With Guardians being the focus of the Lists of the Week this week, I thought it'd make sense to feature the Guardian's Marquee Command card in IACP as today's card of the day.
Iron Will is a unique defensive card that caps how much damage your Guardian figure can take from the current attack. Importantly you have to play the card before dice results are known, so you're not always sure how much damage it will be stopping, but you always know how much damage you'll be taking from that attack max when you play it which is what makes it so useful.
Onar is one of the best figures to play the card thanks to his lack of defense, meaning he is likely to stop a lot of damage when he plays the card. IACP Obi-Wan also likes this card a lot to be able to control how much damage he takes so he can use Strike Me Down at just the right moment when he's gotten down to very low Health.
There's a lot I like about this card from a design standpoint. First of all it doesn't actually stack well with other defensive modifier abilities, at least not on the same attack, in fact it's actually not as strong with figures that have high defenses.
2nd is how much it punishes figures trying to throw around huge attacks with things like Focus, Tools for the Job and Concentrated Fire. For the longest time this was one of the most popular and most effective strategy in the game and Iron Will is particularly strong against these types of plays and players playing against a Guardian list should consider spreading out their Focus and extra dice abilities a bit more.
The other thing I like is that it's not so absolute in punishing the attacker the way On the Lam is. 3 damage is still something for the attacker, and that also means it's easier to play around it as well, you know that the card won't work if the target has 3 Health or less remaining, and you can spread out your damage buffs a little more until this card comes out.
Looking forward to hearing player's thoughts and experiences with this card in the comments below.
It also doesn’t protect against damage outside of an attack, like Sabine’s Parting Gift.