Math Hammering: Ranking Rebel Commander Units

Good morning gamers,

Last time, we looked at what the "best" Rebel Corps unit was, based on how well it fulfilled the needs of the scoring system that's in place for Legion 2.6. Today, we're turning to the other required rank class in Legion: the Commander. The Rebels have access to nine Commanders at the moment (no new ones appear to be on the horizon, though new sculpts are coming!), but it would appear that in an interview with Grey Squadron Gaming, one of these Commanders will be migrated to Operative. Let's take a look at how we're going to be ranking things and then we'll dig into who's the best Rebel Commander around!

Taxonomy Overview: What Is "Optimal" for Legion 2.6?

As discussed in the previous post, because the objective conditions (both primary and secondary) are so heavily skewed towards having more activations than your opponent in pre-defined (and often stationary) parts of the board, Legion 2.6 is about both taking enemy units off the board (whole units - not just rendering a unit inert by killing off most of its models) and keeping your own units on the board. This means there are two measures of effectiveness (MOEs) that we can use to determine if a unit is "good": average expected damage and average expected health (AEH).

Average Expected Damage (AED) is computed by finding the average number of hits and crits that a unit is supposed to get. The greatest dilemma for finding this number in the real world is that it is affected by a LOT of variables - here's a few:

• There is a subtle but mostly irrelevant distinction between a Hit result and a Crit result - Crits really only matter if the enemy unit has the Armor X keyword, has dodge tokens, and to a small degree, has light/heavy cover (often if they also have Low Profile);
• The Pierce X keyword doesn't increase the damage that you do, but it DOES make the damage that you get more likely to actually take effect;
• The number of hits/crits that you get is all fine and good, but the quality of the target unit's save (and defensive keywords, dodge tokens, and visible models) can have a huge impact on how much damage you can actually do;
• The number of wounds previously suffered might reduce the expected damage of the unit (if it's a multi-model unit and each model has 1 wound) or it might have a slight impact once a certain amount of damage is done (if it's a multi-model unit and each model has multiple wounds), or might have no impact at all (in the case of single-model units); and
• The distance to the enemy target may affect whether or not a unit can aim before shooting - and the value of an aim token is highly dependent on which dice in your dice pool hit or missed in the first volley).

For the sake of a more simplistic model, I've made the following assumptions:

• If a model pays for an upgrade that increases its damage once injured (like Tenacity), we will use the upgrade to improve whatever offensive range bands would be affected;
• The average expected damage of a model will be a straight average of their expected damage at ranges melee-3 (for Corps, we did ranges 2-4 and preference of melee or range 1, but since most Commanders can't do damage at range 4 - Cassian is the only exception - it seemed silly to both penalize basically everyone for a very understandable design choice by the AMG crowd AND reward characters that can do melee well over those that can't);
• The score for the model will be the score of a reasonable loadout for the character - we will not be meta-gaming upgrades to score well in the system, but will look instead at what makes a Commander function well in army lists;
• Units are assumed to not take aim actions before they shoot unless that unit has a unique way to gain an aim token without spending an action; and
• The score for the unit will be the average expected hits for every 10 points spent on the unit (so units that are cheaper but do the same/more damage than a more expensive unit come out ahead).

Unlike the discussion of Corps units last time, most Commander unit are going to have one or more of these factors baked into their profiles, so getting to a final value is going to require some . . . frequent caveating. As I did last time, I will attempt to capture everything that was not factored into a character's final score - and as far as it is possible, I have tried to be as fair and generous as I can to every unit reviewed.

Average Expected Health (AEH) is much easier to conceptualize, but there are gray areas on the margins. Obviously, the total wounds of the unit will be "health" - and something will be added based on how good the save of the unit is - but do you account for rules like Low Profile making one cover save work? Do you assume cover at all? What if your opponent has Sharpshooter? What about rules like Impervious (do we assume the attack has Pierce)? If a unit can't be killed in a single volley, do you count its saves, dodges, Armor, Danger Sense, etc. more than once?

Like the damage calculus, there are a lot of variables that can affect this number - so our methodology will assume the safest case:

• This number will start with the initial total health (wound threshold) of the unit, including additional health provided by upgrades to the unit (specifically Personnel and Heavy Weapons);
• Additional health will be added to the unit based on the probability of saving wounds with defense dice (e.g. a 4-wound Rebel Officer that has a surging-white save will add 4/3 wounds to its health total);
• Special rules and tokens that can prevent wounds (e.g. dodge tokens, Armor X, Danger Sense X) will apply additional wounds once based on the number of hits that are likely to be blocked; and
• We're not going to assume that anyone has cover (of any kind) or that the attack has Pierce, which means that the Impervious, Immune: Pierce, and Low Profile keywords will not be factored into the calculation. Since there are Rebel Units who rely on Low Profile to help them compete (and one in particular that we're viewing today), I will comment on how the numbers would change if you assumed an extra hit was taken off by Low Profile (but will be excluding it from the quantitative assessment).

The last methodological thing we need to talk about is how we compare these two MOEs. Some players might want to make an aggro-heavy list that relies on blowing chunks into the enemy quickly and so would rate the AED score higher than the AEH score. Others might think, "You know, my likelihood of actually killing off enemy units is quite low, so I'd rather have my units last longer than be able to do damage", in which case, the AEH is the more valuable metric. For us today, I'm going to assume that they are equal and each contributes half of its rating to the overall score.

With all that said, let's get into the Commander ranking!

Optimal Commander Unit Ranking

We have 9 profiles to choose from today and unlike last time, we're going to have two honorable mentions - one because in an interview with Grey Squadron gaming, we were told that one of our current Commanders isn't going to stay a Commander, and the second because it's a Mercenary unit that is unlikely to see play in Rebel lists because its role is far too locked down into the Mercenary Corps unit it brings to the table (and absolutely nothing else). Let's get started with the former, which is . . .

Honorable Mention #1: Jyn Erso with Esteemed Leader, Duck and Cover, Prepared Supplies, and config - 102pts, Score: 0.609

This one hurts me a bit because by score, out of the nine profiles we're looking at today, Jyn just barely podiumed at third! The build that I have for her isn't my own creation - Mike Barry talked about it on a Scoundrels podcast a while back and it's a very, VERY difficult version of Jyn to take down (especially if she's surrounded by Mark II Medium Blasters who all gain Guardian 1 while she's at range 1 of them). This version of Jyn got an estimated 1.625-2.5 damage depending on her range bands, but for 102pts total, that only equated to ~0.2053 hits/10pts spent when you averaged across the damage bands (or 1 hit/48.72pts spent). Jyn's gun has Pierce 1, so against most units, whatever damage is done at a distance (1.6-2.1 hits) is going to get through, which makes her reliable at chipping away wounds . . . but not outright destroying things. Even with her tonfa (which does more overall damage, but doesn't have Pierce), she's still not picking a unit up off the table by herself - but that's not really her job . . .

Jyn's bailiwick has always been surviving - with 6 wounds, surging white saves, a cached dodge token/Nimble, and Danger Sense 4 (with Duck and Cover to start triggering that), her expected health was 1.01 effective wounds/10pts spent, which translates into nearly 10 wounds - that's pretty good. As with the offensive calculation, this doesn't give extra credit for repeat dodges from Nimble, the variable number of Suppression tokens she's going to have to trigger Danger Sense, or the ability for nearby Corps units to strip off her incoming damage with Guardian 1 from Esteemed Leader. Without all these buffs, Jyn got the second-best defensive score, narrowly edging out most of the competition and only squeaking in behind the leader by a little bit. My applause for Jyn - she's got a place in Rebel Veteran spam lists for me.

I didn't rank her with the Commanders because it's been confirmed that she's changing to an Operative "soon" - we'll see how soon this is (it could be later this month at Adepticon, this summer during Ministraviganza, or anytime in between), but it didn't feel right to rank her alongside the other Commanders since she's changing teams. We have a few months before the Operative post comes out in this series, so if she's released by then, I'll add her to that ranking. :)

Honorable Mention #2: Pyke Syndicate Capo with Vigilance - 60pts, Score: 0.573

If I felt bad about stripping Jyn from the final ranking when she came in third, I feel less bad about stripping this guy because he actually came in right about the middle at sixth. Here's the thing about Rebel list building with Pykes though: as we talked about last time with the Pyke Syndicate Foot Soldiers, Pyke Foot with the P-13 Disruptor cost about the same as Rebel Veterans with the CM-0/93, but they perform worse overall. Pykes only do well when compared to other Rebel Corps units if you're running vanilla units - and you're really competing with Ewoks for the 2-3 Mercenary slots in Corps (if you have Underworld Connections), so while you certainly CAN take Pykes in Rebel lists, you probably won't (or shouldn't).

Since the Pyke Syndicate Capo exists to synergize with Pykes, a list that has no Pykes really has no place for a Capo. By taking the Capo, you have to take a Field Commander upgrade on a Heavy OR you need to take another Rebel Commander . . . and generally speaking, there's probably two good Rebel Commanders that will help your list as a whole a lot better than a Pyke Capo with no/a few Pykes to support. But let's operate under the assumption for the moment that you want to run a few Pykes in your Rebel list instead of Ewoks. If you do, here's the breakdown for this guy.

The Pyke Capo is blissfully cheap with the expensive Vigilance upgrade at 60pts and he's packing a pretty decent combat profile of 3 non-surging blacks at range 1-3 and a very unimpressive 1 black in melee. He got an expected 0.1458 hits/10pts spent (or 68.57 pts/hit - which oddly enough put him at the bottom-middle for damage), which is pretty good for a guy who wasn't trying to specialize in doing damage. On Defense, he did slightly worse than Jyn with 1.00 effective wounds/10pts spent, which is mostly due to having many of the same (but worse) keywords as Jyn has (Danger Sense 2, surging white saves with 4 wounds) at a fraction of Jyn's cost. I didn't give him credit for having Independent: Dodge as that dodge token is likely being passed to a Nimble Pyke squad instead (while this guy stays safely out of view), but know that if he did get credit for it, he'd pop ahead of Jyn defensively and jump slightly in the rankings. If you want to run this guy, do it - I think there are better options.

Now, on to the main list - the first entry saddens me . . .

Pick #7: Luke Skywalker with Burst of Speed, Offensive Push, and Recon Intel - 144pts, Score: 0.416

Okay, this guy has a raw deal because he costs so much and his gun doesn't do that much more than anyone else . . . and while his lightsaber is the best melee weapon here, it's not THAT much better than his blaster and it's only making up one-fourth of his damage score. I've included this particular variant of Luke because he's offense-focused and can utilize all three of his upgrades on the first turn:

• Tap Offensive Push and expending Burst of Speed before his Scout move;
• Perform a Scout-1 move/picking up an aim token;
• Performing a Speed-3 Jump 1 move/picking up an aim token;
• Perform 1-2 blaster shots with his pistol, depending on whether you played Son of Skywalker on the first turn or not, using the aim tokens to extend your blaster to range 3 with Long Shot 1 or rerolling dice to make sure you get as close to 4 damage as possible.

Unless you have a way of giving Luke a Recover action (Cassian's Volunteer Mission Command Card, perhaps?), he's probably not benefitting from Offensive Push again, but this strategy does open up your options on the first turn to deal some early damage that you can capitalize on for Turn 2 (where the first scoring opportunities usually arise). A unit that's been weakened (or destroyed) on the first turn will have to play more conservatively if they want to be a useful scoring piece on Turns 2-3 (let alone 4-5), so an aggressive first turn with Luke can be really good. Also, Burst of Speed isn't strictly necessary on the first turn, so you could bank that one and only perform a Speed-2 Jump to get the second aim token (leaving you with a Speed-3 double-move-and-charge turn later in the game - potentially with Son of Skywalker).

I will also add that I ran the stats for how good Luke was supposed to do on his Son of Skywalker turn (hint: twice as good - 0.4123 hits/10pts, 24.25pts/hit) and these numbers absolutely CRUSH the other Rebel Commanders, but chances are good that while attacking twice on one round is bound to happen, you're probably also going to try to buy time for your squishy Rebel units to survive on a tight objective by playing I Am a Jedi, which prevents Luke (and up to 2 enemy Trooper units) from attacking. All in all, Luke will hopefully get 5 Attacks in during the game, but since you're attacking twice on one round and not attacking on another round, it didn't seem right to adjust Luke's ranking just because he's got Son of Skywalker.

Luke's blaster is pretty good all things considered - 1 red/3 black with Pierce 1 and Sharpshooter 1 is supposed to get 2.75 hits each time he shoots, which paired with his 3.625 expected hits from his 2 red/3 black lightsaber in melee (with Pierce 1) gives him an overall score of ~3 hits/attack, but because he costs so much, his average expected damage is only 0.206 expected hits/10pts spent (or 48.51 pts/hit - which is slightly ahead of where Jyn landed and puts him third overall). If you look at just the raw average damage that Luke does, there's only one other Rebel Commander who comes close to what he can do - so if it weren't for his darn cost (and our defense category, coming up next), I expect Luke wouldn't have ended up last.

Luke's score on defense REALLY took a hit because he doesn't have Deflect. With Block, he can get defensive surges in melee by spending a dodge token, but this version of Luke can only get dodge tokens by receiving them from command cards (I didn't take Force Reflexes or Prepared Supplies). As such, Luke only gets credit for having 6 Wounds and a non-surging Red save, for a total of 0.63 effective wounds/10pts spent. This is the worst score of any of the Rebel Commanders and caused his offensive score to plummet below that of the competition.

So yeah, Luke is a victim of my equal ranking of the two metrics and I think he's a much better Commander option than my ranking seems to indicate. I was expecting him to come above . . .

Pick #6: Lando Calrissian with Underworld Connections - 100pts, Score: 0.502

Lando comes in at #6 (but functionally #8) because he has a so-so offense and is expensive for his defense. Lando's blaster does benefit from both Pierce 1 and Sharpshooter 2 (neither of which are factored into this analysis), but with only 1 red/1 black, he's looking at only 1.5 hits per attack and when that's factored in with his so-so melee attack of 1 black/1 white (1.0 hits/attack), he ends up getting the worst offensive score of any Rebel Commander with 0.1375 expected hits/10pts spent (72.73 pts/hit). I liked running Lando in the previous edition with Mark-II Medium Blaster Troopers to lend 4 extra black dice with Fire Support - his cover bypass with Sharpshooter 2 made that attack pool really sing. Still, Lando can shoot at range 3 and bypassing cover can also ignore keywords that will give a small dice pool trouble (Low Profile, I'm looking at you!), but I'm very much looking forward to the revamp of this profile.

On defense, Lando is . . . well, a Rebel hero. He's got surging white saves and 6 Wounds, but he's also got Uncanny Luck 2, which gives him some rerolls (which will turn 2 of his defense dice into effectively red dice). This boosts his survivability a little, but with no additional ways to mitigate damage, his score ends up being 0.87 effective wounds/10pts, which is higher than Luke's score, but lower than everyone else's score. I could raise that to 0.92 with a marginal reduction to his offensive score by giving him Prepared Supplies, but this would change his end score from 0.502 to 0.526, which . . . wouldn't change his final placement at all. Plus, if I did that for him, I'd have to do that for a lot of people.

Pick #5: Rebel Officer with Underworld Connections - 55pts, Score: 0.556

Pipping over Lando is the generic Rebel Officer, who is rapidly becoming one of my favorite Rebel Commander options. Yes, he's basically a cheaper, worse version of Leia, but sometimes you just don't have the points to upgrade him to Leia! This guy is only 55pts and he has . . . pretty terrible scores for both offense and defense from a raw perspective. His gun is the worst we've seen so far with 2 surging black dice at range 1-2 (nothing at range 3), and only a single surging black die in melee, netting him an average of 0.781 hits/attack, but because he's so cheap, that's a score of 0.142 hits/10pts spent (70.4 pts/hit). This puts him below Jyn and Luke (thankfully), but about on par with Lando and the Pyke Capo.

His defensive scores seem like a pretty similar story, with 4 wounds, surging white saves, and the only innate way to get defensive tech is by using Take Cover 1 on himself (or paying 6pts more to get a Portable Scanner to boost it to Take Cover 2). This is . . . certainly an option, but you could also just perform a dodge action each turn instead, so we're not going to score that here. While his overall defensive score isn't great, his reduced cost makes his low stats come out alright relative to the competition with 0.97 expected wounds/10pts - or put another way, about where Jyn and the Capo showed up (and Lando showed up if he took Prepared Supplies).

His overall score puts him in the middle band and I think if you're looking for a cheap Commander option, this is very clearly your guy (though if you can find the points for it, Leia is clearly the better choice - and she hasn't shown up yet in this assessment, now has she?). With 0.556, he was just narrowly beaten by both the Pyke Capo and . . .

Pick #4: Han Solo with Underworld Connections and Up Close and Personal - 113pts, Score: 0.577

It makes me really happy to see Han above the generic likes of the Capo and the Rebel Officer - and he's both the absolute middle of the total set (Jyn above, the Capo below) and the reduced set (fourth of seven). Han's stock really went up in the new edition, as Cover is less reliable and Pierce 2 makes sure that his hits actually go through when he rolls well.

Han's cost was a big decision point here, as he's a Commander with a Command slot (so I put Underworld Connections on there, so you can run him with Ewoks) and he's got a range 1-2 pistol that can be fired twice (making Up Close and Personal a really good investment). Han didn't get anything in his Gear slot, but know that if he had received Prepared Supplies for the bonus dodge, he'd jump to slot #3 (or #4 overall behind Jyn) because of the way the points would slightly lower his offensive score and slightly raise his defensive score. Regardless of what you give him, Han is expensive, which limits how well he can score.

On offense, Han is rolling 2 red dice with the ability to surge for crit, which gives him an expected 1.75 hits/shot, but thanks to having Gunslinger, he clocks in at 3.5 hits/attack action (shooting twice is awesome). With no ability to reach range 3 (that might change with his updated card, since Luke's blaster got Long Shot) and a rather mediocre melee performance, Han comes in with an average expected damage of 2.031 hits/attack, which translates into 0.1798 hits/10pts spent (or 55.63 pts/hit). This is better than the Rebel Officer, the Pyke Capo, and Lando, but worse than Luke, Jyn, and the three players we haven't seen so far. Mostly this is due to Han being expensive (113pts - the highest cost character we have in this assessment besides Luke), but it's also due to his melee performance being so poor (3 surging whites just isn't good). Han is the only character who has Pierce 2, which makes the lack of factoring that in a real shame for him (and less of a shame for about half of the other participants).

On defense, we're assuming that Han has shot twice, so his 6 wounds, 2 dodges, surging white saves, and 3 rerolls comes out to a final score of 0.97 expected wounds/10pts spent, which is about what we've seen from everyone else. All told, Han is about as defensible as you expect to get and can do damage about as well as everyone else. In other words, he's the perfect middle-man and he'd probably rank in the middle regardless of the weighting that we placed on damage and health. All in all, Han ends up with a score of 0.577, which just passes the Pyke Capo (0.573) and without the Prepared Supplies, he comes in just shy of podiuming to . . .

Pick #3: Wicket with Forest Dwellers - 73pts, Score: 0.587

Like the Pyke Capo, Wicket is a mercenary unit that can be taken with the Rebel faction. As such, you need another Commander or a Heavy unit with the Field Commander keyword in order to run him - and if you're running him, there's a very good chance that you're also fielding 2 Ewok Skirmisher units (or potentially 2 Ewok Slinger units if you brought Underworld Connections on your other Commander) to benefit from his Scouting Party keyword. You're also taking Forest Dwellers to maximize on Scouting Party, which means your bare-bones minimum cost for Wicket is 73pts. You could throw Tenacity on there too (or one of the fancy Ewok Training options that allow you to mess with your opponent's stuff), but 73pts seemed like a pretty reasonable way to go.

Unlike the Ewok Skirmishers we talked about last time, Wicket has a ranged attack, which allows him to participate (barely) at range 1-2. A ranged weapon of 1 black die that surges for crit doesn't look like much, but with Pierce 1 and Sharpshooter 2 on that weapon, he's basically clocking someone every time he gets an icon. All told, he's a pretty neat little shooter who upgrades his attack to 2 red/1 black with Pierce 1 when he's in melee. With Relentless as well, he's a pretty efficient little fighting machine who is expected to get 0.1241 hits/10pts spent. This is the lowest offensive score we've seen today (barely below the Rebel Officer and Lando), but like the Ewok Skirmishers in the previous post, it's the health efficiency that really takes Wicket over the top.

On defense, Wicket brings Independent: Dodge to the table and pairs that with Nimble and Low Profile (neither of which we are factoring in here). With 5 wounds and the Rebel stock-standard surging white save, Wicket's very cheap chassis gives him a score of 1.05 expected wounds/10pts spent - or put differently, just barely the highest defensive score of all Rebel Commander units (just above Jyn's 1.01 expected wounds). The keywords to spare on both of these units make them pretty difficult to deal with, but Wicket can be especially hard to handle since he's always going to have a dodge token (assuming you don't issue him an order). Agile 1 would be the icing on the cake for this guy, but hey, he's fine as he is.

His overall score is a very impressive 0.587, which isn't as good as Han's 0.595 if he has Prepared Supplies, but we did say at the outset that I wasn't going to game the upgrades and make people overly expensive just to make them score better. All in all, the bronze medal goes to Wicket, who was edged out by 0.038 points by . . .

Pick #2: Cassian Andor with Overwatch/Duck and Cover and config - 94pts, Score: 0.625

There's a lot of people down on Cassian right now - and for good reason. Cassian's long-range blaster config was really, REALLY good in the previous version of the game, since he could start on the board in a spot that had visibility to places that would be valuable for scoring, he could generate aim tokens himself or through K-2SO, and could turn those hits into crits to bypass Cover. Yes, he also had a pistol (technically two) that was pretty good, but running him in with his pistol was a lot riskier in that version of the game.

With the changes in Version 2.6 to cover and deployment, Cassian can still use his long-range blaster config if he wants to, but the game doesn't revolve around being far away anymore (not usually, at any rate). As such, pistol-Cassian is where it's at - and that's where we're going to focus much of our time today. Cassian is good - and he deals quite a bit of punch for being a sub-100pt Commander option.

Let's get this out of the way first: as was mentioned at the top of the article, he's the only Commander who can actually do damage at range 4+, so if you happen to need to shoot across the board, he's the only one that's going to be able to do it. In our metric today, his sniper config isn't being evaluated, since we assume he's going to use Long Shot with his pistol config to get a better score (which is simply due to having an extra red die). Yes, aim tokens can be at a bit of a premium for a character with Marksman, but we're going to assume Cassian has 2 aim tokens (one from K-2SO's Calculate Odds action and one from moving before he shoots), so he can both trigger Long Shot and improve a die.

Cassian's pistol sports 2 red/1 black, which is one of the better die pools we've seen today (behind Luke, two shots from Han, and our top-spot Commander), but he actually gets a score of 3 today because his aim token guarantees that one of his dice will go from a blank to a hit. Without the boost, he gets a 2.375 expected hits/attack, but the aim token is going to pip that up to a 3.000 expected hits/attack because whatever comes up blank is going to be a hit (so I took the minimum of his normal score +1 and 3). 

For you math-heads out there, the only way Cassian doesn't get 3 hits is if he gets a blank on a red die (0.125 probability) AND a blank on either the other red die (0.125 probability) or the black die (0.375 probability). The probability that either the second red or the black fails is 1 minus the product of the two successes, which turns out to be a 0.453 probability. Because we also have to fail the first red die, we multiply the 0.453 probability to the 0.125 probability and that gives us the probability of getting two blanks . . . which is 0.057, or roughly 5% of the times we shoot . . . I could use 0.943 instead of 1, but the end result would be the same - Cassian gets credit for 3 hits. His gun has Pierce 1 but no Sharpshooter (would be a nice add if they're updating his card), which is again something we aren't factoring into this analysis.

With 3 expected hits at range 1-3 and a pretty decent melee score of 2 hits (thanks to Marksman working in melee too!), Cassian comes out with an average of 0.293 hits/10pts spent (or 34.18 pts/hit), which is better than everyone we've seen so far. It helps that he's about the same cost as everyone else, but is also getting icons on all his dice. Defensively, Cassian is "fine" with a score of 0.96 expected wounds/10pts spent, due to having 6 wounds, surging white saves, and Danger Sense 3 (which is not hard to proc with Duck and Cover and K-2SO). You do have to be careful HOW you proc Danger Sense, though, as you run the risk of Cassian being suppressed with his sad Courage 2 stat. Still, if K-2SO is giving you aim tokens, you may not have to move-and-shoot (especially if your target is at range 1-2). All in all, Cassian gets a very respectable 0.625 and comes up in second place behind . . .

Pick #1: Leia Organa with Underworld Connections and Improvised Orders - 85pts, Score: 0.643

Yes, it's Leia - who I think is qualitatively the best Rebel Commander in the game, so it made me happy when her combat profile and her survivability stats also made her quantitatively the best Rebel Commander in the game. She's getting a new sculpt this year and I think she's a fabulous add to any Rebel list that you're building (assuming you don't need the points for an extra activation). She's an improved version of a Rebel Officer with a better gun, better melee profile, +1 Take Cover, more health, surge for crit instead of surge for hit, AND has some killer command cards (none of them are bad, her 1-pip is probably the worst of them, but it does give her an extra attack action, so . . .). Yeah, all around, she's just a really good take - and only 25-30pts more expensive than a Rebel Officer.

I would like to make a note about her and Cassian though: both of these heroes were evaluated with two builds - one that was more expensive (Cassian with Overwatch/config and Leia with Underworld Connections/Improvised Orders) and one that was less expensive (Cassian with just his config and Leia with just Underworld Connections). If you compare the cheaper version of Cassian to the more expensive version of Leia, Cassian pips both of her scores just barely with a 0.653 final score over her 0.652. If I allowed that version of Cassian to play, he'd technically be the best Commander here. However, my experience with Cassian is that you probably want Duck and Cover (or Overwatch with Duck and Cover in your Loadout "side board") because you can get more out of his 1-pip that way. If you're not running his 1-pip, it would probably be fine to run him cheaper - but if you take Duck and Cover, you immediately drop below both of Leia's scores. As such, I'm not allowing a bare-bones Cassian to take the top slot - it belongs to Leia.

On offense, Leia got an upgrade in the new edition to having 3 red dice at range 1-3 instead of 3 black dice at range 1-2 with Pierce 1 - and honestly, it's a good trade. The three red dice with surge for crit makes Leia reliable at getting hits that need to be saved and with Sharpshooter 2, she doesn't have to worry about cover saves stripping anything. Her blaster is also extended to range 3, which paired with her 3 black in melee gives her a very impressive average of 2.438 hits/attack across all three range bands and 0.287 expected hits/10pts spent (34.87 pts/hit). This puts her behind Cassian (barely) and ahead of everyone else. It certainly helps that she's only 85pts with both upgrades, but this does highlight how much certain other characters (like Han, Lando, and Jyn) will probably need to see points cuts in order to be competitive once their new profiles hit the market later this year (hopefully in the spring? Adepticon announcement, please?).

On defense, Leia has several keywords that you'd want - Nimble and Take Cover 2 (to give herself and a friend - maybe Luke? - a dodge token). She has 6 wounds (pretty standard), surging white saves (very standard for Rebels), and otherwise just a cheap profile, which lands her with an estimated 1.00 expected wounds/10pts (and I didn't factor in the dodge token from Take Cover 2 into this, since she may not be able to park and shoot/take cover on a turn - her score would actually be higher if I did that). It pays to be cheap and Leia might not be the cheapest person in this set, but she's still one of the cheapest and the gains she gets over other cheap Rebel Commanders is pretty sizable. As a cheaper option than Cassian and Jyn, she's a steal and is the logical choice for all Rebel lists.

Conclusion

I've heard Mike Barry say on the Notorious Scoundrels podcast that Leia and Wicket might be the best two Rebel Commanders - and this assessment seems to indicate that there's a quantitative truth to that, regardless of the utility of the keywords they're providing (most notably Wicket's Scouting Party keyword and Leia's two Command slots). In this particular analysis, these two characters came in at #1 and #3 and since Wicket can give Scout 2 to 2 Ewok Skirmisher units (who did really well in the Corps assessment) and Underworld Connections on Leia allows you to take 2 Ewok Slingers in the Special Forces category (more on them next time), you can get quite a few activations that are pretty cost-effective for Rebels for a ridiculously small number of points (if you're sparing on the upgrades, you can get six activations for 309pts).

While I agree with Mike that these two are great together, I also don't think that you have to take them all the time. Yes, they're good - but guys like Han and Luke (and in my opinion, Cassian) are still quite good and can provide you with some nice second-slot Commander options to support Leia (but you should almost take Leia - but I have been strapped for points in recent escalation games, so I have been leaning on the Rebel Officer profile to get some extra oomph out of the rest of the list).

That's it for another math-heavy post - if you enjoyed it or have comments on it, leave them below! In two weeks, we'll have another escalation round update, but we'll be back with a look at Rebel Special Forces in our next update in this series - and boy are there some good picks! Until next time, happy hobbying!