On the plus side we got new previews on a holiday courtesy of FFG and Maindeck.  The downside, well, see below…

Darth Vader – Unstoppable

This seems mostly underwhelming.

A couple interesting things that could work… Can use Cinta as a Plot on the flip to attack immediately and then dump all cards in hand as damage straight to the opponent’s base.  If there ends up being a way to actually draw some cards then a combo with Aggressive Negotiations could be devastating.

However, the front leader side is basically a non-synergy with the unit side that wants you to have cards in hand.  Discard cards but then flip into wanting to have cards in hand.  This new Vader seems to be in fact very stoppable mostly by himself.

He’s not the worst 7-deploy leader we’ve seen from FFG, but for a Darth Vader leader, the expectations are high, and this misses those expectations by a mile.  Unless we see some synergy with wanting to have things in the discard pile, this iteration of Vader doesn’t seem very good.

Shadow Cloaking

Bravado is a card that saw some play in Anakin decks for a bit.  They still often play 1 or 2, but Anakin has fallen down the ranks considerably since his early set 6 meta reign.  Shadow Cloaking is essentially the same card as Bravado but gives a shield token while sacrificing the possible 2 resource discount.  Maybe rotation meta will be different, but Bravado looks like a better card, and that saw minimal play.  This could have been pushed more with the 3-aspect restriction

That’s a Rock

This is not the Vader synergy you are looking for.

Single Reactor Ignition

What is there to say that isn’t obvious?  Super Laser Blast was an excellent card.  If you are playing Villain, Vigilance, Aggression then Single Reactor Ignition is clearly better.  If you are playing a control deck in these aspects, you will play this card.  And, it’ll probably be played a lot over the next 2 years.