Grand Moff Tarkin portrayed brilliantly by Peter Cushing has always been my favorite Star Wars villain Imperial Hero. Even at age 6 when I first saw him on the big screen I thought he portrayed the perfect gentleman villain who was charming as he was ruthless. His real life best friend Sir Christopher Frank Carandini Lee who we lost a few months ago played my next favorite villain Count Dooku.

Looking at his game card, while fairly strong, a part of me wishes it was stronger. Of the current CANON Imperials from the three Original Trilogy movie, he is clearly the most capable commander, with perhaps Major General Veers being a close second (but as a ground commander). Also I would wish there was a game effect when both Grand Moff Tarkin and Vader are in the same fleet.

What are the chances Fantasy Flight will make future cards the augment current fleet leaders?

Also, I currently have two Victory and one Gladiator class Destroyers, any unique and esoteric tips on how to use them with the late great Grand Moff Tarkin?

I have a pretty good strategy for those 3 ships using Motti, but you could make some extra room to squeeze Tarkin in if you wanted.

2 VSD IIs, both with Gunnery Team, one with Motti.

Glad I, Demolisher, Wulff, Engine Techs, ACM.

Demoting one of the VSDs to a 'I' might be enough to get you the points, or dropping Gunnery Teams, but I wouldn't do that myself.

The only problem I have with Tarkin is that he's not Screed.

Tarkin is a very well-rounded commander that makes your fleet very reactive and adaptable to what your opponents do. He's not cheap but he makes everything run faster and smoother.

For defense, he can give every ship a Repair token which you can use to repair shields every turn. Do this at least twice and you practically simulated what Motti does for your fleet.

For offense, you can have him give Concentrate Fire to every ship every turn making every attack you make more reliable with that extra reroll. Unlike Screed, he can do this for every single attack.

FFG is releasing cards to buff tarkin

it's called Wave 2 and the new 400 point fleet limit. The more ships, the more tokens.

and here's something downright dirty

1.) repair 4 + tarkin token = 3 shields repaired a turn

2.) in the "Here They Come" article, the ISD has a Defensive Retrofit upgrade packaged, implying it has the slot to take Advanced projectors

3.) the ISD has two redirects, and 4/3/3/2 shields]

in short, you will give this much of a ****:

300's just a bit of an awkward spot for him at the moment. It's almost impossible to fit more than a VSD and a GSD with a decent enough number of squadrons and the most expensive commander in the game, but come 400 he'll be a force multiplier for certain.

I strongly agree with the point that Tarkin will get better as the points of fleets go up; at 400 he is potentially very powerful, especially in a ship spam fleet.

Screed and Motti also have their uses; right now, I like the Imperial commanders overall much more than the rebels. Tarkin will get better at 400.

Tarkin will get much better in a 400 point game. His ability to grant a token to each ship in your fleet will be more valuable when you can field more ships. Certainly he won't suit every fleet build, but I can foresee a few fleet built around 3 or even 4 ships that could benefit from his leadership.

I've tried him at 300 with a barebones trio of two vics and a glad, and had some success, mostly because you need to leverage those tokens continually... If I could just add 75 points of Squadons to those with some hanger bays, I'd call it a success at the moment.

to be fair, if you want to use Tarkin now I have seen the tarkin vsd + gsd used to very good effect. The flexibility granted by his tokens do not seem as initially impressive as skreed's ACM barrage, but they do some rather unexpected things such as

1. turns the demolisher into a VSD for the purposes of flinging squadrons

2. lets GSD trigger engine techs on a dime, without having to invest in Wulf (intel officer, anyone?)

3. give both ships more accurate long range firepower, and the GSD an all-important re-roll on the fairly spiky black dice.

I considered running Tarkin with my VSD/GSD setup, but I figure if I'm going to take a commander just to get a Nav town every turn that Wulff was cheaper, and a different commander also gives me their effects as well.

Next time I run Tarkin, I will try running the fleet with Liaisons on the VSDs. Whilst not every ship will want the same Tarkin token, those who don't get what they need will still at least get to fire off their Liaison effectively for free.

Nekomatafuyu beat me to it. There are already upgrade cards for Tarkin, Weapon and Defence Liaisons (for all of 3 points per ship). I am in love with VSD's commanded by Tarkin with Weapon Liaisons. Turn 3 and onwards just pile up engineering commands and use a token to change it to squadron or conc fire as required. In a 2 VSD list whichever ship is getting shot up can use an engineering command + token every turn while the other VSD burns the Tarkin-Token to go offensive.

Any upgrade card that can rely on tokens to activate is also exponentially more powerful with Tarkin. Other than the previously mentioned Liaisons, that's "only" Flight Controllers, Nav Team, Engineering Team, Engine Techs, Corrupter, Wulf Yularen and Admiral Chiraneau.

He counters one BIG weakness in wave 1 Imp lists, and that is command flexibility.

He beats Motti hands down in my book. 2 VSD list you are looking at 6 points per health added. If you use Tarkin to get 7 repair tokens across your fleet during the battle, you are ahead. Using weapon liaisons on both Vics as described above a single Vic doing 3 turns of repair dial + token gets you ahead on health per point while your other ship is still going full offensive with the flexibility of choosing at a moments notice to focus on guns or squadrons.

Screed makes for a harder comparison. But fortunately these two commanders rely on a different resource. Building a fleet with a lot of crit dependant upgrades pick Screed! Building for leveraging token use pick Tarkin!

He's also significantly more expensive.

I take those points and slap a couple gunnery teams on my VSDs. Up to 50% more firepower on my "second" shot seems pretty worth it.

Just commenting on the character alone, he's the 'battlefield announcer' for the Imperials kn Star Wars Battlefront and he sounds just gentlemenly badass as the movie heh

The way I look at Motti is that he comes free on a 276 point list, but Tarkin is a 14 point upgrade. That is going to be a lot less painful of a 14 points when we get an extra 100 to play with in wave 2.

I think all 3 Imp commanders will get better at 400 points.

The thing with Tarkin is that he'll become more affordable - ATM I've problem fitting him into my builds.

Even though I'm a Rebel commander I think Tarkin is an exceptional investment of points. While expensive his ability affords so much flexibility and power to the entire fleet. Motti and Screed both bring strong abilities, but are much more specified in terms of what they can really do, though I think Motti is going to make Imperial class Star Destroyers pretty **** scary (as if they needed the help!). As for Wave 2 he really doesn't do much for the Raider if you ask me unless they're using their tokens every single turn, but the three Star Destroyers are still going to enjoy him immensely. He offers a lot for what you invest in him. :3