The Hyperlane Report: How Best to Balance 


We have it folks, the new Star Wars Destiny FAQ is here!!! Well it is here, but you know what I mean. We have a ton of changes to the rules and I wanted to provide a place to go to see them (the ones I deemed important) quickly! Below is a quick snapshot from the FAQ but if you wanna know more keep reading.

Balance of the Force (Point Adjustments)

We have a new type of balance in the form of point adjustments for existing characters. This is a very interesting and easy way to balance character combos. So who got changed?

+1 Point:

Captian Phasma: Ruthless Tactician – 9/13 – > 10/14

+2 Points:

FN-2199: Loyal Trooper – 10/13 – > 12/15

Poe Dameron: Ace Pilot – 14/18 – > 16/20

Unkar Plutt: Junk Dealer – 10/13 – > 12/15

These changes make it so the aforementioned characters can no longer be paired with the counterparts that were potentially stagnating the meta (strong words, but that’s what we do). No more eUnkar/eThrawn, ePoe/eMaz, or Rainbow Nines. We must forge ahead and find new ways to “break” the game!

Upgrade Replacement

Now each player may only replace an upgrade once per round. This does not mean a player cannot play an upgrade if there are three out, however. If a character has three upgrades and the player has already replaced once this round, the player can discard an upgrade and pay full cost to play another one.

Now Nines has even more to be angry about!

It seems like the main reason they did this was to counter Nines, Rey, and various other action and damage cheating characters from overwhelming players into stagnation (yeah I’m gonna keep using this word, deal with it!). Also hopefully this speed reduction will make the game a little more interesting mid and late game, but who knows? Most of the decks I have played lately are mid or late game decks! No one ever said I was good at this game…haha

Discarding to Reroll

And for removing 3 dice in one turn.

They changed the wording on discarding a card to reroll a dice, by saying you can discard a card to reroll any (including zero) of your dice. This is most likely a direct response to Empire at War’s card Running Interference being used with Sabine to combo-lock your opponent. Seems legit. I enjoy it because that combo was hard to play well against, and I am already bad enough as it is!

Card Eratta

We now have 4 more cards to try to remember different text for! You can feel my sarcasm, can you?

It’s a Trap no longer has Ambush and only let’s you only change up to two of your red dice to sides matching an opponents die.

Imperial Inspection now gets set aside after its effect triggers, making it a lot less annoying. Yeah I said it…

The most powerful artifact in the galaxy. It makes all of your attacks unblockable just by holding it!!

Vibroknife only makes the damage it’s die deals unblockable. If you modify with the vibroknife die, that damage is also unblockable. Which is a much more thematic effect if you ask me, which you may not have.

Heat of Battle now only turns two of yours and your opponent’s dice to damage sides. I never saw this card in action so I am gonna take FFG’s word for it.

Card Clarifications

Mostly all of the card clarifications are for EaW cards and are important ones:

You need to pay for Asoka’s upgrade dice as well as her character dice to ready her.

You have to declare an action before resolving a die with Kanan’s ability.

Jabba: Make them lose all their money! Bib: Master Jabba,  they get to choose what they lose. Jabba: Waaaaaaaaaagh!!

Either Hutt Ties option can be chosen regardless of whether the opponent have dice or resources to get rid of.

You can still deal damage to Magnaguard after it has 8 damage on it (good, The Best Defense target).

Port District does not trigger if you reduce the cost below 3 or play a card for free while you control it.

Random Other Stuff

Finally, we have the actual FAQ in which we got some pretty good questions answered:

Not even the bone chilling cold of Hoth prepared Solo for being frozen in carbonite.

You cannot Endurance a die taken with Prized Possession. 

You cannot use or replace a copy of a unique upgrade with itself to play for free and trigger any enter play effects it has. 

And most importantly Ascension Gun’s effect does away with Main Plaza! I’m sure that will matter later :P. 

I sure hope that was helpful! There is some other stuff that was clarified such as redeploy happening as a before interrupt, the clarification on how the queue works, and more inherent dice abilities, but I just chose the ones I found most interesting, the cool ones. If I messed something up or said something wrong, please comment! Time to jump… 


-Kyle

Leave a comment

Your email address will not be published.