Star Wars X-Wing: The Separatists Gain Deadly New Abilities In 'Servants of Strife' Preview

Fantasy Flight Games is getting ready to release a new pack for Star Wars X-Wing, and now we have a preview of the Separatists upgrade cards you'll find in the Servants of Strife Squadron Pack.

The new pack will include a Belbullab-22 Starfighter and two Vulture-class Droid Fighters, as well as a host of new ship and upgrade cards. The new Power and Profit preview from Fantasy Flight breaks down some of those new upgrade cards, which there will be 48 of in the pack. Not all of these are new but there will be exclusive cards to the pack that have not been seen in the game before.

The first upgrade to take a look at is Treacherous, which allows you to choose a ship obstructing an attack towards you while defending. If you do you get to cancel some damage and the ship you choose also gains 1 strain. As the preview reveals, the best case scenario would be to chose one of your opponent's ships, but you can also sacrifice one of your own to save another ship if the opportunity presents itself.

The target ship can also hide behind gas clouds now (in addition to debris and asteroids), so they are not completely out of luck.

Players also gain new Tactical Relay upgrades, which are given a solitary restriction. These are quite useful, so only one of each upgrade type can be used on the field of battle. Cards like Kraken allow you to keep some of your other ships from removing calculate tokens, while Energy-Shell Charges become even more useful in conjunction with it.

Another Solitary upgrade is TV-94, which allows a friendly attacking ship to spend a calculate token to add another attack result to the equation.

You'll also get the Soulless One Ship card for the Belbullab-22, which allows the defending ship to reroll a defense die if the attacker is outside of your firing arc. This card can be used by any pilot, though it does go well with General Grievous' other abilities.

You can pre-order the set right here, and it hits stores in the first quarter of this year. The official description can be found below.

"War! The Separatist Alliance has driven a spike into the heart of the galaxy, splintering the once-unified worlds with chaos, tyranny, and fear. At the heart of this offensive is the dastardly General Grievous, commanding endless legions of droid fighters.

Swarms of networked Vulture-class fighters commanded by tactical droids strike at innocent worlds, forcing the Republic on the defensive. All the while, Grievous slinks through the shadows in his customized Belbullab-22 Starfighter; hunting the Jedi at every turn.

This Squadron Pack contains everything you need to add one Belbullab-22 Starfighter and two Vulture-class Droid Fighter ships to your games of X-Wing, including new ship and upgrade cards, three maneuver dials, and an array of tokens."