Except that was not the case. He was not a piece to keep in mind when building squads, he was the piece. GOWK restricted the meta so tightly that player's options were to either play GOWK, anti-GOWK, anti-anti GOWK (and pray you didn't fight GOWK), or lose.

I am making a statement, not complaining. There is a difference between the two and if you do not wish to partake, then do not peruse my thread.

Aye, I have to agree there. Moblie and Evade seems a bit much, though it gives the rebels a sense of favour.

In the same way that the Imperial, Republic and to a lesser extent Sepatists often have board wide commander effects to enhance their abilities (Mas and in the case of CIS, Grevous) to reflect their more organised structure, with both Republic and Imperial having access to boardwide swap which was considered broken at the time. The ability to march that hugely damaging piece right into centre of their army, kill a importent figure, before wraping out snuggly behind their own lines next round. As well as super stealth that makes figures unshootable.

The Rebels and new republic then recieved Evade and moble and sort of caught up, which in a sense made sense. Being that small groups of rebels were hard to pin down, dispite the techical suppiourity of the empire. The only thing that prevented it from really getting out of hand is the lack of boardwide abilitys present in Rebels, and the fact that adjecent figures could ignore such effects. So rebels ahd to be careful, they had no Mas to hide, so while their effects are stronger, they also have to stick together which makes a nice tempting target for swaps and lancer charges.

Then we have every other fraction, which has naither, and hence fails. Sith even have a swap piece, a 57 pointer with no borderwide ability that sadly sees little to no real action because it can't synchronise as well as the main 5 fractions.


Problem is, Republic has board wide swap, access to a number of potent shooters. With a board wide effect, there is only so many abilitys to hand out before one fraction gets a little too good at something rather then strong.

In GOWKs case, the Brick Wall effect and enhancement to stats made the main way to win games, through attacks, really just unfesable. Even a push hitting on GOWK would just remove a third of his health, while the shooters would remove the entirity of the figure that attacked him with relentless accuracty, or the shooters would all be forced to shoot at GOWK, giving the Republic effectively evade due to targetting rules. This, combined with open gambit made it effectively impossible to walk around him on some places as the shooters will have a good go at you before one can engage them.

Of course, these matchs were winnable, through map choice and by the dice. Just at this point in time, GOWK was simply too much. He made his shooters better then yours then plonked himself in the gambit zone and made the other person resort to increasingly desprate measure to get him off of it. Swap could be countered by keeping away from their stuff and square counting. GOWK was just designed to win gambit based games, as he could claim points and eat damage, before hobbling back to a safe cove for the rest of the match if he got too damaged. He was one guy you had to specialise your force against, or one would litrally lose.

Again, not so much a issue in fun games, very much a issue in the sense that some people will do whatever it takes to win, reguardless of fairness. Plus when you get a Jedi in the Republic who is obviously better then anything else out there, it makes the Republic itself limited.

Still sort of the same now, nowadays Aninkin, Yoda and Jet Obi are obivously the best choices for a great deal of squad lists for the Republic army while Kit and Windu are reltively weak. But it's just generally better to start again, rather then trying to over correct and end up destorying Obi's stats card. ><;


Still, I will probably make a few experiments once I finished with a local tourney. namely testing the strength of the figure itself in a faction that is considered weaker. Such as Mandolorians, Sith, Old Republic and Vong. If he could make the Sith or Old Republic Competive level, then it would be clear that he simply does too much. I can post the results of such a finding later if you wish. ^^


Edit: Sorry. Hehehe, I could not keep quiet. ><; I love the debate too much, just again, personal throughts on him

I like to have my brain busted (and I feel like that every time I've played you, Frank :). It is a competitive game, and it feels good to win - I doubt anyone would say otherwise. But I don't think GOWK was good for the game.

Indeed there have been other brain buster figures, and you point out many of them. I think Rieekan is the top brain buster right now. But there are ways to minimize the impact a figure like Rieekan has against your squad - namely, get adjacent to the figure to keep them from evading. There really wasn't any way around GOWK's CE short of disruptive. And then you still have to worry about the tempered steel that was GOWK himself.

When GOWK issues first came up, I thought it was just another piece and that players would adapt to, like Thrawn and BFBH. But the adaption was "play him," "anti-him" or die. But that's already been said.

Right - now seems like the perfect time to bring up an issue you all think about, but NO ONE has had the courage to bring up. Yes, I'm going to say it - its time to ban Nien Nunb. In the hands of a amatuer, he can be sometimes easily dealt with... but in the hands of a master... *shudder*

ponda baba is DEFINATLY useless now that his arm is gone, no matter what he says about being ambidextrous. XD

GOWK is dead, face it. He was chopped in half, Vader stepped on his empty cloak, and Luke has accepted it and hopped on the falcon. What good is winning if you have to resort to GOWK to do it? It's like being a Yankees fan, your team has a pay roll of over 200 million dollars, of course you are going to win the world series.

GOWK is banned!?!?
how come nobody told me?

I'd get on the bring him back bandwagon, but the horse pulling the wagon has been beaten
to death. yet we still keep hitting the poor beastard

this is a good point. I just recently unleashed death upon my friend with the horrifying Nien Nunb cannon. Decimated most of his squad. He didnt know what hit him... No seriously, I really did use Nien Nunb and won the game because of him. It was EPIC!

Yeah, the counters were not many, nor true counters at all. At best they gave you a slight edge. And really, if he was still around, you would play Republic or die.