I am really REALLY starting to see an imbalance here between Hero and Villain cards, and I dont just mean the characters. I mean the cards as well, look at He doesnt like you vs Loth cat and mouse, ok so the first one came out during awakenings and they realized it was to strong maybe... ok but lets look at cards that ALL came out during Spirit and all have similar types of abilities.

Dark Presence vs Your Eye's can deceive you Blue villain support vs Blue Hero support, both uncommons both require you to hit a specific dice side, Dark Presence costs 0 and is a villain card, Your eyes costs 1 and is a hero card, Presence effect is REMOVE a dice, Your Eyes.... blank a dice.... am I the only one feeling like that is backwards... removing is clearly the stronger option and it costs 0, but blanking costs 1???

Imperial Inspection vs Spy Net. Red Villain Support vs Red Hero Support, both require you hit a specific dice side, Inspection costs 0 and is a villain card spy net costs 1 and is a hero card, Inspection forces your opponent to return a card back your hand that costs 2 or less and spy net mills the top card of the deck. Honestly different effects for different types of decks but honestly just about equally powered, but again any one noticing a pattern here yet? Villain costs 0 for a very powerful effect whether running mill or damage, Hero costs 1 for a powerful effect for only 1 kind of deck....

Last but not least, Salvage stand vs Double Dealing. Yellow Villain Support, vs Yellow Hero Support, both commons, both require you to hit a specific dice side, Salvage stand costs 0 and is a villain card, Double dealing costs 1 and is a hero card. Salvage stand takes away a resource for hitting a resource side (so you are effectively up 1 resource on your opponent) which most dice in the game have a resource side, vs Double dealing which gives you a resource after hitting a special, of which you have to design a deck around and again it costs a resource before it will even grant you that resource.

Why are all the supports that require you to hit a specific dice side on Villain always cost you 0 with effects that either eclipse or equal their hero counter parts and yet the Hero cards all cost 1??? i thought FFG was comparing similar cards at similar cost levels, should these cards not all have been the standard for cards like this?

Not saying heroes and villains should have the same cards, but their power budget should be the same, and this is a pretty clear example of that being a nope.

A few things:

Dark Presence vs Your Eyes Can Deceive You - YECDY effects your opponents best dice, DP effects their worst one. So it's not as simple as remove vs change.

Imperial Inspection vs Spy Net - This applies to the others, but particularly here. I feel Disrupt was generally considered the worst face in Awakenings; Focus was arguably the best non damage/special side. It makes sense that requiring a 'worse' side gets you a better effect. You've also got to consider synergy - it's hard to fit Imperial Inspection in with Villain Red, while Hero Red has abundant sources of focus.

Salvage Stand vs Double Dealing - SS can be played around to a degree via spending money, while DD will always give you an advantage.v

Having said that....this cycle of cards does really make it hard to argue against there being a villain bias. I agree that the costs on them are messed up, and they fact that it's all the villain cards the benefit is not great. Hopefully it's just teething issues, with certain effects being misvalued, or cards being changed during development. I find it hard to believe that they actually thought villains were the ones that would need a power boost in SoR.

2 hours ago, Abyss said:

A few things:

Dark Presence vs Your Eyes Can Deceive You - YECDY effects your opponents best dice, DP effects their worst one. So it's not as simple as remove vs change.

Imperial Inspection vs Spy Net - This applies to the others, but particularly here. I feel Disrupt was generally considered the worst face in Awakenings; Focus was arguably the best non damage/special side. It makes sense that requiring a 'worse' side gets you a better effect. You've also got to consider synergy - it's hard to fit Imperial Inspection in with Villain Red, while Hero Red has abundant sources of focus.

Salvage Stand vs Double Dealing - SS can be played around to a degree via spending money, while DD will always give you an advantage.v

Having said that....this cycle of cards does really make it hard to argue against there being a villain bias. I agree that the costs on them are messed up, and they fact that it's all the villain cards the benefit is not great. Hopefully it's just teething issues, with certain effects being misvalued, or cards being changed during development. I find it hard to believe that they actually thought villains were the ones that would need a power boost in SoR.

Very good counter-arguments. At some point, cards must:

-Have different feeling when playing different faction/Color, cards must have enough different mechanic!.

-Offer some sort of imbalance, but not to radical (55%-45%)

The exemple of SS vs DD is a good one. Have you played SS recently? The moment it hits the table, BAM, your opponent burn his or her ressources (Feels similar to disrupt).

In order to keep a game interresting, it is not necessary to perfectly balance it like Chess... humm, wait, white plays first!

Not everything needs to seem equal, because the factions make up for it in other ways.

For example, as a mostly blue hero player, I can tell you that Luminara Unduli is no slouch. "What?" You might say, "she's at least two points overcosted!" I would agree with you if she were, say, a red hero, but her dice is just so good with Guard and Destiny (two of the best cards in the game) that it evens out. Likewise, yellow heroes seem like garbage. But then there's Second Chance.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you take any two cards from any two factions (i.e. affiliation+color, in my posts there are six "factions"), they are almost guaranteed to not be balanced. You have to consider the faction as a whole, because each one has its own strengths and weaknesses.

also, if you don't believe me, check out the hero/villain split in the last pie chart:

http://www.thechancecube.com/meta/2017-store-championships-meta-report/

32 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

Not everything needs to seem equal, because the factions make up for it in other ways.

For example, as a mostly blue hero player, I can tell you that Luminara Unduli is no slouch. "What?" You might say, "she's at least two points overcosted!" I would agree with you if she were, say, a red hero, but her dice is just so good with Guard and Destiny (two of the best cards in the game) that it evens out. Likewise, yellow heroes seem like garbage. But then there's Second Chance.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you take any two cards from any two factions (i.e. affiliation+color, in my posts there are six "factions"), they are almost guaranteed to not be balanced. You have to consider the faction as a whole, because each one has its own strengths and weaknesses.

also, if you don't believe me, check out the hero/villain split in the last pie chart:

http://www.thechancecube.com/meta/2017-store-championships-meta-report/

What deck are you running with Luminara? She's a hero I really want to make work, but....

I do feel like she, and your arguments for why she is good (Destiny and Guard), are exactly the problem with some of the heroes. A theme with them is to work well with other characters...but You're paying a premium for dice that require interaction with other game elements (other dice or cards) to be useful. Using Luminara's special to add two or three damage is only netting you one (at best) from her highest damage side. Frankly, I feel like just having two Padawans is a better use of points. For comparison, SoR Vader is exactly the same cost. Two of his sides can prove a bit more challenging to use but he needs nothing but a resource. His special has the same damage potential as Luminara but doesn't require extra dice to interact with. She needs a die that has been rolled out and is actually useful on the table long enough for her to interact with. If your opponent can see it and remove it, it was essentially removing two dice for the price of one.

One of the latest Tiny Grimes videos details how villains are better than heroes by looking at 10 powerful cards. I completely agree with the thought that this might just be growing pains for a new game. Of coarse someone can also easily point out that Heroes have Poe/Maz, and therefore the argument is irrelevant, but when I got into this game, I was hoping to be creative with 3 character combos, and interesting deck builds, and have some viability.

I'll have stints where I play hero, but then go back to villain because I actually like the cards I draw playing villain, and find their usefulness less situational than their hero counterparts.

27 minutes ago, AlexW said:

What deck are you running with Luminara? She's a hero I really want to make work, but....

I do feel like she, and your arguments for why she is good (Destiny and Guard), are exactly the problem with some of the heroes. A theme with them is to work well with other characters...but You're paying a premium for dice that require interaction with other game elements (other dice or cards) to be useful. Using Luminara's special to add two or three damage is only netting you one (at best) from her highest damage side. Frankly, I feel like just having two Padawans is a better use of points. For comparison, SoR Vader is exactly the same cost. Two of his sides can prove a bit more challenging to use but he needs nothing but a resource. His special has the same damage potential as Luminara but doesn't require extra dice to interact with. She needs a die that has been rolled out and is actually useful on the table long enough for her to interact with. If your opponent can see it and remove it, it was essentially removing two dice for the price of one.

I did post my Luminara deck somewhere on this forum... I don't actually use her ability much. Usually when I do, it's only to get resources. Very useful, but situational. She's more useful for her focus, resource, and damage sides.

The thing is, her 2 melee damage can be used with Guard to remove both of Palpatine's dice. Vader can't do that. The blue hero events and upgrades (and her natural partner in crime, Rey) are so powerful that it balances out.

1 minute ago, Kieransi said:

I did post my Luminara deck somewhere on this forum... I don't actually use her ability much. Usually when I do, it's only to get resources. Very useful, but situational. She's more useful for her focus, resource, and damage sides.

The thing is, her 2 melee damage can be used with Guard to remove both of Palpatine's dice. Vader can't do that. The blue hero events and upgrades (and her natural partner in crime, Rey) are so powerful that it balances out.

I still don't think that balances out (especially now that you have essentially two blanks on Luminara's die) You have to have a die out and card in hand and you expend both. Don't get me wrong, it's good control and I use it in my decks, but to me Vader is a significantly better character for the same cost and I think current results bare that out.

1 hour ago, Kieransi said:

Not everything needs to seem equal, because the factions make up for it in other ways.

For example, as a mostly blue hero player, I can tell you that Luminara Unduli is no slouch. "What?" You might say, "she's at least two points overcosted!" I would agree with you if she were, say, a red hero, but her dice is just so good with Guard and Destiny (two of the best cards in the game) that it evens out. Likewise, yellow heroes seem like garbage. But then there's Second Chance.

I guess what I'm saying is that if you take any two cards from any two factions (i.e. affiliation+color, in my posts there are six "factions"), they are almost guaranteed to not be balanced. You have to consider the faction as a whole, because each one has its own strengths and weaknesses.

also, if you don't believe me, check out the hero/villain split in the last pie chart:

http://www.thechancecube.com/meta/2017-store-championships-meta-report/

Remember that is almost entirely do to Poe/Maz and the Rey decks. I will fully admit that Hero has 2 really good characters... Rey, and Maz, there isnt a hero deck that can compete right now that doesnt run one of those 2, in this case an outlier is the exception, it's kind of like "the exception that proves the rule" Villain has all kinds of combinations available for hero though you have to take the best outlier's that you can because the AVERAGE hero card is kind of bleh.

4 minutes ago, AlexW said:

I still don't think that balances out (especially now that you have essentially two blanks on Luminara's die) You have to have a die out and card in hand and you expend both. Don't get me wrong, it's good control and I use it in my decks, but to me Vader is a significantly better character for the same cost and I think current results bare that out.

Maybe so. I don't have a ton of data. I just know that I took it to a local tournament and finished second, placing far above QuiGon/Rey and any Vader decks (either Vader).

My local meta has no Poe/Maz presence. People own the cards but don't want the hate. Therefore, I haven't tested it vs. Poe/Maz yet. My store has another tournament tonight. I'll take my revised Luminara/Rey deck and see how it does.

3 minutes ago, tunewalker said:

Remember that is almost entirely do to Poe/Maz and the Rey decks. I will fully admit that Hero has 2 really good characters... Rey, and Maz, there isnt a hero deck that can compete right now that doesnt run one of those 2, in this case an outlier is the exception, it's kind of like "the exception that proves the rule" Villain has all kinds of combinations available for hero though you have to take the best outlier's that you can because the AVERAGE hero card is kind of bleh.

I just think the good players are afraid to try new things. Villain completely dominated until Poe/Maz was discovered, and now hero dominates, albeit with one deck. I'm guessing there's several borderline-OP hero decks that could be made, it's just that nobody's thought of them.

Just now, Kieransi said:

I just think the good players are afraid to try new things. Villain completely dominated until Poe/Maz was discovered, and now hero dominates, albeit with one deck. I'm guessing there's several borderline-OP hero decks that could be made, it's just that nobody's thought of them.

I promise you I am trying, I have been trying Luke is my favorite character and I have been trying literally everything that i can get my hands on... I know there are a lot of people at my local area that are trying too, but usually with villains and not heroes, they did try with heroes for a bit but they gave up.

9 minutes ago, tunewalker said:

I promise you I am trying, I have been trying Luke is my favorite character and I have been trying literally everything that i can get my hands on... I know there are a lot of people at my local area that are trying too, but usually with villains and not heroes, they did try with heroes for a bit but they gave up.

Luke and Obi-Wan are perhaps too far gone. Sometimes the really expensive characters are just too weak. IG-88 is truly awful. I tried to play him, he got destroyed. There are now 24 different hero characters, and the heroes really thrive on unusual combos. I think that with Empire at War, there's going to be enough options for deckbuilding that a skilled hero player will almost always beat an unskilled villain player, and that might already be the case. I do agree with you that the villains seem a little more powerful inherently, but I will remind you that Hit and Run, It's a Trap, and Second Chance are all hero, and are flat out some of the best cards in the game.

Also, six words for the other folks in your local area:

SAVE THE REBELLION!!!

save the dream...

8 hours ago, Abyss said:

A few things:

Dark Presence vs Your Eyes Can Deceive You - YECDY effects your opponents best dice, DP effects their worst one. So it's not as simple as remove vs change.

Imperial Inspection vs Spy Net - This applies to the others, but particularly here. I feel Disrupt was generally considered the worst face in Awakenings; Focus was arguably the best non damage/special side. It makes sense that requiring a 'worse' side gets you a better effect. You've also got to consider synergy - it's hard to fit Imperial Inspection in with Villain Red, while Hero Red has abundant sources of focus.

Salvage Stand vs Double Dealing - SS can be played around to a degree via spending money, while DD will always give you an advantage.v

Having said that....this cycle of cards does really make it hard to argue against there being a villain bias. I agree that the costs on them are messed up, and they fact that it's all the villain cards the benefit is not great. Hopefully it's just teething issues, with certain effects being misvalued, or cards being changed during development. I find it hard to believe that they actually thought villains were the ones that would need a power boost in SoR.

Well done post I like this response, as you said the cost is really the issue, if YECDY and DP were both the same cost then ya hitting either would be arguably equal in strength blanking a good dice vs pure removing a bad to "meh" dice off of either a shield or a discard side both would be good effects, its just there is really no reason why YECDY should cost 1 while the other costs 0. Its already situational and the person still has the option to just reroll it.

Imperial inspection vs spy net, I dont know about that, because you have to remember not just how many focus sides Red Hero has access to, but how much red hero WANTS the affect of spy net, the only one that actually cares about this is Mill decks and I doubt they would run Mothma instead of Ackbar, or other cards that dont have focus sides, in terms of synergy you have to think about the synergy of not just the sides but also the effect. Spy net sure the effect may not be so "hard" to get off but the effect is so pigeon holed that you basically have to run Padme in a mill deck for any one to even notice this card having an effect nvm even thinking about having it as a secondary potential win condition because it costs 1 mean while Tie fighters, Krenic, Deathtroopers and even Greivous all have disrupt sides in addition to others and the effect is basically always worthwhile, not to mention of course what people have figure out to do with the splash.

SS vs DD Yes i did note that myself at first, however as I pointed out its the exact opposite of the problem above. In this case you have special sides which are rarer, powerful sure, but rarer, while resource sides are also powerful but way more common, part of what made disrupt sides so weak is that you basically gave away the fact that you had it, by rolling it out your opponent got to see it and THEN spend resources, but with SS if your opponent goes first you dont get a chance to spend it, and if they dont you know you cant save up for removal now, its pressure that disrupt never had. Again ya you can just spend it, but you have been locked out of trying to spend it after they roll so in a way it has already done its job just by being on the table, that said ya if there was 1 where I could excuse the cost difference it might have been this one, because special sides are usually nice as they are and getting free resources is something they seem to curb to a degree.

10 minutes ago, Kieransi said:

Luke and Obi-Wan are perhaps too far gone. Sometimes the really expensive characters are just too weak. IG-88 is truly awful. I tried to play him, he got destroyed. There are now 24 different hero characters, and the heroes really thrive on unusual combos. I think that with Empire at War, there's going to be enough options for deckbuilding that a skilled hero player will almost always beat an unskilled villain player, and that might already be the case. I do agree with you that the villains seem a little more powerful inherently, but I will remind you that Hit and Run, It's a Trap, and Second Chance are all hero, and are flat out some of the best cards in the game.

Also, six words for the other folks in your local area:

SAVE THE REBELLION!!!

save the dream...

ok you get chirrut to work and I will give them that quote lol

Edit: no character should ever be to far gone... RiP General Greivous.

1 minute ago, tunewalker said:

ok you get chirrut to work and I will give them that quote lol

I've actually been meaning to try eChirrut/eMothma. The red hero events might make Chirrut speedy and survivable, and Guard would still work in there! Plus there's plenty of focus from Mothma, and access to red weapons as well!

I just wanted to mention that Double Dealing can work out extremely well, especially if you have two. I'm running two in my Chewie/Rey deck, and if you throw in a Force speed or lone operative you are almost guaranteed to get two credits, meaning you could get 4 every turn. This let's you bring out some super heavy costing cards really easily. Obviously it just depends on your strategy and deck build, but I like it better than salvage stand.

8 hours ago, KotasMilitia said:

I just wanted to mention that Double Dealing can work out extremely well, especially if you have two. I'm running two in my Chewie/Rey deck, and if you throw in a Force speed or lone operative you are almost guaranteed to get two credits, meaning you could get 4 every turn. This let's you bring out some super heavy costing cards really easily. Obviously it just depends on your strategy and deck build, but I like it better than salvage stand.

Again DD is one that I can excuse its cost its on par with cards like "it binds all things" where its a support that gives value over a duration, just remember you have to do those things in more then 1 round to get the resources you spent on DD though. So if you round 1 spend 2 resources on DD and 0 on the Force speed to gain 2 resources, remember you havent actually gained anything yet just gone even, but yes in the next round you will definately gain a resource, the question with DD and to an extent It binds all things is "is it worth the action to play this and have to use it THIS round to get it to break even and then use it AGAIN next round to actually get any value out of it when the game lasts 3-4 rounds at best.

Hey, @tunewalker and @AlexW , just wanted to give a brief report of the tournament I took Luminara/Rey to. It did not perform as well as last time, partly due to me confusing whether Force Illusion discards cards from hand or deck (yes, I know, idiotic mistake... gotta read the stupid card before I use it), and also partly because I did not draw a vibroknife in my starting hand in any of the four games, even with mulligan-ing most of my hand... but yes, I will concede that although perhaps another day I might have won several of the games I lost, none of the decks I faced were the big tier-1 decks anyway. So I was sitting there afterwards, a little shell-shocked, thinking perhaps blue hero was a waste of my time. Everyone else in the tournament got several packs of SoR as a prize, but I only got one pack, the other people in the lowest four having dropped already. Well, that one pack was Obi-Wan! So now I have my second Obi-Wan dice... I guess it was karma - the universe is telling me that I must play blue heroes!

Next step: get Luke... good thing I preordered two boxes of Awakenings from Team Covenant!

10 hours ago, tunewalker said:

Again DD is one that I can excuse its cost its on par with cards like "it binds all things" where its a support that gives value over a duration, just remember you have to do those things in more then 1 round to get the resources you spent on DD though. So if you round 1 spend 2 resources on DD and 0 on the Force speed to gain 2 resources, remember you havent actually gained anything yet just gone even, but yes in the next round you will definately gain a resource, the question with DD and to an extent It binds all things is "is it worth the action to play this and have to use it THIS round to get it to break even and then use it AGAIN next round to actually get any value out of it when the game lasts 3-4 rounds at best.

Yes i think so. For example, if I have a Bowcaster in my hand turn one, and I want to get it out early, is it better to not spend the two resources on DD and save them so I start the next round with 4? Or would it be better for me to pay the 2 now for both DD, roll the force speed (pitching a card if necessary), and start the next round with 4 anyways but now with an established extra income for the rest of the game? Again, it depends on your strategy, but for me it is worth it to take one/two actions turn 1. Any later I agree it isn't worth it, but I think there are several other cards where you wouldn't play them outside turn 1 or 2.

3 hours ago, Kieransi said:

Hey, @tunewalker and @AlexW , just wanted to give a brief report of the tournament I took Luminara/Rey to. It did not perform as well as last time, partly due to me confusing whether Force Illusion discards cards from hand or deck (yes, I know, idiotic mistake... gotta read the stupid card before I use it), and also partly because I did not draw a vibroknife in my starting hand in any of the four games, even with mulligan-ing most of my hand... but yes, I will concede that although perhaps another day I might have won several of the games I lost, none of the decks I faced were the big tier-1 decks anyway. So I was sitting there afterwards, a little shell-shocked, thinking perhaps blue hero was a waste of my time. Everyone else in the tournament got several packs of SoR as a prize, but I only got one pack, the other people in the lowest four having dropped already. Well, that one pack was Obi-Wan! So now I have my second Obi-Wan dice... I guess it was karma - the universe is telling me that I must play blue heroes!

Next step: get Luke... good thing I preordered two boxes of Awakenings from Team Covenant!

I'm very sorry to hear that. I was actually rooting for you despite the fact that I was skeptical as I really like hero blue as well. I would consider a Rey+ 2 Padawans if you can. They have great dice to go with her and make the weapons cheaper. I run about 14-16 upgrades and then mostly control type events.

20 minutes ago, AlexW said:

I'm very sorry to hear that. I was actually rooting for you despite the fact that I was skeptical as I really like hero blue as well. I would consider a Rey+ 2 Padawans if you can. They have great dice to go with her and make the weapons cheaper. I run about 14-16 upgrades and then mostly control type events.

How about Rey + 2 Acolytes? That also fits in 30 points and has the same amount of health. I'm not sold on the Acolyte's ability, but maybe I should try it. I was cursed on my Awakenings pulls and got no blue heroes besides Rey. I have plenty of Awakenings, just no blue heroes...

1 hour ago, Kieransi said:

How about Rey + 2 Acolytes? That also fits in 30 points and has the same amount of health. I'm not sold on the Acolyte's ability, but maybe I should try it. I was cursed on my Awakenings pulls and got no blue heroes besides Rey. I have plenty of Awakenings, just no blue heroes...

That's really unlucky! The beauty of the Padawans is that they each have three damage sides and can reliably pair well with Rey's dice (or any other modified melee dice). I could see trying one acolyte but two isn't enough damage in the current meta.

On 6/14/2017 at 11:30 AM, AlexW said:

What deck are you running with Luminara? She's a hero I really want to make work, but....

I do feel like she, and your arguments for why she is good (Destiny and Guard), are exactly the problem with some of the heroes. A theme with them is to work well with other characters...but You're paying a premium for dice that require interaction with other game elements (other dice or cards) to be useful. Using Luminara's special to add two or three damage is only netting you one (at best) from her highest damage side. Frankly, I feel like just having two Padawans is a better use of points. For comparison, SoR Vader is exactly the same cost. Two of his sides can prove a bit more challenging to use but he needs nothing but a resource. His special has the same damage potential as Luminara but doesn't require extra dice to interact with. She needs a die that has been rolled out and is actually useful on the table long enough for her to interact with. If your opponent can see it and remove it, it was essentially removing two dice for the price of one.

She works well with Padawan.

37 minutes ago, DJRAZZ said:

She works well with Padawan.

It's still far too conditional for my taste. You're running 3 dice there, so I think it's just better to run Rey, who -- as I've mentioned --- has dice that are nicely supported by the Padawans.