The designers of Vset 14 talked with the community, both individually and in Bloomilk threads, talked to Mike Moore himself (who recently dominated the NZ tournament with Krennic and Darktroopers), and then all put our heads together to come up with a unanimous solution.

It's not simply a knee jerk reaction to it winning one tournament. It was more that it was a shocking display of our blindspots, opening our eyes to exactly how far off our aim was, and major synergies we missed.

Clearly the issue lies with Krennic himself (and specifically how much he boosts the Dark Troopers), much more than the Darktroopers independent of Krennic.

The Hux connection was totally overlooked. It rocketed the Death Troopers to an insane defensive rating (especially considering Snokes Doctrine of fear), while they (mostly innately with Krennic) also pump out ludicrous amounts of damage. With a high attack score, and a high attack rating. Thus the need to drop giving out cunning. Additionally, it's much easier to keep the squad abilities going when all FO counts as the same name. Not to mention FP rerolls. Thus the need for the First Order rival.

We made them stronger than intended without them even becoming First Order. With that synergy they go through the roof.

A very bad side effect of the composite of this is that it's ESPECIALLY hard on Jedi. When in general we are trying to make Jedi able to compete at the top levels (and over the last several years we've made great progress, we might be just about right), however this would set them back significantly. Thus the necessity to allow Lightsabers to ignore Krennic's damage reducing CE.

In general it's a really bad idea, and frankly dangerous to have a brand new squad type (as opposed to a single character) rocket to a dominant tier one right out of the gates. It has the potential to create NPEs frequently, and in extreme cases can even fracture the community and cause players to leave for good, as we've seen in the past. It also hampers design for future sets.

We had intended to have this squadtype be tier 2, with some future room for improvement, but ultimately not a dominant force to be reckoned with. With Imperials already having dominant squads centered around Thrawn, Daala, and Vader of Lothal, we didn't want to make the rich richer. We (naively) thought we'd be fine since Krennic couldn't play nicely with any of them (rival to Thrawn, Daala's squad loses prideful, Vader of Lothal has rival to commanders without a force rating or Trooper). That was a grand misfire.

We really feel it's important to take action quickly in this case. We don't want this wound to fester for many months or even years as has sometimes been the case.

I also feel it's important as a designer to stand up and own your mistakes. I personally deserve the lions share of the blame for the disaster Krennic turned out to be. Admitting that, to the community at large, will hopefully prevent (or at least lessen) more resentment.


In summation - these factors heavily weighed in our decision
A) Community concern/outrage over power level
B) Completely not what designers intended
C) Mike Moore (again, winner with this squad type) thought they were too strong and encouraged changes

Happy to answer anyone's questions

Bloomilk database updated.

The wording I used on Rival and 3rd CE is very slightly different from the card image above.

Wow!

fantastic errata, I love the lightsaber part, didn't see Cunning Attack as a huge issue, but sure!

Glad the change is liked!

Scotch, or martinis?

As a play-tester, part of the issue with this piece, is that last set, the designers spelled out what squad types they wanted tested with each piece. This can be a good tool, but in this case it proved restrictive - the prescribed squad types were mostly focused on using one or two Death Troopers as bodyguards for tank pieces, where obviously they're more effective bodyguarding each other and with more CEs to boost them.

Play-testing has been pretty low the last few sets, even though you've been doing lots of helping with this set - just need more man-power really.

At first I didn't really agree with Jenari about a "balance committee" for the designers. But this comment makes me double think that idea..

I don't want to hi-jack this thread, but is this really what the designers thought? This seems very eery to me. I agree all play tests should mean something, and allowing play testers to use anything can be counter productive... But so is Designers saying play this only this way....

I am really at a loss. Is it more important to make sure pieces come out correct during design, so the cards that are produced ( at the expense of players donations) or is it more important to give designers full control so they can do what they want?

If every set we have to change something on some piece... Does it not make more sense to try and catch it before it came out? Obviously just play testing isn't working. So whats the best idea?

Designers suggest ways to try pieces. We certainly did not say to ONLY try it a certain way.

It was playtested in several different ways.

The main thing everyone missed was the Hux connection.

Make mine a double bourbon, straight. Do it right or don't do it children

Lothal is top tier?
But you make a great point it is time for a tier 1 shift.
Screw rebels and Imperials.
And new republic had tons of Jedi and the top tier 1 build is Han, corellian with wedge? Luke Skywalker, the best of all time is in the faction!!

But designers need to get serious about getting melee to be top tier.
I am glad they are halting new nonmelee powers and keeping them away from melee hate
We just need to get melee on the map more.