I hope that the changes the upgrade pack brings take more upgrades up then they take upgrades down, but to be honest there are a few cards that I think need to be brought in line and well that is what we will be looking at in this weeks AMM so let's dive right in.
ECM okay so I have thrown a lot of shade at this card, but honestly this card has such a high impact on the meta, and is way under-costed in relation to the damage is saves you.
I know that some community members did the math and in relation to the damage this card saves you verses others it should be a discard to use. Now do I think that is the best way to go about chaining it not necessarily I think there are several options open.
First it needs an engineering token to ready, this makes it so that in order to get more than one use out of it you need to invest a little more into it and that seems like a fair deal to me, maybe a slight cost increase.
Another slightly more drastic option is to change the function of the accuracy effect. This is a bit of a bigger change, and I don't think it will likely happen, but we are getting what is in essences a 1.5 so it's possible. Instead of an accuracy “locking up” a token they would do something like “during the spend accuracy step the defender must exhaust a number of defense tokens equal to the number of accuracy icons the attacker spends.” This is an exhaust not a spend effect so tokens can not be discarded this way the idea is that an accurate shot compromises the ships defenses, but ECM can kick in and let you cancel one accuracy in the attack pool or something along those lines. Will this happen I think it's unlikely, but I think it has a lot of interesting aspects to the game as a whole in changing the accuracy effect in some way will directly impact ECMs.
A simple change have the card read “at the start of the spend accuracy step the defender may cancel one accuracy face in the attack pool” this is a little bit more in line with what ECM is as its actually a real thing in military ECM is an electrical device designed to trick detection systems like radar, sonar, etc. However if you have multiple accuracy icons you still get to lock up a token, but more accuracy icons means less damage so it seems a fair trade, and ECM would not need to exhaust and maybe even have a point decreases.
The last change is just a simple point increases its simple, but works and might be what we see. Either way I think ECM is a card that is just a little to good and that has far reaching consequences for the game and should be brought into line with other cards.
Titles I Narrowed it down to two and it was fairly clear to me what one should be brought in line, Squall.
While I do think other Titles like Demolisher will likely see changes I think Squall is clearly right now the most egregiously offensive title right now in the game. You can take 3 squadrons and as most of the Empires squadrons are already speed 4 or 5 and squadrons are capable of deploying within distance 5 of the player edges and speed 5 is a foot and the table is 3 feet from player edge to player edge. You take a speed 5 squadron put it as far out as you can in deployment about a foot away from your player edge then tack on an additional 2 speed with squall and you can launch your squadrons nearly all the way to the other side of the board on turn one, it's honestly a little ridiculous and if you bring Major Rhymer your threat range is absolutely insane.
Now my objections may steam from Maarek+Jendon shenanigans, but even without them it can still really be a bit ridiculous. I always liked squall but the list that really brought it to my attention was Cataclysmic Squall, and while the ace cap does kinda bring it into line its still very nasty.
Onager Testbed (96)
• General Romodi (20)
• Admiral Ozzel (2)
• Gunnery Chief Varnillian (6)
• Veteran Gunners (5)
• Orbital Bombardment Particle Cannons (5)
• Cataclysm (5)
= 139 Points
Quasar Fire I (54)
• Governor Pryce (7)
• Flight Controllers (6)
• Boosted Comms (4)
• Squall (3)
= 74 Points
Gozanti Assault Carriers (28)
• Darth Vader (1)
• Reserve Hangar Deck (3)
= 32 Points
Gozanti Assault Carriers (28)
• Hondo Ohnaka (2)
= 30 Points
Squadrons:
• Maarek Stele (21)
• Colonel Jendon (20)
• Major Rhymer (16)
• Mauler Mithel (15)
• JumpMaster 5000 (12)
• Black Squadron (9)
• 2 x TIE Defender Squadron (32)
= 125 Points
Total Points: 400
I have seen this list take out a MC-80 turn one and really that makes for "un-fun" games and I really don't think that is a good thing I am not sure how to fix this, but let's take a swing at it.
First idea is to add the restriction that the squads must be in the rear arc of squall to benefit from this effect. This allows fast squads to hide then jump out pretty far, but not all the way across the table.
Another idea is to make the card an exhaust effect that starts the game exhausted, this way you don't have the ability to use it on turn one, this is probably the simplest idea.
You could also have it only affect squadrons of speed 3 or less, but that really limits its usefulness.
I am just not sure how this can be brought into line, but I think not being able to use it on turn one is really the simplest way to bring its power level down without changing the card itself.
There are really not any commanders that I can think of that need a nerf really the closest one would be Sloane, but I think she got it already in the ace cap. I do think some commanders could use a lift though so lets look at someone that could use a pick up General Madine.
Madine is pretty good, but not seen enough he can't bring the edge that other 30+ point commanders can bring. My idea to fix him is pretty simple reduce to 25ish points and have him start the game with a few navigate tokens on his card maybe 5ish that any ship can use to resolve his ability. This fixes the issue of always having to navigate or have a token at the ready a ship can resolve his effect and allows him to be taken in many more lists, sure if you navigate you get extra benefit, but you don't have to and that can be quite nice.
What cards do you think will be changed? Are there other cards that you think should be brought into line? Hopefully in the next few weeks we will have more info on what to expect, so we can talk about the facts and not just speculate, but until next time have a great week!
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