Exclusive Twilight of the Republic SWU Set 3 Preview!

Hello There!

Set 3, Twiight of the Republic, is almost here. We have two short weeks before pre-release events and hype is at an all-time high. Well today, I'm here to heighten that even more with an exclusive preview staright from FFG. 

So far, set 3 has looked amazing and in my opinion much more impactful at first glance than set 2 was. That's not to say set 2 was bad, it certainly wasn't, but there weren't a lot of "build around me" cards and ultimately it ended up just being mostly updated set 1 decks that defined the meta. Set 3, in my opinion, is looking to change that right out of the gate with leaders that scream "build around me" with Dooku and Yoda to name a few. The clone trooper and battle droid token mechanic is looking really great but I think exploit is going to make a much larger splash than coordinate in a constructed environment.

But anyway, my own musings aside, I know what you all clicked the link for - an exclusive set 3 preview card. I heard you liked Lurking Tie Phantom so I'll give you Lurking Tie Phantom in upgrade form so you can Lurking Tie Phantom while you play your Lurking Tie Phantom ...

 ... oh boy. There's a lot to unpack here. Firstly, it's not *exactly* Tie Phantom as the upgraded unit cannot be returned to it's owners hand unlike the Phantom itself. This means that playing this on an actual Lurking Tue Phantom means that your opponent can quite literally only remove it if they can manage to find it in space. Secondly, there's no "non-leader" restriction on this card which means that you can make some hard to deal with leaders even harder to deal with. Boba Fett with his armor becomes even more increasingly difficult to remove, Chirrut becomes essentially invincible, big statted leaders like Darth Vader, Yoda, Dooku, etc become harder to remove, and leaders that "die to Takedown," well, no longer die to Takedown.

Whew, that's a lot to take in and we haven't even talked about the implications on units that are hard to remove. Once you realize that it not only doesn't have a "non-leader" restriction it ALSO doesn't have a non-vehicle restriction. Avenger, Home One, several other capital ships, just became incredibly more terrifying out of yellow decks. It's even harder to remove an Avenger when you can't do literally anything to it. You have one turn, sometimes even just 1 action to deal with the giant threat before it becomes night impossible to answer. High risk, high reward cards like this are great for the game and really reward patience and proper set up so I'm a big fan of this card.

It does have its downsides however. It's slow in that it costs 3 resources to deploy out of the gate, it's an upgrade so it's fragile, it doesn't give a stat boost so it's resource inventment isn't an immediate benefit, and it doesn't have any immediate impact the turn you spend the resources, more than likely. That's a lot to really take in but the best part of all this is that a lot of it's downsides are mitigated by the fact that the unit (if it's not on a leader, that is) can't be bounced back to hand by a Waylay effect making the upgrade a lot less risky than any other upgrade in the game.

Those are my thoughts on the new card and I'll be back soon with more of an overarching, all-encompassing thought exercise on what I think of set 3 as a whole. This weekend I'll be at the PQ in Glen Burnie, Maryland so if anyone is around be sure to say hellow. Thank you to Xander and FFG for the opportunity to preview a card and I hope you enjoy it.

-Professor Numpty (Tatta)