"I used to believe that being a good soldier meant doing everything they told you. That's how they engineered us. But we're not droids. We're not programmed. You have to learn to make your own decisions."
     – Captain Rex

Fantasy Flight Games is proud to announce the upcoming release of Desperate Circumstances, the third Force Pack in the Alliances cycle for Star Wars™: The Card Game!

The longer the Galactic Civil War rages, the more fully its battles spread from system to system and planet to planet. Twin ion engines roar through the skies, blaster fire echoes off the hillsides, and galactic citizens everywhere are drawn into the fight—on one side or the other.

As the Alliances cycle continues to explore the different bonds between the game's affiliations—bonds of friendship, duty, and mercenary interest—Desperate Circumstances reaches far from Rebel and Imperial headquarters to follow the recruitment of new forces from the fringes.

Within the Force Pack's sixty new cards (two copies each of five different objective sets), you'll find mysterious dark side witches, daring scouts, a Force-sensitive Lamproid, a new version of the galaxy's deadliest assassin droid, and one very special relic of the Old Republic.

The Lost Commander

The bonds of friendship and loyalty run deep through one of the objective sets in Desperate Circumstances. And it exemplifies much of the Alliances cycle's approach to the light side affiliations by making them stronger as they join together against the dark.

Focused on Captain Rex (Desperate Circumstances, 271-2), The Lost Commander objective set (Desperate Circumstances, 271-1) introduces not just one, but three different effects that gain strength with each affiliation you can count among the cards you control.

First of all, we have Captain Rex, who starts strong as a Rebel Leader with three force icons, three health, Edge (1), a black blast damage icon, and an edge-enabled unit damage icon. Rex's Edge (1) is always valuable, as it helps change the nature of each edge battle he enters as an attacker. But it's his Reaction ability that defines Rex's presence in the game; whenever he strikes, he gains a number of different combat icons equal to the number of different affiliations among the cards you control.

Given that you'll always spot at least one affiliation—on Rex himself—and should easily be able to spot at least two affiliations if your affiliation card and objective sets are balanced appropriately, Rex should have no trouble gaining two icons of your choice. And while they have to be different, (meaning you can't just choose two black tactics icons), black icons and the white, edge-enabled icons are different. So if you win the edge battle, Rex could strike with as many as three blast damage or three unit damage. Or he could gain a white tactics and black tactics to shut down two enemy units.

And then, if you have The Lost Commander in play, along with an attachment that you can focus with two focus tokens, you can refresh Rex and have him ready at the beginning of your opponent's combat phase to serve as a defender.

Since Rex wants enhancements to focus for The Lost Commander, his objective set provides two of them—both of which have multiple uses in any deck built around the old Captain. Republic Supply Cache (Desperate Circumstances, 271-4) provides a valuable resource, but the card draw it provides is arguably even more valuable. And like Captain Rex, the Cache grows stronger for each affiliation you control. The set's copy of Necessary Alliances (Desperate Circumstances, 271-5), meanwhile, provides another resource and pairs it with Influence to help you play cards from other affiliations, even if you don't have their resources represented among your objectives.

The set's single copy of Battlefield Engineers (Desperate Circumstances, 271-3) can help you get more value from each of these enhancements, but it also hints at possible combinations with the Mission Briefing objective set (Core Set, 9-1), which comes with another Battlefield Engineers, more card draw, and the often-overlooked Heavy Blaster Emplacement enhancement (Core Set, 9-5).

Finally, since the whole objective set rewards you for combining cards from multiple affiliations, you should have little difficulty making good use of the set's final card, Allies of Necessity (Desperate Circumstances, 271-6). And as the reigning World Champion previously noted, this is a fate card that begs for serious exploration.

A Time for Desperate Measures

There was previously little chance that, in Star Wars: The Card Game, you'd ever face a deck utilizing three different factions, but the times are changing. As both sides continue to call for reinforcements, traveling to the Outer Rim, posting bounties, and recruiting relics of the Old Republic, Captain Rex and his objective set begin to make the impossible feel likely.

And the dark side gains new options in the Force Pack, too. IG-88 looks to claim new bounties, and the Nightsisters of Dathomir return in strength.

Which affiliations will you bring together? What will be the bonds that unite them—friendship, loyalty, honor, and courage—or fear and greed?

Desperate Circumstances (SWC39) is scheduled to arrive at retailers in the third quarter of 2017!