I moved this discussion from the Official Balance Committee Rulings post;



The way you attack these factions is to instead of banning, nerfing, or errata'ing, the Rebels and Imperials, make new characters, commander effects, and special abilities, that specifically attack these 2 factions!

1. Much more Rebel Hunter

2. Much more Imperial Hunter

3. Ability that negates booming voice

4. Commander effects or more "Never Tell Me the Odds" and abilities that negate Master Tactician

5. Abilities or commander effects that hinder Charging Fire

6. Abilities or commander effects that nullify Prideful

7. Some type of ability or commander effect that negates and nullifies board wide commander effects

8. More ways to deal with Diplomat ( especially the 5 pt diplomats, uggh )

9. Cheaper Disruptive and commanders that grant disciplined leader ( I mean, why do the Rebels get the only 8 pt Disruptive mini, 9 pt activation modifier, and 14pt crazy boardwide commander effect? )

10. More CHEAPER ways to deal with activation modifying commanders............................................This is something that has been an NPE for almost a decade! And whoever does this, allow them to sit and spin in the back as well!

11. A commander effect or special ability that can DESTROY AND ELIMINATE ridiculous, cowerdous, cherry picking commanders that just sit in a locked room, in the far reaches of the map, never to see the light of day, or a speck of dirt on their uniforms, or a drop of blood spilled!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

12. Special ability or commander effect that ignores or makes immune to Ysalamiri



Let's get creative here ladies and gentleman. Stop being lazy by just throwing Thor's hammer down and banning everything that has already been established,that just confuses the community and costs us more money and time consuming efforts with all the re-printing and re-designing of stuff that has already been established!

Just my opinion, but I don't mind Daala's prideful or charging fire. My problem is that she then has access to cunning, opportunist, Yslamari, cannon shots and everything else under the sun. When reading some stories about her I found that Palleon was really the only other officer she got along with.

So my Daala solution would be to give her Rival: May be in a squad with 1 other Imperial Commander. Just my opinion

Daala's already been errata'd once (edit: twice!) already, and I'm not in favour of doing it again.

In response to the OP, I disagree that multiple counters to tier 1 Rebel and Imperial squads should be added. Counters are boring to play, and annoying to play against. The game could devolve into simply winning by having as many counters in your squad as possible, not by being creative and building powerful squads. Also, several of the proposed counters will hurt other factions as well as the two culprits.

I suggest instead that new characters should be added that provide more tier 1 options for other factions, boosting old and more recent characters in new combinations. That, in my opinion, would be far more interesting than simply adding hard counters to Rebels and Imperials.

Third time's a charm.

Big +1!

Thanks for stating this.
I am probably one of those big pins and needles that are making designers hesitant.
I do want designers to be hesitant, but only for certain things.

To be 100% honest, jedi force users should be the OP pieces if anything, is the way I feel. If we are going to design pieces too powerful, lets make it make sense, is my opinion. I want designers to be bold in Jedi force users and more tentative with shooters and non-uniques. (except the big guns like Cad Bane, Durge, Han, etc)

I want power ranks to make sense. So Luke should be the most powerful in the game, etc.


So when we see Dodonna, C-3PO, Crix Madine, Ozzel, Palleaon, and Thrawn ruling the game it is very very hard. Then when you see it happening for a DECADE it makes it even more hard.

I feel three factions are already set up to balance Rebels and Imperials. Those are Old Republic, Sith, and Repblic.

All we need are aggressive jedi to seal the deal.

OR has Bastila with new Satele, Atton, Vima, and Zallow we have a few good options to play with. A few more aggressive costed pieces and we will be able to stop the evade, mobile, cunning, out activate with 10 piece squads.

Sith have Queen Amonoa, but Sith lack in power (Cognus and Plageuis have no teeth on the move, Sith'ari has no defense, Caedus can only be played with Barris these days, Revan is old news without a partner that works, etc)

Republic have Cin Drallig and Obi'Kin a few more aggressive lower costing Jedi (30-40) and we can be ready in that faction as well.
Cin-Drallig, Serra Keto, and Quinlan are already powerful. Obi-kin can be used well if he has a few cheaper pieces as well.


I think we can be close if designers are willing to aggressively make some force users.

Mandos are doing a decent job at deterring them just by being some meaty no one can do anything about it.

I think we are getting there tbh. Imperials also just need a complete new look. Something that changes the same old same old. Vader of Lothal tried hard to do that but is hated for some reason. I played him in a regional and I thought he played great in the faction. But we need Imperials to have a Vader-led storm trooper option.
One of the best scenes of Revenge of the Sith was Young Vader walking in with the troopers! where is that option?

Anyway, those are my thoughts. I, too, want to see a shift in top tier. I also want to see it shift to jedi, and most importantly, I think the ground work has already been laid without needing huge errata's (although Daala errata would be welcome with open arms) or floor rules, or bans

I wholeheartedly agree with you here shmi. My favourite squads to play are big meaty Jedi. But when Luke or Caedus are being beaten by lil shooters, it's frustrating. I agree that if some really good force users were added, it would help bring factions up. Lightsabers and their users are a huge part of the universe to me, and it's sad that their power isn't represented properly sometimes. These are the most powerful people in the galaxy after all, they should be better.

Oh whoa. I didn't even notice this guy in the set. I definitely notice him now

I'd be okay with seeing more Jedi like Ven Zallow.

I would like to gently point out, though, that sometimes a bold new design will look really weird:

(Qui-Gon Jinn, Follower of the Living Force)

This piece certainly pushes the limits - at this point, I think he comes in close second for unassisted Force point accumulation. This piece had a nice bit of controversy when it came out... and I still have yet to see him do anything. I don't mean to antagonize anyone who disagrees with his design, and I am not by any means making a statement of "this is a good piece" or "this is a bad piece," I just want to point out that sometimes a bold new design will look crazy at first glance, and we need to be sure we give designers room to make those epic Jedi/Sith, and trust the designers/playtesters that they're making more Ven Zallows and not Critdus.

So, now the question is: How do we properly scale up the power of Force users? I agree that Qui-Gon piece is beast, but the guy did pretty well against Maul for quite a while, and Maul usually gets great pieces.

Picking at straws here, who is more powerful? Ven Zallow or Darth Vader? Zallow will get creamed by about half of the Vaders out there, and will totally demolish the other half. Should Qui-Gon be on par with Grand Master Yoda? No. But is the Grand Master Yoda piece competitive...? I don't really think so. (I don't mean to resurrect the Qui-Gon debate here - I just use this as an example to bring up the question of which pieces exactly define the proper power level. If Darth Vader, Dark Jedi is the standard for where Jedi/Sith should stand, then most Jedi in the game are WAY overpowered.)

My point being - this game is already very subjective. That certainly does not give us free reign to make whatever we feel like. Yet, most of the notable characters have a wide range of power-level representation, depending on era of the game and what you need out of the piece. Qui-Gon, Follower of the Living Force is inaccurate flavor-wise when compared with Grand Master Yoda. BUT, I think it's a perfectly legitimate comparison to say that Follower of the Living Force is scaled to 100-point Yoda or EPIC Yoda.

Also, sometimes new mechanics just need a test drive. Maybe Serenity will show up on a great Yoda or Nomi or someone like that in the future.

So, I certainly don't mean to say "Give Ahsoka Force Renewal 4, she's a Jedi, it'll be good for the game." But, if designers have any room at all to bend character rules for the sake of the game, I'd say it should be with Jedi.

I guess in the end, we just have different opinions on this one: I'd prefer a Jedi be overdone so it will be useful, you'd prefer that we choose Jedi deserving of high power levels to correct the game.