Let's nerf this nonsense!

Once again, I hope I am jumping the gun and THEY will fix their own mess but what ideas do we have to make SC not as OP but still competitive and fun... or do we just all agree to never speak of it again

I'll start it off. Here's mine:

Get rid of the +1 block and +1 damage!

(also, maybe raise the cost to 3)

Simple. Keep the 2 movement and attack part, cause that is pretty fun.

1. Leave the cost as it is, change the wording to "exhaust this card during a figure's activation to choose 1 of the following: +1 damage | +1 block | gain 2 movement points"

2. remove the passive +1 damage and +1 block, raise the cost to 6

3. Leave the stats as it is and raise the cost to 12

Brett already did a great analysis on it

If you still want SC to remain as top tier, then perhaps change the cost to 4 and 10 for option 2 and 3 respectively. I also have a tendency/leans more towards nerfing than buffing, in other words I'm more afraid of a unit being too good and abused, than a unit being so bad that nobody uses it anymore as already described here

Keep everything, add focus to the move 2 and attack

This one's easy: just ban the SC card. Tear it up. Throw it in the bin.

It's vastly OP to the point of being unfixable without a complete rewrite.

So then you come to rewriting it from the ground up, and you start with the question "what do we want to achieve?", and the most logical answer seems to be "we want people to be able to play as the lovable characters they're so familiar with from the Star Wars Rebels TV show", and they can already do that just by taking all the SC figures, so in fact the entire card serves no actual useful purpose. Get rid of it. Smallest possible change. No play-testing necessary. No unexpected side effects can arise. Done.

(Can probably also get rid of Rebel Graffiti while you're tearing things up, though Sabine would feel pretty left out if you didn't replace that with something).

How about changing the 3rd paragraph to “ Deplete this card during a friendly figure’s activation...”?

41 minutes ago, Majushi said:

Keep everything, add focus to the move 2 and attack

Maybe it should add focus AND hide and probably should allow more damage tokens, block tokens, draw two more CCs and allows Jedi Luke to join the team. That would make it pretty fun for everyone.

35 minutes ago, Bitterman said:

This one's easy: just ban the SC card. Tear it up. Throw it in the bin.

This is my vote so far. Easy. Next.

Ban it and reduce the cost of each member of Spectre Cell so they're actually competitive (as needed).

OR print a new upgrade that gives the same benefit, but only if you're NOT running any Spectre Cell groups 😁

19 minutes ago, Stompburger said:

...and reduce the cost of each member of Spectre Cell so they're actually competitive (as needed).

I'm not against this, but then why do this on SC members only? Why not also rStormtroopers or RGC or AT-ST or any of the other figures that never see play? Answer: because that's a separate problem. One that would be nice to address, one day, but until then let's not let perfect be the enemy of the good. A meta with more than six figures in it is better than we have now, even if the meta doesn't make every card and figure equally viable. Reducing costs of other SC members would require play-testing and careful consideration of combos with other lists, i.e. risk of unwanted side effects. Simply removing the SC card doesn't need any of that.

Once the SC card is gone, anyone who wants to play SC because Star Wars: Rebels was an awesome cartoon can still do so , and they'll probably still do better than someone taking rStormtrooper swarms or Luke/Leia/Han/Chewie, which are other "cool and thematic but suboptimal" lists. Anyone who wants a hardcore tournament list might not take SC (or at least not the whole of SC) after the SC card is gone, but... so what? Where is the rule written that says "the figures from Rebels must be a high-tier competitive skirmish list"?

(Granted, the concept of the SC card is inoffensive. It'd be really nice to have some way to encourage themed lists like SC, or 501st Legion, or the Bounty Hunters, or the Crew of the Millennium Falcon, or whatever, that each get some little bonus to make up for more restrictive selections. But [a] there must be lots of them, (b) the bonus has to be small, and [c] first things first... SC has to go... polish can be applied later).

25 minutes ago, Stompburger said:

OR print a new upgrade that gives the same benefit, but only if you're NOT running any Spectre Cell groups 😁

"Your squad may only include figures named Saska Teft, General Weiss, Boba Fett, AT-ST, Wookie Warriors, Wampa, and Kayn Somos. You may ignore faction restrictions while building your squad."

I know you're joking but I would take that squad with the SC card abilities!

Are the spectre cell members that bad that they would need to be fixed? Certainly Sabine, Chopper, Ezra, and Hera would see lots of play. I reckon Zeb is alright too. Is Kanan that bad?

I would worry about fixing the cards that are way worse first... and there are plenty that are worse than all of the spectre cell gang. Then maybe do adjustments...

2 minutes ago, Mandelore of the Rings said:

Are the spectre cell members that bad that they would need to be fixed? Certainly Sabine, Chopper, Ezra, and Hera would see lots of play. I reckon Zeb is alright too. Is Kanan that bad?

I would worry about fixing the cards that are way worse first... and there are plenty that are worse than all of the spectre cell gang. Then maybe do adjustments...

They're all viable in that you can play with them and not automatically lose, but Ezra, Zeb and Kanan are not as good as other figures for their cost and would probably not see much competitive play outside of niche lists. With that said, although it's not ideal, as Bitterman pointed out that's not necessarily the end of the world - not every figure needs to be top-tier competitive.

Unfortunately, without the SC card the concept of bringing in the whole Rebels squad and having any sort of shot is pretty much dead. It's fine to splash in an underpowered figure here and there, but bringing three of them in one list, a list with only 6 figures and no trait synergy whatsoever, is a recipe for disaster. And I'm not just talking "this isn't top tier"; at that point it's more a case of "that was so one sided it wasn't fun". An outright Spectre ban pretty much kills the dream of running the Rebels crew for anybody who doesn't want to get completely trounced.

With all that said, I have no idea how to go about balancing it. On the one hand I love the idea of the free spectre cell attack being a "deplete" effect. I think that brings it very much in line with other top tier lists while still keeping it interesting to play with/against. You'd have to time that attack to really generate a big swing in your favour, since afterwards you're losing not only the threat of the attack but also the +1 block and +1 damage as well. To me that seems like an interesting mechanic that would reward strong play both as spectre and against spectre, and it would keep the list viable without making it overpowered like it is today.

On the other hand, though, even after that nerf I'd still consider spectre to be a "problem" in the meta. While it would no longer be the dominant list in the game, it would still reeeeally limit competitive listbuilding. You barely even see Jet Troopers anymore, for example, and that's because it's too hard for them to get any kind of regular damage in against spectre's +1 block. Lots of figures fall into this category - figures that might otherwise be fun to splash into lists, but there's no point because they're just shooting BB pellets against SC. If your list doesn't have an answer to "how can I get some damage onto Ezra" (which basically means hunters, Vader, or a few select rebels like Han/Drok/Ahsoka) there's really no point in running it competitively.

SO... yeah. I've got nothing. I would love to see a nerf to SC without an outright ban, but I definitely haven't got it figured out yet.

23 minutes ago, ManateeX said:

Unfortunately, without the SC card the concept of bringing in the whole Rebels squad and having any sort of shot is pretty much dead. It's fine to splash in an underpowered figure here and there, but bringing three of them in one list, a list with only 6 figures and no trait synergy whatsoever, is a recipe for disaster. And I'm not just talking "this isn't top tier"; at that point it's more a case of "that was so one sided it wasn't fun". An outright Spectre ban pretty much kills the dream of running the Rebels crew for anybody who doesn't want to get completely trounced.

Yet again, though - so what? Take Han/Chewie/Leia/HeroLuke in a list (no points for C-3PO or R2-D2, unfortunately) and see how well you get on. Not well, IME, to say the least. Yet that group are enormously more iconic than the characters from the (admittedly pretty good) Rebels cartoon.

Why, exactly, must we consider it a problem if "the dream of running the Rebels crew" is one that doesn't really work? Like, specifically: why?

Am I the only weirdo who thinks the individual SC figures are competitve already (sans SC) and don't need updating?

23 minutes ago, Jaric256 said:

Am I the only weirdo who thinks the individual SC figures are competitve already (sans SC) and don't need updating?

To expand on this a little, it's not the deployment cards that are the problem, it's finding existing rebels figures to create list synergy. It's not like Zeb sucks, it's that he doesn't really fit in with existing figures to create a cohesive list.

Buuuuuuut...... That could change if you update some of those figures...

There's really two options I can see for the SC upgrade card that seem realistic. They're not going to completely change the flavor of the list.

1. They can change the move/attack piece to a once per mission or deplete. Let's be honest, the only thing that makes them busted is the extra move/attack every round. If that's once per mission, it's still strong, still worth two points. It's still capable of a big swing that can let the spectres win a game, but not OP. As good as the extra damage/defense buffs are, they're only a problem because of the extra move/attack.

2. Ban the card. This is probably the easiest route, and requires no internal playtesting or effort on FFG's part. It still works for casual games and I wouldn't say anything to a noob who brought it to a local event, so who cares. It just keeps SC out of higher level tournaments.

7 minutes ago, Jaric256 said:

Am I the only weirdo who thinks the individual SC figures are competitve already (sans SC) and don't need updating?

I don't think anyone is arguing any of them are terrible, just that their mix of types hurts their synergy enough that without SC, competitive lists would likely swap out some of the Spectres for other figures and thus remove the "whole Ghost crew" theme.

That said, what about something like:

"At the start of the round, choose one keyword possessed by an undefeated friendly figure. Until the end of the round, each friendly figure gains that keyword.

While adjacent to a friendly figure, friendly figures gain <1 block> while defending and <1 hit> while attacking."

34 minutes ago, Weatherwax2099 said:

I don't think anyone is arguing any of them are terrible, just that their mix of types hurts their synergy enough that without SC, competitive lists would likely swap out some of the Spectres for other figures and thus remove the "whole Ghost crew" theme.

That said, what about something like:

"At the start of the round, choose one keyword possessed by an undefeated friendly figure. Until the end of the round, each friendly figure gains that keyword.

While adjacent to a friendly figure, friendly figures gain <1 block> while defending and <1 hit> while attacking."

Clever idea, except for the force users.

1 hour ago, Weatherwax2099 said:

I don't think anyone is arguing any of them are terrible, just that their mix of types hurts their synergy enough that without SC, competitive lists would likely swap out some of the Spectres for other figures and thus remove the "whole Ghost crew" theme.

That said, what about something like:

"At the start of the round, choose one keyword possessed by an undefeated friendly figure. Until the end of the round, each friendly figure gains that keyword.

While adjacent to a friendly figure, friendly figures gain <1 block> while defending and <1 hit> while attacking."

I like this.

Just ban it.

1 minute ago, Tvboy said:

Just ban it.

I like this also

3 hours ago, King_Balrog said:

Clever idea, except for the force users.

Good point. Probably Droid as well. Vehicle might still be reasonable on the assumption they're using jetpacks temporarily or some such.