thats the squad that won the Gencon championship? Hmmm, looks like a good squad, I'm surprised it doesn't have any ce's though. But then with no ce's, the squad can't be countered as easily.

I have a problem with this. I don't think someone who just throws a buncha quote on quote "broken" figs together should win. I think it should be someone who builds a special squad which relys on strategy not just a few beatsticks. I really think Bill or Lobo should have one, not just because they are members but because they probably had synergy and CE's and a lot of other stuff. I think that we have a problem with the fact that the winning squad has no synergy, or strategy, or CE's whatsoever. I think that it is sad that all the other well though out squads can be beat with just a few beatsticks, because to me this game is all about outhinking and outwitting your opponent.
Just my two cents.

A better description of the squad usage can be found at:

http://forums.gleemax.com/showthread.php?t=908653

I'll admit I was dissapointed that the mentioned squad won the Gencon championship, but the JWM's aren't broken, there is a counter to pretty much everything. I would say the only figure that comes closest to being called broken is Boba BH, but even then you can counter Boba BH.

Its a solid squad. He caught a few opponents off guard by running the Genosis Arena Map, but that wasnt the difference. Broken Boba plays incredibly well on Mustafar as well and that was very often his opponent's map of choice. (I'll be posting more on this at a later time).

Then the key to it all, he got multiple disintigrations through out the tourney. He won at least two games on that fact alone.

He had the benefit of running a solid all around squad that can play on most maps, and rolled well. When he faced his bad matchups, he rolled 20s with Boba. That was the difference. When I played him in my completely exhausted and meaningless round 7 game (I was the only 6-0 and already a virtual lock for the top Cool, He made a horrible play early on that should have cost him Boba BH and R2. Instead Boba made 6/8 evade saves and only took 60 from Han. He then preceded to camp Boba in the upper middle room and surround him with ewoks (only 1 square paths around him so he cannot be attacked from the left side). I made the only choice I had to charge and try to break through. Still had a shot, but I lost the last init for the game.

All that being said, he also had the vastly superior left side of Mustafar with a squad designed for the map, Broken Boba. He chose to drop Lobot for activations, which was a mistake, but his Boba was never disintigrated so luck was on his side. I know he got a 20 on an opposing Boba in the last round of one game, and then two 20s in the final game.

I disagree here wholeheartedly. Both BGartz29 and Dr_Divot reported opponents, quality ones, stating that they had no clue how to play on this unused map. I find that this map choice was crucial for this squad to work and I mentioned it thusly on the main forum thread.


What does it mean when you say the map is a broken map but play it anyway. By gosh we were there to win, and people who chose mustafar with their squad choice knew the risks of facing any strong shooter (only had one shooter in the squad...).

It is probably true that disintegrations helped. However, you know that he was not the only one who won with that cursed ability. You know how I lost to Jason, you know how Boris lost on the first shot of the game. So, whatever, I know that several of Dr_Divot's disintegrations were on low HP characters (I think he got a 30 HP commander with one, and against Bazillai in the end was a 20 HP Landspeeder (after the first shot) and he still made the deflect roll as if it was normal for fun and failed it (so Luke's speeder was toast regardless).

Perhaps somebody should have got a good night's rest the night before. However, did you know that the announcement of the 7th round came halfway through the 6th when Dr_Divot stopped trying to win his game. He thought he was a lock and just wanted to relax... oops.



Why did you pick a map that had one and only one good side. Amazingly we playtested Geonosis time and again from both sides. Perhaps you should have played a balanced map or suffer the consequences of losing 1 die roll. Luck was on his side, I agree. However, the game is based on dice.

I mentioned in the other thread that this was not 'broken boba'. You can claim anything you want, you can claim that Lobot is superior. However, I can tell you that every time I faced Lobot, I killed him for a lead in points (Jason's last round crit on Vader pulled him back in the lead). Lobot is a LIABILITY and I do not understand how you can think it is a good choice when maps like Mustafar and Geonosis exist where Lobot is most likely able to be hunted down for an easy 27 points.

I am tired of defending logic to you. The truth is that Kelly, Billy and I correctly guessed what would be played and correctly figured out how to best deal with it. Not having Lobot and playing Geonosis was the logical progession. I am sorry you did not have that foresight.

the map choice was very clever.

I have no doubt that it factored greatly in his results.

The squad is a very tough one and played well is one of the best.

Paired with the two of the most imbalanced and shooter friendly/Melee unfriendly maps as well as a great deal of practice set the base for this tourney.

No one else had a gameplan quite so unique.

mm, Emr Ive played that squad several times. It was my other choice and I decided to go with Han because I preferred it.

I said geonosis was a good move but there are people who playtested on it, Matt and I included. Heck, I ran it in the 100pt tourney just for practice just in case. And even knowing what would happen on Mustafar against his squad if I lost side roll, I had no choice but to choose it because of the risk for me on the right of Geonosis. Which I only knew because of playtesting.

What I was saying about Mustafar is that its a great map for Boba. That's nothing new and explaining that more at this point is silly. We all know this. Whatever the heck you found wrong with my statement about it is way off base. The point was, by running Geonosis, and assuming you guys expected a lot of mustafar like we did, it was a great move. You had a map no one would know how to play, and could play well on your opponents as well. And if you assume that, then dropping lobot isnt a terrible move. However, you do face certain risks which I am not going to go into detail arguing.

And lastly, making claims about superior foresight on your part is rude, untrue and unfair. I expect better from you. You guys made a great choice in map selection and I grant you that was a very smart move. But attacking me for saying I was tired and so on is just not cool...

Why is it not cool. You chose to stay up late. You mentioned being exhausted towards the end of the championship tourney. How else could I take it other then a decision that didn't pan out? I can say I was asleep by 10:30 Friday night. I chose not to play games until the wee hours of morning missing out on some events from my first GenCon (GenCon is freakin amazing!).

If you didn't want me commenting on your decision to stay out late the night before, you probably shouldn't have mentioned being exhausted. I commented to Eric during our match that I was surprised how many quality players were out late last night.

Perhaps I am just being very defensive about the prior post. Your attitude on the other forum thread is quite different and much more positive. I think I may be out of line, but I don't know.

Yeah I was tired when I got home last night and wasnt intending to be negative over here. Smile I didnt stay out late on Friday night, in bed by 1AM (my usual time - 12PM central time). But I had a horrible headache for the first three rounds and had to take some aspirin. Medicine of any kind (even with Caffeine) makes me tired. And after 10 hours of gaming with no break and no food I was exhausted. But I didnt make it an excuse there, and I am not intending to make it one here. My point was only that my first loss was partly as a result of those factors.

Also, I chose not to play the Ipod tourney as well for this very reason.

I have to say that when map choice is that big of a factor in who wins and doesn't, something has to change. mustafar and the arena should be banned from dci play for those factors alone. played one game on the arena and lost due to one bad play by myself, as well as loosing three key init's in a row.

I would love to see a 2 map total point game. The problem is the time limitations. As it was the champ went 14 hours with a 1 hour break only after 7 rounds before the top 8.

Oh dont get me wrong Fool, I've understood map control for a long time. And right now, some are just plain abusive - I was one of those who chose to do so and ran Mustafar with Han Scoundrel.

However, you do have to run a squad that can win on your opponents map as well, and I also won on other maps. You cant jsut sell out and hope to win map and side every time.

And in particular, its more about the side balance issues that the map roll anyway. We have a couple of maps that are incredibly inbalanced by sides. Korriban at least is equally horrible

I hope you didn't play any palpatine sith lord squads.

Ouch, vassal dice doesn't have anything on those Gencon dice. Hope you have better luck next Gencon. But 5-2 is a pretty good record, especially with rolls like that.

I remember DarkLordVerjal once rolled a lot of 20's once and was almost accused of cheating once.

Well, the first thing that comes to mind, is it feels really good to know that I finally got knocked out by the Champ. My other loss that day was against stsparks from Dayton, and I got a chance at a re-match in the finals, and beat him without too much trouble that time. Just wish the dice had cooperated in the final game against DrDivot. End of the game his last JWM has 10 hp and 1 fp left. Aurra rolls a 19 on her first attack, and makes his deflect save with an 11. Sad I then promptly rolled a 5 (needing 7s to kill), and then lost initiative too. With Wicket in range, he killed Aurra for the game. It really could have gone either way. My friend James was watching the whole time and as we talked on the drive back to Cincinnati, neither one of us could really think of anything I should have done differently, so I feel like I played a nearly flawless game. It's just how the dice go sometimes. Wish I'd had the chance to play Barzillai though. I'm pretty sure I could've beat him. Very Happy

All-in-all though, was an absolutely blast, and I never dreamed I would go that far.

Oh, and I knew that the Boba/JWMx2 squad would be a contender. I went 4-0 on Arena with it in Friday's 150 tourney. Twisted Evil

And the football analogy for the maps doesn't really hold up, because a football field is basically the same everywhere. Geonosis and Mustafar are completely different from almost all other maps. IMO, the analogy doesn't really hold up. Though I think it would be cool to have two games and total up the points to determine the winner.

Huge grats to the champion - good squad but AWESOME metagame choice on the map.

Now, DCI needs to realize that they are hurting a high quality, mostly balanced game by having HORRID maps available that pretty much can ruin certain squads.

Korriban? Really? at least its bad on both sides, but any CE based squad loses first turn against an accurate shooter.

Yeah, Korriban was a horrible choice for a DCI legal map, doesn't even make sense why they would consider it for DCI and now the worst has happened, it has become legal.

I am in agreement, I like an idea that I saw somewhere requireing all maps played in a tournament to be the same, I like Death Star and Chancellors Starship maps, they seem the most balanced to me.

I have to agree with Fool that the ability to bring your own map, and have it be decided by dice can give the player who prepared more for the event more return on that time.

However, that needs to be tempered with some general rules regarding what should and shouldn't be found in a map. While I can see reasons as to why one would want to have certain maps that facilitate completely different styles of play, there are certain expectations that I would like to be met.

A Map should:

A) Be roughly equal on both sides
B) Have a safe starting area
C) Be roughly fair for melee and non-melee squads.

OR

Maps can follow any of the rules or none at all, but there should exist a rotation so that a bad map only lasts for, say, 1 year. Then we'll have a "Korriban" season which may be replaced by a new map that totally favors another squad type.

Its just too bad that maps are like this, because there are good squads that exist that are not super defensive but they need a reasonable map to have a chance.