Is it time to restore these cards to their former abilities? Right now both units are way below the power curve of the game, but it would be nice to have options for generic damage dealing troops in these factions outside of Jet Troopers and elite Rangers.

Would these units even become competitive again if they were restored to their pre-nerf stats?

Here's a link to the FAQ if you need to refresh on their original stats. https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/2b/63/2b631e5b-3f50-47cb-943b-0359fcc6b399/swi_faq_v30_lo_res.pdf

I'm not sure they will ever touch them again as they have been "fixed." Further changes could lead to more confusion with players who don't play often. Then there were all of the reprints of the cards in the new versions of core boxes. So there are a lot of people out there without the "old" versions.

All of that said, I would love to see the royal guards come back enough that they saw play. I still see people run a set of Elite Sabs every so often for objective running/blast/stun. Un-nerfing the Blast 4 would have to be looked at carefully as that is a lot of damage potential. The reg sabs should stay nerfed. Getting pierce 4 on them was absolutely broken for their cost.

Can someone explain why is everyone counting their abilities doubled? I know they have overload but red-yellow has low chance to give 2 surges.

Hera and focused , which is a rebel staple, are making two surges much more probable than just red-yellow.

Also for a while Elite Sabs were played with Targeting computer for rerolls which helped as well.

42 minutes ago, NagyLaci said:

Can someone explain why is everyone counting their abilities doubled? I know they have overload but red-yellow has low chance to give 2 surges.

Because they were almost always focused and getting a reroll from Luke/Targeting Computer.

Considering the huge volume of angry emails to FFG the first errata generated from IA players at the time who care more about printed card text than a balanced metagame, I could see how FFG would be very reluctant to make any erratas, even if it's technically an unerrata.

On 7/9/2018 at 3:06 PM, Tvboy said:

Is it time to restore these cards to their former abilities? Right now both units are way below the power curve of the game, but it would be nice to have options for generic damage dealing troops in these factions outside of Jet Troopers and elite Rangers.

Would these units even become competitive again if they were restored to their pre-nerf stats?

Here's a link to the FAQ if you need to refresh on their original stats. https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/2b/63/2b631e5b-3f50-47cb-943b-0359fcc6b399/swi_faq_v30_lo_res.pdf

Mixing Royal Guards with Riot Troopers and having Zilo on top of that. No thanks.

Blast 4 is also pretty dumb, even if it doesn't make Saboteurs competitive again.

Well you can use RG's in Legion now. LOL. Re-create all of those famous battles like Hoth (like advertised by FFG) with the Emperor in tow. Sorry. I had to mock this one.

11 minutes ago, NeverBetTheFett said:

Well you can use RG's in Legion now. LOL. Re-create all of those famous battles like Hoth (like advertised by FFG) with the Emperor in tow. Sorry. I had to mock this one.

Just pictures on a screen right now friend. Also would mean playing Legion instead of a game I actually want to play.

1 hour ago, Tvboy said:

Just pictures on a screen right now friend. Also would mean playing Legion instead of a game I actually want to play.

Well NOT right now, yes. And yes, my feeling was it's too slow and I'm not a big fan of large scale games. So it's just my preference to not play it. Still, it's Star Wars which counts for something for me.

They’re never going to undo it, but I think the originals might be too much still. You could give the Sabs another inherent accuracy and give the RG’s back their +2 damage surge. Top it off with a re-roll and both would be usable.

As someone who've played the Sabs a fair bit lately, what they need isn't to get their bonkers blast back. To make them more viable they need something else.

Reduce the deployment cost by one (which essentially gives them a needed reroll for the same price, TC, while reasonably denying them another attachment on top) and the figure cost by one or increase their health by one.

Actually, I would love to see the regular Sabs getting their Speed 5 back. Then they would be an objective runing alternative to smugglers. But it is not really needed for the faction, as Rebels have smugglers.

I've played with and against Royal Guard so much, I'd rather see them never again.

I'd rather like to see fixes for other units: Stormtroopers, Heavy Stormtroopers (Speed 4 would be great), ...

I don't think elite Sabs would actually make a comeback, their health and range is too much of a liability, but I think if regular Sabs were restored to 5 speed AND got their Pierce 2 back, they could be a pretty decent hybrid objective runner unit that has better damage output than the smugglers. More importantly they also have a better trait as spies and could also allow for more command decks synergy with Drokatta as heavy weapon figures. I could see reg Sabs as an alternative to Mak+Smuggler that a lot of lists run as long as they don't care too much about activation count.

Hi! It me, Person Who Wanna Fix Things.

What do y'all think of these changes:

Quote

Unique Skirmish Upgrade Card: Ambush Expertise

Cost: 0

All Rebel Saboteurs in your army gain "SURGE: After this attack resolves, you gain 2 movement points" and +1 Accuracy.

Elite Rebel Saboteurs gain Health +1, +1 DMG.

Targeting figures at Accuracy 4, Elite Sabs have a 53% chance vs. one black and a 47% chance vs. one white of doing at least 4 DMG. At the same target 4 spaces away, if Elite Sabs held back all their surges for Stun or Blast they would have an 93% chance vs. one black and an 83% chance vs. one white to do at least 1 DMG.

Quote

Unique Skirmish Upgrade Card: Ever Watchful

Cost: 1

Reduce the deployment cost of your Elite Royal Guards by 2 and the figure cost by 1.

Your Elite Royal Guards gains: +1 SURGE. While attacking, you may reroll 1 die.

Adding a static +1 SURGE gives an elite RG a 48% chance vs. black and 58% chance vs. white of doing at least 4 DMG (without factoring in the reroll). With these changes, if the player is withholding all SURGEs rolled for Stun, the player can expect a 76% chance of doing at least 1 DMG vs. a black die (and roughly the normal DODGE chances vs. a white).

I like them. How about changing the Ever Watchful to an upgrade to the group with a -2 cost (useful for both e&r RG). Still with the reduced figure cost for both types but only give the second function to eGuards?

That way you could add rGuards real cheap, but they wouldn't be much more than meatshields/guardians at this point with their crappy attack OR you could take eGuards and get some solid fighting power still.

@aermet69 I've been hesitant to touch rRoyalGuards because Sentinel on two figures is still a very powerful ability. If rRoyalGuards aren't worth their cost w/ Sentinel, I think it would be better to increase what rRoyalGuards can do so they become worth 8 deployment points. I could be talked into improving their attack, and honestly, I guess the eRoyalGuards could use another attack boost as well.

So what about this:

Quote

Unique Skirmish Upgrade Card: Ever Watchful

Cost: 0

All your Royal Guards gain +1 DMG.

Reduce the deployment cost of your Elite Royal Guards by 2 and the figure cost by 1.

Your Elite Royal Guards gains: +1 SURGE. While attacking, you may reroll 1 die.

This gives rRoyalGuards a 70% chance vs. one black die and a 73% chance vs one white die of doing at least 3 DMG. eRoyalGuards get really buffed: 76% chance of doing at least 4 DMG vs. either a black or white die. (Not counting rerolls, of course.)

Giving them a damage and a surge seems like you should just give them another yellow die instead

Lets be reasonable, they’re not going to start errataing stuff that isn’t broken, but they might restore cards to their original printed text if a lot of people still have the unaltered cards. I’ve heard that core sets started including errata’d Sabs, is that true of the Sab ally packs as well?

12 hours ago, Tvboy said:

Lets be reasonable, they’re not going to start errataing stuff that isn’t broken, but they might restore cards to their original printed text if a lot of people still have the unaltered cards. I’ve heard that core sets started including errata’d Sabs, is that true of the Sab ally packs as well?

Yes, this is true. The Sabs from my expansion pack are errata'ed.

If a lot of people have errata'd cards, I guess FFG didn't really leave themselves room to go back then. Maybe the angry anti-errata mobs will be less angry about errata if it's buffing their cards instead of nerfing them.

14 hours ago, Fightwookies said:

Giving them a damage and a surge seems like you should just give them another yellow die instead

I thought about that (and it probably has been suggested by others in the past). My primary concern was that you'd end up with way too many surges and not enough damage. Running the numbers, red/yellow/yellow gives eRGs a 65% chance vs. one black & a 68% chance vs. one white to do at least 4 DMG... that's a little less than +1 DMG +1 SURGE but isn't that far off.

I think giving them an extra yellow would work if they also got extra surge abilities... but with Sentinel & Forward Vengence, that's really a lot for a deployment group with 2 figures whose price we have just reduced down to 10 (figure cost 5).

Surge for a damage power token would be a solid ability for any figure capable of oversurging