Last week, ARH released an article outlining more plans for Organised Play, with a focus on In Real Life events. We thought we’d have a look at what’s been covered:

First up, Game Night Kits:
ARH have released game night kits for general sale. Each kit contains 6 copies of Taron Malicos and 12 copies of four non-character cards: Electrohammer, Rallying Cry, Unending Hate and Force Affinity, meaning this is effectively a 6 person kit. The card choices are good ones: they’ve got their three Faltering Allegiances cards which saw late errata, and they’ve got two strong Redemption cards. They’ve also used a FFG-style quarterly kit logo, turned on its edge, which is a nice touch.

The card choices bode well for the future. I thoroughly approve of printing cards which have seen errata, and if we do see any further Redemption errata these are likely to make it into kits. The Pirate Loyalist and Ultimate Heist errata were very early, so I would not expect these to be in kits, as most people will have printed cards after these changes (in the same way that ISB Agent, Planned Operation, Selling Intel and Extremist Campaign have not seen an inclusion here).

I also like the card distribution. As these are not skewed in any way, and the price for these is very reasonable (around $3-5 pp for a set, including postage, depending on the size of the order) I think you could expect to earn a complete set as a participation prize in an event.

One interesting point is that as these are available for general sale, ARH have left it up to the community to use these as they wish. FFG kits by contrast had to be earned. Yes, some people had friends in game shops who could hook them up, but the majority of us had to earn them or buy/trade them with friends who had surplus. The response to these kits was overwhelmingly positive, but I think it may prove tricky for tournament organisers to use these kits as prize support as a large number of the competitors may have already bought themselves sets.

It would be logistically complex, and unnecessary, to gatekeep these kits as FFG did. However, I think I would like it if, once IRL events start getting up and running again, these sets could be announced prior to them going on general sale. That way tournament organisers could set up an event and declare these as prize support before half their entrants go out and buy themselves a copy. It would make it easier for TO’s to gauge interest and it would mean people would be less inclined to buy themselves a copy, if they knew there was an event coming up which they could go to in which they would earn a set. But it would still mean that local groups without a bricks-and-mortar shop could still get a set for their own game night.

Regardless of the implementation, I think this set looks great and the fact that these are for general sale shows a strong support for the local scene.

Proxies
We discussed the issue of proxies in our OP article last month. ARH have addressed this issue, and here’s a summary of what they’re going to allow:

ARH Cards:
Proxies can be used, so long as these cards are indistinguishable from other cards when shuffling/drawing, and so long as they are a printed ARH design.

ARH dice:
At premiere level events, you must use stickered or printed dice. At local level, proxies will be allowed, so long as these are uniquely identifiable e.g. different coloured standard D6 dice, with a matching die left on the card to keep track of which is which.

FFG Cards and dice referenced by ARH:
Cards like X-Wing (referenced on Ackbar) and E-Web Emplacement (referenced on 501st Assault Squadron), and their corresponding dice, plus dice such as Medical Droid (referenced on Redemption), will need to follow the guidelines above for ARH cards and dice.

FFG Cards not referenced by ARH:
The original FFG cards should be used, but an exception has been made only for Covert Missions at local level, under the discretion of the Tournament Organiser, owing to supply issues in some areas.

This does mean that if you want to play highly sought after cards like Niman Mastery, even at a local level, you need to have the original FFG card. However, I do not envisage this being a problem as those few players who don’t have all the cards they’d like to build their deck should be able to borrow such cards from fellow players.

Here’s a further summary of these guidelines, with green meaning allowed, and red meaning not allowed. FFG cards and dice are always allowed:

These guidelines are very similar to what we wanted to see. I’m not a huge fan of allowing un-stickered D6’s at all, but I understand that it does improve inclusivity, and hopefully the majority of players are likely to have stickered or printed dice anyway. I would like it, if someone were to bring an unlabelled D6 to an event, that they also brought a printed out dice reference to make it easier to see what symbol was meant to be showing on their dice:

And finally:
Next weekend, the first of the Galactic Open Weekends gets underway. Here are a reminder of the times:
GO I: 20 March 11am-4pm GMT (7am-noon US EST/10pm-3am Australian ET)
GO II: 20 March 7pm-midnight GMT (3pm-8pm US EST/21 March 6am-11am Australian ET)
GO III: 21 March 4pm-9pm GMT (noon-5pm US EST/3am-8am Australian ET)

We did a review of these events in our Organised Play article last month. If you want to read that again, click the following image showing some of the stunning spot glosses on offer:

ARH promised that there would be 12 characters, 4 plots and 3 battlefields on offer. They spoiled one plot on their discord, and On The Sensors spoiled the other one in one of their videos (click the plot images below to see the OTS video):

Now it’s our turn for spoilers. ARH have kindly gives us these two amazing battlefields to spoil for everyone:

Well, it had to be Hoth didn’t it? I picked up the old FFG Echo Base spot gloss a while back, and I’d love to get my hands on these two. They both use artwork from the Star Wars Battlefront game series, and look pretty amazing. Thank you to ARH for letting us share these here.

If you want to earn any of these, you’ve got to be there next weekend (click the links above). Good luck everyone, and looking forward to getting to roll some dice with some of you in real life soon.

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