I have been wondering about thermal shields' impact on the meta. While it is locked to just CIS and Republic it still impacts the Empire and Rebels because they can still run into it across the table for them. We did talk briefly about thermal shields in a past AMM, but let's make a slightly deeper analysis and see how it may impact the game as a whole.
So first this triggers after the attacker gathers dice, but before the modify dice step so before any add effects happen, and even before the dice are rolled, this has major implications. First, leading shots losses stock because in all cases that it is useful it is possible for this card to remove all blue dice in the attack pool, rendering the card useless. Second. crit effects like HIE and ACM lose a bit of their punch as in most cases it's possible to remove all or nearly all dice of the required color to trigger the critical effect. Third, it makes effects that increase your armament like spinals less appealing when going from odd to an even number or dice, but more appealing when going from even to an odd number of dice. Fourth, it gets around intel officer, intel officer triggers after dice have been rolled and thermal shields triggers before dice are rolled and thus the brace is spent before intel officer takes effect. Lastly, it makes effects that add dice like that of Ackbar a more appealing way to gain access to a large attack pool.
I think the power of thermal shields is nowhere better illustrated than when against an ISD. If we have an ISD-II with leading shots we can spend the brace to remove all 4 blue dice from its attack pool making leading shots useless in this scenario, we also take a 8 dice attack down to a 4 dice attack. Maybe our ISD-II has HIEs on it, it's still the same case, losing all 4 blue dice, giving us no way to trigger HIE on our front attack and go down to a 4 dice attack pool. However to help our ISD combat this we could take spinal armament that boost our front armament form 8 dice to 9, however thermal shields would still get to cancel 4 dice so we would lose all the blue dice we have, but would have an attack pool of 5 not 4. We could if we really wanted a blue dice use QBTs; this effect adds a blue dice if we are going slower than the target ship, and because it's an add effect it could not be canceled by thermal shields.
So what is the best way to use thermal shields? Well It varies quite a bit. First, in the leading shoots ISD II case it is probably better to cancel all the red dice and not blue dice, Why? With thermal shields you want to reduce your opponent's damage ceiling as much as possible. This means in general black dice will take priority as they have two faces with two damage then reds as they have one face with two damage and finally blue dice. This order can change based on dice pool composition and upgrades on the ship. For example with a ISD-II with HIEs it will be much more beneficial to remove the blue dice than the red, this is because the ability for one blue dice out of 4 to produce effectively 4 damage greater than 2 reds producing 4 damage. Let's say we are dealing with a Kuat with leading shoots it is still probably better to take out the 3 black and one of the red dice as this takes the damage ceiling from 14 to 6, and if your opponent uses leading shoots for the re-roll they reduce the damage ceiling to 5. Since redundant shields allow you effectively bypass accuracies for what is likely your most impactful token, your brace. Reducing the damage ceiling will always be better than to cancel blue dice that generate more accuracies, hence the hierarchy of dice cancelation when using thermal shields: black, red, blue. The dice hierarchy can be manipulated by crit effects like HIE or add dice effects like ex-racks might make it more appealing to remove blue dice if the player is going to be leaving on leading shots for re-rolls.
So what does this all mean for the meta? Well first off Onagers hate this card, this upgrade really reduces the Onagers damage output with its ignition attacks. If thermal shields become common it may make Onagers a less common sight.
In addition, intel officers have not been a very common sight but if thermal shields are a thing, you may start to see intel officers even less, as intel officers almost always targeted the brace. Maybe they will start to target things like salvo more so that you can get rid of the annoying small attacks that come from salvo, but it seems like intel officers will struggle in a meta of thermal shields.
Leading shots, while it may not always be the best to rip out the blue dice the fewer dice that are in your attack pool the worse leading shots get. So even if you don’t remove all the blue dice in an armament you have made leading shots worse by extension. I have real issues with leading shots now and it's really hard for me to justify in a world with thermal shields, unless I have add dice effect, and even then if my armament is ordered in such a way that all blue dice can be taken out of its pool you have to question it.
In the past I have felt like effects that have increased a ships armament have been overlooked for other upgrades, but I think that these effects become much more interesting, particularly for ships with an even number of dice in your attack pool. So again in the example of the ISD going from 8 to 9 dice give you a 5 dice attack and not a 4 dice attack, after thermal shields. However with a Liberty going from 7 dice to 8 dice is a waste in the case of thermal shield as you will still only have an attack pool of 4 dice either way. So I think dice that take an even numbers armament to an odd become a much more interesting choice.
Boarding troopers stock is up. Since brace can not be targeted by accuracies with thermal shields anything that makes it more likely to be removed is going to be nice and boarding troopers does just that.
Sato Gains a little bit more utility as he can make sure you have the dice of the color you need even after things have been removed by thermal shields. In addition to HIE, and ICB, blue crit effects are a bit more interesting as they can act as a “defease” from thermal shields taking out your higher damage output dice.
Cards like Darth Vader (boarding team), and Shriv Suurgav that remove upgrade cards could become more important for lists that depend on special crit effects. As it lets you keep the dice you need in your attack pool to trigger them. Sunder on an Onager star destroyer could be a thing, as thermal shields can not remove all your black and blue dice in your armament so it can still trigger.
The effect thermal shields could have on the meta I think could be a lot more impactful than you might initially think. What are some ways you think thermal shields may change the game? Until next time have a great week!
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