Today we’re going to a look at the newly revealed cards for the Hero of Bright Tree, Wicket, and some of his Ewok friends.
Points: Not a lot of them. Wicket comes in at a meager 70 points which is quite low for a Commander. He is definitely cheap enough to fit into a variety of lists.
Offence: Wicket comes with a few things that allow him to generate some decent offence. Firstly is the keyword Relentless which is, as always, an incredible keyword. This will allow him to double move and still attack, allowing him to enter melee much easier. You can also use him to move, shoot, move (peekabo) which means he can stay out of line of sight. With another keyword, Sharpshooter 2, he’s not that bad at getting some cheeky wounds, plus he surges to crit.
Wicket’s ranged weapon is a sling shooting up to range 2 with only one black die, Pierce and Primitive. This weapon really is only ok with Sharpshooter 2. When Wicket has nothing better to do it’ll be great, but you probably don’t bring him just for his sling. You can really up the offence though if you manage to fire support in a Mark II. This would be 5 black dice Sharpshooter 2 shot with Pierce 1. That’s Imperial Boba Fett’s output, which is to say, good.
The keyword Primitive has finally been confirmed to be a debuff. Basically it means that Primitive weapons are worse into armoured targets, lowering critical results to hits.
Wicket in melee can hit you with a spear, boasting two red and one black die with Pierce 1. This is really decent. You can also always add Tenacity, bringing Wicket to 3 red 1 black, which is starting to sound like a mini lightsaber.
Defence: Wicket has a plethora of defensive tech. Independent: Dodge 1, Low Profile and Nimble. He will be really resistant to ranged plink damage. Where he suffers though is that he is only five health rolling surging white saves. If/when an enemy unit lines Wicket up, he will just die. He also is very susceptible to being punched to death in melee, and anything with a good melee profile will kill him very quickly.
Support: The big support ability, (besides command cards which we will look at below) that Wicket brings is Scouting Party: 2. This keyword allows up to two other (Bright Tree) trooper units to Scout up to Wicket’s scout value at range 2 of Wicket, when he finishes his Scout. This ability has only ever been seen before on Captain Rex and is really good. One amazing thing you can do with this ability is gain a huge advantage on Hostage Exchange, as you can use Scouting party on a Hostage squad. Wicket has built in Scout 1 which is fine, but you will almost always be adding the Forest Dwellers upgrade bringing that up to Scout 2.
Wicket brings four new command cards to the game.
The first we’ll cover is actually a Leia 2-pip. A Beautiful Friendship is a card that has some great benefits. Firstly, the card gives teamwork for the pair for the rest of the game. This is already great because Wicket has Independant: Dodge 1, so both Leia and Wicket can start the turn with a dodge. This is especially good because both have Nimble, and perma dodge is amazing. A dodge on Leia allows her to be much more aggressive than she usually is. Her pistol is quite good but rarely used because she’s so fragile, a perma dodge really helps that.
This card also increases the amount of orders you’re able to give. This is because when a Rebel or Bright Tree Commander issues an order you may issue an order to the opposite type of unit at range 1. This would allow you, for instance, to give two orders on a character 1-pip which is good, you can also increase the number of faceups for No Time for Sorrows. A sneaky good part of this card is if you were to put Seize the Initiative or an HQ Uplink on a commander, then that would be issuing an order so you’d be getting two for one. The biggest downside of this card is that it’s a 2-pip; you probably want to play it early which isn’t ideal. The 2-pip slot will also be very crowded.
Wicket’s 1-pip is a bit of an odd one. Usually 1-pips are very aggressive and a good opportunity to get a big punch in. In Wicket’s case, the 1-pip is a card that will allow you to get to safety, which is still good. Giving Wicket a dodge token, Speed 3 and Outmaneuver is all amazing, but Wicket can’t attack this turn. This card is certainly amazing for objective play, and even potentially a card to allow Wicket to close the distance to the enemy. You can even use it as it seems to be intended, to get Wicket to safety.
Wicket’s 2-pip is a great support card, allowing you to choose two enemy units at Range 2 with no line of sight requirement. These units gain observation tokens. You can use these observation tokens for re-rolls, (rebel snipers love the prospect) or for a special effect. The effect you can spend an observe token for is to give the attacking unit surge to hit. As you might guess this is a huge benefit to Ewoks who don’t normally surge. This could also be a benefit to rebel Z-6s????
Wicket’s 3-pip is called Courageous Counterattack. This card has two effects. The first is that Bright Tree units with a faceup order token have a courage value of ‘-‘. This is amazing for keeping your Ewoks moving and getting two actions. Especially because Ewoks are close range units, you really need to keep them getting two actions as often as possible. The other effect on this card is akin to the Tenacity upgrade. You add a white die for each wound token or defeated miniature when a Bright Tree unit with a faceup attacks. This benefits Wicket who loves extra dice for both his melee and ranged dice pools. Wicket can theoretically get a total of 3R 1B 4W in melee while at four wounds with this card and Tenacity. This card also of course benefits the other units with faceups. It, as the card name suggests, helps the Ewoks fight back after suffering some attrition.
Wicket is a very interesting addition to the game. Coming at a bargain price with the ability to fit into Rebel lists, Wicket will surely see tables everywhere.
So we finally got to see the actually ewok units that are coming to Legion. All the speculation about Wicket or anything else really was kind of meaningless until we saw the units. They look interesting.
So the first Ewok unit is a melee only variant. We had already seen a preview this card by seeing its alt art. This card is a solid base trooper card with plenty of utility when combined with upgrades and command cards.
Low Profile and Unhindered combine together to keep Ewoks alive and moving quickly towards the enemy. Also, this unit has six models, giving you quite a bit of inherent resilience.
The ranged variant of the ewoks are called Ewok Slingers and are a Special Forces Unit. They come in at a super cheap 35 points. This unit card is certainly worth that.
This card adds two additional keywords to the already existing ones from the Skirmishers, Independent: Surge 1 and Target 1. This means that whether you give your Slingers an order or not, they’ll be getting a green token of some kind. A surge on them is super valuable as they don’t surge on either offence or defence, meaning they are very likely to get value out of surges. Target 1 is also great as they are throwing lots of Black dice, and Black dice love aims.
So far we haven’t seen any ranged heavy weapons which is a bit of a disappointment, as the Ewoks throw decent dice at range 2. A way to backload the dice pool would be nice.
The five upgrades we’ve seen for the ewoks all bring some great uses to the game.
Axe Ewok: Who doesn’t like a little bear with a big axe? Brining a red die in melee with Pierce and Impact, this mini will likely be in plenty of Ewok squads for only 15 points. The Skirmisher unit plus an axe is only 55!
Call to Arms: This limited upgrade (the two dots mean you can only equip up to two of this upgrade in your army) allows you to exhaust it to gain a suppression and Charge. This is an incredible effect for the melee Ewoks as it allows them to move-move-attack, extending their engagement range massively. The Ewoks have low profile which means they also don’t mind the suppression that much. If/when they find themselves not in melee, they will still be benefiting from ‘heavy’ cover no matter where they are.
Forest Dwellers: This upgrade gives the unit Scout 1 as well as a dodge token at the start of the first activation phase. The Scout is certainly the key part of this card, as you usually don’t care that much about a dodge turn one, but for only a point more than recon intel a dodge can come in handy. This will be stapled to Wicket and likely other Ewoks as well.
Insatiable Curiosity: This is a card that will lead to some truly laughable and incredible moments as ewoks grab upgrades and weapons and destroy them. But seriously this card is really good. When expended you can choose an enemy in base contact and discard one of their (non-limited) heavy weapon, gear or armament cards. This will cost you a wound on the squad that steals the card but that is most certainly worth it. You can really gut a Dark Trooper squad by stealing their heavy weapons. You can also take away Cad Bane’s Gauntlets or Cassian’s Rifle (those are not unique despite being on unique characters). This will lead to some very interesting strategies.
Ewok Trapper: The Ewok Trapper does two things for your list on top of just being another body. It allows the squad it is in to take an additional training upgrade. An additional training upgrade could help make some bonkers combos with all the training upgrades we’ve seen. The other thing it does is allow the unit to use the log trap command card that was revealed at Adepticon. This means that likely for Bright Tree lists you will see at least one trapper if not more.
While we still don’t know the force org chart for Bright Tree Village, we can play around with Ewoks in the Rebels to get an idea how Ewoks will work in lists.
This 55 point unit already shows us how cheap ewoks are and how we might see them form large activation lists.
This will likely be a build of Ewok Skirmishers you see a lot, carrying good basics of a melee squad, good weapons, and Charge. For only 60 points this unit of Ewoks will act a lot like how we’ve seen Wookiees operate.
This little 193 point ‘strike force’ will be one of the first things that I want to try to add to my rebel lists. This basic loadout helps the three units all lean into their strengths and act as a bit of a Distraction Carnifex. This little strikeforce could really buoy single character Rebel lists. For maximum melee you could also throw this strikeforce into a list with a bus, Wookiees, or a Jedi. The possibilities are endless.
This version of the melee ewoks is ‘fully loaded’ and still only comes out to 74 points. The second training upgrade will probably be of hot contention in the weeks and months to come. Into the Fray allows you to get surges for offence and defence, tenacity would help make the melee attacks even better, you also of course could add the upgrade to take away upgrades. All these options seem great and I’m sure we will see some interesting setups.
Ewoks seem to live up to their billing of being able to field a swarm of murder bears. The unit cards and upgrades can combine to make some very potent units for very cheap, this could lead to Ewoks actually being quite viable in competitive play, though that isn’t guaranteed by any means. Ewoks, regardless of their competitiveness seem to fit the vibes right, and will be a blast to play on the table.
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