We are revising the good the bad and the ugly series, for thoughts just joining us for the first time you can check out the past wright ups in this series on this blog to get a better idea of what this series is about, in short is is evaluation of cards I don't see to often that are ether "good" as in you should highly consider using them or "bad" you should never use this card, however it might have a niche use, and "Ugly" is a card you may want to consider in some of your lists. I still have a lot of cards to go though, however I am still focusing on cards that are rarely seen, or at least out here in our community, so lets dive right in. The Good
Hondo Ohnaka
So this is a guy that I just think is super underrated. A lot of people say that he helps your opponent and so that is why they don't take him, but you get to pick the two tokens first so you can leave your opponent high and dry when it comes to what tokens they get especially if the ships they really want to give the token to already has a copy of said token, or if for example they have no squadrons, or they are a msu fleet so an engineering does almost nothing for them, etc. If I had to tell you my favorite thing about Hondo, well it's really a simple thing, but it really is quite powerful, you can use him to still pass out tokens from a comms net flotilla and still push squadrons on that key turn, its small, but more powerful than you would expect for 2 points. He also has the plus of if you are running a Fleet command upgrade since he triggers in the ship phase you can trigger him before you trigger the ability to trigger your fleet command upgrade to spend the token so he give you the insurance on helping you get that fleet command off as much as possible. Another interesting side note is that you can use him to give a comms net flotilla the token and the ship can pass that token to the same ship that received the other Hondo token. Hondo also helps push that little bit of extra value out of your ships such as you have an engineering coming up and you use Hondo to also get a token so you can really maximize your healing output, or you could have a squadron command coming up and being able to activate one more squadron than normal can be quite powerful, or you really need to make sure this attack kills a ship here is a con fire, you can get quite the jump on your opponent with a navigate token and command, or jump out of trouble or maybe you need to slow down/speed up and don't have a token or command Hondo this there for you. While you could say well just a comms net could do that for me, yeah but you have to activate the comms net first, and hondo gives you flexibility in activation while still getting the advantage of the token given. While the comms net ship still gets command for itself or to pass off. He just makes the life's of you comms net flotillas that much easier, helps you get a Fleet command off without discarding it, and can help you leverage a small advantage into a big one. The big thing with Hondo is you have to get more value out of him than your opponent, and you have some control over that, and because you can plan when Hondo will be used to best suite your advantage this should be something that can be accomplished, almost every time you use him. The biggest downside to him is he competes for the officer slot, but if you got an empty officer slot, he is really not a bad choice, and is better than a lot of other officers we could take. The Bad So I think its time to break down what I personally feel is the worst card in the game, again we will look for a redeeming quality like we always do, but it is quite hard to find it in this one but I will do my best. Director Isard.
So I want to look at her text really quick “when you reveal a command, you may look at all command dials assigned to 1 enemy ship.” personally when I was a new player this seamed really cool to me like I can know what my opponent is doing or going to do that is great, but in practice she is just bad, why well lets look.
So Isard lets us see what is going on with one ship our opponent is going to use, the problem arises that as you learn the game more you can anticipate the other players commands. You can even look at an opponents fleet and see that yes they have lots of squadrons so I should expect squadron commands form these ships this game, almost every turn. You can look at a ships load out and say oh this ship really wants to do this command so they will most likely do that almost all the time. Isard also loses value if you don't have a command 3 ship to look at all its dials for as much information as possible, she also loses value as the round progresses because more dials get revealed so you gain less information, and thus she has less value, so you are almost forced to activate her ship as early as possible in the round to get the most value out of her. So because you can anticipate in most cases the other players commands she is really only good at helping you catch that unexpected command, but how important is it the end of the world if you thought your opponent had a navigate but has a con-fire, its probably not and even if Isard got you that info what are you going to do about it? Really the best information she can give you in my opinion is dose my opponent have a squadron command on turn 2 or 3, can I alpha strike without fear of retaliation, and even then, its not that pivotal, just plan as if you opponent is going to do exotically what you don't want them to do, because that is probably what they are going to do.
So I have given this card a hard time, however there is kinda sorta maybish a place for Isard and that is on a slicer tools Gozanti. A lot of the time when a Gozanti slices it puts itself in a vulnerable position, and you can use Isard to determine if the slice is worth putting the Gozanti in harms way, but again you almost always know the ship you want to slice, because you know what command that ship is going to have. As stated before, she might get you some value at the start of round one so you can look at a command 3 ships dials to get a better idea how the initial engagement will pan out, but its a big might. I just struggle to find even an okay use for Isard, and even with most bad cards I can do that, even the slicer Gozanti is very subpar, just take a different officer, I mean her best use is to act as Fodder for Vader when the SSD comes out and she is still bad at that because there are cheaper and better options, for that role.
The Ugly.
Nav Teams
The Ugly category is always my favorite one to do the wright up on, not necessarily bad cards, but niche cards that have a place, but need to be built around, or have a card that is more expensive that out performs it, but might be worth taking because its a little cheaper than the better card, and this weeks is not different, Nav Team. So in essence Nav teams just makes it so you can add a yaw with your tokens instead of increasing or decreasing speed, and well that could be quite handy, however it is out performed by Engine techs in almost all cases, but it has places that it can shine in, it just needs to be built around. So we could say something like this:
Arquitens Command Cruiser (59) • Wulff Yularen (7) • Nav Team (4) = 70 Points
So this is interesting in that you can always get an extra click on the Arquitens, and still con fire, you could also do the same thing with Tarkin and Engine techs, but Tarkin is not cheep, you could always drop Wulff and have Darth Vader as you commander get a nav token save it for a rainy day and con fire with Vader rerolls. Now that Demo can't engine techs then shoot, you can put nav teams in that slot and with a comms net flotilla, you can do some pretty crazy things add in JJ you can get double clicks on all yaw values at speed 3 makes you insanely maneuverable. On the rebels side we have the Liberty that would really like some yaw fixing with nav teams you get that without having to take Madine, you need a way to keep nav tokens on the guy, but coms net along with other token upgrades on the rebels side does not make this to hard. Nav Teams also has some interesting interactions with Leia as well, unfortunately Nav Teams is not cumulative with Madine's effect. So that's Nav teams if there is one thing I want to see more of it support slot upgrades, and more Ion cannon upgrades, tough in the mean time while I don't think Nav teams is a great upgrade, I think it might be worth considering in some lists if you have a few points to spare, but don't want to go full Engine techs. Its a nice cheepish card that can really increases ship maneuverability, and sometimes an extra click on a yaw, can do more for you than a change in speed. So its not amazing and wont go into every list, but I do think its a card that is very much forgotten, that could use a little more consideration in some lists. Thanks or joining me as I continue to explore lost, bad, and forgotten cards, and seeing how they are best used, and just how good some of these cards are that have fallen by the way side. What are some cards that you find have been forgotten, that maybe deserve some more play did I miss something in my analysis of these card let me know, and share your thoughts, and have a wonderful week.
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