ASH: Preview Review 5/19
Begun the Preview Season Has…
Bright Hope from Spark of Rebellion was a staple card in Command Heroism for a solid two years until the recent rotation occurred. It was terrific at shutting down an onslaught of little fighter units in the space area nearly single handedly.
The new version of T-6 Shuttle 1974 previewed yesterday by Maindeck gives us a new spin on the same basic card.
This new Ashes of the Empire space unit has a bunch of things in common with its Spark of Rebellion predecessor.
- Power 2
- Hit Points 6
- Cost 4
- Command Aspect
- Heroism Aspect
- Sentinel
- Traits of Vehicle and Transport
- Uncommon
- Unique
This basic setup pretty much seems to make this card pretty good just by having seen the history and level of usage that Bright Hope saw previously.
The first main difference is the trait Jedi vs. Rebel. The Rebel trait may have fallen on some hard times losing a significant set of the “Rebel Package” that existed with things like Fleet Lieutenant and Wing Leader. The Jedi trait could be more significant at this point. One interesting thing to watch out for would be the next rotation and the loss of Legends of the Force that may have had the best Jedi synergy so far.
Next up is the text under the Sentinel box. Bright Hope’s ability was potentially more useful in being able to draw a card than to bounce a unit back to your hand. It was kind of a secondary effect of the card that came into play much less than basically everything else about the card. Luckily the new T-6 Shuttle has all the same things that made Bright Hope good.
The action ability on the T-6 is an interesting one. Giving +2/+2 to another unit with an action cheat of attacking with that unit accomplishes two things, one being that even though you are exhausting the T-6 you still get its 2 power of attack points in and it also boosts up the hit points of the unit doing the attacking making it harder to take out at least until the end of the phase.
With the new ability game text it is possible that aside from a heavy Rebel package build that the T-6 could just be better than Bright Hope in nearly every other scenario.