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.