It’s September 27th, and that means it’s time to unveil the final wave of adjustments being implemented for Season 6 before the community vote opens in a few weeks where you all get to decide which cards stay and which cards go back to the drawing board. More information on this season’s community vote will be coming out soon. I have been assisting the IACP Steering Committee in analyzing the Season 6 game logs and results from over 85 game logs submitted, collecting feedback from playtesters (all of you!) and putting together the updated card images, and I also get the honor of detailing all of the changes being made in Season 6 v6.2.
Once they are completed, you can view the official change log, FAQs and printable cards for these changes here: IACP Official Documents – IA Continuity Project (ia-continuityproject.com)
A big thank you to everyone in the community that gave feedback on the new cards through Slack, Discord, email, and the Playtest survey. A lot of the changes to cards have been the direct result of suggestions and comments that the community has made, and was made the better for it.
9 cards have received functional updates for v6.2. Here are the changes and the reasoning for the changes:
Mercenaries
Bib Fortuna and Palace Politics
Some players were concerned that Bib didn’t really bring anything new to Scum that wasn’t already available to the faction, other than the ability to eschew Rebel figures from a Scum list without losing out on Focus tokens. But many players saw that as a huge restriction on their list building options rather than a as a benefit.
A new ability has been added to Bib, Illicit Arms, that functions much like an offensive version of the Empire’s Zillo Technique, allowing any friendly figure to discard a Command card to add +1 damage once per attack, but only in Mercenary armies. This plays well with the Scum faction’s heavy focus on offensive play, and also now gives the Scum faction a much needed discard outlet like those available to the Rebel and Empire players to cash in risky Command cards that can no longer be played later in the game, such as cards limited to a specific unique figure. This unfortunately replaces Illicit Income, which wasn’t doing much that Jabba’s Nefarious Gains wasn’t already doing other than offsetting the initial VP cost of Bartered Information on Round 1.
Hopefully this new ability is exciting enough for Scum players to consider running Bib in their lists over the Rebel Care Package every now and then. And with 6.2, Bib also gets a brand new Command card that pairs perfectly with his new ability as well as giving Scum players access to even more new strategies to play with.
De Wanna Wanga
Bib is fully replacing the old Palace Politics card with a brand new Command card, De Wanna Wanga! This card allows Bib to masterfully manipulate the game’s shady underworld, aka the discard pile. Having this card in your deck means you will almost always have a card available to discard to Illicit Arms each round, and acts as a great check against strategies that discard your valuable Command cards from your deck, like Strain or Grand Admiral Thrawn. In the late game it can let you recycle an important Command card into your deck so you can redraw it with something like Black Market or Jabba’s Scheme.
The Mandalorian, Rising Phoenix
The Mandalorian had probably the greatest amount of discussion this season both among the community and within the Steering Committee.
The ability to perform 2 full power attacks with bonus Pierce 1 did not correctly account for how easy it is for a 14 Health figure with Mobile, Speed 5, and a Stun removing baby in his back pocket to get within 2 spaces of a target, and with a Focus was able to just about delete in a single action any full health figure that wasn’t also a queen piece. It also made Mando feel too much like a pure melee figure compared to his actual fighting style in Season 2 of the TV show. The new Protective Fire in 6.1 also did not resonate with people as Mando flavorfully protecting the incapacitated Child companion from assailants. (BTW, both of those were my suggestions, so my bad)
Beskar Spear’s power now more correctly accounts for Mando’s excellent mobility while also mixing in his ranged attack to cement him as a mixed attacker. Note that Reach has also been added to his keyword abilities instead of being written out in the text box, and only applies when he is using Beskar Spear or any other ability that grants him a melee attack.
Protective Fire is now a mixture of his 6.0 and 6.1 abilities. The Child companion token now acts as a tangible visual reminder to the opponent of which figure they should avoid shooting at if they don’t want to face retaliation from Mando. This should help fix a lot of the issues players were having with mentally tracking defensive triggers like Mando’s 6.0 ability, also narrowing it down to triggering off of 1 marked space rather than 6.0’s 8 possible unmarked spaces (all spaces within 2 spaces of Mando). It also removes the issue people had with feeling forced to give up access to the Child’s abilities too early, and more flavorfully represents Mando being hyper focused on protecting the Child by making it the focus of the ability.
A big thank you from the Steering Committee to everyone in the community that provided feedback and suggestions for how to make Mando better this season.
Migs Mayfeld
Mayfeld got a big buff in 6.1 after a poor showing in his debut outing. His performance results in 6.1 was a lot more balanced, but with a Focus and a damage power token from Ko-Tun or a Clawdite Senator, his main attack could pack an enormous punch. Because of this, player perception was that he was too strong in 6.1.
To make Mayfeld’s damage output feel a bit less front-loaded and more balanced, the +1 damage bonus has been removed from his stat bar , and the -1 damage has also been removed from Guns Out, which makes it the same ability as Return Fire and has been renamed as such. .
Rebels
Cara Dune and Ambush
Cara Dune is back again with another update in 6.2, and much digital ink has been spilled about the incredible amount of damage she is able to deal through a combination of Call the Vanguard, Parting Blow, Smash and Ambush, as well as the some of the premium attack modifying cards in the Trooper and Heavy Weapon traits. Removing access to any of these cards feels like it would be a disservice to the players that have enjoyed list building and playing her with all of her traits. Increasing her cost or nerfing her attack stats also felt like it would make her too dependent on having those specific Command cards in hand to be worth her points.
The first solution to this was to restrict her incredibly powerful dice pool of red red blue to effectively be once per round via a new ability, Shock and Awe. So if you want to start performing extra attacks with her, the dice pool gets downgraded to red blue yellow. Her ability to achieve Blast 3 was also toned down by removing Blast 1 from one of her surge abilities.
Ambush
The next part of the solution was removing her ability to trigger Parting Blow during an opponent’s attack by using Ambush. This often led to huge blowouts in Cara’s favor and felt difficult to avoid on certain maps and in many situations, as it effectively required you to attack her from range 6 or greater to avoid. It now simply deals 2 damage, meaning it can still possibly stop an attack, but all you have to do to avoid that is not attack her with a figure with only 2 Health left, rather than praying that Cara doesn’t also have Parting Blow in hand when she plays Ambush.
Empire
Flametrooper
The auto-Weaken from the attack has been replaced with Bleed, to recapture the thematic feel of the Flametrooper setting the target on fire and having it continue to burn if it doesn’t put out the flames. Pierce 1 was also added to the attack to help make sure that it is able to trigger it’s abilities, which often require that the target suffer at least 1 damage from the attack to trigger.
Snowtrooper
Largely the result of a last minute discussion in the Zions Finest Slack, Snowtroopers have been given a small quality of life upgrade to make their attacks feel less swingy. Previously with only a surge for Pierce 2, it was possible for them to roll 0 damage pips on their dice and not have away to deal any damage. It was also very easy to completely nullify their only surge ability by exhausting Zillo Technique or something like Onar Koma or the new Echo Base Troopers. Splitting up their surge abilities into two instances of +1 damage largely keeps their average attack damage the same, but makes it less likely that they will do 0 damage with their attacks.
Neutral
Covering Fire
Troopers were very strong in Season 6, due in large part to the power of the upgraded Covering Fire, which had gotten updated to give every attacking Trooper that round a +1 surge in addition to the added surge ability. This became a very powerful force multiplier, especially for the Trooper lists with a high figure count or that were able to generate a lot of extra attacks.
Covering Fire now grants the Hidden condition to 3 Trooper figures instead of the blanket +1 surge to all Trooper attacks, which puts a cap on how many attacks will benefit from an extra surge, but also grants a small defensive bonus to 3 figures if they are not able to activate first in the round. It still keeps the additional surge ability for all Troopers in the round just like the original card.
Be sure to share what you think of the 6.2 changes in the comments below and on the ZF Slack channel and IACP Reddit and Facebook pages. More information will be posted soon about the Season 6 Community Vote where you all get to decide which cards from Season 6 get to remain in the game for Approved play.