I can't believe how much less I enjoy Reach now that Squad Slayer and Anniversary Squad are gone. Matchmaking is only occasionally fun to me now. :-(
Seriously. The beauty of Squad slayer was in its party restrictions, something I feel is often overlooked when discussing the playlist. If you were in a party of 1-3 you would not be paired against a team of 4 or 5. I've played four games of Super Slayer so far; two of them were against teams of four, Inheritors and Reclaimers to boot. Squad Slayer was the closest we had to a much needed mercenaries list.
Now, the bigger scandal is the removal of Anniversary Squad. Why? There is literally nowhere to play TU Reach on DLC maps. You know, the content I've payed additionally for on top of the game itself.
If I want to play Team Slayer on DLC maps I have to be a Vanilla fetishist or play on the retrograde Anniversary settings.
Squad DLC: Vanilla
Anniversary Classic: Three shot pistol
Tell me where I can play TU with certainty on DLC maps?
Playlist management from 343 has been truely baffling.