Counterassault.

Why? Declan Devalis.

'nuff said :)

Dark Age. It was a balanced game that had been well playtested. Everything after Dark Age was all unbalancing and fixing...
And AOD was the end of it all

Dark Age for a couple of reasons.

1. The game was still new and fresh. I didn't know how bad they were going to #### things up before trying to fix it with AoD. I still had optimism and hope about the game and its fluff. Now I'm more jaded.

2. The game was pretty balanced. See above posts.

3. Now that set retirement is in place, I find myself reaching for DA pieces more than any other set to put in my armies. I miss my Centurions, Ryoken II's, Madcat III's, hoverbikes, Marksmen, Koshi's (back before they got ####ed over in FP), Danni, etc. This set works great with AoD rules.

CounterAssault is a close second. But by the time it came out, Power creep was becoming a problem and it therefore had more (in quantity) ridiculous pieces than DA did.

Ah yes ... Mad Cat IIIs and Ryoken IIs. I sure wouldn't mind seeing those re-released as non-uniques in a future set.

I chose FFE, but I supopose I would change that (if I could) to DA...

FFE's arty wasn't a problem, but I forgot about 1-st turn-destroy your army sorts of things (BR Giggens w/ BR Sniper Teams, W/ BR Lego, W/ Bart) and I forgot about Tank-Drop ::Shakes fist at Tank-Drop::

Top 's Right...DA was the only Truely Ballanced set (with the exception of the infantry capture rules)

Mid :)

CA... two things... SC mijoiners and Declan Devlis

"yeah"... "CA"...

yes, "two things"... SS Arrow IV Artillery Tank & SH Aesir Medium AA Vehicle


.......

lol


*ahem* actually, the best set featured 0 artillery/helo units. and that set...

is Dark Age!

Counterassault seems to have the most efficient mechs and vehicles. The Aesirs, Sun Cobras and Shockwaves bring to mind. Then followed by Dark Age because I like their line of uniques most of all from the Mad Cat IIIs, Ryoken IIs, to the Jupiters.

My favorite set has to be CounterAssault... It certainly isn't the most balanced, but it seems to give more character to the factions. Under Counterassault, factions began to have a "feel" to them.

In it we saw: SSw got some REAL good vehicles/arty, SC got some 16" range energy snipers, Liao was fleshed out nicely, we saw some good ROTS stuff, and ICE mechs were slowly slipping away.

As far as play balance is concerned... DarK Age. Although, strangely enough, everybody remembers the crying about turtling fatties and infantry swarms... Things that were rectified by ARTILLERY in FFE! (And the game has lacked balance since)

I chose Dark Age as the best set. As Top said, it was the most balanced and the sets that followed featured units or rules that threatened to unbalance the game. I've been playing since day one, and I've seen it all.

Artillery rules made certain that entire battle groups would be destroyed if they took as many as three turns to get where they could at least shoot back.

VTOLs made certain that it would take even longer to get to the arty because they had to be dealt with first.

Deep infiltrate was the only answer and the armies most likely to do so also had the least or weakest artillery. But, the infiltrate got so potent and ubiquitous that it had to be nerfed too. That obligated First Turn Imunity in deployment zones.

Faction abilities are still a silly idea, and the good abilities are too easy to abuse. (side note, too many people are recruiting gunslingers to CJF just to get the MDFA, and that gunslinger is often the only unit claiming to be Jade Falcon. C'mon, they're CLAN and what Clan hires Mercs? Any?)

Of course we all know what sort of pain was in store for anyone that actually wanted to play a big assault mech. The points were high enough to guarantee that they had little or no support, and they'd have to face entire armies of little things that could nibble them to death.

In fact, through the later expansion sets, most players came to believe that having a mech was a liability. AoD brought the Mech back to MechWarrior, and I hope it stays good that way.

Counter Assault was the first set to give us hope that balance was returning to the game, so it gets my vote as the next best set after Dark Age. Then, the game designers shot themselves in the foot again with Falcon's Prey. It's only saving grace that I can think of is that those who wanted Falcons finally got them.

Two weeks after the release of Falcon's Prey, Set Retirement was announced. We are still trying to bring back the older players by showing that their old armies are still playable.

I picked Liao mainly because I'm hooked on Liao now.


Dark ages: a good start but there were some problem units here and some total #### that to this day a sane person has yet to field.

DFA: Set of the construction mechs, almost all of the non unique mechs were utter ####

FFE: some good stuff came out, but most of it was in the form of Unique/LE and I wouldn't base my final decision on a few LE's that you can't get in a booster.

Counterassault: I actually really liked this set a lot. Some of the great mechs came out of this one and I sorta think that Firepower is the incarnate of this set. My main complaint here was the horrid paint jobs. I guess that FFE paint was of a poor quality too.

Falcon's Prey: Sure the paint was good and a favorite faction was introduced........ but WTF happened to the QA team? Must have been a strike in China (though I don't think they are allowed to strike so who knows) I pulled panther after panther with missing shoulders or guns in one instance I pulled a unit with no arms at all it was like I was opening salvage boosters. To give the set credit it is the easiest set to pull a LE/unique (I managed to grab 14 from the last case I opened) also to its credit is the insanely powerful tanks and arties.

Overall this set was a lot like DFA, a fair amount of junk that only the truely disturbed would field.... coupled with a few insane units.



I really enjoyed Liao Incursion. I liked the design of the Liao units and I really hope they keep it up, but I'm loyal so don't take my word for it.

bsidez