Hello,

first off: i am very sorry for my english. I dont use english on a regular basis and it is a little bit rusty.

Our group play for arround 1.5 years now and we are having a total blast with this absolute great game. we had a lot of fun fights and we are playing on a more casual base and try to play more like thematic battles or self written scenarios. we also play standard games with that pick and ban method (what is a really cool mechanic when you have all available battle cards).

Yesterday was the first time that i had real struggles with the point balance of some units and we had a longer discussion on the table:

We had a game of GAR against CIS and GAR won with only one model lost. OK the CIS list was very suboptimal, but... we are a bit worried about the point costs and the focus of the armies. from our perspective the idea behind the armies was:

-rebells good blaster, bad save roll

-empire good save rolls, bad blasters

-seperatists bad in everything but cheap

-republic good in everything but expensive

That theme seems to be not really actual. with padme and rex the republic is more then capable to do a very easy 9 activation list and dont have a real downside. with arc troopers and strike teams it will get even worse.

there are so many balancing aspects that we dont understand... how can it be that a hero like rex costs only 90 points, when a hero like han solo who has the same role in a battle cost so much more and has the worse skills of them both? why are b2 droids thats expensive with that poor stats?

or all questions short - is there a plan to rebalance the points like in september 2019 to bring the faction back in their focus roles? or did we missunderstand the roles of the armies totaly?

There's supposed to be a point rebalance any time now. I assume it's why they are taking waaaaay too long to release an RRG update.

5 minutes ago, arnoldrew said:

There's supposed to be a point rebalance any time now. I assume it's why they are taking waaaaay too long to release an RRG update.

Being shutdown for a few months might also have something to do with the extra delay.

16 minutes ago, arnoldrew said:

There's supposed to be a point rebalance any time now. I assume it's why they are taking waaaaay too long to release an RRG update.

From what they said in one of the gencon streams, it sounds like they will be releasing an RRG soon without a points rebalance, and then another one with points changes later in the year.

Some short answers

They have done point adjustments and will again.

I don't think that Rex or Padme created cheaper and with better abilities than Han as Han Solo is a bit too expensive and suffers from being designed earlier than Rex and Padme who could get a bunch of new fun stuff without a too high point cost. Leia and Padme are very similar for example if you want a more fair comparison. Sadly this game like alot of the other star wars games the design is done in waves and newer stuff tend to get flashier rules and more optimised point cost since the designers know wich keywords and rules are really worth alot of points. All we can do with that is hope for erratas, point adjustments or "fix" upgrades.

Both CIS and Clones are in a weird spot as they lack so many options compared to the empire/rebel counterparts. This is and will be solved with new releases. However I think Clones might work a little better with limited options due to the quality of their units. CIS have alot of synergy required units and atm some units lack units to synergies with since they aren't released yet. Clones have turned out pretty strong, but I think it's to early to call for point adjustments for the units outside the core set IMO.

I don't think b2's are bad, but they need surge tokens and face up order each turn to work as Intended. The new tactical droid with reliable for a guaranteed surge tokens each round will be a nice addition to them. Also CIS suffer from having only expensive commanders and support/heavy units making it hard to optimize their lists and activations. The STAP expansion, commando droids + specialist with the new cheap tactical droid commander will really open up the game for CIS.

As a veteran rebel player with alot of tournament wins/top 4 placements I have hard time with CIS atm and I think they aren't as strong as Clones from the start, but they will get there with more expansions and options.

They need to do a rebalance more than once a year. Xwing has it good!

2 hours ago, Memorare said:

They need to do a rebalance more than once a year. Xwing has it good!

I don't know that they are releasing enough stuff during the year to justify rebalance more often.

I personally hate the xwing model. I wish they would stick to the point costs and rework things or scrap the point costs altogether. But don't flip flop multiple times a year. For any casual play or trying to generate new player interest, its a real turnoff to have the points mean nothing or jave the army you built become invalidated.

4 hours ago, Memorare said:

They need to do a rebalance more than once a year. Xwing has it good!

I prefer errata and points changes to be rare. I know that playtesting is hard and getting the points exactly right is a challenge, but frequent changes can also scare people off buying the game, or even cause existing players to quit. My group for the Song of Ice and Fire miniatures game was already falling apart before the pandemic just because of people getting frustrated with the amount of errata.

I would argue that not fixing units can discourage people from playing the game too. Strike teams for example are a blight on the game right now and have discouraged me from playing it. Strike teams still arnt balanced and theres still a huge balance problem with units that offer up cheap activations.

Theres also units like the rebel airspeeder and imperial dewback which are still useless after being released two years ago. Why are they still so bad? Errata and point changes definitely need to be more frequent.

We need errata and point cost changes twice per year. Because once per year isnt cutting it. Theres still units that werent balanced properly last summer and were still waiting on them to get fixed. Having two erratas per year would allow them to fix everything in the second errata that they missed in the first errata without making everyone wait an entire year. Having to wait six months is better than having to wait an entire year.

7 hours ago, buckero0 said:

I don't know that they are releasing enough stuff during the year to justify rebalance more often.

I personally hate the xwing model. I wish they would stick to the point costs and rework things or scrap the point costs altogether. But don't flip flop multiple times a year. For any casual play or trying to generate new player interest, its a real turnoff to have the points mean nothing or jave the army you built become invalidated.

The x wing 1.0 snowballed with unbalanced points, unplayable ships and ships needing 4 expansions to work. New players had a terrible team in competitive scenes where they lacked certain fix cards for example.

I think legion is fine atm with the exception of a few units that really needs to be redone from the ground and not just point adjusted.

51 minutes ago, Khobai said:

I would argue that not fixing units can discourage people from playing the game too. Strike teams for example are a blight on the game right now and have discouraged me from playing it. Strike teams still arnt balanced and theres still a huge balance problem with units that offer up cheap activations.

Theres also units like the rebel airspeeder and imperial dewback which are still useless after being released two years ago. Why are they still so bad? Errata and point changes definitely need to be more frequent.

We need errata and point cost changes twice per year. Because once per year isnt cutting it. Theres still units that werent balanced properly last summer and were still waiting on them to get fixed. Having two erratas per year would allow them to fix everything in the second errata that they missed in the first errata without making everyone wait an entire year. Having to wait six months is better than having to wait an entire year.

Different kinds of players need different frequencies of balances. I went to a Star Wars Destiny tournament once where the deck I ran just a few weeks prior wasn't legal anymore. I had no spare with me and had to borrow a very bad one. I somehow missed the update though i regularly check the FFG website for news. That was a huge let down. Never played the game since (that was long before it was cancelled and I really enjoyed playing it occasionally before).

As much as I would like to play the Airspeeder or Wookies, I'm fine with balances not being too often to also let the meta some time settle. And we actually got a balancing update in february where they nerft Creature/Emplacement Troopers

I absolutely expected power creep in this game, much like most living games. So does it surprise me to see a unit like Clone Captain Rex who combines the combat ability of Han Solo for 30 less points with similarly good command cards of Director Krennic? I can't wait for him to have a 5pt jet pack so he can also work as Sabine as well. There is always that one unit or card that is too good and this is one of them. (shoretroopers when they came out replaced stormtroopers, Tauntauns became an auto include as other examples).

I prefer one major points rebalancing a year and if I have to wait 3 months that makes sense to me, because there are more units about to be released and probably more units to be balanced out. I just hope they are a little more aggressive this time than last time around certain units. If I said Han should be cheaper than Rex or Leia would anyone disagree with that?

To be fair, Han's combat abilities are explicitly better than Rex's (Pierce 2 on every shot is insane), it's just that Rex does everything else that is not combat better. Han's command cards are better in my experience, though Rex's certainly aren't bad.

They should never have published points values on the cards, and instead have an online database that gets adjusted every 3 months. It’s not an unreasonable expectation for players to have internet access in 2020.

I hate rules erratas or updates (outside of new editions), but points should be a live value that allows for changes to the meta.

There are some units that NEVER see play, and that shouldn’t be the case at all.

I'm not sure why we have to have one big point update a year. Why can't they just release corrections as they need to? Why does it need to be an annual thing? if (for example) Taun Tauns need a point adjustment, why wait 6 or 9 months to do it?

10 minutes ago, Jake the Hutt said:

I'm not sure why we have to have one big point update a year. Why can't they just release corrections as they need to? Why does it need to be an annual thing? if (for example) Taun Tauns need a point adjustment, why wait 6 or 9 months to do it?

I could be wrong here, but I think they really believed that they would never be needed. We know that Legion has been pretty bad in a lot of areas and that probably forced their hand on the matter. Points on the cards and using a PDF to shows the changes seems like a rushed job to fix things before they got more out of hand. That is the reason why I think the points change coming up will do little (hopefully I am super wrong about this). Just enough to piss off the people who don't want any changes and the people who wish they would be more aggressive with the changes. Seems like they should have made their choice and stuck with it, but instead they now have the worse of both worlds.

15 minutes ago, Olephantor said:

They should never have published points values on the cards, and instead have an online database that gets adjusted every 3 months. It’s not an unreasonable expectation for players to have internet access in 2020.

I hate rules erratas or updates (outside of new editions), but points should be a live value that allows for changes to the meta.

There are some units that NEVER see play, and that shouldn’t be the case at all.

16 hours ago, Memorare said:

They need to do a rebalance more than once a year. Xwing has it good!

It seems that X-wing should be considered the exception with how to do points and fix problems. Legion seems closer to Armada with how they handle the game. Not sure why X-wing game gets the app, 6 month point changes, instant fixes to anything problematic, and the most constant releases (does X-wing really make that much more money to get all that love??). Sort of sucks being a fan of other FFG when the golden child is right there lol.

16 minutes ago, RyantheFett said:

(does X-wing really make that much more money to get all that love??)

Yes. The answer is yes. It was an unexpected breakout hit and has always been much larger and made much more money than pretty much anything FFG has released.

Part of messing with the points in X Wing is to keep the meta fresh by churning it now and then with new points. Same with the adjustments to hyperspace format getting adjusted.

Yeah, it does nothing for new players but it keeps their existing player base from getting too bored.

2 hours ago, arnoldrew said:

To be fair, Han's combat abilities are explicitly better than Rex's (Pierce 2 on every shot is insane), it's just that Rex does everything else that is not combat better. Han's command cards are better in my experience, though Rex's certainly aren't bad.

I actually partially disagree, remember Rex is 3r with tactical 1 where as Han is 2r with pierce 2. That means Rex is arguably stronger against anything with armor, anything with impervious, immune to pierce, shields. Also are we counting defense as part of the combat abilities? I remember when Han first came out they released Boba at the same time, a card with impervious who could ignore Hans cover and had pierce himself, that was brutal.

On 8/12/2020 at 9:19 PM, Vlad3theImpaler said:

I prefer errata and points changes to be rare. I know that playtesting is hard and getting the points exactly right is a challenge, but frequent changes can also scare people off buying the game, or even cause existing players to quit. My group for the Song of Ice and Fire miniatures game was already falling apart before the pandemic just because of people getting frustrated with the amount of errata.

The nice part about ASOIAF miniatures is that they have a great free app and listbuilder, and they give out free high quality errata'd card images on PDFs on their website.

13 minutes ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

The nice part about ASOIAF miniatures is that they have a great fee app and listbuilder, and they give out free high quality errata'd card images on PDFs on their website.

The bad part of ASOIAF miniatures is they are still distributed by Asmodee and have even more distribution issues than Legion. 😛

41 minutes ago, Uetur said:

I actually partially disagree, remember Rex is 3r with tactical 1 where as Han is 2r with pierce 2. That means Rex is arguably stronger against anything with armor, anything with impervious, immune to pierce, shields. Also are we counting defense as part of the combat abilities? I remember when Han first came out they released Boba at the same time, a card with impervious who could ignore Hans cover and had pierce himself, that was brutal.

He MIGHT be slightly better against those things, but not by much. Pierce is the most powerful keyword in the game.

In a direct comparison 1-to1 Han is *mostly* stronger imo, but it's quite close. Han is surprisingly resilient even without accounting for Low Profile (which will be very powerful or useless depending on your table). Rex shoots like a pro but Pierce 2 is worth a **** of a lot more than an extra Red in the vast majority of situations, it's not even close.

It's hard to say who's Commands are stronger, since they are very different, but I'd say Rex works better with his army through token sharing and his 2-pip to leverage value each turn even when he can't shoot, yet Han can really turn a game around with a well timed command card.

That being said, Han could stand to come down by a few points for sure.

3 hours ago, OneLastMidnight said:

Han is surprisingly resilient even without accounting for Low Profile (which will be very powerful or useless depending on your table).

I've never seen him run without Duck and Cover, so the table doesn't matter.

44 minutes ago, arnoldrew said:

I've never seen him run without Duck and Cover, so the table doesn't matter.

It does if the table is all heavy cover, as this lowers the value of low profile somewhat due to the fact that you can't take advantage of the free bonus given from light cover and just get the standard bonus every other unit already has from being in the heavy cover.

Even if in the open, duck and cover has a points cost and suppression cost, so it is hardly as free as just having light cover.