So here's my ideas for gundark stats:

Elite only: 8 points

Round base

Creature, brawler

Speed 4

Health 14

Melee attack: yellow red

Defense: black

Native pierce 2

Native evade

Surge for reach and +2 damage

Abilities:

Swipe (special action): choose an adjacent hostile figure and roll 1 yellow die. The figure suffers strain equal to the surge results. Then perform an attack on a different hostile figure.

Hunger (see wampa)

Ideas?

Seems a little under-costed at 8 points. Maybe 10?

Also, please excuse my lack of knowledge (mind you I've only played a dozen games at home), but how can you spend a surge for reach? You can only declare attacks adjacent to you with melee, and after you roll your dice, the reach surge will have no effect since you are in the process of attacking the opponent's figure already.

If you can spend a surge for reach, I'd separate reach and 2 damage, so You would have multiple options with your surges. With a yellow die, you'll be rolling atleast one surge almost every time.

Also, I'd presume that it would be non-sentient.

Sorry for the confusion. The surges should be separate. A surge for reach and a separate surge for +2. I thought a surge for reach would be a different dynamic. The gundark takes a risk attacking a figure two spaces away. You're most likely correct that you need to be able to attack the figure. Just thinking of fun new ways to do stuff. I also agree that 8 is undercosted. 10 seems a bit high. If were to cost it at 10 I might add a green or blue die to the initial attack. Non sentient is also good!!

I don't think you're allowed to target a non-adjacent figure with a melee attack unless you already have reach.

Correct, you cannot perform an attack without a valid target. If you need Reach to attack, you need it during the declare target step at the latest (see Electrostaff).

(Surge for Reach,Cleave could be useful though.)

I do like the idea of that mechanic, though. Maybe as an ability, you could have something like-

Sweep (spends one action)- Gundark gains reach until the end of the turn and may perform an attack. However, unless one surge is spent toward this ability during the attack, cancel all effects of this attack and assign one damage token to Gundark.

Then, for the E Gundark-

Slash (spends one action)- Elite Gundark gains reach until the end of the turn and may perform an attack. However, unless one surge is spent toward this ability during the attack, cancel all effects of this attack. No enemy abilities may be used to cancel a surge spent in this way.

Correct, you cannot perform an attack without a valid target. If you need Reach to attack, you need it during the declare target step at the latest (see Electrostaff).

(Surge for Reach,Cleave could be useful though.)

Right, if the attack gains reach and cleave during the attack, you would be able to cleave something up to to spaces away, even though your target for the attack had to be adjacent. Is that how that would work?

(Surge for Reach,Cleave could be useful though.)

Right, if the attack gains reach and cleave during the attack, you would be able to cleave something up to to spaces away, even though your target for the attack had to be adjacent. Is that how that would work?

That was the fun/crazy idea.

On more careful thought we need to assume that the Reach keyword persists through the "after the attack resolves" abilities. On the other hand, Cleave(s) and Blast do persist through other "after the attack resolves" abilities, so all keywords gained during the attack seem to persist until all effects triggered during the attack have been resolved. Thus also Reach would be usable during Cleave from the same attack. And if there are more than one Cleave ability, Reach would apply to them all.

Thought- some surge abilities offer additional range. So, theoretically, a unit can have to count on getting range with a surge, and could miss if they don't roll what they need.

So, I get that a melee unit does have to be adjacent to their targets unless they have reach- but what if reach was a surge ability for a unit that simply had an ability that allowed them to attempt attacks for units 1-2 spots away?

Maybe something like this:

(Special Action) Sweep: choose a hostile figure two spaces away from you. Perform an attack on that figure. If no surges are rolled on the attack dice, the attack fails.

Then if the attack succeeds you could spend the surges if they were not cancelled. Basically you give the figure conditional reach which is what I was shooting for.

Also I like that the special actions are sweep and swipe.

Why bother making it a melee attack then? Just make it a ranged attack, on a figure within 2 spaces, that uses Green/Red or something.

You missed "and in line of sight". Also, if the target is not adjacent, perform an attack targeting that figure would abort during the declare target step if the attacker does not have Reach. So, you would also need to add Reach. You would also need to define what the attack fails actually does, change to either the attack misses or the attack is cancelled .

In effect the figure would always have to have Reach. The limitation would be the need to spend (or just have?) a surge to not miss .

Why bother making it a melee attack then? Just make it a ranged attack, on a figure within 2 spaces, that uses Green/Red or something.

One reason could be that there are agenda and class cards you can benefit from or use as attachments on deployment cards with the ranged attack type.