TimmerB123 wrote:
GOWK dominated the scene in 2009, until he was breifly banned and then errata'd to effective only against non-melee.
Cut to the 2012 competitive season when SSM was changed back to the card text (effective against all attacks), and he races to the top - winning several regionals and ultimately the world championship.
I argued vehemently against using the card text again, and I will again put forth the motion that SSM needs to be changed back to 2010-2011 definition permanently.
GOWK is clearly dominant, but that's not even my biggest issue. My issue is that luck is such a big part of the piece. Now don't misinterpret this please. Good players use him well. Trevor is without question one of the greatest players in our game, and he used him perfectly. That being said - a 50/50 chance of negating ANY attack is ridiculous. And that's without even a force point. Anything that increases the luck factor vs the skill factor in this game (where it is increasing too much IMO anyway) is a bad thing.
Do we really want to have our game be opening up a pack of quarters and seeing who flips more heads? That's what it feels like. In games with evenly skilled opponents and evenly matched squads it's always been true that luck can be the difference. That will never change. What I don't like is when mismatched skill and mismatched squads can be overcome by dumb luck. And not insane luck like "I rolled 13 1's in a row and he rolled fifteen 20s!", but he rolled over ten 3/4 of the time, and when he rolled under, he FPd and made the save. That's not that dramatic of luck but it's a huge swing in the game. With figures that are less skill pieces and more luck dependent (once again, don't misinterpret this - skilled players can use these pieces even more insanely well), this game is moving in a bad direction. With Avoid defeat being thrown around like candy and Mace LotLS killing full health 140pt figures from a riposte, we need to make a stand.
GOWK is the best place to start. Republic is without question dominant. Now they have a new piece that unless facing MT, virtually assures them winning a key init (why did we make that again?).
We need to go back to this:
Soresu Style Mastery:
When hit by a non-melee attack, this character takes no damage with a save of 11
Personally I think GOWK and SSM is fine the way it is, and I like to make a few points.
In terms of tournaments won using GOWK and his dominance, all of those were won by 2 individuals (unless I missed someone somewhere), those 2 people being myself and TinT. I can't speak for Trevor, but I know I used my GOWK/Mace squad a lot because I enjoy it and I wanted to practice a lot with a solid squad for my first competitive year of playing. My point being: I don't think 2 unique players using a GOWK squad = dominance. There were other GOWK squads out there and they didn't perform as well. The meta is wide open and there are a ton of options, including viable options to deal with GOWK and (most importantly) they can deal with GOWK in a timely manner. Which brings me to my second point.
Earlier in the thread it was brought up that GOWK can make games take longer and deny someone a 3 point win. There's another popular style of squad out there that can also do this, the death shot squads (specifically the Republic version). Considering that most of those squads have nearly 120 points tied up in commanders, it can be incredibly difficult to get enough points, or to kill all the pieces, and get a 3 point win. It's something we have to deal with in the game right now and I don't think it's a large enough of a problem that requires the banning of any pieces. That being said, it is incredibly important the players play quickly and decisively so that rounds can move fast. Every player should have access to myriad squad ideas and they should be able to play them if they so desire. Which brings me to my final point.
Rather than banning pieces or handing out errata, the designers should continue to make pieces that keep the meta fresh and vibrant. They have already shown the collective aplomb that they can do this and we should continue to let them do that.
Now, if we get to this point next year, or even prior to regionals, and it's been all "GOWK this and GOWK that", then maybe the notion of a errata should be looked at, but I sincerely doubt that'll happen. I believe it will remain a solid squad, just like Skybuck (as Bill so slyly showed us at Gencon) but that doesn't give enough of a reason to nerf it.
That's my $.02 at least.