Preface

Over the past year or so I have often enjoyed my conversations with Sledge, the Territory Wars officer in my Guild and one of the leaders of The Empire Alliance, an alliance of 9 drama-free guilds that can serve and guide players of all types in SWGoH. I have often been impressed with his theory crafting, his strategic thinking for Grand Arena and Territory War match-ups and his knack for accurately predicting what is to come in Galaxy of Heroes. In fact, he has often predicted items I knew about from the GameChangers program that I wan never able to verify given the NDA that I signed with Electronic Arts. If I had to describe these moments I would say this – “Impressive. Most Impressive.” As a result I have asked him to start a new monthly The (Probably) Road Ahead column for Gaming-fans.com with the first edition below.

– LJ

SWGoH: The (Probably) Road Ahead – 02.18.19 @ 10:57 am ET

Some quick background: I am the TW lead for LJCool’s guild. I have made it part of my job to read the tea leaves on CG’s plans, and do my best to mitigate the cost of new legendaries, metas, and TW teams for the guild by predicting them long before we get another ridiculous puzzle. LJ asked me to give a rundown of what I think about CG’s current plans, and so in the hopes of saving everyone a bit of cash, here is what I believe we are looking at in the immediate future for CG:

1. We know the Separatist Droid rework is going to be complete next week, but as of this time, nobody really “knows” how good it will be. I see this faction very much like the Palpatine rework this time last year – a hard counter to the current meta, but just a blip on the radar compared to the upcoming meta shift. The droids are going to absolutely WRECK Revan, but I’d be surprised if they were as effective against a good Traya team.
2. The real meta will be the Old Republic Sith toon coming in March. Probably Darth Revan, possibly Malak, but I put a lot more stock in the former than the latter. For CG to make money on this event, it has to be a Journey level event, and Malak simply does not meet that standard. Instead, if we get him (and I think we will), he will be very much like Sion was for Traya. A marquee toon that is 100% necessary for the team’s full effectiveness. If you haven’t already gotten BSF and Canderous to 7*, get to work now. Carth and Juhani will be dropping into F2P locations on Wednesday. I fully expect HK-47 to get his own rework and the Old Republic tag for this event, and I have been preaching that to my own guild long before the most recent road ahead clue from Carrie.
3. Ships! CG has done their best to muddy the waters with the direction of ships in the future. Are we getting the Ebon Hawk? Are we getting the Malevolence, or even the Ravager? My money is still on the Malevolence, with an event that almost certainly requires a 7* Anakin to succeed (think Bossk in the Chewie event), but that being said, I am currently farming the Sith ships. I am doing this because a 5* Anakin can be farmed fairly quickly to 7* but two 4* Sith ships will take quite a while. When I get Sith Fighter to 6*, I will most likely switch off to Anakin and bring him to 6* as well (all the while continuing to farm Sith Bomber) so I am within striking distance no matter which way CG decides to go. Regardless of which capital ship CG chooses to release, it would be wise to have stockpiled as much prestige as possible. 1950 prestige, and roughly 16 million ship building materials are needed in order to max a capital ship from 0.
4. Territory Wars: CG has settled into a pattern – finally – that we can start to work around. We have several teams that get insane boosts, and these teams will rotate in and out of Territory Wars going forward. This is designed to extract as much cash out of whale guilds as possible. For the rest of us, it’s a roadmap to future TW efficiency. The teams we know right now are Ewoks, Troopers, Clones, and Jawas, plus individual bonuses for GG, Mace, and CUP. We can expect more new bonuses like this in the future, but at the same time, it appears these existing bonuses will stay in the rotation. For effective TW performance, we’re all going to have to farm and gear these teams.

Last year in the lead up to Sith Month, aka The Month of the Sith, I made some long-term predictions that we would get an early Sith counter to Rey, that the Sith would be eventually countered by Jedi, and then Separatists would get their turn. I am three for three, so allow me to peer once again into the future: following the separatist rework, and eventual Sith meta with Darth Whoever, the Very Expensive (never heard of him? I’m not surprised. It’s not a tale CG would tell), there will be very few factions that have not gotten somewhat recent reworks, and therefore fewer options for CG to extract cash from us. The most fertile ground I see is in the Galactic Republic, however we have been given almost all the toons necessary to have a Jedi Luke Skywalker Journey event also. I spent last year getting all my shards ready in either eventuality. I even got 7* on Ugnaught since he is a Bespin toon. One of these will occur mid-year, right around the time we get a new raid (or mythic raids with new rewards). Regardless of which path CG takes, the end of the year will be dominated by Resistance and First Order reworks, marquees, and almost certainly a Legendary and/or Journey event. For the long game there, you will definitely want to have seven stars on everyone, AND THEIR SHIPS. This means Rose too, unfortunately.

By Grand Admiral Sledge
Descendants of the Empire
Gaming-fans.com Staff Writer