Title: FFG:Heroes and Legends
Post by: RSSFeeder on 18 September 2013, 09:00:02
Announcing the First Force Pack in the Echoes of the Force Cycle
Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce Heroes and Legends, the first Force Pack in the new Echoes of the Force cycle for Star Wars™: The Card Game!
The Heroes and Legends Force Pack begins an epic journey through the Echoes of the Force cycle, exploring the power of the Force and its impact and effects on the galaxy. As the Heroes and Legends Force Pack opens the cycle, you’ll find Imperial forces working to complete the Dark Trooper Project and Imperial War Droids that can count their icons for the Force struggle without a Force card. At the same time, you’ll find the bold intelligence agents of the Rebel Alliance and independent Smugglers and Spies slicing in to sabotage the operation. Meanwhile, on the planet Ruusan, Jedi and Imperial Inquistitors clash over the power of the Force nexus hidden inside the Valley of the Jedi.
In the Echoes of the Force cycle, Star Wars: The Card Game experiences dramatic changes taking shape as both sides learn to better channel the power of the Force. Its balance has implications that reach far beyond damaging dark side objectives or advancing the Death Star dial. The living Force binds all things, and it may soon permeate every part of your decks, drawing strength from the new cards included in Heroes and Legends and other Force Packs from Echoes of the Force.
To talk more about the development of the Echoes of the Force cycle, here’s the cycle’s lead developer, Nate French.
A Word from Lead Developer Nate French
While we were working on the Echoes of the Force cycle, we adopted a vastly different approach than our approach to The Hoth Cycle. Instead of creating an environment-based set that focused on a single location in the movies, we aimed for a more conceptual focus, with the goal of exploring the concept of “the Force” in the game.
Given this focal point, the thematic “stars” of the set are the Jedi and the Sith. A number of new Force User and Force Sensitive units hit the scene, with a handful of new Force powers at their disposal, and cards like Mara Jade, Force Storm and My Ally Is the Force.
The Jedi and Sith are not the only beneficiaries of the new cycle. Alongside the introduction of new Force Users and Force powers, the struggle over the balance of the Force takes center stage, and both light side and dark side factions find new ways to contest and manipulate the struggle. The Dark Trooper Project and the Phase I Dark Trooper give the Imperial Navy a unique means of swaying the balance to the dark side, while Green Squadron Deployment allows the Vehicles of the Rebel Alliance to bring the balance to the light side.
Introducing new fate cards helps to craft an environment for the cycle. These cards, which appear in multiple objective sets across all factions of the game, help create a synergistic backdrop for a number of other effects in the set. This cycle introduces two new fate cards for each side, Seeds of Decay and Echoes of the Force. These new fate cards help their owner contest and influence the game as the Force struggle starts to heat up.
May the Force be with you!
Echoes of Greatness
The Heroes and Legends Force Pack invites you to participate in events stretching across the galaxy. With the menace of the Dark Trooper Project and new War Droids, the battle for the Force takes on new dimensions, as the Rebels collect the intelligence they need to maintain freedom in the galaxy. In other parts of the galaxy, Imperial Inquisitors are striking out for Ruusan, attempting to harness the power of the Force within the Valley of the Jedi, leaving only one untested Jedi to stand in their way.
In this first Force Pack, the Heroes and Legends objective set gives you some of the tools you need to use the power of the Force. It begins by introducing one of the new fate cards: Echoes of the Force (Heroes and Legends, 636). The fate card provides Force icons, but it also gives you the opportunity to commit a unit to the Force struggle or remove a unit from the Force! By using this card, you can commit an enemy unit covered in focus tokens to the Force, meaning that your opponent has one less Force card to work with on his side of the Force struggle. As another option, you could use this new fate card commit an enemy unit in an engagement to the Force, causing it to focus twice. No matter how you use the new fate card, the power of the Force can tip the balance of battle in your favor.
The benefits you can reap from the Force hardly stop there. This objective set also includes Ataru Training (Heroes and Legends, 498) a new Lightsaber Form that can enhance any of your Force User units. While the enhanced unit is participating in an engagement, they gain the ability to destroy a participating enemy unit whenever you win an edge battle by at least two Force icons. The ability to destroy enemy units before any strikes are exchanged can be invaluable, making units with the Edge ability, such as the Millennium Falcon (Edge of Darkness, 332) more valuable than ever before.
The objective of the set, Heroes and Legends (Heroes and Legends, 496) gives you another option you can use to maximize the potential of your units. By focusing it as an Action, this objective allows you to reveal a unique Character unit from your hand, and swap it out with a target unit of the same name that you have in play. In the past, a duplicate of an unique unit you already had in play was best used in an edge battle, but with the advent of Heroes and Legends, there’s a new option for play. For example, perhaps your Obi-Wan Kenobi (Core Set, 101) has become exhausted and damaged in conflict. Provided you have a duplicate of Obi-Wan in your hand, you can focus Heroes and Legends to swap the two, giving you a ready, undamaged Obi-Wan, fully prepared to attack a new dark side objective or defend your own objectives.
Of course, the question is, how are you going to get a duplicate of a unit into your hand to use Heroes and Legends? The objective set also includes Rahn's Guidance (Heroes and Legends, 499), a zero-cost event that allows you to search the top five cards of your deck for any Jedi unit and put it into your hand. With Rahn’s Guidance, you’ll be that much closer to swapping your units in and out of battle.
But if you want just a bit more benefit from the power of Heroes and Legends, look no farther than the mercenary-turned-Jedi Kyle Katarn (Heroes and Legends, 497). Kyle Katarn’s ability to refresh your own forces or shut down your opponent’s when he comes into play cannot be overestimated. He also pairs naturally with the Echoes of the Force fate card, allowing you to manipulate units committed to the Force across the battlefield, and use the Force to bring victory to the light side. Because there are two copies of Kyle Katarn in the objective set, you can use Heroes and Legends immediately. If you include two copies of the objective set in your deck, you will have four copies of Kyle Katarn throughout your deck. With that many copies of one unit, you can be almost guaranteed to find at least one pair, especially when using Rahn’s Guidance. If you have one pair of Kyle Katarn cycling through your playfield with the help of Heroes and Legends, any more copies you draw into can be used for Force icons in an edge battle, helping to trigger the power of Ataru Training. With the help of a few more Jedi Knights, such as Luke Skywalker (Core Set, 92) and Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’ll be ready to take on the whole Empire!
Train in the Ways of the Force
With the Heroes and Legends Force Pack, the Echoes of the Force cycle is just beginning, and you can uncover new options for using the Force! Prepare for more of the power of the Force, and look for the first Force Pack in this new cycle for Star Wars: The Card Game at your local retailer in the fourth quarter of 2013!
...Source: Heroes and Legends (http://www.fantasyflightgames.com/edge_news.asp?eidn=4358)