Since the announcement of Season 1, the IACP Steering Committee has been focused on gathering as much feedback from Skirmish players as possible. In our Season 2 Vote, we asked our voters some questions about what they thought about Season 2 and what could be improved. This article details what we learned from our voters and compares these answers to those we got from our Season 1 voter feedback questions.
We also asked voters about what the Skirmish Committee should be focused on for future Season content. That data will be reviewed early next week.
If you want to share your feedback on what is discussed in this article, we’d love to hear it.
Still An Acceptable Amount of Changes
For the Season 2 Announcement, we presented 25 new or changed cards to be used. We heard immediately from several members of our community that 25 was too many. The Steering Committee then removed 5 of those changes, leaving 20 changed or new cards to playtest. During the Season 2 mid-Season update, we removed another change (Gaarkhan’s Command card). Season 2 ended up lasting an extra month or so due to some real-world complications within the Steering Committee’s membership.
One voter voiced their concern that, even with the reduction of changes, there wasn’t enough time to test everything they could. We understand that concern, especially since Season 2 ended up lasting longer than intended. However we also hear from voters and other members of the community who are excited to have a variety of cards to test, especially for army lists they have been looking forward to trying. The Steering Committee is trying our best to limit each Season to about 20 cards or changes: Season 3 ended up being 22 cards based on some players asking the Committee to add changes for the Tusken Raiders & ISB Infiltrators, which we felt wouldn’t overwhelm playtesters.
Another voter asked what is going to happen when the Steering Committee runs out of existing content to change, and that perhaps we should slow down the pace of changes per Season so that IACP will have changes for several years to come. The Committee isn’t worried about this issue since the Star Wars galaxy is especially full of characters and stories that we’ve not seen in Imperial Assault. We know that many players want to see more new Deployments for which they can find and paint miniatures. We will be carefully balancing adding new content with fixing existing content (or adding new content that improves existing content, like Imperial Retrofitting or Suppressive Fire).
Preferred Methods of Change
We asked our voters, “In your opinion, which of the following methods are acceptable ways to modify Imperial Assault through IACP to make the game more enjoyable for you and others?” In the multiple choice question, we listed several methods to change Imperial Assault. Our voters could pick one or more of the methods. The following table shows how many of each method was selected by the 43 voters of the Season 2 survey, and we compare those answers with those from Season 1.
| Method | Season 2 Number of Selections (Percentage of 43 total voters) | Season 1 Number of Selections (Percentage of 53 total voters) |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment cards: Cost decreases or increases | 40 (93.0%) | 48 (90.6%) |
| Deployment cards: Modifying existing card abilities and stats | 37 (86.0%) | 39 (73.6%) |
| Deployment cards: Creating new cards to replace or use as an alternative to existing cards | 37 (86.0%) | 40 (75.5%) |
| Deployment cards: Create new deployments not previously created by FFG | 33 (76.7%) | 32 (60.4%) |
| Command cards: Cost decreases or increases | 34 (79.1%) | 34 (64.2%) |
| Command cards: Modify existing cards | 33 (76.7%) | 36 (67.9%) |
| Command cards: Create new cards to replace or use as an alternative to existing cards | 29 (67.4%) | 28 (52.8%) |
| Command cards: Create new cards not previously created by FFG | 30 (69.8%) | 26 (49.1%) |
| Rules: Reduce benefits from Focus (e.g. no longer 1 additional green die but a static bonus) | 10 (23.3%) | Not asked in Season 1 |
| Rules: Modify core ruleset and/or create new core rules (e.g. changing 40/15/15 Deployment & Command card limits; limit 1 Hunter card played per attack) | 13 (30.2%) | 14 (26.4%) |
| Rules: Create new design space in existing rules (e.g. a new trait; a new Beneficial/Harmful condition) | 23 (53.5%) | 19 (35.8%) |
| Rules: Modify existing FAQ rulings from FFG | 21 (48.8%) | 19 (35.8%) |
| Skirmish Maps: Create new scenarios for existing skirmish maps (C and D) | 31 (72.1%) | 38 (71.7%) |
| Skirmish Maps: Take over the competative map rotation when FFG Organized Play drops support of IA | 37 (86.0%) | 38 (71.7%) |
| Skirmish Maps: Create new skirmish maps | 29 (67.4%) | 35 (66%) |
| Skirmish Maps: Modify existing scenarios for existing Skirmish Maps | 26 (60.5%) | 28 (52.8%) |
For the most part, our voters ideas of preferred methods of change in IACP hasn’t changed much from Season 1. There are no massive changes in voter choice. The new question about changing how Focus works was the least popular method, with only 10 voters willing to make that change.
The Committee wasn’t surprised to see increases in popularity for new Deployment and Command cards. When talking to the community since FFG’s announcement that Imperial Assault Organized Play was ending, we think players are now seeing that the future of IACP will need new cards to keep the game fresh. The Committee was also not surprised to see an increase in the desire for IACP to take over Competitive map rotation responsibilities once FFG is finished with Organized Play. We’ve spent some time developing rule sets and tournament kits for what organized play might look in IACP, and we’ll release more information about that once we get closer to the end of FFG’s OP this March at Adepticon.
The Committee was surprised to see an increase in voters preferring some new design space within the existing rules, such as a new Trait or Condition. We will be communicating more with the community over the course of Season 3 to see what kinds of new design space excites our players.
Voter-Suggested Additional Methods
A few voters opted to write in some suggested methods for IACP to manage Imperial Assault:
Support Campaign & Raid Maps — The Steering Committee would love to support custom & new Campaign materials. If one or more members of the Imperial Assault community that is interested in working with the Community, please contact us at iacontinuityproject@gmail.com. As it stands now, the existing Steering Committee members do not have the bandwidth to start developing for the Campaign game.
New Deployments with Figures Available as 3D Printable Files — Even though FFG is moving on from supporting Imperial Assault, they still have a vested interest in protecting their intellectual property that they’ve developed under license of Disney/LucasFilm. While we feel like IACP isn’t a threat against the remainder of FFG’s projects, we also don’t want to create new things that may explicitly violate licensing restrictions: Currently everything we provide is fan-made and either self-printable or provided at production cost. We’re not for sure how 3D models of Star Wars characters might apply to those restrictions, or how we could host or pay for development of those files without becoming an operation too big for the “Empire” to notice. The Steering Committee may look at this in the future; from a logistics and legal standpoint, it is a low priority item.
For now we’re working on rules for casual and competitive play to allow players flexibility in representing these new deployments on the board. We will also be providing printable tokens for the new Season 3 Deployments that players can adhere to existing tokens or coins to use in physical play.
Fix Tuskens — This voter should be fairly pleased with the contents of Season 3.
IACP was Still Fun, Fresh and Worthy of Your Time
We’re excited that so many of our voters felt like IACP met this criteria for them. We decreased the amount of voters who voted “No”; there were 5 voters in the Season 1 survey that chose “No”.
In the voters’ written feedback, several lamented how Season 2 lost steam and lingered with little Committee feedback in November and December of 2019. We’re sorry that happened. The Steering Committee will be looking for more help from within the community to help manage things like the Testing League and events. Hopefully a consistent engaging Season 3, with announcements for IACP organized play, will finally get us to a 100% “Yes” answer to this question.
3 thoughts on “A Cause That Was Worth It: Season 2 Voter Feedback”
A few comments that are strictly from a personal point of view.
1) You need a google account to vote. I do realise that many people probably have one, and that it’s free. But I don’t want one. This cuts me out of the voting. If it’s super difficult to do the vote openly, then I understand your decision. It’s merely a point.
2) There doesn’t seem to be a lot of “advertising” or community engagement about Skirmish in the FFG forum. The, still, obvious place to look. Seems like a few people come there still and have newly bought into the game and could be caught into the IACP this way. I’m personally not sure where to read about IA (and IACP) anylonger.
I think most of what you do is excellent work, and I’m happy you keep the game running. I enjoy playing IA.
Hey aermet, thanks for sharing your thoughts with us!
The reason why we restrict voters to having Google accounts is because it’s the only tool we have in Google Forms to limit votes to one per person. I’m sure there’s better online balloting software out there that doesn’t require a Google account, but we really don’t have the time to learn and implement a new system. We investigated a way to accept ballots via email, but there’s no good way to ensure a ballot sent by email wasn’t sent by somebody who also logged into the Google Form ballot. However, we’ll make an exception for you in the future: send us an email at iacontinuityproject@gmail.com when Season 3 Community Voting starts and we’ll send you a ballot PDF and you can email us your selections.
It does seem that the FFG forums are slowing down. There’s lots of other places to discuss IA and IACP online: https://www.reddit.com/r/ImperialAssaultTMG/ continues to be very active, and so are the forums for Imperial Assault on boardgamegeek.com. There’s always the Zion’s Finest Slack community: For information to join it, click on the “How To Participate” link at the top of this page.
Thank you for the reply. That is a fair reason.