Tamtel Skreej
The next time you watch Return of the Jedi, watch for Tamtel Skreej. He's the guy in Jabba's palace who looks suspiciously like Lando, but apparently belongs to some species that sees through its facial hair. My evidence is that when we get our first close-up on Tamtel's face, he pulls his visor/facemask thing down a little, apparently just to let his mustache look around. I know they needed to make sure we understood that this was Lando, but I defy you to explain the character's motivation in the moment for this bit of exposition.
In the miniatures game, Tamtel Skreej represents another piece of evidence that Wizards of the Coast wants you to use exactly one version of Lando, and that version is the Hero of Tanaab. After the dramatic upgrade between the original Rebel Storm Lando and the HoT version, I was wondering what strange new direction they'd take the character in his third incarnation for the game. As it turns out, they took him in the Melee Attack direction, which was a suboptimal choice.
To be fair, they didn't just tack Melee Attack on the Hero of Tanaab and try to charge you the same number of points for him. They also lowered his Attack and Hit Points and took away his Mobile Attack and Commander Effect. And, technically (if you want to be extra super fair), they also increased his Damage and added Stealth and Cleave.
I'm oversimplifying, of course. Tamtel is a 23-point piece that can theoretically do 90 points of damage in a single activation (Double Attack with Opportunist, and Cleave to get a third attack in against another target). Unfortunately, that's not going to happen all that often, as Skreej suffers from the eternal melee problem of getting to the fight alive.
To help with this, he has Stealth. In the competitive game, Stealth, in and of itself, just means that most scrubs can't shoot you, because most of the real shooters have Accurate Shot (one of the primary indicators that they're a real shooter, in fact). What Stealth does for you is allow you to be enhanced by the Stealth-enhancing Commander Effects. Specifically, either of the two Vigos or Nom Anor will improve Tamtel's survivability dramatically, and he probably shouldn't be used without one.
Okay, so we know how to make him survive. How do we make him deal his impressive (if purely theoretical) damage? This is tricky, because Double Attack and Opportunist on a melee piece mean that you sort of need the enemy to walk up to your unactivated Tamtel, and most opponents are not this accommodating. You can walk up to them, but then you'll only get the one attack (or possibly two with Cleave). You can base them at the end of the round, then attack next round, but Opportunist means that you want the enemy piece to activate before you attack it. Hmmm.
When trying to solve a transportation problem in Star Wars Miniatures, your answers are pretty much always R2-D2, Astromech Droid and Grand Admiral Thrawn. Either one of these can transport Tamtel where he needs to go to hurt people, but both of them are in factions with far more powerful melee beatsticks. Probably the best that can be said for Tamtel is that he's a reasonable backup melee combatant, especially for the Empire. Since almost all of the Empire's melee powerhouses are versions of the same fallen Jedi knight, it can difficult to get a couple of melee characters together for them. Think of Tamtel Skreej as a Dark Side Marauder that trades some hit points for better damage potential and Stealth. It's not much, but I told you that the Hero of Tanaab version was better right at the beginning.
Overall rating in 100: 2
Overall rating in 200: 2
In the miniatures game, Tamtel Skreej represents another piece of evidence that Wizards of the Coast wants you to use exactly one version of Lando, and that version is the Hero of Tanaab. After the dramatic upgrade between the original Rebel Storm Lando and the HoT version, I was wondering what strange new direction they'd take the character in his third incarnation for the game. As it turns out, they took him in the Melee Attack direction, which was a suboptimal choice.
To be fair, they didn't just tack Melee Attack on the Hero of Tanaab and try to charge you the same number of points for him. They also lowered his Attack and Hit Points and took away his Mobile Attack and Commander Effect. And, technically (if you want to be extra super fair), they also increased his Damage and added Stealth and Cleave.
I'm oversimplifying, of course. Tamtel is a 23-point piece that can theoretically do 90 points of damage in a single activation (Double Attack with Opportunist, and Cleave to get a third attack in against another target). Unfortunately, that's not going to happen all that often, as Skreej suffers from the eternal melee problem of getting to the fight alive.
To help with this, he has Stealth. In the competitive game, Stealth, in and of itself, just means that most scrubs can't shoot you, because most of the real shooters have Accurate Shot (one of the primary indicators that they're a real shooter, in fact). What Stealth does for you is allow you to be enhanced by the Stealth-enhancing Commander Effects. Specifically, either of the two Vigos or Nom Anor will improve Tamtel's survivability dramatically, and he probably shouldn't be used without one.
Okay, so we know how to make him survive. How do we make him deal his impressive (if purely theoretical) damage? This is tricky, because Double Attack and Opportunist on a melee piece mean that you sort of need the enemy to walk up to your unactivated Tamtel, and most opponents are not this accommodating. You can walk up to them, but then you'll only get the one attack (or possibly two with Cleave). You can base them at the end of the round, then attack next round, but Opportunist means that you want the enemy piece to activate before you attack it. Hmmm.
When trying to solve a transportation problem in Star Wars Miniatures, your answers are pretty much always R2-D2, Astromech Droid and Grand Admiral Thrawn. Either one of these can transport Tamtel where he needs to go to hurt people, but both of them are in factions with far more powerful melee beatsticks. Probably the best that can be said for Tamtel is that he's a reasonable backup melee combatant, especially for the Empire. Since almost all of the Empire's melee powerhouses are versions of the same fallen Jedi knight, it can difficult to get a couple of melee characters together for them. Think of Tamtel Skreej as a Dark Side Marauder that trades some hit points for better damage potential and Stealth. It's not much, but I told you that the Hero of Tanaab version was better right at the beginning.
Overall rating in 100: 2
Overall rating in 200: 2
Labels: Bounty Hunters, Fringe, SWM review
posted by Ten-Eyed Man at 3:41 PM
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