With new starter sets purchased, battles flying around, I’m sure a lot of new players are starting to look around to see what else they can get to expand and alter their forces. While for existing players, the new card packs allow for a lot of variation, for new players, it seems far more beneficial to get the new releases that have all the updated cards included. This means that apart from getting extra of the units already included in the starter sets, there is not too much to get. While for some players they might find this frustrating, as someone coming into this new, I’m actually really pleased that releases are at this pace. It gives players time to enjoy what they do have, to find the strengths and weaknesses of the units in their possession and to just generally really enjoy the game.
For both Rebels and Imperial players, there is a new release in the form of customisable commanders. The Rebels I will look at in another review, but for this one, I’m going to dive into the Imperial Officer and Agent. While these are not named characters, they allow players to create their own unique character to lead their forces. Not only that, but with a lot of customisable parts, these characters shouldn’t just be unique in name but in looks as well. With only Darth Vader for new Imperial players, this offers some variation. However, I did also think that there would need to be some huge benefits for not taking Vader instead favoring a lower ranking officer. I was quite excited as to what this could be.
One thing I did notice was that the box for the Imperial officer and agent is considerably bigger than the Rebel version. As I am an Empire player, this seemed only fair and sensible! On opening the box, I was greeted with a lot of sprues for two characters. The box says that there are over twenty options for these characters. That is a lot, and I can certainly see why the box must be the size it is. There are three sprues here, crammed full of modelling goodness. This was clearly going to be the hard part for me, figuring out what combination of models I wanted to do.
Before I went down that rabbit hole, I thought I would look at the cards to give me an idea of how I might build these characters in terms of weapons, which I hoped would give me some direction to where to go with the models themselves. Let’s start with the Imperial Officer, who can be your commander. He or she has a base cost of 55 points, although they do need to equip at least one upgrade. However, already, this shows just how many points you will save from not having Vader, enough for another unit! While Vader plays great, he is painfully slow, so just having a cheaper commander provides a lot more options to players. However, with the reduced cost also comes a lot less of an offensive character. With some combat training and nothing more than a blaster pistol, no one is going to particularly fear this commander and at six health, they are rather squishy. But if they are an ‘unknown’ commander, why would Rebels fear them? It fits rather well and like I say, the ability to take another unit with this commander rather than just a higher priced commander like Vader is very appealing. The commander provides you with a three-pip command card, which allows you to order three trooper units, which gain suppressive till the end of the round. Also, if an enemy panics during the round, a trooper unit can make a one speed movement. Useful when played right.
In terms of upgrade, there is only one that is exclusive to the Imperial Officer – the rest of the cards that can be used by both the officer and agent I’ll look at in a moment. ‘Academy Training’ costs ten points but improves the officer’s morale by one. It also gives them exemplar, inspire one and strategize one (as an action). It’s very much about inspiring the troops and giving out tokens to aid them. This officer is going to want to stay close to the troops, if this is the upgrade I take with them. As the officer comes already with inspire one, this upgrade would give them inspire two.
Before I look at the rest of the upgrades, I do want to look at the Imperial Agent. They are an operative and cost fifty points to field in your army. They too need to equip an upgrade and come with the keyword relentless. Like the officer, they only have a blaster pistol with five health and two morale. Again, not the toughest of characters but I feel a lot of the appeal of both of these characters are the options they give you to bolster your own troops. The unit provides you with a one pip command card, that allows you to order just the agent but gives them demoralize two and inspire two to the end of the round. If they are in the right place to make use of this, you might be able to panic a Rebel unit before they get a chance to activate.
Like the officer, there is only one upgrade card that is exclusive to the Imperial Agent. ‘Platoon Commander’ costs eight points and gives the keyword ‘Retinue’ to a trooper unit. Of course, you’ll want to keep them close to the agent to allow them an aim or dodge token, but they also get some handy extras. They get sharpshooter one and while they’re engaged, they get an attack surge changes to a critical hit and a defense surge converts to a block. Very handy for whichever unit you choose.
After that there are eight more upgrade cards, which can be used by both characters. It shows just how much you can customize these characters and make each one different. The next two cards are doctrine cards, as are the previous two upgrade cards mentioned. ‘Tip of the Spear’ costs eight points. When they are issued an order, an allied unit within one can remove a suppression token. Additionally, your officer or agents can ‘Aid: Trooper unit’, direct one trooper unit and gain tactical one. This seems very handy; I’d certainly find this useful for playing against my son. ‘Defend in Depth’ costs ten points and during the end phase, you choose an allied trooper unit within one, they don’t have to remove an aim token. Your officer or agent gains ‘Aid: Emplacement Trooper Unit’, ‘Prepared Position’ and for an action, ‘Spotter One’. All of this is very helpful, in fact most of these upgrade cards are. They are what you would expect, they help your trooper units. However, with them, is also the inherent cost that goes with them. While you are saving points from picking the officer over Vader, you could easily upgrade the commander too much. I like there are so many options though, hopefully something to suit every play style.
There are three gear upgrades that are included in the box. ‘Seeker droid’ costs eight points and the officer or agent gains recharge one, shielded one and observe one. This will allow you to keep your unit alive for longer as well as reroll dice. I am definitely one of those players that always, always, needs to reroll their awful dice. This seems very helpful – and gives me a little direction in building my model! ‘Command and Control Uplink’ also costs eight points and during the command phase allows you to remove this card to treat your command card with one less pip. This could be very useful, but I also think it is very situational to make it worth the cost. I think I’d feel more comfortable with the Seeker droid. ‘Combat Armour’ is the most expensive upgrade in the entire box. At fifteen points, it is some serious points but changes the defense die for your officer or agent to black instead of white. However, surges then do not count as a block. This will really help the survivability of your unit but is it worth the cost? If I had the points to spare, maybe, but in a tough spot I think I’d maybe go without this? Oh, the decisions!
As if there weren’t enough point consuming upgrades, there are also three weapons. All three are a big improvement over what the officer and agent have but again, how best to spend your points? Are you keeping your commander at the back or throwing them into combat? Two of the weapons are five points each. Heavy blaster pistol has a range of 1 – 2, rolling two red dice and gives the unit sharpshooter one and target one. Z-6 riot baton costs the same, but you are rolling two red and two black dice. It also gives the unit immunity to melee pierce. The final weapon, also melee, is the most expensive, costing eight points. Stun baton gives the unit demoralize one and lets you roll one red dice and five black dice. I can see the benefits of all of them. I can also see the cost of this officer or agent climbing higher, and higher.
So, from the cards… well there is a lot to appreciate. The range of points that can be placed onto these two units is vast, enough to suit all needs, maximising points if you have a few left over when building your army. The selection is fantastic, and I can’t overstate that. However, it does not help me figure out how to best build these models! I can already see that this is going to be one of these sets that I’m going to need multiples of, just so I can build different variations of the models! The model stage is not going to be easy!
With three sprues arrayed in front of me, a horde of upgrade cards in the back of my head, it was time to actually take glue to plastic and assemble two models that will fit into my army. Now I’m not going to be too particular in my games. I mean if I change the upgrade cards around, I’m sure my opponent will understand. But it would be good to be somewhat close!
With the instructions uploaded on the Atomic Mass Games website, I could finally get a glimpse of how many different options there were. There are a huge number of faces, split evenly between female and male. Some plain, some with hats, some with General Veers style headgear, some with a Kallus style helmet, some with a breath mask. There is something here for every look that you could imagine. The bodies for both the officer and agent are standard but it’s how you build them up with heads, arms, cloaks, droids and everything in between that will give them some character.
I started with the officer, having some idea where I wanted to go. I wanted a male, because they seem to be the most stupid and arrogant of the Imperial commanders and I knew that I wasn’t going to give him extra armour, so I wanted to have the typical hat that we see so many officers wearing. With the rest of his outfit, I felt that having anything, but this style of hat (or the breather) would not have necessarily worked. Which I suppose brings me to the one slight issue. If you do want to match a model with a card, the only one that is wearing combat armour is the agent. Of course, the simple solution to this is to switch the bodies around. Thankfully no armour needed, and I only had one head that fit all my criteria. I was off to a great start!
With the simple build instructions, I had the body and legs put together in no time. Head attached it was time for perhaps the most complex part of the build, figuring out which arms to go for! All the options on the cards are available on the model, so I wanted to be somewhat careful with my choice. I knew I wanted one hand free, and I also knew that I didn’t want my officer necessarily in lots of melee. That left me with one upgrade, the heavy blaster pistol. That left me to choose whether to have a pointed hand or closed fist. That was a little back and forth before I finally settled on the pointed fist. Then it was onto a cloak or not. At this point I will mention that the sprues are split into one for each character and then the final sprue has all the different pieces that are shared. There are actually two seeker droids, something I was very happy to see, and two of each cloak, although looking at the instructions, there seemed to be only one that would fit each character. One thing was for sure, there would be lots left over to allow for customization in the future. Having tried both, both sets of cloaks will fit onto the characters, adding another layer of variation you can give your model. I knew I wanted my officer with a cloak, but opted for the one without the shoulder pads, that didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the officer.
In terms of the seeker droids, while the instructions show that this can be attached with the cloak, there are no actual grooves on the cloaks to allow this. Why should there be, they are optional after all. Without the cloak, you do have two grooves left over nothing that a little green stuff won’t sort out. I thought I had wanted my commander with a droid but the more I thought about it, the more I leant away from adding it to the model and more towards giving it to my agent who I didn’t want with a cloak. This was most definitely for cosmetic reasons rather than game play but maybe I’ll use the seeker droid with the agent, just to see if the cosmetics could match the game play. It meant that my commander was done, and I was rather happy with him, droid or not.
It was then the turn of the agent. Following the build for the legs and body is again, simple enough, it was time for the customization. As with the officer, there are lots of options. I knew that because I had a male, I wanted my agent to be a female, which eliminated half of the heads but still left me with a rather large array to choose from. I never liked the Imperial agent helmet so that was a quick goodbye which left me still with two options. I could go with the hat version to keep it in line with my officer but that seemed a little too samey, although it would give my army a ‘look’ to it. Or there was the one with the breath mask. It reminded me so much of the flame trooper for space marines from way back when that I just thought, this will look cool. So, with that it was to decide the arms. On the instructions it is sticks galore, but I knew I didn’t want to upgrade my agent too much, so one stick and the standard pistol or an open hand. Then you realise there are two stick options, one for each hand. So which hand, what do you have in the other hand? Then the realization that you could just have a stick in both hands, make your agent look badass and be done with it! The point I’m trying to make is that there are so many options here that the pleasure in the building isn’t following the instructions but trying to figure out what sort of model you want. I almost ended up giving her a cloak, which would have looked cool – I know it would have done – but I also wanted her different enough from my officer. Instead, I went with the seeker droid, thinking it would cover one of the gaps left by the lack of cloak. To my pleasant surprise, the droid fitted perfectly with both gaps. This added stability for the droid, left me with no gaps and was perfectly positioned to follow the eye line of the agent. A match made in heaven!
With that complete, both my officer and agent were complete. They look fantastic and I’m already wondering what other combinations I could go with. With all the spare pieces, I have a feeling I might be able to customize other models that may get released, which is a real bonus of getting this set. As someone who likes to make his forces a little different, the number of extras that should be able to switch out with future releases makes this very appealing. In terms of gameplay, I’m looking forward to the options that this set provides me, in terms of a new commander and of providing an operative that I can also use in the game. Rather than do a playthrough with them in this review, there will be a review of both the Imperial and Rebel as they go head-to-head in battle. In terms of model potential and gameplay potential I feel this is a fantastic release for the Imperial players. I like that these are unnamed characters; I like this opens up a lot more flexibility with the starter set and I love the sheer number of options that this set gives you. If, like me, you have the starter set this is a great next purchase for your force. Look out for the battle review in a couple of weeks when I see how my unnamed commander takes on those pesky Rebels!
