S1AL wrote:
As I said, Vong are getting stronger all the time, yet still not making a significant splash at regionals... though, honestly, the only reason they didn't place well in CO is that the guy running a rebel push squad made some ridiculous number of crits in his game that allowed him to still win an awful match-up. Mix that with the fact that I built my squad to take out high-hp figures and remove stealth, and it was a bad luck/terrible match-up that kept him out. I think Vong can compete just fine ATM.
However, the meta will not return to what it was last year. Damage continues to go up, though attack values may be dropping a bit in some cases. That hurts Vong a lot. On the plus side, if Force Push doesn't go away, Vong really wreck that squad and don't care at all about Rieekan's annoyingly powerful CE.
OK, honestly, I guess I don't understand what you're trying to argue then. In one post you say Vong are going to be out of the running, and then you turn around say "Yeah, sure they do just fine at the moment." Are you trying to say that they are good now, but will suck after GOWK is banned? Are you forgetting to include all of the incredible Force users that are coming out in Jedi Academy? As you pointed out, Vong completely ignore the Evade problems that Rieekan/Wedge present. And to some degree, it doesn't matter that massive damage output squads become popular again. That's why two of the best Vong pieces have pretty good HP, and Crab Armor 6. And they're cheap on top of that! They can afford to take a beating, and still keep coming, and then lay down some hefty damage before they finally die.
I'll still say again, most people are predicting that after GOWK would be banned, we would return to a meta that was fairly similar to what it was at GenCon last year, with the addition of a couple new things like Yobuck, Lancers, or new Thrawn. Vong were good at GenCon last year. It's just that most people don't like running Vong, so they choose other things. Just because only 1 Vong squad made the top 16, doesn't mean they weren't good. You'll find that if both the Rebels and Vong are equally competitive, probably 75% of players will choose Rebels every time, simply because they like that faction better.
And on top of all this, we're getting an enormous infusion of Force users in the next set, which makes the Vong even more appealing. There's absolutely no reason for Vong to get WORSE once GOWK is banned. The historical data just doesn't support that theory.
S1AL wrote:
IIRC, and I'm definitely not sure that I do, something like half of the top 16 squads were Rebels. I think either 3/4 or 4/4 from the top four were Rebels. Top 16 was a bit broader, but we had, what, 1 Vong, 1(?) San Hill (was it Merc or BH?), one random squad (HoloVeers, which really didn't surprise me that much, as several people had experimented with him at my venue). There might have been a JWM swarm, or perhaps a Broken Boba variant. So really, there's not a lot of difference. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it appears to me every single one of the top squads was either a Mobile/Twin/Evade squad or was designed to beat it.
Umm....There are 6 competitive factions at GenCon last year (OR, Mandos, Sith not competitive). So, out of the top 16, of course there's going to be multiples of some of the factions. There were at least 3 San squads in the top 16, two with BFBH/AurraJH, and one with Boba Merc (either Aurra or Tyranus with that one, can't remember). I came in 4th in the Swiss rounds, so it was 3/4 Rebels at the top at best, and of the 4 Rebel squads in the top 8, two of them were mirror squads, and the other two were different types of builds (one was BFBH/HanRH, the other was Han Cannon). So even if you still want to say that the Rebel faction held the majority of the top slots, it was still at least 3 different archetypes of squads.
And I believe you are correct, that all of the top 8 squads had some element of Mobile, Twin, or Evade. But that's because those are popular abilities, handed out to a LOT of different units. To some degree, it'd be tough to NOT have the top squads include those abilities. Heck, even in our GOWK driven meta, all of the top squads still have those (Dash, Rex, Lord Vader, Rieekan, etc.). The point is, it's still DIVERSITY. With Mobile/Twin/Evade, there are a multitude of pieces, in all sorts of different factions, with those types of abilities. With GOWK, it's ONE piece, in ONE faction, that has SSM. THAT is why it restricts the meta differently than the Mobile/Twin/Evade stuff does.