Back in January, my colleague Jayson wrote an excellent article about leader design in SWU. If you haven’t read it already, I highly recommend taking a few minutes to do so! To recap, he outlined some common traits that good leaders usually have (solid stats, useful leader sides, resource cheating) and ones that not so good leaders often have (bad stats, slow and conditional leader sides, trait dependency). Looking at the current crop of leaders on our Meta Snapshot, it’s hard to disagree with his analysis. The decks that rise to the top are consistently ones that meet his criteria. So how are the Secrets of Power leaders stacking up?

Two notes before we start: First, this is only examining premiere constructed format playability. Some of the leaders below might end up being great in draft/sealed, but that’s not our focus today. Second, this calculus may change after the release of set 7 and SWU’s first rotation. So, if you’re from The Future, take this all with a grain of salt.

[If you missed Part 1 – go check it out!]

Jabba the Hutt

Jabba has an underpowered and conditional leader side with an enticing and interesting unit side. On the former, costing a resource and an action to trigger is already not great, but adding the self-damage requirement pushes this into niche-use territory. It pains me that the requirement for the bonus is 3 damage, because a whole host of self-damaging cards, like the newly reprinted, Death Trooper do 2. Adding small, additional requirements to put bonuses out of reach is one of the themes of this set and Jabba exemplifies it… However, his unit side is better. The clap-back ability has no damage limit, so large Ambush units could attack and get a 2 or even 3-for-1. There’s also synergy with his high health and upgrades. How will these two sides balance out? Probably with Jabba just outside the meta.

Overall Outlook: Weighed down by a poor leader side

Lama Su

Lama Su has interesting and useful abilities on both her leader and unit side. Resource cheating has consistently been one of the most powerful leader effects in the game- even if this is for upgrades (which suffer hate more than other card types.) The one damage can also be an upside for the numerous Grit units available in villain blue. Where this leader suffers is on stats. 10 stats for a 6 deploy leader is simply not enough. Lama’s ability is roughly in line with other leaders at her cost point so there’s no reason for her body to be so undersized. Remember that Han1 gets these stats and he comes out on 5.

Overall Outlook: Understatted and uncompetitive

Dryden Vos

While at first glance Dryden has an ability that costs and low stats relative to his deploy, there’s a lot going on under the hood that makes up for it. For starters, there are great low-cost units that do not have Ambush and would love to get it- top of the list, Rukh. Dryden’s ability to enable the Vader/ambush combo on his unit side is also hottness. But there are other layers of synergy. Discarding any card from hand allows Dryden to fuel Anakin and we can recur those hero cards at cost with Palpatine’s Return. So, while Dryden has an ability that ostensibly costs the equivalent of a resource, it’s not literally a resource, which means you can still play units on curve. AND those discards fuel other synergies!

Overall Outlook: Fun and synergistic- potentially competitive

Bail Organa

Bail is the most interesting leader in the set. Since his deploy is not epic, he can come back turn after turn as a ready 3/3 dragging whatever Plot cards he wants with him- and there are solid options: Naboo Royal Starship, Unveiled Might, Sudden Ferocity. He also synergizes with Smuggle cards. Beyond that, he can leverage the leader-focused bases from Twilight, namely Shadow Collective Camp. His ability to discard anything from hand can also enable Anakin.

Overall, what I’ve experienced trying to deckbuild with Bail is tension between these various synergies. Because we can’t run both Anakin and Shadow Collective Camp, we have to choose. If we go the red route, we have a leader and base that will reward us for prolonging the game and generating extra value, but we’re in a color combination that has no quality removal to allow us to do that. If we go blue, we get all the removal, but lose the card draw engine that enables repeated deploys in the red version. I don’t believe aggro is the route to go because then we’re in direct competition with Sabine- a battle many decks have lost. I’m just not sure where to use Bail.

Overall Outlook: A cool leader lacking an archetype

Governor Pryce

Pryce’s leader side has some appeal. Readying a token unit, particularly one with a large upgrade (like a pilot) could deliver real value. However, when you start looking at the available token generation options and the upgrades you could put on them, the dream fades. Waking up, we have to face the harsh reality that the leader side is chronically understatted. Again, 10 stats for a 6 deploy leader is simply not competitive. I’m also baffled as to why the tokens needed to be ready to trigger her bonus. These small nerfs by the designers doomed a lot of Secrets cards to unplayability before they ever hit the table.

Overall Outlook: Unique effect – underpowered execution

Cassian Andor

Full disclosure: I have not played any games with Cassian yet. But I am worried by the level of un-interact-ability here. The designers keep saying that they want games to be full of units attacking one another on the board… so why do we have a leader who actively transgresses that? Say Cassian has two units on the table and opens his turn with Rebel Assault. Those units now can’t be attacked. The only thing that determines if you’ll win the game is what removal options you’re holding in your hand. And if Cassian manages to deploy, the sequence gets even more punishing. Cassian deploys, brings out Cinta, attacks, and then can immediately claim, making himself un-killable. The next turn a pump closes the game. I don’t know if this will turn out to be meta or not, but I doubt it will be fun to play against.

Overall Outlook: Scary

Sabé

Sabé has a unique ability that doesn’t require a resource. Good! However, two things give me pause. First, the ability does nothing to affect the board. You can monkey around with your opponent’s deck all you want, that doesn’t help you actually get ahead. Second, the ability is not optional. So, if you do see two awful cards on top you are obligated to replace one of them with a better card. On her unit side, the effect is better, but stats are middling. I’m just not sure this adds up to anything effective.

Overall Outlook: Annoying, but not good

DJ

DJ has two yellow icons! Now this is something different. There’s a lot of cool combos to pull with this guy: using Lando for a quick capture/rescue combo; releasing the hounds; impounding a stolen speeder for 0. However, does it all make up for losing hero/villain and having bad stats? After some initial builds, I’m not sure that it does.

Overall Outlook: All smoke, no fire

Leia Organa

Would you like a worse version of Snoke? That might be ok in draft, but it’s not going to cut it in constructed. Read the ability again. You have to reveal a card that shares no aspects with the card you want to buff. That means to buff a Heroism/Vigilance unit you’d have to reveal a mono-symbol card of another color. Since most constructed hero decks stock mostly cards with hero symbols on them, that means she’s completely premiere unplayable.

Overall Outlook: 100% draft-only

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That’s all of our leaders for Secrets of Power! Not a fantastic crop, but with enough standouts to keep us on pace versus other sets. Previous ones have averaged around three meta-playable leaders. If I had to pick those three out of the Secrets class, it’d be Chancellor Palp, Dryden Vos, and Colonel Yularen. Villain green just has a lot to recommend it. Meanwhile I’m holding space for Mon Mothma, Bail and Padme.

Thanks for reading, time to go test!