The Steering Committee is very excited to share all the new and exciting toys that we have selected to be part of Season 6. And while those previews are coming, I’ve got the task of sharing something a little more mundane, but no less important. In order for us to provide the most exciting experience and to open up avenues of design space, we’ve decided that certain abilities are so core to Imperial Assault that we’re adding them to the list of KEYWORDS.
- Professional – While attacking, you may reroll 1 attack die.
- Efficient Travel – You ignore additional movement point costs for difficult terrain and hostile figures.
- Priority Target – Figures do not block line of sight for your attacks.
As a Steering Committee, we’ve discussed this move for some time, as it adds a bit more of a barrier to entry to the game for new players-losing reminder text and putting the onus on the player to remember what the ability does and gives a possibility of negative play experience if a player forgets about the keyword. However, it does also allow us to make for more dynamic figures. And by giving us small balancing tweaks we can add or remove to increase or decrease the potency of a given deployment, this gives us more room in our continuous effort to work with the community to provide a more fair and balanced play experience.
Starting in this season, you’ll see these abilities presented in the area normally reserved for surge abilities and other keywords, like in the new version of The Mandalorian:
Wait, that was a new deployment card for the Mandalorian updated to include events presented in Season 2 of the TV series? Oh, shoot, guess I did sneak a deployment preview in here. Spoilers! Like Luke Skywalker carrying the original trilogy, the Mandalorian series is breathing new life into Star Wars fandom, and, also like Luke Skywalker, we felt that he was one of the figures that definitely deserved a second deployment card.
This new Mandalorian gets two big upgrades that our hero managed to acquire in Season 2 of the TV Series. First, that sweet new jetpack (note to self: I gotta get me one of those) represented by the Vehicle trait, Mobile keyword, and a Speed of 5. This potent combination will allow him to be a threat that can cover most of the board. And with his Protective Fire ability, any unique ally within 13 spaces is one turn away from having someone to watch their back.
It also means that any enemy within 8 spaces is in danger of getting poked with Mando’s second big upgrade, his shiny new Beskar Spear! With a possibility of a total of Pierce 3, this attack will hit as hard as your normal lightsaber. And 8 spaces is just about 2 more than his average accuracy of ~6, so you’ll want to get this version of the Mando right up into the action. With that in mind, we’ve represented his full suit of Beskar armor by giving him an innate block and given this version a health of 16. So Djin no longer needs to worry about patching up his armor with his surges and can focus instead on dealing damage to those who attack his friends.
Speaking of protecting friends, we can’t forget the Child! Lemme just post these cards here, so you’re not hopping back and forth to TabletopAdmiral.
The Mandalorian gets some extra protection in the form of a free Clan of Two, having Baby Yoda there to heal him back up or, in a pinch, drop an attack die. But having that precious cargo in tow will draw even more of a bullseye on the Mandalorian, opponents looking to score the 10 Victory Points and help themselves to an extra one by picking up little Grogu.
We’re all looking forward to seeing how you guys can break our designs and really excited to work together to create the resulting final versions of each of these new cards.
Spoilers will continue every weekday for the next two weeks, up to the full release of Season 6 on July 26th! As for tomorrow’s article, I’ll leave you with Mando’s first words on-screen: “I can bring you in warm, or I can bring you in cold.”