Jaster Mereel, from Destiny of the Force





Jaster was a much trumpeted addition to the meta - with his death shot CE, he gives Mandos a chance against the Lancer, while his reinforcements 30 also allows squad customisation, while he's a decent enough shooter as well, given everything else he can do. His CE is really helped by Kelborn's Relay Orders and Coordinated Command - since a lot of good Mandalorian pieces are cloaked, having a cloaked source of Relay Orders is really useful, so that your Mouse Droids don't just get picked off. Among other things, Reinforcements 30 can be useful to choose between the Mandalorian Captain and the Mandalorian Scientist - the Captain is usually the better piece, but the Scientist means that 10 damage pieces can keep twinning against Bastila.

On a less competitive note, it's also fun to run Jaster with Jango Fett, Assassin in Mandalorians to take advanage of Jaster's synergy - you can have Jango with twin and a +20 attack against living enemies in a Mandalorian squad.

Jaster is certainly a significant piece for the Mandalorians, even though he hasn't featured in many Regional winning squads - it was the core of Kelborn, Mandalore the Vindicated, and Fenn Shysa that the Mandalorians were most successful with last year. Even so, he's still a key piece and worth considering for many Mandalorian builds - squads built around Jaster Mereel made the Top 4 in the NZ Nationals in 2012, and 2nd in the Chicago Regional in 2013. 9/10.

One of my favorite v-set pieces, with all of the new pieces I would think we'll see the Mando death shots resurface at some point. He's too good to ignore.

Oops - I'd forgotten about that. He did place 4th in the NZ Nationals in 2012 too, so I guess he has some significant success. Upping him to a 10.

Excuse me? A map roll away? You won map and we played on your map that had cover all over the place. The placement mistake is debateable as we really have no idea what would have happened. I saw your placement mistake since round 1 and took advantage of it. With no placement mistake my plan would have been different. While we technechally don't know how it would have unfolded, I'll give you that. But I cant give you the map roll response.

Princess Leia, Hoth Commander, from Bounty Hunters





Alliance and Empire's Princess Leia is the premier Rebel Leia in the game, winning three consecutive GenCon championships. but Leia Hoth Commander's resurrection CE makes her an interesting piece to build around in some squads. It certainly doesn't work in every squad - I think even in something like a Rodian Brute swarm, where they need to make a save of 16 to come back, you're just better off with 6 or 7 more Rodian Brutes in the base squad instead of Leia. Her best use is arguably with the SpecForce Wilderness Fighters from Command of the Galaxy - with their Survival Expert Special Ability, they only need to roll 12s to come back, and with Rieekan they only need 7s for their Evade saves, which in effect makes them the cockroaches of SWM. Darth O has also come up with a fun build with Felcors and Force Spirits, where the Felcors have rerolls and mettle to help them come back:



Don't forget that you can use Leia Rebel Commando's Versatility to give Leia Hoth Commander an extra ability too, either Cunning Attack, Stealth, or Accurate Shot. I don't know if she's quite top tier, but you can build some useful little squads around Princess Leia Hoth Commander, 8/10.

Have you played against the Wilderness Fighters, Rieekan, SpecForce Crix, and Leia? By herself, I agree that she's more of a gimmicky 4-5 piece, but with the Survival Expert on the Wilderness Fighters, they're coming back half the time - there's enough synergy there that it gets nasty. That's mainly what I'm thinking about with the 8 for Leia - I've played against it, and I think it could do well enough at a tournament - it's hard for some squads to chew through 50 hit point pieces which evade on a 7 and come back to life on a 12.

The squad has its weaknesses - it's vulnerable to Bastila since it's so reliant on CEs, and the Fighters aren't heavy damage dealers - but I think lots of decent squads would have trouble chewing through all those hit points, evade saves, and avoid defeat saves.

Deena Shan, from Legacy of the Force





One of the more redundant figures out there, Deena Shan emerged one set after Juno Eclipse; both are Rebel pieces in a similar price range, with Disruptive and very similar hit points and stats. Deena does have the advantage of Stealth, and a much higher defense, but Juno gets all the play since she's 4 points cheaper. Deena would be a strong option in some other factions, but she's mostly redundant in Rebels, unless you really want to employ double disruptive (and even then General Crix Madine is another uber strong piece with Disruptive who's a really good option if you're playing any other Commandos). Deena would probably deserve an 8 in another faction, as cheap Disruptive is very useful, but with Juno around she's barely going to see any table time in Rebels. 5/10.

Overall I am rating pieces on how strong they are - I just think the Wilderness Fighter/Leia Hoth Commander squad is actually a reasonably strong build.

This one was played by Ricky Heck, the same guy who won it all last year. That year we met in the Swiss rounds, and I was playing Solo Charge. He played it really well, with the Houjix bodyguarding a LOT of damage and keeping me from really making much progress vs his squad, while he had some amped-up quad-attackers (6-attackers w the Exile's CE) putting all of my pieces in danger. I brought in a Felucian with my reinforcements, which I sent in to die. That allowed me to toss Anakin up there to Unleash the Force. The thing is, I was 1 square away from losing the game. At the time I was wondering whether I should place Anakin in one spot, where he'd get certain pieces, or another spot where he'd affect other pieces, including the Exile. I had completely forgotten about the Exile's Force Defense power. I happened to guess correctly, so that the Exile was 7 squares away from him when he UTF'ed, and so I won the match; however, if I had gotten greedy and tried to hit the Exile too, then Ricky would've Force Defensed me and won the game. It was a very memorable match, and I won it with a single accidentally-good decision.

I don't know if Ricky played it after that - but I'm pretty sure Reuben from Alaska played it. I remember Deri faced it.