LAW: Preview Reviews 1/23
Preview cards courtesy of FFG and Pleasant Kenobi on Instagram.
Galen Erso
The design of this card is really clever and probably fun to play with.
You’re basically never going to play this on your side of the board. Giving it to an opponent so that all of your own units gain two pretty nice bonuses is cool.
There are also not a ton of great ways to deal with this aside from a bounce to hand effect or running him into other units which sort of creates the opposite of action economy for your opponent. The absolute funniest way to deal with Galen would be to play your own Galen, defeat theirs as the second copy and then give yours to your opponent.
Easiest place where Galen could fit is a space aggro deck. If there are no other ground arena units available for your opponent to run him into then he’s going to just be there for a while most likely. Vader JTL Cunning looks like a great place to try him out. Vader has the ability to go very wide, which will maximize Galen’s buffs. Vader also does not play very much on the ground, so it will be very hard for your opponent to remove Galen. Maybe they have to use some targeted removal, but that’s also a win for Vader.
Overall this is a very fun card that has some interesting gameplay and deck building implications that are new to SWU. Time will tell whether it’s good or not, but it’ll be fun to try him out.
Fear and Dead Men
Seems to clearly be made to work with the new Darth Vader leader which could make for some crazy 7 resource flip turns. Flipping Vader over with a Cinta Kaz played as a plot to attack right away with Vader, then dumping your hand could potentially allow this to be played for free or ideally only the 1 remaining resource not counting any credits that may have been accrued. That adds up to a pretty big turn with massive board swing capability.
The main issue with this sequence is it’s late in the game and slow. You need to deploy Vader, attack with Vader, then play this. This is all to hopefully clear the ground and maybe 1 space unit? It feels like a lot of effort and uses 2 specific cards, plus there are probably better things to do with 7 resources.
Having basically nothing to do with Star Wars Unlimited, this card does captures one of the most iconic Vader scenes from the comic books.
Persecutor
Many of the big triangles are going to rotate out of Premier format when A Lawless Time is released. What would Star Wars be without big triangles? Therefore printing more triangles makes a ton of sense.
Playing a Devastator JTL or a Fulminatrix SEC with 8 resources and then following up with the Persecutor on the 9 resource round is going to be fun. Even more fun paired with the Admiral Piett leader and some ramp in the form of GNK Power Droids, some credits, or perhaps another of the cards revealed yesterday as seen below.
Another angle on this is Bombing Run from SOR which has a similar effect of 3 damage to every unit in an arena for 5 cost. With the extra 4 resource cost you get the extra 9/7 capital ship which can attack and do the same thing the next round. Just be careful as the Persecutor will hit itself if you choose the space arena.
It can certainly be powerful. It will come down to whether the meta wants a 9-cost space unit. Outside of Piett, it may be too big. It does trigger on play and on attack, which goes a long way. At this point, Piett is losing his best ramp, so even with him, a 9-cost unit may be pushing it. For 9 resources, it’s hard to not think about why it has to hit your own units. Bo-Katan is another 9 cost unit and only affects your opponents units. The new Lawbringer, for 8 resources, only affects your opponents units.
Expendable Mercenary
On the surface it looks somewhat similar to Superlaser Technician, but with some key differences.
For starters it costs an additional resource. That cost is high for a 3/3 unit. However given that this mercenary can become a resource could be enough to make this playable.
The second difference though is that when the Mercenary is resourced it would not be readied like the Technician. This is critical in making it phenomenally slower. Technician is deploy for 3, and then the following round you could kamikazee run it into an opponent’s unit to jump from 4 to 5 right away. Mercenary already comes out one round later due to the cost at 4, and then the sacrifice by running into an opponent’s unit gains the resource but not readied, so the jump from 5 to 6 only helps for leader deployment that turn and not for playing something else. The benefit only really comes into play on what would have been the 6 resource turn and then being at 7.
The Mercenary is certainly not an equal replacement for the Death Star Technician. Some decks may be desperate enough for some ramp to run a couple Mercenaries, but it won’t feel as good as Technician did. The Mercenary would also really like to have ambush to get an immediate trade and ramp, but that is much harder to do post rotation. Maybe if Dryden Voss leader becomes viable, he can slot some of these to push to 7 resources.
Another fun little downside is that Expendable Mercenary after being played will be readied just in time for your opponent to play No Glory, Only Results on it.