Welcome to the inaugural episode article of the Garbage Cast (name subject to change), where we perform the functions of a podcast… in written form! You may already be scoffing at the idea of fitting those 1-2 hour Golden Dice Podcast episodes into a 50,000+ word article, but fear not. We have limited ourselves to doing these with 1-2 topics and not stretching too long on the word count.

For our first episode, Jayson has given us the topic and boy is it a hot one right now…read on to join us for Episode 1 – Love In The Age Of Boba: A Discussion On Balance In SWU…

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Justin – Well I suspect Jayson picked this topic because of the following graphic (thanks to Lev from the Dagobah Daily for compiling this graphic, click here to access the data)

Before we focus too much on Boba Fett, I want to pose this question to you fellas…what makes for a balanced or unbalanced TCG meta in your opinion?

Jayson – I’m so already looking forward to how interesting this discussion is going to get…and how much potential there is for us to get yelled at. I also know there’s a diversity of opinion on the team on this subject, and it’ll be fun to hash that out.

For me personally, what really stands out to me as unbalanced is when I feel that a game’s available options overly restrict me from expressing myself with my deckbuild and deck choice when I show up to a tournament and want to have a good day. This doesn’t really strike me as a good definition though, because the bar of being able to self-express is different for different players.

I brought Sabine to our PQ and personally felt very empowered by the process of testing that deck, learning my lines, and adjusting card counts to my proclivities and what I most wanted to counter. On the other end of the spectrum, I think the only self-expression Tyler feels as it relates to Sabine is, uh, curse words?

Like, if you just really badly want to take Thrawn or Hondo or whoever to a big tournament and do well with them, aren’t you pretty much locked in at that point to thinking the balance in SWU sucks? This is a way more subjective subject than I think a lot of folks give it credit for, and no amount of Boba graphs will change that.

Tyler – In my mind a balanced meta starts with a healthy level of competition between the three major archetypes- Aggro, Midrange and Control. If one of those three pillars is overpowered it removes the natural bad matchups for some decks and skews playrates.

The other metric I judge on is diversity. Can you reach parity in each of those three lanes with multiple different builds? If one leader is so dominant in a particular archetype that you can’t realistically build without them, then that’s a problem.

Even as a pathological Johnny, I understand that not every leader will be meta playable, but deck diversity seems to be on the decline. And that’s not good for the game.

Jim – You guys sound like you are writing a college thesis, so I’ll dumb this down a little. If you look at every new card that is made and ask yourself, “How does this fit into my Boba X color deck?” because he is what is winning or gives you the best chance to win, then the game is not balanced.

Jayson – I think some historical context and stat evaluation is important though. I’m not saying Boba isn’t too good, but I do think it’s worth noting that 12 different decks have won PQs and that Boba’s win-rate isn’t that far removed from his play-rate. That doesn’t tell the whole story, but surely you guys are like me and have played TCGs where things were way worse, right?

I think back to that Netrunner worlds where all 16 decks in the top cut were playing the same Corp deck and feel a little lucky. Maybe that makes me too easygoing

Justin – I’m personally pretty similar to Tyler, but a little different.

I agree that a balanced meta has a triangle (or larger shape) of different areas countering each other. Diversity within those areas is not something I really attribute to balance, as long as we have at least 5 viable distinctly different decks that can win a tournament, and none of the 5 have zero hard matchups, then I think we’re in a really good spot.

At the end of the day, a competitive player is going to bring the deck they think gives them the best chance to win a tournament. It’s not surprising to me that after the first week of strong Boba results, Boba play rate only got higher and higher each week of PQ Season. But as Jayson said, we ended up with 12 different decks winning at least 1 of the 40 Planetary Qualifiers. In my head, that’s great! The meta shifted each week somewhat, and as more people piled on whatever Boba flavor just won, other players were looking to counter the early flavors of Boba finding success. The rise of Red Rey results in the last couple of weeks is a pretty good display that the meta was adjusting.

Another factor is that I think 2 things currently make bringing a control deck a difficult decision.

1. Sabine is effectively an auto-loss for any control deck that is looking to beat Boba.
   • While Sabine still has play into Boba (her worst matchup), Control just doesn’t really have a chance against Sabine.
2. The time rules make control mirrors even more high variance with them effectively being a best of 1 a lot of the time.

Boba would be getting kicked down a lot more if there were more control being played, but the above issues make that tough.

What I think most are struggling with the current meta with is not an imbalance with Boba, but Boba forcing out the decks they want to play and having to play wayyyyyy too many games against Boba Fett as the masses have latched on to him as the go-to for competitive play.

Is this something that warrants designer intervention?

Jim – I feel the best intervention for the designers is to make leaders and cards that support those leaders more relevant than any kind of ban or hard errata to Boba.

Justin – And I think this point boils back to a little designer insight we were given last year. Sets 1-3 were somewhat designed together, and they didn’t want sets 2-3 to power creep set 1. As a result of this, we’re mostly still playing set 1 leaders and so the game has felt a lot “samey” to people.

Jim – Yeah, I hope after the game has played out now for a year they’ve looked back at sets 4 and beyond to say, hey we need to print X card now to slow some deck styles down. I’m pumped to see what they have in store and I believe this new set will help spread the meta out.

Jayson – Tyler, something tells me the deck diversity that Justin and I have pointed out is a bit of a cold comfort for you as a player. Can you speak a little to what the competitive balance has felt like from your chair?

Tyler – We’re getting at my thesis for how this current meta evolved- which is not that Boba drove his own dominance necessarily, but that Sabine being a powerhouse effectively cleared the field of potent control decks and that’s left Boba unchecked in the midrange. I think you can’t talk about how to address Boba without talking about Sabine’s power level.

As for me, my core gamer personality thrives on being able to create things that are new and different. Even though set 2 had some viable leaders, it did not produce any new archetypes. The end of set 2 meta looks basically the same as the set 1 meta.

That four-month struggle to create something new and different – and utterly failing because Sabine and Boba stayed at peak – was really demoralizing, yeah. I kinda wished I had just stuck with the Blue Iden I was playing end of set 1 all the way through to now.

Justin – Another intestesting question- does a successful competitive meta need to cater to that type of player?

Tyler – I don’t ever expect the competitive meta to be a paradise for me where any deck is competitive, but I think a healthy meta should be porous enough to allow off-meta decks to break through and succeed once in a while.

Justin – Did we not get that though with Han/Green and Iden/Blue winning PQs, and decks like Gar making top cuts? (edited)

Tyler – Han/Green and Iden/Blue were just set 1 archetypes reasserting themselves. Gar making top cuts is closer to what I mean.

Jim – Path of least resistance helps too. You said yourself Justin that you didn’t face Boba after Boba all day at your PQ.

Sabine has a tighter matchup there. Those decks probably got lucky with a few less challenging matches.

Jayson – Justin and I both ran Sabine at the PQ. I finished 4-3 and he made Top 4, despite facing some Boba. The big difference between our performances was that Justin made fewer mistakes. I had a rough one, was too wiped, and had overlooked learning some lines into certain matchups. Justin was a machine.

This brings me to the flip side of Justin’s initial question- what things do you see in SWU that you take as positive indications about balance? To me, the biggest one is something I talk about with every game I play. I think that when two players sit across from each other, the better pilot should win almost every time.

Am I crazy to feel like SWU does a good job hitting that mark? The best pilots with the most reps consistently show up in top cuts. What is it about Boba that reduces how much that counts for?

Tyler – Correlation not causation- good players choose to play Boba because he can take them a long way. Boba doesn’t make bad players better necessarily.

Justin – So at the end of the day, is the game fundamentally unbalanced? Or is the biggest call for Boba’s head a desire for variety in life?

Tyler – The game is unbalanced, but not because of Boba- it’s because Sabine is crowding out control decks.

Separately, I think it would be boring for players and bad for the game if we went a whole year where the same two leaders dominated competitive play. Even if the game was balanced while that happened.

So yes and yes…but for different reasons.

Jayson – I don’t think I can agree that the game is unbalanced. The number of players who also think that has dwindled substantially though. I feel kind of isolated in my analysis that most of the potential balance adjustments wouldn’t be positive for the game.

Despite that, and separately from it, I nevertheless definitely have arrived at the point where I think it’s probably best that some sort of corrective action be taken, if only as a sort of PR measure. Players, by and large, seem to want a balance patch.

Justin – Sets 1-2 had a distinct 4-5 pillars of deck archetype. I’m curious to see if set 3 adds to that and if it shakes things up. Unfortunately, we won’t see that before PQ’s start in January, so if they want to hit something it probably needs to happen in November before Store Showdown season.

Jayson – Justin, have you seen any proposed change to Boba or anything else that you think wouldn’t just kingmake another archetype? I’m definitely in the club that sees a number of paths to Control/Prison hell if too strong a hammer were to be swung.

Justin – I think Tyler mentioned earlier, but you can’t really hit Boba and not touch Sabine. But doing that does lead us to a world where we’re likely just playing double loss mirrors all day in control hell, or Sabine isn’t hit hard enough that she takes over as queen. The ecosystem really is balanced pretty well IMO, we just struggle to see enough control players to feast on all those Bobas.

Jayson – Yeah, that double loss rule is a real silent killer. Players already avoid control sometimes to lessen the chances of grueling matches that go to time all day, and in SWU, those same mud fights can punish your record. That makes for such a hostile ecosystem for Boba’s natural predators, as Tyler has deftly pointed out.

Justin – There’s a stark difference on my mental capabilities when I spend 7 rounds playing 20 minute matches with Sabine and getting a solid 45 minute break after to eat/drink/restroom/whatever, compared to playing up to time being called for 7 rounds.

Which I guess leads to an interesting question for Tyler. Since you are so in favor of some sort of balance to the meta, what would you do?

Tyler – I get the sense that the designers really want the cards that have pushed Boba and Sabine over the top to still exist. Take Boba’s Armor- I’m pretty sure they designed it to combo with Fat Boba and the interaction with Set 1 Boba is just collateral. Same is probably true with Wrecker and all the clone stuff.

So a Destiny-Style restricted list, that doesn’t ban cards, but instead just removes problematic interactions would be best. This has the advantage of not impacting sealed/draft at all and requires no errata.

Justin – Man, I just want to point out the Restricted Lists are the bane of my existence, and the thing I’ve noticed the most players screw up when deckbuilding for a competitive tournament. There’s just something difficult about staring at a long list and making sure you only have 1 thing.

Tyler – Yeah, but it’s simple for FFG – and you know that’s the most important metric.

Justin – I don’t think it is though. With competitive OP just starting, being a bit of a clusterf***, and people all waiting to see what’s gonna happen… you kind of have to nail this.

Jayson – A contextual note here- MTG very recently engineered one of its worst controversies in recent memory when they made a set of bans that tanked card values overnight. The fallout from that has been pretty awful, including the disbanding of an entire pillar of MTG OP in the council.

I think it would be foolish to assume FFG doesn’t have their eye on that situation as they consider how heavily to intervene here.

Justin – It has been interesting to watch the Boba Fett Showcase price tank in the last month or so as people suspect an incoming nerf.

Jayson – I would be shocked if whatever the nerf ends up being manifests as actual errata. Buy buy buy!

I do think Justin is right about how high the stakes are. FFG has burned some goodwill the last few months with the supply issues, OP woes, and perceived balance imperfections. All eyes are on them.

The only thing worse than a miss would be inaction, though.

Justin – Even making reference to what the community perceives, and that they intend to wait and see how set 3 shakes up things would be welcome. Radio silence outside of a joke from Tyler Parrott on a live stream saying “We see you Boba” isn’t going to cut it.

Tyler – Yeah, that’s the most disturbing trend out of FFG of late – less communication. I feel like comms were great in the run up to release and it’s been a slow slide since then.

Justin – That’s the biggest display of Josh’s absence. Things have gotten better in the last few months in that we actually see OP people on stream and Alicia has sort of taken the reins of communicating on OP’s behalf, but there’s still a lot more they could be communicating that the player base would love to hear

Jayson – When you add it all up, how damning are these trends for you personally? Does any of it give you concern for the game on a macro level or is it more that you just see a gap between where we’re at and where we could be?

Tyler – It gives me “old-FFG” anxiety. It makes me suspect that Josh personally moved the needle and with him moving on, culture might reassert itself.

Justin – I mean we’re still insane levels ahead of previous FFG games where we refreshed their “upcoming” page to see when the product moved from “In Production” to “On The Boat” before it mysteriously showed up at our stores 4 months later.

Jayson – I also think that the hardest thing to nail is the game itself, and I continue to be floored by how much I like SWU. Like Tyler, my old friend FFG anxiety is definitely creeping in, but unlike the old days, I haven’t really lost faith that SWU will move forward well on the whole. I think the fast PQ prize adjustments were a good indication of that trend. Things are better.

Tyler – Oh yeah, definitely better than the old days.

Justin – FFG have actively listened to feedback, and responded multiple times.

1. Language rule with decks
2. Not enough PQs (tripled)
3. PQ prizing abysmal, not enough participation cards (fixed)

So, it’s hard to say it’s all doom and gloom, but I’d love to see less issues they need to fix!

Anyways we’ve kind of moved away from the Boba balance topic, so this is probably a good spot to wrap up our first GarbageCast. Any closing thoughts?

Tyler – On the whole, the game is in a good place. If FFG keeps listening to feedback, things will be fine. I’m actually encouraged from what’s coming out of early set 3 testing – Yoda or Quinlan could be legit new archetypes. It’s a good time to be a Johnny!

Jayson –I have a note that’s going to feel doom and gloom but it’s really, I promise, meant to be more encouraging: if things go wrong somehow with the Premier environment, I’m really not tripping because I can just pivot my game time to more Draft and more Twin Suns! As I pointed out in a recent article, EVERYONE should be playing roughly 100% more Twin Suns than they are currently playing.

What I’m really getting at is that this game has tons of ways to engage, and it’s important to remember to do what’s fun for you.

Justin – Collect, connect, compete. FFG is really nailing the first 2 already, I look forward to hopefully the near future when we can all agree they’ve nailed all 3!

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Did you enjoy this? Any topics you’d like to see us discuss in the future?