FFG announced a bunch of spoilers yesterday and we were so excited by some of the cards that we had to stop our presses just so we could talk about them. Today we’ll talk about Hero cards and neutrals while tomorrow we’ll finish up with villains.

Ahsoka Tano, Force Operative

NJCuenca: Somewhere, Luminara Unduli is crying. Not only does Ahsoka have more health she also has a better ability. Ahsoka’s ability seems like it could be broken but I think it will end up just being strong. The game needs to drag out quite a while for the ability to incredibly effective and if you’ve read Bobby Sapphire’s article yesterday you know that 12 health characters die in round 2 regularly.

I think she will most like be used at her 13 point cost. There you can slap an upgrade on her that will be better than her second starting die and thus you’ll create some value. The issue is that at 17 heroes don’t have much to pair her with. Qui-Gon and Luminara(HAHA Luminara!) come to mind but there you can have either Rey or Kanan(more on him in a sec) with two dice and I’d lean towards having an extra die than a sweet late game ability.

She’s still interesting at elite since you can play an incredibly aggressive deck that doesn’t play many upgrades at all or uses cards like Destiny to cheat them into play- In that situation you can ready her for 2 and then add an upgrade from your hand after you readied her. I foresee you wanting to overwrite the one upgrade in order to increase its power while still only having to pay an additional 1. The big issue here is that this sounds very much like FN except that it costs way more towards your character costs and at 17 points you can bet your buns that people will be chanting “Ahsoka must die.”

HonestlySarcastc: Firstly, we know how to say the name and spell it. BSaph just flips his lid every time I called if Ah-sho-ka. I like the card quite a bit. It has some crazy advantages and drawbacks to the ability but don’t we all dream of smashing out 8 damage with just our character die? We’ll be paying a resource per die rolled out, but if we hit a resource side then it evens out in the long run…. what i mean by that is that you get to see your roll prior to deciding to to pay to ready her. So let’s say you hit a 2 melee and a resource, you can gladly pay to ready her knowing that you’ll recover the resource and be able activate her again if you needed that resource to be used somewhere in the turn. She lends herself to some very powerful late game turns when rocking powerful upgrades. Crazy Master of the Council shenanigans will exist and she isn’t very good with cheap costing upgrades that you may not want to roll out twice. We’ll find out if she can hang with the current big dogs damage wise, but if you can find a resource engine or a way to max out her damage, this could be top tier.

Lightsaber Pull

NJCuenca: This card wins the flavor award of the week and its also a nice little addition to our deck building options. Now playing a suit of blue weapons that vary in situational power will be more palatable although taking an action is a bigger cost than most would care to admit. Still, now I get to play my beloved Luke’s or Kylo’s Lightsaber and draw it most games without having to put more than 1 in my deck.

Regardless of how good this card is people will definitely play it just because its got great flavor so we’ll know right away if the consistency is worth the card or if the cards it gets isn’t worth the action.

HS: Lightsaber pull is the first of it’s kind in this game with being a “tutor”. A “tutor” is a card that can search out other cards from your deck and tend to lend itself to making decks more consistent and capable of running a “tool box”. A “tool box” is exactly what it sounds like, you get a bunch of different options for the situation that will be at your fingertips. I could see this becoming a whole new FN-2199 variant card for searching up the best Blue weapon for the given situation, but luckily the best Blue Weapons all say Blue Character Only.

Shoto Lightsaber

NJCuenca: Its a 2 cost blue weapon which is something we haven’t had before. Padawans will gladly take this card and one will definitely make its way into most Lightsaber Pull decks just for consistency. Turning on the ability is what will make this card good but the question will be is that deck building constraint really going to drive a competitive deck? I’m thinking it won’t do it alone but this could be a nice complementary piece to a deck that wants a lot of blue upgrades/weapons. Maybe it’s time for The Power of the Force to shine? I sure hope so!

HS: I think that Shoto Lightsaber is a weaker Makashi Training. It saying Weapon is much more relevant for the tutor and specific characters, but the ability isn’t active until you “suit” up a character and how many times do we really believe we can activate and get that ability without being focused down. Great as a 1 of for the Tutor, as an additional melee 2 drop weapon for Nines decks, and for Padawans to rock for 1 cost. It might see play as an overwrite option for K2S0 to get the trigger also, but It leaves me wanting more.

Kanan Jarrus, Rebel Jedi

NJCuenca: FINALLY! Another aggressive mid cost character akin to Rey. It having a base 2 damage symbol at that cost without it being a pay side is actually power creep- think of Kylo and FN. We lose one of those character’s HP which seems fine when you consider his ability is really solid. The ability is like a fixed Fast Hands for his dice. This is great design since it will let your opponent interact with a die while still saving you action if they decide not to. This makes his focus sides more valuable than on most character since you’ll be able to focus into something else without having to use your normal action which will allow you to play around mitigation effectively. The question will then be for your opponent to either remove the more powerful die that currently doesn’t do anything or your focus. I know which side I want to be in that dilemma.

You’re going to see this card a lot because its cheap and can dish out a good bit of damage for its cost. I’m excited and I look forward to pairing him with Churrit and playing some sweet Force Misdirections. That probably won’t be the strongest thing you could do but my Chirrut dice are in too good of condition for my liking.

HS: Heroes are slowly getting the lower costed elite useable characters. This kind of shits all over the 18 point hero cards, but at least you can make 3 character decks now that aren’t all super squishy. I find the ability to be super interesting when combined with his focus side since you should be able to try to resolve a die, trigger his effect to resolve the focus and change the die you want to resolve, then resolve it. There could be a ruling where the die needed to be on a resolveable side first, but we’ll have to wait and see. Action “cheating” is here to stay, but it looks like they are at least making it “very specific” types of action cheating instead of having a myriad of options. This character is very good at speeding through your actions, so we’ll see where it takes us.

Training Remote

NJCuenca: This card also wins the great flavor award but its a worse card than Lightsaber Pull. This card seems slow and the upside isn’t high but maybe there’s a blue character deck that wants to go deep with supports? I’m not exactly sure what that deck looks like and its probably not viable. My big issue with the card is that for one resource you should be getting more especially if its something super slow like this. If the plus 2 modified side didn’t have a pay side then we’d have something but then it probably would be too good. Even if it had one more plus 1 side instead of the blank it still might not be good enough. If we’re speaking about the plus 1 sides you’d need 3 activations in order to break the usual 2 for 1 resource exchange that is the norm in SWDestiny(we covered this concept a few weeks ago if you didn’t get a chance to check it out.) With most games being decided around round 3 this might not even make up the value because of its double blanks. The pay side is interesting going long but 2 for 1 damage sides aren’t anything special. This being used for discard sides starts getting me more interested but it being limited to only blue character dice refrains me from getting too giddy.

HS: I HATED lure of power and thought it was garbage due to it costing 2 and not being an “ability” to cheat in with Holocron. This card however I like much more. I tend to play slower decks with tons of actions and this gives you a lot for the small cost. I’ll ignore the +2 for a resource since that is dependent on what we are resolving, but the +1 should be useful as long as we are expecting the game to be 3+ rounds. If you hit a resource side on a character die, then this can go and pay for itself. Flexible modified sides are an interesting concept and I really like that this only costs 1 and is a support so it isn’t susceptible to losing the die when a character dies.

At Peace

NJCuenca: This card isn’t remarkable but will be under consideration for Hero mill decks. Even there this is just a mid to late game card that might not even make the cut. It being Hero only will save us from having to try it in Villain which admittedly would have made it more interesting. Even there I’m not sure it would have been too strong.

HS: I dislike At Peace. 2 cost to not remove dice is a very high cost, especially when you take into account that it alters your own dice and that your opponent can discard a card to reroll their dice. Unless there is a combo card, I’d give it a 0/5 for regular, but if it costed only 1, it would probably be a premiere mill card.

No Surrender

NJCuenca: This kind of reminds me of an Unpredictable for only blue dice that you can only use offensively. Its super specific and unremarkable for an action plus a card. Still, this kind of effect isn’t available in blue so some funky combo deck might want it? This certainly won’t be high on my priotity list of cards to try.

HS: Being able to resolve the die is cool, but it has to be a Blue Character die AND be showing a blank. That sounds awful. 0/5. I’d rather use Roll On which is much better.

Thanks for Reading!