Preview cards from yesterday were courtesy of FFG and Thorrk.

Aurra Sing

Aurra is likely to be one of the options for control players out there after rotation, along with Mother Talzin.  They both have a lot in common in that they can defeat a unit with 1 health.  Aurra Sing deploys on 7 resources and Talzin on 5, both with the same stats.  So what advantage does Aurra Sing offer over the much faster Mother Talzin, and is she worth the slower deploy?

While it won’t come up often, Aurra can defeat something with less than 1 health that is being kept alive by something like The Tragedy of Plagueis.  At this point, that isn’t a good reason to play her over Talzin since that is a pretty rare scenario.  

Aurra’s deploy effect is significantly better in that she has a deploy effect, and a pretty good one at that, whereas Talzin does not.  You are waiting 2 turns for a free Takedown.  That’s a great effect that has direct impact on the board.

Aurra also has much more flexibility in deck construction since she does not require the force token.

So, does all of this make up for her atrocious stats?  She’s certainly good, but it’s hard to see if she is better than Talzin at this point.  Talzin has excellent stats for her deploy, a relevant on attack effect and the 2 turns earlier deploy can help control the board better than Aurra can in that time.  It’ll take some deck brewing to see which is better, but our current porgpinion is that Talzin has a slight edge.

Adventurer Sniper Rifle

Obviously meant to combo up with the new Aurra Sing leader.  If you can get the rifle on a unit and keep it alive with Aurra Sing leader, or Mother Talzin for that matter, you can cause some frustration for your opponent.  It has to be played on a unit that can survive a few attacks and that you don’t want to attack with.  Even if you can put all of that together, it’s very fragile.  For an upgrade that doesn’t even give a stat bonus, the Sniper Rifle looks to fall short.

Governor’s Shuttle

The Governor needs a new shuttle because this one looks bad.  There are certain effects that you love to have attached to a unit and are happy to pay extra, typically when it provides you a 2 for 1. The Governor’s Shuttle is an example of an effect you don’t want attached to a unit, and certainly don’t want to pay more for it.  Power of the Dark Side was so good because it only cost 3 and let you manage the board early and you could play it with no units out to make it a one-sided removal.  The shuttle is never one-sided since it always has itself to defeat so you are paying 5 for a bad version of Power of the Dark Side.    

Cad Bane

These are the kinds of cards that are very frustrating.  What could have been a very cool legendary of a fan favorite character instead feels like a bunch of keywords and abilities tacked onto a card with little synergy.

Cad Bane has the same problem as many cards.  He’s slow and has no effect on the board when he enters play.  This is the same issue too many expensive legendaries have so we’re not going to harp on it.

The frustrating part is vigilance has no way to make credits, and green only has a few limited ways.  Mainly Bib Fortuna and the new Krennic leader.  So his aspects don’t lend themselves to making many credits easily.  For the sake of argument, let’s say you had 2 credits sitting on the board.  It would be significantly more impactful to just use those credits to play Cad a turn or 2 earlier.  A round 5 6/6 shield overwhelm is just ok.  A round 3 6/6 shield overwhelm is one of the best things you can do.  Then, maybe you make a credit the following turn with Krennic and then attack with Cad. This cool looking legendary card has then gotten you 1 experience token? 

They could have left off the on attack ability and just made him rare, or give him something that feels legendary.  He could have gotten 1 experience for every credit used when playing him. Or Porg forbid, give him Ambush.  It’s a Cad Bane legendary!