Analyzing the Core Set - Sith - Fall of the Jedi

So going to jump to the Dark Side for a bit and review the Sith Objective Sets.  Light Side was getting boring no?

So Sith, the strongest faction out of the gate in the Core set in my opinion.  What makes them the best? Their simplicity.  Sith are about one thing: Killing and locking down your units, To supplement this, they also have some of the best card draw/deck manipulation in the game.  They are extremely efficient at both and can constantly put you in a bind.  A lot of people would argue they are kind of slow, which I think is total BS.  Espos really help them with this.  Even the Rebel vehicle blitz deck cant stand up to a few cheap guys supplemented by espos turn 1, especially if one of them is the Royal Guard.  To top it off they have really good force icon values, so good luck winning edge battles against them.

Onto the sets...

Objective Set 19 - Fall of the Jedi

Objective:
The first instance of the DS being able to quickly manipulate their deck to find the cards they need.  Standard 5/1 stats and the react basically means that even if you only play 1-2 cards a turn you can still see 3-4 new cards using this and the rulebook effect to pitch stuff.  While this ability is not all that strong on its own, it will mean when you need something, you can find it in a turn or two.  It also means that playing one guy and having no battles occur will not stymie your hand.  Really great for finding characters and those Sith events when you need them.

Darth Vader
The big man himself.  5 for 4(!) capacity, 2 combat icons, a blast icon, and an edge blast icon is one hell of a stat line.  Combine this with Elite, 4 force icons, and his react and this guys is a real beatstick.  The React is soooo annoying, compounding how powerful the Sith events already are. Important to mention that his react can target non-characters so you can do silly tricks to kill off those pesky Y-Wings with it.  Very commonly, you will play him, abuse his react while he holds down the force struggle and use him as a fat defender until you have broken the LS and are forcing the game end. Very strong character thats not easily removed.

Sith Apprentice
Gee, where have I seen this stat line before?  Pretty boring overall, but gives you a nice 2 cost guy that can attack or defend relatively well.

Vader's Lightsaber
One of the few Sith Enhancements.  So let me get this straight - makes Vader able to kill any LS unit except the Redemption? Check.  Compounds the killy power of Sith by keeping you down once they have a grip of the game when on Vader? Check. Costs only 1 resource? Check.  Has 2 force icons? Check.  Yea ok... Sith are terrible /sarcasm.  While not a great card in and of itself, on Vader it makes him one of the scariest units in the game, as if he wasn't bad enough.

Force Choke
Nice, an event so good they had to limit you to 1 per turn so Vader couldnt wipe out the LS board the minute he hit the table. Doing 1 point of damage may seem pretty unexciting until you realize most characters have between 1 and 3 hit points.  So at worst, you kill a weenie or finish off a medium/large unit.  At best you combo this with a 2 dmg strike to kill something fat.  Clearly better when Vader is on the table since you can kill a single 2 capacity guy or two 1 capacity guys (hurr card advantage). Also really good for poking protect characters so they cant protect anymore or removing those annoying shield tokens.  Its limited to characters only which is kind of annoying, but not necessarily enemy characters.  So Y-Wings beware, Vader will choke his own men (or himself!) to kill you if hes desperate.

Heat of Battle
Duplicated on both sides.  Except this one is better because DS has a whole theme about killing LS units.  See above. Weee I kill your guys before the battle even starts.  I guess I win when that happens right? Also helps you win edge in the off chance the LS isnt wiped out. Yay for duality!

As a Whole:
So in case you missed it, Sith have a theme of killing LS characters =P.  And they are extremely good at it.  This set is pretty much mandatory if you are going straight Sith, and can be ok as a splash.  Really no dead cards here, closest one is Vader's Saber and even that will pain train enough LS guys its worth having.  Obviously. the whole set gets better the more Sith cards you play and can only get stronger as more cards are released.  The LS has a hard time winning the game when they have no units /shockedface.