Another TP Tuxedo For Ol’ Dengar

19th November 2024

Barry

3 mins

  I don’t think it’s any secret that Dengar is one of my favourite characters in Star Wars. The Robot Chicken version with Zeb Wells’ high pitched salesman voice just works so well. It just works for me more than the canonical voice.

  I bring this up because the We Don’t Need Their Scum unit pack was released from Shatterpoint and I had to have it. The Dengar model is just cool, with the pose and the little critter locked up in the cage. How to use him in Shatterpoint? No idea. Trying to make a list with the new bounty hunters makes me realise I really don’t appreciate the squad building rules for Shatterpoint, though it makes a lot of commercial sense to sell multiple versions of the same character.

  So for this I wanted to take a look at Dengar’s many iterations throughout the FFG/AMG games and see how he’s evolved over time.

X-Wing Miniatures

   Probably the most popular and hated iteration of the character. Dengar in his Jumpmaster Punishing One felt like an unstoppable killing machine with his revenge shot, especially when he was paired with Manaroo in first edition of X- Wing. Jumpmasters more generally had huge amounts of utility which found true pain in the wolfpack but that’s a bit of a digression.

Dengar remained my go-to-guy in first edition and paired him typically with Fenn Rau because he’s high initiative and Scum generally lacked that past those two.

 Second edition of X-Wing didn’t really see him change ability – though changes to actions through linked actions and a truly horrible dial proves that the Jumpmaster is paying for its first edition sins. Dengar is…fine? With the XWA’s beta-points, he’s a decent combat piece but when it comes to playing the objective he’s not the best piece for that.

Armada 

Armada sees Dengar return in the Punishing One and unlike a lot of the other bounty hunters that also make their appearance in Armada he lacks the Rogue keyword making him somewhat reliant on a squadron command to move him and he also lacks the Counter keyword for an actual revenge shot.

Instead he’s here to buff other squadron counter by one, and he has the Swarm keyword to allow to support re-rolls which gives him a spot in any self-respecting squadron ball or Sloan list. Rosco constantly has Dengar in his Imperial squadron ball and it’s because he’s a solid support piece for a fighter ball.

  Imperial Assault

  Finally feet on the ground! What has Dengar got in store for us? A lot of pain it seems. His base dice output isn’t great but you can fix that with a focus and the ability which absolutely crushes. He has licence to print a surge icon thanks to contempt and then do whatever he wants.

Add 2 damage or add a condition with Punishment which he can trigger repeatedly he can really wreck someone’s day for 7 points which isn’t too shabby. Unfortunately finding a squad builder is harder now that TableTopAdmiral has decided to focus on Legion Shatterpoint, but do yourself a favour and break out the Imperial Assault from storage and have a crack.

Outer Rim

Dengar makes his arrival through the Unfinished Business expansion and brings with him the Punishing One as a ship – if you can snag it before anyone else does. Perhaps it’s best to avoid Dengar since he’s absolutely coming for you – and he doesn’t even need to kill his opponent to trigger his ability. Just win the round of the combat.

  And again adding 2 damage to the opponent and avoiding one himself. This helps him with objectives throughout the game and helps him get more powerful crew and gear.

  Then there is his Personal Goal which is to win a combat against an opponent with 2 fame, so it can be pretty early in the game when Dengar starts hunting down other players.

Round Up

Overall I think we can agree that Dengar is like a lot of background characters in Star Wars - they’re there for all of two seconds and somehow ended up with a backstory and fandom defining him as a badass. Should he be? Dunno… But it does seem to be that he’s a consistently good character to use and should I ever sort myself out to play Shatterpoint he’ll be on the table somehow.

- Barry