There seems to be general agreement that a Chewbacca unit is all but inevitable, probably coming sooner than later, and most likey as the Rebel’s first operative.

I’m curious: What would folks like to see as his abilities?

And what kind of new upgrade cards might be bring to the table?

Personally, I’m wondering at the chances of something that might be called, say, an “Expert Pilot” ability that would allow him to “use” any single vehicle in inventory. So, yeah, in other words an ability that gives the Rebels use of an AT-ST (and any other cool toys on the Imperial side that will most surely be coming eventually as well.)

A few ways that could be gamed come to mind. For example, would rebel players be interested in spending, say 80-points (or whatever) on a Chewie card (or perhaps a pilot upgrade, like card like Weiss or Wedge) that then gives them access to spending face value for an AT-ST for their list building? Or perhaps, instead, some kind of “commandeer” function that allows him take over an enemy vehicle mid-battle, a la ROTJ?

Also, some kind of “repair” ability seems like a logical fit for Chewie, to fix wounded vehicles and, eventually, droids.

Anyway, curious what you’d like to see in Chewie’s big bag of tricks.

Entourage: Han Solo while building an army, ignore the rank of 1 Han Solo unit. During the command phase if you issue an order to Han or Chewie, issue an additional Order to Han or Chewie if they are in range 1-2 of each other

Basically Having Chewie allows you to have 3 Commanders on the board, and if Han gets an order give an order to Chewie or vice versa

I think he might have some kind of repair ability and a life debt ability

I say Chewies card will be....

Hp-8

Courage 3

Def-white

Spd-2 (or 1)

Surge- crit and shield

Melee- 3 red 1 black

Bow caster- 1 red 2 black, pierce, impact 1

Charge or relentless maybe?

Life Debt: After setup, place a victory token on one friendly commander or operative. If that unit is destroyed, the victory token is removed. At the end of the game, if that unit has a victory token, gain that token.

Alongside that, I’d probably give him Guardian 2. And his command cards could be a bit more defensive.

Definitely going to have a repair ability.

Whether its heal a vehicle or negate the Damaged result is up to debate though.

Which while on one hand is amazing, rebels are gonna need some actually GOOD vehicles to bother with first.

Thats pretty good! Opposite of bounty! I like it alot!

5 hours ago, WAC47 said:

Life Debt: After setup, place a victory token on one friendly commander or operative. If that unit is destroyed, the victory token is removed. At the end of the game, if that unit has a victory token, gain that token.

Alongside that, I’d probably give him Guardian 2. And his command cards could be a bit more defensive.

I love that Life Debt idea! Hope we see something like it.

A more defensive design seems fitting. I imagine he'd have a red defense die. Probably without the surge? And will come with the Anger upgrade we saw in the Palpatine preview.

I would also guess Rebels will get another source of Impact from his bowcaster.

Maybe....

Bowcaster- 1 red, 2 black, pierce, impact 2?

Command card wise....

1 pip

Rip his arms off!

Chewbacca

Chewie gets charge and may attack twice this turn. After a melee attack he may take free move action. Add 1 red and black dice to each melee attack and immobilize 1.

2 pip

?

3 pip

Laugh it up fuzzball!

Chewbacca and 2 vehicles

A vehicle within range 1-2 of chewbacca when issued a face up order may repair 2 wounds.

4 hours ago, nashjaee said:

I love that Life Debt idea! Hope we see something like it.

A more defensive design seems fitting. I imagine he'd have a red defense die. Probably without the surge? And will come with the Anger upgrade we saw in the Palpatine preview.

I would also guess Rebels will get another source of Impact from his bowcaster.

Anger is a dark side force power; it seems more likely he will have Boba’s upgrades (hunter).

Impact would be good. Maybe pierce 1, impact 1, range 1-3.

Hard to say what his command cards will be.

1 hour ago, Orkimedes said:

Anger is a dark side force power; it seems more likely he will have Boba’s upgrades (hunter).

Ah, you’re right! Forgot it was a force power.

I am okay with the idea of Chewie allowing Rebels to take an Imperial vehicle in the Rebel list. Too OP to takeover an opponent's vehicle during the game.

A command card that denies your opponent to give one of his vehicles a command token. I predict other command cards to enhance Chewie or a nearby unit, maybe give a unit relentless for an activation.

Any Ability to commandeer an opponents vehicle is totally op, and a big NPE. I played the RTS Force Commander, where Rebels actually could do that (also in Empire at War, but there it was only Chewie). And it´ s so not fun.

That said an ability to shoot with an enemy vehicle for one round like it´s your own or something like that, would be okay imo.

8 hours ago, Vode said:

Any Ability to commandeer an opponents vehicle is totally op, and a big NPE. ....

What does "NPE" mean?

Negative Play Experience.

Fancy words usually meaning "I got my face stomped and im sad now" but sometimes its a legitimate complaint.

Also i like that Life Debt idea. That'd be sweet.

The Bowcaster definitely should have Impact2, even if its only a 3die attack. That thing is notoriously deadly for what it looks like. Im not sure what the range should be but it SHOULD hit hard.

51 minutes ago, Albertese said:

What does "NPE" mean?

Negative Play Experience. It gets thrown around a lot to describe very different things, but when used correctly it refers to game mechanics that are very aversive to play against because they take away the opponent’s agency. Another way I’ve heard it described is a game mechanic that makes it so your opponent is not playing the same game you are.

Chewie stealing vehicles is a great example of a pure NPE. Your opponent can basically make it so he or she is playing with an 1000 point list versus your 600 point list... using something YOU brought to the table. It literally takes away the agency you have to control your own units. It’s an absolutely terrible idea from a gameplay and game balance perspective. Save modeling that particular scene to carefully crafted scenario play.

Chewie enabling rebels to bring an imperial vehicle unit is ALSO a terrible idea, but more from a game balance perspective. It constrains the future design space for both factions, because FFG would have to ask “is there some way chewie can break this” of every vehicle they make from now on.

Abilities:

Guardian 2

Low Profile (ironically)

Melee: 4 red

Bowcaster: range 1-3, 3 red, high velocity, pierce 3

Upgrades: Hunter, Duck and Cover, something new.

Command cards:

1) Split Fire: 3 pips, commands only Chewbacca, Chewie can attack up to 3 targets when he uses the attack action. (mimics the bow caster abilities demonstrated in games)

2) Wookie Roar: 2 pips, commands only Chewbacca, when any enemy non commander trooper unit activates within range 2 of Chewbacca, they do not rally and automatically panic. At the end phase, do not remove suppression tokens from those units.

3) Let the Wookie Win: 1 pip, commands only Chewbacca, Chewbacca immediately performs a speed 2 move and attack, and then another speed 2 move and attack. Then flip his command token face down.

Awesome command card ideas!

28 minutes ago, Derrault said:

Bowcaster: range 1-3, 3 red, high velocity, pierce 3

Should cost about 200 points just for this weapon and the command cards. Too much overpowered IMO

46 minutes ago, Derrault said:

Abilities:

Guardian 2

Low Profile (ironically)

Melee: 4 red

Bowcaster: range 1-3, 3 red, high velocity, pierce 3

Upgrades: Hunter, Duck and Cover, something new.

Command cards:

1) Split Fire: 3 pips, commands only Chewbacca, Chewie can attack up to 3 targets when he uses the attack action. (mimics the bow caster abilities demonstrated in games)

2) Wookie Roar: 2 pips, commands only Chewbacca, when any enemy non commander trooper unit activates within range 2 of Chewbacca, they do not rally and automatically panic. At the end phase, do not remove suppression tokens from those units.

3) Let the Wookie Win: 1 pip, commands only Chewbacca, Chewbacca immediately performs a speed 2 move and attack, and then another speed 2 move and attack. Then flip his command token face down.

...uhh, wow. That's a crazy level of Broken. He'd have to be the most expensive model in the game to balance this out. All of those command cards are actively game breaking (3 attacks with a pierce 3, high velocity, weapon at initiative 1, auto panicking, and 3 pip card that's basically faster than Han's 0 because it happens right away). I'm not even positive 200pts is enough for that.

Pierce is an incredibly powerful keyword. It would be awesome if the bow caster just had Pierce 1.

Right now there is no source of pierce beyond range 2 except Veers, and he throws crap for dice.

Just a range 3 pierce 1 weapon with decent dice would be unique and powerful enough by itself to make Chewie worth taking.

2 hours ago, MasterShake2 said:

...uhh, wow. That's a crazy level of Broken. He'd have to be the most expensive model in the game to balance this out. All of those command cards are actively game breaking (3 attacks with a pierce 3, high velocity, weapon at initiative 1, auto panicking, and 3 pip card that's basically faster than Han's 0 because it happens right away). I'm not even positive 200pts is enough for that.

Given that he’s kitted out as an operative, and you’re suffering the opportunity cost of activating any other unit, they should be relatively powerful one offs.

The basic attacks are significantly weaker than say, Vader (6 red dice and can double move and attack) so I can’t agree with that. 3 red dice with pierce 3 is actually less total dice than Han (2 targets for 2 every single round!)

Hmm. FFG seems set on making sure if you choose one faction to play, you don't have to buy the other faction to get the necessary cards, etc. For that reason, I do not see Chewie being able to pilot vehicles, especially those of an opposite faction.

I bet, though, one of his operative command cards will either sabotage or repair vehicles. Good idea!

Chewbacca's 1 Pip Command Card:

"Ripping Arms Out of Sockets:

Choose an enemy commander at range 1. Get out an exacto knife and cut that miniature's arms off.

That enemy commander loses all weapons, and all of its offensive surges now convert to blanks. That enemy commander can now only attack with the following melee weapon:

Off-Bakance Kick: 1 White Die"

Haha now that command card would be broken. Literally...

I dont even think we'd see Chewy temporarily hijack a vehicle, i.e. command card ability to "attack with a target enemy vehicle at R1 as though it were your own. That vehicle counts as already spending an action to perform an Attack when it activates"

Why would i doubt it to happen? Two reasons.

1) If its a problem, it makes people never want to use vehicles out of fear of the walking carpet. Which makes Chewy useless because this would not be a cheap ability even if its a one shot one.
2) Its an ability that only works on optional units an ENEMY uses and unlike ion weapons does literally nothing to non-vehicles, atleast the ion guns shoot red dice.

I like the Life Debt idea and honestly hope thats the idea they go with. It makes sense both on a thematic level and gameplay level, since imps got bounties.

Wow, some great ideas in here! Life Debt would be dope, but really love Entourage. Some killer command card ideas too.

As far as using Imperial vehicles I agree both options certainly have the potential to be OP, but I wonder if that couldn’t be mitigated with some simple game mechanics. For example, WAC, you make an excellent point on the big picture game balance issues if Chewie were to enable one vehicle in Rebel list building, but wouldn’t the added cost off set that?

In other words, if I as a Rebel player want to bring, say, an AT-ST with grenade launcher to the fight, that would cost me 210 points plus (let’s say) 100-points for Chewie. 310 points is an awful lot to spend for that privilege. In effect, Rebels would have to pay about 50% more. Honestly, I’m not sure that would pass the cost/benefit test for me (would really depend on the rest of his skill sets), but it could be a lot of fun. And tho it’s impossible to know what future vehicles will look like in this context, it seems to me the additional cost of Chewie on top of the list price of the vehicle would always provide that game balancing offset.

As for the in-battle commandeer option, I agree it would be game breaking if he could just do that automatically. But wouldn’t some kind of balancing mechanic make that manageable? One way to do that might be that he’s only be able to take over a ground vehicle that’s suffered at least two wounds... and/or require a crit roll while in base-to-base contact to successfully complete the take over and/or suffers one wound for each failed attempt. Other balancing possibilities come to mind, but my point is that it seems very doable. More importantly, I think it would add to the gameplay experience, not take away from it. The far-from-guaranteed *threat* of Chewie steeling a vehicle, I think, would bring a whole new layer of complexity in potential tactics and counter-tactics without “breaking” the game at all.

Plus, from a big picture perspective (pun intended), vehicle stealing/using is such a common device within even just the canon storyline (Chewie commandeering the AT-ST is just one of many examples that come to mind) it seems like a game mechanic we’d want to see included eventually. Again, as long as it’s done smartly.