Even after our Regional tourney-
I'm still undecieded

to be honest, Boris is the only player I've faced who ran it well, (sorry, still have not faced Lobo with it...) and while I lost-
I think with another go-round, I could win with my squad if I got to face another GOWK squad-

it seems to me, those who have won against a GOWK squad, have done so by simply dodging GOWK alll together, and finfishing off it's support-
essentially taking the wind out of the sails so to speak
VERY MUCH like we all did with San Hill, B&B and even the Infamous Boba BH....

That's why MOTF2 on GOWK needs to get the fudge out!

I can live with GOWK only allowed to reroll a failed save once per character activation. At least that way damage "should" be more consistent.

I agree with you 100%.

IF he can dodge 900 damage, I'm pretty sure his support can't. Deal with them, then if you have to, work in some auto-damagers (Forch Push etc..) to deal with him.

I know that is WAY easier said then done, but you work with what you can is all.

Well that is the beauty of it now that Wizards has seen fit to release Luminara stats. Now Gowk can support you cannot touch either.

Just play Gowk, Lumina JM and a version of Barris. In cover Barris and Luminara now have 31 and 32 defenses..... have fun hitting that. Boba BH needs 14's to hit Luminara and then when he gets them she can Soresu Style them away.... yeah makes for a real fun game. Going forward as long as there are combos out there like this the game changes competely... maybe once some more people digest what Luminara and the 12 point Atarian Rangers can achieve they will get the Gowk problem. JA maybe could have fixed Gowk but the thing is it just made him harder to deal with versus easier.

I'd like an order of Fringe characters with Crack Gunner and a floor rules update, to go please

Edit - for the poor Elite AT-AT Driver...

I've tested it, and it is broken.
GOWK
Barriss
Lumi
R2
MD x2
Ug x3

Basically the three of them move up toward the middle while remaining in close proximity to each other. They are nearly untouchable from range barring a random 20 roll (and not just from Boba BH). Any damage they do take, Bariss heals away. The MDs and the Ugs control gambit for the first 7-9 rounds for a total of 45 points. You can actually afford to be very aggressive with GOWK, as losing him isn't that big of a deal if he is slowing your opponent down in a timed game. Sure they get 55 points, but you've been racking up gambit and using Bariss and Lumi to kill the enemy pieces that get too close to the middle.

Yeah that's pretty sick.

Out of curiousity does Tarpals 'CE work with FP's or only SA's?

Wouldn't LV or Boba Cannon still wreak havoc on those squads?

LV it seems like you just kill GOWK, then Barriss, then Luminara? No worry about getting hit for a lot of damage from that group.

Boba Cannon being the "Fire tons of shots, and you'll eventually start disintegrating stuff".

(Actually, Tarpals' Guns also may have a blast with that squad).



@Fool: If a piece had MotF2 and Tarpals, they could use a replace attacks force power twice.

Well sure, anything can be countered. But is that really what the game needs?

Squad 1 (as posted above)
Squad 2 (LV, new Thrawn, Mas, filler)
Squad 3 (Boba, Bothan Noble x3, filler)

Everything else just falls by the wayside.



Not saying it can't happen, but you can't count on it. Against a better, practiced opponent, Boba will have to be within 6 squares before he makes his first shot.



Again, stay out of LOS until the last possible moment. It really isn't that difficult.

Well Luminara isn't coming out in JA. So JA didn't make GOWK better it actually had some good counter pieces for NR and Vong. The support pieces for Republic/Fringe would have to be utter crap from now until the game dies to keep the faction balanced with this beast of a general. Rob did not do that with Luminara.

When this 3rd map pack comes out there will be support pieces with 31 and 32 defense in cover. He was close to the edge of banning with me before, but when this happens the cheese factor is just off the charts. I guess Luke GMJ is then that much better since it's essentially a melee squad but I don't like it. Vong will have an uphill battle but they should be able to compete. NR has their direct damage. Imps have Lord Vader (and new Thrawn, he can't hit these guys without OPP). The game shrunk considerably.

This is SWM 2.0. This is what some people were asking for I guess. Reboot with a competitive edge. Well here it is.......

The strategy simply doesn't work, I've tried it a dozen times. You ignore GOWK and go for the support, that pump ensures they're going to hit you really hard before they go down and then what's left of your squad (which won't include the auto-damage pieces if you're versing a decent opponent) gets smacked around by GOWK, who will have a mountain of Force Points and be truly impossible to damage. If you go for GOWK, your pieces bounce and you get smacked around anyway. The only option for 95% of squads is to pray they don't lose too much killing the support (which, as I said, is exceedingly hard given that damnable CE of Obi-Wan's) then try to work up 55-60 points of Gambit before GOWK kills something else. The odds are so heavily against you it's stupid.

Earlier today, I was going to post in this thread that based on the diversity of squads that are appearing in (and doing well in) the regionals, some of the complaints about GOWK limiting the game are over the top.

Then I saw the stats for Luminara.

I'd like to suggest that perhaps the ban shouldn't be on GOWK, but on the Republic faction.

I think GOWK sould be banned beacause of his insane stat's and low point cost, but I also think he shouldn't be banned because then in the future there could be more ban's and they could also ban Boba, BH and Mara Jade, Jedi the two most broken piece's before GOWK. and that's not right. I mean I hate GOWK as much as all you others especially when I have to use The new Dooku against my brother all the time just to have a chance of beating him, but I don't want to start seeing a whole lot of other ban's like Grand Master Luke Skywalker, he can do six attack's against GOWK and GOWK could roll his saves, but if he misses his save that's it, because luke will force defense against the reroll's with MOTF2 and mettle.
So I voted yes ban him, but after reading your guy's posts and rethinking it over I regret it. There are a lot of way's to counter him and Lord Vader and Count Dooku of Serreno are the best ones.

P.S. if their is any way I could change my vote please change it to no.

Great. Have fun in your all Republic and all Imperial meta. And go try Dooku of Serenno at a serious tournament; you'll be lucky to win a round.

I've just said this elsewhere, but really, are any of the peices you might worry about on the same level as brokenness as GOWK? GMLS can dish out six attacks a turn, but he's 115 freakin points. He damn well better be able to lay waste to any other piece! Mara Jade, Jedi can deal a heckload of hurt for her points, but I know from a lot of experience that she can be exceedingly fragile once she gets up close.

The only other piece you might have to worry about is Boba BH, but any further bans will not come until months of playtesting have been conducted on the piece. That's what happened with GOWK, so there will be no reason to expect anything less on another piece.

@GWEk: You wouldn't get many arguments from me. Seriously, though, it's only GOWK. Without him, I'd be looking at Barriss/Luminara and just racking it up as another trick for the Republic. It would hardly be a problem for most of the other factions to compete with that combo or any other Republic tricks.

See, that's my concern with banning GOWK. The decision to ban should, reasonably, take months of playtesting. However, the game is constantly evolving. Even without stand-alone pieces, a new set releases, on average, every four months. To a certain extent, a new set "invalidates" the months of playtesting that just occurred. The majority of the playtesting was done without the addition of Jedi Academy, and even any Jedi Academy testing is not necessarily legitimate because we're still missing 6 pieces...

Confounding this is the fact that Rob works about a year in advance, on multiple sets at a time, and often "builds backwards." There have been many times a character has been introduced and the full impact and/or counters haven't become apparent until one, two, or even three sets came into play. What happens when counters for GOWK--who are also countered by GOWK--are introduced? The game is generally self-adjusting thanks to Rob (although it can take time), and taking one piece out is throwing a pebble in a lake... and we're not sure where the ripples go.

I'm pretty sure that by 2010, the game will have shifted enought that GOWK will no longer be a pre-eminent, unstoppable force.

In a sense, why NOT let 2009 be "the year of GOWK"? If nothing else, the creation of GOWK as a gatekeeper has shaken up the greater meta and caused a number of new squad ideas to be tested out (and some have been quite successful). Is a bunch of GOWK for a year really much worse than a few years of Han Cannon, San Hill, and Thrawn?

All of which is to say that I'm not necessarily saying he SHOULDN'T be banned...

Sorry if I've meandered a bit. Just had a few thoughts (and no conclusions!) that I want to get out.

Boba Bh isn't broken, his Distigration is. I wouldn't mind an errata, but I don't intended to stand around with a sign yelling for a ban. Mara Jedi broken? Really? I have not heard that one before. But GOWK, unlike Boba BH, isn't made unfair by 1 SA. It's multiple. Soresu-Mettle-MOTF2-amazing CE-Knight speed to get him out of dodge if he is in trouble. Also, GM Luke broken? You clearly have not playtested him.


Yeah...About that...Don't count on that.

Unless you have the stats for all the pieces in JA, Galaxy at War, and the Dark Times, I don't think you should be talking about what is coming in the future or not...

Was that addressed to me? I hope not, because I'm simply speculating that the game will continue to evolve, as it has with each set since REBEL STORM. Squads, pieces, and factions rise and fall on a regular basis. Ban or no, GOWK will be no different in the long-run. With most of the stats of JEDI ACADEMY already revealed, there are no clear "GOWK-slayers," but there ARE more tools to deal with him. The wheel is already turning.

That was addressed to DarkLordVerjal, who claimed GOWK being power-creeped out of the game by 2010 would not happene...my comment was merely that of "you have no idea what's coming either, so that isnt useful...."

No, I know GOWK won't be around. So maybe before you say something and appear like an idiot, you should choose patience.