Hi there!

Some of us in the german community didn't really like the approach of the IACP, but agreed, that some rebalancing had to be done. Therefore we created the RIAST Rules.

Designer's Commentary: Imperial Assault Skirmish is the miniatures games with the best core rules out there. Sadly, the Skirmish game is (more or less) discontinued and game balance is in a bad state right now. This Rebalanced Imperial Assault Skirmish Tournament Rules (RIAST Rules) document was compiled with the intention to have some more years of Rebalanced Imperial Assault Skirmish and to share this with the community.

Many Deployment cards are either underpowered or overpowered and therefore there is only a small number of Deployment cards played competitively. The plan was to make as many figures playable as possible.

In most cases the Deployment cost is just either too high or too low. In these cases the Deployment cost was changed.

If a Deployment card is too expensive, it will not get played, which would be sad, but not a real problem for the game as a whole. But if a Deployment card is too cheap, it will be the only card that's played (e.g. 4x4 or Spectre Cell), and that would be a catastrophe. To avoid this, Deployment costs have been reduced carefully.

Only Deployment cards that couldn't be rebalanced by changing their costs got new rules. The plan was to make as few changes to cards as possible.

Deployment cards should not get banned (with the exception of Upgrade cards).

FFGʼs game designers said in an interview, that there are reference deployments, used to balance the costs of the other deployments correctly. Elite Stormtroopers are one of those reference deployments, Elite Probe Droids are too. Therefore, these should not be changed.

There are certain baselines in this game that should not be ignored. E.g.: There is a maximum number of figures per army of twenty. The game designers achieved that by making the cheapest figure cost 2, e.g. regular Stormtroopers. Therefore, reducing the cost of any figure to less than 2 points per figure is not an option.

Command cards are a whole different story. For many reasons, it is impractical to change a Command card's text. Furthermore, game-winning Command cards cannot be rebalanced by just raising their costs, as they will be played anyways. For overpowered Command cards it is possible to raise the Deployment cost of the figure(s) to achieve balance (e.g. Son of Skywalker or the Hunter cards). Other truly overpowered Command cards have to be banned. There are so many viable Command cards, that buffing underpowered Command cards isn't necessary.

I would like to thank all the playtesters for their great work and Feedback!

The complete ruleset is attached to this thread.

RIAST-Rules_2019-08-01.pdf

These rules will be used for the inofficial German Nationals (there will be no official German Nationals).

Any ideas and feedback are welcome ...

Wow, these are very aggressive changes to both the cards and the rules.

I'm very curious how some of these will play out.

Interesting approach.

Could you provide the Tournament Rules and rule/card changes as two separate documents? If I were to try to convince someone to try these rules with me, I want to give them one document and say "let's try this", preferably with as few changes as possible until trust is established. How you run your unofficial German Nationals is not relevant for that, so the first 11 pages (!) are just off-putting.

More generally, to get people to try new rules, it needs to be as easy for them as possible. Ready-to-print images of the modified and new cards would be helpful.

I appreciate the Designer's Commentary as it explains the thought process behind your changes (and a good chunk of it I agree with). Again though, top priority should be making it easy to use the rules - separating the commentary (into an appendix or another file) would let players focus on just the changes.

@Bitterman: I will provide both ready to print cards as well as a stripped down / just the rules version of this document in the next few days. As the Nationals are in 3 weeks, this document was priority 1, but the rest will follow asap.

Nice work @DerBaer ! I enjoyed reading through your errata and contrasting your design choices & goals with that of the IACP. I don't think there's a wrong way to change IA, though we definitely disagree on methodology. If there's more folks who prefer your ruleset, I hope they use it to continue to enjoy playing Skirmish.

Let us know how your Nationals play out under RAIST!

I would change Raiders of the Death Star to:

Quote

A New Hope

-3 points.

Include this card only if your army includes Luke Skywalker (Hero of the Rebellion), Han Solo (Scoundrel), Chewbacca, Leia Organa, R2-D2, and C-3PO.

You may choose to treat any friendly figure as being a higher or lower figure/deployment cost than another friendly figure for the purpose of abilities.

Less words and more choices when it comes to list building, with 2 points to play around with. The thing that so many people hated about Spectre Cell was that it was a premade list with no list-building, and Raiders does that even worse, so it's important to leave at least a little wiggle room for people to customize the list. Also I don't know if "Raiders of the Death Star" is a thing in the German translation of Star Wars, but I feel like "A New Hope" is a better more iconic name that hasn't been used in IA before.

@cnemmick: Thank you.

@Daniel: I'm very interested to hear your opinion.

Tvboy: I like your idea.

I think mercenary lists are going to suffer a lot from these changes

This mostly looks like huge nerfs to merc (Jabba, pirates, greedo, Vinto (really?), scheme, rebel support) and some nerfs for empire (jets, DP) while buffing a few things that will still be irrelevant (heavy storms at 4 speed are still not playable. ewebs at 7 and 5 is still a joke, eTrandos at 9 are still too weak). Pretty much all buffs on the rebel side of things (Luke at 10 wow) yet they didn't have any of their commonly played pieces nerfed (sabine, gideon, 3p0, hera).

I do like the idea of readying deployment cards can only be done on your turn and not as last activation. That's a good nerf to the stupidity of luke/IG.

I'd have to play with the round/init changes to get a better idea, but at first glance it seems like it has potential. I don't know if there are any weird things that crop up from doing things this way though, like always getting to go first in a round if you have less guys.

I'd be very worried han/drok or rangers type lists are just going to be unstoppable. Merc lost everything they had to compete and empire looks like they're stuck with Vader unless someone can get the ATs to work, but jets basically got removed from the game.

That's my first impressions from scanning the changes more in depth.

11 hours ago, DTDanix said:

ewebs at 7 and 5 is still a joke, eTrandos at 9 are still too weak).

We tested 6, 4 and 8 respectively, but that felt overpowered to our playtesting crew.

12 hours ago, DTDanix said:

yet they didn't have any of their commonly played pieces nerfed ( sabine , gideon, 3p0, hera).

Rebel Graffiti got banned and Sabine is no Vehicle anymore. It felt like she is powerful, but not overpowered. Time will tell, if that is enough of a nerf.

Gideon, 3PO and Hera are really powerful, but most of the playtesters said, that they are not overpowered, especially not in the overall context of the faction. But I have to admit, there was/is a lot of discussion on that one.

The ban of On the Lam nerfs Han Solo indirectly, who was played a lot around here (before Spectre Cell).

11 hours ago, DTDanix said:

I'd have to play with the round/init changes to get a better idea, but at first glance it seems like it has potential. I don't know if there are any weird things that crop up from doing things this way though, like always getting to go first in a round if you have less guys.

That happens quite often, but is actually less of a problem than it seems on first glance.

You just don't have the situation, where one player goes last one turn and goes first the next turn (and knows that for sure, because he has Negation). These situations, where Han goes last (moves out of cover and shoots), goes end of turn (shoots), and goes first next turn (shoots and moves back to safety) are gone.

... There are many reasons to have more activations than everyone else. Now there is one reason to have less activations. I just hope that this balances out.

On ‎8‎/‎10‎/‎2019 at 11:20 AM, DTDanix said:

I do like the idea of readying deployment cards can only be done on your turn and not as last activation. That's a good nerf to the stupidity of luke/IG.

Thank you.

The idea was, that the most powerful use of SoS is: Luke goes last, move, move, attack, SoS, Luke goes again, attack, attack, End of Turn, Luke got the Ini and goes again, attack, move, move to safety. That had to be stopped. The change to Ini and the change to SoS were made to stop things like that.

But then Luke felt like 10 points.

Very interesting indeed, thanks for sharing!

During play/playtesting, what Merc bands were successful? Those rule changes feels heavy for our scum faction...

Yeah, that's right. But before Spectre Cell, Mercs were THE dominant faction (at least in Germany). Something had to be done about that.

Jabba is still good. Black Market is still good. All those Hunter Cards still rock. IG is still a beast. Etc. Actually, even the nerfed eWeequays are still really good (depending on the mission). There are lots of options to choose from within the context of the overall rebalancing.

Oh, I actually got it mixed up in my head somehow, I somehow mixed it up that Assassinate was banned.

Just a small note/question on this:
All deployment cards and command cards
All deployment cards and command cards should include the following changes:
• "friendly figure" should read "friendly figure with the same affiliation icon".
• "friendly non-GUARDIAN figure" should read "friendly non-GUARDIAN figure with the
same affiliation icon".
• "friendly TROOPER" should read "friendly TROOPER with the same affiliation icon".
Designer's Commentary: This rules change was made to stop Mercenaries from
using the "Rebel Care Package", i.e. Rebel figures granting Focus or similar bonuses,
e.g. Gideon Argus, C-3PO, and Hera Syndulla.

Would it not be simpler and a lot more clean to just errata Gideon, C3PO and Hera to say Rebel instead? They are the real problem, not a TA Jabba Incentivizing Vader or Sorin giving out his surges to HKs. Are there any other cases where this is really an issue?

Also, Inquisitor should cost 7. Or at least 8.

2 hours ago, Ram said:

Would it not be simpler and a lot more clean to just errata Gideon, C3PO and Hera to say Rebel instead? They are the real problem, not a TA Jabba Incentivizing Vader or Sorin giving out his surges to HKs. Are there any other cases where this is really an issue?

Other cases: E.g. the cheaper Ko-Tun.

How could it be more simple or clean to have 4+ Errata instead of one single and simple rules change?

In my opinion, Jabba ordering a hit by Vader is just stupid.

The Sorin / HKs interaction actually should not be affected ...

2 hours ago, Ram said:

Oh, I actually got it mixed up in my head somehow, I somehow mixed it up that Assassinate was banned.

No problem.

We had a lot of discussion on how to nerf the "Hunter Meta".

The "ban" on the RCP seemed obvious, as many players on this forum and elsewhere complained a lot about the RCP in Mercs.

Jabba losing Nefarious Gains seemed obvious too, because it is extremely OP and because Swarms can never be viable, as long as Nefarious Gains could be played against them. We tested a Stormtroopers Swarm against Jabba / Hunters, and it was devastating. Nefarious Gains scored an average of more than 10 points in these games.

Banning On The Lam seemed obvious, because it's OP and it kills the fun for the opponent (and we had no idea on how to balance that card).

Banning Dev. Schemes seemed obvious, as this card is a game winner on some maps, e.g. Anchorhead.

In the overall design process it was an early decision, not to change any command cards, but to either ban them or to reflect their strength in the affected figures' cost. And we wanted to ban as few cards as possible. With that in mind and all the nerfs already made, it seemed obvious not to ban Assassinate, but to reevaluate the deployment costs of all hunters.

28 minutes ago, DerBaer said:

Other cases: E.g. the cheaper Ko-Tun.

How could it be more simple or clean to have 4+ Errata instead of one single and simple rules change?

In my opinion, Jabba ordering a hit by Vader is just stupid.

The Sorin / HKs interaction actually should not be affected ...

Well, its up to you of corse. To me it feels like a clumsy solution. It means that one has to keep track of what units the imp officer can move and so on and so forth. I have never really seen any other issues apart from RCP and maybe Hera. If anything, I think it is worse and less stringent that Sorins ability is not affected but the imp officers is simply because it is an activated ability...

(I also just realized that Jabbas abilities already are scum restriced. Never thought about that before)

1 hour ago, Ram said:

If anything, I think it is worse and less stringent that Sorins ability is not affected but the imp officers is simply because it is an activated ability...

Actually, that is not the reason.

4 hours ago, Ram said:

All deployment cards and command cards should include the following changes:
• "friendly figure" should read "friendly figure with the same affiliation icon".
• "friendly non-GUARDIAN figure" should read "friendly non-GUARDIAN figure with the
same affiliation icon".
• "friendly TROOPER" should read "friendly TROOPER with the same affiliation icon".

There is just no mention of "friendly DROIDS and VEHICLES ..." as is on Sorin's card.

Ah, ok. So then only the unspecified case and the specified cases of (non)-Guardian and Trooper are affected. Hm. Ok.

Don't know if I missed it, but is there any intention to replace the unique command cards that were banned?

Or do Han, Luke, etc just have no command card?

It is just Han. Luke's Card etc. are not banned. And we have no plans on making our own Command Cards ...