The preview is up on FFG.

Skirmish-Focused Thoughts:

In skirmish I want more than 2 attack die for a 7 cost figure. 8 health/4 movement/surge for 2 damage/+2 accuracy is all stuff you can get on cheaper figures generally, so you're going to need to get a lot of value from Contempt and Punishment. Luckily, I think they're both good abilities but I'm not sure if they justify 7 points in skirmish.

On the plus side, this gives the gives the Merc faction access to Stun. It seems like you'll usually be choosing Stun as the condition anyway, but the flexibility is good, as is the ability to use extra surges to add more conditions. You could easily Stun, Weaken, and Bleed a figure on a good die role.

So I'm not sure about Dengar, he's certainly not a powerhouse for his point cost as Boba is…

Also, for skirmish, Punishing Strike seems expensive for 2 points, I think it would have been very powerful at 1 point. It does upgrade your Bleeds to Stuns though, which is really good considering many Merc figures can inflict Bleed (Transoshans and Nexu are the most common).

Dengar's command card seems pretty good, but you do have to survive an attack which limits the window of use significantly. The targeting restriction is also a downside: you might not want to shoot back at the figure shooting Dengar. It's fair for 2 points but not amazing. The other command cards both seem bad because they're either only situationally good or because symmetric points are just bad.

Also, FWIW Both Dengar and his Punishing Strike could improve in the future if powerful new Harmful Conditions are introduced. As far as we know, Stun/Weaken/Bleed are the only ones in the game now but who knows about the future.

Update: after the recent errata for Gaurds and Sabs, Dengar is looking a lot better. We'll see soon just how much better.

Maybe if he costed like 5 or so he would be good.

The thing is, at 7, Royal Guards cost 1 more, you get 2 figures with the same health as Dengar and they basically have the same surge abilities - +2 damage and stun (let's be honest, other harmful effects really don't matter).

With a min range of 3 and speed 4, Dengar has about the same range as guards, too (they can move 5 and attack 2 spaces away).

At least the stun should be more consistent with Dengar, but still, you only get 1 figure.

Punishing Strike is interesting for elite nexu.

I don't know why all of the merc units have to be so overcosted compared to everybody else.

As he is, Dengar seems like an okay addition to the merc troops, but not enough to make them actually competitive.

He seems decent enough. I agree he could have been cheaper, or a few more HP, but at least he has more HP than cost. If you're a scum player (like myself) comparing him to RGs doesn't make a whole lot of sense, as it's not an available pick (and they are over the curve anyway). I really love that scum is the jack-of-all-trades with all their skirmish upgrades, however they do seem expensive. Both this, and the +4 VP one. In General I like the abilities they have lying around, but unless you're careful you easily end up with having spend 4-6 point on nice upgrades. That's an entire deployment card worth of points not helping you directly.

I do think Punishing Strike is very strong if you play stuff like Boba, Elite Nexu and perhaps even with imported Sabs handing out multiple conditions (though they have to be focused then to have a real chance of it).

So, if I attack with my Elite Nexu and you are already bleeding, can I apply another bleeding (and the change it to stun), or are the target safe, because you cannot apply bleed to an already bleeding figure??

Unfortunately, you have to talk about royal guards if you want to talk about being competitive.

Half a Royal Guard Deployment for 7 points instead of 8 is a pretty fair comparison for Dengar. It clearly underscores how Degnar is over-costed at 7 (or maybe the real problem is that RGs are under-costed?) For the same 7 points, the Rebels can get a pair of Elite Saboteurs which are similarly each comparable to a single Dengar.

Since he's unique, you can't even bring multiple Dengars in your squad to get multiple stuns: so you'll inflict, at most, 1 stun per turn (barring special effects).

I think at 4 he would have been fantastic, an auto-include in every merc set, and give the mercs something to fight the others with.

At 5, he would still be good, probably still an auto-include.

At 7, he is just a little lackluster since the other factions can effectively get 2 of him for the same cost. 7 also makes him a little harder to fit into a squad.

As is, what do you think would be a good squad with him?

I think the hk droids with Punshing Strike might actually be decent, dealing out Stun instead of weaken. Shame you have to exhaust it though, so you really only get 1 stun per round. They cost way too much, too.

Also, playing the range game on some maps is just awful.

I like Elite Nexus, but if you send them into the fray, they tend to die too quick.

I think the hk droids with Punshing Strike might actually be decent, dealing out Stun instead of weaken. Shame you have to exhaust it though, so you really only get 1 stun per round. They cost way too much, too.

Also, playing the range game on some maps is just awful.

I like Elite Nexus, but if you send them into the fray, they tend to die too quick.

HK Droids might be good in skirmishes where you can keep them at range. Remember you do get 3 attack dice and 2 figures for just 8 points which is pretty good even if most of the dice are blue. (I think 2 blue die have are better than 1 red at both the best and worst case, plus you get the accuracy.)

You could do something like:

24 3x HK

7 Dengar

2 Punishing strike

1 Temp Alliance

3 Gideon

2 C3P0

1 Devious Scheme

That's 40, with 4 somewhat scary attacking groups.

The gameplan would be to forgo objectives since you can't hold them and focus on dps'ing down from range and stunning to keep your guys alive.

Auto-lose on Kuat A though.

I'd put my Hks behind two Nexus, give Dengar his herd of cats.

With Nexu though, you're just giving your opponent something to attack by putting it up in melee range.

Unless you're pretty good at rolling on the white die, they tend to go down after 2-3 good attacks.

Yea, so they attack it and not your HK with very little health or defence. And the Nexu auto cleaves and can now auto stun. It's a great distraction/front line damager.

You can't just throw out a 6 point figure to die and have it only do like 4 damage and stun.

It will also block your hks from attacking unless you take the elite ones, which are really overcosted.

I think you're better off trying to just not get hit with the hks. You should do more damage and live longer.

I'm also curious what you would take out to put in 2 elite nexu.

Can you screen the HKs with Bantha riders?

Yes. And you should.

and just hope that your opponent does not field elite sabs...

I don't see that. The range of the Sabs is too short.

In a hallway, they can't move past the Bantha and they more often than not won't have the range to hit the HKs behind the Bantha, especially if the HKs stay back a little bit more.

I like dengar, i like everything about him.

His mini has a ton of attitude, and his rules have even more. This is a guy who brings a lot of tricks for a faction whose them should e based upon being tricky and having shenanigans. He might be a little overpriced, but in my opinion that is only when you compare him to Royal Guards, when you compare him with elite troppers, he might have less overal health but his special abilities make up for it in my opinion, Dengar is a finesse piece of equipment that plays like a scalpel, ready to set the opponent down for the killing blow with whatever the damage dealers in your army are. And that is why i like him a lot, he is not an obvious point and click option he is a careful scalpel that makes incisions before you enter with the real battleaxe. I believe this to be true with any faction that has acces to a main damage dealer, Imagine you weakening and stunning somebody before delivering darth vader to kill him.

I think the comparison of him with Royal Guards or saboteurs is not one i like because those two units are uber good and anything compared to them will be diminished.

The abilities seem great and well suited for him but (unfortunately again) i have to agree its way overpriced. Of course, we haven't seen him in the field yet but as i see it now hes not worth the 7 points.

Seriously, they cant continue with this random efficiency/point ratio system if they want to climb from from this guards/sabateurs mess

I think the comparison of him with Royal Guards or saboteurs is not one i like because those two units are uber good and anything compared to them will be diminished.

Unless you only play with your friends who agree to weaken or not play Gaurds/Saboteurs, you can't ignore the comparison because you're going to have to play against them in any tournament!

So now that 4x4 isn't super broke, is Dengar worth his points?

The abilities seem great and well suited for him but (unfortunately again) i have to agree its way overpriced. Of course, we haven't seen him in the field yet but as i see it now hes not worth the 7 points.

Seriously, they cant continue with this random efficiency/point ratio system if they want to climb from from this guards/sabateurs mess

Yes the scale is very very random, a great example for me is Gaarkhan and the wookie warriors, for the same point cost you get more than double the wounds and essentially the same ammount of attacks, at the cost of just a slightly worst dice pool(which is debatable).

Dengar compares to elite troopers in my opinions, for the cost of 2 troopers and a third you get less wounds(8 to 12) similar dice pool, better abilities and range, but less attacks. Then again elite troopers are definitely not terribly efficient when saboteurs and royal guards exist which is why dengar looks so badly overpriced IMHO, he is built around the point scale were the standard is a unit that isnt all that convincing overall

I think the comparison of him with Royal Guards or saboteurs is not one i like because those two units are uber good and anything compared to them will be diminished.

Unless you only play with your friends who agree to weaken or not play Gaurds/Saboteurs, you can't ignore the comparison because you're going to have to play against them in any tournament!

I live in argentina, for now our player base is not large enough to warrant a huge tournament, much less to warrant a 4x4 list since it requires to buy 2 sets and nobody would do that here.

And yes i play mainly themathic and for fun lists specially with my brother, we generally play the derby between IG 88(my favourite bounty hunter) and his droids(cant wait to get more droids from the hoth expansion) and boba fetts hunters. For me characther, fluffines and fun is more interesting than sheer competitiveness.

Maybe I'm coming at this from more of a campaign-centric point of view, but Dengar seems kind of amazing to me. In one attack, he has the likely potential to stun, bleed, and weaken somebody all at once? The next activation for that figure would be brutal.

Maybe I'm coming at this from more of a campaign-centric point of view, but Dengar seems kind of amazing to me. In one attack, he has the likely potential to stun, bleed, and weaken somebody all at once? The next activation for that figure would be brutal.

Well he was just bad in comparison to the old Royal Guards (which can be deployed in any campaign) and Saboteurs. Now that they are much weaker he's looking better by comparison. I need to play a lot more to know how much better.

Maybe I'm coming at this from more of a campaign-centric point of view, but Dengar seems kind of amazing to me. In one attack, he has the likely potential to stun, bleed, and weaken somebody all at once? The next activation for that figure would be brutal.

Well he was just bad in comparison to the old Royal Guards (which can be deployed in any campaign) and Saboteurs. Now that they are much weaker he's looking better by comparison. I need to play a lot more to know how much better.

Elite saboteurs dont look that weak

I'm thinking of playing him as;

Dengar

Boba Fett

2 x Elite Trandoshan Hunter'

I know this is only 4 activations, however after the lastest changes I think the game has changed significantly.

Also as a theme Boba and Dengar have often worked together in the expanded universe.

I look forward to testing this out as soon as I get my hands on Boba's long term side kick Dengar!!