Description
As with the first two sets, Twilight of the Republic will feature a 2-player Starter Kit containing two ready-to-play decks. Both decks are built around the leaders Ahsoka Tano (Twilight of the Republic, 11) and General Grievous (Twilight of the Republic, 15). These two sworn enemies obviously bring their share of new features. So what will you find in these two decks?
Let's start with Ahsoka Tano. This breathtaking Padawan jumps into the fray with a deck pre-built around the Aggression and Command affinities. Her style of play highlights a brand-new game mechanic from Twilight of the Republic: the Coordination keyword. This keyword grants a card an ability that can only be activated if you control a minimum of three units (a mix of ground and/or space units). In Ahsoka's case, as long as you control at least three units, her Leader side gains an action ability that allows you to attack with a unit, giving it a power bonus. When you deploy Ahsoka as a unit, she gains a different Coordination ability that grants her a +2 power bonus. Since she has become a unit, Ahsoka is one of the three units required to activate the Coordination keyword, so you could surprise your opponent with just two other friendly units in play.
Speaking of friendly units, to activate Ahsoka's Coordination ability as soon as possible, you'll almost certainly want to fill your arenas with inexpensive units. The Foot Soldier of the 332nd (Republic Twilight, 240) is just the unit you need. What's more, it has its own Coordination ability that will boost its stats as soon as you have other units in play. The same goes for the Coruscant Guard (Republic Twilight,106), an inexpensive unit that's formidable at the start of the game and will gain Ambush as soon as you've set up enough units. Once you're ready to deploy Ahsoka, you can team her up with her mentor Anakin Skywalker (Republic Twilight, 147) and watch them wreak havoc with their respective Coordination abilities and another friendly little unit at their side!
Playing units one by one is great, but playing Captain Rex (Twilight of the Republic, 97) is even better! Thanks to his ability to create two Clone Soldier tokens (Twilight of the Republic, T02), you'll instantly have three units! This is our first encounter with a “Unit Token”, which works exactly like a normal unit in most cases. The only difference is that when your Unit token is eliminated or returned to your hand, you remove it from the game, as is already the case with Shield and Experience tokens. With units like Rex allowing you to create Unit tokens on the fly, you can easily activate Coordination abilities and repel opposing troops with the power of your clone army!
Of course, the Republic isn't the only faction with large armies under its command. On the Separatist side, we have General Grievous. This commander of Droid armies is accompanied by a Command/Ruse deck that revolves around Droid units. Grievous' ability, present on both sides of his Leader card, allows him to give Sentinel to a Droid unit for the current phase, and even increase the power of that Droid when it's a Leader unit. This works wonders with a unit like General's Protector (Republic Twilight, 83), which lets you create a Combat Droid token (Republic Twilight, T01) every time it's attacked. These Combat Droids can also be granted Sentinel and have the Separatist trait, meaning that units such as the Separatist Commando (Republic Twilight, 180) will always be at the top of their game.
That said, it's possible to use Combat Droid tokens in another way by using the second new keyword in Twilight of the Republic: Valorization. This keyword allows you to eliminate units you control in order to play other units, such as the Tank Hailfire (Republic Dusk, 233), at a reduced cost; in fact, each unit eliminated in this way reduces the cost of a unit with the Valor keyword by 2. The Tank Hailfire will allow you to eliminate up to 2 units, but other units will allow you to eliminate even more! Having plenty of inexpensive, expendable units (like Combat Droid tokens) will open up countless strategies when building your deck. For example, you could play a Combat Droid Escort (Republic Twilight, 229) which creates a Combat Droid token when played, but also when eliminated. In concrete terms, you pay 3 resources to play the Escort and create a token, then on a subsequent turn you eliminate them to play the Tank Hailfire, paying just 4 resources thanks to its Valor keyword. And as a bonus, eliminating the Escort earns you another Combat Droid token, always useful for your army.
