Spring Cleaning - with an AT-AT!

Here we go – after the game mechanic and thematic disappointment that is the Shadow Collective Battleforce, I was very inspired to create a proper Battleforce through which the underworld in Star Wars is represented in a thematically and game mechanically interesting way.

Unlike the bland $1 store impression that is Shadow Collective, I’m going for something iconic here: Jabba’s Palace. The idea is to convey the flair of Jabba and his criminal lickspittles with units that don’t have a military feel, plus combine new unique advantages with new unique disadvantages.

The first of these is the corps unit of the new Battleforce: Jabba’s Henchmen. With the possible exception of the Gamorrean Palace Guards, Jabba does not maintain any structured, easily identifyable units. I wanted to insert this aspect both into the composition of the army and in how this particular ‘unit’ feels in the game. The idea quickly crystallised to develop the unit as a kind of buffet consisting of numerous personnel upgrades and heavy upgrades, in which each upgrade brings its own small features and advantages. The advantage is that you can – within a certain framework – tailor different corps units to a profile focused on ranged or close combat. The disadvantage is that the keywords here are not unit keywords, but weapon (or upgrade) keywords, which disappear with the loss of the respective figure and make the unit a bit more less effective with each loss than any other unit we have so far.