Wave 5 Villain Pack – General Sorin
General Sorin, painted and photographed by Matthew of www.oldenhammer.com
Campaign
In the campaign, General Sorin is tricky to use. He relies upon positioning to get the most out of him. You mostly will use his Bombardment to make more powerful units attack out of turn. This can be powerful with figures that have strong attacks, but if the rebels can control your powerful units with Stun, then his viability diminishes rapidly. His Advanced Firepower is good if you run Droids or Vehicles, it really doesn’t justify his cost of 8 Threat.
His Agenda Set includes Armored Division, which is actually decent. With it, you can save 3 Threat for deploying a Vehicle. This brings down the cost for the new SC2-M Repulsor Tank to a measly 7, and you can use it once every mission! This can turn around missions quite fast. Explosive Shrapnel on the other hand is pretty situational. It is not a bad card, but it can be hard to trigger it in a way where it feels rewarding for the imperial player. If you have a lot of Blast available, it is a little better, though.
To recruit General Sorin as Villain for your campaign, you need to win the side mission Fully Charged, which is included in his Agenda Deck. This mission requires map tiles included in the Return to Hoth expansion.
General Sorin appears in the following campaign missions:
- Return to Hoth Story Mission: Return to Echo Base
- Return to Hoth Story Mission: Rescue Ops
- Return to Hoth Story Mission, The Last Line
- Return to Hoth Story Mission: Our Last Hope
- Wave 5 Pack General Sorin Agenda Side Mission: Fully Charged
Skirmish
General Sorin basically serves as an Elite Imperial Officer on steroids. With Bombardment you can effectively counter Trooper lists. He is a bit hard to get in position sometimes because of his mediocre Speed of 4. But his 7 Health combined with a black defense die make him really vulnerable to attacks that can pierce or spike a lot of damage. If you are comfortable with him weaving in and out of the area of engagement, you might be getting your moneys worth out of him. But at a Deployment Cost of 8, he will most likely not make the cut in many lists. The Skirmish Upgrade Card dvanced Com Systems from the The Grand Inquisitor villain pack is basically mandatory to use General Sorin in Skirmish.
His Command Cards are … tricky. They do look pretty weak right now, but with that mentioned Skirmish Upgrade Card, at least his signature card Optimal Bombardment has the potential of doing great things. Field Tactician is a bit more powerful than the Order ability from the Imperial Officer. Instead of 2 movement points, you get a full move out of the card. Still, it is a hard sell for how tightly packed Command Card decks are these days. And lastly, Fuel Upgrade gives a slight boost to all of your Vehicles for one round. Until Vehicles really come into play, it is just not good.
The Skirmish Upgrade card The General’s Ranks is a bit odd. It can be good on General Weiss, an AT-ST or even the SC2-M Repulsor Tank, but the main problem is that you also need an Elite Imperial Officer or General Sorin to really make this card work. At a cost of 2, you will have a hard time finding room for it in your budget.
The included skirmish map Climate Resarch Camp uses tiles from the core box and the Return to Hoth box expansion.
Model
This isn’t the model you are looking for. Once again, the art on his deployment card is much better than the model itself. Also, his equipment and cloths are too bland to really stick out. Safe your money for something else if you are in it for the paint job.
Thanks to FFG Forum user tomkat364 for correcting me on the usage of Field Tactician.
Thanks to /u/Vee492 for pointing out missing missions.