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Rebel Saboteur, painted and photographed by Matthew of www.oldenhammer.com

Campaign

Similar to the Rebel Troopers, these come in a group. Their deployment card shows their greatest strength, Overload. You can trigger Pierce 1, Blast 1 and Stun twice, provided you roll the surges. Nothing too exceptional, and with Gideon, the Rebel Troopers certainly have a leg up! They can be good to stun Melee enemies like Darth Vader, the Royal Guards or the Wampa.

To recruit the Rebel Saboteurs as Allies for your campaign, you need to include and win either the Core Box mission Target of Opportunity or the mission Armed and Operational included in this pack. All these missions are playable with just the tiles from the Core Box!

This also means that this pack has nothing to offer for your campaign aside from a new side mission that gives you the same reward as in the core box. And unlike with the Rebel Troopers, you can’t include both of the above-mentioned side missions! The game’s rules say that you can only include green side missions that give different rewards into your side mission deck.

Update – New FAQ as of December 2015: The Rebel Saboteurs have been changed significantly with the newest FAQ release. Their deployment card reads similar, but they lose Surge: Pierce 2 and only got Surge: Pierce 1 instead. Also, their Speed got reduced from 5 to 4. This weakens them considerably as allies, but since the recommendation for the campaign already was so low, a further downgrade is not necessary.

The Rebel Saboteurs appear in the following campaign missions:

• Core Box Side Mission: Target of Opportunity
• Wave 1 Rebel Saboteurs Side Mission: Armed and Operational

Skirmish

Since the changes with the FAQ of December 2015, these guys got beaten hard with the nerf stick. The Regular Deployment Card got reduced to Pierce 1, and Speed 4. The Elite Deployment Card lost access to Blast 2. This alone makes them much less viable now.

However, some of the included command cards are either universally applicable or recently got a bit more attention. Change of Plans gives you flexibility you need. Especially in Trooper lists where you have a lot of deployment cards that share traits and have similar cost, this can shake up a game quite a bit. Hide in Plain Sight can only be played by deployment groups that have the Spy trait. But since that is getting a bit of development with the Bespin Gambit expansion, this might be okay. It is good for both Agent Blaise and the ISB Infiltrators for instance. Lock On can also see a bit more play, but more on the imperial side. Rebel lists recently got more options for unique figures that mostly revolve around white defense die. This can help you combat the dreaded X-men on that die. And you get Collect Intel which is also in the Agent Blaise pack, but if you don’t buy him and want to run some ISB Infiltrators, it can be worthwhile to pick up the Saboteurs for.

The included skirmish map Endor Wilderness uses only tiles from the core box.

Update – New FAQ as of December 2015: With the FAQ 2.0 from December 2015, both deployment cards were changed! The regular deployment card got its Surge: Pierce 2 reduced to Surge: Pierce 1. Also, their speed was lowered from 5 to 4. The elite deployment card also got changed. Surge: Blast 2 was reduced to Surge: Blast 1. This does make the regular Saboteurs less efficient at stunning unique figures, and the elite Saboteurs now can not dispatch of enemy Troopers as easily with 2 times Blast 2. In all, their versatility was greatly reduced, which prompts me to downgrade their Skirmish Rating from 5/5 to 3/5. They still can be the backbone of a rebel list, just not as effective as they once were.

Model

The model is interesting. Their goggles and their backpack mix up their silhouette to make them much interesting to look at than the Rebel Troopers. Also, if you are bored with their greenish style, you can opt for a Mon Calamar conversion like our friends over at Oldenhamer.com did.