Star Wars Miniatures

Virtual Sets

The original intent of the first set was to bring the bottom four factions (OR, Mandos, Vong, and Sith) closer to the competitive tables. Each of these factions got some really strong pieces, but they each also received a power 10+ piece to bring them up to speed: Bastila Shan, Jedi Master; Darth Revan, Sith Lord; Jaster Mereel; and the Yammosk War Coordinator. Jaster is a bit of the odd man out as he didn’t do quite enough to make Mandos competitive, but he was a big step for them. There were additions for the other factions that were interesting, but a lot of them were more flavorful than competitive. The odd man out in that regard was everyone’s least favorite bug, Poggle the Lesser. I think the issue of inexperience in designers shines through nowhere better than Poggle. I don’t mean that in any way to be a slight to the designers on this set, it was just a fact of the matter that nobody had done something like this before. It’s actually commendable that the set came out as good as it did! The biggest issue with Poggle was, unsurprisingly, lack of playtesting. Originally his Rapport was for ALL non-unique Separatists, which was found to be abusable when combined with Gha Nachkt and Battle Droids. So it was tempered to just living and that was that. Unfortunately, he didn’t get tested with a focus on Geonosian Drones, but this was a lesson learned for the future (no 2 point pieces, playtest any changes).

Another one of the big lessons learned was about organization. This was a purely behind-the-scenes issue, but there was exceptionally little organization on DotF. To write this, I’ve gone back and poked around the old forums, and finding any specific information is a nightmare! I think this was another result of lack of experience, and definitely something that started getting fixed in later sets. I think there are a lot of problems with the way sets are designed currently (there are certain things that I have been complaining about for years behind the scenes), but the organization is truly much, much better now than it was originally. - Echo24