Welcome to Our Thrawn Talk
Thrawn is diabolical, brilliant and ruthless. He is a tactical genius whose troops follow him willingly, and who will fight for him whether or not he’s watching over their shoulders. Thrawn is a fantastic character both in the legends novels and in his current canon form.
It makes sense that Thrawn would be crafted in the Vigilance aspect. He is always watching, learning, absorbing information, to later turn that knowledge back on his adversaries.
Vigilant (adjective)
- Keenly watchful to detect danger
- Ever awake and alert; sleeplessly watchful
What is His Style?
Obviously, Thrawn is very stylish in his starched and nicely pressed white Imperial uniform. But let’s talk about his play style as a SWU card.
Following on what we know of his character from other media, Thrawn seems like he should be a control leader in Star Wars Unlimited.
Assuming that the developers wanted to make Thrawn’s latest leader incarnation fit his persona from other media, it seems like he would have been developed as a control leader. There are many cards with When Defeated effects that would support this by healing a base, drawing cards, etc.
Have the FFG developers made a small oops though in their pursuit of making Thrawn control oriented?
Aggro Combo
Imagine Thrawn is the leader. During round one Val is put into play. For round two, Val could be used as the Exploit 1 component of Infiltrating Demolisher.
The way this would work is that the exploited unit triggers with Val being defeated and enters play. Val’s effects are then triggered. Thrawn’s ability can make the When Defeated component happen twice.
You now have in play an Infiltrating Demolisher that cost 2 resources to play, has 4 experience upgrades on it, and 3 points of damage. That’d be an 8/9 unit with 6 health remaining. Seems good.
A Cherry On Top
You also have a resource still available on round two since the exploit makes the Demolisher only take two resources to put into play and presumably you would have played a third one. May as well have Covert Strength in the deck too in order to take advantage of that extra resource. Heal a couple damage from that Demolisher and give it another experience. Now it’d be a 9/10 unit with 9 health remaining.
Chimera
Thrawn’s newest iteration of his flagship is strikingly better than the first. The Jump to Lightspeed Chimera leans into the new leader mechanic immensely by allowing it to activate a When Defeated ability when it enters play. Sure, you could use it to heal your base with the ability from the upcoming Onyx Squadron Brute, but is there also an aggro combo lurking here as well?
What about Admiral Motti? Play the Chimera, activate Admiral Motti’s ability making it immediately available swing in for five on your next action. Oh and if you have another villain unit out, say maybe the 8/9 Infiltrating Demolisher from earlier, just use Thrawn’s leader ability to double up Motti’s effect and ready that unit too.
What Does All This Mean?
Does this mean that the new Thrawn leader is an aggro champion? It’s possible. It’s also very early in the spoiler season to say that definitively. The above are some cool combos although they’d be statistically improbable to pull off with any amount of regularity. In fact we just updated the Porg Depot hypergeometric calculator to help with calculating combo odds, at least for two cards (figure three card combos are just really unlikely to play on curve).
Aggro leader or not, there no doubt that Thrawn’s mechanic seems to fit his character. Turning a disadvantage into a major advantage. A unit being defeated helping to turn the tide back in his (or your) favor. That could be incredibly powerful within the context of Star Wars Unlimited.