I really like the concept of Ion, especially with vehicles back and droids popular. Of course, EVERY Ion weapon in the game has Exhaust which is why many don't use it.

So, what do Ion weapons need that could bring them into play?

How have you effectively used Ion as is?

This is an interesting one.

Ion is neat but also very niche. I think conceptually, where it's at in terms of how often it's actually used makes a lot of sense. Not many infantry units in the SW universe have shields, and outside of the clone wars, not many armies used droids or vehicles large enough to consider the cost and opportunity investments. In other words I actually think for rebels and imperials ion being rarely used makes a bit of sense.

I do think the clones should have had a higher presence of ion baked into weapons. Thematically, if any army was going to use it a lot, it should be clones. Of course, the way the game is structured makes sense that they don't. lol

I think if they were going to make ion more prevalent they'd need to have infantry upgrades that gave armament slots. Make armaments available that have a good standard weapons, so people don't suffer an opportunity cost there, but also have it so it can be flipped to an ion weapon (possibly with cycle to avoid the exhaust opportunity cost?)


I haven't used it, but I had it used on me. I was playing CIS ( and my opponent knew it going in lol) He built 3 ion platforms and used 2 sets of speeders as comms jammers. It bricked my droids hard.

I played a list the other day that included 4 Rebel Troopers with Ion Grenade Launchers and a Pathfinder unit with Bistan against a list that had an AT-St and 2 speeder bikes. It was surprisingly hard to keep my opponent's AT-ST ion-locked for 2 reasons:

1. Without an aim, the Rebel Troopers are far from guaranteed to actually deal damage to the AT-ST (or even a speeder bike). Even if the target is in range, having to Recover-Shoot is more of a handicap than I thought.

2. The other player can still beat you with activation control. If they start the turn ion-locked and then manage to activate last, you will be forced to use your ion units for other things. Then they can attempt to activate it on the next turn before you can ionize it. We played 5 rounds and I didn't manage to get it ionized until after its second turn (he last-firsted one of my Airspeeders...) and then he managed to out-activate me in this way to shoot on the fifth turn.

4 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I haven't used it, but I had it used on me. I was playing CIS ( and my opponent knew it going in lol) He built 3 ion platforms and used 2 sets of speeders as comms jammers. It bricked my droids hard.

Last season of Invader League (or maybe the one before?) you would know what faction you were going up against, but not the specific list. CIS got spanked a time or two by ion, including a double tank list that went up against 6xSnowtroopers with Ion. One tank never even got to fire, and the other one got one shot off, I believe.

I haven't personally used it, but I think Snowtroopers with the T-7 Ion might be viable now. The cost has been decreased 14 points from what it was at launch and the range has been increased to 3. With Steady, they can Recover>Move>Shoot every round. If Snowtroopers ever get a Captain like the Stormtrooper Captain, they could also equip Offensive Push and be unable to be Suppressed ever, with a free aim every round (so that's unlikely to happen lol).

24 minutes ago, arnoldrew said:

Last season of Invader League (or maybe the one before?) you would know what faction you were going up against, but not the specific list. CIS got spanked a time or two by ion, including a double tank list that went up against 6xSnowtroopers with Ion. One tank never even got to fire, and the other one got one shot off, I believe.

That's cold blooded! lol I would have guessed those matches would be blind to prevent gimmicky wins. What with the inclusion of the droid trooper rules. I presume they've changed it based on the context of your statement?

1 minute ago, Darth Sanguis said:

That's cold blooded! lol I would have guessed those matches would be blind to prevent gimmicky wins. What with the inclusion of the droid trooper rules. I presume they've changed it based on the context of your statement?

That was the first round where they allowed you to change your list once while playing in the first few games, so maybe they will do away with that rule. That Snowtrooper list might do significantly less well against my Rebel Infantry list or an Imperial gunline.

Ion wasn't historically used because it was expensive, often required you to recover which means you lose actions, wasn't flexible enough to deal with an infantry heavy meta and is ignored if you don't hit.

Today 1 of these issues are somewhat fixed, the cost. Rebel troopers are cheaper with a ion weapon, etc.

Ultimately ION is used to counter vehicles and until you see players running into vehicle consistently ion won't be played.

23 minutes ago, arnoldrew said:

That Snowtrooper list might do significantly less well against my Rebel Infantry list or an Imperial gunline.

Undoubtedly.

51 minutes ago, Lochlan said:

I haven't personally used it, but I think Snowtroopers with the T-7 Ion might be viable now. The cost has been decreased 14 points from what it was at launch and the range has been increased to 3. With Steady, they can Recover>Move>Shoot every round. If Snowtroopers ever get a Captain like the Stormtrooper Captain, they could also equip Offensive Push and be unable to be Suppressed ever, with a free aim every round (so that's unlikely to happen lol).

This! I REALLY want a Snowtrooper Upgrade expansion!!!

1 hour ago, Uetur said:

Ion wasn't historically used because it was expensive, often required you to recover which means you lose actions, wasn't flexible enough to deal with an infantry heavy meta and is ignored if your impact 1 weapon doesn't do damage which means it was effective less than 50%.

Today 1 of these issues are somewhat fixed, the cost. Rebel troopers are cheaper with a ion weapon, etc.

Ultimately ION is used to counter vehicles and until you see players running into vehicle consistently ion won't be played.

I use vehicles regularly and have seen ion used against me maby once, and it didn't really do anything that time. Its good that the points went down, but as long as it requires a recovery action to use more than once it's not going to be a "good" choice.

Recover for most units is like " let me cut off my hand, so I can cut off your foot" and as described above, sometimes you slip and cut off both your foot and your hand.

If you think of these weapons now like high energy shells for the tank, you can stomach it better.

They still get a better price for it.

2 hours ago, arnoldrew said:

Last season of Invader League (or maybe the one before?) you would know what faction you were going up against, but not the specific list. CIS got spanked a time or two by ion, including a double tank list that went up against 6xSnowtroopers with Ion. One tank never even got to fire, and the other one got one shot off, I believe.

This is one of many reasons ion should be removed from the game. When used properly it will cripple vehicles and droids, abd against everything else it's wasted points.

Vehicles still aren't the best and if ion was prevalent they would be useless, and as a side effect so to would be droids.

Bad design.

23 minutes ago, buckero0 said:

Recover for most units is like " let me cut off my hand, so I can cut off your foot" and as described above, sometimes you slip and cut off both your foot and your hand.

If you think of these weapons now like high energy shells for the tank, you can stomach it better.

They still get a better price for it.

High Energy Cells have Cycle, so that's a different thing. How are we supposed to be thinking of them?

1 hour ago, arnoldrew said:

High Energy Cells have Cycle, so that's a different thing. How are we supposed to be thinking of them?

If ion guns you took on your infantry troops had cycle or reload or something similar, where it did not require an action, and was only 8 pts and just as powerful (Critical and High Velocity keywords) then, they would be worth taking

4 hours ago, Thraug said:

This is one of many reasons ion should be removed from the game. When used properly it will cripple vehicles and droids, abd against everything else it's wasted points.

Vehicles still aren't the best and if ion was prevalent they would be useless, and as a side effect so to would be droids.

Bad design.

Ion shouldnt be removed from the game. Instead Ion should be changed so that a vehicle with an ion token can only take 1 action and cant take any free actions or use keywords that give them additional actions (an ioned speeder would lose 1 action and also lose its free speeder move for example). And additional ion tokens would no longer stack with eachother.

That makes Ion sufficiently punitive without completely gimping vehicles because ioned vehicles would still always get 1 action.

Then they can look at removing exhaust from ion weapons. Exhaust is a terribly unfun game mechanic and no weapon should have it (unless that weapon also has cycle). Including the stormtrooper HH12 which suffers tremendously from the perversely masochistic combination of min range, cumbersome, and exhaust.

2 hours ago, buckero0 said:

If ion guns you took on your infantry troops had cycle or reload or something similar, where it did not require an action, and was only 8 pts and just as powerful (Critical and High Velocity keywords) then, they would be worth taking

I would rather see exhaust removed entirely and Ion tokens changed to no longer stack. A vehicle should never have to worry about losing all its actions as a result of getting hit by multiple ion weapons.

Ion was okey ish in the early days. Speaking as rebel player it was a good idea to being 1 or maybe 2 ion launchers despite the point and exhaust problem as rebels often ran 2-3 at-rt and at-st or multiple speeder bikes was common. Later on I noticed how often I faced empire and even rebels without any vehicles and the ion weapon became an expensive relic.

Ion is alot like impact where it has historically been expensive and a chance you wasted your points depending on what your opponent brings.

With the new factions, droid trooper keyword and point decreases we have more targets for ion, but you still run the risk of facing 0 or just 1 minor target for any ion weapons you bring.

The second problem for alot of ion weapons are infantry carried and that either makes a trooper unit splitting fire and possible facing more cover reduction or just unfocused fire on two targets along with the exhaust drawback on courage 1 or possible 2.

I have good success with the ion rifle on the rebel landspeeder as it can combine with the rocket launcher for a unit that focuses down a vehicle, again running risk of not facing vehicles. Rebel troopers have been putting ion after ion on a at-st some matches and I have had them bounce shots on a 9wound at-st without either ion or dmg as they are screaming for an aim token they can't get when they have to recover.

Now CIS is ofc the big target for ion, but even in a completely even faction tournament you only have 1/4 facing them. However vehicles might become a little more common and alot of rebels and republic lists will have R2 so at least ion CAN play a role.

Ion is a common thing in the star wars games and it's often a big hit or miss and no different here. It brings some counterplay if CIS and/or vehicles becomes really strong. However with the relative low changes of facing CIS and vehicles maybe it's still a meh choice for several players.

It might come around. With new transports on the horizon, i would hope they will continue to tweak vehicles to make them worth taking with new drivers, upgrade types and balancing upgrades.

I would be ok with Exhaust at the current pricepoint of the weapons if they were more reliable.

Against droids, they are pretty ok. Against armor, they should not rely on causing a wound with their low impact values.

As soon as every faction can remove ion tokens with repair droids, ion will be even more uncommon.

Maybe let the keyword hand out ion tokens as soon as you roll colour, similiar to the suppression mechanik. That rule would be a little bit more streamlined as well.
That would be ok if Ion would not stack anymore as @khobai suggestet.

I think Ion needs a redesign: As it stands it is either completely ineffective or flat out broken.

I like the idea of max. 1 ion token, so you can't take out a vehicle completely. But at the same time you need consistancy. It could trigger on a hit instead of a wound. So you lose one action (recover) and steal one action, fair and square. I could even see ion x giving pierce x against vehicles. Taking an action of a vehicle often doesn't do a lot. A guaranteed wound would really make a difference. But that would probably be too strong and would promote hard counter lists.

i think ion should have to wound a vehicle/droid to give an ion token. you should definitely have a chance to defend from ion with a saving throw.

Although to make ion weapons more consistent I could see ion weapons gaining a rule similar to impact 1 so ion weapons would be more likely to wound.

Or maybe Ion weapons could just let you upgrade one of your dice when attacking a vehicle (so you could either upgrade a hit to a crit or a blank to a hit)

That would improve the consistency while also rewarding you for using ion against its intended targets.

Regardless its pretty clear the Ion rules should be completely redone.

I agree that ion tokens should be limited to 1. And I also agree that the weapons themselves need something to make them more attractive in general. Maybe give Ion an effect against non-vehicles/droids? Maybe they could be Suppressive against non-vehicles/droids? Or maybe they still give Ion tokens, but the token does something different on non-vehicles/droids? Like maybe the defender can spend it while the unit with the token is attacking to force them to reroll some dice.

I think if they were always useful, no matter what your opponent was using, people wouldn't mind as much that they weren't guaranteed success against vehicles.

I have to agree that Ion, like Impact, has the difficult of being a limited keyword. They only work against specific other units/keywords, so in making an "all comers" list, there is often a better use of points than a keyword that MIGHT have an effect, and that can only be used once without having to give up an action. If you know you are playing against a list with Armour/droids/vehicles, then those keywords become more valuable, but those points are effectively wasted against an all organic infantry army.

Cycle could also help, or possibly some infantry variant where that model can't contribute any weapons to an attack pool while "reloading." But even there we still have to issue of spending points on potentially placing an Ion token. Limiting a unit to one Ion token and making it trigger on a hit would likely help the keyword as well.