Fear not, for the Mercenary faction has some new tricks up its sleeve as well for Season 11! In fact, this will be the first preview with truly new, never-before-seen figures for Imperial Assault. Buckle up and get ready for the ride with some surprising additions to IACP!
First off, we have a fan favorite, The Armorer, from The Mandalorian series. A true smith and devotee of the Way of Mandalore, The Armorer is a bit of an enigma. While certainly not primarily a combatant, she has a deep knowledge of Mandalorian traditions and is somewhat of a spiritual leader for the clan. On her Deployment card, this is represented by the traits Guardian and Leader.
True to form, The Armorer deploys with Beskar Armor, characteristic of many Mandalorians in Imperial Assault. Wielding her gravity hammer and magnetic tongs, The Armorer’s combat abilities are represented by a melee attack with extremely consistent dice pool comprising three green dice and two strong surge abilities, as well as a surge to regenerate a block token. (Fear not, there is still no way in the game to roll more than four green dice in one attack, which is already possible with figures like Greedo.) While this attack does not do the most damage for a 6-point figure, it is still quite deadly, especially when focused, and it is difficult to roll poorly. As we will see, consistency is one of the main keys to The Armorer.
The maxim “This is the Way” embodies her role in providing armor and weaponry to her compatriots. This is a map-wide ability that rewards friendly figures for defeating opposing figures. While this ability will naturally be most effective against swarm lists, it still will usually provide a meaningful 4-5 block tokens across most games. Most importantly, this ability will fuel the use of her second ability…
Survival is Strength is the lynchpin of her Deployment card. Similar to Luke Skywalker (Hero of the Rebellion), The Armorer provides a reroll aura within 3 spaces. However, instead of being offensive, this reroll is defensively focused, and allows the defender to reroll one attack die, if the defender spent a block token. This represents the unique nature of the beskar armor that The Armorer provides. Critically, this reroll happens after attacker rerolls, and so is very flexible. It can be used to attempt to make an attack miss, to reroll a surge for Pierce 3 or Stun, or even just on a red die displaying 3 damage pips. The attacker must remember this ability and maybe consider a slightly more risky reroll of their own, if it is critical that a surge gets through the defenses. A way to consistently supply figures with block tokens is highly recommended to make the most out of this ability, as well as the ability on her unique Command card.
Mandalorian Steel, another name for beskar, is the finest metal in the galaxy bar none, and has unique properties, able to absorb the full energy of blasters and even block lightsaber strikes. The wearer of this armor takes on a unique vitality represented by this Command card, allowing every figure on the map to recover 1 damage after it spends a block token defending an attack. Unlike Survival is Strength, this effect is map-wide, albeit for only one round. However, recover 1 over the course of several attacks can make a key figure survive just that much longer to make a difference (at least, until it runs out of block tokens to spend). Note that this recovery happens after the attack resolves, so if the attack would defeat the figure, the figure does not survive and does not recover one damage.
There are many Mandalorians in the game with access to block tokens, and other synergies involving them (side-eye to Gar Saxon). We hope that The Armorer makes building Mandalorian-centric lists more feasible and more fun!
The second reveal for today is….drumroll please…Asajj Ventress!!! “Wait, what?” some of you might say. Well, Ventress does make an appearance in the Bad Batch series, placing her squarely in the Imperial Assault timeline. However, without her iconic red twin sabers (and with a bit of regrown hair), she is not nearly as recognizable as from her Clone Wars days. She now has taken on the role of a bounty hunter (for other force users, apparently), and therefore is a Force User and Hunter in Imperial Assault. She now wields a single yellow-bladed lightsaber, represented by a melee attack with three yellow dice, and the usual lightsaber-wielder surges for +2 damage and Pierce 3, but with an additional surge for +2 damage, making her an extremely deadly Hunter especially when Focused. Ways of manipulating the attack pool of Ventress may prove extremely lethal, and we leave it to the reader to devise such dastardly schemes.
When we meet Ventress with the Bad Batch, she is blackmailing them for information, telling them to “Consider It My Payment” to know the purpose of their mission and what the deal is with Omega and high M-count individuals. In Imperial Assault, the information that Ventress gets is in regards to the Command cards in the opponent’s hand. At the start of Ventress’s activation, your opponent will choose and reveal to you one Command card from their hand. This “locks it in” as the next Command card they will play. If, during this round, they play a different Command card before playing the revealed Command card, they are penalized by being forced to discard the Command card they revealed. In some cases, this may not be possible because the revealed card was discarded to Zillo, Heroic Effort, etc. In this case, the opponent reveals their entire hand, but is not forced to discard anything. Note that Smuggling Compartment, if exhausted at the start of Ventress’s activation, will leave the opponent with an empty hand, and therefore counteract the ability, at the cost of them being unable to play cards during her activation.
This ability can be thought of in the same vein as Kanan Jarrus’s Force Vision, but for Command cards instead. In some cases, the next card to be played may be quite obvious. But in many others, it behooves the opponent to choose carefully; if revealing a card with a conditional trigger (such as a Parting Blow), the Ventress player may be able to successfully avoid the trigger. Or, in fact, if a Parting Blow is not revealed, Ventress may feel safer moving away from her target after the attack. If a Parting Blow is then played, it comes at the cost of another Command card also. If the opponent reveals a defensive card like On the Lam, the Ventress player may choose not to attack Smugglers for a while, forcing Lam to be discarded for the opponent to play other command cards. Conversely, if the opponent does not reveal Lam, but does play it when Ventress attacks Han Solo, they will be forced to discard whatever card they revealed instead, making Lam effectively cost 2 cards. While this might be a difficult ability to wrap one’s head around at first, a closer examination makes it clear that great skill can be expressed in both when to activate and what to reveal in response to this ability.
Aside from a hefty attack and plentiful mind games, Ventress is an agile figure, using the Force to effectively fly across the battlefield. While she is a speed 4 figure, she is also Nimble, an ability that first appeared on FFG Jyn Odan. While IACP Jyn Odan no longer has this ability, it has a new home in Ventress. Notably, since Ventress also has a surge to gain an evade token, if she spends that evade token and rolls an evade, she can move up to 4 spaces after receiving an attack (6, if she were sitting next to C-3P0 as well). This can be used both defensively and offensively to reposition rapidly across the battlefield, much more than her speed 4 would permit. Attack Ventress at your own peril.
As the Bad Batch found out, attacking Ventress is indeed not always so simple. While Ventress’s 12 Health and a white die may not go a long way, she does have one more trick up her sleeve. When the Bad Batch ambush her, she tells them “No Cheating” and pulls away their weapons with the force, and then engages them in hand-to-hand combat. Enter the unique Command card for Asajj Ventress:
This card is played at the start of the opposing figure’s activation from which Ventress is grabbing the blaster. By forcing a figure to engage in hand-to-hand combat, she has some defenses against getting sniped from long range (as long as she can see the attacker), and can more easily retaliate, especially in concert with Nimble. However, this is not foolproof, as figures, especially those in multifigure groups, may “leapfrog” each other to avoid triggering this ability, similar to how one plays around Jyn Odan’s Quick Draw (I know, it’s called Hair Trigger or whatever, but it always will be Quick Draw to me as a traumatized Imperial player from the campaign.) Who knew? So many oblique references to other Imperial Assault characters, old and new. It will be critical for the opponent to be aware of this possibility and play around it. Maybe not, though, if Mak Eshka’rey can get through and shoot her first!
By removing a die from the attacker’s die pool, this card is somewhat effective against other melee figures as well, so it is never a complete dud to take in a list. Still, it will likely not prevent the wrath of Darth Vader from bearing down on Ventress. Note that the target figure’s attack type is melee, and it loses one die for the whole round, including for any granted attacks it may further receive. Perhaps the most satisfying use of this ability may be telling an opponent reactivating a rancor, “No Cheating!” as you play the Command card.
Finally, the last reveal for today is an update to a card that was put on Probationary Approval in Season 10—Dengar. Unlike Rogue One from yesterday, we are making a slight further change to Dengar for Season 11. Over the course of Season 10, the Steering Committee noted that there were some strongly negative player experiences associated with playing against Dengar. Mainly this was because he could deal Harmful conditions (specifically Stun), to figures that he could never acquire line of sight to, by instead acquiring line of sight to a support figure or other unimportant figure that just so happened to be 2 spaces away. One main principle of Imperial Assault is that (usually) you have to be able to acquire line of sight to your target in order to hit it. To address this, and bring Dengar more in line with this principle, we have limited the spread of conditions to adjacent figures, similar to Blast. Dengar’s attack profile is still such that he is able to choose to either deal significant damage like any other Hunter, or deal a bit less damage and spread more Conditions. Now, however, it is significantly more practical to play around the condition spreading. We are actively monitoring the performance of Dengar and encourage players to try out this version during the playtesting season.
Stay tuned for further spoilers and updates, and perhaps some Command cards that may even synergize with the cards revealed in the past few days!