Having just played with the Jedi Hunters Squad Pack, I thought it would be sensible to start on something Republic just to be fair! This pack contains Luminara Unduli, Barriss Offee and two Clone Commandos, making up a full squad. In terms of characters, I couldn’t be more excited. Having been a huge fan of the Legends era, the two Jedi are some of my favourites. From the original Clone Wars series where they worked together completely in sync, to Barriss in one of The Clone Wars era duologies I keep coming back to, Medstar by Steve Perry and Michael Reaves, these characters have always had something about them. For more modern fans, they appeared again in the newer The Clone Wars although somewhat different to their original characters. The Clone Commandos, well I loved the Karen Travis books and the Republic Commando game, so this again makes me so excited for this pack (although I have to decide for the paint – Omega? Or Delta?). What I think this pack perfectly does, is embrace several fan bases within Star Wars. I think that in and of itself will make it popular with a lot of fans.
I’m really liking how all these models come on a single sprue plus a sprue for the bases. After opening the webpage with the instructions, the first build is Luminara herself. Let me be honest, it was a complete geek out moment. The model is absolutely stunning. The pose captures the character perfectly, the detail on the clothing is superb. Painting it might be a different matter, but the patterns are incredible and really bring the character to life. The build is also incredibly straight forward. Everything fits as it should do and in no time at all you’ll have a completed model.
The next on the instructions is Barriss. The pose is so her and works tremendously but it is also the first time where I’ve really paused to think if I want to assemble the whole model first and then paint. That lightsaber gets very close to her face, and I was a bit concerned with picking out details with not much clearance. Looking at the instructions, it would have been a lot of hassle to work around it, so I just thought, let’s go for it. I’m glad I did. There isn’t much clearance but having assembled her, there is enough to get a 00 brush in order to pick out Barriss’ face. Thankfully after the battle droids, the arms and hands line up very easily, so much so that I never worried about getting a perfect fit. Next to Luminara she looks fantastic, and I purposefully put them both on bases with sand to give them some unity but also because it reminds me of them from Alan Dean Foster’s The Approaching Storm.
Finally, it’s the time of the Commandos. The first is a delight to build, straightforward and easy to do. The pose, like all the others, is full of motion and yet easy to paint. The second is my favourite of the two; he has that look from the Republic Commando game that brings back such wonderful memories. I couldn’t stop myself assembling him all, with the blaster, I may regret this. One thing I will say if you’re going to build him, do his arms before the legs. It took me a few minutes to work the left arm in because of how far the leg comes up. It is absolutely doable but would be far easier the other way around. There is also a barricade for the commando to crouch besides, which I have left off so I can paint him the white armour first. It’s an easy one to leave off for now and glue back on when I’m ready.
There are no variant parts that you can switch and choose between and in all honesty, I didn’t miss it one bit. These models have such nostalgia behind them, that it was just a thrill to be assembling them in the first place.
Onto the cards. The Republic Commandos seem good. They only have a health of six but always have protection from their armour, which means they’ll always be reducing damage down by one. They can also do up to eight damage from their tree which is nothing to be scoffed at. It’s another clone unit that you can field in your squads, and I must admit, I’m looking forward to taking a couple of Jedi and then the rest just completely clones soon.
The real gems of this pack are the Jedi and Luminara looks like she is going to steal the show. Already there is a buzz online about just how powerful she is. The healing aspect of the character that was introduced in Legends for both her and Barriss is here and is saying it very loud and clear. The ability ‘full recovery’ is at a cost of two force but allows a unit within three to remove all damage and conditions. Yes, I said all…ALL! That is extremely powerful and I’m sure it will have opponents pulling their hair out. The fact that some of her other abilities trigger advances to make her more maneuverable and cross the battlefield quicker, is twisting the knife…or should that be lightsaber? It’s not the only heal action she has (in case you’re wondering), if an allied unit is wounded, you can heal another three times. This is really going to make her a target as she will need to be defeated quickly, otherwise the rest of her team are not going anywhere anytime soon. She also allows you to look at the top card of the order deck. It may seem like a small thing, but knowing when to play a reserved card or to reserve a card is a very big advantage. It allows you to plan a little more, to make use of the best unit you can. There is a lot here for this character, a lot, and I can see why there is so much talk about her online. Well after feeling the wrath of the Fifth Brother’s force repulse, I’m sure he’ll be thrilled to be up against Luminara this time!
Barriss works well with her master, of course she would. She has healing that when she recovers, units within three remove a single damage. Combine this with Luminara and you have units that can keep coming back again and again, really hampering your opponent’s strategy. She also has something called ‘faithful padawan’ which allows her and Luminara (or any Jedi Primary Unit you might put her with) when engaged with the same enemy, to add two dice to their attack. That means Barriss would be rolling eight dice and Luminara could be potentially rolling nine. That’s a lot of dice! I thought the Jedi Hunters Squad Pack was really adding a lot to the game, but this brings a lot of weight too.
This is all easy to say when it is on a card, but how does it replicate onto the battlefield? It all plays beautifully. This is a fully synergized squad that is immensely powerful from the word go. Luminara doesn’t give out much damage, but her healing ability is incredibly powerful. She healed up my commandos as soon as she activated, keeping them in the game a lot longer. Yet as I say she is very powerful; she is also very situational. When I was wounding enemies, most of the time, my units didn’t need healing, or they were already wounded. My only option was to remove some conditions. With not much control of the initiative deck, it means that while powerful, Luminara has to have impeccable timing to work to full effect. Her ability to allow a supporting unit to attack is also extremely handy and having her backed up by commandos worked a treat when I played against the Inquisitors. The commandos. They don’t get many dice, but they really pack a punch when they hit and as a backup unit for someone like Luminara.
The other thing I will say about Luminara that really helps to balance her out, is the force cost. By the time I had activated Luminara I had pretty much used all my force, meaning my other units really suffered as a consequence. She can do really impressive things, but she is a drain on your resources.
The character that I was most impressed with was Barriss. In order for her to be effective, she needs to be with her primary unit, in this case Luminara. This then triggers several abilities that add both primary and secondary characters. But the thing that really makes Barriss impressive is her stance card. She doesn’t do a huge amount of damage but one of her options for her initial damage is two damage and a reposition. Unless you get very bad dice rolls, this will always trigger and is immensely powerful. This allowed her to move very quickly around the board and secure objectives for me. I’m very eager to try her with different primary Jedi to see how well she’ll interact with these.
All in all, I am in love with this expansion. It works fantastic on the table as it is and I’m already thinking it will be a staple squad in my lists. I’m also wanting to try out the different characters in different squads, which tells me how much I’ve enjoyed using them. Add the nostalgia quality to it all, to the characters picked, the stances they’ve been given, and you have a very successful expansion. Dare I say it, I think this is an absolute essential purchase for any player of Star Wars: Shatterpoint.
