Talk:Emperor Palpatine/@comment-26068736-20151124204252/@comment-73.11.36.66-20151126074335

Characterizing Palpatine as a 29 point upgrade because he needs a Lambda to enter the board isn't entirely an accurate way of breaking it down either, though. A cheap Lambda doesn't need upgrades to be "passable," it's a large footprint low PS blocker that can spit 3 red dice attacks if it catches something in arc. Is it a big, fat, slow target? Good, I hope my opponent wastes turns shooting down a 10 hitpoint ship that isn't even a third of my points instead of, say, the Interceptors or Advanceds that I'm running alongside it. All of that AND you get Palpatine's ability on top of things, there aren't very many 29 point investments you can make in X-Wing that are that efficient in terms of raw utility value for your money if you ask me.

Like, I get the point you're making, you can't splash Palpatine literally anywhere, but when you consider that "Shuttle plus a couple of expensive escorts" was already a popular list prior to Palpatine and that swapping Palpatine in for Vader + an upgrade or two works out pointswise, I'm not sure I'd characterize him as "pricy" so much as "a reasonably costed alternate flavor for your shuttle escort lists."