I think the three strong NPE squads for me are:
i) Thrawn with Boba/Cad and Morrigan Corde - you get high activations, init control, big movement, tempo control, and unpreventable damage (you can play Pellaeon as well).
ii) Blast Bug swarms - the cloaked Praetorite guys are very difficult for a lot of squads, even if they fall over to Yobuck. You can get Peace Brigade as backup shooters. I feel like you should have to pay through the nose for the Blast Bug CE.
iii) Daala - still really good, even after all the errata.

All three squads are high activation, and can get or counter tempo control.

I'm also concerned about a couple of other swarms, like KBSVs.

Less worried about stuff like Threepio (even if I think he came out too cheap and 3720 to 1 is a problem), Father, Jango etc, as I like squads that promote low activations and uniques.

If you haven't already, I would encourage you to try the new Plagueis. Not unbeatable by any means, but very fun and good. Squads with a couple of Sith beatsticks and minimal tech are playable.



I haven't ever played as or against blast bugs, so this is mostly my unsupported opinion, but I would be in favor of leaving blastbugs on nonuniques but allowing a save 16 for no damage, like suggested earlier. Yes, having a bunch of saves is annoying at times, but I guess the way I see it if you hate rolling dice you might be playing the wrong game.

I think Jangalore is still pretty new to be nerfed. Probably should just keep an eye on him through gencon. If he seems to be overperforming or an NPE then he should be looked at, but my gut reaction would be to let a squad that promotes low activations and playing iconic uniques be one of the more powerful squads (while working on some soft counters).

Also, as semi-casual, semi-competitive player, the existence of strafe/gallop is a really bad reason to not nerf a squad. I know that those abilities help to balance out the power of swarm squads, but pieces like lancer and yobuck are good against EVERYTHING. Yes, they have counters and horrible match-ups, like anything else, but to me they are a soft NPE. At the very least it is a majorly better version of mobile attack that can keep your pieces safe while dealing damage, and at worst it takes out an entire squad in an activation.

It the oft tossed around excuse for not doing an errata.
-"Kids come to a tourney not knowing the errata then cry, blah blah"


It's not a valid rgument anymore (if it ever was)

I'd vote that we don't crucify Jangalore just yet. (Who came up with that name, by the way? That's hilarious.)

I think Blast Bugs are a problem, but I think the whole Vong faction is a problem.

Now before anyone shoulder-tackles me, I'm not saying we should kick them out of the game.

But, while some factions fared poorly under WotC, the Vong were permanently maimed. The Shaper was a great idea, but range 6 was stupid. However, because it's an easily-accessible straight-up damage boost, every Vong piece has to take that into account.

So right out of the gate, the Vong have a tech piece (Yammosk) to make all the rest of their tech usable. And all Vong have to be almost useless on their own in order to compensate for getting boardwide +10.

OR, if you don't feel like fighting up close, you can choose from a myriad of annoying direct-damage options, many of which still require lots of background tech to get ranges up and boosts applied across the board.

The Important Part: When I'm bored, I'll hop onto Bloo Milk and look at recent squads. I enjoy looking at how they might work. It took about a year, but I (mostly) figured out how the competitive game works simply by analyzing Bloo Milk squads. That said, I usually skip Vong squads, because they have a dogpile of weird tech pieces that you have to have in order to be competitive.

To be fair, other factions have some odd squads (out-act-and-smash is hard to wrap your head around without seeing it in action), but the Vong are hard-wired to need a ton of tech to do anything useful. To compensate for their gameplay awkwardness, they get cool stuff like Nom-bombs, spit poison, blast bugs, etc.

I guess what I'm saying is, this would be a ton of work, but it wouldn't be the end of the world to just overhaul the Vong faction completely. All of the other secondary factions recovered nicely under the v-sets, but Vong are just too messy and awkward to match up well with the other factions.

What I've heard so far... and I don't know if I'm just being ignored, or no one wants to just say it... But Vong have everything right now, they are annoying, and can get just about anything you can think of... And now your telling me they have 2 new tech pieces, that add yet another play style type for them?

I agree that we should wait until after gencon to change him, but disagree that no change is warranted. The Furious Assault and Accurate Shot combo should have been something left to obscure combinations that you had to pay way to much to actually be worth it, and to the epics sets. It is one of the biggest power creep cases in the V-Sets to date.

The other factors is his overall survivability. He has 130 hit-points, Quick Draw, Flight(I consider it defensive), Solitary, Defensive Stance +4, Beskar'gam 6 and a base 19 defense. Because of Solitarys impact and how easily it is attained you may as well consider him to have a base 23 defense.

Of the 23 other characters that have over a 22 defense 7 of them are epics... and none are shooters... Now Jangolore can also boost himself up to a 27 defense. Only one other character has that ability to boost himself up to a 27 defense, Darth Maul Shadow Hunter and he is an epic. His boost actually isn't even as good as Jangos, since his is light-saber duelist, lol.

I could go on, but y'all get the picture... I hope

I want to call in on the show sometime. I think it would be fun.

yeah this guy has a lot going on and fits into like all the categories for possible gameplay types. the other thing is mando's didn't need this guy...at all... I'm just not sure why this approach was taken.

with me and you it would be lol.

Lol what a skit