May 2024

May 2024 retrospective

Hey everybody,
Wow. May has come and (almost) gone in quite the flash, it doesn’t seem like it’s been an almost five week month, somehow. Here in the glory that is the British Isles, most of that month has been submerged in rain, though I am hopeful that sometime soon we will get more summer on the way. Always makes me feel more productive when the weather is good, though that said, I have posted quite a bit during the month. 14 posts for the month isn’t too shabby I suppose! For the most part, I’ve been exploring a lot of different Star Wars games this month, predominantly the LCG and Shatterpoint, although in terms of games played I have also tried out the still-new Star Wars Unlimited, which I plan to go more in-depth on next month, so stay tuned for that!

For the LCG, I have been investigating the second cycle, Echoes of the Force, and have rebuilt most of my decks to experiment with the “new” cards from that cycle. I found it interesting how a lot of those cards disrupted how well my decks were otherwise playing, and I think it’s possible (likely?) that the core set had a much more balanced experience overall. As the game progressed, we definitely saw the designers try to give us archetypes to build into, and so to be fair, I probably need to make completely new decks to take advantage of these “new” cards. Might need to look again at this, although I do feel some decks, like the Sith deck, will be almost completely rebuilt when I come to look at later cycles again, so we shall see what happens then!

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Shatterpoint has been a huge part of the month for me, as well, as I have fully embraced that game, and have been splashing the cash on products as well as splashing the paint on the models! I’ve primed all of the terrain, and have made some inroads to getting that stuff painted up, which has just been so good, but have also pretty much completed Count Dooku’s squad pack, which is very nice! I’m not currently happy with the way Dooku’s face has turned out, unfortunately, but at least he isn’t just grey plastic anymore.

I actually had a game last night with Dooku and Asajj, against James and his mostly-clones list that included Anakin and Obi-Wan, and it turned out to be my first ever victory! I think it really helped that I was trying to be focused on what I wanted to do, I was trying to play aggressively to score objectives, and I was trying to play fast to keep myself focused on what I was doing. It still went to a third struggle, and the way that played out was super tight in the end – it came down to Asajj wounding the 212th clones in order to gain another momentum token on my side of the tracker, which meant by scoring two objectives I won. But if I hadn’t drawn Asajj to do that, the momentum would have swung back and James would have scored two points for his victory. Very dramatic stuff!

I suppose that’s what it’s all about though, tense gameplay and cinematic moments! I think we’ve played 5 or 6 times now, though, so I was very pleased to finally have a victory there!

It has been a fairly Star Wars-centric month, especially with the reading that has been going on as well. There will be some reviews coming out soon for the novels I’ve been wading through, although not all of them are from the GFFA! At the start of May, I was back in Rokugan as I had finally finished collecting the dynasty packs for Legend of the Five Rings LCG, which was quite exciting – there’s still a couple of clan packs and the Clan War expansion that I think will never be found again. But otherwise, I have a pretty complete collection of L5R now, and I’m very excited! It’s such a good game, and such an interesting setting – indeed, on the subject of novels, I’ve got a couple of those to get round to at some point, which should be fun, as well.

Games Workshop had a reveals weekend where they showed off the box contents for Age of Sigmar 4th edition, something that had almost succeeded in getting me back on the Warhammer horse. I do love Warhammer fantasy (small f), and while there have been some pretty dire messes created by the move from Old World to AoS, I still remember with tremendous fondness the fresh feeling of the landscape in 2015 when the game first launched. I’ve been trying my hardest not to get involved, but longtime readers of the blog will no doubt remember last year’s Summer of Sigmar, something that seems to happen quite regularly – like the sun brings me back into the fold, or something! So I have been thinking about maybe taking a look at the preview articles they’ve been putting up about the game.

Maybe…

They’ve also shown off some very interesting miniatures for the Horus Heresy line for the Mechanicum, and if I wasn’t actually looking to sell my AdMech army I would probably be thinking about getting some of those to incorporate into the force. Most interesting, though, is new Necromunda, set in Hive Secundus and the genestealer infested depths. In addition to Spyrers and mutated genestealers, we’re also getting more Zone Mortalis terrain to reflect the rad-bombed wasteland of the hive, which sounds very interesting. I am somewhat cautious though, because I have an absolute ton of stuff for Necromunda, and while I am sorely tempted by the new box, I think that price is going to be a serious factor here. I might just get some of the genestealer stuff as and when, and focus instead on the terrain? If I get it at all?

I had the conversation with James the other week, as my primary Necromunda gaming partner (as well as MCP and Shatterpoint!) and I think we’re both fairly keen to try some more games in the Underhive, but in all honesty, we’ve both got so much stuff for the game at this point that more is probably irrelevant, so it’s going to be interesting to see whether the box is good value, when it eventually shows up. I’m still far more interested in Shatterpoint right now though, and I addressed this in another post this month, but I could see myself almost getting out of Warhammer entirely, or certainly selling off everything but my Necrons and Drukhari. Time will tell, I suppose!

Adepticon reveals for Shatterpoint

I know, Adepticon was two months ago, but I’m really only now catching up with everything in the world… Atomic Mass seem to have become the new Fantasy Flight when it comes to exciting reveals like this, and there was a host of exciting stuff shown off for Shatterpoint and Marvel Crisis Protocol (that I’ll get to in another blog), so let’s take a look!

Coming in June, we’ve got the Iden Versio squad pack, the General Han squad pack, and the third mission pack for the game, Never Tell Me The Odds. General Han is a must-buy for me, so I can have more Rebels themed for Endor, and of course the mission pack as well. Iden Versio looks very nice, but the way things have worked out, James is going down the Empire route so I’ll leave that for him.

July will give us the Ghost crew, two squads that will include Kanan and Hera, et al. As I’m going for the Rebel Alliance boxes, I think I’ll be getting these at some point, though probably not for a while. I already have a lot of Shatterpoint content that I’ve still not experienced, and I’ve recently found that I actually just really enjoy playing the core set stuff, so I’m not really feeling in any huge rush! Though Ezra looks annoyingly useful…

The last squad pack with a somewhat definite date is Thrawn, who is coming in August. I’m a very big fan of Thrawn, even though this is Thrawn from Rebels and not the Zahn books. I think I might still buy him though, breaking my rule for not having Empire stuff. He’s just one of my favourites, so I think it’s okay!

After this, we get a bit hazy. Q4 sees the release of a squad pack to follow up the Bad Batch, though I’m not entirely up on that lore so I’m not familiar with all this stuff. Crosshair, the guy who seems to be a baddie in the early episodes of that series, comes here as a primary, with flamethrower troopers, which sounds interesting. Also in Q4 we’re getting the big Mandalorian squad pack, This Is The Way, which will feature the Armourer from the show. I’m planning to get Mando himself when he comes out in the UK, so it’ll be good to have a full on Mando-era strike team!

Q4 will also see the releases move from Jedi to Empire, as we get Lando with Lobot and Wing Guard, and General Veers with Snowtroopers. Perhaps most interesting of all, though, is the Bounty Hunters ‘unit pack’, which brings Boba Fett, Bossk, IG-88 and Dengar into the game, all as secondary characters. Very interesting. I’d wondered if we would ever see character packs like Legion has for the operatives or whatever, but this seems to be the next best thing!

Moving into 2025 now, we’re going back to the Clone Wars it seems, with Kit Fisto finally coming to the game! Finally, Ki-Adi-Mundi is coming, with generic Jedi padawan support units! Very interesting, how they’re going to package that. Even more interesting is the fact the padawans will have multiple head options to change the species.

All in all, there’s some very interesting stuff here, though I’m very intrigued by the fact that the Han/Luke/Leia Death Star rescue squad wasn’t announced until May 4th, yet is also apparently coming in June… At any rate, with Ministravaganza slated for July, there’s likely to be yet more reveals coming, and I cannot wait! It might be time to start theory-crafting what could be up next, but that’ll be for another blog…

Lightsaber forms

Hey everybody,
As I’ve been getting back into Star Wars Shatterpoint, one of the things that I’ve noticed coming up a lot is the different lightsaber forms for the various Jedi and Sith, and seeing how they are used in the damage trees for characters. It’s interesting to see this come into the canon – at least, I presume it has, because this is a game that has been approved by Disney & LFL, and only came out last year, so it’s definitely in the new canon of everything!

The seven forms of lightsaber combat were first described in a Star Wars Insider article in October 2002, which was written in consultation with a fencer/choreographer and aimed to describe the forms, assigning them to instances of lightsaber combat in the films. It’s kinda interesting how these came about, because the lightsaber choreography up to this point was very much done to look good in the films, and without any kind of thought to consistency around “Count Dooku always uses Makashi” or something. Going through each of the (at the time) five movies to retroactively assign the moves on screen a name must have been quite the task, I think!

Anyway, let’s take a look at them all now.

Form I: Shii-Cho
Said to be a fall-back option, because it had been superseded by all other forms since its first inception, Shii-Cho was principally concerned with disarming an opponent. Kit Fisto is said to have been a master of the form, and in his hands it became so much more than the potentially basic and sloppy bladework. It still formed the first instruction a Jedi initiate would receive when it came to the lightsaber, and is the form we see Luke practicing aboard the Falcon.

Form II: Makashi
This was “the fencer’s form”, and was developed specifically for lightsaber duelling. Defined by precision and efficient movements, Makashi also used more jabs and cuts instead of the slashing movements of Shii-Cho. In time, following the Sith wars, it faded in preference to Form III as deflecting blaster bolts became a more pressing concern than enemies with lightsabers. Count Dooku was of course the undisputed master during the Clone Wars, although other Jedi such as Qui-Gon Jinn (naturally) and Luminara Unduli were known to be exemplary duelists.

Form III: Soresu
Soresu came about as blasters became more widespread, and was known as a defensive form among the Jedi that took elements of Shii-Cho and developed on them. Over time, Soresu became something of a symbol of the Jedi themselves, as keepers of the peace and shields to others. The idea was that the Jedi would find a calm centre, from which they could change position and hand movements quickly, reflective of the rapidity of a blaster, with the aim of purely defending, and wearing their opponent down. Obi-Wan Kenobi was known as a master of the form, which he specifically aimed for after noting the lack of defensive capability in Form IV when he witnessed Qui-Gon defeated by Darth Maul.

Form IV: Ataru
One of the faster, offensive forms that was characterised by Force-assisted acrobatics, wide swings and strong blows. The speed of the attack could make the combat difficult to follow, as the user allowed the Force to flow through them and direct their movement. Yoda famously employed Ataru in his battle against Dooku, spinning through the air and leaping from walls, while Qui-Gon Jinn initially employed it against Darth Maul, but found himself stymied by the confined space of the Theed generator, which ultimately led to his downfall.

Form V: Shien/Djem So
Shien was developed from Soresu in an effort to give a defensive fighter the opportunity to create openings in which to attack, although still with an emphasis on blocking blaster shots. Djem So was a further development that was used specifically for lightsaber dueling. Both aspects attempted to turn an attacker’s strength against them, with immediate counterattacks and redirecting blaster bolts back to the shooter. Djem So in particular placed importance on powerful strikes, although both aspects of the form were considered to be too aggressive by many Jedi. Anakin and Luke Skywalker both mastered the form.

Form VI: Niman
The sixth form of lightsaber combat was developed to blend the best elements of the preceding five, and was intended almost as a catch-all for users who weren’t necessarily combat-minded. The form also included Force-enabled attacks from telekinesis and so on, reflecting perhaps the fact that its generic feel was due to the Jedi devoting their time to other pursuits. By incorporating Force powers along with a wide range of saber skills, however, a Niman master could prove a formidable foe. Interestingly, the form was developed from non-Jedi who wielded dual blades, and so the Jar Kai form of two-bladed combat has strong ties to Niman. Exar Kun was perhaps the most notable practitioner of Niman, which suited his dual-bladed lightsaber.

Form VII: Juyo/Vaapad
The most aggressive of the seven forms, Juyo was almost considered taboo due to its requirement to harness one’s own emotions when fighting. Vaapad was developed by Mace Windu in an effort to channel the Jedi’s inner darkness, and accept an opponent’s fury. It’s interesting to note that knowledge of Juyo was often suppressed among the Jedi, although Sith Lords like Darth Maul would use it in combat without reservation. Among the Jedi who used Juyo, it took immense control and concentration to harness one’s emotions without slipping to darkness. The demands it placed on the user were therefore too much to be used effectively.

So there we have it! The more you know, kids!

Star Wars LCG: Echoes of Rebels and Smugglers…

Hey everybody,
I can’t seem to stop talking about the Star Wars LCG at the minute, as I have once again become totally obsessed with this game! I’ve had a run of plays with it recently, where I have been exploring some of the cards from the second cycle, Echoes of the Force. After playing a couple of games with my Sith deck and feeling like I have made some mistakes in building that deck with some of the ‘new’ objectives from this cycle, I’ve been having a look at what else is on offer for other affiliations. My Sith deck was always something that seemed to work really well, whereas the decks for Smugglers and for Rebels were never really given the same amount of care. I think the Sith cards work really well out of the box, but the strategy for other affiliations isn’t always immediately apparent, so I usually wound up throwing anything and everything in there to see how it all works.

The Rebel Alliance deck is perhaps my least favourite out of all the decks I currently have set up, although with recent additions it has begun to really come together nicely. There are a fair number of starfighters in the deck, which have a not insignificant amount of objective damage, but the tricks in this deck around things like retreating the Death Star dial, or even targeting the dial itself, often seem to throw a spanner in the works. Something that I have found very useful is You’re My Only Hope, which sacrifices one of my units to draw two cards, then forces the discard of one card from the opponent. I played it and sacrificed a chump blocker I had played earlier, and forced the discard of the only Sith card in hand, Emperor Palpatine! What a coup! Where an opponent is keeping up a card in hand, either in case of an edge battle or because they can’t quite play it yet, it’s really good.

I’ve tried to make the deck more about starfighters, though. The Y-Wing is a great 2-cost card that does two objective damage, but enhanced with an Astromech Droid Upgrade it gets three objective damage. With Target of Opportunity in the edge stack, I can deal one damage to the objective as I come in. As so many conflicts tend to go unopposed, the Y-Wing can one-shot some objectives, which is tremendous, but with two copies of Rebel Assault in the deck as well, the firepower in this deck is amazing. I had a turn with the Y-Wing and X-Wing coming out, Target of Opportunity in the edge stack, with Adaptive Strategy to effectively resolve it twice, and then Rebel Assault to finish the objective off. That’s eight objective damage on the table, which is all from really cheap cards!

I really like the combination of Y-Wing and Astromech Droid Upgrade, and I’m a bit sad they only printed it in the core set. I suppose you can’t have it all, though! Interestingly, though, the worst match-up I’ve had with the deck is against the Imperial Navy. Definitely on theme there, I suppose! The Empire also has a lot of starfighters, but the big difference is in the number of capital ships the Imperial war machine is pumping out. With multiple ways to get them to the table reduced, it’s quite horrifying to have Tarkin and an unopposed Death Squadron Star Destroyer going into battle, as Tarkin reduces the number of damage needed to take out enemy objectives, and the Star Destroyer is dealing three objective damage without winning the edge battle by itself. Unopposed, that’s an objective one-shot. Coupled with early Superlaser Blasts means it can be a very short game!

The Smugglers deck seems to be something that I have accidentally landed on for being really powerful since I removed the Renegade Squadron objective sets. It doesn’t involve Dash and the Freeholders, and it doesn’t involve the Falcon at all, but it’s all about single units attacking alone, as the game lets you declare multiple combats so long as you still have the ready units to do so. I suppose it is mitigated by the fact that you’re relying a lot on objective cards being in play at the right time, and so while it doesn’t necessarily sound like a big combo when you talk about only requiring 4-6 cards in play, it nevertheless feels tricky to pull off to get everything lined up together.

Let’s talk about the objectives first. Across the Anoat Sector gives each Smugglers unit one objective damage icon when it is attacking alone. Hit and Run is a neutral objective from the core set that allows you to deal 1 damage to the engaged objective when you win the edge battle as the attacker. Finally, Raise the Stakes raises your unopposed bonus to 2 while it is undamaged. In my recent game, I only had two of these in play at any time, although Raise the Stakes replaced Hit and Run, so in combo they were still impressive.

The units are an equally mixed-bag of things. Lando is very useful as he has one objective damage icon, and one tactics icon, but he has the ability to remove a unit from the engagement for one resource, which can sometimes allow the combat to go unopposed (as he is not dealing unit damage, unfortunately). But with the objectives out in that combination, he can still deal 4 damage to the objective if he is able to go unopposed. I’ve got two ships that round things out. The Blockade Runner has two objective damage on it, and the native ability that enemy units with a printed cost of 3 or higher cannot be declared as defenders, again allowing me to (hopefully) slip in under the wire and deal damage – 5 points of damage, when the objectives align for me, so I’m one-shotting most objectives in the game. The Sleuth Scout has the same ability, but only one objective damage, and it is edge-enabled, so perhaps a little more difficult to get on-line.

There are a couple of ways for the Sleuth Scout and Lando to each one-shot objectives though, in my recent game that was done through keeping the Balance of the Force so I was able to deal one damage to the objective at the start of the round, then deal four in combat thanks to the objectives on my side of the table. Target of Opportunity is always great to have in a pinch, though, especially as the Sleuth Scout needs to win the edge battle to get on-line.

It really struck me as to how powerful the deck seemed to be, though, by just deleting objectives each turn. There are, of course, some lovely tricks to be had in the deck as well. The Blockade Runner was focused down by Boba Fett in my game, so I was looking like I would be out of the race until I drew Cloud City Operative, who allows you to move 1 focus token from a target unit to another target unit that costs 2 or less. And she costs 2, so I moved the focus token to her and freed up the Blockade Runner for another pass. When it came to the final crunch, once again it was the Operative who came to the rescue – the Scum deck had brought out 3 Jawa Scavengers, who have edge-enabled tactics icons, and my three objective damaging units were all focused down to the point where they would be out of the game. But in comes the Crossfire card that lets you give a unit a combat icon of your choice when it strikes, and so I was able to get the win by giving the Operative an objective damage icon. Wonderful stuff!

So much of that is perfect-world play, of course, but when it comes online for you, it was just incredible!

Twice the Pride

Hey everybody,
I’ve been preparing myself for an upcoming game of Shatterpoint, mainly by trying to get my terrain painted after taking advantage of some glorious sunshine here recently and getting everything primed. However, I have also been painting up Jango Fett, off and on, and I have really fallen in love with the model – even if I say so myself, he’s looking pretty good!

I’ve painted up hundreds of models for 40k in my time, but there’s something incredible about having movie characters from my favourite setting to enjoy. I haven’t yet made it to Dooku, as I’m still a bit intimidated by having to paint faces, but hopefully I won’t make a complete hash of it once I start!

At any rate, I thought I’d follow on from my Ewoks post and do another exploration into some Shatterpoint characters, using none other than my personal favourite, Count Dooku. He was actually one of the first expansions available for the game at launch, so it’s quite an old squad box now, but I hope my exploration of the squad here will still be of some interest!

Dooku is a powerful Sith Lord, and so comes with just 7 squad points off the bat, though his abilities do make it worthwhile overall, I would say. Granting 4 Force points is above-average, and his health pool of 30 overall (10 stamina, 3 durability) does put him on something of a par with Anakin, the strongest primary unit out of the gate. His subtitle is Separatist Leader, and that definitely comes through on his card – his tactics ability lets you give another Separatist Alliance character within range 3 a free dash move, and free movement is always good. He has two reactions, one of which has been quite controversial so far in the game. “Surely you can do better” allows him to spend 1-3 Force, and change one hit to a fail for each Force spent when he is targeted by an attack – when he came out, he caused an errata in the rules to clarify when this happens, and it is in the modify dice step once the attacker has modified their dice, so it’s very powerful.

He can also spend a Force to dash towards an enemy and make a five dice melee attack if that enemy has targeted an ally within range 2 and rolled no hits. This is a bit more situational, although I suppose with d8s there is always the chance of that happening! Finally, his identity lets you refresh 2 Force when an allied primary or secondary unit is wounded, which is very useful given how Force heavy he can be. The ability then lets you choose an allied Separatist support unit to either dash or make a 5 dice attack. So he’s directing the battle all around him, which is very interesting.

As a primary unit, he has two sides to his stance card of course, the somewhat weaker side is Force Mastery and allows him to roll 8 dice for a ranged attack (Force lightning) and six dice for melee. Taking either branch of his damage tree, you’ll be dealing a maximum of 7 damage, but he has the choice to either recover and reposition, or to deal conditions out as well as the damage, which I think makes it very flexible to use when the battle is going. I think it’s a bit weaker because anytime you roll three expertise but only get two crits/hits, it’s sad. The other side is Form II Makashi, and deals a total of 10 damage if you make it all the way down the tree, as well as allowing him to reposition or shove the enemy back, which is a wonderful way of visualising the fencing style he uses. The Force lightning is a bit weaker on this side, but the melee is beautiful, and includes a defensive expertise chart of turning your opponent’s crits into outright failures.

Dooku is interesting because his card doesn’t really offer him much in the way of personal buffs, he’s more about either directing others or, in the case of Surely you can do better, keeping himself alive. It’s in his combat card itself where he is brutal, and I think that’s probably fine because it makes him formidable in that he doesn’t necessarily get weaker over time – if he’s injured, you’re not relying on abilities that suddenly cost more Force to keep him strong, he was always that capable…

Our secondary unit in the box is Jango Fett, a 4-cost unit that many people call the strongest in the game. He is one of these characters that I remember trying out, and not seeing what made him so powerful until I actually started using him properly, then the penny dropped and James had to get Anakin involved to even things up a bit. As an action, he can jump thanks to his jetpack (for 1 Force), and he also has the Capture Wire ability of dragging a character within range 3 towards him range 2, then giving them the pinned condition (for 1 Force). Pinned removes a move action from the character, so they’re basically stuck there for their activation, and they’re also now in melee range for Jango to pistol-whip them (presumably). In conjunction with Capture Wire, we have the reactive ability Not So Fast, which lets him roll 5 dice when an enemy within range 3 activates, and deals damage for each crit and hit rolled (for 1 Force). So he can pull you towards him, attack you, then if you try to do anything on your turn, he can potentially deal enough damage to wound you, ending the activation.

I’ve been calling out the Force cost for these abilities to show how Force-hungry Jango really is. However, he does have the innate ability of refreshing two Force when he wounds a Primary or Secondary unit, so he really needs to be going after the enemy leaders and making the most of his tricks. This also allows him to heal twice, which is always useful. His other innate ability lets him jump for free whenever he makes a focus action. So he can potentially focus, then make a free jump to get him within range 3 of an enemy so he has a target for Capture Wire, then attack that enemy to whittle down the health so that he can Not So Fast on that enemy’s turn to wound them, at which point he heals and refreshes the two Force he used to perform all of those actions!

As a secondary character, he has five tiles in his combat tree, although he’s rolling 6 dice in melee and in ranged combat, so there’s always a chance. I’m not a huge fan of the expertise chart because of the fact that 3 expertise rolls in either melee or ranged combat only gains you two results, so it is a bit grim! You want no more than two expertise in there, because if he can make it all the way down his tree, he’s doing a minimum of 7 and a max 10 damage to the enemy. Interestingly, the third tile on the tree gives you the option of a free active ability, so you could potentially save the Capture Wire in the hope of making it to this tile, and you wouldn’t need the Force for it.

The supporting unit in the box is the MagnaGuards, the controversially-costed 3-cost support that gets in the way and stops you targeting Primary or Secondary characters while they’re engaged with you. So they’re a bodyguard – with an innate ability called Bodyguard, which gives Primary or Secondary characters Cover (1), which confused me at first because of the change to cover at launch, but those changes only applied to cover from terrain, so the allied units don’t need a hunker token to also gain the bonus from the MagnaGuard. As the bodyguards, though, they’re pretty rubbish if they can’t keep up with their charges, so once a Separatist Primary unit makes a move action, they have the reactive ability that grants them a free advance towards the chosen Primary. Only one model can do this, so you can split the party in this way, and have one looking after each of your primary units, though in practice I found it very difficult to keep everyone together in this way.

Anyway! In terms of combat, they only have melee stats, and they’re throwing six dice but with only four tiles in their tree. That’s still a possible 5-6 damage, plus some shoves and either a reposition and a heal, or a disarm and a shove, which feels very nice to have!

Overall, I think the Dooku box has the air of danger about it. Jango is quite the mercenary, and Dooku, backed up with his MagnaGuard, has all of the airs of a boss-level fight, with damage being dished out left and right, and the opponent being shoved off points to keep them in the hands of the Separatist Alliance. Dooku is my favourite character to have come out of the prequels, and I love how confident and powerful he appears; AMG have definitely translated this to the game, giving us someone who is a really threatening presence on the board. The first time I played the squad, I don’t think I did them justice, as I under-used Jango and wasn’t 100% sure on what to do with the MagnaGuard, so split them up and had one following Dooku, getting in the way. I think it might be a better idea to keep them a bit closer together, sending Jango out to do what might be required but still acting as something of a bodyguard as well. Dooku can definitely hold his own, though, and I think he can act as something of a unit hunter, though it might require some practice to get right!

Star Wars LCG: More Echoes!

Hey everybody,
Earlier in the week, I was talking about the second cycle for the Star Wars LCG, the Echoes of the Force cycle, and the interesting cards that came in those packs that interacted with the Force phase of the game. It was interesting to see, because it’s the sort of evergreen cycle that will always have an impact, because that phase is always going to happen when you play the game, so the cards will always, to some degree, have a relevance. Up to this point, having only really been seeing the Hoth cycle cards, you could pretty much turn off a lot of those cards unless you were playing with a very specific deck, which included a lot of Hoth objectives to allow cards to function correctly.

However, even with these Echoes cards in my decks, after playing a game of Rebels vs Sith, I noticed just how relevant the core set cards actually remained, and it prompted me to think about this game as a whole.

Most card games that I play have required me to build a deck of 50-60 cards, although of course games like Arkham Horror LCG break that mould by having decks in the 30s. Competitive games, though, have a bigger deck, and you can build those decks by including cards that you see fit; when it comes time for new releases to break the mould, cards can be swapped out on a one-for-one basis. However, with Star Wars LCG, the objective set system means you’re building a ten-card objective deck and a 50-card draw deck that come in sets of 6 – one objective, and five associated cards. This is a fascinating concept that I have been a big fan of for this game, but I can definitely see how it is limiting to the game play as time goes on. This is due to having to swap out chunks of your deck when you deckbuild, and it has caused me a few problems over the years.

I think I’ve seen this the most with my Sith deck, which used to function really well with the core set only cards, although I did include two copies of the objective set from the Edge of Darkness expansion, which gave me those Force Wraiths who could commit to the Force and still count their icons when exhausted. The deck worked great, with a lot of brilliant internal synergies, but now that I have started to expand out, I’ve seen a bit of a dip in quality. I have six decks built for this game, one for each faction, and I have always known that the Sith deck was pretty top-tier, insomuch as it is consistent and seems to play itself. By cutting some sets to include the Jerec and Sariss stuff from Echoes, I have noticed that it has diluted a bit, and has actually lost to the Rebels and Smugglers decks that I have been tinkering about with recently.

I suppose it’s all a matter of consistency. Looking through the Sith deck as it is now, there are a lot of units, and then a small pile of enhancements and events. With Palpatine and Vader, this used to be much closer to the Sith Events style of deck that would run amok, and it worked so much better. I think by including the ‘new’ stuff, there is a greater variety of things to play now, but it seems to be struggling to get online, somehow, which I think is a shame, really.

This is where I think the problem sometimes lies with deckbuilding for Star Wars LCG. You don’t just swap in a couple of cards at a time, you swap at least five cards from your draw deck, and by changing up five objective sets, I have fully changed up half the deck, with 25 new cards in here. There’s very little consistency now, although I suppose I do have three copies of Force Choke still in here!

The fundamental approach to deckbuilding has to change, because you need to be mindful of what else is being taken out when you look to swap out a card. I’ve also had this recently with my Scum & Villainy deck, where I wanted to swap in Zuckuss and 4-LOM from the Echoes of the Force cycle. I had initially looked at removing one of the Bossk objective sets, but then I started looking at what else was in there. I noticed that I was including the Greedo objective set purely for the Captured card, the 3-cost event that lets you straight up capture an enemy card. The rest of the set was underwhelming, which I think is the balance issue to ensure you aren’t getting too much good stuff (though that would later change). As it is, I’ve decided to remove that set as well, so I could include two copies of the Zuckuss objective set, which has a few capture elements anyway, so can keep the theme going.

It’s an endlessly fascinating topic for me, and I really enjoy seeing what ‘new’ stuff there is as I continue to explore the game now, six years after the game died.

Star Wars LCG: Echoes of the Force

Back in my Star Wars LCG renaissance in 2022, I started to take a look at the game in-depth, and wrote a piece on the first cycle, the Hoth cycle, with the idea that I would be taking a look at the others in time. Well, two years later I’m now in a position where I can look at the second cycle! I have had the Hoth-themed decks set up for each faction throughout this time, and so have been playing the odd game with these cards, but it’s now time to shake things up!

Echoes of the Force was the second cycle for the Star Wars LCG and included a strong emphasis on the Force struggle, characters committed to the Force, and so on. It was released during 2014, after a fairly significant delay following the previous cycle, which was itself heavily delayed anyway, so I’ve read that it was this cycle where a lot of folks left the LCG to move on to other games. That said, there are some pretty good cards in the cycle, and a lot of them retained their relevance throughout the lifetime of the game.

Every affiliation gets support, of course, with five new objective sets for each across the entire cycle. Even those affiliations that traditionally don’t have much to do with the Force, Scum and Smugglers for instance, still get some love, such as Scum getting more bounty hunters including the Force-sensitive Zuckuss. The way that the game handled it was quite interesting, really, with effects that trigger if there are units committed to the Force, either friendly or enemy – it really helped to give that sense of the Force being in all things. Some affiliations got additional Hoth objective sets, such as Rebels getting General Riekkan and the Empire getting Admiral Piett. Interestingly, we began to see some Endor themed objective sets as well, including an Endor-themed Leia for the Jedi, and General Madine for the Rebels. We also got C-3PO for the Smugglers, which was interesting as we get to see Ewoks across all the light-side affiliations, before the Endor cycle brought them properly into the game.

Smugglers had a subtheme of cards in hand mattering, particularly for your opponent, and it led to some of the worst combos in the game at that point. I wasn’t following the competitive scene massively, but even in my cloud of not-playing I was aware of the Aquaris Freeholder controversy. A card that costs 8 to play, but is reduced by 1 for each card in your opponent’s hand, which comes in an objective set where all cards get bounced back to hand when it is revealed, is quite good. Coupled with later sets in the cycle that give blast icons to units when they attack, or Dash Rendar who gets a blast icon for each card in the defending player’s hand if he’s attacking alone – Smugglers could suddenly take the game very quickly, especially if a Sith control player is keeping cards in hand for the edge battles, etc.

To make matters worse, Holding All the Cards forced players to draw cards, and Shifty Lookout allows you to consider your opponent holding +1 card. Shifty Lookout, Holding All the Cards and the Against All Odds objective give Dash 4 blast icons in the right circumstances. Oh yeah, and his set has Target of Opportunity so you can deal damage to an objective during the edge battle. If you had The False Report come out to bounce all cards back to hand, Dash can one-shot an objective and you can play Aquaris Freeholders pretty much for free, giving you a head-start on a second objective very easily. These two objective sets pretty much created the Restricted List for the game on their own back in 2014.

Of course, the main affiliations to benefit from the Force already get some very interesting injections of cards, thanks to the cycle having a theme around the Dark Forces video games. Characters like Kyle Katarn, Jerec, Jan Ors and Sariss make their entry into the game, and we have some fantastic theme coming through overall. In addition to this, we also get some more expanded universe stuff explored, such as Mara Jade in her Emperor’s Hand days, and Winter as an Alliance spy. Dash Rendar makes an appearance for Smugglers, too.

It’s the Sith that are the main focus for today’s blog, though, as I have had a fairly significant change to my long-standing deck as I have moved into the new cycle. I’ve taken out some of the core set stuff, and the Prophets of the Dark Side objective sets from the Hoth cycle, and have started to lean into the Jerec/Sariss stuff that we have here. The end result feels quite punishing, as it has a lot of effects that seem like they might dominate a game. I’ve got the Cularin cultists sets included, which are reasonable although the objective itself sets the Balance of the Force to the dark side when it is revealed, which seems like it might be very powerful. When Sariss commits to the Force, she forces an enemy unit to also commit; when Jerec is focused to strike, however, he removes a target unit from the Force. That’s all fine, but removing a unit from the Force by a card effect triggers the Imperial Inquisitor card, to remove 1 focus token, allowing him to be re-used for resources. By removing units from the Force, you then give targets to Force Storm, a 4-cost event that deals 2 damage to each unit not committed. You can only play this when the Balance of the Force is with the dark side, however, that’s where the Cularin cult comes in!

There are two new Fate cards in the cycle, Seeds of Decay and Echoes of the Force. Seeds of Decay allows you to place a focus token on a ready unit that is committed to the Force, so this can feed into Sariss’ ability of force-committing characters to then bury them in focus tokens, which of course removes their efficacy in the Force struggle. Seeds of Decay was almost designed to shut off the tactic of having a strong Force user committed to the Force and just used for blocks, as it forces that unit to have focus tokens on it. Echoes of the Force lets you commit someone, or remove someone, from the Force, which feeds into this deeper strategy of controlling how the game is playing out. These cards retained their relevance throughout the life of the game, which is always interesting to note in looking back at the early game. The Balance Phase, committing units to the Force and so on, all of these things are integral steps that you can’t get away from when playing Star Wars LCG.

Finally, I wanted to talk about Mara Jade. She has been one of my favourite characters in Star Wars since I first read Heir to the Empire, and I really like the fact that we have her in this Emperor’s Hand stage of her life. Her objective card lets you focus down an enemy unit when you commit a Sith unit to the Force, so plays into Sariss again, while Mara herself gains targeted strike, shielding and elite while committed to the Force – interesting, because her unique lightsaber attachment lets you consider her as committed to the Force while it is enhancing her. So you can potentially have more than the traditional 3 units committed to the Force when playing. She also comes with some Imperial Shadow Guard, who have protect unit that is committed to the Force, so they can take the hits for Mara. The Sith Library is always useful, but finally we have the Rage event, which lets you remove up to two focus tokens from a unit committed to the Force. The ideal play, therefore, is to have Mara out, enhance her with her lightsaber so that she is considered committed to the force, she can deal two objective damage and three unit damage in the conflict (getting two focus tokens, because she is committed to the Force), but then you play Rage at the end of the battle to remove those tokens, and then she still counts her 3 pips for the Force struggle.

That said, unless playing against a Jedi deck or similar, I think the best play in this deck is still to commit the Force Wraiths to the Force, as they count as committed even when they’re exhausted. So you can use them to attack and still keep the balance. In that sense, It almost doesn’t matter if Mara is committed or not – I mean, with elite she will be removing those two tokens when you refresh anyway, so you could almost use Rage to go in for a second conflict, and not care too much about the Force struggle. I think I would be tempted to put either Jerec or Palpatine committed to the Force, and even if a big Force user like Yoda comes out across the table, the Cularin cult can bring the balance back anyway.

For all that is created some powerful cards, I do like this cycle for the focus it put on a core aspect of the game – indeed, one that I have quite easily overlooked in some games as I have worked around the need to shift the balance to one side or another. While the Hoth cycle attempted to give us a theme to play into, Echoes of the Force was able to highlight one of the main phases of the game, and introduce cards that work off that in new and interesting ways. It’s something I always think quite interesting when looking back like this, as we see how games evolve and what the designers chose to do with each cycle. Later cycles would give us more themes (Endor) and other stuff to do (pilots), but it’s always fun to see how core principles of the gameplay can be utilised in these ways.

New Necromunda!

GW are doing some kind of preview event this weekend, which started with the full reveal of the new Age of Sigmar box for 4th edition, and has continued today with 40k stuff. The big news, though, is Necromunda getting a new box that will be taking us to Hive Secundus and the Genestealer Cult infestation there!

I love it. All of it.

It’s Van Saar and Spyrers teaming-up against the tainted scum of the hive, and the article seems to suggest that we’re getting co-op style rules, if I’m reading that right? Could be kinda fascinating.

The models seem to be on the lower side of things for this one. Van Saar are eight, and Spyrers are two, which is intriguing. The Genestealer side is eight recycled Hive Scum models, then six mutants with some floating brains. As for terrain, we’re getting the bulkheads recycled from the 2017 box, so this will be a 2D affair out of the box.

This makes me hopeful that it won’t be as expensive as the Ash Wastes box, although of course that came out a couple of years ago, so anything’s possible.

I’m really trying to avoid spending more money at the minute, as I’m not really sure about my future with this kind of thing. I’m also quite painfully aware that I bought the full Ash Wastes experience, painted up all that terrain, and have only played a single game with that ruleset.

I was tempted by the Stormcast, but this is a whole other level… 😬

Reeling me back in..?

Oh, Games Workshop. They nearly got me, back then. They’re doing some reveals at the minute, so we’re getting a look at more upcoming plastic goodness, and they started with the launch box for Age of Sigmar 4th edition, Skaventide. We’ve known it’ll be Skaven for months, after some sprues had been leaked for the big rats, but it’s always nice to see the official confirmation of this stuff.

This is a hefty box, though! 74 miniatures, plus a bit of terrain, and all the books and cards? Wow. But as has been pointed out, in the ‘win this box!’ competition, the fine print tells us you can win a prize of value $265, which is +$15 on the Leviathan box for 40k last year. That retailed for £150 over here, so this is just expensive.

I mean, it’s always been expensive, but I’m sure the original AoS starter was £85? Granted, it was just minis and a couple of pamphlets, but it is arguably a better launch box if it’s an affordable one.

All that said, I do like the look of the Stormcast Eternals in this set. Stormcast were what got me interested in AoS at first, and I was very keen on them as my first foray into the Mortal Realms, and this re-imagining of that 2015 core set, with new Liberators and Prosecutors has really got me interested once again. Argh! I’m trying to thin out my plastic collection, and yet they keep drawing me back in!!

Jay from Eons of Battle has compared these with Dark Angels and he’s not entirely wrong!

But even so, they look amazing, and there’s a part of me that thinks I might try to pick up the Stormcast half of this box once it’s out in the wild. Maybe.

They do look good, don’t they?

A complete dynasty (pack)

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With the arrival from Canada of these two packs, this week has seen me complete all five cycles for Legend of the Five Rings LCG!

I’m very pleased, because this gives me such a huge collection now to play with – to hopefully play with, I suppose, because I still need to find an opponent, but I’ve played it solo a couple of times and had an absolute blast, so even if that is to be my future with the game, I guess I’m still able to enjoy it for what it is. There are solo modes of course, but I find playing the regular game, but controlling both sides, can be quite enjoyable and challenging when I’m in the right mood for it.

I have a very good collection now, though I think I will always be missing that Clan War deluxe, as well as the Crab and Lion clan packs. It’s a bit like Allies of Necessity for the Star Wars LCG, they’ve just disappeared…