Played a few games this weekend. Talon is great, I like the new Han, and there are some really interesting new commons and uncommons. But I couldn't help feeling like something was wrong with the game. With a semi-major tournament coming up next week (it's prominence is built around the fact Moses is hosting it and that several top-level players are rumored to show), we had some discussion - and practice - at what we thought would be used. The piece that kept popping up was Dodonna. I can't envision ever playing a NR or Rebel squad without him (and I know most of the people I have talked to about it can't either).

Dodonna, what a snooze fest. I really like the piece, I've used it, but we have a few slow players at our store (I'm one of them) and the thought of every squad setting up around the store being Ozzel/San/Tarkin/Dodonna/Veed just bores me to tears.

We practiced a couple of games with a Dodonna vs. Dodonna set-up, and wow talk about slow play. As my friend Dark Jedi 21 put it, he is "San Hill without the drawbacks." The trick is knowing what phase to activate 2 characters, and when not to. But anyone who has ever played with Tarkin enough to use him correctly shouldn't have any trouble with that concept anyway.

I can see every "tempo-control" vs. "tempo-control" squad going to time.

I was really hyped about this set but after seeing it in play it was really apparent to me that the game has a finite lifespan, and it has already peaked. Not saying the game's going to die tomorrow or anything ridiculous like that, but unless they make some major efforts at fleshing out the flavor it's going to be really stale in about a year or two.

This carbon copy crap has got to end.

I agree, but not to that extent. I do not like how they made soooo many "san-like" pieces. He should have been Seps ONLY. A few Die-Hard fans won't let this die, that's all there is too it, but stale yes.

I've yet to play with the new stuff, but here's my take, for what it's worth.

Tbh.. THe best guess i can make is that they are trying to balance things a bit after FU, (rather badly i might add), now granted, this isn't the first 'crap' set we've seen. Plus you can't start saying this one set will kill the game because it's stale. It's following on the heals of FU, which Introduced at least 2 new mechanics.

I'm looking at LOTF as more a "reprint/update" set. NOT everyone has access to the original stuff, hell here anything pre BH is hard to get (universe reprint was around for a bit, but already dried up).

okay ya were seeing ALOT of the old mechanics/abilities, but some have nice twists. Others i think are there purely to help new players having to hunt down and pay thru the nose for Older peices.

I mean for the guys at my LGS/DCI shop, they have nothing pre COTF. they just don't have access to it. So i'm glad in a way they will have access to older abilities, as it will open up thier options and maybe i can stop wailing on the same squads every week.

And just for the count, this set does in fact have New things like Fel's Guantlets.. so it's not a total reprint. I'm lumping it in with A&E as same general idea. We'll prolly get another Fresh ability/power come the set after.

I just don't like how Dodonna is only 9 and you can CHOOSE. Atleast with others that allow you to choose you have to have LOS.

I partly disagree with the idea that the game is getting stale. I think that only applies at the higher levels where those players cull the best parts out of each new set and before the set is even out they've built the meta squads for that set. For someone like me its not even close to getting stale. I play at a store where most of us don't get to play nearly as often as we'd like and 95% of the time squads are built around a couple pieces they'd never played before but felt like trying that week. On any given Friday that I manage to get up there I litterally have no idea what type's of squads I'll face.

Well, if you notice, I didn't say the game is stale, I said unless WotC gets back to their roots of design philosophy for each faction, it probably will become stale. If every squad construction, regardless of faction, starts out with the piece in each faction that either provides the identical function of a piece in a different squad, or the complete counter to that function (don't even get me started on Han GH), then where's the fun in that?

I think the game will be better when each faction has its own flavor and individual means to victory. Rob has talked in the past about some of the design philosophy. Rebels rely on guerilla tactics; Imperials are armored defense "stand-and-shoot" militants. The Separatists swarm with Droids. The goal of various incarnations of characters is to give players "choices," not to just slap every potential ability on a card and then try to do a different character. The last couple of sets have really flown in the face of those philosophies IMO. Whether that was intentional or the result of hurried design, I can't say for sure.



I remember those days. I don't necessarily blame the people in my local group, they're smart enough to recognize it's a competition and they are going to play what wins. Hell, I do the same damn thing.

It's funny you said that. I was at the store today talking with a guy who hadn't played in a couple of years and I was trying to get him to come back to our Saturday tournaments. He said he got out because it got so expensive.

"Actually," I told him, " with the set that just came out this weekend you could get back in and play fairly competitively for pretty cheap."

It's true.

This is very true for most factions. I originally found the gimmicks per squad to be quite true, but it was really lame to play the same stuff for Seps and various very subtle changes to Rebels. Vaders +6 defense makes perfect sense with a theme of stand and shoot for a faction philosophy.

I housed the Sep pieces for a long time due to lack of options. I can only hope that with this attempt to give a lot of options to multiple factions that we see some new game breakers to emphasize the differences between factions again. Because after 2 games with Tyrannus I'll probably be bored with Seps again.

I might agree a little, but then again, I have not played either with or against a Dodonna yet (only had 1 pulled in 3 release sealed tourneys this weekend). As I've said previously, part of me doesn't like the fact that the Seps are no longer the only ones with this trick, but each of the different factions that it's been given to will utilize it in completely different ways, and I think that is cool.

As an example though, slow-players, or games going to time are NOT about the pieces being played, IMO. It's about the type of player you are, and how well you know the pieces. At the release event yesterday, Madman and I battled out a HARD game that went about 9-10 rounds before I finally lost. Whereas, at the table right next to us, two other guys BARELY even got 5 rounds in, and their 5th round started literally 30 seconds before time was called (we were playing 50 minute rounds). None of these squads had any tempo control, but the slower guys, one had Nyna and Talon, and the other had Nyna and Lumiya. They're both just VERY competitive players, and very cautious. To top it off, neither of them knew a whole lot about the set to this point, and were still trying to figure out what all the various pieces do.

And this is basically what I see week-in and week-out, and at GenCon last year. 9 out of the 10 games against my buddy James at our LGS go to time simply because he doesn't know the pieces that I am playing well enough, and he isn't able to anticipate everything I might do. So it takes him much longer to decide his strategies and moves, and often I still end up beating him. It's funny, because it's a HUGE testament to how much difference it makes to be involved with the greater world-wide community online, because James is pretty much oblivious to any of the online community. And that's why, barring the stupid dice, I typically beat him most games, simply because I know the game better, and know the pieces better, from all the discussion around here. And I pretty much saw the same stuff at GenCon last year. The people who consistently played slow or lost terribly quick to me seemed to know less about both my squad and their own, and so were at a vast disadvantage when it came to the amount of time required to play the squad.

Yes and no.

I totally agree with the "one activation per round" everyone gets now as being one of the staler concepts. I put it in line with Master Tactician in terms of abilities that make the game less fun to play in general. Like MT, this ability is SO game changing and can feel "unfair" for anything except high competitive squads.

However, sets are being released more on a good schedule, so I'm hoping that the regular infusion of new figs should keep the game going.