Last week, I Rebel spoiled three new cards and yesterday The Hyperloops spoiled 3 more. We thought we’d have a look at them and give them our thoughts.

Finally, a blue Leia! Leia now holds the distinguished position as being the only character to be represented by 3 factions in Destiny. And what a great iteration of this character: excellent sides, decent health, guardian, and a good chance of picking up some free shields every round. The apprentice subtype is a nice addition for cards like Force Affinity, Untamed Power and Protect The Younglings. I could see her doing well paired with Rey and especially Transformations Anakin thanks to her ability to protect her father from his self-destructive tendencies. I also like the idea of using her non-elite paired with eYoda, as you can use her guardian to take the damage on Yoda‘s shields. I expect her to see a decent amount of play.

Note that since guardian is an after ability, you can choose the order which you resolve that and her free shields, meaning you can shield up before taking a hit, or take a hit on existing shields before re-shielding. And those shields can go on anyone, so she can go full-on protector and give shields to someone else while taking a hit with guardian.

One thing which does surprise me about this character, is that after ARH jumped through semantic hoops to make sure you couldn’t use Sifo-Dyas to find out the top card of your deck, they’ve released a character that makes this really easy, opening up deck building options with Greez. To be fair, it’s a little tricky to make the numbers work, as together they add up to 20/23/26 points depending on how elite they are, meaning you’ve got options like Leia/Greez/eSatine or eLeia/Greez/Hoth Trooper/eRescue Han, neither of which sound great options. However, the power of guaranteed double focus could be very strong indeed, so long as you can keep Greez alive.

I think it goes without saying that this iteration of Luminara is a significant improvement on the last one, who had to get balanced down -3/-3 to 11/14 and was still worse than 9/12 Aayla.

Those dice sides are all good, and that special looks handy, so long as you have an apprentice standing, which is slightly more likely thanks to her health boost. However, if you don’t have a dice apprentice remaining, discarding and giving a shield is decent, but it doesn’t close games. The reference to apprentice card rather than character makes me really hope for an apprentice support, which could help Luminara late game or if your apprentice dice are already in the pool.

Other than pairing her with the above Leia, she could be handy when paired with eLuke (Covert Missions)/eUnited or Jedi Trials, eAhsoka/Youngling/United or Jedi Code (below) or eRey, especially if you’re lucky enough to hit a special on Rey after giving her a shield, to get the immediate resolve and re-roll. And all of those options can be changed by dropping her to non-elite and adding in a 5 health Youngling, as her second die costs a hefty 4 points. To be honest though, I’m not blown away, and will need some convincing to believe this character is going to hold her own in a world of Transformations Anakin and blue villains.

What a great plot. Another one with a build restriction, which seems to be the go-to plot design for ARH, but it’s certainly an effective way to develop theme decks. Anyone who’s played blue hero a lot knows that you often just have too many shield sides, especially if you’re running cards like Jedi Lightsaber for the on-play ability, and this is a great way to leverage those sides, sort of like Stand Firm, but on a stick. This fits perfectly with eLuminara/eLeia or eLuminara/eRey, and is probably better value than United in those builds, especially the Leia version thanks to her many shield sides.

Dash Rendar is a very different kind of character to what we’ve come to expect from ARH. Action cheating has been deliberately absent from the game since their stewardship, but it’s coming in hot here. Those dice sides are ok, but that double resource side is huge, especially with Reap kicking around.

There’s some nice plays you can pull off with ambush yellows, such as We’re Home to ambush activate 2 scoundrels and potentially 3 vehicles if you pair him with a character with piloting. Or you can play Change of Plans to resolve any support die as focus. Or you can play Flee The Scene and take another action (maybe play another Flee The Scene).

I’m certainly going to be trying Dash with Transformations Han, for double piloting double scoundrel. It’s going to be fast, and if it can get Mean Streets then Jump to Lightspeed is going to be on the cards. I don’t expect this pairing to be top tier necessarily, but I do expect it to be popular, and able to sneak wins against most decks with the right rolls. It’s going to be pretty annoying to play against.

Dash‘s ship, the Outrider, is a very solid ship for 4 cost. Not only does it have a great die, but it’s draw ability is going to be really strong. If you get to resolve that special, it could be incredibly strong, though it’s going to be a risk dropping a prime card on the bottom of your deck for the die to get removed.

Remember you get to see what you roll before you place a card on the bottom of your deck and draw a card, meaning you can choose to put that prime card on the bottom of your deck if you roll the special, or draw it if you don’t. I’m thinking I’ll want to ambush activate this vehicle, or protect the die with a Stolen Datapad, to really maximize value.

And finally, another plot with a build restriction. Play 3 traps, and you can spend 3 resources to gain 4 Ewoks, each with only 1 health remaining. There’s 3 traps in the game, and if you want to guarantee playing 3 you probably want to be playing Wicket.

None of these traps are bad per se, so including them won’t feel too onerous. You could play Nightsister Lair to help with resource generation, which be neat with Wicket. 3 resources however is a lot for an Ewok deck, which always seems to be running on empty, and would rather spend its money on mitigation and damage from hand. Therefore, I think this is more likely to be included in a resource rich deck that is happy to include an Wicket for 8/10 points and may get to spawn 4 extra Ewoks in some games. You most certainly would want to be running red as this is a mission plot, so it puts Covert Mission online, which is a huge bonus to almost any deck.

The strength of adding 4 Ewoks is going to hugely depend on your matchup. Against direct damage decks, each Ewok burns a die. Against indirect damage decks, or decks with some damage splash, they can all be knocked out with a single big die.

If you can pull this off consistently (somehow), it does put some interesting cards online. Like Our Situation Is Desperate, Honourable Sacrifice, Destiny Fulfilled.

Overall, I think this card is going to generate the most… interesting builds. I can’t wait to see what the community comes up with.

---

If you like what we do, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter: https://www.patreon.com/echobasedestiny