Compare General Skywalker's CE to Mandalore the Indomitable's CE.

See the difference? That is the reason the basilisk gets momentum while strafing and no one else does. Skywalker has an additional condition in there that in order to get momentum you have to end your move.

It is also worth noting that Durge (Clone Strike) and Warmaster Tsavong Lah (Universe) have variations of the same CE as Gen. Skywalker, so the way it works has been established for a long time now. Mandalore's is the CE that breaks the mold here.

Updated with WNY results. The beef/shooter dichotomy meta is still going strong. Using Evazan to get efficient, relatively stout healing for GOWK is borderline genius.

Thanks, I take that as a compliment.

For WNY, I think the only squad your missing for the top 4 is third place one, and it's a Solo Charge squad.

Nice work Hinkbert.

You have demonstrated beautifully the power of Lobot when used correctly. So many people use him wrong (ie - having the same reinforcements every time).

Even if you bring the same reinforcements frequently, having multiple options for different match-ups is where Lobot's true strength lies. From your play reports it looks like you would not have won every match without him. You brought in a 40hp bomb Kel-Dor when needed (vs strafers), a 60hp bodyguard Ponda Baba when needed (vs beefcake squads), you brought a scrub sweeper Momaw Nadon when necessary (vs mice swarms, or theoretically spitting Nom Bombs), and finally you grabbed distracting Figrin D'an and his Twi'lek bodyguard backup when those CEs needed to be stopped (Mando death shots, etc). Bringing in only one of those options into your base squad instead of Lobot would have made you less versatile, and likely - you would not a be regional champ.

Lobot may not be necessary in every squad, but this is a fine example of how to use him to win.

Seriously impressive use of Lobot good sir. This comes from someone who has won 6 regional championships, every one of which contained Lobot.

Danke.

Yeah, the number of options that Cantina Brawl gives, combined with Lobot, gives a player a big incentive to use Lobot "properly". There are so many sub-20 point pieces in that set that can be useful in different squads. Sure, Lobot may not be necessary in every squad, but I think it shows the acumen and passion of the designers for this game to make a sub-set like Cantina that works so well with Lobot. Awesome job guys!

Lol! That's hilariously ironic, since I know for a fact that some of the designers specifically tried to hurt Lobot with this set. Pieces like Wuher and Tyber Zann were attempts directly and indirectly to get people not to play him.

It worked with lesser players. I have heard several times, "I'm never going to play Lobot again for fear of Bribery." (Obviously, these are players that don't know how to use Lobot).

Bribery wouldn't have effected you (or if it did, it would hurt them as much as you - go ahead, take my 2 uggies!), and neither would "no droids allowed".

I actually heard one player (who isn't very good at the game) say that every squad he would build from now on would contain either Tyber Zann or Wuher. That made me laugh so hard I almost pooped myself.

Thing is, without a direct hard counter (ie - a SA or CE that doesn't allow reinforcements AT ALL), Lobot will only continue to get better with every fringe piece under 21 points. And the more diverse the meta, the more having Lobot will help you as a toolbox to customize how to combat each squad individually.

What's more funny, I think, is that this isn't really true at all. I'm the one who designed Tyber Zann and specifically designed Bribery, and "hurt[ing] Lobot" was never a part of it. I've posted this multiple times on both here and Bloomilk as well as talked about it at length on the SHNN; the purpose of both Wuher and Zann is to make Lobot a more interesting piece, not a worse piece. I LOVE Lobot. He's one of my favorite pieces in the game. What I love most about him is bringing in 2-3 characters to help my squad's effectiveness. I regularly bring in a Bodyguard with him, but I've also been known to bring in Diplomats, Override, extra attackers, all kinds of stuff.

What I hate about Lobot, though, and what many, many other people have hated about Lobot, is using him as 27 points to bring in extra activations. Even worse was to play him and Gha Nachkt to bring in even more activations. 39 points for 12 activations which include a 30 HP blocker/repair/combine fire piece and an Override piece is really hard to argue with, but it's the lamest, least fun way to play Lobot. So we decided to make some counters (both hard and soft counters) to that, and it's work better than I could have hoped. People playing Lobot to bring in things like a Kel-Dor, Ponda Boba, Momaw Nadon, Figrin D'an, etc. was one of the main purposes of Scum and Villainy and Cantina Brawl.

The purpose of Tyber Zann was not to get people to stop playing Lobot, and you obviously have a great misunderstanding of the design process for him if you think it was. The purpose of Tyber Zann (well, the purpose of Bribery) was to stop people from playing Lobot in one specific way which almost everyone agree made the game less interesting.

Seriously, if you can look at Cantina Brawl especially and look at the many new, fun, effective, and interesting options that we gave Lobot and say that the purpose was to "hurt Lobot", I don't know what to say. We might as well have called that microset "Some Rebels and Imperials plus a lot of new friends for Lobot", but that would have probably been too long of a title. No one on the design team for Set 3 wanted to hurt Lobot at all, and I don't think we did, I think we made him MUCH stronger as well as much more interesting. Before it was easy to have just one or two variations on Reinforcements, because there were only a few that were the best. Now there are tons of really good options depending on the situation you find yourself in. That's what makes Lobot good.


As a designer on V-set 3, I genuinely believe that Lobot is much better now than he was before the release of the set. That was absolutely, 100% intentional, and you're incorrect to suggest otherwise.

I have a theory.

+1

This goes hand-in-hand with some general comments I made recently about design.

Last post from me for the moment (3 in a row and all)... the best squads haven't been realized yet. What we've so far, for the most part, are localized powerful squads being thrown against each other. This happens every year at Regionals, at least since WotC stopped making the game. It will be GenCon where the true meta forms, if at all. I'd say right now Kavar OR-based squad is the gatekeeper with B&B still tried and true. The GOWK squads that have been run are focused on heavy damage-dealing with things like Mace Legacy or perhaps Yobuck, but there are subtler concepts waiting to be discovered that can better fight the meta squads. At least in my mind, which I'm sure there are some who will say that's the only place where the statement may be true. To that I say, perhaps, but we'll never know until they are played and developed.

I think I did overstate it. It was the 10 mouse dump that was the specific focus to hurt. But, some people involved with the design team (even if they weren't an actual designer of v-set 3) have stated directly and indirectly that they'd love to see Lobot never played again.

Good players like you, Daniel, obviously see the strength in Lobot. If I remember correctly, you used the 10 mouse dump more than once in your championship run.

That might be true, but rest assured that Bribery would have been created exactly the same if those people didn't have those points of view. When I came up with the idea I didn't have any anti-Lobot sentiments in mind.



You bet I did, it's super powerful. You're paying an average of 3.25 points per activation for 12 activations and getting lots of other good stuff with it. Interestingly, though, my actual preferred set of Reinforcements (as in the Reinforcements that I enjoyed playing with the most) was a Gamorrean BG and an R7. The 50 HP Bodyguard and 4th Override gave me a ton of extra flexibility that I really enjoyed playing with, and that's the set of Reinforcements that I defaulted to when I didn't feel the need for the activations, like against a really low activation squad without tempo control or against Yobuck. Those two pieces, especially the Bodyguard, were key in my 2 wins against Yobuck that year. But the extra activations to let me outactivate Brandon Pyle's squad in the championship game were also key in me winning that game. It was a powerful strategy, but most people (myself included) felt it was A) TOO powerful, and swung the balance of the game too much and B) was just less fun and lead to more of a negative play experience than bringing in something interesting, like a Bodyguard, or more tech, or another attacker. So we designed pieces to make the 10 mouse dump specifically less powerful. I don't think we made Lobot weaker at all; like I said, with the new Reinforcement options that Cantina Brawl brought out, I think that we actually made Lobot much stronger. He's just different now, and more interesting.

Well put. I was a playtester for Tyber Zann and had a lot of input on it, and you're intention for him was very clear. I actually love bribery, and hope it finds it's way onto another character.

You are obviously not a Lobot hater, but there are some very big Lobot haters involved. But like I said, barring a hard counter, Lobot will only continue to get stronger with each set.

I will likely use Wuher in most of my competive squads. When he hits, it is great. But even without it, he is great for collecting Gambit. Especially on the Cantina map.

As the guy who invented this squad, I have to respectfully disagree. That OR squad loses at least 75% of the time to GOWK and Mace, probably about 100% of the time to Nom Bombs, and isn't a fantastic matchup against the Weir squads that have been quite popular. In fact, I don't really expect to play that squad again in a competitive tournament, unless it's in something goofier like Mystery Map.

Having said all that, I like it more than most OR builds that I've seen (especially the ones built around Mira), and the best OR squad will be a gatekeeper for the meta until forever thanks to the third-best piece in the game (After Doombot and Thrawn, IMHO). It's just that most of the regional winners thus far are already built to get through that gate!

The trick now is a squad that can resist the freight-train Mace builds while also not getting nibbled to death by superstealth Weir commandos or bombs.

I also think that the almost-unanimous reduction in average squad activations has been very interesting to watch. Especially when the Yammosk (steal their CE if you want it, otherwise don't) and Pellaeon give you the option of taking activation control or not on a game-by-game basis. A big part of it has been Rebels falling off a cliff, and maybe Momaw is making people think again about 10 mouse droids, but I can't help but look around the meta and think that having a dozen mice to keep Mace away from your dudes or force the storm commandos/Mando guys to waste time on would be a strong play.

Especially with Yobuck and the lancer even more absent from the meta than Rebels.

Squads that I think would do well, that people have thought of already, that we haven't seen:

Rebel pilots, especially with Dash (GOWK and Mace can't defend 'em all)
Ithorian Commander and Han in STA swarm
Well-built Iggy swarm
SOLO CHARGE (Old school or with Jaden Korr, this squad has answers to most everything, but hardly anyone's playing it. I'm mystified)

As a huge supporter of Solo Round (Solo Charge with Jaden instead of Anakin), I believe it odes have an answer for almost everything. I would have finished higher with it when I played it, but became extremely unlucky :/ (See the Force Push 5 on Weeks's Figrin due to draw fire)

It does baffle me why more people don't play it. It's sooooo good and balanced.

I agree Hink. Nice use of Lobot. And this is one of the squads that truly does need Lobot.

And I am one of the Lobot-haters, but that is mainly because for too long we saw people bringing him for just 1 purpose and use 1 set of dudes. The more options there are for Lobot, the more I actually consider him when squadbuilding (wait Laura doesn't build with Lobot so I guess I don't either) but when I try and make up my own squads I occasionally think of him. There are def certain squads that do need Lobot (like Hinks), but I will stand by my assessment that most squads that use Lobot are probably better off without him.

Well, that was an interesting weekend. Rebels and Separatists, who up 'til now made absolutely zero noise, won the Chicago and Atlanta regionals, respectively.

I do think that GOWK plus Mace and well-built Weir squads can give both Rebel and Slow Lancer squads trouble. Their problem is getting past the deathshot squads, which is not a trivial challenge. Honestly, Naboo deathshots are probably the biggest gatekeeper in the meta right now.