Here're my thoughts, broken down by element in no particular order. I just added things over the past few days as I thought of them, or got what I wanted to say organized in my brain. I've now played with or against pretty much every piece in DotF and had been thinking about writing this up for a week or two. Boris's post spurred me into action...
Card Design & Printing I feel this is the primary element that seperated this project from everything that's come before. Sure, the stat design is great, but it's the amazing quality of the physical cards, and the fact that physical cards exist at all that really makes the VSets. The card design is fantastic. The print quality is fantastic. My only minor gripe is I wish the facton color stripe along the top had been maintained so VSet cards in a box are still slightly tinted the faction color. Grade: A
Funding Method Kickstarter was a great choice. I like the transparency and security. I like the idea of donations to cover the print run and shipping and also sharing the extras with others. Apparently shipping came up a bit short, but I think that should be easily correctable based on experience with a bump in the initial funding, and requesting non-donors cover their own shipping to some extent when requesting cards. The other improvement I'd like to see is even more transparency about the costs and if any money remains (if any) at any point in time. It shouldn't be too hard to have a finances thread with this info so donors can see exactly where their money went. Grade: A-
Distribution There are donors apparently still waiting for their set--that kinda says it all. This was really too big a job for any one person. It also needed way more organization and transparency. There were cases where someone's set supposedly went to their pointman, but there was no clear answer about who the pointman was in some cases. If my experience as a pointman is typical, then most sets did not have a name/address attached to them. You just got X copies, and distributed them on your own. I'd like to see a public list showing when a package was sent, to whom, and whose sets were in the package. Grade: D
Character Selection This is pretty much a free pass from me. I've never really cared which particular characters are chose from the fluff for any particular set as long as they're interesting in gameplay terms. I kind of like like seeing a mix of new characters and old favorites. At this point as close as we have to a major element missing is a few of the original trilogy mainstays in New Republic format but I never expected DotF to fill that minor void all at once. So for me the best case is making characters that other players really wanted to see, and that seems to have occurred. Grade: A
Quality Control When I saw the leaked cards I was afraid this particular element was going to border on failure. Luckily, those cards were from before the process even really started and the final result exceeded expectations by leaps and bounds. Still, there were a few cases of card errata so there's room for improvement. Grade: B+
Faction Balance The lesser factions have made real strides without totally reshaping what works well in the stronger factions. Each of the weaker factions got a cornerstone piece and each is wildly different. The Yammosk plays well as the Vong's hive brain. Bastila's Battle Meditation really pumps up the Old Republic, though after playing her a bit I sort of wish she was more of a battlefield commander rather than a character you have to hide completely to make sure the meditation is effective. The Sith got a trio of figures that reshape the faction (Revan, Bandon, Kun Spirit) but all push their offensive onslaught mentality in different ways. The Mandalorians get Jaster Mereel who helps fill a major void, allowing their expensive pieces some damage potential even if they get picked off somehow. It's hard not to gush about how well this particular element was handled--the power shift is neither too subtle, nor too overwhelming for a single set. Basically just right. The design team did there best work here. Grade: A
Metagame Evolution There are a number of metagame concepts and characters that everyone accepts at the highest level of play, but most people would seem to prefer weren't quite so prominant. Leading the list would likely be activation control and the related tempo control epitomized by two pieces: General Dodonna and Mouse Driod swarms. DotF introduces several counters to Dodonna, whether it be the less imaginative direct counter the Mandalorians got with the Counter Intelligence Officer, or the more creative abilities the Vong and Old Republic got to shut down or borrow the effect using their signature new pieces. Less was done to slow down the value of insanely high activation counts. Years ago, shifting the tourney rules to only allow one activation in the first phase effectively eliminated the problem the game had with massive first-strike combos. But about the same time Oppurtunist came into prominence along with unprecidentedly large damage output from individual chraracters and ever since the game has been a paridoxical race for last strike that DotF didn't really change in any substantial way. There are a few outliers that break the cycle (Revan is a nice mid-round strike piece, for examle) but there's room for more action here. Another staple is melee crowd-control with Yoda on Kybuck and the Lancer Droid as the primary offenders. The problem here as that these pieces are also a nice counter for tempo and activation control squads--they're a huge threat there. So you don't want to hate them out of the metagame completely or you cause a worse problem. The solutions DotF brings are fairly elegant--give the factions that suffer most, but don't rely on huge activation counts themselves too much, some pieces that mitigate the advantage. So you get the Old Republic Jedi Seer getting attacks of opportunity on the Lancer and Jaster Mereel bringing death shots to strafed or galloped Manadalorians evening the playing field substantially in what used to be rout matchups. There are also some lesser concepts that don't particularly dominate, but are prominent enough that they could use some mitigating elements and could uses a bit of hate sprinked in just to offer them a bad matchup here and there. Mobile and Greater Mobile on shooters are overused. Reinforcements is overused. Opportunist is overused. Evade is overused on shooters. While none of these need to be nerfed, each could use a piece or two it has trouble dealing with. I also think non-unique combat swarms still need help in several factions--these should be more competetive than that are. Squads compositions still favor high cost uniques with 3 (or even 2!) point activation fodder too strongly in too many factions. Grade: B
Revival of Older Pieces Along with faction balance and metagame evolution, reviving older pieces is what I consider the other major factor that should anchor the VSet designs. This is the area where I think the design team most underachieved. Starting with the positives, Atris bumped Handmaidens right up to Tier 1. Niles Ferrier brings back Defels, Pallaeon helps a few Vaders, the Scout Trooper Officer bumps Scouts, and Poggle puts Geonosians, mostly Drones, on the table but I don't think even the designers planned on either of these being more than middlingly competetive. The common thread here is that the focus tends to be quite narrow, often a single piece benefitting. Even so, that's really not much to complain about. Where I have trouble is for each of those designs that helps an old piece see more play, we have another design that dooms an old piece to never appearing. For clarity, with uniques this isn't really problematic, and there's often no other reasonable solution. Ki-Adi-Mundi is awful. Creating a new piece that only helps Ki is counterproductive, leads to the worse element of "pre-built" squads and you can only play one Ki anyway. So the way to go with uniques is, unfortunately, to just replace substandard ones with better models. But that's not true of non-uniques. I very much dislike the "build a better model" theory applied to them. Let's take an example. The Series II Destroyer Droid in a vaccuum is a finely designed piece, effective and costed well. But it's among my least favorite pieces in DotF because quite simply it does everything the regular DD does better at roughly the same price point. It's so much more effective for it's cost that there's almost no way a DD can be resurrected at this point because the Series II will almost certainly benefit even more from any help it gets. I would much rather have seen a piece created that boosts the original DD--say a weak commander with Rapport that gave them Advanced Shields so the originals resemble the Series II, or a different Series II design that actually synergized well with the original so both see use in the squad since we have two different sculpts. Another similar case is the Yuuzhan Vong High-bred Warrior--he's so much better than the other Vong in his price range, and so functionally similar, that it's going to be tough to help bring them into play without this guy getting a boost as well and remaining the go-to piece. To a lesser extent, the Nogrhi Warrior and Mandalorian Gunsmith make revivals of similar Wizards pieces much less likely. On a slight different track, you'll notice most of the discussions revolve around pieces helping or hurting other single pieces. I'd like to see more done at the class level. The standout here in DotF was helping Black Sun and we need more of that. Troopers need help in most factions. I'd like to see something perhaps for Heavy Weapons characters, or maybe a bit more for Mercenaries. Buff Jabba's rabble somehow. Seps Commando Droids and pretty much all their droids outside of the Lancer and 4-point Battle Droid need help--we have a zillion Super Battle Droid sculps wasting away and I miss seeing things like Crab and Spider droids on the table while fringe IG-88 clone dominates. Grade: C-
Unique Designs This is kind of the easiest bit to design, and for many the most fun, and most anticipated. There's a lot of good work done here, but the elements important to me are mostly covered in other sections. I only really include this bit so it's clear that my minor disappointment with some of the design work on non-uniques doesn't extend to uniques as well. It's solid in choices, variety, and execution but it's not something that interests me all that much. Grade: B+
New Abilities The work here is pretty good overall. I prefer that individual abilities remain fairly simple. The design team did a pretty good job of reigning in some concepts that started out much more complex (a bit of inside knowledge showing through here, which I've tried to avoid but it's particularly important here to note.) Telepathic Insight is perhaps the most complex element, but it's also a key one for the faction, so the design team chose well where to push the envelope rather than, for example, leaving something weird that was also rather insignficant in the larger scheme of things. Grade: B+
Shaking Things Up One of the neat aspects of the game has always been the weird ability that generates squads that play entirely differently than anything the game has seen before. Some will be instantly apparent (Nom Bombs) while others only show their true power over time (San Hill.) Some will be massively dominant (swapping) while others are relegated mostly to casual play due to their inherent riskiness (Immediate Reserves, Jar Jar, "gambling" powers). But these elements have always been one of the things I've looked forward to with each set. DotF has a few such elements. The most prominent is the Yammosk's Telepathic Insight. Stealing a commander effect is just neat, and leads to squads that play differently practically every game. It promotes adaptability which remains one of the great tests of a skilled player. It's almost perfect as a "shaking" ability. Nothing else quite reaches that hight, but getting there once a set is nothing to be critical of. We see Geonosians getting the Nom Bomb trick. Vong get a Vaderesqe Attack bonus stacking trick. New Republic and Vong each get a nifty trick piece with stacking bonuses as it takes damage. Imps get a nice squad customization trick with Pallaeon. All neat, but none create a new style of squadbuilding or tactical play that's the holy grail of shaking things up. Grade: B
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