Wave 6 Villain Pack – Agent Blaise

Agent Blaise painted and photographed by Matthew of www.oldenhammer.com

Agent Blaise painted and photographed by Matthew of www.oldenhammer.com

Campaign

Agent Blaise is almost Lando’s counterpart in Wave 6 with his similar stats and similar cost. A Deployment Cost of 6 threat 8 Health and a black die mean that he is mostly viable in the middle of the campaign. But there is actually another reason that makes him better suited early and in the middle part of a campaign: His ability Menace: for one surge you can increase threat by one. This ability can also be triggered if he doesn’t hit or all damage gets canceled! So by deploying him, you essentially raise the Threat Level by a point if you attack with him every round. At Threat Level 3 and 4 this is very valuable. With Activate Agent you can then spend your newly gained threat to deploy a new group. If it is a Spy or Trooper group, you even get a 1 threat discount! Combined with his competitive Deplyoment Cost this makes him one of the best villains so far.

Of course he also has an Agenda Set which comes with Classified Techniques that lets you ready one of your class cards once. Under Surveillance lets you dish out Strain to heroes. It really is best in long missions or at the end of the campaign when you can make the heroes attack more often. For 2 Influence it seems a bit overcostet, especially since you need to discard it and can’t shuffle it into your Agenda Deck again.

To recruit Agent Blaise as a Villain for your campaign, you need to win the side mission Security Breach, which is included in his Agenda Deck. This mission requires map tiles included in the Bespin Gambit expansion.

Skirmish

The Skirmish Deployment Card of Agent Blaise is almost identical to the campaign version. This makes him very competitively costed with 8 Health a black die and 3 attack dice for just 6 deployment cost. With Adapt he can not give himself the Hidden condition, but he can certainly do it for other figures running with him. Interrogate is where it gets interesting. With a Surge he can look at his opponent’s full hand of command cards. Not only that, with it, you can discard a Command Card to force your enemy to discard a specific Commnd Card. Your cards need to cost equal or more Command Points though, so it is not straight up bonkers. If you plan on playing a Spy focused list, there is no way around Blaise right now, and even splashing him into Trooper lists seems viable.

Looking at the Command Cards included in the pack, all of them are geared towards Spy figures. Collect Intel lets you look at your opponent’s hand, even if you didn’t bring Blaise. So these actually clash a bit with him because you really don’t need them if he is in your squad. Espionage Mastery is Blaise’s signature card does make his Interrogate ability go off the rails. You get to return that Command Card you just discarded, and you get to draw another one. Intelligence Leak is another way to look at your opponent’s hand (does anyone see a theme here?). You can even make him discard a card, though at a pretty high cost to you if the discarded card isn’t something like Take Initiative that has a cost of 0 to begin with.

There is also a Skirmish Upgrade Card in the form of Zillo Technique. Featuring amazing art of Darth Vader, its effect is decent against the right list. But that also makes it miss against rebel all unique lists that mainly use their surges on bonus damage instead of pierce. Unless pierce enters the meta through other means, currently this card will not see much play.

The included skirmish map ISB Headquarters uses tiles from the core box and the Bespin Gambit expansion.

Model

Look, I understand that you want to have your Bespin Gambit villain look menacing and stand out on the board. But the disconnect between his deployment card with the helmet on and the model with the helmet off is really jarring. Also, his pose isn’t even different enough from the Stormtroopers to make him stick out that much. I don’t know what’s going on with this model, but it is not good.