Hey everyone! Today we are going to kick off a 5 article series where we ask each of our team members for their opinion on the best and worst characters, supports, upgrades, events and wild cards (plots, battlefields). Some might not be the exactly the best or worst but we might try to mix things up with top characters/upgrades/etc by including solid cards that maybe aren’t talked about as much.

Jack

Top Character

Padme – I can’t really express how excited she makes me. What do you want? 1 Focus, 2 focus, 3 focus or 1 indirect, 2 indirect, 3 indirect? We have all talked about how this set has brought us a lot of focus dice, and Padme lets us turn them around into damage. She obviously goes great with her ship for synergy and an extra shield a round. Also the downgrade Target Acquired or the support On The Mark can make her indirect sides direct. Her coming in at only 14 points is a great spot to be in too. Yoda/Padme with Armored Reinforcements gets me excited, or even exploring other 13 points options like Aayla and Maz. An early pairing I have been looking at as well is ePadme/eSatine/Gungan. 5 die start is a great thing and both Padme and Satine are strong characters. The trick will be how figuring out the 30 cards, how heavy do you lean into her focus ability and how much do you pack damage supports?

Bottom Character

Dengar/Ezra – So in reality, Ezra has to be the worst right? You could probably pick a non-unique but Ezra just seems bad. In an effort to not just state the obvious I am going to go with Dengar. A 1/2/1 for damage isn’t exciting and sure he could push out more with bounties on an opponent but no bounty excites me. Maybe Enticing Reward. I think Dengar can go up in value as stronger bounties get printed but until then I don’t see him packing much of an impact on the game. I think the most frustrating thing is how much Yellow Villain revolved around him (Fire Blade, Bounties and Punishing One) but he still just doesn’t seem to fit. Dengar’s best home might be in draft/sealed where you can stack your deck with a few bounties.

Top Support

Megablaster Troopers – 4 cost for 2 or 3 dice is a great value. There are currently 27 leaders in the game, notably Snoke, Tarkin, Phasma, Tobias and Enfys Nest. All of them could easily get this out turn 1 and have 11 health or more to keep them around to get the most value of these troopers. Its dice are a bit lacking for a 4 cost but obviously the value comes from rolling in 1 or 2 extra dice. We also have Imperial Officer spoiled which helps turn these dice and it is a leader, so if your leader character dies, you can still roll in two First Order Stormtrooper dice. After getting a few games with this in a Phasma deck, it really felt like the real deal. I think there is a very strong argument for Entourage being the best support but pulling 0 I haven’t had the chance to be impressed like I was with these bad boys.

Bottom Support

Fickle Mercenaries – Unless your deck just amasses resources I don’t see this making the cut. Sure dropping it for 1 is good value for its dice sides but I am going to assume this will always get stolen. I would be okay to pay 2 to remove this die from an opponent and make it my own. By that point, if I am the player who originally played it, I would steal it back and have now sunk 3 resources into this. That just isn’t a game I want to be playing. Just go play Hired Muscle if you want a really good 1 cost support. The only thing that would ever prop this card up is Entourage because that is an extremely good card.

Top Upgrade

Chewbacca’s Blaster Rifle – This might make Chewbacca a bit competitive (probably not but I can dream right?). He still just loses to mill but I like this rifle a lot. We have seen the power of rolling in dice multiple times. 2r, 3r, 4r for a resource is good value for a 3 cost. Middle-Middle need some help with big guns to compete with the vehicles out there and this seems to be a step in the right direction. Yellow hero guns always seemed to play fair, they were usually solid but nothing compared to what blue had for upgrades. This lets them step a little bit into the unfair territory with two resolutions of this die. I know that this isn’t really the top upgrade in the set but I wanted to break up the obvious picks of something like Palp’s Saber or Quicksilver Baton.

Bottom Upgrade

Malice – I just really really do not like this die. Sure 1 cost redeploy is nice and it obviously is meant to go with Unlimited Power himself but even with him I barely want it. I would need to sit down and make a deck but I would much rather run Force Jump, Bartering and Unhanded Tactics before I even think of including Malice. The discard sides can be annoying for opponents to deal with but I think I just look else where for force abilities in every deck. Really not much to say for me, hard pass from me.

Top Event

We’re Home – I want to say there are a lot of good new removal events in this set and I wanted to pick something that was not removal. To me this seems to be on the same power level as Strategic Planning with the extra need of a die showing a resource and has to be a yellow vehicle. You don’t even need scoundrels to use this card, you can just activate them too. Imagine the Yoda/L3/Gungan deck or the L3 Engineers deck getting a resource die showing. I will gladly remove that die to reset my Shadowcaster. So it has a bit more of a setup but still can provide huge value.

Bottom Event

Honorable Sacrifice – There were a few choices that could fit in here because events can just be fillers for a set but figured I would keep with the tradition of red hero having bad cards. Defeating your character and you have to remove damage dice? Why can’t it be any two die? This might find a home in a Gungan 4 wide deck or something along those lines but this is dead in a Middle-Middle pairing. It has K2 on the art which usually hints at this card working well with him but it the opposite as his text says you may end the round after you defeat him which won’t be super ideal in most situations.

Top Wild Card

Lightsaber Mastery – Just so much value for 2 points. So far we have 4 moves in Deflecting Slash, Fatal Blow, Twin Strike and Circle of Shelter. I find Fatal Blow really bad and Circle of Shelter not as impactful unless it is with Luke3. Putting Deflecting Slash and Twin Strike under this plot seems like the most value. Having a un-blockable damage and removal on demand is powerful. A card like this only gets more and more powerful as more moves get released into the game.

Bottom Wild Card

Force Flow – I wanted to pick something else to spice it up but this is awful for 2 points. I get its a starter plot and easy to follow to introduce mechanics to new players but man. This will never see competitive play while it competes with Lightsaber Mastery, Double Down, Stolen Intel or really any of the Allies of Necessities plots.