Something I've noticed is that while there's been plenty of discussions regarding how good a unit/deployment cards are, rarely anyone mentions how good command cards are. Shall we start classifying command cards/houseruling those too? I think it's a pretty central piece to skirmish: Jedi Luke isn't as good without SoS; IG-88 isn't as good without Blaze of Glory; not to mention Negation + Take Initiative where a command deck is more like 13 cards 14pts rather than 15 cards 15pts

I got the inspiration from looking at those newly released Wave 10 CCs and thought to myself "Gee, those 3 faction-specific cards might actually get played if it actually says 'You' instead of 'Each Player' "

Oh yeah. I have ideas for a command card FAQ.

I feel there's a few issues in the structure of the game itself that adds to the complexity of fixing the cards:

Dead Weight

When selecting cards for your command card deck, you're afraid some cards will end up as useless in your hand because

1. they can't be played because the figure(s) required on the board has been defeated (nearly every figure-specific card)
2. they can't be played because the window for playing that card has shut (e.g. drawing Inspiring Speech late in the game as your forces are all spread out)

This is not as big of a problem for Imperials using Zillo Technique. When the Rebels find a good unique-figures-only list, Heroic Effort helps offset this as well. But without those skirmish upgrades, Rebels and Mercs must exclude all but 4 figure-specific cards in order to have a competitive command card deck.

I wonder if the game would be better with a common discard rule. Something like "Once per round, at the start of a figure's activation, discard a card from your hand to X." X has to be something that's slightly helpful to any figure. My suggestion for X would be "Gain a movement point." That would really help melee characters and enable figures to stretch just far enough to reach objectives or perform attacks.

With a rule like that in place, keeping cards in your hand could also be a resource strategy. Murne Rin's Field Report ability would be more likely to trigger if your opponent's spent two rounds tossing his/her command cards for extra movement. Future Skirmish Upgrades or deployments could replicate the "if you have more command cards in your hand than your opponent" mechanic.

Initiative and The Taking Of It

It's really powerful. Y'all know that.

I wish I knew exactly how to fix the "You pick 13 Cards & have 14 Command Card points" issue. A good idea I read somewhere is that Take Initiative requires that you exhaust deployment cards with a cost greater than or equal to Y, where Y is a number greater than Threepio's deployment cost. However, that just makes TI more expensive to play without reducing the requirement for having Negation. If Negation's cost was increased to 2, I feel like it just changes the adage to "you pick 13 cards and have 13 Command Card points". Adding trait restrictions (like Leader, Spy) to Negation will only encourage us to make sure we have at least one Leader or Spy in our lists.

I do still like the idea (and the thrill!) of having initiative stolen as a game mechanic. But contrary to what I've said earlier this year, I wonder if TI should just get banned as currently written.

Replace it with a card that allows a player to take the initiative and then must activate a deployment card immediately. There has to be tight restrictions on 1) how many figures can be activated immediately after taking initiative and 2) forcing the player who is taking the initiative to put his/her most valuable figures at risk. I would like to try having the player activate the highest-costed unique figure in his/her army first. If the army does not have an unique figure with a figure cost of Y (where Y is a number MUCH GREATER than Threepio's deployment cost), the card cannot be played. It's a more generic version of I Make My Own Luck that requires more skill and setup. With this new card being cost of at least 1, Negation is no longer a necessary counter.

Until something is done with TI and Negation, players will always feel compelled to include them. That restricts what other cards can be added, whether they are fixed or not.

I think an upgrade for each faction that let you get rid of useless CCs would be good. Something simple could be (for Scum) something like: When a figure suffers strain, discard one CC: that figure suffers an additional strain. Or whatever. I like the "deckbuilding part" of that Command deck. Do I build around getting all my cards, using cards like Planning and Black Market along with R2-D2 and Jabba for more draw power. Or do I make a more alround useful CC deck, and just go with whatever I have? With the Black Market upgrade, I've also multiple times tried to build around 3s and 0s. Add the 0 cards for free, and ditch the 3 pointers for VPs unless you can immediately use it for better gain.

Heroic Effort also goes a long way with this for Rebels. To be honest, I don't think there's really a problem here.

i really think that playstyle is there, most people are stuck in a "competitive or bust mentality"

there is a topic of which maps are the most fun to play that just started. I wonder what percentage of the players actually have played maps that weren't in the official rotation.

When trying out new figures I think its actually counter intuitive to take TI and Neg, because you may get a false sense of their worth or not really, truly have an opportunity to display the figures rules.

I play without those cards all the time, kind of like aermet69 mentioned, play a deck that has a theme.

I played a rebel hunter list with eRangers, Biv and Verena in it. It actually did better than it should have and Biv actually got to attack twice.

The entire design focus of those 3 command cards was to make them symmetrical. The designers were playing around with the idea that symmetrical effects that either hurt or help both players can be made to benefit 1 player over the other when used by a skilled player. They failed because they made the cards too expensive and affect too many figures, which makes them unwieldy and hard to control. I think if you wanted to fix those cards and stay true to the designers' intentions, they would cost 1 point and only affect 1 figure from each player's list OR keep them the same but allow the player using the card to choose all of the figures that get affected 3 on their side and 3 on the opponents OR have them affect every figure in play and not just 3 on each side.

As for why you don't see as many house rules for command cards as deployment cards, I'd guess it's probably just because most people frown on house rules and see them as a last resort and because the deployment cards are where the actual iconic characters live that people grow attached to. People don't have the same attachment to I Make My Own Luck as they do to the character Han Solo, so there's less motivation to change the game to make sure that I Make My Own Luck sees table time, but getting Han Solo the character on to the table is worth the effort in most people's minds.

Just to be clear, are you hoping this thread is about discussing house-rules and changes to existing command cards? Or are you hoping to categorize existing command cards as printed? Those 2 things are very different.

A discussion and categorization system for existing command cards similar to @theaficionado ratings for deployment cards is something that's useful to all players, especially new ones.

House rules are less useful to those of us who enjoy playing in events. We are largely stuck with the official cards as printed: they're the rules we can agree upon. So while it might be nice to sometimes think about other rules, it doesn't mean much unless there are people willing to run a tournament with the modifications.

27 minutes ago, nickv2002 said:

Just to be clear, are you hoping this thread is about discussing house-rules and changes to existing command cards? Or are you hoping to categorize existing command cards as printed? Those 2 things are very different.

A discussion and categorization system for existing command cards similar to @theaficionado ratings for deployment cards is something that's useful to all players, especially new ones.

House rules are less useful to those of us who enjoy playing in events. We are largely stuck with the official cards as printed: they're the rules we can agree upon. So while it might be nice to sometimes think about other rules, it doesn't mean much unless there are people willing to run a tournament with the modifications.

I'm mainly looking for a discussion about command card classification (Tier 1, 2... etc) and why are some command cards sucks, and what can we possibly do to make them "good" again (release new figures? change wording? change costs?)

The reason being I've noticed that some cards would just never get picked (in both competitive and casual scene), like the 3 mentioned above or Palp's signature card

Way too expensive for 2pts, not that useful considering you'd never put Palpatine in the back anyway just to wait for that Unlimited Power

There are also plenty of solid command cards that rarely gets picked because of all the Hunter meta recently

23 minutes ago, ricope said:

There are also plenty of solid command cards that rarely gets picked because of all the Hunter meta recently

Surely you don't mean these four? Two of those four I consider auto-includes in every one of my lists.

Given I already made one for deployment cards, I'd more than happily make one for Command Cards too!

Element of Surprise is definitely an auto-include for me. That, plus Take Initiative and Negation are what I begin every command deck with. I have a bit of X-man trauma, so I always include cards that can negate the white die whenever possible.

1 hour ago, nickv2002 said:

Just to be clear, are you hoping this thread is about discussing house-rules and changes to existing command cards? Or are you hoping to categorize existing command cards as printed? Those 2 things are very different.

A discussion and categorization system for existing command cards similar to @theaficionado ratings for deployment cards is something that's useful to all players, especially new ones.

House rules are less useful to those of us who enjoy playing in events. We are largely stuck with the official cards as printed: they're the rules we can agree upon. So while it might be nice to sometimes think about other rules, it doesn't mean much unless there are people willing to run a tournament with the modifications.

For me, categorization of existing command cards is the more helpful of the two topics. We should definitely do that.

But I'm still gonna put my game designer hat and contribute to command card fixes (in a thread separate from the categorization thread). That's an itch that I really enjoy scratching.

I would like a tier list of command cards. ? And some discussion about the list.

I think both subjects should be seperated as well.

I would also think that a list of command card tiers would be great, if only to generate discussion, but I think it's going to be a whole lot harder (or at least more hand-wavy) than the deployment card tiers. Where do you put a card like 'Single Purpose', for example? It's just so dependent on what deployments you bring. With some lists I'd call it a Tier I auto-include, while on other lists it's a maybe and on others you'd never even look twice at it.

For classification's sake, I think we'll have get a bit specific about each tier:

• Tier 0 - Competition Cards for every list (TI, Negation)
• Tier 1 - Best Competition Cards (Element of Surprise, Tough Luck)
• Tier 2 - Good Competition Cards
• Tier 3 - These Are Cards That You Can Play I Guess
• Tier 4 - Cards That Should Be Abandoned To The Sands of Time

On 11/28/2017 at 9:48 AM, buckero0 said:

i really think that playstyle is there, most people are stuck in a "competitive or bust mentality"

there is a topic of which maps are the most fun to play that just started. I wonder what percentage of the players actually have played maps that weren't in the official rotation.

When trying out new figures I think its actually counter intuitive to take TI and Neg, because you may get a false sense of their worth or not really, truly have an opportunity to display the figures rules.

I play without those cards all the time, kind of like aermet69 mentioned, play a deck that has a theme.

I played a rebel hunter list with eRangers, Biv and Verena in it. It actually did better than it should have and Biv actually got to attack twice.

Yes. It really seems like Skirmish is dominated by a mentality of "I have my retirement savings bet on the outcome of this game". It's weird to me as someone who's been playing miniatures for almost 30 years. It's not the first game I've seen where people play that way but it is the first game I've seen where almost everyone apparently plays that way.

I like random command decks for some real interesting house-rule stuff. You sort them into little decks by cost and faction. Then you deal them out into blind piles of 15/15. It really turns the command decks back into the element of surprise that I feel they ought to be.

10 hours ago, ManateeX said:

I would also think that a list of command card tiers would be great, if only to generate discussion, but I think it's going to be a whole lot harder (or at least more hand-wavy) than the deployment card tiers. Where do you put a card like 'Single Purpose', for example? It's just so dependent on what deployments you bring. With some lists I'd call it a Tier I auto-include, while on other lists it's a maybe and on others you'd never even look twice at it.

The system for deployment cards should still be fine:

Tier 1: The best of the best in the game
Tier 2: Still very playable. Perhaps they were once Tier 1, but a newer unit has dethroned them
Tier 3: Rarely seen outside particular lists
Tier 4: Nonviable

So Single Purpose would be Tier 3

edit to add: ofc this might be irrelevant in actual tournaments, but I am seriously considering banning or straight up rewording some of the command cards when I play at home: banning Assassinate, On the Lam, Heightened reflex and maybe Tools for the Job will give some much needed nerf for Hunters. The power from those cards came from "while X" so you can decide whether to play them after you see the dice results. I think changing the trigger to "When you declare an attack" would still make them very good but not as OP as they currently are. This ofc would warrant a completely separate thread @cnemmick