Disney Interactive and Lucasfilm announced on Thursday the launch of a new update to its strategy-based mobile game Star Wars: Commander, putting a whole new spin on how players battle in the game.
The new update, called "Squad Wars," allows players to recruit troops and create a super squad that will battle against an enemy squad. In order to compete in this mode, players need at least 15 squad members, and each of these members need to be at least at headquarter 5 in the game.
The story line is that rebel squads are trying to take over operations at the planet Sullust, which is the new planet of ash and lava that has just been added to the game. Players must get their squad ready for battle and compete against a rebel squad.
The new Squad Wars gameplay is also expected to expand to other worlds already in the game, like the Hoth and Yavin 4.
The user starts the Squad War by organizing their team by choosing the members and clicking on "Find a Match." A good strategy is to mix the level of players to add to your squad so that it's easier for you to be matched against someone else's team with players who are at similar levels.
Players will create a temporary base on the volatile planet and edit their defensive layouts. It's the Commander's job to assign troops in their squad to defend bases.
During these large-scale battles, players can capture factory outposts, which will give the squad tactical offensive and defensive advantages. Each time a factory outpost is conquered, its defenses are upgraded. That makes recapturing the outpost a real challenge.
However, the squad must decide whether it's smarter to attack the enemy base to disable uplinks, or capture the outposts.
What's interesting is that there is a limited number of attacks each squad has, so each member will have to work their team to find out the best strategy for beating the opposing squad.
The winning team is rewarded with new Supply Crates.
Star Wars: Commander has been frequently rolling out new gameplay and features to the mobile game as of late. These included the debut of Maz Kanata from The Force Awakens, who brought with her new missions, but this only lasted for a limited time.
A more noteworthy update was the February release of Night Raids, the feature that added 24-hour day and night cycles to each planet so that players could participate in two Heroic Defense challenges per day.
Star Wars: Commander is available to download for free with in-app purchases through the App Store, Google Play Store, Amazon and Windows Store.
