12 minutes ago, SpiderMana said:

I really want to know what BBQ consists of in this context.

Han, Chewie, 3 flame RTs with uplinks. Rebel Troopers and astromechs to taste.

57 minutes ago, SpiderMana said:

I really want to know what BBQ consists of in this context.

Sorry about the BBQ. Han, and 3 Flamer AT-RTs.

*edit* Ork beat me to it!

The game could use an activation equalizer of some sort. Pass tokens are a decent option. Alternatively something could be done where the player with fewer activations gets extra orders or something. I think it might be really helpful to just have an overall activation cap at list construction. 8-9 activations max might make room for more expensive stuff.

I just spent a few minutes going over the Invader League Finals bracket lists. I’m simply going to post a quick & dirty parse (since I’m on my phone).

# of lists: 32

# of lists with 3 snipers teams: 25

# of lists with 2 sniper teams: 5

# of lists with 3 saboteur teams: 1

# of lists with no sniper/saboteur teams: 1 (Yay Breadwinner!)

When the commando/scout team nerf eventually comes, no one can be shocked. The competitive meta is stale with them as is, but at least some players are trying to push the needle a small bit.

1 list with IRG

1 list with Pathfinders

2 lists with the Oppressor tank

1 list with AT RT

1 list with a land speeder (no, not the snowspeeder )

1 list with Speeder bikes

Lots of 1-2 Deathtroopers as well as Bossk, with I take as a positive tbh.

On 4/17/2019 at 3:25 AM, Angry Ewok said:

I am continually annoyed by the boring, spreadsheet efficient, tactically passive, list composition in most top competitive legion lists. There are some stand outs that break out of the mold and I admire them and hope they will continue to find success. We need ppl like them to break up the current snooze fest.

Sadly and unimaginatively, the general formula for high level tournament success is really pretty simple if you look at the reports though. You must take your faction's best (aka most long range) troop option, and not just a few, you had better spam them hard. Most lists feature 5-6, Z-6 Troopers or DLT Troopers, then to further pad your activation advantage you have built by spamming efficient troop choices, you then spam your faction's sniper teams. So now that you have filled out your obligatory 8-9 units, you then actually consider what units you like to use, or think have tactical wrinkles worth considering.

What you don't see much of are units that exceed the 70 point range, anything above that is hard to justify when you factor in the loss of activations it represents, such a unit must offer something amazing to warrant its inclusion. People say vehicles are bad in legion, why is that? Because not only do they not score in every mission, but they also fall short of this 70 point or less bench mark of inclusion, and can not normally be justified as one of your above 70 point splurge units...

The end result is a bunch of lists that look basically the same, and fight basically the same, and typically not in a very dynamic or tactically deep/challenging way. They all excel in attrition fights because as enemy units attempt to close, they must spend actions to move instead of taking other beneficial actions like Aim, Dodge, etc. All other things being equal, the army that gets to take aim or dodge actions instead of moving will out perform an army that does. An army with equal range and more activations will end up getting more shots on their opponent as they wait the other side out and hit them once they have moved into range. This issue only gets worse when you factor in suppression. An army with more units can create more suppression ( thus incentivizing activations even more). We all also see the massive advantage of having more units/activations when setting up a Last/First attack or covering objectives once the enemy no longer can react due to being out activated.

The cover system is admittedly designed to encourage larger dice pools, but when crits get around this limitation and ALL missions are objective based, it is nowhere near enough to limit whole sale spreadsheet efficiency spam across both factions.

As with basically any alternate activation game, having more activations is advantageous. That is why we have the meta we currently do, a never ending parade of blah armies running the same 4-5 units over and over.

Legion needs missions that award points for killing units. 40k is a simplistic, shadow of the tactical depth legion has to offer but they do get one thing right, to counter the overwhelming strength of MSU style lists in objective based games, kill point missions are also included in tournament packets. This introduces risk to MSU players for spamming units.

Imagine the list design space that opens up if players could include a mission in their battle deck that awards 1 VP for each enemy unit killed? Or even better, if in addition to the VP's earned from holding objectives, you earned 1 VP for every 3 units destroyed. We would see people reconsidering the ubiquitous sniper teams for sure. Also there would be less pressure on each unit in your list to conform to the 70 or under template. Tough, hard hitting units become less of a liability and more of a factor in list design.

As it stands I am just not impressed or interested in going to large events and playing against people who seek to create a stand off situation and create just enough of an edge to force the other side to push forward, thereby exposing themselves to the attrition mismatch I outlined above. The game is not 3 months old any more, all lists should not look the exact same... Put down your calculators and actually play the game, don't just tie the mission and win my killing 1 unit and hiding all game.

If your name was ewokscout it would have happened Already @TauntaunScout @DewbackScout

37 minutes ago, Fistofriles said:

If your name was ewokscout it would have happened Already @TauntaunScout @DewbackScout

Wait what? What do I have to do with this?

@Angry Ewok Tune in, turn on, drop out. Play with like minded friends and be awesome. Don't worry about the casual players at stores and tournaments. If you DO establish yourself in a local scene, usually even singleminded tournament players will play non-optimized lists with you if you make it clear what kind of game you're looking for. They generally don't get any valuable experience by defeating non-optimized list on turn two. Whereas a lot more can be learned in any game that take 5-6 turns. In between tournaments those players aren't actually trying to win, they're trying to learn. Though that can vary, I've met some real ****'s, but if you make it clear you're bringing a list based on [not winning] and are just placing scenery and markers in places that look cool, your opponent will usually play along.

When you have two factions, few units, and both a publisher and a player base (apparently) influenced far more by computer programming than military history, everything you lament is inevitable. If you don't like the way the current tournaments work, write and run your own at the local store. If you provide prizes you will get players. If it's awesome it'll catch on. I find that 40k has far more tactical depth than Legion. Jiggering the order of operations, or stacking bonuses, isn't tactics, it's basically computer coding. I find that tactics, like double envelopment or interlocking fields of fire or oblique order, which I employ to great effect in 40k, rarely work in Legion because of its fundamental rules of combat and activation.

If you got points just for killing units, you'd just see a new round of same old lists over and over. This was a problem in 2nd edition 40k because were awarded for squad destruction. Therefore a space marine army with 4 expensive squads could only ever have 4 points scored against it, while an Ork army with 12 cheap squads could have 12 points scored against it. Then in some editions they tried counting how many points worth of stuff you killed which slowed scoring to a crawl. So if you handed out points for destroying units, people would show up with 3 corps units with medical droids that hide out, and a very few, very expensive, heroes and vehicles.

If it was accomplished through specific missions, bids for Blue player would get out of hand.

I think the solution is still a core rules changes, for contesting objectives. Ie, if any enemy model is within X of an objective, in all missions, you can't get points for claiming it. AT-ST's would get real interesting.

The game is built with 5 options in each battle deck category. Blue player cuts 1 currently from their deck and one is unused, I am encouraging the inclusion of other missions that allow points for to be scored by killing units. This does not invalidate the current all objective based missions we currently have but the inclusion of kill point oriented missions would give the option for lower activation armies to include these missions in their list. There needs to be a threat/disincentive to just spam the cheapest most efficient, units simply to pad activations.

Ask any "top player," what the best non-core unit is. They will unilaterally say Strike Teams. I get tired of hearing players go through their lists and post game wrap ups saying "well I wish I had more snipers,"

They are a pandemic issue when they are as prevalent as they are. They also do not have similarly cheap, similarly effective counters. They only other units that can threaten at that range are other snipers and command cards... We would not see them being used as much if they had weapons that make them come into range of other more standard line units.

When a unit's only effective counter is itself we as players need to be asking ourselves if using that unit is good for the game, my suggestion is that they are terrible for the game.

More 4+ range weapons and or ignore LoS weapons would fix them quickly btw.

Just imagine the massive amount of variety we would see in legion lists if Snipers could only be taken inside full sized Scout Trooper and Rebel Commando units, this does not invalidate peoples purchase of the models, but then drastically shifts the meta and allows other units to be fielded more easly without being squeezed out by Sniper Strike Teams, Ex. Death Troopers, Wookies, Pathfinders, The full sized Scout and Commando units, al of which are good and fun but often overlooked when compared to the point and click effectiveness of corner peaking sniper teams.

The primary issue (beyond that snipers are to cheap, easy to use, and have an abundance of ways to ignore conventional rules of the game) is that they are far harder to kill than any other 44 point units and far more effective.

Corner peaking alone insures that it will require a minimum of 2 activations to kill them

Unlimited Range (not usually a good game design choice in general BTW as it drastically limits counter play options) allows them to ignore most of the threatening units on the field

Pushing forward with conventional units to engage them is an potion but that is usually impractical because it over extends your force. It also forces the attacking unit to spend several of its limited actions to close the distance dropping its efficiency all while the snipers laugh and either fire and move out of LoS or Aim fire if in no immediate danger.

They are highly likely to produce 1 dead model (roughly 60%) no matter if that is an expensive unit with great armor, (paying a lot of points for that armor), or if it is a cheap model, it also ignores the Dodge token nullifying one of the primary potential counter plays against it. And will likely still get its kill even when shooting into heavy cover, once again circumventing another major options for limiting incoming damage from small dice pool units.

The units gets to ignore or mitigate the following mechanics conventionally used to mitigate damage: cover, range, armor, dodge,

Magic bullets are no brainers... and are a detriment to the back and forth of play and counter play. They over simplify the game and reward ppl for taking them, not for playing well.

Kwatchi's post above only makes my point more...

1 hour ago, Angry Ewok said:

The primary issue

...is that the game is barely two years old and had two factions. If it wasn’t this repetitive list it’d be another. We’re about to double the number of factions, that might do more. Adding a 1/4 chance (or far less!) of getting that mission card with “search and destroy” points won’t fix the tournament lists.

But you’re going to find similar issues in the tournament scene for anything, now that the internet lets lists spread overnight and the culture of wargames has shifted from that of RPGers to that of CCGers. It sounds like you’re shocked to find the bars are full of drunks and karaoke. If you don’t want to be around drunks who sing loud, have a beer at home.

Balance is important at all times, not just when the game is 5 years old

Taking the path of least resistance and willfully spamming units that are clearly an issue and ignore massive portions of the rules system, should not be celebrated but shunned,

Winning by running the proven meta proves nothing, it just means you are willing to buy, paint, and play them, and have a functional internet browser.

It also proves that you are willing to remove the tactical depth and variety of varied lists in favor of a watered down version of the game where you no longer care what token you pull because your list is such a blah fest of timing neutral units and copy past range 3 troops choices.

You say it is efficient and competitive (and it is) but you are turning the game from chess into checkers.

The way you win is far more important to if you win. Play with something that does not cheapen the experience for all the people you have to play...

1 hour ago, Angry Ewok said:

Balance is important at all times, not just when the game is 5 years old

Taking the path of least resistance and...

Well you also have to consider that players can’t even play the biggest tournaments in this game without winning smaller ones first. That’s going to actually cull out other attitudes to begin with.

There’s also no way that I know of to gain recognition for anything else but winning. Back in the day, you could lose all your games in the Warhammer grand tournament and still get your picture in White Dwarf if you did something interesting with your army theme. Or won a side category like Best Sportsman.

Legion’s big tournaments, so far as I can tell, has no rewards for anything else. And no equivalent of some roving person thinking you’re cool and putting you in White Dwarf.

And I do shun them. By not going to tournaments. And I don’t own even 1 sniper team for either army.

Unpainted armies are the 90% majority in storeplay. Why would minmaxing be any rarer?

4 hours ago, Angry Ewok said:

The primary issue (beyond that snipers are to cheap, easy to use, and have an abundance of ways to ignore conventional rules of the game) is that they are far harder to kill than any other 44 point units and far more effective.

Corner peaking alone insures that it will require a minimum of 2 activations to kill them

Unlimited Range (not usually a good game design choice in general BTW as it drastically limits counter play options) allows them to ignore most of the threatening units on the field

Pushing forward with conventional units to engage them is an potion but that is usually impractical because it over extends your force. It also forces the attacking unit to spend several of its limited actions to close the distance dropping its efficiency all while the snipers laugh and either fire and move out of LoS or Aim fire if in no immediate danger.

They are highly likely to produce 1 dead model (roughly 60%) no matter if that is an expensive unit with great armor, (paying a lot of points for that armor), or if it is a cheap model, it also ignores the Dodge token nullifying one of the primary potential counter plays against it. And will likely still get its kill even when shooting into heavy cover, once again circumventing another major options for limiting incoming damage from small dice pool units.

The units gets to ignore or mitigate the following mechanics conventionally used to mitigate damage: cover, range, armor, dodge,

Magic bullets are no brainers... and are a detriment to the back and forth of play and counter play. They over simplify the game and reward ppl for taking them, not for playing well.

Kwatchi's post above only makes my point more...

1 wound per activation is on par with Force Choke (5 points instead of 44+), and the strike team requires 4+ wounds to purchase it’s value back.

The obvious counters would be something that doesn’t expect to make saves anyway (Wookies, Chewbacca) or something with armor that the sniper is unlikely to harm at all.

I think mortars will help.

One simple rules fix might be to chance the effect of a draw. (not really a FIX as such, but could help)

So right now the person who annihilated the most points worth of units wins a draw, change that to total number of units destroyed perhaps? But that would make blue winning more often, and take out some granularity, so perhaps not ideal.

14 hours ago, Kwatchi said:

I just spent a few minutes going over the Invader League Finals bracket lists. I’m simply going to post a quick & dirty parse (since I’m on my phone).

# of lists: 32

# of lists with 3 snipers teams: 25

# of lists with 2 sniper teams: 5

# of lists with 3 saboteur teams: 1

# of lists with no sniper/saboteur teams: 1 (Yay Breadwinner!)

When the commando/scout team nerf eventually comes, no one can be shocked. The competitive meta is stale with them as is, but at least some players are trying to push the needle a small bit.

1 list with IRG

1 list with Pathfinders

2 lists with the Oppressor tank

1 list with AT RT

1 list with a land speeder (no, not the snowspeeder )

1 list with Speeder bikes

Lots of 1-2 Deathtroopers as well as Bossk, with I take as a positive tbh.

Surprised we didn't see more tanks to be honest.

It's a shame there's not more bikes, royal guard, FD, pathfinders, well any variety

8 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

Well you also have to consider that players can’t even play the biggest tournaments in this game without winning smaller ones first. That’s going to actually cull out other attitudes to begin with.

There’s also no way that I know of to gain recognition for anything else but winning. Back in the day, you could lose all your games in the Warhammer grand tournament and still get your picture in White Dwarf if you did something interesting with your army theme. Or won a side category like Best Sportsman.

Legion’s big tournaments, so far as I can tell, has no rewards for anything else. And no equivalent of some roving person thinking you’re cool and putting you in White Dwarf.

And I do shun them. By not going to tournaments. And I don’t own even 1 sniper team for either army.

Unpainted armies are the 90% majority in storeplay. Why would minmaxing be any rarer?

That’s not true at all. LVO and adepticon both had very tight painting competitions, and someone at adepticon built a wonderful AT-AT display board with lights and sound. Multiple awards were given at both events. LVO had a special award for the oldest contestant there, a 60 year old man who was competing in his first ever convention tournament!

All these people had their pictures taken and were just as celebrated as the people who qualified. And in both cases, the Developers of the game were there to compliment them (Luke eddy at LVO, Alex Davy at Adepticon). Adepticon also had a very cool terrain competition that led to an awesome Scarif board that brought many players not part of the legion competition to our tables, several of which were directed to the FFG booth and picked up the game.

Its a shame you put down the big tournaments and the absolutely wonderful communities that surround them. Both big events I’ve been to have been nothing but pleasant - I even watched as two 2-1 players playing a critical match for a High Command spot stopped mid game to explain what was going on to a new person that had wandered by our area, while time was expiring.

And please, don’t equate sniper strike team ownership to some badge of honor. It’s not like Lupo didn’t make worlds with sabs. They’re efficient, but in a lot of the top games I observed/played in, they tend to be ineffective or despatched by other means - and so much of the game that happens has nothing to do with them.

19 hours ago, Kwatchi said:

I just spent a few minutes going over the Invader League Finals bracket lists. I’m simply going to post a quick & dirty parse (since I’m on my phone).

<snip>

When the commando/scout team nerf eventually comes, no one can be shocked. The competitive meta is stale with them as is, but at least some players are trying to push the needle a small bit.

Nice work! I think we will see a change to the Strike Team keyword in the RRG so that the heavy weapon trooper is no longer the leader. Strike teams will still be good and still get used, but it will drop their power a bit.

3 hours ago, TalkPolite said:

That’s not true at all.

I am glad to hear that. Like I said, "that I know of". Even if I didn't go to Games Day back when I was a kid I saw those pics in WD. I haven't run across anything similar to WD for Legion so I don't really know what goes on at tournaments I'm not at.

Quote

Quote

Its a shame you put down the big tournaments and the absolutely wonderful communities that surround them.

I'm not the one calling for them to be "shunned". I don't care about them enough to want that, but effectively I do shun them a lot more than someone (such as Angry Ewok) who's taking the time to read all these tournament army lists and stuff. Two hours is pretty much my travel radius for gaming/reenacting (thus precluding Adepticon et al). Everything happening at the local cons and gaming stores is about 90 percent unpainted, plus lots of bargain basement used models proxied for the latest codex, or whatever. So I am largely withdrawn from gaming in public places. I've had great store games of SW: Legion against fully painted armies but scheduling is always an issue. And I could plainly see that we were surrounded by tables of unpainted Legion armies so any tournament in the local area is going to be very grey.

Quote

And please, don’t equate sniper strike team ownership to some badge of honor.

I don't think anyone is doing that here. Maybe I missed something though. I don't really understand why I was recently summoned to this debate.

Anyways adding one card that makes the goal to annihilate units, won't fix the things Angry Ewok is complaining about. That card will be drawn too infrequently to impact groupthink, I'd imagine. If several such cards are added, it will just shift the focus of the game to bidding. To the extent that these things are even a problem, the solution is in changing or adding verbage to the rules about scoring IMO.

Or maybe he's right and a new scenario card would work. People seem to put in enough man-hours writing these forum responses to write their own tournament regs, so it's not like they don't have the time. If someone thinks a kill based mission card or cards will fix this issue, homebrew some cards, post them publicly, run a store tournament, and report the results publicly. It's little more work than running a big D&D campaign and lots of people manage to do that without any official stamp of approval.

3 hours ago, TalkPolite said:

Its a shame you put down the big tournaments and the absolutely wonderful communities that surround them. Both big events I’ve been to have been nothing but pleasant - I even watched as two 2-1 players playing a critical match for a High Command spot stopped mid game to explain what was going on to a new person that had wandered by our area, while time was expiring.

On the other hand, I have first hand reports from some of the people who played in the High Command tournament at Adepticon of bad manners and attempted cheating. Two of the players are no longer interested in playing Legion at higher levels because of their bad experiences they had with multiple opponents. Much like with anything involving people, there are good and bad intermingled.

12 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

Unpainted armies are the 90% majority in storeplay. Why would minmaxing be any rarer?

It's more like 10% at the places I've played. My army is usually only 50-75% painted (because painting is an awful slog and not how I want to spend my limited free time) and I usually have the least painted in the store. More often than not, when I play in tournaments every army I play against is fully painted. I've also never had anyone in person try to make me feel like I'm morally bankrupt for not liking the arts and crafts part of miniature wargaming as much as I do the strategy part. The internet is a whole different story, of course.

12 hours ago, Derrault said:

The obvious counters would be something that doesn’t expect to make saves anyway (Wookies, Chewbacca) or something with armor that the sniper is unlikely to harm at all.

Emphasis mine-

You mean, something like vehicles...????

I've recently been wondering if the vehicles that no one plays (for reasons that have been discussed elsewhere) are the counter to sniper stike teams. Seems, rules-wise, like this might be the case but the implementation of the vehicles (pointing, etc) missed the mark.

3 hours ago, arnoldrew said:

It's more like 10% at the places I've played. My army is usually only 50-75% painted (because painting is an awful slog and

Any given gaming store in New England or PA, or OH over the last 20 years, I see or saw 100% unpainted 40k, Warmahordes, Flames of War, and AOS/WFB armies, which make or made up about half of everything being played. Then there's a smattering of armies that are about 25% painted: maybe that means 1 model in 4 is painted, or maybe it means half the models are about halfway done being painted. Then there's a bunch of armies with no consistent look: a mix of bare plastic, primed models, and (presumably used based on the assorted style) painted models. Fewer than 10% of armies I've encountered in store play are fully painted to a basic standard. Unprimed plastic is the norm even for people who've been at it for decades. I don't think I've ever been to a store and not seen at least one person playing with incomplete models. Ie, no bases for flying models, a big monster with a missing arm, etc.

It is extremely rare for me to go to any given store on game day and see even a single painted army for any game, besides my own. Even for games like Kill Team that need 10 models. There are local SW:L players with fully painted armies though! So the Legion playerbase is ahead of the curve.

Quote

More often than not, when I play in tournaments every army I play against is fully painted.

That was how it was at con tournaments back in the 90's but I don't see that any more. When I pop by a store for a 40k (or whatever) tournament nowadays, it's generally an even higher proportion of unpainted. Presumably to chase the power-creep but I don't know for sure.

Quote

I've also never had anyone in person try to make me feel like I'm morally bankrupt for not liking the arts and crafts part of miniature wargaming as much as I do the strategy part

You might decline an invitation to a Superbowl party if you know the host only has a tiny black and white tv. That's not a moral judgement. Even though it doesn't affect the numbers on the scoreboard.

I think it is important to make a distinction between being a nice human being and robbing the other player of the chance for a challenging game where both players can engage and can compete on an even playing field while still fielding the units they want to.

Being a nice person is just expected of everyone, it includes things like stopping in the middle of your game and explaining rules to a bystander, or allowing the other player to go back and correct a missed opportunity that they messed up the timing on. (Example a Snow trooper unit that tries to move, aim then steady, and you let the guy go back and Aim, Move, then steady) Being nice is just not being a jerk in general, and should be expected, you don't get a sticker for doing what is expected.

On the other hand, a person (the nicest, most considerate person you can imagine) can choose to take a list that is intentionally abusive, simple to run, and passive. That "nice," person is inflicting their over simplified, flavorless, tactically watered down version of Legion on everyone else they play and that's not honorable. By taking such a list, they put pressure on other players who want to use units that may be weak to unlimited range attacks that mitigate cover and armor, or that are to points heavy, for fear of losing games not because they got out played, but because they got out listed.

The success of the spam troops, spam snipers, use the rest of your points on something you actually have to think about how to use, style of lists even when run by the most gentlemanly player, is a stain on the community because of the list building shadow it cast, restricting what other people feel like they can bring to major events, encouraging the mentality of activation spam because of how powerful that is in the current objective only scoring system, and just in general creating a situation where.

Snipers are CURRENTLY to good for their points because they have few viable counters that are not Commander Specific, or involve using the exact same units. When one of the available options for list building is so good that all other options must struggle to justify themselves under the standard of "why not just the same points in sniper teams," something needs to be done. In the mean time, we who want this to remain an intellectual contest not a list writing/I spent more money on sniper teams than you contest, should temper ourselves and use such units in moderation, not as a max out the slot auto include which renders most games into either mirror matches, or games where the guy who did not give in to the meta must fight this mental contest from a position of disadvantage based on how easy to use his opponent's list is to run and how few actual risks it must take to achieve victory.

Win with tactics, or lose with class but don't bring a google search list that puts training wheels on your games for you. Where is the honor in that?

7 hours ago, NeonWolf said:

Emphasis mine-

You mean, something like vehicles...????

I've recently been wondering if the vehicles that no one plays (for reasons that have been discussed elsewhere) are the counter to sniper stike teams. Seems, rules-wise, like this might be the case but the implementation of the vehicles (pointing, etc) missed the mark.

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.

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.

The game could be helped a great deal by just doing a points rebalance. Make Darth Vader 160 like Luke, Make AT-ST's either cheaper or give them a built in pass mechanic (similar to Stratigic Advisor in Armada) and the Air Speeder needs to be about 20 points cheaper and/or surge to hit.

Corner peaking making snipers immune to 1 shotting unless you have really fast stuff that can flank them and is the main issue with the counters you mention, mortars do threaten them same as other snipers, but the ability to corner peak insures the unit gets a new lease on life and are in no danger of being wiped out or decreasing in offensive output. Now, if Mortars could kill models out of line of sight... as they should, then there would be another real counter option that does not force a commander card use or use of your own snipers.

Aside from the issues I mentioned, the main concern is how powerful activation count is in a game where controlling an objective boils down to the # of unit leaders you have near/on stuff most of the time. A full health AT-ST that steps onto the center Key Positions objective can be canceled out by a single Trooper model who delays their activation until the enemy is activated out, and sneaks over. Despite the vast and obvious disparity in combat power possessed by these 2 units, the objective is "controlled," by neither of them, and can be "controlled" by 2 such trooper models even though we all know they have no where near the fighting power of the AT-ST. Thus, quantity is the desired quality (not going to use the old Stalin quote) in this situation. Giving expensive, powerful units the ability to count as multiple units for scoring or scoring by point value would do much to curb the wanton spam of activations.

Why do we hate activation padding you may ask? Because it takes FAR FAR LESS brain power to make good tactical choices and plays when the enemy has activated out.

When there is no threat of reprisal until after the next command card (giving you a chance to react), the number of safe plays and easy targets skyrocket, you end up make better moves often not because you are a better player, but because you have access to much better data than your opponent.

You are playing checkers while he is being forced to play chess to counter you.

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.

11 hours ago, NeonWolf said:

Emphasis mine-

You mean, something like vehicles...????

I've recently been wondering if the vehicles that no one plays (for reasons that have been discussed elsewhere) are the counter to sniper stike teams. Seems, rules-wise, like this might be the case but the implementation of the vehicles (pointing, etc) missed the mark.

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 c an get so many activations for such a small investment.

Edit: Not to mention that with a maximum of 5 units with armor, the snipers still have a target rich environment.