7 cards from Season 7 have been updated for the 2nd out of 3 planned updates for Season 7, 7.1, 7.2 and 7.3. If you were not already aware, below is the schedule for when the next 2 updates will be happening, along with the dates for the Season 7 community vote, competitive play and the release date for Season 8.
July 5th: 7.2 Update
August 1st: Final 7.3 Update
August 21st – 28th: Community Vote
August 29th, 2022 – January 29th, 2023: Season 7 Competitive Play
January 30th, 2023: Season 8 Official Playtest Release
As we get more and more game logs submitted with Season 7 playtest games and more and more feedback from the players, we are getting to the stage of fine-tuning these cards with less and less changes. Though we are still waiting for more data on some of the changes that were made in 7.1, these are the changes we’ve felt we were ready to move forward on before the final change in 7.3 before the cards are voted on by the community.
I should mention there are a few cards that we know are still somewhat controversial to people that we are keeping on eye on, but we have decided not to make changes to here, because we feel both that we don’t have enough actual playtest data on them to be sure about their performance and that there isn’t enough consensus in the feedback we’re getting about the cards. It’s one thing when we see a hard trend being displayed by a card over 20 games, or if there is unified feedback from the majority of the community about a card, but without one of those to rely on, we would rather gather more data and feedback and make the necessary changes in 7.3. So keep playtesting and keep giving us feedback, especially for cards like Leia and the Purge Troopers and Purge Commanders.
Big Thank You to all the players that continue to help us out with playtesting these cards and submitting Vassal game logs for our data. If you are interested in the playtest game data we’re working from (manually entered and compiled by myself), you can find the spreadsheet here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18T9C6PKBaciEl3FEqHwTmG2mtxiSGHXdiLIKfig_WqU/edit?usp=sharing
If you have Vassal logs you want to uploade to contribute to our data collection, you can use this link (please make sure to label your logfiles if you are submitting games from 7.0 or 7.1 versions): https://www.dropbox.com/request/BKy7BQH9ujbIeNJ4ruXd
You can check out the original versions of all of the 7.0 cards here: https://ia-continuityproject.com/2022/04/19/season-7-preview-gallery/ and the 7.1 updates that were made on 5/31 here: https://ia-continuityproject.com/2022/05/31/first-season-7-update-may-31st-v7-1-important-future-dates-included/
If you want to join the discussion and leave feedback from your playtesting games, you can join us over at
Discord: https://discord.gg/vrCNGst4
Slack: https://join.slack.com/t/zionsfinesti…
or over on the IACP subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/IACP/
You can also leave feedback anonymously through our IACP Season 7 Survey linked here:
Mercenary
Rancor
Summary:
Surge for +3 damage changed to +2 damage
Surge for Recover 2 removed
Recover 2 added to Voracious ability
Though we were correct to nerf Crippling Blow from 7.0 to 7.1, we were getting mixed feedback from our playtesters about the Rancor’s performance in 7.0, and an initial 40% win-rate had us siding with the voices saying the Rancor was not hitting hard enough for its cost. That win-rate ended up being false though as 5 last-minute game log entries submitted after the deadline for the 7.1 changes showed it’s actual win-rate was closer to 60%.
We’ve walked back the surge for +3 damage ability that we thought the Rancor needed to deal enough damage, which it apparently didn’t. We’ve also listened to the feedback we’ve been getting since 7.0 that the surge for Recover 2 combined with many easy ways for Creature Brawlers to generate extra attacks was inflating it’s health by too much and making the Rancor too difficult to bring down if it got a decent string of surge rolls. However we still felt that giving the Rancor an option to Recover damage would be helpful and wanted to use that to represent it regaining health by consuming it’s hapless victims. We’ve gone down a more flavorful route and moved the Recover 2 from its attack abilities down to the Voracious ability when it sacrifices a friendly creature, very similar to its original design in the campaign. This limits the Recover to once per round and will make taking down the Rancor more reasonable, though still not easy.
HK Assassin Droid
Summary:
Added an additional Surge for +1 damage ability
Changed the 1 strain from Merciless to 1 damage
HKs were definitely overperforming in 7.0 and we had gotten a lot of feedback that they were feeling overpowered in terms of how much damage they were dealing, so we tuned them down in 7.1 by changing their surge for +2 damage to a surge for +1 damage. This has impacted their performance more than we anticipated in 7.1, so we are trying to make improvements without just reverting back to what was making them overpowered in 7.0
In 7.2 we are giving them an additional surge for +1 damage to help prevent them from over-surging on their attacks, especially when Focused, which should bring up their minimum damage floor without allowing for the massive damage spikes that were happening in 7.0. We also got feedback from players that felt Merciless was only meant to be used in lists that were focused on both harmful conditions and strain, which was not the intent (we hoped it could support either type of list). To help make Merciless feel a bit more focused in its intent, and to reward the HKs with a bit of a damage boost for playing into one of their themes, we’ve changed the strain from Merciless into straight 1 damage.
Empire
Shoretrooper
Summary:
Cost changed from 6/3 to 7/3 (originally approved at 7/4 in Season 4)
We had known since the end of Season 4 competitive play that Shoretroopers and their Mortar counterpart hadn’t been in a great place competitively. This season we wanted to see how they’d do at 6 points instead of 7 and if that would make them and the Mortar Trooper competitively viable again. We knew that putting them at 6 opened up a lot of possibilities for activation chaining tricks like Strength in Numbers and Death Troopers, which can be very powerful with Squad Upgrades extending those chains even longer. But we’d already seen with Pathfinders and the Z-6 that it could possibly work out.
We felt we didn’t have enough data after 7.0, but now after 2 months of playtesting and 19 games played where they haven’t fallen below an 80% adjusted win-rate, we knew that a change was necessary. We looked at several options for how to fix this overcorrection, with one being to keep them at 6/3 and lower their health to 6, but ultimately the majority of the committee voted to bring their cost back to 7 but keep their figure cost at 3 so they give up less VPs when they die and can now play Reinforcements to help keep the Mortar firing longer.
Looking at their data again while I write this, it may be most likely that the Death Trooper’s Field Tactics are what set the Shoretrooper apart from the Pathfinders at the same cost, as Death Troopers had an 87.5% win-rate when combined with Shoretroopers, but a 14% win-rate without them, though Shoretroopers win-rate without Death Troopers was only marginally lower than without.
Purge Trooper Loadout: Electrostaff
Summary:
New Ability for Quick Strike
The Purge Trooper is meant to be a toolbox figure that can customize it’s loadout to one that’s most effective against the opponent’s list. We were looking for ways to clean up Electrostaff’s ability a bit and make it more effective against the types of figures it was meant to be good against, specifically figures that over-invest in buffing their defenses. 7.1 Electrostaff was good against figures that rolled multiple dice or spent defensive power tokens, but it wasn’t catching single-dice targets that used innate defensive modifiers like Boba Fett. We also wanted to catch defensive rerolls and adding defense dice that the Purge Trooper’s main thematic prey, Jedi, are so fond of using. It was difficult to catch all those things with an ability that triggered during the modifiers step, and without making the ability extremely wordy.
So we changed the ability to happen after the attack resolves and just deal straight 1 ping damage if any of the 3 following criteria are met for the defense: Modifying the dice pool (adding or removing dice before they are rolled), rerolling defense dice, or modifying the dice results (adding or removing results). Importantly this ability does not require the attack to not miss or deal normal damage, so if the defender spends a power token or rerolls into a dodge, even if the normal attack deals 0 damage, the defender will still suffer 1 damage from Quick Strike. This also now works against abilities that might modify the Purge Trooper’s dice pool, like Run for Cover or Force Exhaustion, which was a nice bonus.
With this change combined with the 7.1 change to Purge Troopers giving them extra movement and damage bonuses against unique figures, we are hoping to see some small improvements in the Purge Trooper’s performance and the community’s perception.
Rebels
Saw Gererra
Summary:
New ability for Wanton Destruction
The main feedback we got from players about Saw was they weren’t really sure what to do with his abilities outside of a few niche cases, which made it awkward for people to find reasons to bring him in a list. His main attack packs a wallop for his points cost, but as a 4-point 2-dice figure with 2 support abilities, players seem to mostly see him as a support figure. Players didn’t seem to like that it cost a surge to use his original Wanton Destruction ability and had been asking for ways to remove the surge cost.
We’ve decided to take a page out of Bib Fortuna’s comeback story (in IACP, not in the actual Star Wars universe), and try out adding a Command card pitching ability to replace Saw’s original Wanton destruction effect. Saw’s new ability will be similar to Heavy Fire when used, dealing 1 damage to up to 2 other figures within 2 spaces of the defender, though to make it feel distinct from Bib’s ability, this ability can’t deal damage to the defender. This also helps to make the new ability feel like a true successor to Saw’s previous ability, sort of combining the Cleave and Blast abilities together. We feel this ability and its limitations will make Saw an excellent choice for Heavy Weapons lists that are already Focused on maximizing splash damage, as well as in lists that can’t fit Mara Jade but want to play more unique figure command cards that might become dead draws in the late game.
Zeb Orrelios
Summary:
Obstinate ability removed
We’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from players on Zeb’s improvements in Season 7. Mainly Lasat Honor Guard to help with his anemic damage output for his cost.
However Zeb has been struggling this season to get his win rate above 30% outside of Spectre Cell, even with a healthy amount of games played, which is generally a red flag to us that a figure needs some help, although we also wanted to be careful not to overcorrect as we have done in the past.
We were looking for a small way to improve him that could also help simplify his crowded text box and without giving Spectre Cell too much of a boost. Allowing him to become Focused or Hidden seemed like a good way to improve his performance outside of Spectre Cell where he generally doesn’t have access to either of those conditions. We considered changing Obstinate to let him keep a resistance to harmful conditions, but we worried that might be too much of a boost on top of gaining the ability to gain beneficial conditions, and ultimately we decided it was best to go with the most simple change of just removing Obstinate altogether, making his Deployment card look much less cluttered, though also less barren than his original FFG printing.
Neutral
Reduce to Rubble
Summary:
Cost reduced from 2 to 1
This was a late addition thanks to a community member pointing out to us in Slack how little this card has been played so far compared to how many Heavy Weapons lists have been seeing play and suggested reducing the cost to 1. The argument was that it’s difficult to fit this card into Heavy Weapon lists since they already have so many options for area of effect damage, and especially now that their marquee card Overwhelming Impact is at 3 points. The committee agreed that it wouldn’t hurt to try it at a lower cost for a couple of months to see if it gets more play in Heavy Weapon lists.
Well, those are all the changes this time around. Let us know what you think about the Season so far using any of the social media link listed above, or just leave a comment down below. You can also fill out our Season 7 playtest survey if you’ve played with the cards using this link: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe37sj7N7dfRri74xUrkDXxWxSMN3GoXh5CEFM2BTESyCLaKQ/viewform?usp=sf_link
Thank you!