Description
Flagship of the cruel General Grievous, the Invisible Hand has its own dark reputation. Its presence at the head of the Separatist navy heralds shameless avarice and calculated destruction on a galaxy-shocking scale. But it is not alone. Each Providence-class Dreadnought bristles with heavy armament, shrugs off enemy ordnance with powerful shielding, and leads whole fleets of lesser ships into battle. Carrying countless fighters and battle droids to the front, these dreadnoughts are the soulless heart of the Separatist war machine.
The Invisible Hand Expansion Pack includes everything you need to add 1 Providence-class Dreadnought to your game. including 1 painted plastic ship with base and fin, 2 ship cards, 14 upgrade cards and 13 tokens.
Andrew MacLean-Finney (verified owner) –
The big beast of the CIS *Roger, Roger*
The Unit
The Providence-class follows the CIS pattern of not being focused on either it’s broadside or frontal guns, being fairly evenly split between them. While it’s a shame to miss out on the big dice pool something like, say, an Imperial Star Destroyer brings to the party, when firing out both arcs the total firepower is actually comparable. So you just need to learn to fly it the way it wants to be flown.
The ship’s dice pools give you escalating threat at each range, so really this is a brawling unit that wants to get into the thick of it where it can put all it’s dice and upgrades to work. As a result it really benefits from the Defensive Refit slot offered by the Carrier version, but there are other ways to run it.
Upgrades
The Clone Wars expansions come with 2 commanders each, which is a superb decision as it’s allowing the 2 new factions to achieve a good variety of options already. In this case we have Admiral Trench (blargh) and General Grievous (Yay!). Grievous rewards having a big fist full of generic squadrons, so bear in mind that the Squadron Packs are not generally available right now, so if you see some it’s worth picking up one or two. Until then you’ll probably find 4 Vulture squadrons from the starter isn’t going to be enough to make him useable.
The 12 other upgrade cards included are mostly generally playable, except for Hot Landing with literally has no effect for CIS right now. There some though, such as Point Defence Ion Cannons and Thermal Shields which are going to be showing up everywhere!
Rules note: The Invisible Hand title is a little curious with how it works and it’s effect – a lot of people in the community expect it to be errata’d. Make sure you agree with your opponent a shared understanding of what it does before you start.
The Model
I rather like the Invisible hand, it’s chunky and looks intimidating, and the paint job has turned out nicely with good shading and nicely accentuated details – take a look at the lights painted onto the raised bridge.
Conclusion
Your Commander deserves better than to be stuck on some Munificent, hoping the enemy doesn’t decide to turn him into a bug on their wind-shield. He deserves to be on the Invisible Hand