The dust has barely settled on the release of the core game and expansions are coming out thick and fast. Usually if a game has this many releases, it puts me off: the upkeep cost of the game becomes too expensive. Yet for a newly released game, this is exactly what is needed! More squads, providing more options and opponents fielding different combinations for players to challenge themselves against. While we eagerly await the Obi-Wan and Dooku packs at Jedi News, I wanted to get stuck straight in with one of the newest releases, the Jedi Hunters Squad Pack.
This set contains four characters: Grand Inquisitor, Reva, Fifth Brother, and Fourth Sister. This covers several fan bases, namely Rebels fans and fans of Obi-Wan Kenobi. Conveniently, the You cannot Run Dual Pack has also been released, which provides players with Vader and an older version of Kenobi (we’ll be getting to that in a later review). On opening the set, everything is contained on one sprue apart from the bases. It’s compact, at least the models are. On the other hand, there are the cards you will need. I was left a little speechless seeing the sheer number of cards for all the different languages that the expansion box supports. You certainly will not need all of these and I’m going to be having a careful think of how best to utilise these so as not to waste them. I would maybe suggest that no matter the language, you only need one set of initiative cards.
Onto the building of the models. The instructions are viewable online with the first construction been the Grand Inquisitor (and rightfully so). This is a beautifully simple model to assemble. Everything is clearly marked out, simple to assemble and the model itself is stunning. Some models I have to build in parts and paint as I’m building them. Cloaks are usually a main cause for this, yet the cloak on the Grand Inquisitor is moved to the side, creating some movement for the model as well as allowing complete assembly even for painters. Furthermore, there are head choices. The Grand Inquisitor and the Fifth Brother both have a choice of two heads, and I couldn’t be more pleased that there are. The heads you can choose from are their real-life versions from the Kenobi series and ones that more closely resemble how the characters appear in Rebels. This pleases both fan bases and I think is a really nice touch from Atomic Mass. I went with the Rebels version in case you’re wondering!
Reva and the Fourth Sister are next. Both of these again can be assembled completely without the worry of painting for cloaks. The poses on these, in fact on all four of the models, are excellent. They exude fear and power, and they look impressive when assembled next to each other. I do think that the designer of the models (Dave Kidd) must be a painter as each model has been carefully thought out.
The final model, the Fifth Brother, has two interesting choices. The first is the head, same as the Inquisitor, that allows you to choose between the Rebels and Obi-Wan Kenobi version. The other is a sliced moisture vaporator. This is insanely cool and adds a lot of dynamic movement to the model. What I like is that it is completely optional, even the model on the box shows no sign of it. Although cool, I’ve opted to leave it out as I think the model looks great without it and I might be able to use it on a different model in some later release. Just a quick mention on the right arm. When you join it, there will be a gap between the arm and body. This is absolutely fine as the shoulder pad covers this when you add it over the top of the join.
This is a very simple build and shouldn’t take players very long to put together and get playing within a couple of hours. The models, as always, look outstanding. The look, the movement, the size, makes this from an aesthetic point of view, great value for money.
Onto the characters themselves in the game, as you’d expect, they work better when played together. The Grand Inquisitor’s tactic ability (that activates every time his initiative card is revealed) allows another Inquisitorius character to move. This really sums up a lot of what all these characters can do, which is to move quickly around the board. These aren’t units of more than one unit, they are individual characters and this speed I think is very thematic with the source material. The Grand Inquisitor looks like such a heavy hitter. He allows you to remove opponents’ control tokens, and if he’s against another force user, there are abilities that will allow him to add defense dice. There is even his identity ability that allows healing and force refresh if another Inquisitorius character wounds an enemy unit. For these, it’s always better when attacking a force user, which then provides some balance when your opponent is fielding squads without a force unit.
Although the Grand Inquisitor looks incredible to play, it’s the Fifth Brother who really caught my attention; he seems so fun. In keeping with the character, he just seems to scare your opponent! He can move enemies away, or if there is contention for an objective marker, he can take control. He is going to be one on the game to watch as it’s going to take a couple of characters or units to try and deal with him.
Fourth Sister looks very maneuverable, but it’s Reva (Third Sister) that also seems to have some very tantalizing abilities. She can allow allies to make extra attacks but for me it’s the ‘Your Fear Betrays You’ ability. Remove a condition from an opponent to add two dice to an attack. From the games I’ve played so far, condition tokens can quickly stack, and this ability also can stack: remove one or more condition tokens. Coupled with units that can hand out conditions with ease, this seems extremely powerful.
There are a lot of options here for dark side users and I’m really interested to see how players will mix these up with the different units already out. For testing them actually on the battlefield, I’m just combining them with the core set for now to get a feel for them. I already know that I will very quickly want to combine them with Vader as I have a feeling this is going to be a very powerful combination. So how did they perform in battle?
From my cards you can see that I just combined this set with the core box, my son fielding squads just from the core. I dropped the Fourth Sister and ran the group with the battle droids from the core for my second squad. The first thing you notice is that the game goes a lot quicker. The movement of these units is incredibly quick when they are next to each other. The Grand Inquisitor allowing himself and another unit to short move is incredibly useful. I had Fifth Brother on a middle objective by combining abilities from the Grand Inquisitor and Reva. Reva herself was fine, absolutely fine but when compared with the other two, she is just that: fine. Because the other two characters are incredible.
The Grand Inquisitor: fast moving, striking opponents, was able to deal damage, allowed the other characters to heal when wounding the opposition, there is a lot to this character. It was great to see him attacking Rex and Ahsoka, calmly moving over to the middle of the battlefield as if it were nothing. His stance card is a joy, and being able to spend some force to flip it and add two defense dice came in very handy. Hopefully you can see from the photos, just the aesthetics of the stances, you can’t help seeing this as a movie playing out on your table. It really makes this game so immersive.
The star of the show, however, was the Fifth Brother. This Inquisitor is a beast! To say he knocks a mean punch is an understatement, he carved through units with ease. Followed up by breaking ties for contesting objectives in his favour was a joy for me, less so for my opponent (my son Charlie). The pure cinematic moment for me in the game though, was when I got to use Fifth Brother’s ability ‘Force repulse’. It’s two Forces but I was so grateful I could use it. I moved onto an objective with him, surrounded by my own Darth Maul and my son’s Rex, Ahsoka and clone trooper, all within range two (at this point I’m doing a chef’s kiss in the air). My son’s face drops in horror as I push each of these units away two and take control of the objective. It’s an incredibly powerful objective, that really puts you into the Star Wars Galaxy as you can really see this force effect in all its glory…. My son wasn’t particularly amused!
Even with all the cool shenanigans going on, I unfortunately lost the game, but it was immensely fun. The Jedi Hunters Squad Pack adds a lot of characters to start considering for squad building. I started thinking who else could I play them with, but they do work so well when they are all together. The abilities that activate when another does something, make them a real threat, you are going to want to try and separate them as much as possible. With Vader also being released, it seems like a match made in heaven and I like that there is the ability to start fielding pure character squads that are all single characters. Having them count as two for contesting objectives means that they are no weaker than having two models in a unit and their damage output and abilities more than make up for having fewer physical figures on the table. I am really looking forward to playing with these again and my son immediately asked if he could use them (I’m sure to try and do force repulse on me to show how it feels on the other end). As a new game, players are in need of variation and this set really offers a lot for players, not only in just the building of the squad itself with different supporting units all in the same box, but also in the presence of the squad on the table. Three models instead of four speeds the game up and I can’t help but hear George Lucas, “faster, more intense”. For that is what this set seems to bring to this game: faster, more intense and even more excitement.
