Obi Wan

I utterly refuse to make a "Hello there" joke, considering every fleet made for the first 6 months of the game for him is going to be named as such.  Expect images and gifs from different Ewan McGregor roles throughout this article, because I am determined to be DIFFERENT.

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeere's Obi!

The Card!

How can I sass this opposing fleet to death properly...

Clocking in at 28, just like Bail Organa, our other starter commander makes for an easy swap if you wanted to try one or the other in your starter box games.  If you spend a green redirect, he reduces the damage by 1.  His ability DOES combine with Expert Shield Techs, so watch as your opponent's damage evaporates into thin air (so long as it's 2 or less)!  It can be very frustrating to play against, but the survivability he brings to the table is hard to replicate elsewhere. The issue of course is that as soon as the redirect gets exhausted (Sloane, using it), he's not able to reduce the damage. So you can prevent Maarek from dealing his 2 damage with that expert shield tech redirect! But what about the 3-4 TIE Bombers coming in afterwards? Stressing his tokens is the way to defeat him, and preventing yourself from being stressed is how you win with him.

Why Play Him

Do you want to reduce your opponent's damage repeatedly? He's a defensive admiral (which traditionally have been generally helpful! Mothma, Cracken, Rieekan, and Motti have all had moments where they were good.  Heck, Agate defined the meta when she showed up!  Defense from your admiral combined with offense from your ships is a good combination, resulting in solid lists.  It doesn't look like much, but let's also point out that Obi-Wan Kenobi didn't look like much in Episode IV until that bar in Mos Eisley.

Come on, you gotta give that joke a hand

It's an ability that can scale very well, especially when you add in ships with a Brace or an Evade.  Evade ships can tap and remove/reroll the worst dice, and then you redirect what's left.  A 3 red shot at long range at a Charger won't do anything unless you roll at least 5 damage.  Evading one of the dice kills that, and then redirecting with EST equipped reduces another 2 damage.  4 damage from 3 red dice is a solid roll! It's just GONE now.  It gets even sillier when we add in a Brace token; incoming damage is halved, then EST redirect says 2 of it is gone after that.  X/2-2=the final amount we take.  If X is 8, we take 2.  An ISD-II front arc just did TWO damage to our Brace ship.  Now, the issue of course is that they'll likely want to accuracy your tokens.  But getting 2 accuracies is not as easy in 1.5, so locking both tokens isn't something that will happen often.

With Obi-Wan, you have more ways of reducing incoming damage coming in, and reducing the damage coming in is a good way of staying alive. Try him out a few times, see how much damage he actually saves you.

Once you try him, you won't be roamin'.  Cause it's Black Mask.  He was in Birds of Prey!

Common Ships

This is basically a binary question: does it have a redirect? If it does, that's an Obi-Wan ship.  If it doesn't, he'd rather not use it.  There's just... not much more to say here.  He appreciates those ships if they also have a brace, of course, to halve the damage and then subtract another 1, but he'll take what he can get.  Both the Charger and the Acclamator are good choices for him.

Fleet Building

Take ships with redirects and combine them with Expert Shield Techs.  This does result in 45+5=50 point Chargers before dice modification, but they're relatively self reliant and they do well enough on their own even if he does end up dying.  Take some squadrons, of course, because you are playing GAR.  Add in some ships with a Brace and a Redirect in order to significantly reduce the damage.  The benefit of his defensive style is that it lets you build your fleet however you want to for your best game/playstyle while keeping you alive.

It's gonna seem smart to keep him on something larger and able to take more hits, but when he dies he significantly reduces your ability to prevent damage.  So while you DO want to do that, don't put him on that Acclamator that's diving straight into the fray, basically.  You should be hit in the head for those crazy decisions!

Wookiee the Chew, Wookiee the Chew, silly little fuzzy all ripping off arms and....

Final Thoughts

Obi isn't excessively flashy, but he's really good and a solid building block to start out with. Not bad for a "dangerous, crazy old man!"