With the first wave of ally and villain packs about to hit store shelves, I noticed in the Royal Guard Champion preview that the agenda set that comes with him is called "Crimson Empire." No big surprise there. The Royal Guard Champion bears a striking resemblance to one of the villains of the first "Crimson Empire" arc in Star Wars comics, Carnor Jax. In fact, it's pretty clear that the RGC is Carnor Jax in all but name. He's the only unique figure in the game that has just a title, rather than a real name. And during beta, it was called Carnor Jax. Don't believe me, go watch the demo video Team Covenant posted from GenCon 2014. At about the 3 minute mark, the camera zooms in on the mission details for the demo, and you can clearly see the name "Carnor Jax" in red above the heading "Raise the Alarms."

So, why the name change? Did Disney tell them to cut the name as it's a Legends character? FFG's other Star Wars games include plenty of Legends characters, though. Or is the copyright/trademark on some of the characters from Dark Horse's run with the comics tied up somehow? I seem to remember there being some problem that kept Bioware from using the Sunrider name in Knights of the Old Republic (I think Bastilla was originally supposed to be Nomi's daughter.)

NDA prevents me from answering.

Let's just say someone didnt like the name.

Or is the copyright/trademark on some of the characters from Dark Horse's run with the comics tied up somehow?

Carnor Jax is a pilot in X-Wing, came with the Imperial Aces pack. So clearly FFG has rights to the name. So unless there's some reason why Imperial Assault would be treated differently than X-Wing I don't think that's it.

I would venture a guess that they changed the name to Royal Guard Champion in order to be more inclusive to the casual player. If I was most of my friends, I probably wouldn't be interested in a "Conner Jacks" because I have no idea who that is. But they know the rest of the named people. Even if they don't know IG-88 by name, they can say "Hey, I remember that guy from Empire Strikes Back". Do I agree with this, no because all the characters that have been created unique to this game who's going to know the difference. Am I right, am I wrong? Only the focus groups know for sure.

Carnor Jax is like the manliest name ever, and I for one am super pissed that he isn't named that. My only hope is that they release other unique RGC champion cards in the future - for instance Carnor Jax 'and' Kir Kanos, that way we have options. That would be excellent.

I would venture a guess that they changed the name to Royal Guard Champion in order to be more inclusive to the casual player.

Why would a casual player care if he does or doesn't know who Carnor Jax is? I doubt they know who Garkhan, Jyn, or General Weiss is either... So why would the name of some other character change their opinion of the game?

Because General Weiss is (to an extent) the villain of the campaign, Vader is Vader, but Carnor Jax would be an inexplicably specific character that just pops in to the campaign with no explanation or context.

Maybe they didn't want to use him for other reasons, but just within the context of this campaign it wouldn't make a lot of sense to have needlessly used a character that wasn't integrated in to the story.

I'm thinking that this game is going to avoid Legends characters with the exception of characters created originally for IA. That's my guess anyway.

I don't have the card in front of me, but is the royal guard champion unique? Maybe thats the reason, so now you can field multiples in skirmish.

I don't have the card in front of me, but is the royal guard champion unique? Maybe thats the reason, so now you can field multiples in skirmish.

That's what I thought at first! But no, he's unique.

NDA prevents me from answering.

Let's just say someone didnt like the name.

I have to say, I am less interested in who didn't like the name, than I am in why he/she didn't like it.

Maybe I'm not in tune with my inner 12-year-old, but I can't think of any silly half-innuendos that would discourage its use. Is it just about being a "Legends" character? That would be strange, since Jax features in X-Wing.

I don't advocate breaking your NDA (assuming you were serious about that), but I'd love any insight you're able to add.

- H8

Maybe Disney are planning a similar character for one of their films and thought it might be confusing.