1 hour ago, Squark said:

Snipers only make up 16.5% of a list. There's plenty of room for DLTs, Radar Dish Guns, and other AT weapons. I haven't had a chance to run the new vehicles, yet, so I reserve judgement, but much of the problem with sniper teams is how you can get so many activations for such a small investment.

It’s only 2 wounds though, that’s not durable at all, and nothing but another exposed sniper team doing countersniping would bother to fire at it. (Until they can maneuver both minis into LOS)

40 minutes ago, Derrault said:

It’s only 2 wounds though, that’s not durable at all, and nothing but another exposed sniper team doing countersniping would bother to fire at it. (Until they can maneuver both minis into LOS)

What does that have to do with me explaining why the popularity of max sniper teams doesn't create an opening for vehicles?

3 hours ago, Squark said:

What does that have to do with me explaining why the popularity of max sniper teams doesn't create an opening for vehicles?

It was directed at the part where you mentioned how you can “get so many activations”.

Those activations only have 2 wounds, and they do very little damage. Qualitatively, the strike team activations don’t mean much.

14 hours ago, Derrault said:

Ahem, well, yes.

I mean, both rebel heavies are fast and have good enough range that they can touch a strike team on the opposite end of the board within 2 turns easy. The AT-ST has the mortar and the speederbikes are certainly fast enough to close distance and wipe strike teams before suffering any significant damage.

My AT-ST has historically been great at deleting sniper teams. Maybe I was lucky but it can see over cover and rolls enough dice that causing two actual casualties isn't normally a problem. Even if they peek around a corner, it's often the corner of something my AT-ST can see right over.

13 hours ago, Angry Ewok said:

yah but they are not multi role enough to be a consistent good choice in a list currently. This may change with time. Hopefully the new vehicles address this.

...

That is not fair in a mental contest where the point is to test your mental skills against one another on a fair playing field.

You're describing the problem latent to pretty much all tournaments for points-buy games in my opinion. Game designers are fallible human beings and have fewer playtesting resources than the online community. Reset some points? Someone will find a new cheesy thing and that'll be what everyone takes. I wonder if you were around for the Ugnaught Swarm thing.

You can vent your moral outrage to the internet, or you can run a tournament/campaign that abides by the rules changes you'd like to see and report back the results.

If you actually want a contest of play, you have to use pre-set army lists, play several times, and switch sides to see if one list had an advantage. Or y’know. Play chess. Chess had ALMOST balanced armies.

2 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

Ugnaught Swarm

I just imagined it and it was terrifying...

@Squark I was speaking in more general terms. Snipers (not just in Legion) are generally ineffective against hardened targets, such as vehicles. This is true in Legion, however the way the units are designed means that vehicles are not played as often as may have been intended in design/playtesting. One also has to wonder exactly how much thought/testing was given to "competitive" lists in design versus balancing the units for non-competitive play as well.

Does someone know the last time Luke Eddy or Alex Davy played in a tournament at any level???

One idea I have for curbing the use of sniper strike teams is a change in the rules reference guide. Make it so that when a unit looses its leader, the new leader must have the same equipment as on the unit card. In other words, unit leader upgrades could not stay the unit leader after being killed. The new leader would have to be the model that the unit would use if the leader upgrade had not been taken. The new leader would still benefit from unit wide upgrades,like grenades, but not their model specific ones. This would mean the heavy weapon upgrade for strike teams, the officer upgrades for core units, Bistan or Pao for pathfinders, and DT-F16 for death troopers, etc. I think this would mostly effect strike teams, being only two models, and would be a good way lessen their effect.

I know my explanation is a little wordy. Hopefully FFG can word it better.

7 hours ago, NeonWolf said:

Does someone know the last time Luke Eddy or Alex Davy played in a tournament at any level???

I don't think they ever have, or would.

I wish they would though, I mean if I design a game, the best stress test of what I have created is to experience what competitive play is like, I know they are probably playing with stuff 18 months ahead of where we are now, but its still important to see what other non-likeminded people do with the thing you have created.

FFG does pull players from the competitive scene for playtesting. But that's no guarantee everything will get caught (Playtest teams are a tiny fraction of the community, and potentially vulnerable to groupthink like any small closed group), and sometimes deadlines happen and you have to ship what you have.

I'm not saying I think FFG is amazing at playtesting (Some of the gossip/gripes I've heard from x-wing playtesters about their experiences have been facepalm inducing), but balancing a game is a long complicated process where data both quantitative and qualitative, egos, competing visions, and so many other things get mixed up. Saying, "The dev team should play more competitively" is kind of trivializing things. And while good knowledge of the mechanics of a game is important for a designer, they don't need to be exceptional players. There's very little overlap between automotive engineers and racecar drivers, after all.