Alright folks, let’s talk Rigged Detonators.

It's still dominate in the meta and a few years ago we got a flood of complaints. The Balance Committee made a call: remove Attacks and have only the Rigged Detonator save auto-fail. That was the intended nerf.

Unfortunately, even though we were clear about our intent at the time, the actual rules text that went out didn’t reflect that. The errata wording was bad—confusing at best, misleading at worst—and yeah, I wrote it. That one’s on me. Somehow it slipped past everyone.

Since then, a lot of us have been playing it the way it was meant to be played (only the Rigged Detonator save auto-fails—you can still roll Armor, Shield, etc.). But others stuck with the stricter interpretation the bad wording suggested, where all saves auto-fail.

Now the Balance Committee’s at a crossroads: do we fix the wording to match the original decision, or do we just lean into the errata and make the harsher version official?

Personally? I’m over Mira, but that’s just me. Before we lock anything in, we want to hear from you—the players. Let us know how you’ve been playing it, what feels right, and what you’d rather see moving forward.

I would rather see RD be less powerful, rather than more powerful. I think that auto-failing a grenade/missile/mine save is fine, but then you should be able to roll your shield/armor/beskargam saves as normal.

So hypothetically, I guess it's possible, however unlikely, that a bunch of Elite Republic Commandos could be grouped together on low objects terrain, and conceivably take 0 damage if they made all their Shield 2 saves. But that's better than Shields being worth nothing. Statistically, it's most likely that they'd each take 10dmg per grenade (so 20 total if Mira threw 2 grenades and all shield saves were 50%).

I think strictly from a balance perspective Mira is fine as is (with Rigged Detonators affecting all armour saves but not working on her attacks). So it saves a "corrective" errata to just leave her unchanged, and after all the balance committee usually only acts when something is very over the top.

Bump for more views before we make a decision.

The balance committee had decided Rigged Detonators nerfing squads reliant on armor and shields was unnecessary and over the top. I can't speak for the majority but myself and several others have been playing by the issued errata. Since not everyone was playing by the same rules and it affects only certain games, I don't think you can say Rigged Detonators nerfing shields/armor is not a problem. We have little to no record of which games were played 'incorrectly' or which games were impacted.

Personally, I'd like to see Mira take a less prominent role and other squad types to be more relevant in the game.
However, either way, the most important thing is that we get a clear ruling that we can all follow.

I am one of the people who played by listed wording (ie you still fail armor saves and such) and in all the times I have played with or against mira, it has never come up where the other player thought it worked differently. Now I don't recall how many games I have played against someone with armor/shields/whatever, but I have played a decent amount of those characters that have it myself (motross, din, vader of lothal, inquisitors, etc), and I also don't recall how many times I might have played against mira with one of those squads, but it is pretty likely.

Also I haven't seen anyone asking on the forums how it works (until now) so it seems strange that over 3 years of games and two players who play it differently have not played (or had a disagreement about how it was played). That gives me some ideas about what has happened in the last 3+ years
1. Mira isn't that popular anymore (I don't think this is true)
2. Characters with armor aren't played (also not true IMO)
3. Players have played it by the "fail all saves" as it is worded on bloo and in the glossary and just didn't realize or know that armor was supposed to still work (this is what I suspect happened)
4. Mira hasn't played or used grenades against a character with armor (Highly unlikely but in theory possible)
5. Players argued about it at the time but no one bothered to post a question in the forums (also possible)
6. No one ever stood next to green while playing against mira (also possible but very unlikely)


Since we do not know how many games or which games or which scenarios might have occurred, it is probably just a bit easier to let her rigged detonators be awesome with her grenades (ie you fail all saves including armor) rather than having to basically twist the wording and the rules to make it so you fail the grenade specific save but not potential armor saves (not really sure what that wording would look like anyway) especially considering that she isn't the only one with rigged detonators.

Then going forward keep an eye out to see how often it even happens where she gets to grenade someone who also has armor who is also adjacent to green.

Because at this point, while mira is still good, I really do think that having it NOT work on the attack has brought her to a power level that isn't over the top but is still very competitive.

Not trying to be cheeky here, but there is no reason to "fix" the wording as it not incorrect. It does a thing and it works properly within the rules (at this point I am not even sure how the original designers of Zam intended the interactions to work)

Now, it could be nice if there was additional clarification in the glossary about what saves it specifically interacted with, but that is true for many, many abilities.

For instance, it would be nice if the Levitate glossary had the part from the FAQ where they ignore other characters while moving. I know that would have helped us from messing up a rule in a recent game I had.

And there are many, many more abilities that would be helped with additional glossary text (or maybe some other way to notate on particular rules interactions) as I am not sure we want to go around changing a bunch of glossary text (especially for WOTC abilities). But going through and editing a ton of glossary abilities or adding a bunch of text to a comment would be very time consuming for probably not a ton of gain (especially for the more obscure rulings/clarifications).

But hopefully we can get it squared away soon as the Chicago Regional is only a couple weeks away.

Furthermore, if this can't get squared away, I would suggest SUSPENDING (not banning) characters with RD until the balance committee can revisit this. As is, the maps are EXTREMELY warped to RD, which was NEVER my intention and I will look into changing them.

+1.