Final Season 7 Update: August 1st, v7.3 – Six Cards Updated

Six cards from Season 7 have been updated for the final of 3 planned updates for Season 7. The previous updates were 7.1 and 7.2.

After players have had a chance to try out the Season 7 cards in the final iterations, we will have a Community Vote from August 21st – August 28th. You can read about the details of how that works here.

Another 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. These game logs are invaluable in helping us identify cards that are still in need of balancing updates as well as how to best fix them based on actual gameplay. 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: hthttps://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qXD1EUFZ-w785S_WMNmfOmHyNMWAjKGjjHIjSvZB7DA/edit?usp=sharing

We continue to compile and track performance data even after the playtest period is over. If you have Vassal logs you want to upload to contribute to our data collection, you can use this link (please make sure include the date the game was played in the file name): https://www.dropbox.com/request/BKy7BQH9ujbIeNJ4ruXd

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:

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe37sj7N7dfRri74xUrkDXxWxSMN3GoXh5CEFM2BTESyCLaKQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Rebels

Leia Organa

Summary:
Cost Raised from 7 to 8
Health Raised from 10 to 11

Leia has been tearing things up this season alongside Original Trilogy heroes like Luke Skywalker and Han Solo. Despite receiving a nerf in 7.1 and untouched in 7.2, her win rate has only continued to climb, winning 11 out of 15 games since the 7.1 update. We considered several options for how to handle Leia’s high win rate, with ultimately it was decided to return her to her original cost of 8 points so she can keep all of the design upgrades she’s received to her abilities. This tracks with comments we’ve received that she feels like she is doing too much for 7 points, and also makes sense that an ability as powerful as Battlefield Leadership would be more balanced on an 8 point figure. To offset her cost increase, she received a Health increase of +1 to keep her stats in balance with her new points cost.

Zeb Orrelios

Summary:
New ability for Lasat Honor-Guard: “While attacking, after any rerolls, you may turn 1 die showing only a single attack icon to any other side.”

In the previous update we removed Zeb’s new Obstinate ability that prevented him from gaining conditions. This was a double-edged sword for Zeb as it kept him free of Harmful conditions but importantly prevented him from gaining Focus or Hidden to boost his attacks. It seems the ability was more of a hindrance than a boon though. Players reported being able to deal copious amounts of damage between Zeb’s two attacks by Focusing him and Hiding him with Murne. If he rolled well, as Lasat Honor Guard then added to that damage to push the max even higher, creating a figure that had very high highs but also the potential for low lows.

To address the problem of Lasat Honor Guard spiking Zeb’s high rolls too high, but maintain its purpose of protecting Zeb from a whiffed attack roll that does no damage, we’ve taken inspiration from the campaign game and copied an ability from an item card found in the Tyrants of Lothal expansion. If Zeb rolls a die with a single symbol, he can change that die to any face. This way his terrible rolls become good rolls, but his good rolls also just stay good rolls instead of becoming absurd rolls.

Empire

Purge Trooper

Summary:
Health Increased from 7 to 8

We’ve continued to get feedback from players that the Purge Troopers feel under the curve. We’ve made some extensive changes to their abilities and loadouts this season that have not seemed to fully the solve the issue, so this time we’re just hitting their stats. Their health being too low for a melee figure, regardless of how impressive their speed is, was a repeating comment we were getting about Purge Troopers. We’ve increased their Health from 7 to 8 to help them maybe survive long enough to close the gap and deal some damage before they are dispatched.

Lure of the Dark Side

Summary:
Ability changed: “[Action]: Choose a hostile figure in your line of sight. That figure gains 2[damage power tokens], then perform an attack with that figure against a defender within 4 spaces of the attacker. Then, the chosen figure suffers 2[strain].”

Lure of the Dark Side took a double hit in 7.1. The main hit that was also the most justified was taking it away from Grogu so he couldn’t use it under the tutelage of Taron Malicos. But we also removed the ability to use it at infinite range to try to reduce the negative reaction players seemed to have to this card being played on them from across the map on turn 1.

While figures like The Grand Inquisitor, Maul and Taron Malicos all kept seeing play in 7.1 and 7.2, Lure of the Dark Side seemed to stop being included in those decks. And even when they were included, we found that the card almost never resolved for its effect, which is not great for a 3 point card.

Now that a 1 point companion could no longer play the card, it seemed the remaining issue with an unlimited range Lure was how complex it is to play around it, even when you know it’s coming, because of the chaining light of sight. You have to account for the opponent’s vector to your figures and your figures vectors to your own figures. So we tried to figure out how to, somewhat paradoxically, make the card easier to use by removing the range restriction while also making it easier for opponents to play around it once they were aware of it.

In order to give players a clear and simple guideline for how to play around a Lure that has unlimited range from the user to the target, we’ve added a restriction to who that target can attack, with 4 spaces being the chosen restriction. While 5 spaces might seem like a lot to need to keep your figures apart, as the opponent of the player using Lure, this at least gives you a hard number that you can keep track of to know which of your figures are safe from each other and which might turn on another if they fall to the Dark Side for a turn. In addition to this simple option, players can still use line of sight to play around the card as well.

Mercenary

Rancor

Summary:
Trained Changed to: “While attacking, you may suffer 1[strain] to reroll 1 attack die.”

The Rancor is back again, but for a much smaller change this time. The changes made in 7.1 have reportedly helped a lot with taming this beast, with the only remaining outlier being that a certain combination of defensive cards making it very hard to take down in combination with aggressive usage of its defensive reroll. Removing the defensive reroll option from Trained leaves the Rancor a little more vulnerable to chance when it’s already playing (and replaying) powerful defensive cards like Survival Instincts.

Neutral

Reduce to Rubble

Summary:
Increased from 1 point to 2 points

We decided to try Reduce to Rubble at 1 point to see if it would get more people to play it. It did see more play, with the same number of games played in 1 month as the previous 2. However we feel that this card makes more sense at 2 points compared to other cards in the game for how much it’s doing, and we hope that more players will find room in their lists for it to use with their Heavy Weapon figures.


Those are the final changes for Season 7 playtesting. We hope you get an opportunity to try the cards that you haven’t tried out yet in their final forms, or see them in action over at IA Command Youtube channel, and we hope that all of you participate in the community vote coming up at the end of August, 8/21-8/28. Also watch for the Season 7 cards to start appearing in their final IACP-style frames leading up to the Community Vote.

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