It’s here! Once again, it’s time to revel in the excitement of the greatest time of year (except for maybe Life Day!)
That’s right, it’s Spoiler Season! This time around, we have 15 new cards to bring you over the following week for IACP Season 10! For those of you who haven’t been following, since Season 9 we have changed our timeline such that instead of one new season a year with long periods of both playtesting and competitive play, we now work Seasons in a 6-month schedule. This has allowed us to keep things fresh as we release content more often and have more opportunities to iterate on the project, while at the same time allowing us to focus on a smaller number of new releases at a given time (while overall maintaining the same number of cards released per year as previously).
Last season, we had 7 cards voted into “Probationary” or “Continued Testing” status, which informed us that we needed to tweak our new release schedule in some way to account for some cards that still require longer testing periods. Thus, in the past month, we’ve had a small number of community members working with us on testing out this content before its public release in a program called the PPP (Prerelease Playtesting Program). Noa gave a shoutout to each of the members who dedicated their time and effort to help us get this new batch of cards in shape for public release last Friday in his article detailing the “Housekeeping” items for season 9, here: Prelude to Season 10 – IACP Balance Updates for July 2024 – IA Continuity Project (ia-continuityproject.com). I won’t dwell on the same things Noa discussed in depth in that article, but I wanted to thank our PPP members once again for all their hard work and support. I’m sure they’re just as excited as the rest of you to see the release versions of these cards and the community buzz that will follow.
Speaking of community buzz, for those of you participating within the community from the IACP Discord (https://discord.gg/gyWSyAUxhA), we will be adding a distinct forum post on our skirmish channel for each new card this season, as well existing cards receiving changes or on Probation. We’ll post each cards’ thread as they are revealed throughout the week, and they will remain there for discussion and feedback throughout the season. We hope this method will provide players with an organized space to share their thoughts on our new release and changes and encourage players to provide both initial and hands-on feedback as they are playing their games through this testing season.
Without further ado, let’s get into today’s spoilers! For the past couple of seasons, we have started our spoiler articles by unveiling all of the neutral Command Cards (CCs) we plan to add for the season, in order to give you all context for the rest of the season and help you all theorize new synergies and combinations with the existing format and these neutral cards. In addition, we usually follow up the initial spoiler article with faction-specific articles to showcase which toys each new affiliation is receiving. This season, however, we decided to mix it up. We still intend to lead with our neutral CCs, but we also decided to give each faction a little something every day. All of those neutral CCs will be revealed by the end of tomorrow’s article, sprinkled in with a new deployment card from each faction. Then, the rest of the week will feature cards for each affiliation for the remainder of the week.
With all of that said, you may have guessed it, if not from the article title or the banner art, then from the image below itself, but its finally time! Close the Gap is our first Season 10 card and is finally making its way to a new and improved version in IACP!
Close the Gap is an FFG card that many of you have asked us to tackle on numerous occasions over the years. While Brawlers would love an out-of-activation movement option like card, spending 2 command points for 1 space on each of your Brawlers just never left enough of an impact to feel worth it. Meanwhile, the 2-point slot for Brawler command cards already had some great hitters like Grisly Contest, 2 copies of Parting Blow, and for most Brawler lists, both Dying Lunge and your faction’s version of Heart of Freedom certainly had to make the list. This all put Close the Gap in a tricky spot to update. What Brawlers really lacked was a capstone; a 3-point Command Card to showcase some of their greatest potential and highlight their strengths. We felt this forgotten FFG Brawler card was the perfect candidate for a Brawler capstone, and so the new Close the Gap was born.
While this version of Close the Gap only increases the movement gained from the card by 1 more space, we found that a start-of-round, map-wide, Move 2 spaces on potentially all of your attacking figures is incredibly potent. The second spaces really make a huge impact here, increasing the chance that more of your Brawlers make it just inside the range that your opponent had spent the previous round positioning around. Not only that, but we had considered the fact that using this card to close in on your opponent might mean exposing yourself on the approach and decided to grant you a defensive power token to help absorb the incoming blow. We also felt it would be a flavor miss to reward players for using a Brawler’s Gap-Closer to simply aid in them “running away”, so while you are still very much able to do so with this card, you are incentive to approach since you only get the block token if you end your movement close enough to a hostile figure.
We wanted this card to help support all Brawlers and have a high impact on the map-state at large without creating a feeling of supercharging any individual figure (sorry Vader). Even though this card may not be worth 3 points to a Queen piece by itself, we know that it won’t just be the swarm lists running 8+ Brawlers who benefit here. After all, even a mid-range list with only 3-5 Brawlers activating this receives 6-10 movement spaces across the board in an instant, with each space moved potentially opening you up to an additional attack action, which is all the more potent on your higher cost figures.
Some of the most intense plays in Brawler matchups come down to whether the Brawler player access to cards like Urgency or Force Rush at any given moment, and whether the opponent has means to negate them. Some games live or die by this moment. Close the Gap gives your whole roster the same potential movement as these cards all at once. Not only that, but being moved spaces, instead of movement points, means your Brawlers are still easily moving across difficult terrain-heavy maps like the Wasskah Hunting Grounds with this one. Get out there and make some brutal plays with Close the Gap, everyone!
Next up, we have a brand-new card for IACP: Capitalize! This one may look familiar to many players, especially those who love to bring Spy lists to the table. This card functions a lot like Comm Disruption, but instead of rewarding you for redundancy in the number of Spy groups in your list, it powers up based on the number of Harmful conditions you are able to spread out and keep on your opponent.
We had a desire with this card to create something that would sit right at home in a Punishing Strike list. A lot of the time when you apply negative conditions to your opponent, they’re able to act in a way to mitigate the impacts, whether by sending in a Weakened figure first to clear the condition, activating a Stunned figure later in the round to keep up their mid-round tempo, or simply taking extra strain while continuing the fight with a figure that’s Bleeding. But now, your opponent might have to re-think who they want to activate first if they have some particularly powerful CC play in their arsenal, lest it get its effects canceled when you Capitalize on their Weakness. One particularly potent use of this card could be to discard your opponent’s Heart of Freedom, stopping them in their tracks when they very thing they were trying to do was remove the conditions you had them worried about sticking in the first place.
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Focus your strategy on Weakening your enemies, leaving them to Bleed out, or Stunning them with your frightening presence, all while Hiding your true intentions with Capitalize!
(Mandalorian Season 3 Spoilers to follow)
We interrupt this spoiler article to bring you a public safety notice: A Ruthless War Criminal and Imperial revenant leader has escaped on his way to prison. The public is advised to proceed with caution, and report any suspicious activity to the New Republic office on Coruscant.
Editor’s Note: This article has been updated on July 2nd with an updated image for Moff Gideon which clarifies that only a power token or condition token can be chosen for the You Have Something I Want ability
“Whoa, what’s going on here?” That’s right! Moff Gideon is receiving a major update in IACP Season 10. In Season 6, we introduced this Ruthless War Criminal, drawing from his appearance in Season 1 of The Mandalorian. Although Gideon was full of flavor with his abilities, this titular villain never found his deserving halls of the IACP skirmish battlegrounds. Let’s take a look his new changes ability by ability, as there’s much to cover.
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First, in Season 6, Moff Gideon’s I Know Everything allowed you to guess at which group your opponent would activate next during his activation. If you guessed right, each figure in that opposing group suffered 1 strain. The issue here was two-fold. Mainly, that you were guessing what your opponent wanted to do next. You didn’t actually know. You could even guess right, and the opponent could simply change their mind once you make your declaration, and not activate that figure group next. And while an experienced player could likely deduce which group the opponent intended to go with next in a majority of cases, the payoff was low even if the opponent did commit to their original plan, at just 1 strain per figure that could easily be a command card discard.
For Season 10, we beefed up this ability. At the start of the game, you get to look at your opponent’s entire command deck. On top of that useful-to-have knowledge, you then get to choose 2 of their pivotal cards and force them to toss one for the entire game. This version of I Know Everything sends to the Game Box, a rarely utilized game space in IA, but this makes it so even abilities like Leia’s Battlefield Leadership and Bib’s CC De Wanna Wanga can’t bring these cards back. You get to force your opponent into an extremely painful choice by flaunting your knowledge of their secret stash of tricks and showing that even their best laid plans won’t get past your intelligence network.
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I do want to point out now that the ability is worded such that if your opponent is playing Chewbacca, it interrupts Wookie Avenger after the opponent adds Debts Repaid to their hand. We wanted this effect to lose out to Wookie Avenger, since the exchange of trying to force your opponent to start with an opening hand of 2 is just too punishing. This will probably be added as an FAQ entry for the new Gideon.
Next, Expendable Allies has been replaced with an iconic phrase from the show: You Have Something I Want. Expendable Allies was seen by many players as an ability that just wasn’t worth it. While it allowed you to get ahead on the VP game, it had a timing and spacing combination that could make it difficult to pull off, and also required you to play a number of expendable 2-point officers to take out when it came time to activate this effect to get the most advantage/value from it. Players also simply just didn’t like having to get rid of their own deployments, especially for an effect that seemed to only affect the scorecard instead of the board state.
Now, we introduce You Have Something I Want. This ability allows Gideon to stand there and demand tokens from your opponent’s figures. And if they don’t comply? They simply get blasted with the indiscriminate firepower of an E-Web, or perhaps have a battalion of Dark Troopers sent after them! Okay okay, actually, they’re going to pay a hefty cost by taking 3 damage! Once again, Gideon is able to force the opponent into a tough decision where he just tries to take their stuff away, and one way or another, your opponent has to put up with it in the best way they can.
Now, in Season 6, Gideon had 1 final ability: Spoils of Mandalore. This allowed him to equip the Darksaber and gain an extra 2 Health is he did. The issue with this ability was that Gideon didn’t have any innate ability to increase the effectiveness of his attacks, so his Darksaber swing would not only be pitiful (unless he somehow got Focus in an earlier round), he also now needed to get within melee range even make the attack. On top of this, there was no points discount on the Darksaber, so this turned Gideon into a 7 point figure.
In Season 10, we only went with 2 textbox abilities for Gideon, but you can see a few stat changes in his card that reflect some of what he gained over his 3-season tenure on the show. In Seasons 1 and 2 (of the show), we see Gideon using the Darksaber, especially for some crucial fights near the end of the second season. In Season 3, he crafts himself a full combat suit made of durable Beskar, and continues engaging the Mandalorian with closed ranged weaponry. In fact, we came to a realization that Moff Gideon never seems to use a blaster at all in the show. Thus, the change to melee was determined. And along with this change, we decided that instead of giving you the opportunity to pay for extra power by equipping the Darksaber, we would just bake it into the card’s design, granting Gideon +1 health, an innate block, and amazing surges you see typical of Lightsaber users throughout the show. We were also aware that Gideon doesn’t ever wield the Darksaber while in his Season 3 Beskar armor, so instead of explicitly calling either out as a textbox ability, he just has these stats, and whether you fancy a miniature of him wielding a Lightsaber-based weapon or a full suit of Iron-Man-like armor is up to you.
Lastly, let’s talk Gideon’s traits. You’ll notice that despite us talking up his Melee game, Gideon is still listed as a Leader and a Spy. We didn’t feel that he quite made the cut to be granted the Brawler role, but honestly, I personally think this is a flavor win: both from an IA Design standpoint as well as a character standpoint. In IA, Gideon is a Leader similar to Thrawn, who plays really well into Spy lists with his abilities, despite not being one. Gideon here can mesh really well with a Force User/Hunter/Brawler list, and yet, sports none of these traits. He still does bring the Spy trait to the table though, enabling some nasty command card plays that these lists wouldn’t otherwise be able to incorporate. From a character standpoint, Moff Gideon is a man who wields what he does not become. He carries a Lightsaber, but is not a Force User. He steals Beskar and manufactures it for both himself and his troops, yet he is not a Hunter (nor a Mandalorian). And he does throw himself into head-on-head battles with his close range armaments, but he is not a Brawler.
I may have gushed for a little bit too long with that last card. This article is getting long! Wrapping up today’s spoilers is another Team up card, this time in the form of the Rogue One crew! While IACP’s other 2 “Team up cards” (Spectre Cell & A New Hope) encompass your entire list, this one brings the whole Rogue One crew together for the low cost of 30 army points total! The abilities on this card take use of the fact that most of the Rogue One figures either create or distribute Power Tokens (not you, Chirrut), and now allow the whole army to share them with the Rogue One crew. The second ability pulls from Rogue One’s final mission: as each member of the crew falls during the decisive battle, they do so with the determination and Hope that their rebellion will succeed, and grant the player 1 VP as they fall, completing their part of the desperate mission to relay those Death Star plans!
What do you do with the other 10 points of your army? Well, you could bring Saw and a pair of Rebel Pathfinders to represent more characters from the film. Or you could bring someone like Ko-Tun, who pulls together the whole power token theme of the Rogue One team being able to share tokens with each other! Since we realized you’re going to have so many points left in your list even after bringing 6 Rogue One figures, we wanted to provide some flexibility this time around, while still restricting you from tagging the Rebel Care package (R2-D2, Gideon Argus, & C-3P0) along for the ride.
That’s it, everyone! Tomorrow, we have a guest writer presenting a Scum Deployment card along with the remainder of our neutral CCs for the Season. He had the chance to get some hands on experience with these cards over the past month as part of the PPP program.
Anyways hope your all enjoying your games of IA, and I’ll see you on the Discord (I’m TheSecondFlock)!