LAW: Preview Reviews 1/21

Previews yesterday were brought to us by Maclunky Gaming and of course FFG.

Chio Fain

Chio who?
Per Wookieepedia: “an Ardennian male slicer who operated during the time of the Galactic Empire.”

For better or worse, 2 cost 2/4 units are now the norm.  Now every 2-drop has to be compared to the closest 2/4 unit.  Chio Fain is the next in line, also as the next non-hero or villain multi-aspect card.  We already know the 2 cost 2/4 is good, so how does Chio’s ability stand up?  Both players drawing a card on attack is a net zero, so you really want to make sure you are taking advantage of it more than your opponent.  

Blue Red control decks are a good place to start, being as we saw Single Reactor Ignition yesterday.  A control deck like that may be ok with both players drawing extra cards, since theirs will ensure they are more likely to draw their removal when they need it.

Aggro decks on the other hand would probably not want to use a unit like this. They would typically rather limit the resources their opponent has to deal with the early aggression.

Chio Fain could have his place in the meta.  He’s not the best 2-cost 2/4 we’ve seen, but especially early in the rotation meta, good stats could easily win out.  

Plus, even if he isn’t strong in a competitive deck, he should be a good way to make an ally in a Twin Suns game.

Rose Tico

An early 2024 finisher for Sabine decks was Guerilla Attack Pod, a 6-cost 4/6 that would usually come into play ready.  At the time, it was very easy for a deck to be at 15 or less health, so Guerilla Attack Pod would enter ready close to 100% of the time.  The Attack Pod will be rotating out, so can Rose Tico take its place as a good come into play ready unit for Cunning aggro decks? 

The majority of the best units in SWU are unique, and you probably want your 4-drop to be the triggering unit. There just aren’t many high-quality non-unique units.  The issue may come down to consistency.  While Rose’s stats and ability are good, the consistency factor does not seem like it will be there.

Secret Battle of Pretend

This card will generally exhaust one of your units to exhaust 2 of your opponents units.  Exhausting your worst unit to exhaust their 2 best units is pretty decent tempo.  It’s not as good as bouncing a unit back to hand of course, but a leader like the new Lando Calrissian may be interested in delaying the game to the point they can slam an something big like an early Bo-Katan and take over the game from there.  

On the other hand, exhaust abilities that are not attached to a Leader, Unit or Upgrade are not always good enough.  An event like this isn’t going to have a lasting effect on the board.  It’s going to take a specific deck that is looking to slow the game down.  Lando looks most likely so far, but it’ll be interesting to see if someone can brew up a “fun” tempo deck to take advantage of things like this.

Bix Caleen

Bix comes in as a 4-cost 4/5, so stats are where you want them to be.  She is only Cunning, so she can fit into a wide variety of decks.  Turning a card in your hand into a credit has the potential to be very powerful but discarding is also not as easy as it sounds.  You will have resourced your “worst” card in hand, then you would need to discard the second worst card to make a credit.

Even with the potential difficulty of figuring out which things to discard, Bix can lead to a pretty high powered turn.  She provides a solid body and ramps you by 1 when played and maybe a 2nd after attacking, the following turn, allowing you to follow her up with a 7-cost card.  

We’ll see how powerful credits truly are once we get more of the set revealed.  Bix has the potential to be a playable card in a deck set up to use credits efficiently.  She won’t make the cut in every deck, but she has all the parts to make the cut somewhere.