Rolling the Dice: Sato Rework

The first of our three substantial Rebel commander reworks, Sato occupies a rather odd space in Rebel design. He is fairly well loved by players because he creates a very unique style of play. He forces you to play with squadrons in a different way, and enables some fun long range critical effect shenanigans. Despite that, he has never really broken through in a competitive environment. He's been considered fun but not good. Our goal was to preserve the elements that make players love to fly him, while also giving him some additional flexibility to help his competitiveness.

Commander Sato (old)

We ended up looking at an early version of Sato for inspiration. Those graybeards in the community may remember this spoiler from FFG which kicked off a debate on the forums about when exactly Sato’s dice replacement happened. Was it before or after the initial attack dice were rolled? The speculation at the time suggested he would be very strong since his effect would constitute a form of dice correction. The eventual release version specified the effect was before the attack pool’s initial roll. Well what if FFG had gone the other route? 

Commander Sato (new)

We have tweaked Sato’s wording to be more like Dual Turbolaser Turrets. You now roll your initial attack pool, then add two dice of your color choice. You then have to remove two dice from the attack pool. This essentially allows an informed re-roll, while still preserving a crit-based play style. It may not seem like much of an improvement, but even the skeptics among us have found it to be a major improvement in testing. You can now use Sato not just for critical effects, but also as a form of dice correction. There have been some truly bizarre combinations that have found success in our testing. I fully expect the community will find even more.