Skirmish Upgrades: Prey On The Weak

Good morning gamers,

Today we dig into one of the most straight-forward skirmish upgrades available to date: Prey On The Weak. When it comes to the skirmish upgrades we’ve viewed so far, there are two basic kinds of upgrades:

• Attachments that encourage the figures for the attached deployment card to behave in a certain way (Advanced Com Systems, On a Diplomatic Mission, Vader’s Finest, Smuggler’s Run);
• Non-attachments that provide some benefit for the team as a whole OR for one specific character on the team (Black Market, Under Duress).

So far, the only Mercenary skirmish upgrades we’ve looked at fall in the second category, so it’s about time we look at an attachment skirmish card for a change. J

Requirements for Finalists:

This skirmish upgrade is pretty straight forward: increase the Pierce and Accuracy of your attacks. The nuance comes with guessing how high the figure costs of your opponent are going to be (players who run Trooper swarms are likely going to have most of their army composed of deployment costs with figure costs of 2-4 points, while Jedi/unique-character teams will have figure costs well at or above 6). Given this guesswork, here are the assumptions we’re making about finalists today:

• The figure must be a Hunter (as that’s a requirement for the upgrade);
• Figures should have a deployment cost above 4 (sorry, Greedo) and no more than 10 (sorry, Boba Fett and IG-88); and
• While Accuracy isn’t required, figures who benefit from both the Pierce bonus and the Accuracy bonus will receive a higher preference.

I know what you’re thinking: why did you choose the range that you did? Here’s what my rationale is: there are many, MANY players who believe that Trooper deployment cards are the most competitive deployment cards in the game right now. And they would probably be right. Rebel or Imperial (or Mercenary hybrids), Troopers do reliable damage against the majority of units and reliably get Accuracy (and you tend to get a lot of them). You can also regrow them, heal them, and boost their damage. What’s not to like? Most Trooper choices, though, have a figure cost of 2-4 points. As such, if you’re facing an army of Elite Troopers, you want to cost at least 5 points (hence my floor value).

On the other extreme, the most expensive Hunter figure to-date costs 13 points (all hail Boba Fett), but there are very few figures that have a figure cost above 10 (many vehicles and a lot of the named characters from the Core Set and Twin Shadows – hence my ceiling). As such, figures who cost a bit less than 10 points will free up more space for you to flesh out the rest of your army while still getting the bonuses provided by Prey On The Weak. Does this make Boba Fett or IG-88 a bad host for this upgrade? No - though I think you want Focused On The Kill for IG-88 more than Prey On The Weak. As with many of my reviews, this is one man’s opinion – feel free to disagree if you want (but read the article first – I want the views). J

Honorable Mention: Elite Clawdite Shapeshifter (Senator/Streetrat Form)
I don’t usually do “honorable mentions,” but (SPOILER ALERT) seeing as how we don’t have very many Mercenary cards in this post, I figured I needed to give them a bit of an edge in the final tally. J The more I look at these guys, the more I’m impressed with them: at 6 points a model, they’re kind of expensive, but with a Red-Yellow-Green attack pool (my personal favorite in the game) and the ability to become long-range killers, up-close killers, or self-healing token-distributors, they’re fantastically flexible. I’ve not included the Scout form because I don’t think it needs the Accuracy buff (though the automatic Pierce 1 certainly makes up for swapping the Red die for a Blue die), so we’ll just be looking at the Senator and Streetrat forms today.

Both of these forms have great surge abilities (which of course only trigger if you get enough damage to breach the target’s defenses). With a figure cost of 6, pretty much any unnamed character is a fair target and you’ll be getting at least 1 Accuracy from Prey On The Weak and at least 1 Accuracy from the Green die. For a Streetrat, this means you will definitely hit someone adjacent to you (though minimum range is technically 2 spaces away) with a maximum range of 6 (which is kind of hard to hit seeing as how you can’t surge for Accuracy). The Senator also can’t surge for Accuracy, but does get a static +1 Accuracy, changing the range to Min 3/Max 7 (bonkers).

For both of these characters, you should be able to break through the toughest Black die (thanks to the free Pierce 1 and the Green die), drilling into the target with the full weight of the Red and Yellow – both forms can surge for Damage 1, so most of your surge is going to be dedicated to other endeavors (like sneaking out your knife or Recovering health). Whichever form you’re using, Prey On The Weak opens up your options and gives you the boost you need to be great - all for a single deployment point.

Bronze Medal: Biv Bodhrick (with Temporary Alliance skirmish upgrade)
I’ll admit, Biv is one of my favorite characters (we’ll write up the post on him when we talk about tanks): Biv in the skirmish game has a decent amount of health and the ability to perform more than one attack in a given turn (although both must be directed against the same person). Biv is great for tearing down heavy units and with his high figure cost (a whopping 9 – just made it under our limit), he can use his brutal attacks against basically any unnamed character and many named characters (which you won’t see from anyone else in this post). Since you purchased the Temporary Alliance upgrade to bring Biv in, you might consider also bringing another Rebel character to supplement Biv (and the rest of the army) – Gideon Argus or C-3PO come to mind, though if you want Hunter/Brawler synergies, Jarrod Kelvin is a good choice too.

Silver Medal: BT-1
Ah yes, we view yet another non-Mercenary figure. Unlike Biv, you can’t ally in Imperial figures into a Mercenary force UNLESS they’re Droids and you have an Elite Jawa Scavenger. This increases the overall army cost from 6 points to 9 points (which is slightly lower than Biv), but you get a lot out of this guy. First off, BT-1 always becomes Focused right before attacking (ouch). While he can shoot with his traditional arsenal (Red-Yellow-Green-Blue including the Focus die), you can alternatively fire three times with a single Red, Yellow, and Blue die (each of those getting the benefit of the Green as well). Like we said with Biv’s Close and Personal attacks, each of these attacks would benefit from Prey On The Weak, giving each not only a free Focus, but also a free Accuracy 1 + Pierce 1 (more ouch). You’re not going to find any other figure (besides Boba Fett in the turn that he gets to use Mandalorian Tactics) who can push out 3 attacks in a given round to benefit from this card (and most Hunters are hard-pressed to get 2 attacks out). As such, I feel that BT-1 must be granted some measure of respect for the sheer volume of attacks he can deliver with the card and so he claims second place today.

Gold Medal: Onar Koma

Onar has shown up before on our blog in our discussion of best figure to use To The Limit and in that post, I gave him the silver medal but admitted he could have won the gold. Today, Onar finally gets the coveted gold for several reasons. First and foremost, he’s cheaper than most of your other Hunter options. “Cheap” here is a relative term – costing too little (4 or 5 points) makes you more expensive than most units, but certain elite units (and most named figures) will be more expensive than you or at the same cost, which means you don’t get a bonus against them. Very few elite units cost 6 points or more, so you’ll be able to use Onar to focus on the chaff of the army (leaving his compadres to take care of the more elite and heavy models).

Even if you ignore the cost advantage of using Onar, there is another boon to putting this upgrade on Onar: there is a non-zero probability that you will get both the “Accuracy 1 + Surge 1” face on your Green attack die and the “Accuracy 2 + Surge 1” on the Blue attack die. When this happens (assuming your opponent gets no Evade results), you can’t use both of your surges for damage because you have to sacrifice all the Accuracy you gained (and range attacks without any Accuracy miss). With Prey On The Weak, Onar automatically gets +1 Accuracy, guaranteeing maximum damage from his surge results against the person he shoved with Rush. While the other characters get great bonuses from Prey On The Weak, it is most beneficial to Onar because it guarantees he does stuff.

In our next post, we'll be switching gears to non-attachment skirmish upgrades and viewing the Imperial ugprade Zillo Technique. I consider this to be the most powerful Imperial skirmish upgrades (and quite probably the most powerful of all skirmish upgrades) available to date. Until then, happy gaming!