While the Clone Wars cartoon is widely regarded as one of the best Star Wars series ever made, Rebels’ reception was a bit more divided. The show started aimed squarely at younger children compared to its spiritual predecessor, with more cartoony violence and animation style. But, once you get about halfway into the first season, the characters and stories start to mature through its, sometimes weird, arc. Overall, there’s some good Star Wars content with characters who deserve more stories told about them.
Today we’re looking at two expansions for Star Wars: Shatterpoint that contain the main characters of Phoenix Squadron at the start of Season 2. These are “Make the Impossible Possible” and “Stronger than Fear”. As a disclaimer, I am employed by the Walt Disney Company, which owns Lucasfilm, in a role unrelated to gaming. But I grew up a Star Wars fan who struggled with the prequel movies until the Clone Wars cartoon made me appreciate those films more and I am a fan of the Rebels show and the characters.
Because I can’t write enough words about terrain on its own, I’ll also be looking at the Higher Ground terrain pack. I don’t really have any disclaimers about terrain, but I’d say I’m more pro-terrain than anti-terrain.
Expansion Overview:
Make the Impossible Possible contains Hera Syndulla as the primary unit, Sabine Wren as the Secondary, and Hera’s astromech droid C1-1P called “Chopper” as a Support Unit. Stronger than Fear contains Kanan Jarrus as primary, Ezra Bridger as secondary, and Garazeb “Zeb” Orrelios as a support unit.
Hera has several healing abilities during defense rolls and on one of her combat trees, which is also a very flexible tree with multiple paths allowing for a lot of customization of effects with enough successes. Hera also has abilities to move units, provide cover, or remove damage and conditions.
Sabine also has a flexible combat tree that can do a lot of damage, apply conditions, or grant movement. Meanwhile, Chopper’s stance card is called “Droid Rage” and is pretty straightforward in dealing damage. One very cool feature (if you’re the Rebels) is if his Unit Order card is in the deck or in reserve, Chopper can’t be targeted by ranged weapons.
Mild spoiler for a show that’s 10 years old – Kanan is a Jedi who survived Order 66 and Ezra becomes his Padawan. Zeb is a Lassat, which was inspired by the original art for Chewbacca (fun aside: a lot of the artistic styling of Rebels was based on Ralph McQuarrie’s original concept art for Star Wars).
Kanan’s Form III stance card only has melee attacks, which is odd considering he’s carrying a blaster, and his combat tree has three branches that give options to pin and reposition, expose and move, or disarm and move, all of them ending with triggering his Force Push ability. His Pack Leader stance offers ranged attacks via his blaster and a few choices including healing.
Ezra’s combat tree has three specific options that apply various conditions including one that doesn’t do a lot of damage in exchange for healing. Lastly, Zeb’s tree has three main branches to apply conditions and grant movement. He can also heal with defense rolls and has one ability that can grant an extra attack.
Expansion Experience:
I was on the fence about Star Wars: Shatterpoint because I have too many unpainted projects already. When the Phoenix Squad squads were first announced, I showed them to my wife (who has zero interest in skirmish games but also loved the show) and thought that this was my excuse to get into this game. Then Tony offered me the opportunity to review them and I bought a core set. And a few expansions (I mean you need to have bucketheads and Inquisitors for Phoenix Squad to battle if you’re going to do this right) and I’ve had a blast both playing and painting this game so far.
The models were straightforward to assemble without the tomfoolery that the core battle droids entailed. There are also options for Zeb’s weapon and whether Sabine wears a helmet or not.
One of the things I love is that Shatterpoint has thematic names for abilities that reference the original material and this expansion is no different. Abilities like Zeb’s “It’s Just something about the feel of their helmets on my fist” and Sabine’s “I’m going to go add some fireworks to the celebration” brought back positive feelings from the show and had me all but roleplaying the emergent narrative that evolves during gameplay.
The crew of the Ghost all have the tags of “Spectre” which is used across seven of their abilities making this these expansions work better together as a pair of squads than apart as individual units. Many of these abilities also work with the Rebel Alliance tag but the Spectre tag provides a better version.
I think Astromech droids are the sidekick that helps with technical issues and offers snark in various beeps and boops. In the show, there were a few times when Chopper grabbed blasters and zipped around shooting at enemies. And, that’s what he felt like in the game as he absolutely wrecked my battle droids. And yes, I know they’re not of the same era but it’s what I had to play with before my expansions arrived.
But that does bring up a potential issue for some gamers. Rebels takes place before Rogue One so Clone Wars units are generally not time-accurate as are some of the rebellion-era enemies. The We Are Not Accepting Surrenders at This Time squad pack has some Imperial units with two of the antagonists (Thrawn and Agent Kallus) from that show. There are also other crossover opportunities from other expansions and the core box that will allow you to mix and match squads. Overall, the volume of themed squads isn’t as numerous as either the main era or even the post Return of the Jedi timeline. But if you just want to play with various toys on a map, you can ignore this whole paragraph and just do whatever you want.
Meanwhile, the High Ground Terrain pack offers several pieces that blend seamlessly with the core box terrain with identical bridges (or trestles if you add the legs), some crates, and a pair of antenna towers. It also has a taller tower-like building with a heavily armed Star Wars version of a Ring doorbell. Lastly, there’s a rock with a Convor bird (it’s probably Morai) which may push Ashoka fans over the edge to get this because Morai.
I appreciate how the large tower can be disassembled for ease of storage and/or to provide an alternative use case for the lower floor and having more terrain gives a lot of flexibility to make different setups, which is pretty cool, especially as you add in mission packs with different objective locations. Assuming you haven’t already ordered this because you need a space owl on a space rock for your space wizard, the question is: do you need this? And, I’m going to give an indecisive: maybe. I think a second of any of the terrain packs adds a lot by giving you more options. But I don’t know if you need all of them so recommending a second one, whether it’s this or another one, is purely a matter of preference.
Final Thoughts:
One of the coolest parts of these small model count games is the fact that you can mix and match and only feel obligated to buy your favorite characters. And these are some of my favorites outside of the original trilogy. If these characters resonate with you, you’ll probably enjoy these squads. Meanwhile, if you think the band Better than Ezra is about one of the main characters of this show, these squads are probably a pass.
Hits:
• These are great for fans of the show Rebels
• Team abilities make the units work well together
• More terrain offers more layout options
• Morai
Misses:
• Not the best-known characters
• Not a lot of other units for this ‘tweener time period
• You probably don’t need everything
• Storing all the stuff you’re going to buy anyway takes up a lot of space
