The Votes Are In!

In early July we announced that we would be introducing a reprint list, and invited everyone to vote on the cards they would want to see standard legal again. To recap:

As a way to spice the meta up in between set releases, and to carry the legacy of the hard work of FFG forward, we are instituting a “Reprint List” which is a list of 100 cards which will be considered standard legal.

Moving forward, this list will be updated upon release of every regular set, and at the half-way point between set releases. Our intention will be to update it in ways that free up design space in our sets without reinventing wheels (Flank, Logistics), to include many niche cards which are hard to justify space for (Take Cover, Confidence), to shore up lagging Color/Faction combinations, and to throw some interesting curve-balls at the playerbase.

Starting on 01SEP2021, the cards most voted on (with twelve exceptions and one flagrant abuse of power) by the SWD community will be standard-legal until the release of ARH-4, at which point the contents of the list will be altered to fit the needs of the time.

We want to drive that point home, again and again. The Reprint List is a living, changing document, and will be maintained by our team moving forward based on the needs of the meta. The cards contained within today are not permanent, and cards left out are not necessarily gone forever.

We want to extend our gratitude to everyone who took the time to vote on the first list, this will certainly be a meta-shakeup and we are excited to see what comes about!

What Does Sanity Checking Mean Anyway?

In a nutshell, it means we did some faction and color balancing to the straight up votes, then scrubbed for anything that would be a clear and obvious balance concern. For anything not clear and obvious… Well, that’s up to the community to find and exploit.

Faction balancing is important for game health. Providing Villain with more options than Hero in straight numbers of cards would lead to meta stagnation, moreso even than if the options given to both factions were imbalanced in power level.

Color balancing is very similar, though not exactly equal across the board. Color mixing in deckbuilding is, and will always be attractive so we didn’t enforce as much strictness in each card subtype for color fixing.

When doing this, the overwhelming majority of replacement cards came from the next-most suitable card in vote count to keep the community wishes intact to the greatest extent possible. In every instance where we deviated from what was voted on, you will have an explanation.

Battlefields – 7 Cards

Top Votes: (Highest 93, Lowest 41)

Bendu’s Lair
Emperor’s Throne Room
Obi-Wan’s Hut
Weapons Factory Alpha
Outer Rim Outpost
Theed Royal Palace
Comm Tower

Faction Balancing: N/A

Color Balancing: N/A

Sanity Checking:

Theed Royal Palace – History has proven that this battlefield is far and away the superior choice for nearly all decks in nearly all situations, removing the vast majority of strategic meta or deckbuilding choices. Replaced with Carbon Freezing Chamber. Carbon Freezing Chamber was not the next most voted BF, that was Rebel War Room. But CFC was very close behind, and is vastly more interesting.

Final List:

Bendu’s Lair
Emperor’s Throne Room
Obi-Wan’s Hut
Weapons Factory Alpha
Outer Rim Outpost
Comm Tower
Carbon Freezing Chamber

Plots – 3 Cards

Top Votes: (Highest 67, Lowest 50)

Armored Reinforcement
Double Down
Solidarity

Faction Balancing: N/A

Color Balancing: No real point here with just three plots.

Sanity Checking:

Armored Reinforcement – The obvious concern of the three. Our belief is that characters themselves have improved enough across the board to give many decks, even those without access to DM a decent chance against AR.

Final List:

Armored Reinforcement
Double Down
Solidarity

Characters – 15 Cards

Top Votes: (Highest 77, Lowest 37)

Aayla Secura
Yoda
Mother Talzin
Iden Versio
Darth Vader (ATG)
Luke Skywalker (WOTF)
Tarkin
Snoke
Captain Phasma (2PG)
Rex
Greedo
Battle Droid
DJ
Doctor Aphra
Lando Calrissian (ATG)

Faction Balancing: Removing Doctor Aphra, DJ, and Battle Droid. Adding Cassian Andor, Zeb Orrelios, and Obi-Wan-Kenobi (LEG)

Color Balancing: It is our belief that one influencing factor in votes for characters was in which color/faction combinations need additional options. By color balancing characters, a lot of fidelity and desires from the playerbase are lost. Therefore it will not be done.

Insanity Checking: Agent Of Zion has decided to jump Dryden Vos from the depths of the vote chart to the reprint list because quote: “That dude is fucking hilarious”

Final List:

Aayla Secura
Yoda
Mother Talzin
Iden Versio
Darth Vader (ATG)
Luke Skywalker (WOTF)
Tarkin
Snoke
Captain Phasma (2PG)
Rex
Greedo
Lando Calrissian (ATG)
Cassian Andor
Zeb Orrelios
Obi-Wan Kenobi (LEG)
Dryden Vos

Supports – 15 Cards

Top Votes: (Highest 68, Lowest 35)

It Binds All Things
0-0-0
Bubble Shield
Senate Chamber
Hailfire Droid Tank
Vader’s Fist
Tech Team
Millennium Falcon (LEG)
Resistance Crait Speeder
Deja Vu
Backup Muscle
BT-1
R2-D2 (LEG)
Dex’s Diner
Count Dooku’s Solar Sailer

Faction Balancing: Dropping Solar Sailer, adding BB-8 (ATG)

Color Balancing: Blue is very unrepresented here, which makes sense because Supports as a concept have never been part of Blue’s core identity. This will not be performed here, though Blue will get a bit of preferential treatment in the upgrade category as that is where their core identity shines.

Sanity Checking:

Vader’s Fist – If anyone ever kept a shortlist of specific cards that caused the most hate and discontent among the entire playerbase, Vader’s Fist would be near the top. This bad boy needs to sit out a while longer. While there are no other Blue Villain supports which are deck-defining there is a yellow one with that potential. Firespray-31 added, in contrary to vote counts.

BT-1 / 0-0-0 – It is very possible that the high level of people who voted for them did so alongside Doctor Aphra, who is not being reprinted at this time. That being said there aren’t really any problems with them and they still appear to be quite strong and interesting with the new Aphra.

Final List:

It Binds All Things
0-0-0
Bubble Shield
Senate Chamber
Hailfire Droid Tank
Tech Team
Millennium Falcon (LEG)
Resistance Crait Speeder
Deja Vu
Backup Muscle
BT-1
R2-D2 (LEG)
Dex’s Diner
BB-8 (ATG)
Firespray-31

Upgrades – 20 Cards

Top Votes: (Highest 75, Lowest 39)

Dagger of Mortis
Shoto Lightsaber
X-8 Night Sniper
Ancient Lightsaber
Heirloom Lightsaber
Darth Vader’s Lightsaber
Handheld L-S1 Cannon
Force Jump
Hidden Blaster
Maul’s Lightsaber
Holdout Blaster
Dorsal Turret
Crossguard Lightsaber
Luke Skywalker’s Lightning Rod
Ezra Bridger’s Lightsaber
Chance Cube
Grand Moff
Rey’s Lightsaber
Rex’s Blaster Pistol
Force Illusion

Faction Balancing: Actually balanced off the rip, moving to color balancing with an eye to keep faction balance intact.

Color Balancing: Blue is far and away the heavily weighted color. As indicated before it will stay that way to an extent but yellow could use a bit of help. Removing Force Illusion, Rey’s Lightsaber, and Ezra’s Lightsaber. Adding Darksaber, Mandolorian Vambraces, and Maz’s Goggles.

This leaves villain with just one more card here than hero, which is nice.

Sanity Checking:

Chance Cube – Big money is always going to be attractive, and ultimately we just can’t see any reasonable way this can be in the same format as Reap. When legal, Chance Cube had to be focused, generally allowing at least two actions of opportunity to be removed. Reducing that to just one in any deck running yellow poses significant balance problems, particularly in Big-Little villain decks. There is no equivalent replacement of any type so we looked toward giving a bit of help to underserved archetypes in red or yellow, and feel that Cunning may be interesting.

Ancient Lightsaber – This one is a tough nut. The die is quite acceptable, but the healing effect makes hero shield walls just that much tougher. Ultimately it was so highly voted we’re going to leave it in and see where things are, especially with the Dagger and Hidden Blaster back in action.

Final List

Dagger of Mortis
Shoto Lightsaber
X-8 Night Sniper
Ancient Lightsaber
Heirloom Lightsaber
Darth Vader’s Lightsaber
Handheld L-S1 Cannon
Force Jump
Hidden Blaster
Maul’s Lightsaber
Holdout Blaster
Dorsal Turret
Crossguard Lightsaber
Luke Skywalker’s Lightning Rod
Grand Moff
Rex’s Blaster Pistol
Darksaber
Mandolorian Vambraces
Maz’s Goggles
Cunning

Events – 40 Cards

Top Votes: (Highest 92, Lowest 37)

Pacify
Beguile
Hidden Motive
Entangle
Bait and Switch
Logistics
Doubt
Ataru Strike
Friends in Low Places
The Best Defense
Into The Garbage Chute
Overconfidence
Electroshock
Fear and Dead Men
Probe
He Doesn’t Like You
Field Medic
Hasty Exit
Tactical Mastery
Crash Landing
Loth-Cat and Mouse
Easy Pickings
Lightsaber Pull
Flank
Act Of Cruelty
Loth-Wolf Bond
Well-Connected
Conflicted
Truce
Vandalize
Riposte
All In
Scruffy Looking Nerf-Herder
Isolation
Hit and Run
Witch Magick
Adapt
Deflect
Rebel Assault
First Aid

Faction Balancing: Hero has a very slight edge, dropping First Aid, adding Rise Again.

Color Balancing: Red drew the short straw here. Removing Rise Again, Deflect, Adapt, and Sruffy Looking Nerf-Herder. Happily, this also brings our faction balance into line when we add First Aid, Dug In, Pinned Down and Scorched Earth. This leaves Blue with one less than Red and Yellow, but the ubiquitousness of Hidden Motive makes this acceptable.

Sanity Checking: This is a significant amount of busted cards omg what are we doing? Destiny’s Greatest Hits, but on the other hand the playerbase has been bemoaning the loss of many of these mitigation pieces. No single one of them is an issue in and of itself though, and we feel that pushing and pulling on packages of these cards would get too far away from the spirit of community voting, though by the next update you should count on this portion looking very different than it does right now.

Final List

Pacify
Beguile
Hidden Motive
Entangle
Bait and Switch
Logistics
Doubt
Ataru Strike
Friends in Low Places
The Best Defense
Into The Garbage Chute
Overconfidence
Electroshock
Fear and Dead Men
Probe
He Doesn’t Like You
Field Medic
Hasty Exit
Tactical Mastery
Crash Landing
Loth-Cat and Mouse
Easy Pickings
Lightsaber Pull
Flank
Act Of Cruelty
Loth-Wolf Bond
Well-Connected
Conflicted
Truce
Vandalize
Riposte
All In
Isolation
Hit and Run
Witch Magick
Rebel Assault
First Aid
Dug In
Pinned Down
Scorched Earth