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Jabba the Hutt painted and photographed by Matthew of www.oldenhammer.com

Campaign

It can be difficult to adapt certain illustrious characters from Star Wars into a tactical board game like Imperial Assault. With Jabba the Hutt, FFG definitely pulled it off. He stays very true to his film appearance. For 6 Threat you get 10 Health, a large figure base and a Speed of 2. That makes him tough but the slowest unit in the game so far. He does have a red-green melee attack only as a last resort, because his strength lies in manipulating the battlefield with his numerous abilities, most of which are triggered with actions. With Bully he can dish out strain on demand to anyone within 3 spaces. Execution Order works on any mercenary figure on the whole board and lets them interrupt to attack. Want to heal a friendly figure and also focus it? Just use Financial Incentive. He can even increase your Threat by 2 with Plot. Last but not least, Hutt Syndicate gives you a bonus Influence if the heroes don’t defeat Jabba in time. Keep in mind that he has the Leader, Smuggler and Hunter traits. Especially, Hunter for a Fee looks positively terrifying with Jabba on the board. For sure, he is the most exciting unit for the mercenary faction to date and a real force to contend with.

His Agenda Set has On Jabba’s Orders which is a good fit for the Weequay Pirates. You can also slap it on Trandoshan Hunters or the HK Assassin Droids, but both do not synergize as well with it. Head-Hunting gives you an additional attack after your first one if you target the hero with the least damage. It’s expensive for 2 Influence and a one time use card. But this can blow a hero out of the water really quickly.

Jabba the Hutt appears in the following campaign missions:

• Jabba’s Realm Story Mission: Storming the Palace
• Jabba’s Realm Story Mission: Mutiny
• Jabba’s Realm Story Mission: From All Sides
• Wave 8 Pack Jabba the Hutt Side Mission: One Fat Slug

Skirmish

Jabba does have a different deployment card for Skirmish. His basic stats are the same, though. 6 Deployment Points for 10 Health, a Speed of 2 (on a large figure) and a red-green melee attack that you’ll never use. Bully is the same as in the campaign, assigning 3 strain to a figure within 3 spaces. It can also be a friendly figure, which makes some shenanigans with Leia at least a possibility. And don’t forget Under Duress. Discarding 6 cards to safe you 3 damage … tough choice. Incentivize focuses any mercenary figure on the board. This makes it less necessary to include the rebel care package (Gideon and C-3PO) into your mercenary lists. Sceme draws you a command card. Not that flashy, but still useful at times. Order Hit actually takes 2 actions and requires you to spend 2 VPs to give any mercenary on the board an attack and a little retreat option. Since you probably don’t need to move him that much anyway, the 2 actions seem an okay cost. The 2 VPs are a bit easier to come by with all the new Command Cards that manipulate VPs. Also, you will gain some VPs through Nefarious Gains which gives you 1 VP each time a hostile figure is defeated. Can you imagine this in a 4 player game? Wow!

The skirmish upgrade card included in this pack is Black Market. You can look at it as trading cards from your hand to get the next card from your deck. Or you can just take the strain on Jabba himself, since he has a large health pool that he usually doesn’t need. Especially if you dig for that crucial card that will save you, this can work out amazingly. Also, nice is that you can convert the new card into VPs right away. This can give you the option to end a mission at the end of the round, without your opponent having a chance to react. Usually what we see now is that if you run Jabba, you also run Black Market. It’s just too good to pass up.

Shoot the Messenger is probably the weakest of the Command Cards. It’s similar to Bully in that it makes the opponent discard the top 3 cards from his deck. It seems the archetype of draining your opponent’s Command Deck finally arrived. Though, unless you also have other ways to make your opponent suffer strain, this certainly isn’t worth it. Assassinate on the other hand is a straight up damage buff for figures with the Hunter trait. +3 damage sounds insane. Since it does cost 3 it’s not as overpowered as you might think. But if you do run figures with the Hunter trait in your list, you will want to bring this over most other cards. Jabba’s signature card Blood Feud requires an action to give you +1 Damage on any of your opponents’ Deployment Cards. It can be good, but finding the action to actually play it can be very hard.

Model

Without some paint on, the model looks very cartoonish. If you have seen Jabba in one of the Star Wars animated series, that’s probably the description. With paint, though, amazing things can happen. He is also very large, giving you a chance to improve your grading techniques! Not a bad model.