That was an entertaining finale, but a bit anti climatic. It looked like only 4 or 5 people were actually watching it at the event. Was the attention to IA poor overall?

I think both players played very well, but I really felt for the Rebel player, there isn't much you can do when the rolls are so one sided. Somebody should have checked the other guys dice! lol. The way he was rolling I don't think there was anyway he could lose. The Rebel player tried his best but just kept coming up short on the rolls. That's the luck of the game though, you gotta be good to get there and then you gotta be lucky to win. Great job to everyone involved it looked like it was a lot of fun.

My thoughts exactly with the 2 spies reasoning.

Disorient is a card I consider, but it is very situational. Uses for Deadeye and Urgency pop up a lot more often than uses for Disorient.

I played Disorient in my ugnaught list for a little while, but it actually doesn't even make the cut in that anymore (I only have room for 3 0s in that list, and it has to be take init, surprise, and self defense for the junk droid lulz).

The problem with Urgency, is that it tends to leave your guys out to dry. That reduces the number of cases where you want to use it. When Urgency is good though, it is really good, especially for big objectives.

This is why I'll tend to keep Deadeye over Urgency when deciding what to discard. Both can effectively solve the same problem, but Deadeye more often lets you shoot the same guy as Urgency but then move to a better spot.

Deadeye also lets you play riskier just by holding it, whereas you have to spend Urgency before you make the shot.

Regarding Zillo, it has become one of my favorite cards, right next to Rule by Fear. Why? Because it reduces some of the randomness in the game. Instead of randomly getting a bad defense roll and getting screwed, I can mitigate that by discarding a card.

I kind of wish it was a neutral upgrade though, as every faction could benefit from the effects and it makes for interesting decisions in several parts of the game.

I don't like that it discourages taking Pierce 2 units.

I also somewhat dislike that basically everyone is going to take it. Maybe every faction will get something like this though to help smooth out the randomness.

To answer Jason's comment above, me, Eric, Matt C., and Jerry (Gerald on some of the standings sheets) are the four players from the Seattle area that all took roughly the same list. We all made top 8.

How have you been using Zillo?

As Zillo is a modifier, do you use it before the opponent declares what he/she will use the surgers for?

I think I agree that it is a little too powerful for 1pt. If it was just one ability and not the other, or if there was some other type of limit to it. But people would fit this in if it was 3pts, it's that good. So if they may it 2pts, you would have to throw something else out.

Compared to all the other skirmish upgrades, I think it is head and shoulders above and well below the cost on the card. It is an auto-include, meaning you put it in before you even put other cards in the list. Every other skirmish upgrade is only useful for some guys and most of them are either too limiting ( General'sRanks) or just plain bad (First Strike) or way overcosted (VAder's Finest, Under Duress, Punishing Strike)

That was an entertaining finale, but a bit anti climatic. It looked like only 4 or 5 people were actually watching it at the event. Was the attention to IA poor overall?

I think both players played very well, but I really felt for the Rebel player, there isn't much you can do when the rolls are so one sided. Somebody should have checked the other guys dice! lol. The way he was rolling I don't think there was anyway he could lose. The Rebel player tried his best but just kept coming up short on the rolls. That's the luck of the game though, you gotta be good to get there and then you gotta be lucky to win. Great job to everyone involved it looked like it was a lot of fun.

I hear you, but the Final at the IA Championship at GenCon this summer was the same...there were only about 8 or 10 of us in total for that. I think it was also about 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning at the time, too.

I would honestly prefer to see a good 20-30+ spectactors at the Final match, like I've seen before in other games (even when I've been in the Finals)...but sometimes there are other things going on and people move on to their next event or next thing, even if they're eagerly interested in the Finals match itself.

Deadeye also lets you play riskier just by holding it, whereas you have to spend Urgency before you make the shot.

I really like that aspect of Deadeye. More often than not, the blue die will get you the range you need. But with Deadeye on your Hand, it's at no risk.

That was an entertaining finale, but a bit anti climatic. It looked like only 4 or 5 people were actually watching it at the event. Was the attention to IA poor overall?

I think both players played very well, but I really felt for the Rebel player, there isn't much you can do when the rolls are so one sided. Somebody should have checked the other guys dice! lol. The way he was rolling I don't think there was anyway he could lose. The Rebel player tried his best but just kept coming up short on the rolls. That's the luck of the game though, you gotta be good to get there and then you gotta be lucky to win. Great job to everyone involved it looked like it was a lot of fun.

There was probably 15-20 people crowded around trying to watch the final. The issue this year's was that they had the set up in the corner, with no monitors. Two camera at angles toward the table, one from the top, then on that was in front of the spectators and it was hard for folks to see.

Desmond's (runner up) top 8 and top 4 matches had much larger crowds watching than those on the stream....and the games were that good to watch. Too bad that those were not on the stream or recorded. Top 8 was against Eric, who Des had lost to in Swiss, after it went to the tie breaker...and the top 8 match was basically one damage away from going to the tiebreaker at time. The top 4 match, Kenny's list was set up to do major damage to the Dionaga very quickly (my one loss in Swiss was to Kenny on the same mission) and Des very quickly was down 25-1 at the end of round 1, and he was able to climb. Back and win 40-25.

There were a lot of people standing around watching the matches, it is just people were crowded around on the sides trying to get a look. If FFG was able to put up a couple of monitors, it really would help the spectators.

That was an entertaining finale, but a bit anti climatic. It looked like only 4 or 5 people were actually watching it at the event. Was the attention to IA poor overall?

I think both players played very well, but I really felt for the Rebel player, there isn't much you can do when the rolls are so one sided. Somebody should have checked the other guys dice! lol. The way he was rolling I don't think there was anyway he could lose. The Rebel player tried his best but just kept coming up short on the rolls. That's the luck of the game though, you gotta be good to get there and then you gotta be lucky to win. Great job to everyone involved it looked like it was a lot of fun.

I hear you, but the Final at the IA Championship at GenCon this summer was the same...there were only about 8 or 10 of us in total for that. I think it was also about 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning at the time, too.

I would honestly prefer to see a good 20-30+ spectactors at the Final match, like I've seen before in other games (even when I've been in the Finals)...but sometimes there are other things going on and people move on to their next event or next thing, even if they're eagerly interested in the Finals match itself.

There were probably 15 or so people watching, you couldn't necessarily see them all from the camera angles.

The biggest problem is that it's just kind of hard to watch and tell what's going on.

As for the dice, while I undeniably had good dice, that is also kind of the point of this list. All of the troopers reroll help guarantee pretty good damage unless the dice totally flub. My opponent had his fair share of good attack rolls (Killing Blaise in 2 shots, shooting a spy trooper from not guaranteed range with an echo and me rolling blank to 1 shot him) and defense rolls (having to shoot an echo with 3 health left 3 times with troopers).

With rerolls, it really isn't unreasonable to see troopers do 2-3 damage after blocks with each shot. That also tends to be enough for a single group to kill an 8 health figure.

The rebel troopers suffer from yellow instead of green die, pierce instead of damage, and losing the aim bonus by having to move, especially on this map.

I think some of the key moments in that game were:

7 point holocam at the end of round 1 vs 2 points.

Red rebel trooper team being mostly useless due to positioning. They wasted focus killing a camera.

Blaise being 2 shot, but that ended up leaving the echoes in good places to be shot.

Officers making up for good defense rolls by the opponent by rolling good attacks.

Positioning making it difficult for the rebel player to eliminate any trooper groups.

Door staying closed until it was time for the heavies to finish off the yellow echo team.

Focusing down the echo troopers as I thought he probably had reinforcements in hand and also didn't want to shoot at white dice. And rebel troopers just aren't that scary when they have to move and you have Zillo.

Grenadier not showing up, as it would have wrecked me at certain points.

Those are my general thoughts about how the game went.

Congrats Dan. I was one of the judges during Warmup and all day Saturday. I had a lot of fun watching everyone play.

This is why I'll tend to keep Deadeye over Urgency when deciding what to discard. Both can effectively solve the same problem, but Deadeye more often lets you shoot the same guy as Urgency but then move to a better spot.

That's a really good point I didn't think much about. I always prefer positioning to guarantee attacks as a wasted attack is horrible. I play aggressive and keep troopers are range 3-5 all the time anyway. That's why I rarely found a need for deadeye... just like I never use the +3acc surge. But it's a good point that deadeye can change your positioning. I guess I've always seen it as a spare "oh **** I rolled bad" +acc surge... which troopers already have and don't usually need due to rerolls.

I think opening Zillo up to all factions doesn't solve the problem. Then everyone would just take it instead of every imperial player.

You could add a core rule that "once per attack you can discard a card to add one block". That might be interesting I guess.

I also agree that it hurts Pierce 2 units more than it should.

At the end of the day, it's a card that was designed to help make things like Vader/AT-ST more competitive... I don't think it achieved that. Imperial trooper lists were doing fine without Zillo. Now they are even better. I play Imp Troopers btw so I'm not bitter, I just don't like what it's doing to the game. It's not a huge problem but I think it should be addressed.

As for Disorient, I think it just depends who you play against. Locally there's lots of Rebels and Scum+gideon/3po so lots of focus tokens flying around. It's fun watching someone go deep with focused heroes knowing they can do some serious damage only to have the focus stripped away and either take damage or lose cards. I agree it's situational though. Won't see much use against imperial players.

The first Thing I think of for Disorient are focused eStormtroopers (Last Stand).

While all of this talk about lists and what-not is fine, I'm wondering what it is going to take to have DTDanix post a close-up pic of those sweet, sweet, Worlds dice so we can get a better look at them.

If anyone missed the stream when it was still up on twitch (it still is, but only for a few more days), I rehosted them to YT:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPo5SHtKIqxtMy_Wfch6NPDgKS1MHkeXe

While all of this talk about lists and what-not is fine, I'm wondering what it is going to take to have DTDanix post a close-up pic of those sweet, sweet, Worlds dice so we can get a better look at them.

If nobody has done so by the time I get home from work, I can post some pics. Provided I don't forget.

They're the same dice as last year apparently, so you can probably just find a picture of those.

I kind of wondered if they were the same dice. The announcement pic made it look similar but wasn't sure.

This is why I'll tend to keep Deadeye over Urgency when deciding what to discard. Both can effectively solve the same problem, but Deadeye more often lets you shoot the same guy as Urgency but then move to a better spot.

That's a really good point I didn't think much about. I always prefer positioning to guarantee attacks as a wasted attack is horrible. I play aggressive and keep troopers are range 3-5 all the time anyway. That's why I rarely found a need for deadeye... just like I never use the +3acc surge. But it's a good point that deadeye can change your positioning. I guess I've always seen it as a spare "oh **** I rolled bad" +acc surge... which troopers already have and don't usually need due to rerolls.

I understand what you mean about the benefit of Deadeye, but what makes me take Urgency over Deadeye is that it's more versatile. It can help with objectives or getting into position to make an attack or running away. Also, it's better for me because I'm playing with a melee character.

-ryanjamal

That was an entertaining finale, but a bit anti climatic. It looked like only 4 or 5 people were actually watching it at the event. Was the attention to IA poor overall?

I think both players played very well, but I really felt for the Rebel player, there isn't much you can do when the rolls are so one sided. Somebody should have checked the other guys dice! lol. The way he was rolling I don't think there was anyway he could lose. The Rebel player tried his best but just kept coming up short on the rolls. That's the luck of the game though, you gotta be good to get there and then you gotta be lucky to win. Great job to everyone involved it looked like it was a lot of fun.

I hear you, but the Final at the IA Championship at GenCon this summer was the same...there were only about 8 or 10 of us in total for that. I think it was also about 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning at the time, too.

I would honestly prefer to see a good 20-30+ spectactors at the Final match, like I've seen before in other games (even when I've been in the Finals)...but sometimes there are other things going on and people move on to their next event or next thing, even if they're eagerly interested in the Finals match itself.

There were probably 15 or so people watching, you couldn't necessarily see them all from the camera angles.

The biggest problem is that it's just kind of hard to watch and tell what's going on.

As for the dice, while I undeniably had good dice, that is also kind of the point of this list. All of the troopers reroll help guarantee pretty good damage unless the dice totally flub. My opponent had his fair share of good attack rolls (Killing Blaise in 2 shots, shooting a spy trooper from not guaranteed range with an echo and me rolling blank to 1 shot him) and defense rolls (having to shoot an echo with 3 health left 3 times with troopers).

With rerolls, it really isn't unreasonable to see troopers do 2-3 damage after blocks with each shot. That also tends to be enough for a single group to kill an 8 health figure.

The rebel troopers suffer from yellow instead of green die, pierce instead of damage, and losing the aim bonus by having to move, especially on this map.

I think some of the key moments in that game were:

7 point holocam at the end of round 1 vs 2 points.

Red rebel trooper team being mostly useless due to positioning. They wasted focus killing a camera.

Blaise being 2 shot, but that ended up leaving the echoes in good places to be shot.

Officers making up for good defense rolls by the opponent by rolling good attacks.

Positioning making it difficult for the rebel player to eliminate any trooper groups.

Door staying closed until it was time for the heavies to finish off the yellow echo team.

Focusing down the echo troopers as I thought he probably had reinforcements in hand and also didn't want to shoot at white dice. And rebel troopers just aren't that scary when they have to move and you have Zillo.

Grenadier not showing up, as it would have wrecked me at certain points.

Those are my general thoughts about how the game went.

I re read my post after reading your response and I can see how it might come off that I was trying to take away from your victory, but that is not the case. First of all you are the World Champ and nobody can take that from you. Second of all you don't get to the finals off lucky rolls alone. Your list was bullet proof, you put in the time and effort testing and researching and you got what you deserved. I was simply sympathizing with Desmond and his rotten luck in the dice box. But that is definitely not the only reason he lost, he got out played. All that said, congrats on the win and thanks for the insight into the match.

I heard mention that you guys were part of a 'team' from Washington, do you guys have a podcast or something or is this just an unofficial group that plays together? How did the other guys do? Were they running similar lists?

We don't really call ourselves a team.

There are just 4 of us that play in all the local tournaments and stuff, and we all brought basically this same list. We all made top 8. I eliminated one in that round, and the other two lost their matches.

The only differences in lists were the command cards that go in the Lock On/Jump Jets spots.

Running a podcast could be fun, but it seems like too much work.

The first Thing I think of for Disorient are focused eStormtroopers (Last Stand).

I find it gets the most use against any Rebel or Merc list with Gideon/C3PO in it.... which is a lot.

Last Stand is one of the very few ways to get focus in an Imperial list.... There's snowtroopers and Sorin droids too.

Either way, that's why I use it. There's more than enough targets.

I understand what you mean about the benefit of Deadeye, but what makes me take Urgency over Deadeye is that it's more versatile. It can help with objectives or getting into position to make an attack or running away. Also, it's better for me because I'm playing with a melee character.

-ryanjamal

That's also why I like it. Melee characters and objective grabbing (or attacking the back line, where you might need to get past something to get line of sight). In a list like Blaise with Heavies, I'd keep it for the Heavies, but otherwise, trooper lists probably don't benefit as much as some other lists might.

I think both players played very well, but I really felt for the Rebel player, there isn't much you can do when the rolls are so one sided. Somebody should have checked the other guys dice! lol. The way he was rolling I don't think there was anyway he could lose. The Rebel player tried his best but just kept coming up short on the rolls. That's the luck of the game though, you gotta be good to get there and then you gotta be lucky to win. Great job to everyone involved it looked like it was a lot of fun.

I guess I'd be careful before claiming dice are the reason for a victory at this level. It is a troopers build after all with reduduncancy built on redundancy. More importantly he did win 6/6... and at that level I just don't think any sort of dice take you that far.

What I saw was clever play, especially with things like the running away of units that were too weak to achieve more and thus became a liability.

That said as far as tactical play went I thought the semis game with the same troopers list/player going up against the bantha was beautiful to watch. Made me wonder how all of us Aussies got smashed by a bantha at our nationals! He made it look easy

When I played Kenny in our Nationals game it came down to a single HK with one health any my RGC on 2 or 3 health.

I simply had a brain fart and didn't pay attention to who had initiative next turn and made a huge tactical mistake. I should have just run away and I would have won.

It was a very tight game.

The bantha hurt but the MVP for Kenny was his eNexu and a very well built command deck. I think that Nexu did as much if not more damage to my list than the Bantha did.

Dice and good luck can certainly give you a huge advantage. One my my games against a Sorin list, I swear my opponent never rolled under 2 block. Combined with Zillo, I kept leaving things on 1 health instead of killing them and it snowballed really badly. It happens.

But going 6/6 and then winning 4 more games after that.... it's more than just dice.

https://imgur.com/a/F8rTP

Worlds Dice!

https://imgur.com/a/F8rTP

Worlds Dice!

Many thanks. I found an image of the dice from 2015 and they do seem similar but the shade of green from this year looks different (and better, IMHO) but that could just be due to the quality of the photos.

Hmm, I guess I can contribute, as the highest non-Blaise Swiss placer. ; )

I decided on my list because I knew everyone and their brother would be bringing Blaise to Worlds this year. (There were actually fewer Blaises than I thought there would be!) My reasoning fir going Bantha was that it's (usually) a strong list in my hands, and it was that or Blaise for me. I figured everyone (and their brothers, again) would figure the same thing: Blaise lists everywhere, and both practice against them and try to create lists strong against them. But Bantha lists hadn't been winning too often, with a few noticeable exceptions (hi Kenny!). My hope was that a lot of people would underestimate them. I proved right about that, I think; my only loss in Swiss was against the to-be World Champion, and my loss at top-16 was a -very- close Bantha on Bantha game.

My first Worlds, my first competition outside my local small IA community, playing a non-Blaise list, and I placed 4th in Swiss. I am -very- happy with my results! : )

My list was:

Bantha Rider

Beast Tamer

Devious Scheme

rHKs

eTusken Raiders

rNexu

Greedo

Temporary Alliance

Gideon

rSmuggler

My Command Cards were:

Crush

Jundland Terror x2

Grisly Contest

Primary Target

Negation

Jump Jets

Black Market Prices

Survival Instincts

Tough Luck

Take Initiative

Fleet Footed

Urgency

Element of Surprise

Stroke of Brilliance

I doubt I could have done better with a standard Blaise list.

...

I think opening Zillo up to all factions doesn't solve the problem. Then everyone would just take it instead of every imperial player.

You could add a core rule that "once per attack you can discard a card to add one block". That might be interesting I guess.

I also agree that it hurts Pierce 2 units more than it should.

At the end of the day, it's a card that was designed to help make things like Vader/AT-ST more competitive... I don't think it achieved that. Imperial trooper lists were doing fine without Zillo. Now they are even better. I play Imp Troopers btw so I'm not bitter, I just don't like what it's doing to the game. It's not a huge problem but I think it should be addressed.

...

I feel like Zillo would make more sense if it were only usable for unique figures, or figures above a certain cost. Like you said it seemed to be designed to help Imperial heroes, but instead it's helping Imperial troopers who don't really need the help. It's just frustrating to face, there's not really anything you can do to deal with it, and the Imperial player barely has to make any tradeoffs to take or use it :/

Maybe in the future we'll see cards that can counter it, somehow? Some kind of hunter upgrades, or dark jedi or something, that limit the defense modifications the opponent can do (by spending some cost, of course).