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Power Creep?
Poll ended at Mon Nov 19, 2007 10:36 am
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 7:49 pm 
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power creep is a necessity for collectible mini games....a little is ok

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PostPosted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 10:14 pm 
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Fool wrote:
mara's actually not that gross. I dont' think so anyways. She's deadly yes, but her lack of accurate shot and her base 10 isn't great.

Plus Yoda or any character with Absorb or Cancel TOTALLY nerfs her.

That's just my opionion - my concerns are really on the fence right now.

Most of it relates to FU - Vader Unleashed anyways but I'll reserve judgement until the rest of the set comes out.


What annoys me about Mara is that so many people have her (at least around here) and the necessary support to ensure she goes first often enough that you end up having to build your squad around the possibility that Mara will be played.

You're entirely right, it's fairly easy to stop Mara Jade if you happen to have a couple of high priced very rares and build a squad to stop Mara Jade. But that misses the point entirely, which is not that Mara Jade can't be stopped, but that you can't play squads that aren't designed to stop her, which severely limits the actual options you have in squad building.


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PostPosted: Mon Oct 22, 2007 10:24 pm 
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I haven't had issues having to build to face Mara squads. Having Recon yourself negates Talon's advantage. Staying out of 6 squares is often enough to prevent an assualt from happening.

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 Post subject: Re: In Defense of Power Creep
PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 1:14 am 
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Solodan wrote:
This is where power creep can get "interesting" as counters are published. For example, I think that Wookie Freedom Fighters are pretty good against Boba Fett, BH, and good in general. If some smaller, generic jedi with Force Push are printed, AND force push allows for instant death into a pit, it is possible that a swarm of pushers could move Bane or the new Revan into the reactor shaft were they belong.


I really do hope Force Push allows pushing into pits. It's just too funny to not happen. At the same time, they need to ban Mustafar from DCI for no other reason than Force Push: otherwise, next year's GenCon winner could be something like Boba BH, R2 AM and Maris Brood on Mustafar. Much of the map is 2 squares away from a pit.

Am I the only one to not really be seeing power creep in TFU so far? I see some good pieces, but nothing that absolutely obsoletes any of the playable pieces we had before (and no, obsoleting Komari Vosa does not count. Komari was never playable to begin with).

The only pieces I have ever been concerned about are the JWM and Boba BH (and I guess it's telling that both were in the GenCon winning squad).

The JWM can be explained by the recosting of melee, and the more Jedi we get priced along the same lines the more reasonable the JWM will seem. We'll have problems when the JWM is considered obsolete though.

Boba BH is an aberration. I don't see any reason why this figure was made so strong, other than to satisfy Boba fanboys.

Mara Jade is strong, but I don't consider it power creep simply due to the faction. If Mara was in, say, the Rebel faction she'd be broken. As NR, with what little support they have, it's fine. IMO minor factions can afford to have slightly crazier figures, since they will always have less support and less options to abuse them with. If the JWM had been Old Republic faction, we'd likely never hear much complaint about it.

Kazdan Paratus is not power creep. If you take away the 30pts of droids and drop his cost to 25, he becomes sort of comparable to a JWM (and most squads would probably still take the JWM). The droids can be a liability as they can be easier to kill for points than a Jedi.

Vader Unleashed is not power creep. Lightsaber Throw 5 is amazing, but your opponent really needs to be an idiot for you to be able to get the most out of it. Strong, not overpowered IMO.


krayt_dragon: If everyone in your area is playing Mara Jade, play something that can deal with it. Don't complain when your squad is wiped out by Mara. Grievous/Tambor is a pretty bad squad anyway, don't be surprised when it loses to pretty much anything (especially anything with Stealth).

I think your opinion of broken is different from that of everyone else. Broken to you seems to be anything you lose to. I imagine that to be a good many things.


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 Post subject: Re: In Defense of Power Creep
PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 7:20 am 
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Wedge772 wrote:
krayt_dragon: If everyone in your area is playing Mara Jade, play something that can deal with it. Don't complain when your squad is wiped out by Mara. Grievous/Tambor is a pretty bad squad anyway, don't be surprised when it loses to pretty much anything (especially anything with Stealth).


Actually, it's a very effective squad most of the time.

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I think your opinion of broken is different from that of everyone else. Broken to you seems to be anything you lose to. I imagine that to be a good many things.


Don't be a jerk. There's no need for it. I didn't insult you, you don't need to insult me.

Fool wrote:
If you're that worried about Mara and you really are concerned with the "Power Creep", the sedcond Season of the GVL will be starting up in the new year - most of the "Creepy" pieces are on a banned list to start the season so you totally avoid this pieces.


It's not so much Mara I'm worried about, it's the tendancy of WOTC to support the notion of "gatekeeper" pieces and other stuff like that. It reminds me of when I was in high school and played Magic with my friends. We all started playing with the Alpha release because we were at the Norwestcon where WOTC first unveiled Magic and got free cards. As the game got more popular, more and more people at our school were playing. Then around the time that Arabian Knights came out, these two kids (freshmen) with way too much disposable income went out and dropped hundreds of dollars on decks and were unstoppable. They were crappy players with no imagination, but their decks where nothing but $20+ cards (and this was in '93). And you know what happened? After a bout a month everyone at the school had stopped playing. Because the game isn't fun when the guy with the most money is guarunteed of winning everytime.

And that's what I see happening to Star Wars. The keep releasing these "chase miniatures" that are ridiculously underpriced and ridiculously powerful and totally change the metagame, and they quite foolishly assume that the rarity of the piece will keep it out of play, but of course all it really does is ensure that some dumb teenager with no sense of tactics and parents who spoil him will show up every week with some ungodly team consisting of nothing but very rare figures from whatever the latest set is, and then everyone is constantly having to react to that.

And that is just lame. Considering this is what WOTC seems to consider a "company strategy," I suspect the game will be more or less unplayable and totally stupid within the next three sets. By 2009, they'll have run the game into the ground.


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 Post subject: Re: In Defense of Power Creep
PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 7:25 am 
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krayt_dragon wrote:
Yeah, and I can't even begin to tell you how incredibly sick I am of the complete brokeness that is Mara Jade. That piece is the worst cheese I've ever seen. I pretty much hate everything about Alliance and Empire, from the utterly garbage sculpts to the square bases to the ridiculous units.

I had a 150 pt Grevious/Tambor droid swarm squad completely wiped out by a New Republic squad that had Mara, Luke, Talon Karde and some fringe scrubs. In the course of the fight, I managed to do 20 points of damage to Luke before my entire force was wiped out. I couldn't even shoot at Mara Jade until she was amongst my squad, and once she and Luke were close enough to attack everything I had died in two rounds. it was pathetic, those figures aren't even remotely close to being balanced. The other guy didn't even need his other two pieces. And thansk to Karrde's reinforcements, he ended the game with twice as many units as he started with.


Yeah.....your problem there has nothing to do with Mara Jade being 'broken'. Your problem is that you are playing a squad that hasn't been competitive since Universe. If Mara was 'broken' then why was there not a single Mara Jade, Jedi based squad in the top 8 at GenCon? I REALLY like playing New Republic, but I decided not to play a NR squad at GenCon because I knew Mara was just not powerful enough, and her power was way too situational, in order for me to win consistently. A friend of mine (who is a VERY good player) did play NR at GenCon and went 3 and 2 before dropping out.

Mara is a good piece, but she is far from unbeatable. It's just that in your situation, you had just about the worst possible squad to face her. Doesn't make her broken, just makes your squad a bad match-up. This says to me that you may need to re-evaluate the type of squads you bring to play at your LGS. It sounds like you're bringing squads to play for fun, and your opponents are bringing squads to win. Someone will have to change their mind-set in order for everybody to have fun.

krayt_dragon wrote:
Only if the Vader player is a complete drooling idiot and doesn't spend his first two rounds Sith gripping Piett.


Well, let's see, it would take Vader 4 rounds to grip Piett to death (since Force Grip on Vader JH only does 10 dmg, and Piett has 40 HP). Plus, Piett would have to be the closest target, which would be stupid. Trust me. I could beat your Vader JH with Piett and 11 Stormies.

krayt_dragon wrote:
If it changes too much, nobody will buy the new stuff and the game will die.


Definitely agree with you here.

krayt_dragon wrote:
That's what has happened to every single other collectible game out there, Star Wars won't be any different. Let me stress that: Every single CCG/CMG on the market has lost market dominance because of power creep obsoleting old sets. If the new sets make the old sets obsolete, then you're stuck in a really idiotic chase to always have the latest set, and you can never catch up...meanwhile everything you're buying is becoming more and more worthless.[/b]


Not sure I agree with you here. So far, Star Wars has been very different. We have had 7 sets so far, and in all those sets, there are still a decent number of pieces from the older sets that can be played and used. Sure, some of them aren't as good in the 'highly competitive' arena anymore, but they are certainly fun to play with still. And so far, Rob has shown a great ability at coming up with new things to make old pieces playable again.

Plus, everything shifts after each set. Heck, after Champions of the Force, most people had written off the Rebel faction. Even BHs didn't help the Rebels much. But, oh man, along comes Alliance and Empire and all of a sudden they are a top contender again. Perhaps next year the NR and OR factions will rise to the top for a while, and then in the fall when the Clone Wars set comes out, maybe we'll see the Seps dominate again.

And that can all be done WITHOUT power-creep. Rob's been doing it with VERY LITTLE power creep so far. There is NOTHING so far to suggest that this game will die because of power creep problems.

Just sit back, relax, and wait for the rest of this set's stats. If there really is legitimate creep at that point, then nobody will argue otherwise. But at this point, it's really kind of silly and immature to make sweeping assumptions that this set (or future ones for that matter) are going to ruin the game.

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 8:24 am 
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The comparison of Vader vs. 15 Stormtroopers is ridiculous. In RPG terms, if you are level 20 and 15 level 1 characters are ganging up on you, you are going to beat them without even breaking very much of a sweat. This is no different. And as has already been mentioned, 5 point grunts aren't meant to run on their own. That's why the game has commanders.

Regarding Kazdan, I agree with dreadtech. Even at 55 points, it only took someone about 15 minutes to come up with a squad that abuses the concept.

Credit to billiv15 for his Qui-Gon JM, Quinlan, Mas, Rodian Black Sun Vigo, Kazdan, R2, etc., team. Basically you get reserves on rolls of 5,10,11,15,20, and you get up to 4 tries to roll one of those numbers 5 times during the game. At a minimum, you are rolling twice per round.

And you only need 5 of 20 numbers. Thats a 1 in 4 chance, and the odds are even better with all the re-rolling going on (also, you can bring in a Probe Droid to give you more Recon options).

Third and finally on the subject of powercreep. I only think 2 characters have ever truly qualified as powercreep pieces: Boba Fett, Bounty Hunter and Mas Amedda. There are other great new pieces, yes, but none that are must-haves in a squad the way these 2 are. Rarely do I see a tournament where a Boba Fett BH squad doesn't win, and Mas appears almost as often in most squads. If he had been Fringe it would have been better. What makes him a powercreep piece IMO is what he does for the already two-best factions in the game. Two best, at least, prior to A&E.

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 8:38 am 
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Boris wrote:
Regarding Kazdan, I agree with dreadtech. Even at 55 points, it only took someone about 15 minutes to come up with a squad that abuses the concept.

Credit to billiv15 for his Qui-Gon JM, Quinlan, Mas, Rodian Black Sun Vigo, Kazdan, R2, etc., team. Basically you get reserves on rolls of 5,10,11,15,20, and you get up to 4 tries to roll one of those numbers 5 times during the game. At a minimum, you are rolling twice per round.

And you only need 5 of 20 numbers. Thats a 1 in 4 chance, and the odds are even better with all the re-rolling going on (also, you can bring in a Probe Droid to give you more Recon options).


Yikes, that is crazy, LOL. The problem though is that all of those Reserves points count for Victory points when they get killed. And except for a couple options, most pieces in the Fringe-under-20 or non-unique-Droids-under-30 range are not that difficult to defeat. Thus, rolling those extra points into the game can likely just give your opponent easier targets to shoot instead.

Now....if you can work Mon Mothma into that same squad...then you're talking. Reserves on a 20 as well, plus all those reserves get extra attacks when the opponent kills them. :twisted:

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 Post subject: Re: In Defense of Power Creep
PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 11:30 am 
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krayt_dragon wrote:
Don't be a jerk. There's no need for it. I didn't insult you, you don't need to insult me.


Not my intention, I apologise.

I don't think Wizards has a policy of assuming rarity will keep figures out of play. Beatsticks like General Windu and Mara are only R. I've got kids at the local LGS who pulled Bane and Exar Kun, and don't automatically kill all the other kids who didn't pull a major beatstick.

If you're a good player with a fairly average squad, you should be able to do well. If you're a good player with a great squad, of course you should do very well. If you're a bad player with a mediocre squad, of course you'll probably find yourself whooped by Mara Jade every week. That's really just the nature of gaming; just because a bad player loses every week trying to play CS Jedi swarm doesn't mean the game is unbalanced. If the bad player could bring Mara Jade every week and do very well with it every week, then the game is unbalanced. If you're a good player, you really don't need to worry about the "dumb teenager with no sense of tactics", you should be able to beat him regardless of the squad he brings (assuming your squad is decent enough to begin with). IMO this game is more about skill than having the uber-pieces, and that's exactly the way it should be.



The Kazdan/Recon/Anticipation thing is very obvious, and very fun. I don't think it's ever going to be top tier since the Reserves still count for victory, but it's just plain fun to see BDO buffed Darktroopers. Test played some 150pt games with this last weekend, I got 90pts of droids as Reserves, my friend got 60pts when he played it. We didn't use the RBSV in there.


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PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:12 pm 
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LoboStele wrote:
Boris wrote:
Regarding Kazdan, I agree with dreadtech. Even at 55 points, it only took someone about 15 minutes to come up with a squad that abuses the concept.

Credit to billiv15 for his Qui-Gon JM, Quinlan, Mas, Rodian Black Sun Vigo, Kazdan, R2, etc., team. Basically you get reserves on rolls of 5,10,11,15,20, and you get up to 4 tries to roll one of those numbers 5 times during the game. At a minimum, you are rolling twice per round.

And you only need 5 of 20 numbers. Thats a 1 in 4 chance, and the odds are even better with all the re-rolling going on (also, you can bring in a Probe Droid to give you more Recon options).


Yikes, that is crazy, LOL. The problem though is that all of those Reserves points count for Victory points when they get killed. And except for a couple options, most pieces in the Fringe-under-20 or non-unique-Droids-under-30 range are not that difficult to defeat. Thus, rolling those extra points into the game can likely just give your opponent easier targets to shoot instead.

Now....if you can work Mon Mothma into that same squad...then you're talking. Reserves on a 20 as well, plus all those reserves get extra attacks when the opponent kills them. :twisted:


I forgot about Mon Mothma. I'm pretty sure he had her in there, too.

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 12:44 pm 
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@dreadtech,
That fig has an 18 def, there is no way that it is overcosted.

The def score reflects his ability. He's going to get just beaten on more often than not.

its costed just fine.


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PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 3:34 pm 
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LoboStele wrote:
Yikes, that is crazy, LOL. The problem though is that all of those Reserves points count for Victory points when they get killed. And except for a couple options, most pieces in the Fringe-under-20 or non-unique-Droids-under-30 range are not that difficult to defeat. Thus, rolling those extra points into the game can likely just give your opponent easier targets to shoot instead...

That's if you play DCI. Lots of people still play the standard rules as per the Rulebook, "You win my defeating all the enemy characters." Anything else is an optional rule. So by That it makes it a lot tougher to defeat Kazdan if he keeps bringing in Reserves. You'd really need some Accurate shooters to take him out.

So, by-the-book Kazdan is a tough cookiee, in tournament play he's probably average. 8)

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 3:41 pm 
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In DCI he is going to be total crap, but yeah in a kill all format if you dont have a limit to what has to be killed, then i can see this guy ruling the roost.

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 4:00 pm 
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Sithdragon13 wrote:
In DCI he is going to be total crap, but yeah in a kill all format if you dont have a limit to what has to be killed, then i can see this guy ruling the roost.


agreed. Even with my 200pt reserves squad you are still bringing droids, and Kazadan has 30pts built into his cost for the ability. In DCI it wont ever be more than for fun games. Droids are still droids and still suck :) No matter how many you can bring in.

And yes I had mothma as well. but remember, her ce wont work for the droid reserves, just the jedi and any fringe or republic reserves I might get.

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 6:51 pm 
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LOL, and in regards to the lobot being useful thread on the wizo site, he is now perfect in squads because you see Kazdan across the board and *BLAM* a handful of jawas for reinforcements. :D

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 8:26 pm 
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Fool wrote:
I have a feeling they may re-word NTMTO or have an SA or FP like it that represses SA's that allow reserves.


That would make rogue a lot more playable 8)


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PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 9:05 pm 
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Or give a character an SA that prevents reinforcements and reserves to come into play.


... Say, someone like.... Garm Bel Iblis...

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PostPosted: Tue Oct 23, 2007 10:16 pm 
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Preventing Reserves is okay. Preventing Reinforcements is not. Reserves are partially accounted into the fig's cost, while Reinforcements is TOTALLY affixed to the figure's cost. Of the 4 figs with Reinforcements, one sees regular play, and only a second is barely used. Halving Reserves would be better.

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