Go WAAAAYY back to April 28th and i wrote an article on how to get started. Well after a long furlough, here is another article for those of you newer to the game.

Once upon a time, when the game was good, and the anime was #1 on Saturday mornings, I dabbled in the world of Yugioh. There was a saying from the show that often graced a players lips when they were praying to top deck the one card in their deck that would get them out of the jam they were in. "You gotta believe in the heart of the cards." The player would then prayed like mad as they looked at what they drew. It was a heck of a feeling when it actually worked.

Okay, since you can't top deck a character, then what does this have to do with SWM? Simple. The minis have heart too. No i am not talking about die rolls or drafting boosters. In yugioh decks often respond to their players because the build and flow of the deck reflects the person that is playing it. Squads in SWM work very much the same way. They respond to the person playing it, and work according to their styles. It is for this reason that two equally matched players can do well with their squad, but when the switch squads, do not have the success the other person was having with their squad.

Here is an example. Thrawn is by far the greatest piece strategically to ever be created in this game, and ever will be (i hope). I am a very good player (#1 in my city and #3 in my state), but if you put these two things together, that does not mean that i would be unbeatable. Quite the contrary. I would end up losing games that i should have easily won because Thrawn is not my type of character, and when i play him I can't 'feel' what to do all the time. BUT! if you give me a group of Jedi, I will win games i had no right winning most of the time. The opposite can be said of various Thrawn lovers. I know a great many people that love to play high activation grunts, but you give them Jedi beat sticks and they lose most every game they play.

So what does this have to do with Minis and you? Easy. What kind of heart are you putting into your squad? If you want to have any type of success and keep loving the game, you need to figure out where your heart lies. Once you start getting enough pieces that you can vary your squads a bit, try some big squads with lots of grunts and small squads with big characters and see which one favors your play style. Are you a deep strategist, are you all out run and gun? Are you good or bad at looking several moves out of what is happening? These things are going to help determine what squads you are going to have the most success with.

This is a very shooter friendly game at the moment, but i actually prefer running squads that have no shooters at all in favor of all Jedi. My mind set is such that i do really well with these. Others need to run a mix, while others wouldn't know what to do with a lightsaber if you gave them a training manual. So as you experiment, try some different things and see what you are most comfortable running, but if you start losing, make sure that you are not confusing what you are comfortable running with a lack of squad synergy. Eventually you will gravitate towards a certain type of build and that will usually be your set up for most squads that you run. The reason any of this is important is that it will help you to see what type of squads you are going to be really good with, and what squads you won't have much success running most of the time.

As your squad starts to form up on your playing style you will start to discover the true heart of the mini. ;)

"Dude, the fat guy totally just blew up!" -Pink 5