Though Jyn Odan had seen niche competitive success in the vanilla skirmish game with some players, there was a push in IACP Season 2 to update the 4 Core Box heroes besides Gideon and Mak to make them more competitive viable so that new players could build a more functional Rebel skirmish list with only a Core box if they printed out the IACP versions of the cards. There were 3 upgrades made to the original version of Jyn Odan to bring it in line with the rest of the game's power creep that FFG had begun with Jabba's Realm and onward expansions. Health was increased from 6 to 8. Nimble was replaced with the Sidewinder ability. And her attack received a +2 Accuracy and +1 damage bonus. Her Sidewinder ability is almost identical to the ability of the same name, but limited to once per round and it costs a strain to use. This added strain cost was actually part of a design theme that all 4 of the upgraded Core box heroes share, which is that they have to suffer strain to use one of their abilities. This was an intentional nod to the campaign game where the heroes often have to suffer srain to use abilities, though of course strain works differently in skirmish than it does in campaign, but it's a neat little design note that I appreciate about these early IACP designs. Her combination of high movement speed, Hair Trigger, Sidewinder and surge for Pierce 1 and Stun can make her an extremely fun figure to play and sometimes frustrating to play against. She excels at being a lone-wolf figure takes a Focus round 1 and then goes and harasses the opponent's figures while using her fancy movement abilities to stay just out of the opponent's reach. It's important to keep in mind though that the opponent can counter Hair Trigger by activating a figure out of Jyn's line of sight and then moving that figure to block Jyn's line of sight for the next figure that activates, though Marksman is a great card for countering this strategy. However she also does well in her old strategy called the Smuggler Box, thanks to retaining her Cunning defensive ability. She loves to stay next to figures like C-3PO and Onar Koma that can give her an evade modifier to trigger Cunning, which can make her surprisingly durable. Figures that can give her an evade token to go such as Ko-Tun or the Clawdite Shapeshifter are also appreciated as well. Smuggled Supplies can give her an extra evade to trigger Cunning for the rest of the round. And as a Smuggler, Jyn gets access to some great Command cards, including On the Lam, Tools for the Job, and Run for Cover, as well as more niche options like Pickpocket, Black Market Prices, and Slippery Target. Even outside of a dedicated Smuggler list, Jyn Odan is a solid and efficient option in any Rebel list at just 5 points, so long as you have a way to Focus her and maybe give her a bonus evade, she can be extremely effective for her points cost. Check out all the cards listed here over at https://classic.tabletopadmiral.com/imperialassault/ and start building your next IACP list.

Today's card is a modest but important card in the Imperial faction in IACP, the re-costed Advanced Com Systems at 0 points. First off, just want to say, not my first choice in terms of artworks had I been on the committee when this card was put into the IACP. Moving on to the actual card, it's very rare for the IACP to make a card that can go on any figure of a specific trait cost 0 points. In a game where points efficiency is still very important, this can create problems when we try to make new attachments if they have to compete with existing attachments that cost 0 points. However in this case, lowering ACS to 0 points had a very specific purpose. Advanced Com Systems was originally a 1 point card with exactly the same effect seen here, extending the reach of any Leader's printed abilities that affect friendly figures to reach 3 spaces instead of just 1 or 2. In Season 2, the Committee was trying to fix Kayn Somos, and while they found that he was in an ideal place at 7 points with ACS attached to make his Firing Squad ability usable, having his deployment cost be 6 became problematic in combination with Death Troopers' Field Tactics ability as well as Strength in Numbers (a lesson we'd be relearning again in Season 7 playtesting). At that point I suggested to the committee (again not a committee member back then) that instead of having Kayn at 6, bump him up to 7 and make ACS cost 0 instead, and after debating the possible downsides of having a 0 point generic upgrade in the game, the committee went with my idea. Now IACP has several leaders that compete for the use of ACS to boost their abilities. As mentioned, Kayn Somos was the first leader to really want this card in IACP. Then came the recosted General Sorin and new Deployment card Director Krennic in Season 4 which had abilities that benefitted from attaching ACS. And then came Agent Kallus in Season 5, who's Hunt Dissent ability becomes much more flexible with ACS equipped to him. Though occasionally you do just see it slapped onto a single Officer to allow its Order ability to reach 3 spaces instead of 2. One of the downsides that was discussed with this card is if it was appropriate to just be buffing regular Officers in certain lists, which were already a staple in Imperial list-building. The conclusion that was reached was that increasing Order's range on one officer from 2 to 3 wasn't that much of a power increase, nor was it going to really change how often you saw Officers being run in Imperial lists. Officers were valuable for adding cheap activations and bodies to a faction that generally had higher costed figures than Rebels or Scum, and generally Order was an ability that was most valuable on turn 1 when its range didn't really matter that much. Don't forget to include this card in your list if you've got one of the Leaders listed here or even just a regular Officer, and check out https://classic.tabletopadmiral.com/imperialassault/ which has all the IACP cards available to let you play around with building your own Imperial Leaders list for Imperial Assault IACP Skirmish.

Released in IACP S5, Cassian is another figure that often gets classified as a hybrid offense/support figure. His Strike Team ability allows him and another figure to get a headstart out of the deployment zone, and then up to 4 figures that are outside the deployment zone before the round start get a damage power token. This synergizes well with figures like Hera Syndulla and the Rebel Pathfinders. He also has great synergy with his friend K-2SO since he turns on K2's ranged attack option by providing him the 2nd power token he needs. They're also both Spies which contributes to a list's spy count for Comm Disruption. As a Spy/Leader, Cassian's offensive command card options are fairly limited, but his unique Command card Sniper Configuration can really boost his attack power for a single attack, as well as letting him attack a figure he might otherwise not be able to. We imagined this in design as him taking a high position on the map above line of sight blocking obstacles by having another friendly figure spot the target for him. Finally, Cassian's "It Will Be Alright" ability to sacrifice another friendly figure might look like flavor text to tie this card to Cassian's introductory scene in Rogue One, especially with how steep the cost is to use it, but there are ways to make the cost of defeating a friendly figure work for you. The big one is with Chewbacca, using It Will Be Alright to sacrifice a cheap figure like an Alliance Smuggler, getting a bonus attack with Cassian but also reactivating Chewbacca with Debts Repaid. You can also sacrifice companions to the ability, meaning you could sacrifice something like Jarrod's J4X companion to trigger the ability, or if you pay a premium for Saska or Temporary Alliance in a Scum list, you could bring an Ugnaught Tinkerer to feed Junk Droids to Cassian's ability. Keep in mind though that you can't sacrifice a figure that can't be defeated, like Maul, and if you defeat a figure with It Will Be Alright, that figure can't be saved by something like Second Chance or Miracle Worker. Check out https://classic.tabletopadmiral.com/imperialassault/ and see what kind of lists you can build with Cassian Andor!

Hey everybody, today's Card of the Day is very special because today is my birthday! So I'm going to talk about my favorite card design in the IACP, Doctor Aphra! For those not familiar with the character, Doctor Aphra hails as a major character from the Star Wars: Darth Vader Marvel comic run first released in 2015, debuting alongside what are now Imperial Assault fan-favorites, BT-1 and 0-0-0. Doctor Aphra is my favorite design in IACP because she checks so many boxes of things that Imperial Assault needed more of in list-building, and I think she's a really awesome character from a time when the new Disney canon held so much promise and potential. Aphra was a card that went through 2 full seasons of internal design before ever appearing to the public, and the only thing that remained the same from the original design was her dice pool and the ability to play Command cards from the discard pile. There were so many things that we needed to this card to do to represent this character's flavor and also fill several niches in the Scum and Empire factions. We needed her to cost 4 points to allow her to fill a similar support/offense role in Scum lists as Hera was in Rebel lists, we wanted her to play around in either player's discard pile to represent her being an illicit archaeologist, we needed her to be an efficient support option for Scum lists to compete with all of the Rebel options Scum was Temping in without also being strictly better than any of those options. We needed her to play nicely with BT-1 and 0-0-0 to represent her thematic connection to those characters, but in a way that made 0-0-0 stronger but didn't make BT-1 broken, and also in a way that players wouldn't feel like they were obligated to play those 2 figures with her to get full value out of including Aphra alone as a support piece, and we wanted her to play well in Imperial lists as well, both because of BT-1 and 0-0-0 being printed as Imperial figures, but also to represent her strong connection to Darth Vader in the lore and to entice players to play them in the same list together in Empire with the Temporary Alliance card. And I think her final design perfectly married all of these needs into a single deployment card with 2 named abilities. Doctor Aphra is a wonderful deployment card that occupies spaces on both sides of the competitive spectrum of IACP. On one side she is an efficient 3-dice figure that allows players to wring as much value out of their Command cards as possible through her Excavation ability. On the other end, she's a wonderfully thematic card that enables and rewards players for including both of her droid counterparts in the list with her by augmenting their abilities without making them overly powerful. And many competitive players do run her just by herself in lists just for the Excavation ability alone. Being able to get a 2nd go at powerful command cards like Element of Surprise, Planning, Negation and more, or even a 1st go at Command cards that get discarded from the hand or deck before they can be played, is quite powerful in a game where Command cards have so much power. Take note that Excavation triggers at the start of the round, which means you can Excavate a Start of Round Command card like Fuel Upgrade, Stall for Time, or Utinni!, and still be able to play it that same round. And of course for that reason there's restrictions on what you can get back with Excavation, limited to 0 and 1 point cards. Unfortunately for us one of the most powerful Command cards in the game, Take Initiative, costs only 0 points, so to prevent 1 player from being able to keep the initiative for multiple rounds by replaying their's and their opponent's copy, we had to explicitly write out that Take Initiative could not be chosen. While Excavation becomes very useful in the mid-late game once the discard piles start filling up, it's especially powerful if you can enable it to trigger as early as round 2. Command cards like Planning, Black Market Prices, Stimulants, and Intelligence Leak are all great low cost Command cards to play on Round 1 and can be just as useful when Excavated at the start of round 2. And in fact with the card Rule by Fear, which is very commonly seen in Empire lists, you can even get an Excavation on round 1 from the opponent's discard if they have the initiative on round 1, especially since they often discard a cheap card like Fleet Footed or Element of Surprise to keep their more expensive, more important cards in hand. And if you're playing Aphra in an Empire list with Rule by Fear, you can excavate whatever card you discard to Rule by Fear, which is great synergy. And finally her Dubious Counterparts ability can be great fun to build around when you include BT-1 and 0-0-0 in a list with her. Technically it is 2 abilities in one, but I think we were okay to roll these two abilities into one because of how they are linked. In addition to having the ability to include both droids in a list with Aphra if it's a Scum list, meaning you don't need to pay extra for a Jawa or Temporary Alliance but can't use Aphra to bring these droids into a Rebel list if played with Saska, we also figured out that by focusing on BT-1's Missile Salvo and 0-0-0's Invasive Procedure, we could make 0-0-0 a lot more efficient without doing the same to BT-1. Being able to do Invasive Procedure on a target before attacking it made 0-0-0 so much more efficient, however we purposefully worded it so that neither 0-0-0 nor BT-1 could double-move and then perform the action for free. In addition to that, we also forced players to bring both Droids if using Aphra's ability to do so to make sure they didn't just abuse the combo of Aphra and BT-1 together without 0-0-0, though you can still play Aphra and BT-1 without 0-0-0 if you pay the extra points for Temporary Alliance or a Jawa.

IACP card of the day posts are back! I needed to take a break last week due to being too busy with life and the IACP community vote (deadline postponed to 9/2 btw), but I'm happy to be back for this week. Lists of the week will also be back, starting this Wednesday. Today's card is the Royal Guard Champion. In IACP the Royal Guard Champion, or RGC, has only received a recost, though it's a fairly massive one going from 15 points down to 10. Other than its point cost reduction, the RGC is exactly the same as its original version, so most of the differences between how it plays in IACP vs FFG is based on indirect benefits from new cards introduced around it. Iron Will and Get Behind Me! are 2 great cards introduced for Guardians that work especially well for Royal Guard Champion. Iron Will protects the RGC from taking a huge amount of damage from one big attack, and having other cheap Guardians in the list with RGC allows them to use Get Behind Me to protect him from an attack. Even better is if that attack kills the target while it's adjacent to RGC, it will trigger his Executor ability to allow him to make a surprise counter attack. In fact, Get Behind Me!'s restrictions were specifically designed to allow it to be used with the RGC specifically. Feint is a new IACP card for Brawlers that allows the Champion to trade one of it's lesser dice results in order to ensure his attacks hit through a dodge or triple block result. The improved Parry can also be used as a timely defense boost in a pinch to keep the RGC alive, especially effective in conjunction with Zillo Technique. And finally, even though RGC packs a healthy Pierce 2 surge ability, playing Expose Weakness before firing off an attack can ensure that no damage is getting blocked, especially useful against high defense targets and traitorous Empire lists using Zillo Technique to otherwise blunt the RGC's Pierce 2. RGC also received some great new supporting cast in IACP as well. Mara Jade is an efficient figure that shares the Brawler trait with RGC, but most importantly brings the ability Fast Learner to use RGC's signature command card, Flurry of Blades, and 3 attacks from Mara in a single activation is one of the most powerful things she can do with that ability. Agent Kallus also shares the Brawler trait with RGC, while also bringing along the Spy trait for access to powerful Spy Command Cards. But most importantly his his Fulcrum ability, which gives RGC access to increased Command card flow, which is important for drawing into powerful cards like Iron Will, Parting Blow, Looking for a Fight and Pummel to unlock the RGC's maximum potential. And if you bring Mara and Kallus together, Mara can make use of Kallus's Command card, Face Me!, for even more fun Command card combinations.

We will be hosting a free online Imperial Assault tournament on Vassal using IACP rules on September 10th, 2022. Round 1 will be starting at 8am PST. For the upcoming free Vassal Tournament on September 10th, and all free monthly Vassal tournaments for Season 7, I will be putting up as a prize for 1st place, a complete professionally printed set of all fully approved Season 7 deployment cards, shipped from the printer to your address. You can see the designs here which I finally finished. I will include Mando if his recosted version gets full approval. This will not include Command cards (I don't have a way to print them to perfectly match the backs of official FFG cards). Because it is only a prize for first place, there will be a top 4 cut for any event with 8 players or more. Players are responsible for scheduling their top 4 matches on their own time. Multiple winners may defer their duplicate prize down to the next runner up in exchange for an alternate prize. You can sign up for the September tournament here: https://tabletop.to/free-iacp-imperial-assault-vassal-tournament-091022 Players will need to joint the IACP Discord server to participate in the event, receive pairings and communicate with their opponents (Voice chat is not necessary to participate). https://discord.gg/sw5cDuKUY9 For more info on Vassal, check out this video: https://youtu.be/4zfoe5vq2z4

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.