sthlrd2 wrote:
I would have loved to post everyones squads but while I'm still sitting on this 10+ hour bus ride home being uncomfortable and tired, My mind is mush and I can't remember what everyone else ran. So with that being said I will let them come on and post there squads.
Well, I put my squads together out of some random stuff Ray had thrown into a box for Royal Rumble the night before, after Ray had gone through and picked what he wanted, so I do not claim that there was any tremendous foresight to these, but my squads were:
Zannah/Han GH
Galen/Vergere
Cad Bane/Mara Jedi
Got very close with that crew--Jake ended up winning by 20 or so after getting points for the last piece surviving. The funniest moment of the game for me occurred when Galen had a moment fall into his lap when he could kill Revan, Cay, and the Exar Ghost attached to Cay with a single force lightning. So, I won a lot of points there, but I also missed two rolls for the Cay betrayal, so Galen went over to Jake. Fortunately, I brought in Cad Bane, won init, and then lit up my own Galen so I got those points as well. That was about half my points for the whole game right there.
A couple thoughts I had after playing two Royal Rumbles:
1. Jar-Jar. So on Friday night Bill H rolled out Jar-Jar, and Jar-Jar actually becomes even more complicated in a multi-player format, especially when that format can make up to three different characters legal targets for non-accurate ranged attackers. One of the following two things needs to happen: We need to ban Jar-Jar because his interactions are so complicated that he drags out an already long-play format (I don't favor this--I think he's an interesting piece); OR we need to make a very clear ruling on how scoring works when Jar-Jar uses Bombad and someone dies. The specific scenario where this came up was:
On Player A's turn, Player A attacks player B's Jar-Jar. Player B uses Jar-Jar to redirect the shots to Player C's piece. Player C's piece dies. Who scores the points?
This question resulted in an argument that had the length and complexity of a Supreme Court case. The basic positions outlined were:
A. Player A scores because he was attacking.
B. Player B scores because his special ability led to the specific kill that occurred.
C. Points are split between Players A and B.
D. Points are split between all non-Player C players.
E. People start talking in the Jar-Jar voice (note that if this argument goes on long enough, E will occur).
So, yeah. I came down on the side of B (partly because clearly Jar-Jar is doing the very thing he is built to do here; partly because A sets a really non-intuitive precedent for Zannah; partly because it also sets the precedent that Player A would score the points if Bombad resulted in Player A killing himself). Also, to choose option A is effectively to ban Jar-Jar (since why would you play him if you can't use his main ability to its fullest effect?), and if what we really want to do is ban Jar-Jar, we should man up and do it.
Regardless, the rules folks need to come to a conclusion on this.
2. I'll admit that, having played twice, I'm not a fan of players pleading for the player who won init to make particular choices about who goes first. It holds the potential for all sorts of unfairness if the init winner is a relatively weak player who can be manipulated by someone, or if the init winner just decides to help out his buddy or screw somebody he doesn't like, even if the init winner gains no strategic advantage from doing so. I guess I would really like to see a ban on init-related table talk. There were a couple incidents of this (and heck, I even engaged in a couple) that made me a little uncomfortable. I'm not sure I have a good solution here--it just strikes me as by far the least attractive feature of this format.
That said, I had a ton of fun playing these games, and I'm looking forward to getting in some more in the future.