Wave 6 Ally Pack – Lando Calrissian
Lando Calrissian painted and photographed by Matthew of www.oldenhammer.com
Campaign
It is Lando! How can you not like that charmer? His stats are pretty good considering his 6 Deployment Cost. A hardy 8 Health and attacks at range with a green and a yellow die. To get your needed accuracy, he also has +2 Accuracy built in. +2 Damage for a Surge and Stun and Hide for another surge round out his deployment card. But where he really shines is his special abilities.
Resourceful lets him reroll one die each time he is attacking or defending. Gambit is even better. If you are not satisfied with your results, but rerolling seems not great either, why not change the die first and then reroll? This can come in handy when he is low on Health and even a full 3 Block won’t save him. Just swap out the black for a white die and press your luck. Or do you want to maximize your damage potential? Swap your yellow for a red die and spike your damage! Both of these abilities make him so versatile that it is almost unreal. The only real downside of him in the campaign is that he doesn’t really have any ability to boost your heroes like Luke and Leia do. He is still a solid ally.
So what do you get for your campaign for purchasing the pack? Aside from the model, there is also a Side Mission called Paying Debts that rewards you the Lady Luck reward card. Its effect isn’t very powerful: Rerolling all your dice when doing an attack or attribute test once per round. You can use this with Diala or Murne to get more mileage out of Battle Meditation and Sonic Bellow respectively. Rerolling the attack seems good at first, but since you can only do it once per round, it suffers a bit from “expendable resources” problem. You’ll never know if to save it or use it.
To recruit Lando as an Ally for your campaign, you need to win the side mission Reclaimation included in the Bespin Gambit expansion. The side mission included in the pack Paying Depts requires tiles from the Bespin Gambit expansion and awards the reward card Lady Luck.
Lando Calrissian appears in the following campaign missions:
- The Bespin Gambit Side Mission: Reclamation
- The Bespin Gambit Side Mission: Hostile Takeover
- The Bespin Gambit Side Mission: Cloud City’s Secrets
- Wave 6 Pack Lando Calrissian Side Mission: Paying Debts
Skirmish
Lando’s amazing stats also shine here. Especially being able to perpetually Hide himself while Stunning opponents is great! 8 Health and the ability to swap your defense die also gives you amazing flexibility to thwart your opponent’s plans. And don’t forget all the rerolls that significantly increase consistency when using this figure.
The Command Cards include all kinds of thematic effects. Black Market Prices can give a needed boost in VPs by striking some dark alley deals. Tough Luck can help turn around an attack unexpectedly by removing an enemy die from the result. Lando’s signature card Cheat to Win does exactly that: It is basically a free Dodge on a white die or a guaranteed 3 Damage on a red die. While not really focused on the Smuggler trait, it is still good to pick up for Tough Luck which can be used on any figure.
The Skirmish Upgrade card included is Heroic Effort. Being a cost of 0, it is certainly cheap, its effect isn’t the greatest though. The main use is to put away a signature command card of a figure that just was defeated. If it can really make all-unique rebel lists viable remains to be seen.
The included skirmish map Lothal Safehouse only uses tiles from the core box.
Model
True to his role in Empire Strikes Back, he strikes a very engaging pose. His cape makes him seem larger than he actually is, which is certainly a good thing. Certainly not the worst model to pick up, as he presents a good middle ground between easy to paint and still being amazing to look at on the board.