Why is this thread turning into an argument about skill? Since when does the desire to ban pieces or limit squad design have anything to do with skill? I've made the Championship Top 8 at Gencon for 3 out of 4 years, and this year I was in the top running for both the Jedi Challenge and the Sith Trials (not to mention other years), and so by now I've kinda established that I at least know how to play the game...and I've been wanting to see all tempo control pieces banned for more than a year.
[Engages in a strong battle with the dark side, wanting to unleash anger in a rant about how tempo control is bad for the game...rolled a crit! Whew! Dark side resisted for now.]Thanks to Vassal I've played against a few of the German and French players before, and I can attest that they have some
excellent players. So let's not turn this into a skill-comparison competition, because we might not win.
Personally, I don't understand why some of the pieces were removed, other than just to force a different meta. MotF has been out for more than a year now, and if they aren't using the V-Sets, then that would make for a boring and stale meta; I'd want to shake it up for something different too. And it is true that tempo control and mass-kill potential were the primary meta-shapers before DotF and R&R, so I think most of the bans make sense from that perspective.
So if this
is the format, then I'm predicting some variant of Thrawn/Arica/Cad Bane as the winner, because Arica is the only mass-kill piece left in the meta (and therefore she'll be valuable), and also because Cad's biggest danger (deep strikes and long-range melee) is out of the picture...and Thrawn...yeah, he rocks. The other squad option think will do well is NR with Solo Charge (Han beats Thrawn, and Mara can put severe pressure on Cad).