This is great and all, really, a box AND packs announced?

But aren't we due for an FAQ and map change yet? Are we expected to play Jabba's Palace again?? I can't remember how previous world maps went.

13 minutes ago, buckero0 said:

you may be right as far as the campaign goes. FFG uses all of their artwork over so some of the figure cards may be lacking in the quality artwork but I think the other scenario cards and command cards will be solid. The tiles should be fine

an you're right that the Loth cats in and of themselves are silly (they were silly in the cartoon) but the mechanic and having another creature besides the bantha (which will make a comeback once Nal Hutta is gone) and Nexu and maybe the Rancor will be awesome.

I still think built in squad swarm/strength in numbers is super strong for the Death troopers. The 3pt regular death trooper will be worth taking which is pretty awesome for Imperials.

I just want lothcats to be more than “squad nexu”. I’m excited for more creatures too. And I love the idea of small squad creatures. I’m just bummed they look like they’ll be similar otherwise.

The death troopers look great, I just don’t want the rest of the box that much so far and that’s a bummer. I really hope there is a fix for an old unit in there or something to give me more reason to grab it. I really want to want to buy it

2 minutes ago, theChony said:

This is great and all, really, a box AND packs announced?

But aren't we due for an FAQ and map change yet? Are we expected to play Jabba's Palace again?? I can't remember how previous world maps went.

Last FAQ update was March 7th of this year, so probably not that. However, I wouldn't be surprised to see a new map rotation w/ a Tourney Rules update after Worlds.

22 minutes ago, Fightwookies said:

+Wild Attack: 6+2+1. Any other way to add dice to an attack for a brawler?

I wouldn't use wild attack too risky unfortunately tools for the job is not usable there are no other ways... With current cards

2 hours ago, ManateeX said:

Not too much spoiled for skirmish, just one of the new heroes:

Why is my Clawdite elite not 5 points?

2 hours ago, ManateeX said:

I think a lot of the skirmish abilities are going to be similar to the spoiled campaign abilities on this one.

10 minutes ago, buckero0 said:

Why is my Clawdite elite not 5 points?

because your clawdite is a hunter, has ranged and support abilities, and has good surges for killing primary targets.

I disagree, Tress jas better surges besides the knife but its not going to change so no use crying. I've been looking for a decent spy themed list but we may never get enough spoes worthwhile to make ot work

1 hour ago, Golan Trevize said:

I wouldn't use wild attack too risky unfortunately tools for the job is not usable there are no other ways... With current cards

risky for sure. but the fact that she can theoretically cleave 9 unmitigated damage onto vader from one attack is bananas

3 hours ago, Fightwookies said:

risky for sure. but the fact that she can theoretically cleave 9 unmitigated damage onto vader from one attack is bananas

I just have a friend that likes to play 2xBodyguard with rRiots on Vader... I'm going to like adjacency like I have never done before

6 hours ago, Crimson36 said:

I do appreciate the mechanical difference of the lothcat in that regard. But they’re sure to be fast, relatively high attack low defense units with lower health. Apparently they also have a pounce like ability. So again, very similar. They also look aesthetically different from the other creatures because they’re cartoons, and in my opinion have always looked kinda dumb.

As for the style tokens, what I’m saying is have the ability read “this unit gains power tokens for x reason, this unit can spend power tokens for y ability instead of using them normally if they choose”

that way you still get cool and interesting new abilities and interactions but don’t have new mechanics and tokens that can only be used on one figure, and you’ll avoid terrible names like style tokens as a bonus

I think that might affect balance though with figures that could easily pump out power tokens for her(Ko-Tun) another nice thing is that these will be able to stack. I completely agree with you that the name of them sounds bad though.

Really excited to see some creature love, always been enticing to me for skirmish. Nexus and lothal cats pouncing around while the bantha tramples everything in sight.

2 hours ago, TheUnsullied said:

I think that might affect balance though with figures that could easily pump out power tokens for her(Ko-Tun) another nice thing is that these will be able to stack. I completely agree with you that the name of them sounds bad though.

Unless I misunderstand, the people that pump out power tokens won’t do anything more for her than anyone else. Unless style tokens are also power tokens. But even if they are I just find it unnecessary to make a new type of power token. And it limits the synergy with other power token users/granters to make them so specific. I just feel like it’s objectively worse than it could have been and it took more work to make it worse like that. They took extra effort to make things less well designed. It’s not that big of a deal, I’ll probably just not use her, I’m just sad I don’t like her

If you make her ability focus on power tokens, you weaken her significantly. First, she would have a limit of two power tokens, whereas I’m betting she can gain more than that with her abilities. Furthermore, this would lessen the ability of other characters, such as Ko-tun, whose abilities already focus on giving out power tokens.

Giving a character a specific token type that they use all on their own is extremely common for FFG. It happened every wave with Descent. I get that it adds clutter, but it seems like a small detail to get hung up on, IMO.

-ryanjamal

Bringing this back around to a skirmish-centric post, I think it was sad that past heroes with the specialized tokens in campaign were not given some token use in skirmish. I think I understand why -- adding those tokens clutters the board and increases the difficulty for non-Rebels players to understand Rebels play.

But think about Loku having a limited Recon Token component that provided a buff to the next ranged attack against the marked opponent. (+2 Accuracy to anyone seems reasonable.) Saska's device tokens could have acted as proto-power tokens.

Instead, Loku was practically unusuable. Power tokens make Loku a little better on attack nowdays, but Loku is supposed to be a sniper and cannot match the range and damage output of eAllianceRangers. At her introduction, Saska big trick was to bring in a Merc... but she was mostly unusuable due to Saska's cost and attack pool. (Still is, even with the new powerful Smuggler command cards.)

7 hours ago, ryanjamal said:

If you make her ability focus on power tokens, you weaken her significantly. First, she would have a limit of two power tokens, whereas I’m betting she can gain more than that with her abilities. Furthermore, this would lessen the ability of other characters, such as Ko-tun, whose abilities already focus on giving out power tokens.

Giving a character a specific token type that they use all on their own is extremely common for FFG. It happened every wave with Descent. I get that it adds clutter, but it seems like a small detail to get hung up on, IMO.

-ryanjamal

You could easily just give her an ability letting her hold more than two power tokens. The game limits figures to one attack per activation but we have plenty of people who ignore it with an ability.

And your second point is why I believe it’s worth getting hung up on. It doesn’t weaken ko-tun, in fact it would make ko-tun even better. It would give people yet another reason to add more power token-providers. Ko-tun could give one in addition to whatever this new character could generate for themselves. It makes both units better in every turn to use them together. It adds synergy to a list. If new characters came out later that did power token related things both of these characters would be useful with them also. But as it is, with her new mechanic, there’s no synergy. Have 5 points left over in any list? If this figure ends up being OP, she’ll be in every list. If she’s weak, she won’t show up in any. She’s limited to her own utility and can’t combine interestingly with anyone. And I’m upset because I think using power tokens would have actually been easier than designing a new mechanic and new token. So someone did more work for a worse result (imo).

I know this is common practice for ffg, but I think it’s a bad practice in general for any game, ffg or not. I’ve been playing all sorts of games for years and this specific practice of “making up a one off mechanic” has always driven me nuts. I remember a specific instance in the game Summoner Wars. One of my favorite Summoners was Endrich. Endrich introduced “boosted units” who could gain new abilities mid battle. All his cards revolves around synergy with boosted stuff. However when new summoner wars sets came out no boosted stuff ever showed up again. Endrich is nearly unplayable because he’s so limited in his deckbuilding, and the cards in his set are of extremely limited value to anyone else’s deck because nobody can do anything with “boosted units”. I don’t want another Endrich situation. It was lazy to introduce new cool mechanics then never use them again and introduce new mechanics that are essentially similar. And it hurts the game overall.

TL;DR: Common to FFG or not, I really hate this practice of unique tokens/mechanics that don’t synergize well with other things. It’s lazy feeling and I believe it hurts the game in the long run. However this specific instance isn’t that big of a deal and I get that, but I don’t think the defense “they do this all the time” really changes what I’ve been saying.

24 minutes ago, cnemmick said:

Bringing this back around to a skirmish-centric post, I think it was sad that past heroes with the specialized tokens in campaign were not given some token use in skirmish. I think I understand why -- adding those tokens clutters the board and increases the difficulty for non-Rebels players to understand Rebels play.

But think about Loku having a limited Recon Token component that provided a buff to the next ranged attack against the marked opponent. (+2 Accuracy to anyone seems reasonable.) Saska's device tokens could have acted as proto-power tokens.

Instead, Loku was practically unusuable. Power tokens make Loku a little better on attack nowdays, but Loku is supposed to be a sniper and cannot match the range and damage output of eAllianceRangers. At her introduction, Saska big trick was to bring in a Merc... but she was mostly unusuable due to Saska's cost and attack pool. (Still is, even with the new powerful Smuggler command cards.)

I agree with this too. What if they had a skirmish fix now that power tokens exist that lets them use power tokens similarly to their campaign tokens? I feel like something there could be really cool.

I think I’m missing something here: does her command card or skirmish card even mention style tokens?

I get it if someone doesn’t like more and more tokens for campaign - but she doesn’t seem to use style tokens for skirmish. And this is the skirmish forum. It sure looks like they translated style tokens into the surges rolled = x thing. Which seems pretty neat to me - we’ll see if it is in practice.

And loku and Saska (and almost every hero before jabbas realm) are practically unusable because they weren’t priced right/health pointed right/or dice powered right - not because of tokens - as far as skirmish.

It apparently took awhile to figure out the power curve and get most new figures onto it. Is it perfect? Nope. Is it a lot better than everything bespin and before? Yep.

What’s bad in Jabba’s realm? The rancor? A few slightly expensive things? But almost everything has a place.

What about HotE? Clawdites little expensive or not enough health? Or too little synergy currently? Ok - but not hopeless figs. Ahsoka/maul a little hard to synergize with. Jarrod is arguably the most disappointing to me - but he might be good combined with tress for brawler synergy.

But the last two boxes and the Jawa wave have introduced some of the best stuff in the game. And the more toys we get the more options there are to smash together and find new synergies.

I mean come on, someone has currently turned MHD into a thing and almost everyone has written that figure off since he came out.

So I’m just glad we got another announcement and looking forward to more info

3 hours ago, Masterchiefspiff said:

I think I’m missing something here: does her command card or skirmish card even mention style tokens?

I get it if someone doesn’t like more and more tokens for campaign - but she doesn’t seem to use style tokens for skirmish. And this is the skirmish forum. It sure looks like they translated style tokens into the surges rolled = x thing. Which seems pretty neat to me - we’ll see if it is in practice.

So I’m just glad we got another announcement and looking forward to more info

Im with you there. I was just commenting on several things about this box that were not what I was expecting/hoping. For whatever reason we ended up fixating on the style tokens but as far as skirmish goes her design is a little better.

most of all I’m just happy for new stuff

6 hours ago, Crimson36 said:

You could easily just give her an ability letting her hold more than two power tokens. The game limits figures to one attack per activation but we have plenty of people who ignore it with an ability.

And your second point is why I believe it’s worth getting hung up on. It doesn’t weaken ko-tun, in fact it would make ko-tun even better. It would give people yet another reason to add more power token-providers. Ko-tun could give one in addition to whatever this new character could generate for themselves. It makes both units better in every turn to use them together. It adds synergy to a list. If new characters came out later that did power token related things both of these characters would be useful with them also. But as it is, with her new mechanic, there’s no synergy. Have 5 points left over in any list? If this figure ends up being OP, she’ll be in every list. If she’s weak, she won’t show up in any. She’s limited to her own utility and can’t combine interestingly with anyone. And I’m upset because I think using power tokens would have actually been easier than designing a new mechanic and new token.

The problem I have with that is down the line this could lead to some busted combos. When designing her they would have to keep in mind all other characters who have power token abilities, as well as the other ideas they have for the future. And then when designing new characters with power token abilities they would have to balance them all with her in mind. That just leads to a lot of constraint design-wise. Maybe it could’ve been done. But I think the result would have been inferior. But to each his own :-)

-ryanjamal

On April 13, 2018 at 2:10 PM, NeverBetTheFett said:

"Heavy Fire" skirmish upgrade with the Thrawn pack. Hmmmmm...AT-ST fix?

We can only hope that Miami Weiss will finally be able to cruise to the Skirmish tournaments other than when some punter uses his token as a proxy because his Rancor's arms keep getting in the way and knocking other figures over.

...allegedly

Here are the command cards texts:

Protect the Old Ways - Kanan only. Use while a figure within 3 spaces is defending to add +X blocks to the defense results, where X is 1 + the number of Force User cards in your discard pile. 1 point

Karabast! - Zeb only. Use during your activation. During this round, when a hostile figure voluntarily exits a space adjacent to you, that figure suffers 1 damage and 1 strain. Limit once per figure. 1 point

Foresee - Thrawn only. Use during your activation to look at the top 3 cards of your opponent's command deck and discard 1 of those cards. If the discarded card cost 1 or less, draw a command card. 0 points

Let's Make a Deal - Hondo only. Use while defending. Pay your opponent X vps to apply -X damage to the attack results. Then you become focused. 0 points.

Pack Alpha - Creature only. Up to 3 friendly creatures within 3 spaces of you may move up to 3 spaces each. Then choose hostile figure. That figure suffers 1 damage equal to the number of those figures adjacent to it. ? points.

2 hours ago, ryanjamal said:

The problem I have with that is down the line this could lead to some busted combos. When designing her they would have to keep in mind all other characters who have power token abilities, as well as the other ideas they have for the future. And then when designing new characters with power token abilities they would have to balance them all with her in mind. That just leads to a lot of constraint design-wise. Maybe it could’ve been done. But I think the result would have been inferior. But to each his own :-)

-ryanjamal

I feel as though I’ve taken up enough of this thread with this line of thinking, so I’ll leave with this. I think that everyone is entitled to their opinion and I don’t mind disagreement.

Having said that I do have a problem with your argument. Your argument hinges on the assumption of future failings on the part of ffg. It’s literally their job to make sure that crazy op combos don’t happen, but even though that is true I do understand it’s possible. But we can’t assume that and then make that the basis for evaluating a current figure and their ability.

Also, and perhaps more importantly, by your line of logic any synergy could potentially lead to op combos, so words such as “trooper” or “guardian” should not exist either, lest a future guardian have an ability that would be overpowered when combined with a current guardian specific command card. Or maybe even factions. Maybe this game should be about single figures fighting alone each with their own faction so that balance is easier to maintain. Obviously I’m employing some hyperbole but I believe that intended synergy is good for the game and when handled with any degree of care (adequate playtesting) the negative aspect of unintended combos can be avoided. In fact, they already had to do what you suggest when they created the power token characters, they had to make sure none of them created imbalance in the game due to unintended combination. They do that with every command card in the game, and each figure. Most of the time they do a very good job, but obviously some error is unavoidable. I don’t think the answer is to give up on synergy to avoid error that will happen either way.

And if they are going to make her ability unique and not specifically synergize with other units, make it an actually unique ability like kanan’s. Nobody else can give him “see your opponents activation early” tokens and that’s fine! His ability stands on his own in an interesting way and could shake up the meta in just the right way. I’m excited for him. Tress’s style tokens on the other hand are basically power tokens but they are specific to her and marginally “different”. Which is why it would have been cool to just integrate her into the existing mechanic instead of creating a “new” but unoriginal mechanic that cannot synergize with others.

But again, you can absolutely disagree and I respect your right to do so. I just feel strongly about this after watching it affect other games so negatively. I love imperial assault and only want it to improve. Overall I’d say it is trending in the correct direction, which is why this particular figure and her ability got a little under my skin. It’s not so much the exact instance that bothers me as much as the principle of the matter.

Alright, I’ll stop now, sorry everyone. Let’s go back to talking about the cool stuff from this set! I for one am pumped about kanan! He and his command card could be a really cool boost for force users.

With the creature cards as well as Thrawn's command card, I have a sneaking suspicion that the Blaise list and the Bantha list will be coming back with some new twists. (Thrawn would be able to look at the opponent's command deck with his command card, and Blaise would look at the opponent's hand.) (Bantha is a creature.)

Also, with riot troopers already out, and death troopers and zeb along the way, I wonder if there will be more guardian cards at our disposal?

Does anyone know why Zeb is often depicted in a purple hue - makes him look very cartoonish (which he is but still). Started watching Rebels last night, and not once did I think he looked purple... just find it odd.