Okay I want Emperor Palpatine to be my leader. If I can play a guy shooting lighting at people, I do! However, Palpatine is a bit lackluster for me ATM in the card game. His ability is truly fitting for him as a Sith Lord, and I do love me some control, but he just doesn’t quite do what I want him to do. Having to defeat your units in order to ping another unit for 1 damage and draw a card isn’t great in this game. His ultimate goal is to take control of a unit, but I would rather just use Traitorous. Sure, it’s more limited in scope, it can only target units 3 or less whereas Palpatine can take any non-leader unit provided they have been damaged), but it costs far less. Even Vanquish cost less, albeit in a different color and without acquiring the card.

So who did I land on for my leader? Iden Versio! She is an awesome control deck leader, control being my favorite style). What I really like about her though is that her control is aggressive. Take out your enemies and keep your health up! I love being able to attack and/or just defeat my enemy’s units to heal myself. Especially in control, since you have to take damage in order to effectively control. Outside of healing, you have to control very fast in order to beat an aggro deck. However, the only “boardwipe” in this game, Superlaser Blast, cost 8 resources to play. By this time an aggro deck will have killed you or left you in a very vulnerable state. Healing abilities on their own are very lackluster, since the threat that gave you the damage to begin with is still present and ready to dish out their damage again. So having a leader who can remove enemy units (ie. control the board) AND heal at the same time is, as the Merovingian said, “...like wiping your ass with silk, I love it!”

She also comes in with shielded, meaning she has a good chance of staying around, since the shield will prevent damage the first time she would receive it. (for those wondering, the prevention from the shield effect is not optional, even though the wording on shield tokens sort of suggests that it is).  

Here 4 power and 4 HP are on the low end of the middle stat block, but considering her major threat is lower power, low cost but efficient attacks, she should hold her own. (Click here to read more about our exploration in rating cards)All in all she is an amazing leader for control players!