Star Wars: Grand Admiral Thrawn – Report to the Bridge
Today let’s talk about the next big bad that NEEDS to be in Star Wars: X-Wing/Armada – Grand Admiral Thrawn.
Hey BoLS Readers, AdamHarry back with some more Star Wars goodness. Today I want to look into the the future of a galaxy far, far away from a long time ago. With the introduction of the new Emperor card for X-Wing it’s only a matter of time before Palpatine shows up in Armada. So down the road – who is the next big threat to the Rebels? Grand Admiral Thrawn, that’s who! He’s the only non-human in the service of the Empire to become a Grand Admiral.
Thrawn started his career as a Chiss officer who believed in the power of a good pre-emptive attack. This was counter to what Chiss society believed and eventually he was exiled for his actions. He was discovered by Imperial Officer Voss Parck and was brought to Emperor Palaptine. The Emperor was already familiar with Thrawn and his tactical acumen because of a previous encounter with Darth Sidious. This led to admission to the Imperial Navy and paved the way for his meteoric rise through the ranks to become the thirteenth Grand Admiral.
If you talk to just about anyone who read the Thrawn Trilogy they will probably tell you how good Thrawn is at being a boss. He is a very popular character and he even had command of a Victory-Class Star Destroyer, the Chimaera, during his career. He has the history and Fantasy Flight Games has already released a ton of ships from the EU – so why stop now? Thrawn would be a great addition to Armada as a unique character card upgrade along with a new ship title card for the Imperials. For X-Wing he should totally take up a passenger slot (Thrawn is an Admiral not a fighter-pilot after all) and should probably have a very impressive ability.
As an arm chair game designer if I had to come up with some type of ability in game for Thrawn it would have to be something that showcases his tactical prowess. He is the master of studying his enemies and designing a strategy that uses their own strengths against them. Thrawn would be flexible and able to adapt to whatever he was up against. He wouldn’t just add an extra attack die or allow you a re-roll – his ability would be more strategic than that, something not left to chance and it would be flexible. I don’t know exactly what that would be. But it would need to be something that would live up to the name of Thrawn and one of Star Wars fan favorites.
What do you think? Would he grant an extra move in X-Wing or re-allocate stress? Maybe he would grant extra command tokens in Armada? Or maybe Thrawn could have a set of generic useful abilities that he could pick at the start of the game after he sees the opposing squadron list. If you got to write Thrawn’s card what would he do and for which game system? Let us know in the comments below! AdamHarry, OUT!
