Month: March 2025

March 2025 retrospective

Hey everybody,
March has been a very weird month, somehow. Springtime has often been equated with Star Wars for me, especially as I look forward to a break around Easter and enjoying a rewatch of the original trilogy. A number of personal issues have kept me somehow deflated for most of the month, however. February and, in particular, March has seen a huge upsurge in my love of the whole thing, though, and I’ve especially noticed how Shatterpoint has had a massive resurgence for me. I suppose it was always there, with a full half of the blogs that I have published this month being dedicated to the skirmish game.

It’s a bit difficult to put into words exactly why I like it, without falling back on the fact that it is a game set in the Star Wars universe. I think there’s so much going for it, in terms of the rules and mechanics but also the miniatures themselves, yet it seems to get overlooked, I can only think because the rules are perhaps a bit more convoluted than other wargames out there. I think if I were to only play one miniatures game for the rest of my days, then I would be happy for it to be Shatterpoint, as I just absolutely love the game, though I do realise that I’m somewhat in the minority on this one!

This past weekend, we’ve had the Adepticon tournament in Milwaukee, and as per usual a lot of miniatures have been shown off as GW and AMG have been revealing what is around the corner. Shatterpoint doesn’t seem to have a particularly busy year ahead, with some of the miniatures that we saw previewed back last summer being pushed into a Q4 release window, and only two new squad boxes being announced. Both of these tie into the Ahsoka show, and are bringing fan-favourites Morgan Elsbeth and Baylan Skoll to the game, so I’m sure that’ll be terrific when they finally arrive next year. We still have stuff like the Rogue One boxes coming, of course, but the big news for Shatterpoint seems to be that there are four upcoming terrain packs for an Outer Rim settlement that will change things up a bit. I hope the list is non-exhaustive, as I would like to see some new stuff coming out for factions like the Separatists, but I guess that time will tell!

Marvel Crisis Protocol has had some of the models shown as renders last summer finally with fully-painted miniatures, such as Phoenix and Spider Man 2099, but there seems to have been a lot more shown off there somehow, as we’ve seen another web warrior box with Silk and Spider Noir, plus the interesting addition of Spectrum, we’ve got a lot of news about how models are being repackaged, and looking ahead a full year we know the next crisis pack will be Sentinels themed. All good stuff, for sure, but I do feel a bit like my beloved Shatterpoint got the short end of the stick. I suppose I can’t complain too much though, as it’ll give me some breathing room to get my backlog painted, at least!

Games Workshop have definitely “won” Adepticon though, with so many beautiful-looking reveals that look really exciting. In a way, I’m glad I have taken a step back right now, because otherwise this would be expensive! A new Kill Team box has shown off a Tyranid Raveners team, which is not something I had thought would ever be a thing, as they face off against an AdMech team of servitors and automata. For big 40k we’ve got a lot of Chaos coming, with previews of a new Grey Knights dreadknight-style kit, but it looks like Space Wolves are getting a range refresh as well, similar to the Blood Angels stuff. No Leman Russ yet, though…

I find it funny how big the Old World has become, given that it isn’t all that long ago since they replaced Fantasy with Age of Sigmar. I do actually like AoS, and have never played Fantasy, so maybe you can completely disregard this, but it does seem strange how much of the old range they’re bringing back alongside a few tentpole models. However, with the announcement of Cathay entering into things, this looks astounding. I mean, it was always something that I remember being talked about, but the general consensus was that GW could never do it without resorting to Orientalism stereotypes, and while it’s true the faction does seem to lean into that somewhat, there does seem to be more of a sensitivity to the topic being displayed here, than perhaps would have been the case 10+ years ago. The centrepiece model is a giant floating lantern-style hot air balloon, and I can imagine plenty of folks using that for a painting challenge or similar. In general, the faction looks a bit like an Empire-style army, but with dragons. And I do like it. I guess the big appeal here would be that the whole thing is not reliant on old metal sculpts, so we’re seeing a lot of fantastic dragons and flourishes. Beautiful stuff.

But I’m not about to start playing Old World. 

Am I?

Anyway, March is over with now, and I’m looking forward to April. Spring has hopefully sprung, and with it I’m hoping for a lot more positivity all around!

List building in Star Wars Shatterpoint

Hey everybody,
I feel like Star Wars Shatterpoint has completely taken over for me once again right now – it always seems to be a spring thing, how the sun begins to shine, the flowers begin to bloom, and Star Wars bursts to the fore of my being! I’ve had a couple of great games of Shatterpoint in recent weeks (lost both, but who’s keeping track?) and I’m now deep into the game as regards building lists for upcoming games. I usually play with my buddy James, though we’ve been thinking about attending the GT in September at Element Games, so it’ll be interesting to see if either of us feels the confidence to go for that! However, if we do, then I am guessing we’ll need to go down the route of a “proper” list for the game. In today’s post, then, I thought I’d talk a bit about my experiences with this, and some ideas that I have for upcoming games. 

One of the best things about Shatterpoint, in my opinion, is how straightforward the list building side of things actually is. AMG have done a great job of making the game accessible in the way that they sell squad packs, so that you can absolutely just buy two boxes that contain your favourite characters, and you’re off to the races. There are some things to be mindful of, such as not being able to include multiple instances of the same character across a strike team, and characters all belong to a specific era (or eras), so you can’t mix them that way. Though a strike team could be made up of two squads which individually belong to a different era.

Each squad must include a primary unit, a secondary unit, and a support unit. You can see from the image above, General Grievous is a primary unit; in the top left corner you have 8SP which is how many squad points he gives you to build with, while the symbol denotes he belongs to the Fall of the Jedi era. Luke Skywalker is a secondary unit with a points cost of 3, but his era symbol is Age of Rebellion, so he cannot be played with Grievous. Finally, the Bounty Hunters are a supporting unit costing 4 points, but their era symbol is a blend of both, so they could actually be played in the same squad as either General Grievous, or Luke Skywalker.

Obviously, squads will have various synergies across them that you’ll want to maximise on – ideally, you’ll want to maximise across the entire strike team. I’ve talked about this a fair bit when I’ve taken deep dives into the Luke Skywalker or Count Dooku boxes, for example. Count Dooku is a great leader for the Separatists because of his abilities, while Kalani is a fantastic secondary on a battle droid-heavy team because of his abilities affecting units with that tag. I think the game is really well designed in that it has something of a sandbox feel to it, because you aren’t forced into playing light side or dark side characters, but the game does lead you down the path of leaning into synergies and tag cohesion across your teams.

A good example of this is my current favourite squad, Asajj and friends. When Mother Talzin’s box came out, it provided a huge boon for the Dathomirian tag, because up to that point we only had Asajj and Maul. Asajj has an ability that lets her reposition out of combat when an allied Separatist or allied Dathomirian character attacks a character she is engaged with, which is fine because she has been surrounded by Separatists since the core box released. However, the Nightsister Acolytes from the Talzin box have the ability to add two dice to a ranged attack against a unit that is engaged with an allied Dathomirian character. The floor on this is having one Acolyte engage the enemy, and another Acolyte shoot into that combat, but paired with Asajj, she becomes a lot more mobile because you can reposition either onto an objective, or just to get away from an unfavourable combat – or both.

I’ve been using Savage Oppress as the secondary of that squad, although to be honest, he can be a little bit boring as he is basically just a wrecking ball. Which is fine, but sometimes you want a bit more finesse, you know? I’ve decided to try out Jango Fett in that position, as he has recently found favour with me. I know, he’s long been considered one of the best secondary units in the game, but I just couldn’t seem to make him work, mainly due to poor positioning. Recently, though, he has been something of an all-star, even if I’m not winning games, he is still providing so much utility! The displacement from Jango’s capture wire, coupled with Asajj’s Force push, as well as Jango’s ability to refresh Force when he wounds an enemy primary or secondary unit, make them a pretty good team, I think!

I haven’t tried this team out yet, but I want to pair Asajj with General Grievous – a sort of Pawns of Count Dooku team. Grievous is a bit of a monster, which I think was making Savage a little redundant. I’m pairing him with the MagnaGuards, mainly because that’s how we find him in the movie, but also because his abilities rely on battle droids being around him, so he needs something nearby to order around! When he activates, he can bring a battle droid supporting character with him through a dash, but the MagnaGuards themselves can also advance towards an activating primary unit, so he can dash one of them, then move himself, which will drag along the other in his wake, anyway. His Appetite for Destruction ability will also allow the MagnaGuards to attack outside of their activation, because they should be close enough to be engaged with any enemy character that Grievous ends up near to, though the ability can still dash a character up to make a 5 dice attack. In return, the MagnaGuard are giving Grievous cover innately, which will be useful while he gets into position, I think.

What excites me about this list, though, is the inclusion of Aurra Sing as the secondary. I suppose I’m leaning into the bounty hunter theme a bit here, with Jango on the other squad, and she does strike me as being a decent character for inclusion. She costs 5 points, which I think puts a lot of folks off using her, and I think is balanced around her reactive ability Double the Contract, Double the Payout, which lets her make a second attack (albeit at 5 dice). Her card doesn’t require any synergy with other tags, and in fact she has the Payday ability that lets you pay a Force to give her any tag you want – so when Grievous comes up and the MagnaGuards are in position, for instance, she can become a battle droid in order to benefit from his abilities. Furthermore, she gets 3 additional dice when she shoots into an ongoing melee, though the allied character does take two damage as a result. But she’s another potential target for Asajj’s ability to reposition out of an unfavourable combat. I’ve only used her once before, when I played with the Cad Bane box as a whole, and while I think I probably lost that game as well, I seem to recall Aurra was better than I had been led to believe at the time.

Is the squad competitive? Probably not, but I am super excited to play with it and see how it goes.

Star Wars Rebels – season two

Hey everybody,
After almost a year since I started on my sort-of rewatch of the Rebels cartoon series, I’m back today to bring you some of my thoughts on the second season. I talked a bit about this in my post on the first season, but I was really negatively-predisposed towards this show when it first came out, mostly because it felt far too much like it was designed by committee. Suffice it to say, I did not really have very high expectations for the series. However…

As time has gone on, and the new canon stuff has grown and grown, it becomes increasingly foolish, in my view, to try to ignore the new stuff. Rebels in particular has become so pervasive throughout the new canon, that it definitely feels hard to ignore. A major turning point, I think, was getting into Shatterpoint in a very big way around this time last year. That game is incredible, and draws pretty exclusively from the new canon, so it does become difficult to have that kind of connection with the game if I don’t have the background knowledge on who these characters actually are.

What I find interesting about this, though, is how my attitude has almost completely reversed from really disliking the fact that these shows have replaced some of the great stories that I’ve grown up reading, to at least accepting of the fact that this stuff exists now. Whereas before I think I kinda hated what had happened to Star Wars, as corny as it might sound I have let go of a lot of that, and I’m finding it quite easy to enjoy a lot of this stuff, which is easily as uneven as the old Legends stuff was. I don’t think that the first two seasons of Rebels is perfect, but then neither was the Republic run of comics, even though some of those story arcs were peak Star Wars for me. I feel like I’m labouring the point somewhat, but I’m definitely glad to have given this show a second chance, because not only is some of it a lot better than perhaps I’d given it credit for, but also I feel more connected to the modern Star Wars as a result, and that’s something that I am definitely pleased about.

Anyway, enough with all this, let’s get to season two!

Season Two begins with another two-part “movie”, The Siege of Lothal, during which the Ghost crew are kinda revealed to be part of the larger Rebellion now, and work as part of Phoenix Squadron under Commander Jun Sato. The actions of the crew have drawn the interest of none other than Darth Vader, however, who orders a siege of Lothal to prevent the rebels from leaving. During a skirmish as they attempt to break through the blockade, Ahsoka senses Vader’s presence, which causes her to pass out. While the Spectres escape, Vader and the Emperor realise they might be able to find other Jedi in hiding through Ahsoka, and so dispatch more inquisitors to hunt her. The episode is action-packed and kinda relentless, making for a really good season opener, though I did find it a bit silly that Kanan and Ezra were able to survive facing off against Vader…

Aside from the opening and the season finale, on the whole we have a series of stories-of-the-week, which feels a bit like nothing is really impactful over the course of the season as a whole. There are some stand-out episodes with the new inquisitors, Seventh Sister (voiced by none other than Buffy herself, Sarah Michelle Geller) and Fifth Brother, who are both interesting characters but sadly don’t seem to pose much of a threat to the rebels over the course of the season. I think if they had actually been shown to capture one or two of them, it might have raised the stakes a bit, but as it is, they are always able to escape.

We get the return of some clone troopers, headed up by Old Man Rex, which adds a nice slant to the show even if it does seem like it was trying to lean too heavily on the Clone Wars fanbase (notably, Rebels effectively replaced Clone Wars when Disney bought out Lucasfilm). I do like the fact that Rex seems to have been retconned to be the older rebel commando in Return of the Jedi, the guy with the bushy white beard. In a surprising callback, one episode sees the crew travel to Shantipole for a new ship – the planet was created for a module for the West End Games RPG back in the day.

In addition to Vader, we also get an episode that involves Princess Leia on a mercy mission to Lothal, it’s somewhat frivolous but overall seems harmless enough, as we see the way Leia was able to use her status and her diplomatic immunity to help dissidents while seeming to remain neutral. Another callback is the episode where the rebels attempt to recruit some Mandalorians and travel to Concord Dawn – the planet where, in the dim and distant past of the expanded universe, Boba Fett was believed to have lived as the Journeyman Protector, Jaster Mereel. Ah, Legends… The rebels are able to make some kind of alliance with the Mandalorians after they effectively kidnap the leader, Fenn Rau. I was disappointed with this one, as I had been hoping to learn more about why Sabine is with the rebel cell, but maybe that’s for another season… We do get to learn a little more of her back story when we’re introduced to Ketsu Onyo, who I had recently become aware of through playing Outer Rim. I think it was only a couple of days after finding out who she is in the game, that I watched the episode where she is introduced, and was quite pleased to make the connection there!

There are plenty of weird episodes along the way, including the space whales, Zeb’s Lasat people showing up again, and so on. Chopper makes friends with another droid when he stows away on an Imperial freight ship, etc. It’s all very odd stuff. Then we get to the two-part finale, Twilight of the Apprentice, which sees Kanan, Ezra and Ahsoka travel to Malachor after Ahsoka had a vision in the Jedi temple on Lothal. They are trying to find information to help them defeat the Sith, and discover a Sith temple – but they are soon split up. 

The season finale double episode is an epic conclusion that sees the return (and demise) of the Seventh Sister and Fifth Brother, both of whom are killed at the hand of Maul, who returns almost a broken old man here. His attempts to twist Ezra to the dark side appear to be in vain, although all hell breaks loose at the temple, which culminates in a fight between Ahsoka and Darth Vader, during which she realises his identity as her former master. Maul blinds Kanan with his lightsaber, and the rebels make their escape from the temple as Ahsoka is seemingly defeated by the Sith Lord.

It’s a curious season, because the opening and finale double-episodes are really great stories, but the middle 18 are almost throwaway stories with little to really talk about. There’s a lot going on, don’t get me wrong, and the addition of characters like Rex, Ketsu, even the new Inquisitors (who don’t make it out of the season alive) are all great to see. But it feels very much like there is a lot of padding in here, while a couple of the later episodes do serve to tee-up the finale on Malachor. The finale, with the rebels seemingly broken in spirit at the loss of Ahsoka as well as Kanan’s blindness, feels a bit like Empire Strikes Back, so I’m very curious to know how the third season is going to go from here. The only thing I know for sure about it is that we’re due to see Mandalorians again, as I believe Gar Saxon makes an appearance, so I’m quite excited for that, if nothing else!

Star Wars deckbuilding game – Leaders variant

Hey everybody,
At the tail end of last year, I picked up the Star Wars deckbuilding game almost on a whim, having seen a few positive reviews for it and the successor Clone Wars edition of the game. I played it kind of against myself, with the idea of learning the rules to see whether I could try to teach it, but nothing really came of that. However, there is a very popular variant for solitaire play online, called the Leaders variant, so I printed off the relevant bits and gave it a try shortly before Christmas.

It has taken about three or four games for me to properly internalise the rules for this, but I have to say, I have really enjoyed what it has to offer so far, and it has quickly become one of my favourite games to play when I have a spare hour or so. Not that it really takes all that time, but I don’t like to rush the setup or cleanup of games. Anyway!

The Leaders variant allows you to choose a side – Rebel or Empire – and lets you play against the enemy with a really slick AI for that side of the table. There is a game board to print out, which has the relevant tracks and game zones for you to track the game, as well as space for your planets and your Leader. In the variant, there are two Leaders available, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. If you’re playing the Rebels, then Vader takes up his space on the board. You take three shuttles to use as your starting resources, and then you take the two trooper cards and place one face down, and one face up in the muster area of the board.

During the game, it functions pretty much the same as the regular head to head version for the player. When it’s time for the enemy to activate, first of all they will take all of the face up cards from the muster area and move them into the play area. Then the AI player will amass all of their resources, tracked along the bottom of the board, gain any Force from cards in the play area, then attempt to purchase cards from the galaxy row. There is a hierarchy that they will always attempt to purchase capital ships first, and they always go for the most expensive card they can afford (cards nearest the draw deck break ties). Any resources not spent are saved for the end step.

The enemy will then attack, starting with a bounty hunt / sabotage mission. The AI will prioritise hunting cards that reward resources first, then cards that reward Force, then all the other attacks will go into the player’s base, as normal. It’s important to note that the AI won’t bounty hunt or sabotage those cards that do not provide a resource or Force benefit. Finally, in the end phase, any starting cards (Stormtrooper, Rebel Trooper etc) are placed face down into the muster area, and any other cards are exiled. So the AI only gets to use the cards that it has purchased once per game. Capital ships are the exception, of course, as these will remain in play until they are destroyed.

We then have the slightly ingenious step of dealing with excess resources. If the AI used all resources, then they will move the progress track one step forwards. This is the track at the top of the enemy board, which gives benefits at specific points. If there are any resources left in the track, however, the progress tracker will move forwards for each excess resource, so you could see this progress track move 2-3 spaces at this point, which means the enemy Leader will be coming out sooner than expected! Normally, there is effectively an 11-turn clock that you have, and on turn 12 the Leader will appear.

Once the enemy Leader becomes available, the player has one opportunity to bounty hunt or sabotage the Leader, and if successful the Leader will enter the muster area face down. If not, he will arrive face up and can immediately be used on the next turn. 

I know it sounds a bit like I’m gushing here, but it’s just such a great variant for the game. A lot of these things I end up playing solo these days, unfortunately, but with stuff like this out there, that’s no big deal. I think the Leaders variant is perhaps one of the cleanest, most straightforward implementations of a solo version of a game that is fan-made and bolted on after the fact that I have seen. The limiting factor here of course is that the Leaders are only ever Vader or Luke, and while I would imagine you could possibly make it work with Tarkin or Leia, it does feel very much like it’s going to be pretty similar each time you play. Obviously the sheer volume of cards in the galaxy deck will make it different by seeing different cards, but still. In some ways, it’s a shame that there isn’t a way to get Jabba to be a neutral Leader, or something, but these are all really small niggles, if I’m honest. As a quick Rebels vs Empire game, though, it’s really good.

The other thing that makes me really happy about this variant is that it allows me to play what is genuinely a fantastic game. The mechanics of attacking enemy cards in the galaxy row are some of the more exciting things I’ve seen in a deckbuilder, and given how gorgeous this artwork is, I’m so glad that I have a way to play this in my life. I’m now planning to get the Clone Wars version of this game so that I can also play it with the Leaders variant (which has some tweaks to the rules for that), and I believe there is something due out this year for the game that may or may not be a third implementation (Mando-verse?) which I will also now most likely buy if there is a Leaders variant for it. Having a method of playing a game like this available is just so good, though, I would say it’s definitely worth picking up the game if you like Star Wars, just for solo play alone! 

Finished Model Friday: the bounty hunters

Hey everybody,
Just a little post today for Finished Model Friday – I have finally finished painting the bounty hunters for Star Wars Shatterpoint! These minis are just beautiful, but having bought the box back in October, it has taken me quite a while to get anywhere with them! I think, to some extent, I’m a bit scared about painting these movie characters, because they have such an established look, and I worry about being able to replicate that.

There’s something really quite incredible about having miniatures of characters like Boba Fett and Bossk, who are big names in the lore of Star Wars. I think I said something similar when I built Threepio and Artoo last year. These are characters that have been such a huge part of my life growing up, and having miniatures of them is just… I don’t really know the word, it’s just incredible. In the actual sense of the word.

I’ve painted them to the best of my ability, anyway, and I’m very happy with the overall effect of the models when you see them together in a group like that. I’m sure more talented folks than me could make them look incredible, but I think I’d still be happy to put these onto the table when the time comes! I don’t honestly know how I would run them, for the time being – I’ve covered the rules for these guys here, but in short, they’re all secondary characters, with Boba and Dengar costing 4, IG-88 costs 5, whereas Bossk is a decent splash at 3. They only fit in the Age of Rebellion era, though, so that is a bit of a restriction. I had thought perhaps I could run them in a list with the Rebels, possibly under Lando, but I suppose time will tell whether more options present themselves.

For now, I’m glad to say that’s another box that I have painted, which brings my tally up to five fully-painted squads (counting Asajj and Maul as two squads from the core). I think I’m gonna stick with painting Shatterpoint for the time being, as I am on such a Star Wars high right now. I’m keen to get General Han done, but also, I do have a lot of Ewoks to paint, so I might make a start there as well. We’ll see what grabs my attention, I guess!

Wild speculation for Shatterpoint

I’ve been thinking a lot about Shatterpoint again recently, especially after that game last week. It’s a game that I really, really love, and I’ve probably said this before, but I could quite easily see myself sell off my entire 40k miniatures collection in favour of this absolute gem of a game. As part of my general musing on what I currently have, and my plans for lists that I want to play in the future, I’ve also been thinking a lot about what we might get to see out of future releases for the game. With Adepticon at the end of the month, I’m expecting to see a fresh batch of announcements from AMG, as the last bunch of teases and reveals is almost exhausted now.

To start with, and continuing the Rogue One theme of the releases we’re expecting from Q2, I think it’s somewhat interesting that we’ve not had Saw Gerrera as part of that wave. However, Saw, Benthic and some generic Partisans is a box that pretty much writes itself, so would not be surprised if we saw this on the horizon to further flesh out some of the Rebels list.

The issue for Rebellion lists at the minute is how many repeat characters there are – two Lukes, two Hans, three Leias – so getting more variety will help to fill out the premier list for these. That’s not to say I would turn my nose up at a smuggler Han, or Commander Luke from Hoth! Cassian will be a huge help of course, and while I think Jyn will likely be another affiliated box, something tells me that we might instead see that box as neutrals. This got me thinking about original-trilogy rebels, though, and there are still plenty of other characters that we could see. Generals Madine and Riekkan are perhaps more niche characters who might end up further out, I would like to see Wedge come into the game soon. Iden Versio and her box gives me hope for this, because they were TIE fighter pilots, so it isn’t out of the realms of possibility to have X-Wing pilots as well. Wedge, maybe Biggs, and some more generic Red Squadron (or Rogue Squadron, if we get someone other than Biggs) pilots would be another box that seems fairly obvious to me. 

In terms of Empire releases, I think it’s quite likely we’ll see Tarkin at some point. My initial thought was that he’d come perhaps with Admiral Motti as a secondary, the guy who gets choked by Vader, and some Death Star Troopers as supports (the guys with the big black helmets). However, I suppose they may choose to go down more of a Rebels route with him, and maybe we’ll get Governor Pryce rather than Admiral Motti? Tarkin could be a good primary to pair with the upcoming Vader secondary from the duel pack though, which is perhaps the most exciting thing I’m thinking about!

While they started with Episode VI, AMG have since moved through the original trilogy pretty rapidly with new releases, but to my mind there has been one glaring omission: the scout trooper. I don’t really know how they could do the box – my initial thought was to have Lieutenant Renz (“you rebel scum”) involved, but he’s hardly primary material! Maybe Moff Jerjerrod? He was up on the Death Star. I don’t know how they could do it, but I would really hope that we could get these iconic troopers in the game sooner rather than later. Maybe we’ll get a Supports Box similar to the all-secondaries bounty hunter box, and they could be in there..?

Looking forward in the timeline a bit, and I think I may have mentioned this before, I would like to see Daimyo Fett with Fennec Shand, and then some generic enforcer/thugs. AMG have already done the character for Legion, oddly enough. Ideally, we’d get Gamorrean Guards, though I’m not that keen on getting those sumo wrestler type guards he has. Maybe we’d get the swoop gang as supports, instead? That could be… divisive…

I had initially thought perhaps Black Krrsantan, the Wookiee mercenary, but I quite like him as part of a Doctor Aphra box. She’s a real breakout character from the new canon, and I know in the recent interview with Will Shick and Michael Plummer on the Hello There podcast, Plummer called her out specifically as a character he’d like to see in the game. Having her with BT and Triple Zero seems like a no-brainer, but I like the murder droids as a support, and instead I was thinking perhaps we could get Krrsantan as her support instead, as he first appears in the comics with her. If we’re really going off the beaten path, I’d like to get Sana Starros as an alternative secondary (or perhaps support, not sure). I’d love to get more of an exploration of the galactic fringe, though, and it would be great to see. Valance is another comics character that I think could come into the game, and I wonder if he could be the vehicle for rounding out the bounty hunters to get Zuckuss and 4-LOM as well.

For me, though, the game still has some very firm roots in the Clone Wars-era, and I think most of my musings on possible units is based in this era. I’d love to get some Geonosians to help round out the Separatists a bit more, maybe Poggle the Lesser and then some pretty generic drone-type characters, like the stormtrooper sergeant or something. I’d also like to see more scum like the Pyke Syndicate, to help fill out the Shadow Collective tag with Maul. I would imagine Dryden Vos and Qi’Ra will be coming at some point, with Crimson Dawn enforcers accompanying them in some form.

I know I’ve talked about Nute Gunray before – I really need some droidekas in this game, and I think Nute Gunray is the way to get this. I would be fascinated if Nute Gunray and Rune Haako are a two-model primary unit, because out of the vast cast of characters I think this is the most obvious way they could explore that space. Though I would imagine if the Neimoidians are coming, it would be Gunray as the primary and Haako as the secondary. There are still a wide variety of droids that could be used though, with BX Commando Droids being high on the list after droidekas. Something else wild that I’ve recently thought about is the possibility of a battle droid commander, as we see plenty of these guys rather than relying on the super tactical droids all the time. A 3 cost secondary as a commander could vastly open out the design for Separatist lists, but I wonder if it would be abusable by the likes of Dooku.

Aayla Secura is a Jedi that I’m sure we’ll see come sooner or later. She has a named clone commander (Bly) and unit (327th Star Corps) that make her tailor-made for this game. But the same can be said for Yoda (Commander Gree, 41st Elite Corps), and I don’t really know if Yoda would be a unit that comes in the traditional release style. If Mace Windu only brings 6 squad points, for all of his power, I would expect Yoda to be fewer than that, but how would you balance that from the game point of view? 

Yoda and Palpatine always cause a great deal of game balance issues, but I would love to see how each is implemented in the game.

I’ve skirted around this briefly already, but there are still quite a few ‘orphaned’ models that I don’t really see how they could come out – at least, not in the way that follows the standard box releases for Shatterpoint. Quinlan Vos is high on my list here, but as I much prefer him in Legends to the new canon version we now have, I can wait for now. Agen Kolar and Saesee Tiin are two Jedi who don’t get a ton of screen time in the movies or, really, in the Clone Wars, but as two of the posse that Mace takes to arrest Palpatine, they’re still somewhat visible characters. Along the same lines as Agen Kolar, we have Eeth Koth who appeared in several episodes of Clone Wars and has the interesting history of having survived Order 66.

It’s not just random Jedi who might be difficult to fit in the usual box structure – of course, they could always just lump them together to give us a box of all-Primary units like the bounty hunter Secondaries. But it’s another bounty hunter I’m thinking of here, Zam Wesell. She’s got a fairly big speaking part in Episode II, and is something of a plot point in the early parts of the film. I’d be interested to see if she could come into the game and somehow work alongside Jango..?

Obviously there is so much they could do, and none of this really touches on the sequel trilogy, which despite the hate online, I have heard a lot of folks asking for. Ideally they would further flesh out the existing eras first, of course, but I’m just generally happy to get new releases coming for the game!

Back to Shatterpoint

Hey everybody,
At the weekend I was thrilled to get in a somewhat impromptu game of Shatterpoint in with James, after we’d been talking about getting back to the GFFA for the last couple of weeks. It had been just over four months since the last game, but really our games had been a bit patchy since last summer, so I opted to go back to the core box strike team for the game, Lord Maul and Asajj Ventress, while James went for Anakin, Rex and his clones, and the Obi-Wan box. We were definitely trying to keep things simple and straightforward, so were playing on Shifting Priorities as we attempted to get back into the rules of the game.

Well, it was an absolute blast! 

Spoiler alert – I lost both struggles. I blame this in part on a bad start – I drew my Shatterpoint card first, and decided to go with Kalani, but it really wasn’t the most optimum move and just led to a lot of awkward turns subsequently with him and the battle droids. There were some truly epic, cinematic moments though – one being a fight for the central objective between Asajj and Anakin, where he used his Force jump to move into melee range in an effort to move her off, but his shoves were ineffective as she was already up against some scatter terrain. When it was her turn to move, she made an attack on Anakin and used the reposition on her tree to move across from the middle to a back point, leaping the gap between the buildings. It was the Moment from this game that I think defined it, for me.

Four months away, but it was so good to be back! 

I was really glad that we were able to just play the game out, with minimal consulting of the rulebook. I think it probably helped that we had been talking a lot about the game again over the last couple of weeks, as neither of us was really coming back to the game cold. However, I also think it’s a testament to the design of the game. True, we’ve been playing a lot of Marvel Crisis Protocol, so we were still in that frame of mind for AMG games. This may be a hot take, I’m not sure, but I do believe that Shatterpoint actually has a very intuitive and straightforward ruleset, anyway, but as wargamers – particularly gamers reared on Games Workshop – we’re looking for perhaps more complexity and the like, when there isn’t any. That’s not to say that it’s an easy game, or that it lacks depth. 

Take, for example, the situation with cover – always a bane of my life in wargames! There are four checks to be made when seeing if a character has cover:
(1) The character is defending against a ranged attack;
(2) The defending character is within range 1 of a terrain feature at the same or higher elevation than the attacking character;
(3) A straight line can be drawn between any part of the characters’ bases which goes through the terrain, and
(4) The defending character has a hunker token. 

That last point was added just prior to the launch of the game, and so isn’t in the physical printed rulebook. But this kind of thing caused me to agonise about it for a long time, until I suddenly realised what is actually going on here. The character is being shot at, and is effectively trying to flatten themselves against the wall, or drop to the ground – think of Luke in Cloud City, when he’s snooping around then Boba Fett shoots at him, so he ducks back behind the cover of a door jamb. It’s literally that – the hunker token represents the fact he is trying to be quiet and careful, and so on.

It suddenly makes a lot of the scatter terrain in the Take Cover terrain pack a lot more useful, which I like.

Anyway, that was quite the tangent there!  

The game was amazing, and I just love the fact that we get to play with our toys in the Star Wars universe. There is so much to enjoy about this game, especially with new stuff coming out all the time that almost guarantees we’ll get our favourite characters to play. On a personal level, though, it is one of these games that makes me so stupidly happy to play, I really don’t care whether I win or lose. It’s all about these cinematic moments, often not even trying to create them, just letting the game take its course and enjoying them as they come up. That move with Asajj was just so good, it really felt like it was her as a character, and not just a stat block on a card working well in that situation. It’s something that constantly impresses me about AMG games, but especially with Shatterpoint, I suppose given my familiarity with the source material.

Truly epic stuff. I’m really looking forward to more Shatterpoint as 2025 goes on!

My week with Marvel Champions

Hey everybody,
I’ve been really enjoying Marvel Champions once again this past week, and have been playing some really fun games that have mixed up some of the more classic formulas, swapping in different encounter sets for a whole new feel to villains.

First up was Crossbones, one of the villains that I have played against the most. I really enjoy the street-level sort of villains like these, and I tried to further add to that flavour with this game by using the Crossfire’s Crew encounter set (from The Hood scenario pack), and the City in Chaos set (from Sinister Motives). This last set is mainly the Rhino minion, of course, but there are some very interesting treachery cards that I thought could make for a fun mix. The game was actually a whole lot of fun, with Crossbones at one point becoming an absolute monster with the number of attachments on him. I was using Thor and Venom, a hero pairing that wasn’t exactly obvious, though I was chuckling to myself when I was thinking about the idea of AsGuardians of the Galaxy again. There was a fair bit of back and forth between the heroes and villain, with Thor and Venom early on seemingly trying to out-do each other in how much damage they were dishing out. I thought it was going to be a short game, and with lethal damage in both heroes’ hands, I wound up getting a bit cocky at the end.

Venom died when he took Crossbones’ attack to the face, then had Assault dealt to him for a second attack, while Thor had the misfortune to draw Full Auto, which draws encounter cards equal to Crossbones’ ATK, then you take damage equal to the boost icons on those cards. With 4 ATK, Thor eventually had 8 damage coming at him, with just three health remaining – so it was curtains for the both of them! 

Such a fun game though, I very much enjoyed that one!

I also had a game with Black Panther and Hulk going up against Absorbing Man, which turned into an absolute nightmare, so the less said about that one, the better!

That said, I’m slowly getting into the idea of Black Panther now. He’s a core set hero but I’ve hardly played with him (or She-Hulk, to be fair). I should definitely try harder, I think, to play more with these “older” characters, as there’s so much interesting stuff going on in these kits.

Perhaps the most interesting one though, certainly in terms of the back and forth, was my game with Adam Warlock and Rocket Raccoon against The Collector. This is a scenario I’ve actually played a lot, and I’ve never really understood the hate he gets. Sure, it’s an absolute nightmare to have all of your allies, upgrades and supports disappear into the Collection and potentially lose you the game, but I wanted to try Rocket after discovering a subtle thing with his weapons cards, which don’t have the Uses keyword. This means he doesn’t discard the cards when they run out of tokens, and indeed his kit has cards that add tokens to his cards, which further helps to explain exactly what this is all for. I’d only played maybe twice with Adam Warlock, who has the distinction of being one of the weirdest heroes in that you must choose an equal number of cards from all four aspects when building him, but you can only use one copy of each card in his deck. His kit is very much built around checking how many aspects he’s dealing with, which is an interesting way to go about it, and reminds me a little of Spider-Woman.

The Collector is a bit of a nightmare though, because his encounter deck is just so good at funnelling cards into the Collection. It’s not just hero cards that leave play he collects, but he also gets his own cards, so any minions, side schemes and so on… As it happens, though, I lost the game because both heroes were defeated, although with the amount of threat on the main scheme, there was no way I was able to come back from it, anyway. It was really interesting to see the deck unfold though, and I was quite surprised to see he has his own copy of Caught Off Guard from Standard I, which of course discards an upgrade or support. The Galactic Artifacts modular set is built of five attachments and four side schemes, and all of them are just awful which makes you incentivised to get rid of them – but of course, these are going in the Collection, so it’s really interesting to see how his deck comes together in this way.

I’ve said it before, of course, but even when I’m losing in a game like this, I can take the time to appreciate a well-built encounter deck as it murders me into the ground!

Star Wars comics update

I’m continuing to collect my way through the last batch of Star Wars comics, from the 2020 runs that cover the ongoing series, the Darth Vader series, Bounty Hunters and Doctor Aphra. There are a bunch of crossovers across all four titles in this era, starting with the War of the Bounty Hunters storyline, then taking in Crimson Reign, Hidden Empire, and Dark Droids. I’ve heard the general consensus is that there were too many crossovers, but up to now I’ve only read to the first one, though, and on the whole I think it was a bit repetitive having the storyline across all four titles with an additional book covering the events as well…

But we’ll see! I’m more excited to see the individual story strands though, especially the Vader arc that involves the Naboo handmaidens.

I’m quite pleased with my collection to date!

Upcoming Shatterpoint releases

Hey everybody,
Atomic Mass Games have been very busy showing off a lot of the upcoming stuff for Shatterpoint lately, with databank downloads for a few of the new boxes coming out in the first half of 2025, as well as a new mission pack, and the next diorama duel pack, featuring Ahsoka Tano and Darth Vader. This marks the third iteration of Ahsoka and Vader, which has rightly puzzled a number of folks, though I guess AMG will want to have big names for their expensive showcase stuff, so it does make some sense…

The duel pack is representative of their duel at the at the Sith temple on Malachor V. This is an older and somewhat wiser Ahsoka, in her role as Fulcrum, and I am really quite tempted by this pack because I like the idea of a Rebel Ahsoka to play alongside the Ghost crew. She brings 8 squad points and 4 Force, and has some nice Force refresh abilities in her identity. She isn’t a million miles away from the versions we know in the core box, of course, but it’s very interesting to see, all the same. 

Darth Vader, Fallen Master is a secondary unit in this box, and costs 5 points. This is very intriguing, because he currently only has two places he can be viably played – Grand Inquisitor and Moff Gideon. The other Empire primary units don’t bring enough squad points to allow for a support unit as well. As a secondary unit, Vader is almost disappointing in comparison with his earlier incarnations, but such is the price for being a secondary I guess. The fact that he is a secondary, with so few options for other places to bring him, makes me wonder if we’re going to see either Tarkin, or maybe even Emperor Palpatine himself. I can picture Tarkin being a good place for this pairing, because of how they appear during the events of A New Hope, but I suppose time will tell there! 

The whole box is called a “deluxe duel pack”, which is apparently due to the fact that it is being made available only during conventions and other events throughout the year. The miniatures will be available separately, I believe, later in the year, but the crazy Sith holocron terrain stuff is only coming in the con exclusive pack. Initially I was sceptical of this approach, but I suppose it does make some sense – the first duel pack, Vader vs Obi-Wan, really took off as those characters were huge and powerful in-game, but they are of course locked behind a box with an £80 price tag. I would guess that releasing the miniatures separately to the terrain for general release is perhaps a reaction to that, but who knows.

My other guess is that maybe these models are going to come out in normal squad boxes later in the year, though I would imagine the people clamouring for the exclusive box might not be too happy if that were to be the case!

The new mission pack, First Contact, is a massive shift from the current trio of missions, having a total of 13 objectives on the board now, and while not all will be active at once, this allows for a greater variety in how they are configured. There are also Clever Ploys available as an effect for both players when the Shatterpoint card is drawn. The abilities are quite strong, like refreshing 2 Force, but as both of you get the effect, it might be better to choose an effect that lets you dash a character but they cannot activate, forcing your opponent to choose a character to be unable to react to things. Things heat up as the battle goes on, because if your opponent controls three or more objectives you can spend a Force or Momentum to swap the mission card with a different one from the same struggle. So you can potentially change up the active objectives, and knock them off that perch as a result. The Clever Ploy on each card will change, though, so it’s a tough choice, and I kinda really like it!

With this stuff, along with the upcoming Kit Fisto box set – not to mention the Rogue One boxes headed up by Cassian Andor, Director Krennic and (later) Jyn Erso – there is some truly amazing stuff on the horizon for Shatterpoint this year!