The Mos Eisley Mafia: SWCLG "Swayed by the Dark Side" Force Pack Review - Light Side

MEET THE FAMILY (aka - THE REVIEWERS):
-doctormungmung, Massachussets' evil genius;
-yodaman, he who you seek when numbers are involved and master of The Hut;
-pantsyg, jankmaster general (unfortunate circumstances have him out once again);
-Rio, prophet of falling and rising skies;
-Majestaat, the one to blame for typos and delayed articles.

THE RATING SYSTEM:
It's to be noted that due to the SW:LCG's unique way of deckbuilding, it's impossible to just pick the stronger cards. You're likely to stick with some undesirable cards no matter what. Hence, the different scores could be seen (more or less) as:
1 – Poor – Edge fodder. Drops the total value of its objective set.
2 – Bad – Most likely edge fodder. Either too situational or clearly not strong enough for its cost.
3 – Average – Not stellar but does its job decently.
4 – Good – Solid card with guaranteed impact.
5 – Great – Gamechangers you will always be glad to see and play, if able.
* = indicates unique card.


THE BIG DEALS:



Top 3 LS Cards (oh no, they're way more this time):
1 – Native Blessings, with 19 out of 20 possible points.
2 – *Logray (Native Blessings), with 19 out of 20 possible points.
3 – Feast of Honor (Native Blessings), with 19 out of 20 possible points.
4 – Ultimate Sacrifice (Native Blessings), with 19 out of 20 possible points.
5 – Coordinated Strike (They'll Never Stop Us), with 19 out of 20 possible points.
6 – Seeds of Decay (They'll Never Stop Us), with 19 out of 20 possible points.

Top 3 DS Cards (I arbitrarily added more here because it's incredibly boring to have the same card use two different spots):
1 – Unsavory Contracts, with 20 out of 20 possible points.
2 – Allies of Necessity (From the Abyss), with 18 out of 20 possible points.
3 – Allies of Necessity (Unsavory Contacts), with 17.5 out of 20 possible points.
4 – Overwhelming Firepower (Capital Support), with 16.5 out of 20 possible points.
5 – *Black Krrsantan (Unsavory Contacts), with 16.5 out of 20 possible points.

Overall best rated Objective Set:
Native Blessings, with 19 out of 20 possible points.


THE REVIEWS:

Native Blessings (275-1): 19 out of 20 possible points.


doctormungmung (4/5) – Having an objective that has eight health is pretty unprecedented, particularly when it doesn’t count double when it explodes. But, in reality, this is more like a typical four to five health objective, since you’ll be using the protect ewok liberally to keep your board state. Honestly, this was desperately needed for any ewok type deck, as a board of one to two health units tended not to last long. Now with this objective, the proverbial ewok hordes can actually horde-up.

yodaman (5/5) – Ewoks are sometimes a bit squishy and this objective give you protect Ewoks. Sure that means you damage the objective when you protect, but it comes with 8 health so it’s worth it. Definitely a great objective for Ewok builds.

Rio (5/5) – This is an extremely easy one to review. It simply says “Protect Ewok” that’s pretty good since one of the worst things about ewoks was their low health. This will allow those furry little guys and gals to stay around a little longer and maybe get to strike. Also worth noting this is an 8 health objective and I think that is its most useful feature. If you flop 2 of these, you're basically buying yourself at least 2 extra turns in the game, and sometimes that’s all you will need for your onslaught of ewoks to overwhelm the Darkside.

Majestaat (5/5) – Getting Blessings in your opening flop can lead to massive board advantage in just a couple turns, and generally speaking, it'll be easier to have your strikes get through. It can bump the dial a bit faster than usual if you use the protect liberally, but it's well worth the risk. If anything, think of it as your average 5-1 objective, but that allows you to protect Ewoks for 3 damage total. That would be good. Having control of up to a whooping 8 points of protection is great.


*Logray (275-2): 20 out of 20 possible points.


doctormungmung (5/5) – Logray is just amazing. Great stats, with one of each icon in black, and an extra edge enabled unit damage. He makes all ewoks elite (including himself). He has three force pips for holding the Force or in edge battles (you should really play him, though). He’s force sensitive so he can be given a lightsaber or two. And he also gives you a free unit when he strikes! Considering the only ewok he can’t put into play with his ability is the actual Ewok Horde, he has a lot of choices. A great play is to put someone like Wicket into the edge when Logray is in combat, then when Logray gets to strike, bring Wicket into play for future attacks/defense. Outside of ewok decks, Logray is still great just for his stats. Win-win on this unit.

yodaman (5/5) – A great Ewok main. He comes with a great spread of combat icons for 4 health with one black icon of each type and a white gun. He makes all your Ewoks elite and after he focuses to strike you can put an Ewok unit into play from your discard pile once per turn. What’s not like about the furball?

Rio (5/5) – Logray is an impressive Jedi main, he has fantastic icons that include a black blast and a tactic. That is worth his cost alone. Then he has 3 pips and gives all the ewoks elite, so he is an amazing force holder. His reaction to poop out ewoks from your discard when he strikes is a powerful ramp tool, and can get out of control really quick if your opponent doesn’t have an answer. He is a really powerful unit even in a deck that isn’t ewok centric, and an abusive unit in a dedicated ewok deck.

Majestaat (5/5) – When you think about it, Logray is actually pretty overpowered. Great stats and icons spread. Universal elite buff for your Ewoks. Force Sensitive trait for a lightsaber wielding furball. Finally, a reaction that helps you keep a decent board. Sure, only Chirpa and Wicket get the full value, and they're both unique (Chirpa even being a 1 of), but just recovering an Ewok Hunter for extra draw and tactics is already great.


Ewok Ally (275-3&4): 15 out of 20 possible points.


doctormungmung (3/5) – A chud with blast, two health and two force pips. That right there is solid. Add in his (her?) ability to get edge 1 when you’ve got your swarm going, and you now have a good chance at winning edge and getting all of your white blast units turned on to start blowing stuff up. And you get two in this set, so you can have four in your deck. That’s some crazy edge support.

yodaman (4/5) – So you get 2 of these Ewok chuds in your deck and they give a great bonus for 2 cost since you get edge 1 on each of them as long as you have 3 or more Ewoks in play. The lack of a black blast is a bit of a drawback, but the hope is to win edge thanks to their ability. Still they cost 2, have 2 health and 2 pips.

Rio (4/5) – This unit continues the trend of powerful chuds from the last pack. A solid 2/2/2/2 unit with an ability that gives him edge 1 if you have 3 ewoks in play, which you will. They also have blast, so that’s good.

Majestaat (4/5) – With 2 pips, an easy to acquire edge bonus and some blast, the Allies are a very nice addition to the Ewok arsenal. Now the archetype won't be so incredibly dependant on Warriors of the Forest to deal damage, and if you happen to get it anyway, it becomes much more consistent!


Feast of Honor (275-5): 19 out of 20 possible points.


doctormungmung (4/5) – Well Paid for ewoks without a minimum. That’s definitely worth a limited slot. Get all of your Ewok Ally’s out with just your starting four resources. Or drop in some of the one drop ewoks for free. This really helps with building the swarm board, and lets you drop a main with support. You just have to make sure you see a handful of ewoks when you have this card in hand, which isn’t as consistent as you’d like. And, of course, outside of a dedicated ewok deck, this event loses a lot of oompf.

yodaman (5/5) – Well Paid for Ewoks? I’ll take it. The little furballs are often pretty cheap to begin with and thank to this, they can effectively become free, so you can get a serious Ewok swarm going. Great event.

Rio (5/5) – It’s a well paid for ewoks, and we have seen what that did for fighters and pilots. Honestly, I would’ve liked to have seen this as a 2x in the pod.

Majestaat (5/5) – Ewok version of Well Paid. You get one less copy per pod but each comes with an extra pip and no minimum to cost. So you don't get as strong a resource base in total, but you shouldn't have these clogging your hand either. Easily grants 3~ resources. You sacrifice your hand and edge for a turn, but with so many units out in a single turn, it becomes easy to play around enemy defenders or downright overwhelm them face to face if you got enough black icons.


Ultimate Sacrifice (275-6): 19 out of 20 possible points.


doctormungmung (4/5) – As long as you’ve got a swarm going filled with one or two cost units, why not sacrifice one of them to protect the tribe. Things like Force Storm are still a powerful anti-swarm tool, even with protect helping out your chuds. Getting to stop that for the cost of a unit and a card is totally worth it. The same goes for Logray (or the Ewok Horde) and force lightning. Event cancel is fairly rare, but now ewoks are in those elite ranks.

yodaman (5/5) – Event cancel is still powerful. This one is free although you do have to sacrifice an Ewok to get the cancel. That’s okay cause you’ll probably have enough of them to go around if you’re playing this set.

Rio (5/5) – This is what the ewoks needed. This will stop their one real problem: Moment of Triumph. This is a solid card against a lot of things. Ewoks are cheap enough, so they don’t care if they die to save other important pieces of the board. Plus, Logray will just put them back into play anyways.

Majestaat (5/5) – Moment of Triumph must be the hardest counter to Ewoks out there, and this deals with Moment of Triumph, or any other event that could ruin your day. Sometimes, a teddy bear must sacrifice itself for the greater good. Since the archetype is all about quantity over quality, a sacrifice isn't too costly, especially when it would save your whole board.


Overall: 19 out of 20 possible points.

doctormungmung (4/5) – In an ewok deck, this set solves just about all the problems. You get a pseudo-resource, a great main, board building, chuds with blast and edge, and event cancel. I’d say that dedicated ewoks (instead of just the Funeral Pyre support builds) are there as a deck to be reckoned with. They still suffer a bit from consistency (you can wind up with a hand full of events and no units), but that’s not too bad, and can be played around most of the time. What this deck does in terms of protect though, is dangerous, as you open yourself up to a DS win through objectives if you use it too much. And if you don’t see one of these in your flop, you’ll likely have a hard time building a board. Still, for a set to basically pull up an entire archetype, that’s pretty sweet.

yodaman (5/5) – This set is an amazing addition to Ewok builds. It was as if the designers looked at all the gaps the Ewok archetype had previously and just addressed every single one of them. Help keep the furballs alive with protect? Check. Need some tactics and elite? Check. Edge bonus for the Ewoks? Check. Help with getting a swarm? Check. Oh, lets throw in event cancel too just in case we haven’t already done enough. 10 force icons is pretty much as good as it gets. If you’re playing Ewoks (and you should because they’re a lot of fun), you’re playing this set. Definitely a staple.

Rio (5/5) – Overall, I believe this pod is the exact gas the ewoks needed to become a real thing. However, all the pieces need to be there and working. I also think this pod will be solid enough to be taken in decks that aren’t exactly ewok focused as well.

Majestaat (5/5) – Rating for an ewok deck, in which this pod covers just about every weakness they had. Protection, elite, edge boost (10 pips total in the pod), resources (I think I'd still prefer your standard resource enhancement, but Feast does help, no doubt), and an all too important event cancel.
Now, the set makes Ewoks better, but does it make them good? Yes, though I don't think I've found the best build yet. Ewoks have an easy time playing around with the different affiliation cards since they can rely heavily on their neutral pods to meet their criteria, so I'm sure there are a ton of decks I haven't tried yet, but I think the conditions are given to make either a strong Ewok centric deck, or one supported by Ewoks.


They'll Never Stop Us (276-1): 15 out of 20 possible points.


doctormungmung (3/5) – Card draw is great, and very powerful. Rebels have always had some form of draw potential, so more is generally better. Although in this case, it’s somewhat limited by the combo setup needed to get it. Sure, you’ll be blowing up objectives, and you’ll likely be doing that with fighters, but the number of piloted fighters isn’t likely to be all that high, so maybe your only getting one to two cards drawn on average. Still, that’s better than nothing.

yodaman (4/5) – This objective has an interesting ability. After an enemy objective is destroyed, you get to draw cards based on how many piloted units you have. The objective also generates 2 resources which makes this stand out since most 5-2 objectives are blank. While the card draw can’t be underestimated, in practice it’s seemed harder to get as much bang for your buck as I would have expected.

Rio (4/5) – A 2 resource objective with text is always a plus. This allows you to draw a card for each piloted vehicle that seems pretty good even if you only use it once a game.

Majestaat (4/5) – It would be very hard to dislike a 2 resources objective with a good ability. You won't get to trigger it more than twice a game, but with an okay setup, you may be drawing enough cards to keep the pressure up. Go hard on an objective, destroy it, get a new hand for an easy edge battle at the next objective.


*Biggs Darklighter (276-2): 16.5 out of 20 possible points.


doctormungmung (3/5) – Biggs is interesting. He’s a solid tactics chud that can hold the force in a pinch. His two health makes him sturdy enough for his cost. But as a pilot, he can really buff edge. He makes for a fantastic target for Stay on Target, as he’ll provide that edge bonus before edge is resolved, but after stacks are placed, likely pushing you over the top. Still, he’s a pilot, which is susceptible to Tarkin, and generally thins your deck on units if you want to use him for that purpose.

yodaman (5/5) – LS fighters have always seemed to be a bit light on edge. Biggs helps with that since any fighter he’s piloting gets edge [X] where X is the number of participating fighter units you control. Send in the swarm with Biggs and you can rack up a huge edge bonus advantage for at least 1 engagement. His pilot cost of 1 is great. On foot he isn’t even awful since he has a white tactics, but you really want him on a fighter if at all possible.

Rio (4/5) – A pilot that gains edge X for each fighter participating. This is what Rebel fighters have needed for a while. The Dark side got it in the Rogue Cycle with Fel. Now light side can too drop all the units on the board and don’t keep much of an edge hand to attack. This will help mitigate the downside of the flood.

Majestaat (4.5/5) – Man, Biggs sure took his sweet time to show up in this game. But he's a good addition, so I'll forgive him. Although Fighters have historically tried to win via board spam and black blast, leaving yourself so weak at edge battles would only take you so far. Biggs allows you to spam the board and still have strong edge for very cheap. But should you need to resort to trickery instead, you can play him as a unit and have him contribute with his tactics.


*Red Three (276-3): 15.5 out of 20 possible points.


doctormungmung (4/5) – I feel like Red 3 is what Red 5 should have been. It’s a fantastic main with good guns, blast and tactics. It’s sturdy with three health, and has three force pips. It’s also elite, making it very hard to pin down. And perhaps best of all, it stops Tarkin from popping the rest of your pilots like flies. There are some other events out there that it also stops, but Tarkin is the big one. The only real downside to the unit is that the icons are a bit more defensive than offensive, and having both the blast and tactics be edge enabled can cause you trouble.

yodaman (3.5/5) – Red Three seems to be a combo piece. 2 black guns and elite are nice, but the LS wants blast and this unit only has 1 white blast. It’s ability clearly combos well with Heroes of the Rebellion though since Red Three’s passive ability prevents Pilot cards from being targeted by enemy card effects and Heroes of the Rebellion prevents piloted vehicles from being targeted. This gets around Tarkin, but not MoT. For 4 cost on a LS unit though, I really want to see some black blast and Red Three is lacking that.

Rio (4/5) – Ahhhh, the Tarkin killer. It’s a little too late for that, I haven’t seen Tarkin in months. But this unit will stop him from obliterating your pilots. However, a simple update to the FAQ would’ve done that too. I wish this unit would’ve had the blast or the tactic as the other black icon. However, 3 pips and elite will help with another weakness fighters have: the force struggle. The four cost is a little higher than fighter decks really want to pay for a unit.

Majestaat (4/5) – Pilots are a vital part for the Fighters gameplan, so having a global protection for them comes in handy. However, outside Tarkin, there weren't many cards threatening your pilots in the first place, so Red 3 comes out as a lazy response to the old man. But whatever, the community has debated enough about the Tarkin ruling, and this is no place to drag that on.
With 3 pips, elite, a couple black guns and one tactics, Red 3 works as a prime Force Holder, which seems a bit strange for Fighters, as they are all about aggression. But if you look back at the last cycle, FFG has been pushing a slower Fighter build for a while now.


Red Squadron X-Wing (276-4): 15 out of 20 possible points.


doctormungmung (3/5) – Hey, look at that, a great chud with both blast and unit damage, no edge enabled icons, and conditional targeted strike. I’ll take a dozen of those. Targeted strike is just so good, and it’s rather rare on the LS, so any addition there is appreciated. And it’s not like there aren’t ways of adding guns to ships, so with the right combo pieces, you could be popping people like Vader.

yodaman (4/5) – 2 cost unit with Targeted Strike as long as its piloted? Nothing wrong with that. Better if you can find a way to increase its unit damage potential via cards like Resupply Depot, Echo Caverns or an Astromech Droid. Still, it’s good value for 2 cost.

Rio (4/5) – Another solid chud in this cycle, the black bombs is always welcomed. So is the potential targeted strike.

Majestaat (4/5) – This X-Wing is a pretty decent chud with all black icons. It becomes fairly annoying once piloted thanks to its targeted strike. New Wedge can make it very threatening since he comes out of nowhere to provide an extra gun.


Coordinated Strike (276-5): 19 out of 20 possible points.


doctormungmung (4/5) – This is a great card that was in a bad set, so saw very little play. Getting a reprint here is really nice. And showing up in a fighter/pilot set means you can do some crazy things in combination with Farlander, striking with a couple of units even before defenders are declared. Combine that with black icons, and say the Rogue Squadron X-Wing (which Farlander is conveniently piloting), and you’ve got yourself a great addition to Bullseye shenanigans.

yodaman (5/5) – An interesting reprint from an old Hoth set that really fits in well here. The card can be plenty powerful for its relatively low cost of 1. Being able to strike again immediately after one of your units strikes is incredible. You can pull of some shenanigans with this when coupled with units with targeted strike or with Keyan. Nice to see it included here.

Rio (5/5) – This is probably one of the best Lightside events in the game. Unfortunately, it was stuck in a crappy Hoth set. I’m excited to get my hands on this card in a good set. I can’t wait to use it with Farlander and Jedi Red Five. That’s a blown up objective before an edge battle.

Majestaat (5/5) – YAAAAAAAS! Incredible event that was relegated to shelves for being in a pretty bad pod. No more. Getting two strikes in a row is plain brutal in this game.


Seeds of Decay (276-6): 19 out of 20 possible points.


doctormungmung (4/5) – Seeds is seeds. It’s one of the best fate cards out there, and will be for the life of the game. Use it and love it.

yodaman (5/5) – Still one of the best fate cards out there. It’s nice to see it included in another Rebel set.

Rio (5/5) – Still the best Lightside fate card.

Majestaat (5/5) – Seeds has been wrecking the Dark Side for how many years now?


Overall: 16 out of 20 possible points.

doctormungmung (3/5) – There are a lot of solid options in this set. But my experience with pilot decks is that even with all the right tools, they are very inconsistent. Having a lot of your tricks based around piloted vehicles means that you tend to have unit light decks, and if you ever want a specific pilot on a specific ship, good luck. Still, if someone could solve the consistency issue, Pilot decks can definitely be a force to be reckoned with.

yodaman (4/5) – This set seems like it has potential in the right build, but you have to go heavy on pilots and fighters to get maximum benefit. The lack of a resource hurts a bit, but Seeds is a great fate card so that offsets things somewhat. I suspect someone will find a really good build for this set at some point.

Rio (5/5) – Just like the ewok set, this pod covers for most of the weaknesses pilot decks had, and it gives them some fun tricks as well.

Majestaat (4/5) – It has good cards, and while it seems to synergize with traditional fighter builds on paper, in practice it's a bit too slow to support them correctly. However, it might just be the final piece to what's supposed to be an orthodox deck that plays a slower game, contesting the Force and actually having a decent shot at winning edge and use white icons, relying more on 3-4 costed units instead of spamming 2-costers.
That kind of new build is pretty fun, but if often feels like character decks are plain better at that. Maybe if we had another Rebel pod with Stay on Target and a (pilot?) resource. It's sad how that sounds both over the top and necessary.