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Imperial Walkers Sighted

The Battle of Hoth Is Now Available for STAR WARS (TM): The Card Game

“Imperial walkers on the north ridge.”

    –Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Imperial AT-ATs and Rebel Speeders collide in The Battle of Hoth, now available at your local retailer and online through our webstore!

The fifth Force Pack in The Hoth Cycle, The Battle of Hoth expands Star Wars™: The Card Game with sixty new cards. As the light side’s Smugglers and Spies affiliation works on new supply lines and Undercover Dealings (The Battle of Hoth, 283), four new Hoth-traited objective sets advance the high-stakes battle raging over the frozen planet.

In an earlier preview, we saw how the Rebellion hoped its Speeders could find ways to slow or stop the Imperial siege force. Will their efforts prove sufficient? It may be too early to tell, but they don’t stand alone. The noble soldiers of the Hoth Rearguard (The Battle of Hoth, 289) are willing to sacrifice their lives to Hold the Line! (The Battle of Hoth, 288).

Meanwhile, dark side forces press onward! Vader’s Fist (The Battle of Hoth, 291) aims to crush Rebel resistance with the might of Vader’s personal legion of Troopers, the 501st. And if that’s not enough to worry Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Leia Organa, and their friends, there’s always the menacing, Unstoppable Advance (The Battle of Hoth, 295) of the Imperial Navy’s AT-AT Walkers.

Imperial Walkers on the March

Fans of the Imperial Navy affiliation have plenty of reason to rejoice now that The Battle of Hoth is available. While the Imperial Navy has long fielded the dark side’s most powerful Vehicles, few of them match the raw destructive power of an AT-AT walker. Now, these behemoth engines of destruction have finally arrived to Star Wars: The Card Game!

The objective set built around Unstoppable Advance introduces three Imperial Walkers to the game, two copies of the powerful AT-AT (The Battle of Hoth, 296) and one copy of AT-AT Assault Formation (The Battle of Hoth, 297). Each of these Walker units is a potential game-winner, bringing a devastating mix of  and  icons to the table, as well as enough Shielding and damage capacity to ensure it gets its chance to strike. If you get out any one of these Walkers, you can quickly blast away at your opponent’s objectives, but if you get out two or more, you’ll almost certainly destroy an objective each turn. In fact, if your opponent is trying to hold the line with his own Hoth objectives, the AT-AT Assault formation can damage more than one objective per strike, and the ice planet will soon be yours!

However, while it’s true that these units are powerhouses capable of trampling past light side defenses, it’s also true that each of these units requires a significant expenditure of resources. That’s why the set also features the Orbital Resupply Station (The Battle of Hoth, 298). This Location offers a discount for each of your Imperial Navy Vehicles of “cost 4 or higher” and can pay for itself the turn you play it. Moreover, if you run two copies of Unstoppable Advance in your deck and happen to get both Orbital Resupply Stations into play early, they can fuel a steady stream of both Walkers and Star Destroyers.

With three powerful units and an enhancement to make them more readily playable, this objective set is already likely to please a lot of Imperial Navy players, but there’s more. Aggressive Assault (The Battle of Hoth, 299) appears a lot like the Imperial Navy’s answer to the ever-popular Rebel event, Rebel Assault (Core Set, 108).

If we extend the comparison, we can see that Aggressive Assault lacks Rebel Assault’s versatility; it can only damage objectives, not units. In return, though, it allows you to damage each enemy objective, meaning it can do as much as three total damage. Then, if the need never arises to play the event, it has one more Force icon than Rebel Assault, making it a better card to have in hand in the midst of some crucial edge battle. Of course, to play Aggressive Assault, you’ll need to control a Hoth objective, so you may want to consider partnering a couple copies of this objective set with copies of both The General’s Imperative (Assault on Echo Base, 267) and A Dark Time for the Rebellion (A Dark Time, 242). Not only will this cluster of objective sets increase your chances of fielding a Hoth objective at the right moment, it will allow you to benefit from the extra  icon that General Veers (Assault on Echo Base, 268) grants each of your Walkers.

Hoth Under Siege

With a host of imposing AT-ATs and their Unstoppable Advance, the Imperial Navy makes a tremendous push to win The Battle of Hoth. These Walkers are now available at your local retailer, along with the Troopers of the 501st, the Rebellion’s Speeders, and all the other great cards in The Battle of Hoth, so pick up your copy today!

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Source: Imperial Walkers Sighted (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4303)