To go with the Rebel Sabs that were featured yesterday, a nerfed card from Wave 1 that was resurrected by IACP, today I thought we'd talk about the Royal Guards, another card from the Core set that was nerfed early in the game's history for being too strong (at least the regular version was) and is now seeing a resurgence in IACP.
The elite Royal Guard only ever saw fringe play even early in the game's history, always overshadowed by its little brother, but in IACP it has gotten a makeover. Now 3 points cheaper deployment cost and a 1 point reduction to its figure cost, the card is much leaner but still commands a good portion of your total 40 points. It's stats are mostly unchanged, but it's attack now sports a reroll and an innate Pierce 1 which makes it very consistent at pushing damage through.
It had to lose the +1 evade to keep it from being too defensive for a point figure in combination with Zillo Technique and Extra Armor, but it now gains an evade token when it uses the Stun surge ability to compensate.
Royal Guards are now an excellent utility piece in lists that need Guardian or Brawler support. They provide access to Stun and extra defense for non-guardians via Sentinel, and they have excellent speed and bulk for either holding objectives or swarming key targets, and their traits give them access to lots of great offensive and defensive command cards.
But I think what you most often see players doing with Royal Guards is trying to break their Forward Vengeance ability to make sure they start off the game Focused, which really pushes their damage output to the red line. When they first debuted in Season 3, Forward Vengeance was able to trigger off of companions dying since the FFG version could, which players used in combination with Palpatine, the Junk Droid companion and Royal Guard Champion in what was known a the "Junk Guards" list, which is why Royal Guards Forward Vengeance ability is now restricted to non-companions only.
In Season 6 it was possible to use Moff Gideon to defeat an Officer that was standing next to 4 Royal Guards in order to Focus all of them and gain 4 VPs. More recently in Season 7, we've seen an experimental list, jokingly known as "The Ritual", which uses the Hired Guns new ability to become Focused when they take damage in combination with an Officer, Emperor Palpatine and 2 groups of Royal Guards. Palpatine zaps the Officer to death, which triggers the Royal Guard's Forward Vengance to become Focused, and the splash damage from Force Lightning hits each of the Hired Guns to focus them as well.
Royal Guards might not look that impressive on paper for their 9 point cost, but they will surprise you with how effective they can be, they are very solid figures once you start playing to their strengths.
