Designer Journals: Empire/CIS
Empire
Admiral Screed
The first of 2 Imperial Commander tweaks, Screed first made his debut in Wave 1 over 10 years ago. He had a brief span of popularity, but has been down on his luck for some time. The 1.5 update hit Screed particularly hard, first by buffing evades to work at close range, and then by nerfing black critical effects. Things were made even worse by the introduction of Point Defense Ion Cannons (PDIC), a very popular defensive reroll that adds another complication to triggering critical effects. Combined with the high cost of losing a die in your attack pool to trigger Screed’s ability, it has been hard to justify bringing him in the current meta.
Admiral Screed (old)
As with all of our Commander adjustments, we wanted to keep his core identity the same, and so we looked for small ways to improve his critical based playstyle. We did not have to go far to find an option that felt right. We had tested a Screed variant in an open beta tournament held in the winter of 2024 that had shown promising results. We took him directly from there, and gave him to our playtesters to take another pass over him. This version made it through testing without needing further adjustment.
To make sure his ability is not completely negated by the plethora of rerolls that exist in the game today, we have added a protection on the die set by his ability to prevent it from being rerolled (although it can still be canceled by effects such as Scatter, Evades at long range, Admonition, or Captain Brunson). This helps his damage and critical effects stick more often, and will hopefully open up some Imperial MSU list archetypes, which have been scarcely seen.
Admiral Screed (new)
Emperor Palpatine
Introduced in the SSD Expansion, The Senate has never made regular appearances in competitive play. Some of this may be due to his base cost, as he was one of the most expensive Imperial Commanders at 35 points. This price was intended to justify Emperor Palpatine's theoretically very powerful ability, which applied an Intel Officer-style effect to an entire enemy fleet. However, due to the wording of his ability, many defense token effects were able to bypass him, and significantly reduced his ability to provide pressure during the game. The effects that bypassed his old window included common upgrades such as Turbolaser Reroute Circuits, Jan Ors, Axe, and Thermal Shields.
Emperor Palpatine (old)
Emperor Palpatine felt like a good candidate for adjustment, as a small tweak could result in a boost to his playability. We iterated over several versions of varying strength, including one that could trigger on Palpatine resolving Boarding Troopers (which was quickly left behind). We eventually settled on a version that triggered on all enemy spends and caught those effects which had previously snuck through. We also had to make last minute clarification to prevent Sloane, or other hostile spend effects, from triggering on the Emperor's own defense tokens (which, while probably thematic, would have lent to a poor play experience)!
By changing his ability to target any spend done by the opposing player, his effect will be much more consistent and means this expensive commander will not be entirely wasted into certain fleet matchups. Reducing his points to 32 will also put him in the same bracket as Grand Admiral Thrawn, another commander who rewards fleet coordination in a similar manner.
Emperor Palpatine (new)
Point Change: Darth Vader (34->28)
Commander Vader made his debut back in wave 2. His reroll effect was potent, particularly on ships that lacked easy ways to fix some or all of the dice in their pools. Like many older imperial commanders, his base price was set very high at 36 points. While Grand Moff Tarkin, who was the most expensive commander in the game for a long time, was adjusted in the 1.5 Update (by 10 whole points!), Commander Vader was left unchanged.
This has caused him to age poorly as many cheaper commanders have edged him out, particularly General Romodi and Moff Jerjerrod. His effect is still very relevant, but just needs to be priced more appropriately to make him a consideration. Putting him at 28 points places him in a similar price bracket as the two other offensively orientated Imperial commanders, Admiral Screed and General Romodi.
Point Change: Admiral Motti (24-->20)
Admiral Motti is an old commander from wave 1 who we view as a baseline to compare other Imperial commanders against, as his effect is straightforward and easy to quantify. At 24 points, he is competing with several commanders, including General Tagge, Admiral Konstantine, Sloane, and most importantly Moff Jerjerrod. Moff Jerjerrod has entirely eclipsed Admiral Motti in brawler, fortress, and tanky carrier based fleets. Reducing Motti’s cost to 20 puts him at the lowest commander price point and means he might see a little more use when points are extremely tight. This should help out beginning players as well, as his effect is simple and he has traditionally been a good starter commander.
Separatists
Munificent-class Command Frigate
Munificent-class Command Frigate
The Munificent-Class Command Frigate was developed to address some gaps in the CIS lineup. Its design evolution took a few iterations to nail down. We first tested an unusual configuration as a heavy brawler with an ordnance slot, but it was very weird, and the idea of a non-large black dice brawler was shifted elsewhere. Instead, we took it in a different direction to offer by giving it a Fleet Support slot. CIS are limited to the rather inefficient Hardcell Transports for traditional support (who pale in comparison to their Republic equivalent, the Pelta), and are not nearly as cheap as the flotillas available to the Rebels or Empire.
This opens up a wide variety of options for the Command Frigate. It can be equipped with Bomber Command Center so you can run it as the core of a squadron based fleet, or with Slicer Tools for Dooku or TF-1726 shenanigans, or equipped with token resupplies to empower Admiral Trench. The Weapons Team slot can further specialize this ship to support its intended role. There were also some tradeoffs made by removing the Support Team and Ion slots to ensure the ships profile did not overlap with the existing Munificent Chassis.
While the Command Frigate does have a Defensive Retrofit, it is much less durable than a Star Frigate without access to PDIC, and testing revealed that it generally wants to do things other than repair. It also lacks access to Engine Techs, and cannot fake speed 3 like the Comms Frigate to get itself out of trouble. We tested this variant over several internal release periods, and didn't feel like it needed any other major modifications besides a points adjustment down to 74.
Quarren Prototype Gunship
Quarren Prototype Gunship
While the Command Munificent seeks to offer a semi-tanky but slow support option, we also wanted to find a small, fast, close-range attack ship. Unfortunately, it is rather difficult to find an existing model that makes sense for the CIS faction. We originally looked at the CR90B, rebranded as an Assassin Corvette with Ions and an Offensive Retrofit. This was a very potent combination on a cheap and agile command 1 ship, and after some initial testing, we realized this was not quite matching our intended target.
We shifted our focus to another Rebel small that felt like it could meet our design parameters. The MC30 Torpedo Frigate was agile and packed a solid punch, but without titles was rather fragile. We also knew we didn't want to provide it with an Ordnance slot as we feared it would be too much with TF-1726. Instead we chose to give it an Ion slot so it could focus on blue critical effects for extra damage, Leading Shots for dice control, or Point Defense Ion Cannons for a little extra defense. We also replaced the Turbolaser slot with an Offensive Retrofit which further opens up its potential options with B2 Rocket Troopers, Disposable Capacitors, Boarding Troopers, or even Expanded Hanger Bays if your squads need some extra help.
While it is mostly a close-ranged brawler, it can be configured in a wide variety of roles and in particular gives Kraken and TF-1726 another hard hitting ship that they can build around. Our initial testing was very promising, and it did not receive any modifications during the testing process besides tweaking the name to emphasize the Quarren's unique, prototype nature. From a lore point of view, naming the ship a Quarren creation felt appropriate, as the Quarren (temporarily) sided with the Separatists during the Clone Wars, and “stealing” a Mon Calamari design for their use made perfect sense. You may wish to obtain alternate 3D printed models if you want to distinguish your Quarren ship even more from the MC30.
Check out our design journal on the Republic and Rebel changes here!
Designer Journals: Rebels/GAR
Join Chris Fritz (Truthiness) and James Chen (Maturin) on this deep dive into ARC01's additions to the Republic and changes to the Rebels!