Useless Card Reveiw #3: Skyhoppers
Hello. This is the third edition of my Useless Card Review Series of articles. In these, I will take a card that is considered useless and show how it can be quite useful. If anyone has any requests, please e-mail me at gveers@hotmail.com.
The card today is a card that used to be bad, but is now quite useful, Incom T-16 Skyhopper. Luke's T-16 Skyhopper can be useful too. These little things can be quite annoying to your opponent. These are only power 1, and they can't have another pilot (excluding Luke's), so naturally, you don't want to get in a straight fight with these. Their two endearing qualities are their manuever of 5 and their shuttle capability.
When these little things came out in A New Hope and the Jedi Pack, they were immediatly ignored. A power one vehicle, with 1 seat and not much else wasn't needed at the time and saving one force when shuttling wans't worth a card slot. Through Dagobah, these things were mostly worthless, but in Cloud City, they started to shine. Shuttle vehicles can be used in the clouds and on the ground. Now you have another choice instead of Cloud Cars. Also, when Clouds increase the cost of shuttling. When you need to get someone to ground from orbit through 3 clouds, it costs 4 force! With this, you can double your force investment on the first turn!
In the clouds, these things take on even more value. With a maneuver of 5, these things can outmaneuver anything else in the clouds (except the Falcon or Red 5). Starfighters have to take a power and maneuver drain as soon as they hit the ionized gas of an athmosphere. TIEs, X-wings and Y-wings are generally terrible in the clouds. They simply aren't designed for athmospheric maneuvering. Anyone in a cloud deck is going to expect a lot of sitting ducks as opposition. Not so with Skyhoppers. Ever tried shooting down something maneuver 5 in a medium-destiny deck? I rest my case.
Think about these situations:
- You have a bit of a presence out on some forgotten world thanks to the diamond sites and 3 clouds.
- You deploy a few Skyhoppers to move people from your fleet to the ground or vice-versa. When all your forces are down, you can move someone to anywhere on the planet for 1 force.
- You deploy a 1 Skyhopper to get rid of a few TIEs draining you at a cloud sector (Power0 + Maneuver1 = Sitting Ducks). A Skyhopper can outgun and outmaneuver Defenders, Bombers, Fighters, Avengers, and almost anything else you can throw at it.
- You deploy 1 Skyhopper per cloud sector to have a great force drain, perhaps backed up with some Tibanna Gas Miners? It will take the Hounds Tooth, Jabba's Space Cruiser, or a heavily upgraded Starship to get you out.
- Great for force-draining on the ground in a space deck.
What do you think? There are no grand strategies to use Skyhoppers, but that can also be a benifit. Lots of low-cost strategies require you to base your deck or a good part of your deck around the one idea. Skyhoppers can be thrown in to help with space, ground, or clouds. Talk about versitile!
From now on, when you think you will play against a cloud deck, consider adding in some Skyhoppers. Even if your theory was wrong, you can still use them for other things. Try it and tell me what you think. Thank you for reading. See you next time.
Incom T-16 Skyhoppers are sold by Star Cards R Us for $0.05 each.
