We got a few card spoilers this week from AMG. We sadly still don't know the cost of the squadron 5 Venator, but I am sure that a preview article is just around the coroner. So we are just going to do a hot take of each of the cards revealed and I will do a more in depth evaluation, once I get my hands on them and have a little bit of play time with them. I want to talk about the four new commanders first as I think some of the other card pair well with some of the commanders, so without further delay lets dive in.
Mar Tuuk
First up we have someone who is probably my new buddy and pal Mar Tuuk. For 28 points you get to add a die when attacking a hull zone with at least one shield remaining. This is a very interesting effect especially if you are double arching a single hull zone. Your opponent will want to make sure that hull zone has no shields remaining so as not to give you a free die on your second attack. This means they are a bit less likely to redirect or possible spend other defense tokens because well this first attack gets an extra dice so if you opponent braces all of a sudden even if they don't redirect they may still have shields left on that hull zone, and now they have an exhausted brace and given you an extra die on your attack meaning it is more likely now that they may need to discard the brace.
Mar Tuuk is not just about adding dice to your attack pool he plays mind games with your opponent and changes the way in witch defense tokens are optometry spent. Let say a hull zone has 4 shields and is double arced. This first attack comes in with 6 damage, normally this would be a brace redirect type a scenario, but now if they brace they will have shields left giving you a extra die on the second attack and two exhausted defense tokens so they simply redirect instead to bring the target hull zone down to zero shields to cancel your extra die on the second attack, but in the end more damage sticks to their ship. It is a lose lose situation for your opponent ether they give you an extra die on your second attack, or they let more damage stick to their ship on the first attack.
It is also important to not that the downside of having to cancel a die only happens when attacking a SHIP with no shields remaining not a HULL ZONE with no shields remaining meaning it will likely not occur, but because you get to choice the die that is canceled you can cancel a blank or unneeded accuracy so his drawback will be rare and even when it does happen its not terrible to play around and if an entire ship has no shields left you probably don't need that much damage to finish it off. Mar Tuuk will be an amazing commander as most separatist ships seam to want that double arc, and with how he can help you and play mind games with your opponent he is so interesting and might become my go to separatist commander.
Plo Koon
Plo Koon is an interesting commander so while a squadron is attacking at distance 1-3 of a ship you get a free accuracy. This is much nicer then it may first seam for several reasons. First squadrons that are low on health don't have to worry about getting killed to a potential salvo attack thus letting your squadrons stay in the fight a bit longer. Second if you get a crit you can lock up a single contain to make sure the crit triggers, this can be nice some crits can be really crippling. Third attacking evade ships with small dice pools like squadrons is annoying so looking up a single evade or an green evade to force the discard of a second evade can be quite handy. Lastly if you are attacking an un-shielded hull zone locking up a redirect can really hurt making sure the damage goes where it needs to. Its basically going to make your squadron's damage more easily stick and that is good.
His second ability basically gives all your adept squadrons Intel, sorry Kit Fisto. This makes it easier for you to get your bombers bombing what the need to be doing its a solid ability and plays very well into the new 1.5 squadron game. All and all Plo Koon is a soild squadron commander at a pretty cheap price point and he is going to see time at the table for that.
Admiral Trench
Admiral Trench, Trench is like the weird love child of Peitt and Thrawn, two imperial commanders I really like, but I am a bit skeptical about Trench. First his price at 36 points makes him one of the most expensive commanders in the game. On top of that cost you need a way to get tokens onto ships, so by this point you are spending more around 40ish points total for him by including token generation tech. With Thrawn you just get the dial no questions asked with Trench you need a matching token to get the dial, and sure you are refunded the token in that you get the token+dial effect, but again its more work to get this to trigger at a higher cost. Trench does get 4 dials as opposed to Thrawns 3, so he does have that going for him.
To really make him work you are going to need to really plan ahead and you are going to want high command ships so they can stock up on tokens. He also would get better if the separatists had a token changing effect to make things a little easier, but again that's more points. I also think you need to justify since you will be taken token generation tech with Treeach why are you not just putting a T-series tactical Droid on your ships that need extra commands and take another commander to give you a different befit?
I think Trench can work, but his builds are going to be very specific, and he needs to be triggering on two ships on almost every round he is being used to be worth it. His ability is undoubtedly good, but after everything you invest into him in order to make him work is he going to be able to compete with other commanders? I will have to give him a go to really get a feeling for that.
Admiral Yularen
Admiral Yularen, So he is very simple if you use a squadron token in a squad command you activate 1 additional squadron. So you get to push more squadrons so that is nice. He also gains the ability to repair squadrons with an engineering command restoring 1 hull for every 2 points spent. Again very nice keep squadrons from getting killed an that will help increase your MOV, and can keep squadrons in the fight for longer at the cheap price point of 24 points.
I am personally pretty excited about Yularen his ability to give squadron tokens the ability to activate 2 squadrons in place of one can be very nice especially if you want to create small and cheap pocket carries using the Pelta or Consular. However why I personally think he is going to be insane on is the squadron 5 Venator. So with Yularen you can get up to 7 squadrons, then add in expanded hanger bays that brings your to 8 total squadron pushing power. Pushing 8 squadrons in a single activation is insane! That mean in most every list with Yularen and a Venator-II that single ship can push your entire squadron wing, presumable with cards like flight controllers making them even more dangerous. The ability to pack so much power into one single activation is absolutely incredible. Then you have a few other ships fly around with engineering commands to repair your squadrons, partially if you have torrents with reserved hanger decks wow. You do have to consider how you are getting the squadron token for the Venator-II, but once you get that tied down your single Venator activation is going to hurt and do so much in a single activation, I am very excited about Yularen.
That is the commanders so lets dive into the other cards we got, first up Passel Argente
Passel Argente
So for 6 points and if you play him right on turn 4,5,6 your ship gets a free command dial. You are going to want to play a bit of slower game with this guy having the main engagement happen on turns 4 and 5 to get the most value out of him. I also think he can pair well with Trench in you play slow reveal commands mostly just for token and then on turns 4,5,6 that supper ship gets 3 commands while your other ships get 2. I am not sold on this Idea, but its something I want to try. I think he can work if you play a very specific way.
San Hill
I have had some success hyper wave signal boost, I am just not really sold on San Hill. Most the time you want to activate squadrons in the ship phase not squadron phase because your squadrons will get hit by other squadrons that activate in the ship phase. He might be okay in a list with 8 vulture droids that are just there to tie up squadrons and you wont activate in the ship phase, so you get a nice drop on any un-activated squadrons in the squadron phase, but I think there are better options for tactics like this, and its not even that great of a tactic anyway, you are likely just going to give this card a pass.
TI-99
I actually really like TI-99. You should only trigger his ability when your squadron would die from an attack. if you have a screen of vulture droids if they get hit before they are activated and die well you are still getting a counter 3 out of them. You could also use him on squadrons you never intend to activate just use them to screen ships from fighter attacks and always trigger it and its still almost as if they where being activated. I think he is a solid pick in a list running a screen of 6 or so vulture droids.
Tikkes
Tikkes, is amazing with pretty much no downside. I mean sure you have to set your command to the command you revealed that turn, but if you are spamming nav or squadrons or cycling through the same 2 commands anyway he Is just a free command token for that ship every turn. I really cant say much more about him 6 over the course of a game with no downside when you plan well for only 2 points is amazing value.
Clone Commander Wolffe
Clone Commander Wolffe, this guy gives squadrons the assault keyword when you activate them that is okay. My problem with assault is that it is hardly ever worth the sacrifice of damage for the raid token with a few exceptions like a ship with Wat Tambor. His second ability is a bit more interesting in that when you active a squadron with the PRINTED assault keyword they can also spend accuracies to resolve the assault effect. This will pair exceptionally well with Plo Koon commander, however the republic has no fighters with the printed assault keyword, so until that happens, hopefully in the next wave, this card is going to be in the binder. However assault with him and Plo Koon will not be fun to deal with.
Ahsoka Tano
Ahsoka Tano, she gives up to 3 squadrons you activate snipe depending on their anti squadron armament, up to snipe 3. Snipe is very nice for killing things behind escort. I however think this is better used to let bombers contribute to the anti squadron fight without getting locked up in engagement, practically the slower ARC-170's. With Snipe the ARC's hit the squadron battle at the same time their speed 3 counter parts do while staying out of engagement so that they can bomb ships in the next round. I personally think this is the best way to use here of course it can always be nice to snipe with a V-19 with swarm re-rolls as well so there is some flexibility their.
Adi Gallia
Adi Gallia is a weird card but she acts like a second redirect. Let say you take 6 damage you have 3 shields on each side and no shields up front that is being targeted and you don't want to discard your exhausted brace on your Venator. You spend redirect salvo contain, because you can redirect 3 damage to one side and thanks to Adi Gallia you can also redirect 3 more to the other side meaning you take no hull damage. She will make it a lot easier for ships to take full advantage of all their shields even if they only have 1 redirect. For 3 points that's pretty nice.
Clone Captain Silver
Clone Captain Silver can do two things for you, make easy for your black dice carriers to get into black dice range and then get out without worrying about flying off the table, and make the black dice consular sit in the back and pounce when it needs to. I have had really great success with the black dice consular and ex-racks with just a single con fire token for a re-roll, adding in a con fire dial getting 7ish damage fairly consistently that is pretty darn mean for only a 41 point cost ship. With Silver you cost 45 but you can stay at speed one them jump to wherever you need to be its nice however a nav command and good use of swift return can get nearly the same effect. With the black dice carriers it lets you squad command while still getting the speed adjustments you need to get in and out without flying off the table, I think this is his main roll.
If their was any doubt that the Republic was going to be a major squadron powerhouse I think we can put that to bed. It was also speculated that the larger card size would allow for more complex cards to come out without the text becoming to small, this also seams to be true, from what we have seen. I will also add my own bit of speculation before things transferred to AMG I recall someone saying they wanted to be able to let people pick up a single faction and roll with it, because of this I think all upgrade cards that come in ship expansions will be faction or era locked like swivel mounts. This is just speculation, so I could be wrong. I think we have a preview of ships just around the corner in the next week or two so that is something to be excited about. What do you think of the new cards, and how will you use them? Until next time see you next week.
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