Without a new article from FFG, its time to discuss Lord Kylo's weapon of choice, his personal lightsaber.
1) Klyo Ren's Lightsaber comes in at 3 resources, 3 melee damage for 1 resource, +2 melee damage, +3 melee damage, 1 shield and 1 special. So how does this fare against the standard lightsaber? Well they both offer 3 melee for 1 resource, +2 damage, 1 shield and 1 special. The lightsaber offers 1 resource while Kylo's lightsaber has the massive +3 damage. Kylo's weapon is clearly geared towards dealing damage. In fact 4 of the 6 sides deal damage or modify damage (including the special). That's a 66% chance you will be dealing or modifying damage in some way. Now as we said in episode 101, this weapon needs to be tamed as it's not nearly as reliable of a weapon as the standard lightsaber. 33% of the die faces require a melee damage die in order to be usable. So you do have to be careful that you don't rely only on Kylo's lightsaber to deal massive damage.
2) The big thing about this weapon is the special effect. The card states " Blue Character Only. Deal 2 damage to a character. If any of this damage is blocked by shields, reroll this die instead of removing it to your pool." This card allows you to target any character (enemy or friendly) and resolve its effect which is incredibly useful. In a perfect world this die could be rerolled over and over until you destroy all shields on the enemy characters.
But in reality this die will most likely gain 1-2 rerolls eating shields and then giving you hopefully a big boost in damage to hurt that character who thought they were protected. Having a card give you damage and rerolls is very powerful in this game. It also eats up an action forcing your opponent to wait and see what die face you get and then plan a response.
3) Kylo's lightsaber is a really wild card that specializes in high damage at the cost of needing other dice to reach maximum potential. I like this card because it offers a very high damage output, similar to Lord Vader but with the cost of being a modified die face. In the right deck this shouldn't be a problem, but with effects that reroll dice or flip dice to sides you don't want, Kylo's weapon is vulnerable to a lot of counter effects. However if this card is left unchecked, a damage giant like Lord Vader can output damage more consistently than using the traditional lightsaber. It's powerful but fairly balanced as a weapon.
This card is well done, good job FFG. If you are looking to deal more damage, then this card is what you're looking for. It trades consistency for higher damage, which in some decks will shine and produce numbers upwards of 9-11 damage on some really good rolls. However this comes at a price, if you roll only modified sides without the base die, you will have to spend valuable cards or card effects to reroll dice, and that gives you opponent another action to counter your choice. I think this card will see some play at tournaments, but really shine in decks where the villain can tame this wicked lightsaber.
