaments for Games Workshop's Lord of the Rings skirmish game initially required players to bring a good and evil list. The same could be done with IA. No Temporary Alliance, players bring lists from two factions. Toss a coin to determine which list you play, unless your opponent's coin-toss has already determined which list you use.

The idea was abandoned with Lord of the Rings, so presumably it was not popular or too many people objected to purchasing two lists for official tournaments.

Ha ha, yeah I think the last thing the skirmish scene needs is a higher barrier to entry ?

-ryanjamal

The only thing TE needed is a little (and thematic) tweak:

Scum TE: you can choose up to two rebel deployment cards into your army. This cards must have one of the following traits: smuggler, hunter or spy. (this way 3po and gideon are out but people like lando or han are welcome)

Imperial TE: you can choose up to two scum deployment cards into your army. This cards must have the creature trait or be unique cards. (the fact here is empire can hire famous bounty hunters like in the movies, but not all stuff)

Making TA usable only with non unique groups or selecting traits may indeed prove useful (even if I stil think the single point investment the other 2 factions have access to is unfair to Rebel faction)

I feel like TA was useful back when you couldn't really field an all merc list. Now that it's changed, it really needs to go. Thematically it's cool that Imps can hire a merc, but you rarely see people do that. Although I'll be doing that this weekend at Canadian Nationals.