thereisnotry wrote:
I think this mindset or perspective is going on behind comments like these:
--"[I know I'm probably not going to win.] But can't we just play for fun, rather than always having to go for the gold?" ...or...
--"Can't we just play non-tourney squads [so that I'll at least have a chance to win]?"
That's an excellent point. I'm sure this issue comes up all the time in MTG; I certainly know that it does in Star Wars CCG.
The huge difference is that thousands of people play MTG every day; they have a huge and thriving player base. If there is a subset of players that feels marginalized or put-upon, or even just decides that they can have more fun doing something else, it isn't a great loss
to the player base. SWCCG and SWM, on the other hand, need every player they can get, so people getting frustrated or feeling marginalized is a pretty big deal that we have to address.
One thing that helps here in Atlanta is that most of the time we rotate squads frequently. Practicing for regionals or Gencon is different, but most of the year we try all kinds of different stuff. Daniel will never play lancer, and I will hardly ever play Rebels, but there's a lot of variety across the group. We don't do that deliberately to try and "make it easier" for less skilled players to win - in fact, part of the fun is playing something that you know isn't great and finding ways to win anyway. But it still creates more variance in what you might call "average opponent difficulty." And all of us have had the embarrassing experience of bringing in a squad we thought was good, only to watch it get rolled by everyone (Master Thon, I'm looking at you).
On the other hand, I won the Owensboro regional with a squad that I originally threw together from the pieces I had in my car from a 500 point epic game the week before. It turned out to be surprisingly good! Playing different stuff gives you a better feel about how to beat likely opponents, exposes you to rules and situations that you aren't familiar with (strafe, Bombad Gungan, draw fire, bodyguards), and helps you figure out what you actually like to play. In other words, it makes you better at minis. I kind of have to wonder about someone who only wants to play one squad, or thinks that only that squad wins, or something like that. Do they just not have the pieces to build anything else? Is there some way to encourage them to branch out without banning pieces left and right?
So this is kind of rambling, but I would suggest having a tacit agreement, especially among the better players, to try a lot of different squads, including ones that aren't top-tier. Hopefully that will inspire some of the weaker players to do the same - maybe they'll see something they like! - and even if not, at least the game will be different from "your rock beat my scissors because all I ever play is scissors even though I know you always play rock this game sucks". Drafting is also a lot of fun and mixes things up because some of the tactics that constitute the largest skill differences, like knowing how to use override and scrub pieces to maximum advantage, get diminished or vanish entirely. We have had a lot of fun with the Cube format that Daniel mentioned earlier, and building your own is as easy as taking a whole bunch of pieces, putting the cards in sleeves, and passing them around. All the virtual scrubs that have been coming out are perfect for it.