“Devaron’s lightly garrisoned, but it’s not too far from Giju. We just embarrassed the Empire—I wouldn’t be surprised if they threw a dragnet over this entire region.“―Narra to Skywalker before his mission to Devaron
Welcome to the world of Devaron, where the Empire has made good on its many threats to leave a garrison behind. Devaron Garrison, from the Zeb and Sabine figure expansion pack, will officially replace Jabba’s Palace in the map rotation on March 21st, 2022.
With the IACP Championships happening the very next weekend at Adepticon in Schaumburg on the 26th, we are releasing the details on this map rotation a little earlier than we normally do, so that players planning to attend the event will have enough time to get in a some practice games with the new map.
Devaron Garrison is a brand new map to competitive IA skirmish and has never been featured in the IA tournament map rotation before. This is definitely one of the smallest skirmish maps that has ever been rotated into competitive play, and we are hoping this new map will help to shake up the current metagame bring new possibilities for lists that may not have had a good map in the previous rotation. We feel that Devaron’s close quarters will contrast nicely with the long open hallways of Lothal Spaceport and the wonderfully balanced layout of Mos Eisley Back Alleys.
Something that we’ve started doing in the last 2 seasons of playtest leagues is having players play on a selection of random maps other than the current tournament maps, and Devaron Garrison was one of the maps that players were able to playtest on in the league, and so far we’ve heard good things, so we are excited to see how it does in the official tournament map rotation.
Each deployment zone sits just 9 spaces away from the other, with 2 doors and a cross-shaped piece of interior blocking terrain blocking line of sight from one deployment zone to the other, but an un-obstructed hallway curves around this closed-off room as an alternative route from 1 deployment to the other. Separated from the interior area by a 3rd door, a 3rd exterior pathway in the direction of each deployment zone’s terminal to an area with 4 squares of blocking terrain, which create some very complex sight lines that skillful players will be able to take advantage of. Players that find themselves facing off against a close range monster like Vader or Boba, may want to find themselves heading in this direction.
Mission A: Arms Salvage has players battling for control of 5 crate tokens, 2 in the interior room and 3 in the exterior room. Each round the crates will accumulate a power token on them, and at the end of each round, the player that controls a crate will get 2 VPs and be able to distribute the accumulated power tokens on that crate among their figures that are on or adjacent to that crate’s space.
Figures that benefit from offensive power tokens like Director Krennic and Ko-Tun will likely be drawn to the exterior spaces where the red and yellow crates give out offensive tokens, while more defensive figures like Boba Fett and Verena Talos may prefer the block tokens found on the blue objectives.
The doors on this mission are unlocked, and players will have spend an action and likely some movement points to remove doors as barriers, though keeping a specific door closed may be just as important to your strategy as it is for the opponent to get them open. This is a very standard mission type with hold and control objectives and doors that operate normally.
Mission B: Secure Munitions, changes things up completely. This mission still involves controlling the 5 crates, however the objectives are no longer static, they will now move 3 spaces across the map at the end of each round by the choice of whichever player controls them. VP scores are also dynamic in this mission, as players count as having 6 additional VPs for each crate they can successfully move to their deployment zone, but that means the opponent can potentially invade their deployment zone and move a crate away to decrease their opponent’s score.
But not only are crates able to be moved, they can also be attacked and potentially explode! Crates have 5 health and 1 block, and when a crate is destroyed, all figures on or adjacent to that space suffer 2 damage. This creates a fantastic strategic dilemma. Do you try and destroy as many crates as you can early on so you don’t have to worry about controlling them? Do you leave the crates alone and let your opponent build up a false lead, and then try to snatch those crates and VPs from their deployment zone later? Do you risk controlling a crate and potentially having a hostile figure blow it up and deal 2 splash damage to your figures? If you get it wrong, there’s a potential 30 VPs of crates and 10 points of splash damage that will benefit 1 player or the other.
Also mission marks the return of attackable objects, which will be a boon for certain figures such as Agent Blaise and General Sorin, who will be able to farm surges on round 1 against the crates.
Missions like this where VPs are “counted as” rather than explicitly “gained” interact in confusing ways with Moff Gideon’s “Expendable” ability. We will be issuing a ruling in the FAQ containing the official map rotation announcement explaining how Moff Gideon is meant to interact with this mission and other ones like it. Any time Moff Gideon’s controller’s VPs increase because of a mission effect, that will allow the Expendable ability to be triggered. We are using the literal interpretation of the word “gained”, rather than having it look for matching mission-specific vocabulary.
We look forward to seeing how the introduction of a map this small will affect the competitive meta going into Adepticon in less than 2 months. Thanks again everyone for playing with us.