We are extremely excited to be able to give the community yet another smattering of spoilers, guaranteed to give the theory-crafters and deck-builders out there something to chew on! Let’s jump right in to some round-table discussion on the rare and two uncommons FFG was kind enough to send our way.

REBEL TRAITOR

Agent Of Zion:

My initial reaction is a mixed bag. Everything from the point cost to HP ratio to the color and faction affiliation just demands comparison to the single-die version of Bala-Tik and Guavian Enforcer and if you squint just a bit at the point cost you can stack the Rebel Traitor up to our (mostly) gone but not forgotten Tuskan Raider.

Two damage sides at one and two seem to be in line for the cost, though the Enforcer and Raider both have a bit more to offer in the form of either modified or paid damage sides and Bala’s modified damage comes with his flagship reset ability. That being said, indirect damage is… Indirect, and while a resource and a shield side are par for the course I tend to somewhat ignore disrupt when crafting a team since I can’t really draw a straight line from disrupt to victory. Sometimes nice to have, but oftentimes it’s just a blank with a fancy symbol. Nearly every other example of indirect damage we have pushes the raw values up at point or resource cost as the trade-off for introducing opponent choice into your ability to dish out the pain, and building a competitive indirect damage only deck is probably out of reach for the first set featuring it so we have to look to the Traitors ability as our guiding factor.

The ability is pretty dang cool. It’s certainly thematic in forcing your opponent to be led into a trap like any self-respecting Traitor would hope, and we already have a very clear-cut example of usefulness. If I roll out a naked Rebel Traitor as my first action in a turn and force my opponent to roll out Maul in response, I can trade a comparatively weak die for his best die with He Doesn’t Like You and not be punished by Mauls ability. The tricky bit is in getting my opponent to either be in a position where he/she doesn’t have a choice on which character to activate, or I’m well-served no matter what the choice is. Trickiness abounds when facing off against characters with Guardian, perhaps nullifying the ability entirely or in some cases turning the Traitor’s indirect damage into direct damage. And I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that I really want to bait an opposing heavy hitter into getting slammed with a previously-primed Decisive Blow, or getting set up for a Battle of Wills more in my favor. The last two cases are really janky and unlikely to be competitive in any sense, but even something as simple as forcing Palpatine to activate prior to playing Rise Again can give you an edge where there wasn’t one. Unfortunately, I think he just falls short overall with the knowledge we have at the moment, but he will be itching in the back of my mind for a while.

Lasci:

Rebel Traitor is as tricky as you’d expect him to be, but I don’t know if trickiness necessarily wins games. The ability is quite cool and thematic, but I’m not sure if it ends up being impactful enough to regularly win you the game. Traitor’s dice are really underwhelming for his cost considering the damage sides are pretty much on par with or worse than what we could expect from other non-unique villain characters in the 7- to 9- cost range. Unless there ends up being an unforeseen combo piece that utilizes Traitor’s ability to resounding effect, I don’t foresee him gaining a slot over characters like Bala-Tik and Ciena Ree, which he is inferior to in every way.

Tacster:

This character can have some nice mind games but overall has some very weak damage sides. It might be interesting to try as a guardian character in a Phasma deck (surprise surprise) being able to eat a die and force your opponent to roll out another character instead of resolving damage (like a very specific running interference type play). If the timing works out right, being able to force an opponent to activate characters suboptimally, such as to prevent them from playing an upgrade, seems to be the best case scenario. I am not sure I will ever get around to trying the character though with all the other more interesting things in Legacies.

XeroHour:

If there’s a word I would use to describe Rebel traitor, it’s “weird.” I think this character has a lot of potential to really throw a wrench into the plans of your opponent. Forcing your opponent to activate a character as their next action is potentially strong, but only if they weren’t going to do so anyway. I feel like this will be especially strong when paired with a Red character so you can utilize this ability with a Tactical Mastery play to get a bunch of dice on the board and not allow your opponent to react by removing them. I think the question really becomes, “Is this better than a Guavian or Bala-Tik for the same cost?” Without seeing the rest of the set, I’d say probably not. I’m definitely interested to give this one a try and see how the ability can really mess with the opponent.

VANDALIZE

Agent Of Zion:

In keeping with the Disarm, Sabotage, and Confiscate tradition, yellow continues to be the color that Messes With Your Stuff (TM). Unfortunately, the card is still pretty niche. Rend is rather limited in what it can get rid of, but makes up for it by being free and true neutral. With Vandalize you can get rid of everything Rend does at any point, but at the cost of one resource and making your deck just a bit more vulnerable to Kylo2 or his newly spoiled Starfighter. The upside of being a “worse” Rend is the flexibility to trade a bad character die for an Imperial HQ, DH-17, or Maz’s Goggles which will feel great most of the time. Unfortunately, upgrades and supports costing two or more are still pretty likely to be safe. The cost of removing character dice commensurate with cost has a very steep curve, even things so compelling to remove like Second Chance are probably easier to deal with via traditional means like smashing damage into faces. If the five-die ranged damage decks have a place in the upcoming meta, Vandalize probably makes the cut simply by being able to get rid of Force Illusion for good effect, while also giving an escape plan if an opponents Holocron is threatening you with a bad day.

Lasci:

Vandalize is interesting, but I don’t know that itg ends up being a meta staple. I would be more on board with this card if it didn’t cost a resource, but that value is a bit inhibiting when you’re likely throwing out several potentially useful dice for a round just to get rid of one of your opponent’s. This card would also obviously be better if you weren’t forced to spend character dice to resolve the effect. I think Vandalize has its greatest impact as a psuedo-Rend that can also deal with Force Illusion, which has become a meta mainstay of late and likely won’t be leaving even if the Vibroknife nerf was rectified. I could see this fitting into some decks as a one-of tech card, but I don’t foresee it making an appearance in every deck unless Legacies features another baller 1-cost upgrade like Force Illusion.

Tacster:

I am glad to see a card like this come out. To me this feels stronger than Sabotage and also being the cheapest way in game to straight remove upgrades. The fact that force illusion is so prominent as it is, makes it so that this very well could see some competitive play. I do however see this being much stronger in control/mill style decks that don’t always resolve all of their character dice and it is probably a better alternative to disarm for mill decks as well. This is also the only solid upgrade/support removal card seen for the Legacies block so far and thus will be much more interesting in Trilogy formats.

XeroHour:

I think this card is decent, and is simultaneously better and worse than Sabotage. It’s better because you can get rid of upgrades as well as supports and it doesn’t cost you precious cards, but it’s worse because it requires you to give up your dice to do so. This means that not only do you lose out on potential damage, you also have top have already rolled out in order to use it. I think it will likely see more play than Sabotage because of its versatility and the fact that you don’t need to lose cards out of hand to do it. I will likely include this in most Yellow decks going forward as a means to slow certain things down. It feels especially strong in 5-dice decks since you’ll be able to get the maximum use out of it.

NO CHEATING

Agent Of Zion:

I love this card for a few reasons. As much as I love playing Han/Rey, I completely understand people’s angst at having to play solitaire against it and giving the entire field a silver bullet that isn’t totally dead in their deck against the rest of the meta is a pretty sweet deal. I get to have my fun by doing a bunch of unrespondable stuff, with the full knowledge that at some point you’re going to get to have your fun by dealing four or more damage out of hand for free! The gimmicky decks like Rey/Maz/Whoever also get hit by this, which is fair for much the same reasons. No Cheating indeed.

Resolving a Force Speed? Go ahead and take two. Playing Tactical Mastery? Two for you as well. You want to vomit a couple of ambush weapons out on the field to get the jump on me? You’re gonna pay for it. All reasons why this is such a solid card, which makes the game better simply by existing. It will force your opponent to consider cost/benefit of carrying out any number of lines of play they would previously do on auto-pilot and you can get paid off in spades when they don’t without totally obsoleting the Ambush ability.

Playing a Holdout Blaster still isn’t going to ruin anyone, and playing Partnership is still likely to be worth it because one damage out of hand isn’t going to be a make-or-break thing most of the time. But when the situation is tight and the stakes are high, whiffing on your Force Speed provided protected reroll turns into a serious decision point. One damage at the cost of a card out of hand isn’t bonkers, but can you afford to take two just to reroll again? Navigating that decision and a myriad of others like it is going to be one more area of game-knowledge that can separate players from the pack and I’m really excited to jump in with it.

Lasci:

No Cheating feels like a hard nerf to some Hero decks that didn’t necessarily need it. This seems to be targeting decks that utilize Rey1, My Ally is the Force, Force Speed, and Sabine. I think the intention is good; action cheating got severely out of hand in the Spirit of Rebellion meta and it’s good to know that we won’t have to play “PvE” games in the future. But I also I don’t think we’ve seen anything from Legacies that severely boosts the value of of any of the cards that benefited from action cheating, so I’m apprehensive about the timing of the card. That said, while No Cheating might completely negate the chance that Han/Rey will become a meta staple, the deck has already been out of fashion for quite some time and has proven to be more of a niche pick anyways. The most action cheating we’ve seen in Empire at War is playing two Ambush cards in the same turn. It’s entirely possible that No Cheating doesn’t actually do anything on release.

Tacster:

Fun card, glad it costs 0, and glad they have a somewhat punishing answer to lots of action cheating. I doubt this will see much real play as it is even more situational than rend but the threat of knowing its out there in case the meta shifts to decks chaining 2+ actions consistently is nice to have. For the meta across the last 6 months I don’t even think there was a popular meta deck that you would really feel compelled to run this card against. The most abused “cheating” methods involve character abilities outside of Rey and with the overwrite rule limit I think it is just extremely unlikely to see much outside of Rey doing at least 2 or more actions in a row consistently.

XeroHour:

I love this card. It’s a great answer to Rey1’s shenanigans, Force Speed chaining, and the newly revealed Three Steps Ahead (Legacies, 90) . While all of those will continue to be powerful, No Cheating will force your opponent to consider it when lining up those big plays. While I don’t think this will see play everywhere, it’ll be a good meta card if you know your meta has players to use action cheating en masse. It’s 0-cost makes it an ok addition in decks and it can be a really solid card to blindside your opponent with to finish off one of their characters.