Imperial Assault Deployment Card Editor, Credit: @Bitterman

Hi Team, I've been playing around for a few weeks with the idea of Admiral Ackbar on the ground. Could some experts suggest an appropriate Deployment Cost for this Admiral Ackbar? Any advice or suggestions also welcome.

Version 1.0

I'd nerf Tides of Battle to 2 adjacent figures or 1 figure within 3 spaces. 3 figures within 4 spaces is just asking for a killer Round 1: Let's have 3 eRangers all start with a power-surge for free + 1 of them Focused + move 4 to hand out free tokens again next turn. power-wild is extremely powerful since you can optimize it for different units (need def? need dmg? need surge? no problem!)

After the nerf I'd place him at 6: he can be removed in 1 activation if not careful but all 3 abilities are extremely good so you'd want to protect him a bit. So he's a bit like the Rebel version of Palpatine except no immediate unblockable damage + cheaper + weaker

edit to add: if you don't want to nerf it then I'd probably say 9 (yes, more expensive than Palpatine) and make him a high-risk high-reward character: he's OP if left alive but is super expensive and can be wiped out if not careful

Agreed with @ricope. Once that's nerfed, I'd say he'd probably fit in around 5ish threat, maybe 6. He seems like he'd be a more support-orient, less offensively powerful Ko Tun.

Or, more comparatively, like a slightly beefed up elite Officer.

I would recommend ditching "On My Mark" which is Gideon's bread and butter and give him something more unique. Perhaps something like...

It's A Trap: When a hostile figure declares an attack on a friendly figure within 4 spaces, that figure gains 1 block and 1 evade token. Once per round.

I'd add:

"Whenever a friendly Bothan is defeated, all friendly figures within 3 spaces become Focused."

21 hours ago, ricope said:

I'd nerf Tides of Battle to 2 adjacent figures or 1 figure within 3 spaces. 3 figures within 4 spaces is just asking for a killer Round 1: Let's have 3 eRangers all start with a power-surge for free + 1 of them Focused + move 4 to hand out free tokens again next turn. power-wild is extremely powerful since you can optimize it for different units (need def? need dmg? need surge? no problem!)

After the nerf I'd place him at 6: he can be removed in 1 activation if not careful but all 3 abilities are extremely good so you'd want to protect him a bit. So he's a bit like the Rebel version of Palpatine except no immediate unblockable damage + cheaper + weaker

edit to add: if you don't want to nerf it then I'd probably say 9 (yes, more expensive than Palpatine) and make him a high-risk high-reward character: he's OP if left alive but is super expensive and can be wiped out if not careful

I like everything you are saying. This is why I love putting the thoughts up for the Brains Trust to think of things that I haven't. The Tides of Battle ability could look good alongside an It's a Trap ability (mentioned below).

I'm extremely disappointed with Emperor Palpatine (from a thematic point of view). He should be a rightly powerful figure, costed well above many others even if he doesn't fit well in a Skirmish list. Using Luke Skywalker, Jedi Knight as an example, I've been also working on creating different versions of Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader. I think different versions can give us different themes.

10 hours ago, subtrendy2 said:

Agreed with @ricope. Once that's nerfed, I'd say he'd probably fit in around 5ish threat, maybe 6. He seems like he'd be a more support-orient, less offensively powerful Ko Tun.

Or, more comparatively, like a slightly beefed up elite Officer.

Ko-Tun's ability was the closest to what I was trying to achieve, and I based the wording from hers. I want Ackbar to be the type of commander that the enemy fears but the must pay for.

7 hours ago, leacher said:

I would recommend ditching "On My Mark" which is Gideon's bread and butter and give him something more unique. Perhaps something like...

It's A Trap: When a hostile figure declares an attack on a friendly figure within 4 spaces, that figure gains 1 block and 1 evade token. Once per round.

Yeah, I like the idea of Gideon being the only one to have that. Even though it's 'Ackbar on the ground' and not 'Ackbar in space' I'd still like Ackbar to be a major character, with excellent command abilities, even if it means costing him a bit higher.

Would you believe I had to resist the urge so hard to create an ability with that name! Haha. I do think you are on to a good thing with what you wrote there.

7 hours ago, Stompburger said:

I'd add:

"Whenever a friendly Bothan is defeated, all friendly figures within 3 spaces become Focused."

Quick, quick, get those Bothan Spy deployment cards created!

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Thanks Team, with your input, I'll go back and do some work on Ackbar.

I feel unique characters from the movies and shows should always get unique abilities which represent something iconic what we know and recognize the character for. For Ackbar, I'd definitely implement an ability around his famous line "It's a trap!" which would enable him to remove hidden-tokens from figures or something like that. That'd make him unique and bring something new and useful to the game.

2 hours ago, Fourtytwo said:

I feel unique characters from the movies and shows should always get unique abilities which represent something iconic what we know and recognize the character for. For Ackbar, I'd definitely implement an ability around his famous line "It's a trap!" which would enable him to remove hidden-tokens from figures or something like that. That'd make him unique and bring something new and useful to the game.

I love it too when they have those unique abilities. It's a Trap should definitely get some attention. Here's a quick go at trying to implement one of my other favourite Ackbar quotes too. These abilities are by no means final, I'm still very open to input from the Imperial Assault Brains Trust.

Neat idea with Ackbar!

I'm not 100% sure how the timing works. But I wonder if rules will allow your interrupt before the timing window to spend power tokens. Otherwise friendly figures gain power tokens that they cannot apply to the current attack.

Also, I think your Ackbar is imbalanced for Skirmish because none of his abilities are tied to putting himself in danger at all. He's also mobile enough to do objectives or sit on terminals (unlike Jabba) - so he can find a safe place to help your army without really exposing him to enemy fire.

To balance It's A Trap, I think it should only apply to figures within 3 spaces and in line-of-sight. And I think you should rework Concentrate All Firepower to do something during his turn. Here's a suggestion that's kinda like the command card Triangulate:

=> Concentrate All Firepower: Perform an attack. Apply +X DMG to the attack results, where X is the number of friendly figures with the RANGED attack type that have line-of-sight to the same target. X cannot be greater than 3.

With this ability, he'll have to have his surge abilities to account for the extra DMG he'll be getting every activation. But the key is limiting any Accuracy imcreases, so that he must be put near opposing figures to gain this benefit.

Obviously, reworks like this push his cost into the 6 or 7 range. If you are envisioning him to be more like 4 or 5, then he probably should be limited to giving out power tokens on his turn or to adjacent figures only.

4 hours ago, cnemmick said:

=> Concentrate All Firepower: Perform an attack. Apply +X DMG to the attack results, where X is the number of friendly figures with the RANGED attack type that have line-of-sight to the same target. X cannot be greater than 3.

Just a quick reply while I can. This is brilliant, I just went and read the card. That is exactly the sort of thing I'm looking for. I'll work around with this later when I can. (The timing mentioned, I was hoping by the wording would mean you get the tokens when the attack is declared, so before dice are rolled. But I'd love to do away with Power Tokens all together if possible).