For those who are not aware after the cancellation of Star Wars: Destiny by FFG in early 2020, a group of players from around the globe decided to form a continuation committee to ensure the future of the game for years to come. On October 16th (less than a week away) the continuation committee are releasing their first 90 card set, Faltering Allegiances, for both print & play and TTS release. All the details of this release can be found on SWD Renewed Hope website, we’d really recommend checking them out and also checking out the active Discord community.
Today we’ve been lucky enough to get our hands on some spoilers for this set and we’ve invite Steret to give his first thoughts on these cards and how they might impact the incoming ARH Standard rotation that will trigger after the release of Faltering Allegiances. So without further ado, let’s get into the spoilers.
This is the ultimate risk vs. reward card that is going to result in some interesting mind games between players. The fact that you will only know one of your two possible choices is going to bring tension to your decision making, do you take the card you know or take a risk that your opponent kept the best card hidden. Perhaps Thrawn is best placed to make use of this card, he’s going to give you perfect knowledge of what is on top of the deck so you’ll know what to pick and when. If the format is fast and aggressive this card is unlikely to see much play, but if we are in a slower format where supports are more prevalent this could be an interesting include.
This is very interesting design space for a downgrade, the ability to steal a character is extremely strong but how reliably we can load enough resources to make use of this downgrade is questionable. It’s doubtful you’ll ever be stealing your opponents big characters but managing to steal a cheap and useful support character could be back breaking. At a cost of 3 it’s going to be difficult to resolve die round 1 which is probably going to be needed if you’ve got a chance to succeed at stealing a character. It’s a shame that cards such as Deadlock are only able to interact with supports and not other card types, this could be stronger if there were another way to put resources on it…
This is the second iteration of the infamous First Order informant, Bazine Netal. The obvious comparison is to Jabba the Hutt from Convergence as a yellow support character. For only an extra 2 points for an elite die you are far more likely to see her played in her elite form. You give up a 2 focus side for a strong 2 shield side and gain some clear synergies with cards like Extort Cooperation & Z-6 Jetpack. Detect appears to be a strong mechanic and the ping damage Bazine brings could really add up over time. Perhaps there is a choke / control deck with Bazine and someone like Kragan Gorr allowing you to ramp hard early whilst limiting your opponents resources and using Bazine’s ability in the late game to pump up a Z-6 or LR-57 Combat Droid.
This is the beginning of my Kragan Bazine choke deck, currently it’s a little light on removal pending the rest of the set reveal. There seems to be nice synergy with resource stacking cards and Reap to guarantee being able to use Bazine’s Power Action.
Thank you to the ARH committee for giving us some great spoilers and to Steret for giving us a nice run through of his thoughts on them. The committee are throwing a fantastic free release event on TTS next Saturday (Sunday morning for us down under) with full free play sets, alt arts and more to give away. Check out all the information on the ARH website. We at DDU are also going to run a free TTS event the weekend after at a more Oceanic friendly time slot so keep an eye out on our Discord for more information.