ASH: Preview Review 5/29

A 6/6 ground unit for 5 resources is just above rate compared to a vanilla common such as Raxian Assembly which is a 5 cost 6/5 ground unit with no game text.

The upcoming Admiral Ackbar is in this realm. Will he be a good card or is it a trap?

In the Command Heroism aspects he faces some stiff competition at the 5 cost level from Queen Amidala, who doesn’t die easily and brings two spies, or Chewbacca who is a great pilot early game and even at 5 resources as a ground unit that can’t be easily defeated. Competing cards like these could make it hard to justify Ackbar.

However, there are possibly some great combo possibilities.  If you can find a way to ambush Akbar, for example, you could sequence him to ambush, deal his 6 damage, and then as long as he survives defeat him to replace him with an equally costed space unit that has no damage on it.

We did also see a space unit with which he could also combo extremely well.

The Bothan 5 would need to already be in play for the combo to work, but you could play Ackbar, defeat him to get another 5 cost space unit, and then place Akbar captured on the Bothan 5, to have a 6/6 unit just waiting to come into play when the Bothan 5 is defeated.

So he may not be as sticky as Queen Amidala or Chewbacca, but he does provide a nice way to choose which arena you wish to play in. 

The options are nice and there is value in the flexibility. If you are better with a ground unit, just play him as normal.  If you think you would be better in space, but drew Akbar, no worries, he is like a mini U-wing Reinforcement for space.  With a 10 card dig, you should be able to find one decent size unit or 2 smaller ones to put into play.

Verdict

Our verdict is “Not a Trap”. This is a pretty solid card that should see play.