Character Overview
Grand Admiral Thrawn, born as Mitth’raw’nuruodo, is a Chiss from the Unknown Regions. He first appeared in the old Star Wars Expanded Universe, in a trilogy of popular novels by Timothy Zahn. For a time, fans assumed Thrawn was gone for good when Disney reset the Star Wars timeline. However, Thrawn and other associated characters (Pellaeon model when?) have since been made officially canon first via the animated shows and most recently in live action.
Thrawn rose through the ranks of the Galactic Empire due to his intellect and deep tactical acumen leading to many successes for the Empire. Thrawn’s gimmick in the original novels still shows up in the modern canon: his deep understanding of his enemies’ cultures and art leads him to successfully predict their actions and how best to counter them. Thrawn eventually achieved the rank of Grand Admiral, a title rarely bestowed upon non-humans in the Empire.
Agent Kallus, initially an Imperial Security Bureau (ISB) officer and a dedicated servant of the Empire, served directly under Thrawn for a time. Kallus started out as a typical brutal and zealous Imperial officer. Over time he became disillusioned with the Empire’s methods and eventually defected to the Rebel Alliance, taking on the codename “Fulcrum.”
Grand Admiral Thrawn
At first glance, Thrawn’s 7 Squad Points and 2 Force don’t look promising. However, once you dive into the many tactical options he provides, you’ll see that Thrawn is absolutely a powerhouse on the table. Almost all of Thrawn’s abilities are tactically flexible, allowing a player to adjust to the circumstances on the tabletop.
Thrawn’s Identity ability gives Protection (one less damage from attacks, essentially) to Imperial characters with one or more Injured tokens who are also Engaged. Protection is a valued ability in any unit, so potentially giving it to your entire roster is fantastic. This will help keep models alive once they’re really stuck in, and fits in neatly with the many Galactic Empire abilities that cause damage to the models using them. Additionally, whenever a Primary Unit is wounded by an enemy attract, you can choose to refresh your Order Deck. Remember this means you also refresh all of your Force as well! Players will need to think carefully about whether to refresh or not, depending on current Force points remaining, which cards are remaining to be drawn and which are not, etc. This can be a huge game-changer when used correctly.
We Must Wait and Watch means reserving a Galactic Empire order card costs 1 less Force. (So, for free in most cases.) That’s a huge boon to any list when you have to think so carefully about when to spend your valuable Force. Additionally, you can then spend 1 Force when you reserve something, and either heal 1 damage or condition, or a character in that unit can Reposition. Again we see Thrawn’s theme of tactical flexibility. Spending 1 Force to heal once is probably not worth it most of the time, but that Reposition option is excellent. You might use it to grab a point your opponent wasn’t expecting, or set up the reserved unit to have a strong combat turn, for example.
Thrawn’s only Active ability lets him Reposition, then add 3 dice to his next attack roll if he’s contesting an Active objective. 1 Force for a full Reposition instead of the usual Dash is already great, and trivially getting 3 extra attack dice is amazing. Expect to use this ability every time Thrawn activates.
Thrawn’s remaining Battle Tactics ability is complex and cool enough to get its own section, so let’s dive in there, shall we?
Battle Tactics
Earlier, we mentioned how Thrawn uses his enemies’ art and culture to predict and counter their every move. (And who said a humanities degree was worthless?) Thrawn is such a tactical bigbrain that at the beginning of the game, you choose two of three Grand Strategy cards to include in your order deck. When drawn from the order deck, they allow you to choose from one of two options. All six of the rules on these cards provide a powerful benefit (such as a free Reposition at the cost of gaining Strain, or Pushing an enemy model near one of your models at the cost of three damage to your model). The first option on each card also allows you to activate a reserved unit rather than force you to draw the next card per the standard Battle Tactics rules. While this isn’t the first time we’ve seen Battle Tactics (Ewok Trappers added traps to the Order Deck) it’s certainly a much more powerful version, as befits a powerful primary like Thrawn. The damage and condition drawbacks might look daunting, but Galactic Empire is all about damaging their own models to drastically increase their efficiency. Luckily, there are options to ameliorate those drawbacks. For example, Thrawn has immediate access to a Heal on one of his combat trees. Kallus has a double Heal not far down his track. (ISB Agents are out of luck on this front but benefit from Heal effects from others at least.) Other Imperials with access to Heal results include Iden, Vader2, Moff Gideon, and the Stormtrooper Sergeant. So Thrawn’s abilities definitely fit in neatly to the Galactic Empire’s schtick.
Thrawn’s Stances also reflect his flexibility. Not surprisingly, the Strategic Genius stance best epitomizes this. You have options for early Disarm or Strain, and up to a possible three Shove results, with a Heal and Damage to boot! With the extra three dice from ‘I Want You To Know Failure, Utter Defeat’ Thrawn can be a menace to your opponent’s plans. His other Stance, Aggressive Assault, is much less interesting. Most players will likely want to keep him on his other side. But if you really need to max out damage, especially with a melee attack, it’s an option at least. Both Stances feature strong Expertise results, particularly with his Deft Defense. Turning a crit into a failure at one Expertise is crazy good, and he only gets better from there. (Do not let this guy get Exposed.)
Agent Kallus, Inside Man
Kallus isn’t particularly exciting reading from the top of his card down, but he just gets better and better as you go. When he activates, he gets to Dash toward an enemy character. Standard stuff, nothing to write home about. Next, for one Force, he immediately does a Focus action and gains both Sharpshooter [2] and Impact [2], meaning he’s getting three extra dice on whatever attack he chooses to do. Solid, especially with a useful combat tree like his (see below).
Speaking of successes, when an allied character (including Kallus) is attacking or defending, you can pay one Force to allow that character to reroll dice equal to the number of Tags it shares with Kallus. When you link that to his final ability, Uncertain Loyalties, you’ve got a pretty exciting Secondary. When you finish Setup at the start of a game, you can choose if Kallus is Imperial or a Rebel, essentially. He then gains three Tags associated with Empire or Rebels. As Empire, the ISB Agents will share all the tags with him. As a Rebel, he’s not surprisingly going to share two or three with members of the Ghost crew.
Character Cards for Star Wars: Shatterpoint – Not Accepting Surrenders Squad Pack. Credit: Atomic Mass Games.Kallus has decent attack expertise but a mopey defensive expertise. With the same amount of attack dice for ranged or melee, you probably want him doing melee as much as you can. But as consolation if he does shoot, he gets an immediate critical success and one damage for one shooting expertise. So either way, he’s no slouch. His tree lets you skew toward damage along the top, but the bottom track is your winner here. You’ve got a couple of Shoves followed by a double Heal and a Pin. Getting at least four successes is really going to make Kallus happy.
ISB Agents
The no-name ISB agents with the salt-shaker helmets are a solid Supporting Unit in a crowded field of solid to great Galactic Empire Supporting Units. They’ve got a short list of abilities including your standard ‘pay a Force to dash’. in this case the flavor of it is Assault Tactics, meaning they can take one damage and immediately Focus. With Impact [1] and better melee defense, they will want to get stuck in for sure. Once they get there, they don’t have a particularly exciting combat tree or expertise. Their selling point is all about the Imperial Detention ability. With it, they can really lock down opponent models. They’ll be forced to stay there or take two damage. Doesn’t sound like much, but it can add up in a hurry.
Pairings
With so many of his rules specifically calling out the Galactic Empire Tag, you really want to go with a full Empire list to benefit from them. Luckily, Imperial players are certainly not suffering for want of options lately. Thrawn pairs nicely with just about any other Empire primary due to his flexibility. That said, some will play better with him than others. Iden Versio is great for example, but there’s not a great deal of obvious synergy between her and Thrawn. (Her Imperial Special Force on the other hand, go great with him or with the other Primary in the list.) Either version of Vader is a great pairing. Let Vader be Vader, acting as the big sledgehammer killing whatever he wants, and use Thrawn to scalpel out key objectives and enable the rest of the list to do their thing. Moff Gideon is an interesting option. He’ll make your opponent pay more to reserve Order Cards while you gain an advantage in Force economy by reserving for free. Long Live The Empire and You Have Something I Want will get the objectives he wants when he wants them. Go with the Moff if you want to double down on the trickery and cheating aspect of Thrawn, or go with a Vader to shore up the pure killiness of the list. Either way, Thrawn will be a powerful tool for victory.
Summary
We’ve once again seen a very solid release for Galactic Empire. Thrawn looks to be an excellent Primary. Agent Kallus might actually be better as a Rebel, but he’s no slouch as an Imperial either. ISB Agents aren’t exciting but their ability to lock models down makes them appealing in the right kind of list and playstyle. With even more exciting Galactic Empire releases on the horizon, it’s shaping up to be a banner year for Imperial Players. Anyone interested in playing the Empire in Star Wars: Shatterpoint should definitely look to pick up this box.
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