SWLCG Core Box Review: Scum and DS Neutrals

THE RATING SYSTEM:
We'll only be rating the pods as a whole in these series. No in-depth analysis on the individual cards, as everyone already has an established opinion on them and it would take more time than what we can afford. Sorry to disappoint.
While the following isn't particularly precise, the different scores could be seen as:
1 - Poor - Probably a combination of subpar cards, low edge and lack of synergy. Should prove to be a weak addition to a deck even when building around it.
2 - Bad - Overall a weaker pod that can have its moment when properly supported, but usually stays within the realm of "just fun".
3 - Average - A fair choice that is simply outclassed by other options in most cases. May prove to be the superior pick in very particular decks.
4 - Good - All-around solid and can most likely pull its weight by itself.
5 - Great - Cohesive set with with several strong elements which can fit in a plethora of decks. Or it may be somewhat niche but incredibly strong in certain archertypes.


THE REVIEWS:

The Bespin Exchange: 8 out of 15 possible points.


CobraBubbles (2/5) - Scum’s first pod immediately ties the green cards to one of their key mechanics - capture. I’ve always been impressed by how perfectly capture in Scum brings together mechanics and theme, and of course it makes perfect sense to have the most iconic bounty hunter from the films as the vanguard of this strategy. That said, one mechanic does not make a faction, and in a way this specificity makes Boba’s pod less evocative of the overall feel of the faction than Han’s is for Smugglers.
Onto the cards themselves. From a competitive standpoint, the alarm bells start ringing when we look at the left-hand corners of the units here - 4 cost for 2 health and 2 for 1 are not good ratios. The game’s designers have spoken before about the difficulty of balancing unit capture effects, since they constitute pure removal that bypasses damage capacity. In light of that, I can see the argument for Boba’s low health as a balancing tool, opening the possibility of him fading in metas with LS direct damage and re-emerging in those without. But the 2 white icons are one nerf too many, making him a subpar main. Yeah he makes for a pretty sick removal tool when he gets his armor, but as that’s a 2 card combo that costs 6 it’s nowhere near reliable.
The other capture tech here is neat, making for some interesting non-standard economy. Looking at Bounty Collection again, I’m actually almost tempted to play this set with Heartless Tactics, for the potential of playing Captured effectively free. In the core set meta though these kind of effects were a bit wasted, given that only 2 cards in the game could capture units from play at the time. Meanwhile, the chud doesn’t really fit here at all, neither playing into the capture thing nor introducing anything else distinctly Scummy. Overall, as good as Boba+Armor+edge is, there are too many low-value cards here for this set to ever see much play.

BakaMatt (4/5) - This set historically has gotten a lot of flak, especially directly comparing Boba Fett to the other Core Set faction-teaser, Han Solo. To some degree, that's true. Fett himself isn't very impressive and kind of an average performer. He's a steep investment considering his low icon-count and damage capacity of two. He really should have been a three cost, gained another icon (or at least made the tactics black), or had more damage capacity. His only saving grace is his powerful reaction, but he's just one lost edge battle away from watching his puny single unit damage get deflected by a shield to deny the capture (not to mention it's limited to characters). Fett's paired with a weak unit in Outer Rim Hunter, who is worse than the mediocre standard Kuat Security Team. Mandalorian Armor is excellent to drop on anyone you want to stick around, not necessarily (and maybe not even optimally) Fett. Blaster Pistol is a free permanent icon for a unit, especially tasty on those with Targeted Strike for extra punch. Bounty Collection and Bespin Exchange sort of sit in the middle of usefulness, both supporting an older (and failed in my opinion) resource boosting design for the Scum faction. These cards, and later Pay Out, supported a burst playstayle where explosive turns took the place of steady resource accumulation. It makes them reliant on draw and captilizing on board state and I think a good old Prized Possession would have made a better slot than Bounty Collection. Make that change and one of the the changes I suggested to Boba, maybe add a damage capacity to the chud and we'd be cooking with something on the level of Questionable Contacts. Despite the shortcomings, it's still a pretty good set of tools even if just splashing it for the enhancements and keeping Boba under a bit of protection until he can snipe a powerful Character from the opposing board.

Majestaat (2/5) – I was really excited about this set at first. Sure, it had many shortcomings, but I thought that was because Boba would be completely broken once the Scum affiliation got some more development. Wasn't the case, not even close, but we'll talk about that later once we review EoD, likely.
On this set itself, it's on the weak side of things. Yes, Boba can be scary against mains, since his single gun can often be enough to deal with them, but that's it. Because he's fragile and lacks blast, you could deal with him with a chud, or just ignore him altogether. Now, things are different if he gets his Mandalorian Armor, which is pretty sweet, but still not stellar considering the total cost.
The Outer Rim Hunter is okay. Sacrifices health to deal some blast even before the edge battle, and will deal more total objective damage than other chuds, if he manages to survive, that is. He probably receives more flak than he deserves.
The objective and Bounty Collection present a really cool concept for alternate economy, but were oh so dependant on Boba for the longest time. We have some great capture units like Ephant Mon and 4-LOM now, but ironically, with all those great pods out there that would make this work, there's just no reason to run Bespin Exchange because your deck would be stronger picking other sets. Shame.
If you want to give this a run despite all the shortcomings, I'd recommend running it with lots of protectors (ex: Core Palp and Mara pods). Then Boba becomes fairly annoying, until your opponent gets his own protectors, shields, or... runs vehicles.


Looking for Droids: 5 out of 15 possible points.


CobraBubbles (1/5) - Apologies, but I’m gonna repeat a lot of what I said about Rumours at the Cantina here, as many of the same points apply.Putting these tricolour-enabling pods in the Core was an interesting and brave design decision, but ultimately a mistake. These sets are a- not that good at doing what they’re designed to do and b- out of place in the core set. The third affiliation on each side only gets one pod here, so I’d have rather seen these pods, or something like them with better units. The slots could have been better used on exploring some other neutral themes or just giving the main affiliations more cards to play with.
This pod gets a few black marks all of its own as well. The Viper Droids are unspeakably bad. And there are some serious flavour fails here that bug me. The objective title and art evokes a memorable section of A New Hope, but none of the mechanics really fit with that part of the story at all. The art on Dark Alliance irritates me too - some stormies standing around does not constitute any kind of alliance with anybody! Highly disappointing set.

BakaMatt (3/5) - While the units are ever so slightly usable than the light side's counterpart objective set, Rumors at the Cantina, this set has all the same core issues that Rumors does. Fixing affiliation matching in and of itself is not worth diluting the quality of the deck when smart building can all but ensure you'll have matching objectives on the initial flop. This only really merits a look in tri-affiliation builds where it's still a bit of an underperformer. It's Worse is a superb card, but not a saving grace for the set. I can see why this objective exists, but it frankly needed a stronger mix of cards or else to be even more generically useful to have a place. The problem, however, is if it was universally better, it would have dangerously tread close to being an auto-include objective in the game's early life.

Majestaat (1/5) – In a sense, this is somewhat more useful than Rumors at the Cantina, because Dark Side hasn't quite received Influence pods that could replace what this wants to accomplish. However, it's just as bad as its counterpart. You're risking too much by trying to run a triple-affiliation deck, and don't really get any benefit from it. Instead of the Droids, some units that gained X, Y and Z bonus if you control a Sith, Navy and Scum card/objective respectively would have been pretty interesting. Dunno, anything that will make it satisfying to run triple-affiliation.


Corporate Exploitation: 3.5 out of 15 possible points.


CobraBubbles (1/5) - At first glance this set is pretty funny - I can picture people opening their core for the first time, flipping through these six cards, and having to flip back through them again in astonishment. Yes, it shows off a different way of using the pod system... but it’s ultimately a really boring application of that idea. Sure, the objective is in theory kind of fun, but units with 1 health and 1 white icon are generally useless whenever you play them. There aren’t even any other good targets for it in the core. The only sub-2-cost unit that actually has text is the ISB Interrogators, and even they only have a keyword. These days it could be ok in green - getting a surprise Spider, Scum or Salacious can be pretty good - but not good enough to warrant playing 5 awful units in your deck. And no, before you ask, the Trooper trait doesn’t make them playable in Navy jank. Believe me, I’ve tried.
Funnily enough this pod has seen competitive play, in one very specific circumstance. Back in the hellish days of the Dash-Freeholders meta, I saw at least one enterprising player pair this set with Endless Reserves to maximise the number of cards they could easily play out to keep their hand empty. It worked pretty well, and reveals what this set is (in the best case): the kind of thing that clever players can use as clever meta-choice. But that’s not the kind of thing that should be in a core set! Core neutral sets should give interesting options to a variety of decks, not fill a very specific niche. This is the kind of thing to introduce in a Force pack, where players can take it or leave it.

BakaMatt (1.5/5) - Here's my personal vote for worst set in the game. You get five horrible units and decent objective action. The first impusle when looking at this is to drop it into a trooper shell, but you never really want these guys clogging your hand and they aren't worth much even on the board or in edge. The objective looks great at first for surprise drops, but there are not really any impactful one drops worth capitalizing on. It might work if troopers get a way to massively boost card draw, but even then I think I'd prefer to draw into higher grade cards than the units we got here. Dumpster tier set.

Majestaat (1/5) – In other games, getting free units isn't usually bad, since you get some board presence without losing much, really. In Star Wars, however, you're sacrificing edge, and since these guys are edge-dependant, they become worthless. Trooper builds have far better options. That said, this pod did see success in Sith Executor decks with The Killing Cold. At least for a time, because the FAQ kinda hosed it afterwards. If we ever get a consistent sacrifice engine, the purple doods could see the light once again as Executor fodder.


Reconnaissance Mission: 11.5 out of 15 possible points.


CobraBubbles (3/5) - Again I’m gonna be repeating myself a bit here as there are many parallels between this pod and Hit & Run. Unlike the previous two, this set fills an interesting bit of neutral design space, in exploring a mechanic that is inherently neutral: fate cards. This will almost never be a pod you choose because it fits well in your deck, it’s too generic for that. Rather, it makes for a cool playstyle choice - if you really like messing with your opponents in the edge battle, you can splash this to give you a few extra ways to do that. Admittedly the units and objective are not quite as exciting as their LS equivalents, but they still certainly enable edge trickery, and the unconditional reserve increase on Recon Mission is arguably the strongest effect across both pods.
The one complaint I have is that you get two copies of this pod in the Core. Yes, it’s the pod that the rules recommend to round out the 8 pod starter decks, but I’m sure players wouldn’t struggle to move a single copy between their Sith and Navy decks when they switch over. And anyway, if there was just one of this and Looking for Droids was cut, there could have been extra Sith and Navy pods, and we wouldn’t have that problem.

BakaMatt (4.5/5) - Going from worst set overall, we go to what I think is the best overall neutral set in the game. If you have room for it, Recon Mission usually isn't a bad choice. The objective is always on and brings immediate value, granting an extra card on your turn. It's packaged with Target of Opportunity, Heat of Battle and Twist of Fate, all three strong fate cards. The Human replica droids are the counterweight of the set. The units aren't worth paying for, but decent if you captialize on dropping them into play for free. As a bonus, they'll also get boosts from any droid synergy you have (IG-88B). Even discounting the units, getting three good fate cards and the passive ability to boost your reserve is enough of a deal even without considering any synergy this may have with the rest of your deck.

Majestaat (4/5) – Here's something good. Saw a ton of play early on, and while I haven't seen it around lately, I still play it every now and then. Especially if I'm building around fate cards, which is the case with Opps Vader, for example.
The objective is incredible. Still one of the best in the game. The Droids are by no means amazing, but they're usually free and have blast. Can't complain. They performed very well in my early aggro decks.
Then you get the juicy fate cards. Heat, Target and Twist are all very playable, and having one or two of each in your deck is really good, all the more if you're also getting the surprise damage from the Droids. You could send a harmless chud to go unopposed and suddenly you're dealing 3 blast out of nowhere. Mean.
Worth noting this pod is effectively free, assuming you're packing at least a few more fates. I'd say you could pretty much run this in any deck and it would pull its weight. If you can't seem to think of a better pod to fill in your build, this is one great alternative until you figure things out.


FINAL WORDS:
With the country burning and my dog falling sick, this took a couple days longer that I thought, but we finally got to finish with the Core Box.

As Mr. Krabs said, money is always right, so I flipped a coin to see what would be next and it shall be Edge of Darkness. That should take 4 articles: Scum; Smugglers; Jedi/Rebels/LS Neutral; Sith/Navy/DS Neutrals.
Will try to have one done every two weeks.

And that's it this time. I extend my gratitude to the review team and the readers who motivated us to do this. I'm sure there's room for improvement. If you got any ideas, feel free to comment or PM me so we can make the next article even better.
I must say, however, that there's a limit to how many images can be uploaded. That's why I only selected a few images per pod.

If you're looking for more reviews, you can find them in our forum thread here.

May the Force be with you all!