There was some good discussion by @cleardave and @player1750031 in another thread (quoted below) about the current meta. I think it's worth breaking this discussion off into it's own thread.

Basically my question is: how do you feel about the current meta after the most recent release of the Droid-Themed reinforcement wave (Jawas, Hera, Chopper,0-0-0, BT-1, IG Focused on the Kill)?

Is there enough list diversity?

Are certain strategies too dominant and/or not fun to play with/against?

What changes would you like to see? This could be errata or rules changes, or new figures/cards to help round out the game, or anything else you think would help make skirmish more fun (and more popular).

I'll start off by liberally quoting the aforementioned posts because I think they hit on some common thoughts and ideas.

On 7/14/2017 at 1:49 PM, cleardave said:

I would slightly disagree with your assertions above.

The spread of lists at a tournament is not inherently the result of an out of balance game, though it could be.

It's definitely a representation of a meta, local or widespread.

Of course, the meta game, which is "the game outside the game" is often informed by over-powered combos, it is also influenced by people just running what they enjoy running.

I played a guy in Round 1 at Worlds who ran 2 Rancors and 2 Banthas against my Rancor/eWeeqs/etc list. I would have never planned for this matchup by any stretch of the imagination, and if I wasn't able to leverage my own Rancor to basically shuffle step between two choke points and abuse the Massive figure line of sight nuances, I would have probably taken a beating. Daniel, if I'm remembering your name correctly, if you're reading this, I'd love to know how that day shook out for you.

The absence of Stormtrooper lists had more to do with general fatigue of running them, and a concern that they were "nerfed" in the sense of becoming unplayable, versus made balanced, because the Internet lives in extremes of things, in this case "Broken/Overpowered" and "Unplayable".

The thing is, Imperial Troopers are still great, and what we have from Bespin is the framework for some great Spy lists to comes from Heart beyond using Blaise builds and some Leia/Sabs shenanigans.

But, by and large it seems everyone went with the Mercs toolkit. For flavour with Jabba? For sure. Were the eWeeqs easy to use? You betcha; Prowl on Round 1, start shooting.

Ease of use tends to attract a lot of players, and in this IA market, I find that I don't get the chance to throw down a lot with people like I did when I still played X-Wing in years past. This lack of practice with the game makes me more inclined to run with something that at least has a simple "bread and butter" foundation I can get behind and then season to taste, as it will require less preparation to show up and play a decent tournament. I imagine my experience is not unique to me.

So since Worlds, we've had the Droids mini wave come out, and guess what I did when I went to an event after the packs were released? I went HAM on an IG-88 list that was filled with C-3P0 and all the HK's I could muster. It actually did alright, and I wasn't the only one that day dropping the new Droid materials into my list. So do this mean that all the Droids are the new over-the-curve list archetype to build around and defend against? Hardly. It just means that some new stuff came out and I want to put it down on the table and see what happens against some serious players.

If I had the luxury of time and a community, I would play more often and go back to the disruption antics of a Spy list for Rebels and grind out some games on that so I could show up with an unaccounted for build that I know really well and sweep a Regional, but since the opportunity isn't there for me, I may elect to go with something that requires less of my time on the front end to ensure I have a decent day.

This game had a really bad start for an opening meta, in terms of viable tournament lists, and from Bespin onwards there has been an obvious and dedicated move towards making each of these releases really flesh out the traits and start to bring everything on to the table. The problem is the release window for this stuff is so slow that by the time Heart comes out with not just new material, but more importantly the implied material to back-fix Brawlers, Vehicles, and put Vader/Han(?)/Chewie(?) on the menu has viable winning-table tournament list foundations, it's going to be a slow go.

Meanwhile, Destiny is out and taking the gaming world by storm, and it's natural cross-talk with Star Wars games means our humble community will probably lose some bodies as a result. I know locally that if comes down to Destiny and IA sharing a day for a tournament, we'll lose some bodies to Destiny.

You'll probably continue to not see anything other than "safe" picks in IA tournaments until Heart hits store shelves, but I would challenge you to go back and take a hard look at what you would bring to the table as an alternative.

Do you dare to show up using only a Rebel (without Jedi Luke/Rangers) or Imperial list that wasn't posted up here or some other public spot? Show up with something a little janky (but that still has something tying it together like trait synergy on the command deck) and try your best to make it work. See if you can't catch a Luke player with their pants down when you Comm Disruption their Son of Skywalker play. You'd probably win the game right there if the player over-committed because nobody runs Spies and thus nobody can stop you from playing the card and getting that second activation with Luke the Butcher.

Against a competent or great player, the presence of all those Spies might slow them down from sending in the wrecking ball. Against a "total noob" who just ran Luke and eRangers because that's what's popular and they're not super into the game, you might just blow them up.

People like new shiny things. Jabba's Realm not only brought a lot of that but rebalanced Skirmish as a whole to make the game about interaction, not points denial. We have everything we need right now to have fun tournaments with all kinds of nutty stuff happening with the list building. What we actually need is the players to make it happen.

On 7/14/2017 at 8:28 PM, player1750031 said:

I've been playing the skirmish game competitively from day 1. There was a point when I'd do a three- or four-round tournament every other week, plus practice games here and there. I've seen 'metas', players, hypetrains and combos come and go. I don't like to brag about myself, but I like to think the glass Nationals trophy I have on my shelf means I have at least some grip on how competitive Imperial Assault works.

The healthiest this game's been competitively and the closest it was to being balanced was immediately before the Bespin wave.

Before Hoth and the card errata we had the tomfoolery of 4x4 and Rebel Sabs to deal with.

After Hoth and the card errata Imperial Trooper swarms were bull dozing everything everywhere, because post-nerf Sabs couldn't deal with the Snowtrooper AoE heals fast enough and Mercs literally had no playable pieces to compete with outside of HK droids.

After the Bantha wave we were in the sweet spot where you could legitimately build competitive squads in every affiliation. We got sort of a rock-paper-scissors thing going, since Bantha-focused squads had a favourable matchup against trooper swarms, Trooper swarms had the edge over elite-based Rebel lists, and stuff like Rebel Twins were primed to dismantle Banthas. You could now do good with Saboteur-based Rebel lists because Banthas meant that Trooper swarms were less prevalent. Sure, the situation wasn't ideal - Wookie squads based around the idea of points denial were a stinker to play against, but that had more to do with the map rotation that was played at the time.

After that we got the Bespin wave and Cross-Trained Imperial Troopers with Blaise became the undisputed king that trumped everything and eventually crystallized into one cookie-cutter, 100% optimal build that would win event after event.

Then late last year we got the one-two punch of the Jabba wave and the points scoring changes that wiped Imperial as a faction off the face of the planet almost overnight. Rebels can still technically hold their own, but in order to do so they must optimize their list building to include the newest releases - with the standards set by the Jabba wave, the old stuff, with the usual exception of Gideon and Threepio, can barely pull its weight. Mercs have been running rampant everywhere since early this year, and what's worse 90% of the stuff they use is exclusively the newest stuff available. Imperials got the short end of the stick in the last wave and it shows - they have nothing to compete with. Hate to say it, but the power creep is real.

For me personally, it got to a point that I am starting to question if the skirmish game is even fun anymore. I mean, it's fun to gather round and hang out with all the people I've met through the events, I've made several lasting friendships and great memories over this game, not to mention meeting a load of people from a whole country away that grace us with their presence for larger events, which is absolutely awesome. But the skirmish gameplay itself... Between the absurd amount of stackable buffs, the updated scoring rules, newest figures performing far beyond anything we've seen so far in the game, Hunter Command Cards that allow to further stack insane buffs, cards like On The Lam removing any element of risk from aggressive plays, Jabba and Black Market cycling through the deck at faster than light speed and everyone and their hamster getting to re-roll everything every time, the skirmish 'meta' is rapidly devolving towards games consisting of the first turn and a half being an exercise in token distribution and then the game being decided simply by which of the players manages to get their nuke-em-all, chuck-a-million-dice alpha strike in before the other person.

Personally, I generally agree with @cleardave and @player1750031 that the current meta is lacking. I don't think it's so far off the mark though there are good Rebel and Imperial lists lurking right below the mass of Merc hunters. But I'm very curious what you all think.

In particular: if you have specific suggestions about changes I'd love to hear them!

I think for new players breaking into the game, it's easy to get Core and the Jabba's Realm expansion to be able to immediately have a playable list. So, for attracting new players, that's a great thing.

For a game like IA, it's important to remember that the meta will always be shifting. Each blister wave will change what people use. There are things out there now that seem weak, but are just waiting for future content to synergize with. We're in a better place now than when the 4x4 crushed everyone. List building is a lot of fun right now because there are a lot of options. HotE is going to bring more options. Now that the designers have a little more focus on the skirmish side, I'm optimistic about the rebel heros/riot troopers/sentry droids. Even the AT-DP could be interesting in skirmish.

One of my biggest concerns is that the design team will run away with the extra damage theme and the earlier figures we love to play will become unplayable. There seems to be a lot of extra damage running around from command cards and abilities, and thankfully not all of them require an action, but that added to self-focusing figures (remember when focus required an action or 1pt command card or was just plain rare for a lot of figures) make ultra damage a possibility where you have a better chance of erasing a 5-6 health figures without even blinking. It's hard enough to justify some of these figures (most elite troopers, sabs, spies, etc) now. I know that the heroes need to be present and sometimes even a focal point for games, but lets keep some of the figures at least useful.

Self focusing figures is a bit of a misnomer to me. Right or wrong, I prefer to think of the new IG-88 as a three dice figure that can't be focused. They had to buff his attack with the fix, but they did that in a way that also put a cap on it.

I agree that when the Bantha hit, that was the best stage for me for balance and for the variety of lists within factions. But still I'm enjoying right now. Rebels have a competitive list with Luke/Rangers, but that's about all I can get to work so I'm really looking forward to the next wave for the old fixes and new units (and hopefully for force users to get a needed boost). Imperial is a step behind, but it still has some great units and is poised for a huge comeback with the next wave's awesomeness. Mercs are obviously in a good spot, and even though eQuays are dominant and Hunter cards are king, the units are interesting and there are lots of paths to victory. I just played a great game on Vassal with a Rancor, weequay, eQuay, Vinto, Onar, and Jabba list. Is that top tier? No, but it can be competitive and is really fun to play.

So, while I'm looking forward to the balance the next wave will bring, I'm content for now.

-ryanjamal

38 minutes ago, Fightwookies said:

Self focusing figures is a bit of a misnomer to me. Right or wrong, I prefer to think of the new IG-88 as a three dice figure that can't be focused. They had to buff his attack with the fix, but they did that in a way that also put a cap on it.

Et tu, BT-1?

Having a four die attack as standard for a figure seems a bit extreme, even if he is fun to play.

So, Im a very new player, and this kind of thread has me worried about whether I should actually jump in or not. Lack of players seems to be a real bad thing. Why are people leaving for destiny? Because I played alot of destiny for about a month, and then sold my entire awakenings playset because frankly, it was boring and lacked depth. Which were things I found interesting about imperial assault. Obviously if im just playing at home with friends, tier lists and stuff dont matter as much, but as far as a game that has a good consistent player base, is IA no longer one of them?

17 hours ago, ryanjamal said:

I agree that when the Bantha hit, that was the best stage for me for balance and for the variety of lists within factions. But still I'm enjoying right now. Rebels have a competitive list with Luke/Rangers, but that's about all I can get to work so I'm really looking forward to the next wave for the old fixes and new units (and hopefully for force users to get a needed boost). Imperial is a step behind, but it still has some great units and is poised for a huge comeback with the next wave's awesomeness. Mercs are obviously in a good spot, and even though eQuays are dominant and Hunter cards are king, the units are interesting and there are lots of paths to victory. I just played a great game on Vassal with a Rancor, weequay, eQuay, Vinto, Onar, and Jabba list. Is that top tier? No, but it can be competitive and is really fun to play.

So, while I'm looking forward to the balance the next wave will bring, I'm content for now.

-ryanjamal

I think what you said is perfect and what everyone needs to realize. There will always be one optimal list for you to play at any given tournament(based on a number of factors including the meta where you will be playing, your experience with figures and what figures are currently strong/gel together) but that doesn't mean that other lists aren't competitive. Hunters aren't so good right now that another list couldn't come in and pull out a win.

Now ideally everything would be at a level that no faction or figures would be out of whack at a tournament but in a competitive game like this with so many moving parts(including a campaign to balance in the mix) it's really not possible for some things to not be better than others. As long as the top dogs aren't so good that everything else is thrown out window then I really feel we are in a decent spot.

7 minutes ago, taylorcowbell said:

So, Im a very new player, and this kind of thread has me worried about whether I should actually jump in or not. Lack of players seems to be a real bad thing. Why are people leaving for destiny? Because I played alot of destiny for about a month, and then sold my entire awakenings playset because frankly, it was boring and lacked depth. Which were things I found interesting about imperial assault. Obviously if im just playing at home with friends, tier lists and stuff dont matter as much, but as far as a game that has a good consistent player base, is IA no longer one of them?

The skirmish part of the game has always had a bit of a struggle to build a large player base. This has been especially true as Destiny pulls away casual players who want something lighter and with less (up-front) investment. The metagame balance, while perhaps not the best it's ever been, is far from the worst. I'm just hoping to identify ways to improve. The community of invested players here is really great and welcoming so please do join us!

Also: The campaign game is going strong and has a lot of players as far as I can tell from the outside, but that's a better question for the Campaign forums.

15 minutes ago, totalnoob said:

Et tu, BT-1?

Having a four die attack as standard for a figure seems a bit extreme, even if he is fun to play.

It's not as much of a problem as you're imagining because: 1) His surges aren't so great (they're good but no +2 Damage) and with 4 die you can over-surge, 2) 4-die attacks are overkill vs smaller or nearly dead figures, 3) he's a bit of a glass cannon who can (and should) be killed quickly by your opponent.

13 minutes ago, totalnoob said:

Et tu, BT-1?

Having a four die attack as standard for a figure seems a bit extreme, even if he is fun to play.

It's a lot of dice. His surge skills don't really add damage to the attack though, so it's not overpowered for a single attack. But yeah, that's his standard attack and you can't focus him to add a fifth dice.

1 minute ago, nickv2002 said:

It's not as much of a problem as you're imagining because: 1) His surges aren't so great (they're good but no +2 Damage) and with 4 die you can over-surge, 2) 4-die attacks are overkill vs smaller or nearly dead figures, 3) he's a bit of a glass cannon who can (and should) be killed quickly by your opponent.

4) Every time I play against him, he somehow doesn't have enough accuracy (3-4 avg rolling 4 dice lol?) thus forcing him to be closer to the opponent which leads to 3) killed quickly

Cross-posting my comment from Reddit:

What really needs addressing is Take Initiative. It's a card you have no choice but to include, and one you have no choice but to defend against (Negation). As a friend of mine said, it makes 15 cards / 15 pts into 13 cards / 14 pts. The game too heavily revolves around them. Maul is an attempt to address this, but I'd like to see an ability (or failing that, errata) along these lines:

Take Initiative: Use at the start of a round and choose one of your deployment cards. Your opponent may exhaust a deployment he controls of equal or higher deployment cost to discard this card. If he does not, exhaust your deployment. Then, claim the initiative token.

27 minutes ago, totalnoob said:

Et tu, BT-1?

Having a four die attack as standard for a figure seems a bit extreme, even if he is fun to play.

Eh, I don't think it is. He still only averages 5 damage a roll and his range can be difficult to predict. Often times that fourth die is just a surge you don't need.

Edit: geez, we all replied to this at the same time.

On 5/19/2017 at 10:31 AM, pheaver said:

If I could rewrite the card, I'd add "After your opponent's first activation this round, they may activate another unit." That way, you get the first activation, but then your opponent gets two, so really you just moved one activation (a Bantha or Weequay squad swarm or Luke) forward one, instead of moving all of your activations forward one.

Does that make sense? If you didn't play Take, the activation order would be Opponent's Weequay 1, your Jedi Luke, opponent's Weequay 2, your Obi-Wan, etc. Right now, when you play Take, your Jedi Luke will go before their Weequay 1, Obi-Wan goes before Weequay 2, etc. It changes the whole turn around. With my change, Luke will still go before Weequay 1, but Obi-Wan still goes after Weequay 2.

Here is another solution that I liked that would help balance the Take Initiative card.

5 minutes ago, mellowthello said:

Cross-posting my comment from Reddit:

What really needs addressing is Take Initiative. It's a card you have no choice but to include, and one you have no choice but to defend against (Negation). As a friend of mine said, it makes 15 cards / 15 pts into 13 cards / 14 pts. The game too heavily revolves around them. Maul is an attempt to address this, but I'd like to see an ability (or failing that, errata) along these lines:

Take Initiative: Use at the start of a round and choose one of your deployment cards. Your opponent may exhaust a deployment he controls of equal or higher deployment cost to discard this card. If he does not, exhaust your deployment card. Then, claim the initiative token.

Eh, I don't think it is. He still only averages 5 damage a roll and his range can be difficult to predict. Often times that fourth die is just a surge you don't need.

Edit: geez, we all replied to this at the same time.

I would disagree. For a while I stopped playing Take Initiative at all because I disliked the fact i had to exhaust a figure, and I was consistently negated. Negation I don't know why you would ever not bring it. Even if you know your opponent is not running Take Initiative, there are so many good Zero point cards to prevent that its a no brainer to me.

While this may be opinion more than fact, there are at least 4-5 cards that are MUST includes in my decks....Element of Surprise, Celebration (mostly for competitive games), Positioning Advantage, just to name a few.

9 minutes ago, mellowthello said:

Cross-posting my comment from Reddit:

What really needs addressing is Take Initiative. It's a card you have no choice but to include, and one you have no choice but to defend against (Negation). As a friend of mine said, it makes 15 cards / 15 pts into 13 cards / 14 pts. The game too heavily revolves around them. Maul is an attempt to address this, but I'd like to see an ability (or failing that, errata) along these lines:

Take Initiative: Use at the start of a round and choose one of your deployment cards. Your opponent may exhaust a deployment he controls of equal or higher deployment cost to discard this card. If he does not, exhaust your deployment. Then, claim the initiative token.

Thanks @mellowthello & @reznoob the power of Take Initiative is certainly an area of game balance that could improve. I think there are lots of potential ways to fix it so if anyone else has ideas I'd love hear them.

I like @mellowthello's suggestion for take initiative, since it forces you into a bit more of a decision about whether or not you should use it. Another (less wordy) option might be to require that the exhausted card be X-cost or higher so that you don't have people exhausting 3P0, officers, etc. that they probably don't care that much about anyway.

With that said, though, I still think I like mellowthello's suggestion the best. Not only does it make it more of a choice as to whether or not you include the card (although you still probably would, most times), it also makes you make a choice about how to play it. So say you're running a list with a Bantha or Jedi Luke or whatever and you're definitely going to bring it along. Your entire play is based on being able to pull off take initiative this round, so you play the card - but what do you exhaust? How high do you go before your opponent won't want to match? How high can you go before it's not even worth it to play it anymore? On the flip side, if you have negation but your opponent just chose to exhaust a high-cost figure, is it worth playing the negation (and giving that figure back his activation) or saving it for something else? That seems to at least add an element of fun speculation/bluffing/whatever to what is right now a pretty mechanical (yet still game-changing) decision to play the card as soon as you get it.

It seems to me FFG is doing a soft rotation with this game. The old stuff is "out of rotation" because it just isn't playable. Once HotE hits, the new meta will center around the new stuff. Making sure everyone buys the new stuff and also, makes the game fresh, for a while. What I do like about this soft rotation is FFG going back and making the older units playable. It still gives value to the older products. I hope to see more of that.

I think the real question is - Is scum on the way out of the meta? Can Jabba compete with the Empire?

19 minutes ago, reznoob said:

Here is another solution that I liked that would help balance the Take Initiative card.

Interesting. I like the idea in theory, albeit with some skepticism as to how it'd affect the meta. Would like to avoid introducing more double activation play alongside Squad Swarm / Strength in Numbers / Son of Skywalker / Blaze of Glory.

18 minutes ago, wannabepudge said:

I would disagree. For a while I stopped playing Take Initiative at all because I disliked the fact i had to exhaust a figure, and I was consistently negated. Negation I don't know why you would ever not bring it. Even if you know your opponent is not running Take Initiative, there are so many good Zero point cards to prevent that its a no brainer to me.

While this may be opinion more than fact, there are at least 4-5 cards that are MUST includes in my decks....Element of Surprise, Celebration (mostly for competitive games), Positioning Advantage, just to name a few.

I understand the desire to drop take initiative when it's constantly negated, but I think that only speaks to its necessity. For example, I played Paul Heaver at Worlds on the exact same map with the exact same list Daniel Taylor was running in his final round. Now I will not claim to be as consistent a player as either of those two, but the same scenario occurred for both DT and myself: Paul's Bantha rushed in to Jundland Terror and Take Initiative. In DT's case, he negated it and the game was basically over. In my case, I failed to draw negation. With Squad Swarm and Assassinate, I'd have killed the Bantha in a single turn, but the damage from a Take Init was done and I couldn't recover. Same lists, same map, Take Initiative.

I don't think take the initiative is a problem - please don't change it! Please don't nerf it! It's practically a core mechanic.

Is Son of Skywalker/Blaze of Glory into Take the Initiative a huge swing? Heck yes it is! You're not investing 12pts into Luke or Iggy to have a slighly superior unit. This unit has to be 2x as good as eQuays. Focused & hidden eQuays can cripple or potentially kill Iggy or Luke in a single activation, with NO command cards. Investing another 2-3 points and 2-3 card slots on top of the unit's cost for a devastating combo is huge, but taking it away from the beast units isn't the answer.

Take is also a card that can lose value fast as the game draws on. It's also a card that once it is played by your opponent, the game becomes more predictable - once you've weathered the storm, you know where you stand. Don't over commit! Plan on your take getting negated, plan on not being able to negate theirs.

So many command cards are on the power level of Take and Take is the easiest to play around. Changing the mechanic of how it works as suggested makes it practically unplayable (I despise playing cards that allow my opponent to decide if they trigger it - it's like, hey, here's a comm disruption that you can only use against this card - I'm going to play this card, will you comm disruption it? I'd argue its a far worse snow-ball effect for your opponent - already losing, I can give you initiative, or I can exhaust one of my two remaining units... Now, at least you pay the price for taking the initiative.

14 minutes ago, wannabepudge said:

I would disagree. For a while I stopped playing Take Initiative at all because I disliked the fact i had to exhaust a figure, and I was consistently negated. Negation I don't know why you would ever not bring it. Even if you know your opponent is not running Take Initiative, there are so many good Zero point cards to prevent that its a no brainer to me.

While this may be opinion more than fact, there are at least 4-5 cards that are MUST includes in my decks....Element of Surprise, Celebration (mostly for competitive games), Positioning Advantage, just to name a few.

The way the game is now, negation is automatically held until your opponent plays Take Initiative. If you don't bring TI, your opponent will just sit on negation while other 0 cost cards swing the game in your favor. I didn't bring TI to a couple recent tournaments and I noticed that negation was never played against me. It doesn't even cross a lot of players minds to use it on a positioning advantage that takes out a strong figure before they can activate.

6 minutes ago, Mep said:

It seems to me FFG is doing a soft rotation with this game. The old stuff is "out of rotation" because it just isn't playable. Once HotE hits, the new meta will center around the new stuff. Making sure everyone buys the new stuff and also, makes the game fresh, for a while. What I do like about this soft rotation is FFG going back and making the older units playable. It still gives value to the older products. I hope to see more of that.

I think the real question is - Is scum on the way out of the meta? Can Jabba compete with the Empire?

I don't think soft-rotation is the objective, but, on the flip-side, it's certainly not ideal to introduce new stuff that's not competitive in some way. It's a tricky balance!

I agree that skirmish upgrades for older stuff are great!

1 minute ago, Fightwookies said:

The way the game is now, negation is automatically held until your opponent plays Take Initiative. If you don't bring TI, your opponent will just sit on negation while other 0 cost cards swing the game in your favor. I didn't bring TI to a couple recent tournaments and I noticed that negation was never played against me. It doesn't even cross a lot of players minds to use it on a positioning advantage that takes out a strong figure before they can activate.

This is true. I've been playing a five activation imperial list recently and don't run TI because there is rarely anything I'll want to tap for it but the only time I saw Negation played was against a friend who already knew I didn't have TI in my command deck.

2 minutes ago, nickv2002 said:

I don't think soft-rotation is the objective, but, on the flip-side, it's certainly not ideal to introduce new stuff that's not competitive in some way. It's a tricky balance!

I agree that skirmish upgrades for older stuff are great!

Unfortunately we'll probably never get skirmish fixes for any of the unplayable heroes from the first few boxes and I doubt many of the generic troops will ever get changed since they aren't thematic like Han, Vader or Chewie.