The Hyperlane Report: Live Free, Don’t Join


Live Free, Don’t Join

Just to preface, there are no new spoilers here only ones that already exist. With that outta the way, the spoilers for Across the Galaxy were recently released by Fantasy Flight and they look pretty awesome. As usual I just wanted to talk about what I think is great and what I am excited about!

Yes, I am aware I the article title is DJ, but I don’t remember all the quotes from Solo yet so….yeah. Anyways, Across the Galaxy is the first booster set we have seen a neutral character at legendary and that character looks super fun. Han Solo, Independent Hotshot has some pretty solid sides and at only 11/15 points, seems like he could go in either affiliation that wants him. In my wildest dreams he fits along side Wedge in heroes around maybe a subtle vehicle build leveraging the extra resources he gets from heroes cards. In villains I can see him teaming up with Thrawn to have a control build. Unfortunately with Hondo, he will do nothing more than deal two indirect damage as only neutral teams cannot include hero or villain cards in their decks (SWD Rules Reference page 12). Han’s greatest use is truly in limited formats however as he will fit on either side of the board. It is great that FFG is still thinking about the sealed and draft formats! Let’s just hope it doesn’t fall through the cracks in the other formats!

Our next card is an awesome upgrade that will help these neutral characters as well!

Black Sun Blaster Pistol not only looks really cool, but this card in constructed seems okay. With two 3-damage sides it’s pretty good, and you can cheat it out with the many abilities that exist to do so (Cad, IG-88, Sabine). But it doesn’t truly compete with things like Holdout Pistol and X-8 Night Sniper, but it is a very interesting thing to pull from a pack when you are playing limited. Redeploy is a great keyword. I like it as a rare and hope it does well in limited.

Finally we get to see the removal card, Indifferent.

Yet another great card for limited or just when you’re running neutral characters. To estimate value, let’s look at some of the other 1-cost removal events.

Isolation – Only removed a character die but spots blue.
Superior Positions – Removes any die but requires control of the battlefield.
Electroshock – Only removes value two or lower but spots yellow
Neutral Removal Events – Only removes a certain type of die.

Suffice it to say, all of the other 1-cost removal events have significant downsides. There are a few things that make this card great to me. First of all it is common, which means we will see it often from packs, and this is great for limited and constructed. Secondly, if we see some more neutrals in this set it could become a staple in meta decks . Thirdly, I love what this says about FFG in their set design. To me it means they are thinking about limited play, which is one of the things I believe makes MTG such a strong game.

Seeing this many neutral cards spoiled is great, but I am very interested to see if we get the same kind of stuff in other colors. It is easy to see rogue being neutral, but what kind or military force would fill that role? How about for the Force users? What do you think about these neutral cards? Let me know in the comments. Time to jump…

-Kyle

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