Wave 5 Ally Pack – Leia Organa
Leia Organa, painted and photographed by Matthew of www.oldenhammer.com
Campaign
Looking at her Campaign Deployment Card it quickly becomes evident that Leia is worthy to consider in all campaigns. With 8 Deployment Points, her cost is less than that of her brother. She has 8 Health and thus again a little less than Luke. A free Evade helps her defend. You really want her to be there for her atttacks, though. Rolling a ranged blue-yellow-yellow doesn’t seem strong at first. But her special ability Battlefield Leadership lets her command a friendly Rebel Hero to perform an attack together with her. This scales extremely well into the later stages of the campaign, when Rebel Heroes have very good weapons and attachments. But there is more. Should you roll more Surges than you need, you can spend one on Agressive Negotations to exhaust an Imperial Class card. Not only is this a refreshing new mechanic, but it also gives you the ability to neuter specific class cards of the Imperial Player. Remember that you do not need to deal any damage on the attack to trigger this! You only need Line of Sight, enough Accuracy and the rolled Surge!
To recruit Leia for your campaign, you need to win the side mission Communications Breakdown included in this pack. This mission requires map tiles included in the Return to Hoth expansion.
Leia Organa appears in the following campaign missions:
- Return to Hoth Story Mission. Rescue Ops
- Return to Hoth Threat Mission: Scouring of the Homestead
- Wave 5 Pack Leia Organa Side Mission: Communication Breakdown
Skirmish
Leia’s Skirmish Deployment Card is largely identically to the campaign version. 8 Health, 5 Speed, good surges and a ranged attack with blue, yellow, yellow for a total of 8 deployment points is impressive. Her white defense die does make her a bit of a liability, but with 2 yellow attack die, triggering Recover 2 should trigger quite often. Battlefield Leadership works wonders in Skirmish too! Additional attacks are never a bad thing to have. Though, since Line of Sight can be tricky, it’s at least harder to achieve here. If you can trigger an Echo Base Trooper or even Luke with this attack, you are bound to make an impact. Military Efficiency, which is skirmish exclusive, makes her even better. Imagine using Son of Skywalker, and then reclaiming it with Military Efficiency for a 2nd use! With R2-D2 and Devotion you have a good chance of that actually happen quite quick.
But we haven’t even gone over the Command Cards included in this pack! Her signature card There is Another is a bit underwhelming, and only works if you have Force User cards in your hand while Jedi Luke Skywalker is already defeated. Not something you should plan for. With the expansion of the Force User roster, I Can Feel It can actually be played quite a lot of figures. Since the 3 effects are mutually exclusive, it’s still not a strong card. Lastly, Behind Enemy Lines is a bit odd in this pack. Leia does have the Spy trait, but this card seems to be designed to be used with the Alliance Smuggler, Rebel Saboteurs or other future groups with the Spy trait. With the recently released ISB Infiltrators and Agent Blaise, this card might also be good to include in a relevant imperial list.
The included skirmish map Nelvaanian War Zone uses tiles from the core box and the Return to Hoth box expansion.
Model
I am really disappointed that the model doesn’t have the same pose as in the Deployment Card. She looks a bit out of touch and almost as she is striking a pose. Nothing you’d expect on a battlefield. Additionally, this makes her silhouette is very hard to make out on the board. She just doesn’t have any striking features. The Echo Base Troopers certainly got the better end of that deal!