Yes, a new errata has been released and Spectre Cell has been nerfed.

Quote

The second paragraph of the “Spectre Cell” upgrade should read: “At the start of each round, distribute 1󲉀 and 1󲉂 among friendly figures.”

Full article here : https://images-cdn.fantasyflightgames.com/filer_public/84/a8/84a83869-63ea-4087-95c7-50039c4b5f0a/swi_faq_v4.pdf

That's a pretty big nerf. Lots of damage/survival upfront and then efficiency drops off a cliff for the rest of the match.

@Deroche you may have misread that. it's 1 of each token at start of each round between all your units. Not at the start of the match.

So yeah, it's still a super big nerf (to a super broken card) . But the utility of it is pretty consistent throughout the match, not an upfront spike followed by a drop off.

It's still got the free move/attack each round as well ... so ... yeah, that's a lot of variables to wrap my head around while i have a headache. maybe it's fixed with flat damage boost cut back to tokens?

/////

Also, are there any other changes? I'm not the sharpest when it comes to playing "spot the difference" in FAQ guides. ^^;

Indeed, they still get the additional attack and movement points provided when exhausting the card, but 1 hit and 1 block token is far less of a bonus now, and would lead to Doubt becoming more widely used if players continue to take Spectre lists.

1 minute ago, thinkbomb said:

@Deroche

Also, are there any other changes? I'm not the sharpest when it comes to playing "spot the difference" in FAQ guides. ^^;

They highlight them in red.

Mainly it is clarifications, such as you can attack a mobile figure hiding on the top of the Lothal spire, and Set For Stun will cause a stun even if you use it with a Jawa on the far side of the map, or if the defender rolls an X.

Other than that there are a few line of sight clarifications, and R2D2's Lucky ability has been clarified that Heightened reflect won't remove the X result added if he rolls blank, but will remove his X if rolled naturally.

10 minutes ago, thinkbomb said:

@Deroche you may have misread that. it's 1 of each token at start of each round between all your units. Not at the start of the match.

So yeah, it's still a super big nerf (to a super broken card) . But the utility of it is pretty consistent throughout the match, not an upfront spike followed by a drop off.

It's still got the free move/attack each round as well ... so ... yeah, that's a lot of variables to wrap my head around while i have a headache. maybe it's fixed with flat damage boost cut back to tokens?

Ah... I did misread it. Thanks!

While there is some drop off to their attacks (such as Ezra not hitting as hard during a second SC activation, for example) it's going to be the defensive efficiency that takes a big big hit now, not being able to withstand as well as they used to any kind of repeated/focused fire to the same figure.

17 minutes ago, onyersix said:

They highlight them in red.

Blue, but a primary color anyway.

I think this new SC can still be competitive, but since it now worries more about initiative swings, defensive positioning and attacking as a whole group, it won't be as dominating. I think it can still win 40-45% of the time vs. other Tier 1 lists. The SC extra attack/Pummel/Strength in Numbers combos are still going to output a good amount of damage to remove high-value targets.

I like this change, cutting into that stat efficiency that they had while retaining a uniqueness to the list. Zeb won't be as dominate of a damage dealer without a double +1dmg attack, and Ezra's defense won't be quite as ridiculous as it was. This will definitely let other lists compete against them on more even footing. I agree with cnemmick that Spectre could still be viable at upper levels of play.

the big question, Is it too late ?

43 minutes ago, Darth evil said:

the big question, Is it too late ?

Yep.

For this year yes

8 hours ago, HeliosLancer said:

cutting into that stat efficiency that they had while retaining a uniqueness to the list.

Absolutely. I think the free SC attack is a cool and unique idea and I like that they kept it.

Also, if the game was really dead (not mostly dead, like the Man in Black, dread pirate Roberts) why would they bother with a new FAQ? I'm encouraged by this, even if it isn't THAT much on their part...

I liked this better when I thought it was just start of the first round.

Edit: compare to extra armor. 1 point for four tokens. SC: 2 points for at least 12 tokens and an extra attack each round.

All this will accomplish is make motivation the only upgrade card worth bringing for SC.

Edit 2.0:. Disregard. Misread this as all figures getting tokens each round vs two tokens to distribute each round amongst figures.

Fairly significant difference lol

7 minutes ago, Jaric256 said:

I liked this better when I thought it was just start of the first round.

I don't know. I guess we'll have to see. They could have made it one step worse by saying "one damage token OR one block token" I suppose... If SC is still too powerful, maybe that's another nerf they could try, but I'm keen to see how it works as is. I'm happy to still see SC, just not EVERYONE playing it.

I’d take this as a sign the game in general, and skirmish in particular, are not as dead as some have been saying.

1 hour ago, Jaric256 said:

I liked this better when I thought it was just start of the first round.

Edit: compare to extra armor. 1 point for four tokens. SC: 2 points for at least 12 tokens and an extra attack each round.

All this will accomplish is make motivation the only upgrade card worth bringing for SC.

How do you get that to 12 tokens. Very few skirmish games go 6 rounds.

50 minutes ago, aermet69 said:

How do you get that to 12 tokens. Very few skirmish games go 6 rounds.

Indeed. I agree.

Also, think about how many blocks and +1s they would be losing! Not that everyone attacks or gets attacked every round but it must be up there. I have no idea, but say they are making 5 attacks and defending 5 times every round for 4 rounds... that's 40 (blocks and +1s)... now they'd just be getting 8 for those four rounds! That is a pretty huge nerf!

(actually I have no idea how many times dice (attacking AND defending) are rolled each game on average... it would be interesting to know... and that's how many blocks and damages they were getting before! )

4 hours ago, aermet69 said:

How do you get that to 12 tokens. Very few skirmish games go 6 rounds.

I suspect that the person posting this misread the update, and thought it was 2 tokens to each figure at the start of the round, not distribute 2 tokens amongst the squad. 6 figures hitting round 2 each getting 2 tokens would make 12, but thankfully that is not what the card says.

8 hours ago, Jaric256 said:

I liked this better when I thought it was just start of the first round.

Edit: compare to extra armor. 1 point for four tokens. SC: 2 points for at least 12 tokens and an extra attack each round.

All this will accomplish is make motivation the only upgrade card worth bringing for SC.

It's different from extra armour, though, in that it's limited to who can use it. We could similarly say "why would you ever take a card like Urgency when there is Force Rush available that's strictly better", and you probably wouldn't - assuming that you're using Force Users. Spectres may not have as much need for extra armour now that they can't double up on the armour block and the spectre block, but it could still be useful to spread block tokens around to a few extra figures.

And I hope the game continues, I really do. IA skirmish is by far the most fun I've had with gaming. But I think that unfortunately a lot of the damage was already done when they admitted that there was no new content in the works at the same time that they released the Spectre upgrade that took over the meta.

They may keep doing the OP tournaments for a while, and as long as they do I'm going to keep on going to them, but I just can't see how a game like this can thrive on a national/international scale without at least somewhat regular content releases. At least right now, I'm still hanging most of my hopes on playing online with the IA Continuity Project changes.

8 hours ago, aermet69 said:

How do you get that to 12 tokens. Very few skirmish games go 6 rounds.

Disregard

4 hours ago, onyersix said:

I suspect that the person posting this misread the update, and thought it was 2 tokens to each figure at the start of the round, not distribute 2 tokens amongst the squad. 6 figures hitting round 2 each getting 2 tokens would make 12, but thankfully that is not what the card says.

Oh, that exactly what happened. My position on the nerf has now evolved lol

2 hours ago, ManateeX said:

It's different from extra armour, though, in that it's limited to who can use it. We could similarly say "why would you ever take a card like Urgency when there is Force Rush available that's strictly better", and you probably wouldn't - assuming that you're using Force Users. Spectres may not have as much need for extra armour now that they can't double up on the armour block and the spectre block, but it could still be useful to spread block tokens around to a few extra figures.

At the risk of spamming this thread with my mea culpa, the way I read this initially was SC would be getting tokens for each figure, each round resulting in probably 20+ tokens handed out in total.

Even with the SC only restriction, that's way out of whack.

But since that's not how the card works, I'm now much more open minded this will bring SC back down to Earth with the rest of the meta.

Errata-ed card for anyone interested