After multiple deadline extensions, the votes for Season 6 are locked in. We greatly appreciate the 23 members of the community who took the time to fill out a ballot and make their voice heard in the Season 6 Community Vote, as well as everyone that participated in the playtest season league and games, submitted game logs for review and shared their thoughts and opinions on Slack and Discord. This announcement marks the end of the playtest period and the kick off of the Season 6 Approved play period, in which competitive events can now be held which will only feature IACP community approved cards alongside existing FFG cards.
Before I get into the results of the latest community vote, I want to address something important. Unfortunately, this was the lowest community voter turnout we’ve seen since Season 4, which had 28 voters. Every other Season has had 30+ voters. Considering that we are seeing new people joining the IACP Discord and Zions Finest Slack channel nearly every week, I have a hard time believing that this number of voters is a true reflection of the number of people in the Imperial Assault community that have a vested interest in the future of Imperial Assault skirmish through the IACP project.
We want everyone in the community to feel like they get to have a say in the IACP process and the future of the IACP, regardless of skill level or number of games played in a Season. If you are someone who decided not to participate in this Season’s Community Vote, we’d love to hear what’s holding you back. Leave a comment down below, or send us an email at iacontinuityproject@gmail.com to tell us what’s keeping you from voting and maybe what we can do to help out.
Finally, I will soon be announcing a permanent survey that will include many of the questions we ask people about their preferences for the game in the community vote, along with additional demographic and organized play questions that were not included in the community vote. This survey will not have an end date, and instead everyone will be allowed to participate in the survey once between each Community vote. This way, anyone can let us know what they want to see prioritized in future seasons of IACP, even if they’re not participating in a community vote that only lasts for 2 weeks.
As you might remember, Season 6 marks a new way of voting for Approved cards. In order for us to better calibrate cards as needed and to allow community voters to to better reflect their true feelings about a card, a third option was added to the ballot this season, “Approve on Probation”. Rather than a required 70% Approved votes from previous seasons, a card must receive a combined total of 70% of Fully Approved and/or Approve on Probation votes to stay in the IACP. If more than half of the total approved votes received are for Fully Approved, the card is approved as per normal and will be locked in for the future of the IACP, barring necessary balance fixes. If a card receives an equal number or more votes for Approve on Probation as it does for Fully Approve, the card is allowed to stay and be played in IACP competitive approved play but under a probationary status, meaning that it needs to be included in future Community Votes and could see slight changes in future seasons. If 30% or more votes are to Disapprove a card, it is removed from the IACP for future play would need to be reintroduced in a future playtest season.
By allowing cards to continue on to approved play on probationary status, we are able to keep cards in competitive play that the community thinks are probably okay but might need just a little more work, while signaling to players that like to invest in getting professional printings of IACP cards or event organizers thinking of creating custom IACP promos for their events, to know that these probation cards have a decent likelihood of seeing changes in future playtest seasons as we work on getting them just right.
You can read Josh’s announcement post here for more information.
Results
Out of a total of 20 new and updated cards for Season 6, a notable downsize from previous seasons, I am pleased to announce that all 20 cards have been approved to move forward to competitive approved play, with just 1 card being approved on probationary status, though it did come extremely close to being 2 cards on probation.
The Mandalorian, Phoenix Rising 10 point Deployment was the only card with less Fully Approve votes than Approve on Probation votes, and will be moving forward on probationary status. Many voters expressed in the Scum comment section that they liked where Mando’s abilities ended up in terms of their final design, but felt that he maybe still did a little too much for his points cost and would like to leave open the possibility of tweaking his cost or maybe some of his stats in the future based on his performance in the competitive Season 6 tournament season.
Cara Dune was the other card that was the closest to being put on probationary approval, and in fact looked like she was on track to be approved on probation, but received enough votes to fully approve her at the last hour. It seems the players that still had reservations about Cara felt similarly to what people were saying about Mando, that she might still be a bit cheap for what she can do, though a similar number of people expressed that they felt the 6.2 updates to Cara fixed her power problems from earlier in the season. We will have to wait and see how she does in competitive play now that the dust has settled on Season 6.
I think it’s worth repeating that if an IACP card does wind up being demonstrably too powerful for some reason for competitive play after the playtesting period is over, we do have the power to change that card when and if we deem necessary, even if it was fully approved by the community, though we view this as a last resort.
We’ll share the results of the survey that was included at the end of the community vote where voters got to share their priorities for future IACP content, which will also include the link to the permanent IACP community survey.
Below is the complete breakdown for all of the cards in Season 6 and how they got voted on by the 23 players that did vote in the Season 6 Community Vote. You can view all of these cards in their most updated versions in the IACP Official Change PDF.
Command Cards
Rebel Cards
Empire Cards
Mercenary Cards
