Individual players will be responsible for making sure that it is clear for their opponent as to what pieces you are fielding. If you have two Luke Skywalker pieces on the map because one of them is representing a V Set piece, then it will be YOUR responsibility as the player to make sure that you've done something to make it clear for your opponent. Whether that is a mark on the bases of some sort, or a custom paint job, whatever.

The mass-activations (10-20 mice/ugnaughts/rodians) is a problem. Hopefully the Vset addresses it somehow so that the approach is no longer a tier 1 strategy, but if not I'd second buttcabbge's idea for some sort of limit either on number of copies of a figure or number of activations. But a Vset solution would be preferable.

What about the idea of a clock like in chess? It would be difficult since players take actions on each other's turns, but it would take the subjectivity out of slow play/stalling if the time used on the clock became part of the points in the game if the game did not go to completion.

I don't particularly disagree that the preference for the game in competitive play are activations. The real problem is however, that there isn't a magic bullet, or that this is in fact an error in terms of piece power that can be easily overcome. We already have direct counters (and they all factor into the current meta because of it) in Yodabuck, Lancer, Arica, etc. Yet even with these, high act squads are still top tier.

This is actually a "flaw" (not sure that word is really appropriate) at the very core of the rules of the game, and not one that is fixed by rule changes such as limiting acts - in fact that solution actually makes it worse (you play Dodonna and max acts, and that's the only option with an act limit, everyone else is now saddled with 1/2 the acts of dodonna maximum). The issue is that the core of this game is about eliminating your opponent's pieces, and one of the principle strategies at the very core of the game, is focusing your fire. Well, acts help you set that up, and in some cases max it, so it should be understandable that high act squads are going to be favored. (This was one of the things in my Playing to Win articles last year). It isn't that something is broken, it's that the game rules as a whole, function to support eliminating pieces, and any way you can do so faster than your opponent is an inherent advantage.

In short, what you are asking for (making high acts not be a tier 1 strategy) is in fact impossible in any way, shape or form. What can be done by V-sets is making those not be the only possible strategies (which isn't necessarily the case now anyway, but should be even more true moving forward).

Old idea, doesn't work. Nor is slow play that much of an issue with the rule changes. Read the Champ report and you will see how many games finished completely this year. As far as it being "subjective" well there is no way around that. But it's really not all that subjective anyways, people who know the game, know what it looks like pretty easily. The more difficult issue is knowing how to deal with it in a given case, and when to enforce the rules, and when not to. That part is subjective, but we've discussed it for years, and there really is no way around it. And that's why you need good judges, not just guys who know the rules well. You need people who can give their friends a warning if its necessary.

I will add however, there is really no subjectivity in the rules - That both players must play at a speed that allows for the completion of the game. What is subjective is knowing earlier in the game if a game is going to meet that or not - that part is hard for a novice judge.

Interestingly enough, the Lancer and Yobuck are incredibly good at taking down these squads with high activations. The Rebel builds with Crix/Juno and a Bodyguard are tough to deal with though. But as a point of reference, Phillip, Brandon, and Daniel had the high activation squads that made it into the Top 8. Of those 3 players, and their 18 games, only 3 of those games were against a Yobuck or Lancer squad. Phillip beat Trevor's Yobuck in round 3, Brandon beat Lou's Yobuck in Round 3, and then Brandon beat Jason Kiernan's Lancer in Round 4. Neither of the high activation Rebel players had to face a single Lancer squad all day. Honestly, there were less Lancer players in the Championship than I expected, and it's possible that this is how those players made it out on top. Not that a Lancer would've been an auto-loss for them, but it would've been a key difference. Jason's Lancer build was uniquely designed to handle Daniel's Rebel build, IMO, as Jason could wipe out Daniel's entire squad in 3 activations, regardless of the bodyguard. But Dan never had to face him.

So, the counters for high activation builds are out there, it's just that not as many of them were played, and the randomness of switch matchups ended up making it so that the top high-activation squads didn't end up facing their direct counters all that often.

That reason above might be an excellent reason for running a Top 16 instead. Much more chance that those squads end up hitting one of their counters by adding that extra elimination round in there.

Plus, I think the V Set stuff will end up helping with it at least a little bit.

As for the other changes, I still like the idea of Huges getting Stable Footing across the board, but I'm wholly open to it being accomplished by a V Set piece instead at some point. Could be something relatively cheap that also has Industrial Repair or someting like that. Or could be like the Rodian Trader where it grants Stable Footing to an adjacent ally.

Yeah, I'd had the same thought about Dodonna--a straight-up activation cap would, if anything, make him more powerful. You'll notice that there was a lot of hedging in my original post on the subject--I was more interested in hearing what people had to say on the subject than anything else. Lobo's comment about the finals squads never running up against some of the best counters to them is also interesting to think about--it is certainly possible that if we played the same tournament again next weekend, a fair number of people would switch to the Lancer as a counter.

I am curious, Bill or Lobo or whoever, to hear what you'd think about the idea of a limit on the number of any particular non-unique you could have in a squad (i.e., you can have a max of four or five of any particular unit--five mice, five uggies, whatever). One could obviously still build some very high-activation armies, but you'd get some opportunity cost there since a squad with 20-plus activations would have to include 3-point units that don't have the obvious advantages of mice, uggies, or brutes. And obviously this would cap the impact of two-point mice. I'm not sure I really think this is an ideal solution either--I'd hate for stuff in the V-Set to make Vong swarms competitive and then the floor rules come along and nerf Vong swarms--but I'd be interested to hear what others think.

I'm not against a V-set solution here, but that probably won't help in Dynamic Duo (or if TT and FF ever were to be added to the official competitive formats). I know that's a minor point, but those extra squares of movement are important if you decide to show up with a pair of Krayt Dragons or something.

It's not a horrible idea, and is somewhat implemented in the 'EPIC' format rule set that Boris put together long ago (that format limits you to 3 commander effects). The real question becomes "What # do you pick for your cap?" Would '10' be low enough? That's still a lot of 2 point Mouse Droids. But if you go as low as 5, then you start to have issues like you pointed out, where it nerfs perfectly legitimate builds like Battle Droid swarms or Vong Swarms or Imperial Trooper builds.

It's a possibility, and the only way I would maybe consider it is if the cap only applied to the base squad and Reinforcements. Reserves would have to be counted separately. That would still allow things like Wat Tambor TUF or Kazdan or Ozzel to bring in whatever they wanted/needed to via Reserves. Even then, I'm not sure if it's a sure-fire solution. Perhaps the way to do it would be to say that your squad can only include a maximum of # copies of the same Fringe piece. That would limit them entirely. Would also force things like Reserves to look at in-faction options instead.

As a totally different idea, and one that's probably too complicated to actually make a piece of....what if some new V Set piece had an ability that countered Rapport. It would be a 'magic bullet' sort of counter, obviously, and would take some finagling for the rules to work right. Would have to do something like force the opponent to remove pieces from their squad until they were under the point limit, or else anything that benefitted from Rapport took a penalty of some sort (10 damage at the start of the game, or -2 defense or something). No idea how that would actually work, but just possibly an alternate solution. If it was a cheap enough Fringe piece, it could be used as Lobot's Reinforcements. Maybe some sort of Czerka Port Official - "You must pay what those products are worth!"

Czerka Port Official "These are the droids you looking for" - reinforcements cut by 50%

Actually, I've been urging an activation-cap for each point level for quite a while, but I've been much more aggressive about it: I've also been urging that all Tempo Control pieces be banned (even Tarkin, Veed, Mar Tuuk). I know how much people hate bannings, but I've heard FAR more Dodonna-hatred than anything else recently (and with good reason, IMHO). And if we're gonna set an activation-cap, then we also have to decide (as mentioned previously) about Reinforcements and Reserves. Personally, I'm all for including Reinforcements in the activation cap (so that less people will play Lobot), but leaving Reserves open. Currently, the Reserve squads are Tier 2 at best. Maybe an activation cap would make them more powerful, even Tier 1...but then you're going to a tournament and banking on rolling certain numbers for initiative, which is a very risky proposition. Furthermore, a lot of the Reserve pieces aren't very effective on their own, and those reserve squads require several rounds of reserves before they’re firing on all cylinders. This option would allow a lot of other squad-types to compete.


One other option, slightly related to my above suggestion, is that we do not place an activation cap on squad-building, but rather an activation cap on ROUNDS. That is, no player may activate more than X pieces per round. Once both players have activated X pieces, they roll initiative again to start the next round. So you can bring 25 activations if you want (ie, maybe you want to be sure you have plenty of door control options, or plenty of mice for screens or CE-spreading, or whatever). But you wouldn't be able to move more than X pieces per round, regardless of your squad's activation count. Once again, all tempo control pieces would have to be banned, but that’s not a big loss to the game, IMHO. This would still allow trooper swarms to be played, since those squads normally require 4-5 commanders who are there for no other purpose than to offer their CEs (and therefore don’t need to be activated each round). It would also prevent the “Dodonna spins, YT.” “San spins, YT.” “Rieekan spins, YT.” “Whorm spins, YT.”… “blah blah, YT…” nonsense. Why not just eliminate the “Spin, YT” nonsense and get on with the game? If you don’t need to move a certain piece that round, then it wouldn’t need to activate at all.


I know that since both of my suggestions call for big changes, people will immediately dismiss them as dumb ideas or short-sighted ones, or whatever. But stop and think about it for a minute: if everyone was limited to the same number of activations per round, then the game really would come down to more of a contest of skill and positioning and strategy, and less to a contest of who can pull in more Mice or spin more commanders. I think it would be a whole lot more fun overall. I’m just sick to death of the high-activation squads, and of Fodder-Spinning being a top-level competitive strategy.


I’ve heard of the concept of removing pieces or strategies from play by making new pieces which are low-costed counters/solutions for them (most recently the Mando CIO and a huge-movement-helper piece, yet to be designed). It’s nice when it works, but there’s still the problem that you’re having to pay extra points to do something you should’ve been able to do all along anyway! And so, do I like the new Mando CIO? You bet I do! But I don’t think he would be necessary if we would just make some changes to address the problem at its root. As Bill said, this problem of activation control is inherent to the system of the game. SWM, as we have it now, will always be about activations. It doesn’t need to be that way.

Go ahead, flame away.

I am not a "competitive player" per say but I think banning pieces is always bad idea when it can be helped. I think more options to remove scrubs and commanders is a better option IE Lancer and Yobuck.

Banning pieces doesn't solve problems, it just changes what is "good." You take away tempo control, you still have activation control problems, and it doesn't lessen the need for gallop/strafe attackers in the meta.

WotC should have implemented a character limit from the beginning but they didn't and so we have to respect that decision as a core element of the game, even if it is unpopular.

The best we can do is offer counter-options through new stat cards.

I think that's the best option. The CIO is one, but there are plenty of other ways to counter mass mice. Three off the top of my head...

Wookiee Roar (I suggested this one before): All enemy characters (or maybe just droids) of cost 3 or less are considered activated (possibly with a save - maybe not even with a save if it's a replaces turn action on a sufficiently high cost Wookiee)

Crowd Control: Replaces attacks. Select an enemy of cost 3 or less within 6 squares. If there are 5 or more enemies with the same name as that character in the enemy squad, all enemies with that name in the enemy squad take 10 damage (maybe with a save).

Taxation: During setup, for each character in the enemy squad, if the number of copies of the character exceeds the cost of the character, the character takes 10 damage (maybe with a save 11).

Someone else suggested an ability that reduces reinforcements, which would be another way to counter it. And this was just me in 10 minutes. I'm sure the committee has more surprises coming up.

[They've thought about this a lot more than we have, I'm sure.]
Edit: Oops. Forgot I was talking to someone on the committee.

Love the Wookie Roar... It is going into our homebrew somewhere.

Actually, that's not true. If you implement an activation cap (whether on squadbuilding or on rounds) AND ban the tempo control pieces, then you have exactly zero activation control problems. I'm not advocating one part of that solution without the other; both have to come together, or it won't work. But if they come together, it will work.


Actually, that's not true either. The game is no longer being produced. New stat cards are an option, but they are not the only option. Sometimes I think we need to think outside of the box a little more.

I certainly admit that my suggestions are more outside the box than people want or are accustomed to thinking, but let's ask ourselves how effective the previous and current measures at countering tempo-control have been. Despite Yobuck, Arica, and the Lancer being present in the meta, and played by good players, we still had two mass-activation squads playing in the finals (I'm not diminishing the performances by either player at all). And if even these 3 mass-activation counters failed to do the job, then I'm not real convinced that more patch-work measures will do the trick either.

You can make new pieces to do the job, but you'll still have to pay the points to include those pieces in your squad. And if, for example, you've paid for the Mando CIO and you don't come up against tempo control, then you’ve paid 14pts for a gambit-getter. Right now, the meta is this: if you want to win in a competitive environment, you must either play tempo control or have some way of quickly defeating your opponents' activations. If nothing else, the championship this year pointed that out. Unless something of huge significance comes into play, we’ll still have largely the same meta a year from now.

And please don’t misunderstand me: I MUCH prefer this year’s meta to the one we saw at Gencon last year, but that difference was just due to maps; nothing has changed with regard to tempo control.

It needs some tweaking, but the basic idea is there. Boardwide and not subject to disruptive is key for it to take uber-activations out of Tier 1, but somehow it shouldn't eliminate "legitimate" uses of Mouse Droids. Either "all but 2 of them" are activated, or it's on a piece of such high cost that you'd rather attack with it - and only use Wookiee Roar if it can activate, say, 10+ pieces. Or maybe a save so there's some risk involved. *shrug*

Needs work, but I was just trying to illustrate that I don't think floor rules changes are necessary to address the problem. And not every squad has to have these counters in them - if there are enough counter options available and being used, that will be enough to make uber-activations no longer Tier 1.

(Incidentally, I called uber-activations a "problem" because quite frankly they bore me to tears. This is a game - it should be fun! )

Yeah I wasn't thinking about the "activation cap" being part of the deal. I did propose a format a while back in which players use the same number of characters in the build. Originally called 8-man because that was the cap for 200 pts., I have also done it as 10-man and 12-man. It is fun to play, and really opens the field to trying out pieces not normally played.

As for "thinking outside the box" for the V-sets, I don't think (and I believe the other designers would agree with me) that reinventing the game is a good idea. We are building on what's there, but it's a fine line between adding onto the existing house and completely building a new house.

Per round activation cap is a really interesting idea.

The Force Is With Us: Your opponent may only activate two characters after your squad is completely activated. Remaining characters may not activate and a new round begins.

I've played your Epic SWM format too, and it's still one of my favorite ways to play SWM. Whenever we play with activation caps and no tempo control, our games are always really exciting, because every move counts. Contrast that with the pointless fodder-spinning which plays such a big role in the competitive game right now, and you've got two very different games...and one of them is much more fun than the other.

I hear what you're saying, and I think you make a good point. Maybe, as Nickname pointed out, the best thing is to take suggestions like mine (and the suggestions of others' too) and convert them into CEs or SAs on useful and cost-effective pieces.

One other thing that concerns me is the question of whether or not the various counters to certain overpowered tactics will actually have the desired effect. Will, for example, the Mando CIO (and perhaps other pieces with that effect) be enough to shift the meta away from mass-activation squads? Or will it have an effect similar to Han Rogue's NTMTO on Thrawn's MT? I hope they will, but I guess we'll have to wait and see.

I like the Idea of Actiavtion Capping but i dont think this way would work to well, because if you kill off most of your opponents squad and they havnt hurt you that could be devastating.

I think in terms of activations and tempo control, that we really ought to wait until the first V Set is out before we make any drastic changes. It's possible that new pieces could help alleviate the problem enough that it isn't a concern any more.