Official Balance Committee Rulings for (2021) competitive tournament play.

Floor Rules Addendum:
If a character would bring in characters after squad reveal using a special ability whose name contains Reinforcements, reduce the cost of that character by the sum of the cost of the characters added. Perform this adjustment of cost before the 1st initiative. Characters added to your squad in this way count towards the cost of your squad. If you are scoring points for defeats, or for a tiebreaker, defeating these extra characters scores points. These characters may score victory points for occupying specified areas in scenarios that include such victory conditions.
* The character’s cost is reduced by the cost of the pieces brought in and is not reduced by Bribery.

Temporary Ban:
Admiral Daala (Virtual Set 6 Command of the Galaxy #27) is temporarily banned from competitive events until after GenCon 2021. We will revisit this during the 2022 Balance Committee session.

---

Official Balance Committee Rulings for (2020) competitive tournament play.

Add to Floor Rules:
Decreasing Activations: In order to decrease the number of activations in a phase, a character must have line-of-sight to an enemy and no ally with Reinforcements in their squad.

Glossary Change:
Suppressive Fire: Remove the second sentence, “enemies hit by this character’s attacks cannot benefit from or grant commander effects for the rest of the round.”

We will continue to monitor "Unique Yuuzhan Vong Squads" (Yun-Yammka Devotion) as well as any new concerns throughout the season.

Too many rulings, and too complicated.

I think Daala and swarms in general will benefit from the change - Daala didn't use activation control anyway most of the time.

I also think we'll see more strafe/gallop because there's be less Lobot and more swarms.

I think Thrawn will stay viable too. Still out-activates most things even without tempo, and won't be limited to one at a time anymore.

Is this any character in the squad? Or the character that is reducing the activations (ie Dodonna, San Hill, Ozzel, Krayt, etc)

Agreed. It basically turns Ozzel into Moff Morlish Veed (2.8 rating). Grand Moff Tarkin is better in every way now.

likewise, Captain Mar Tuuk is now better than San Hill.

NR takes the biggest hit. Rebels have enough great cheap pieces to still compete.



My concerns - activations will go up. Now any faction has the chance to out activate, thereby any faction can (and likely will) simply pack more fodder.

We'll see more Bastila. And she is a major NPE to many. She is DEVASTATING when you outact.

Daala, welcome back. We all know how much she is loved.


I also see possible reverse abuse. Ozzel/San Hill had aa major downside: One activation ALWAYS. You want it to out act, but then you want to shut it off when the fighting really starts. Now you can. They turn more into Dodonna.

That said - I think people will just not play them rather than try to make them work.



We'll see what the new era brings. There will most definitely be new abuse / NPEs to rise to take their place. I just hope it isn't worse.

I do not think activation control was the key to the Imperial victories. Out of the 3 times I played imps at Gencon I only main boarded ozzel once, and that was in the double swap meta. And my quote was in regards to other squads with act control, lol. Out acting is and always will be a top strategy, and every squad has some type of act control. Yobucks act control is yobucks gallop, luke and Leia, IG speeder, etc. The clear difference is bringing more acts or killing your opponents quickly, but the end is always the same. And just because some people dont think about this, doesnt make it any less prevalent.

However I do think act control has been an important piece to the puzzle that is the imperial strength. Even without the reinforcement tag it is a major hit to out act and smash. With the no reinforcement a lot of squads are hit hard, but I think most people would opt to not use them anyway if line of site is a thing. Unless maybe Rebels or NR with evade.

We do run the risk of an out act nuclear arms race, but most other factions arent equipped with the tech to deal with it. Personally I think that Daala, Yobuck and the wonder twins will still rain supreme, if by a much smaller margin.

Not being accusatory, but I think you are missing the point. I believe they are saying is that we're going to find out Thrawn is still good without act control and now we may have just opened Pandora's Box on other busted Squads.

Intriguing! Now, for a Moore to break it...

To be clear - I was FOR a change to act control. Specifically to San/Dodoma/Ozzel.

I just think THIS change was a poor choice. It shows a clear lack of creativity and short-sightedness. It makes obvious some of the biases on the BC.

Ultimately, I think this will basically have the effect of most people not using act control. Instead of trying to find that balance that promotes certain squad types that need it, they hit it with a sledgehammer and throw reinforcements on the pile for good measure.

Let’s talk about LoS required act control. It virtually never gets used. Will it start to get used now? If it does, what squad types does it disadvantage more? MELEE squads, obviously. In our game which inherently advantages shooters, why would we implement a rule that advantages shooters more? It’s easy to safely get LoS vs melee. Not so vs shooters.

So using act control is a risk, and wasted points vs shooters, right? Problem is that both Imperials and Seps have ways to bring in/not bring in Ozzel/San Hill on a case by case basis (Pellaeon/Nute Gunray).

I just think certain members of the BC saw red in their eyes with their hatred of act control (and reinforcements) and didn’t think through the ramifications. They just wanted to kill it.


One suggestion I know was on the table was to be that you can activate 1 in a phase only if it’s a unique. Encourages uniques, discourages swarms. Makes it so some will still play act control, but in less abusive ways. It keeps things like Daala somewhat in check while not killing non-abusive use (unique heavy NR and Rebel squads for example).

It was a golden opportunity to make a positive change, blown.

I know some people are really excited because there IS a change, but I don’t think they see how much better it could have been and the negative ramifications of THIS change.

Yeah that's my complaint too, really hurts the low activation costly heroes builds (which are usually melee), and is way to complicated, especially the random reserves part. I would have liked:

You may only reduce your activations to 1 if your squad contains only unique characters.

Or

You may only reduce your activations to 1 if your squad contains less than 5 characters.

The reinforcements part I would have just thrown out because there's already enough shots on reserves/reinforcements.