After a few games this afternoon, I'm feeling like the straight-up Trooper Swarm might border on the ridiculous:

Call More Dudes!

4x Stormtrooper (24)

1x Elite Stormtrooper (9)

1x Imperial Officer (2)

1x Elite Imperial Officer (5)

Or drop the grey Imperial Officer to take the initiative.

Marksman (x2) and Covering Fire in the command deck

15 models throwing a blue and a green, and generally re-rolling one of those, for an average of 3 hits per model per activation. Even assuming hot defense rolls, that's still 20+ wounds per round. Additionally you get the bonus actions from the Officers, and you have more than enough dudes to swamp any objective.

The only real concerns are Rebel Saboteurs stacking Blast, and keeping your lanes of fire open.

I'm not saying if this would be a fun list to play or not (frankly, I think it would be pretty boring), but in the current meta it feels like it would be crazy effective.

Am I missing something? Is this not as strong as it feels? (It felt pretty strong when it kept bowling over me this afternoon!) Is this really the new TIE Swarm, just waiting for IA's version of Fat Han to take it down?

Rebel Saboteurs, Fenn Signis, AT-ST, and General Weiss all have blast which trooper swarms have to beware of and the Self-Destruct on Probe Droids can also make an incredible mess of trooper masses.

I have no doubt that a Stormtrooper swarm could be devastating against some squads.

But Chewie, Han, Gideon, and 2x Saboteur would pretty much decimate a trooper swarm, I think. It would be really difficult to get damage through on Han with Chewie behind him for protector, and the Sabs (speed 5) would cause some major trouble with blast...plus han and chewie will each drop a stormtrooper each round.

Han/Chewie with jyn have fun with that it's like 60% your getting hit back. What do you do vs vader with a royal guard. Vader still has choke. How about the probe droid swarm which out acts you by two and has more speed than you because of Rgc.

That does count for the Weiss or at-st cannon. Ummm ig-88 canon with royal

You talked about the sabs.

E-web royal guard combo your only gets 1 damage in and that's 50/50.

What about cleave? Your squad needs command cards to work so what about mak picking off a few guys and getting of shadow ops. I get that you can spread your guys out but your squad is not that fast when it comes to missions.

I really think a protect squad that has characters with double dice or +1 block cause you problems. That doesn't account for the area damage listed above.

And last a rebel trooper squad can match you on figures with better support.

You only need around 20 PT in missions and 20 kills to win most games. Your trooper squad is annoying but not sure it beats the gate keeper squads which I think are tank squads with Chewie or royal guards. I could be wrong about what the gate keeper is since pierce can eat right through them.

There might not be a gate keeper since it seems pretty much ever piece is playable in the meta.

I second guest even playing a set of troopers over two probe droids because of the protection builds.

Needs -1 Elite officer and +2 regular officers.

Needs -1 Elite officer and +2 regular officers.

How do you do that?

Needs -1 Elite officer and +2 regular officers.

How do you do that?

You can buy two base box sets, as you can include up to 4 grey cards of the same type in skirmish and up to 2 of the same elite card (not in the campaign, obviously).

Personally, I returned my second box set after opening the first. I am beginning to question this decision as the base box set includes things that will most likely not be in expansions that you may consider doubling up on in skirmish:

• Trandoshans x4 (1x regular, 1x elite)
• Stormtroopers x9 (2x regular, 1x elite)
• Imperial Officers x3 (2x regular, 1x elite)
• Probe Droids x3 (2x regular, 1x elite)
• E-web Engineers x2 (1x regular, 1x elite)
• Nexu x2 (1x regular, 1x elite)

• BONUS! Extra dice set and rulesbooks, because the only thing I share is blaster fire.

This gives you more flexibility in both your Imperial swarm and your Mercenary factions. I think you're going to find that purchasing a single box of Rebel Troopers and/or Rebel Saboteurs just isnt going to cut it and you'll need to buy two of each.

There is great power in model count, do not underestimate it. The battle of attrition can be won when your troops are cheap and disposable.

Troops can be useful to block hallways while your Royal Guard take or carry back objectives.That still requires a fast unit like Royal Guard to earn those points. It's like most tabletop games - a skew list will win big against some lists and fail miserably against others. I find an all-comers well rounded list is more to my liking.

Needs -1 Elite officer and +2 regular officers.

How do you do that?

You can buy two base box sets, as you can include up to 4 grey cards of the same type in skirmish and up to 2 of the same elite card (not in the campaign, obviously).

Personally, I returned my second box set after opening the first. I am beginning to question this decision as the base box set includes things that will most likely not be in expansions that you may consider doubling up on in skirmish:

• Trandoshans x4 (1x regular, 1x elite)
• Stormtroopers x9 (2x regular, 1x elite)
• Imperial Officers x3 (2x regular, 1x elite)
• Probe Droids x3 (2x regular, 1x elite)
• E-web Engineers x2 (1x regular, 1x elite)
• Nexu x2 (1x regular, 1x elite)

• BONUS! Extra dice set and rulesbooks, because the only thing I share is blaster fire.

This gives you more flexibility in both your Imperial swarm and your Mercenary factions. I think you're going to find that purchasing a single box of Rebel Troopers and/or Rebel Saboteurs just isnt going to cut it and you'll need to buy two of each.

There is great power in model count, do not underestimate it. The battle of attrition can be won when your troops are cheap and disposable.

no I was asking if he does that what should he take out. Since the point of the squad is too max Troopers.Also you dont need two sets really just more cards which you can get I would think with league kits and tournaments in the future. When we get more sets the less a second set is going to be needed.

no I was asking if he does that what should he take out. Since the point of the squad is too max Troopers.Also you dont need two sets really just more cards which you can get I would think with league kits and tournaments in the future. When we get more sets the less a second set is going to be needed.

Elite Officer is 5 points, each regular officer is 2, he would be at 39 points instead of 40 with his list:

Call More Dudes!

4x Stormtrooper (24) (12 model)

1x Elite Stormtrooper (9) (3 models)

3x Imperial Officer (6) (3 models)

You would need two box sets to field this, because the base set only comes with 9 troopers (2 regular and 1 elite), and this list has 15 in it.

But note that the Elite officer's ability is much more powerful that the regular officer's. So you would get more officer dudes, but they would be slightly less versatile.

No nunganz said one elite and two officers. Without messing with the base I dont see how this can happen.

Needs -1 Elite officer and +2 regular officers.

He said *minus* one elite, *add* two more officers. To do this, you would need to buy a second base set, as you only get two regular officer cards. But you would have to do this anyway because of the number of stormtroopers.

Well i misread that. Not sure I agree since the Officer is great because of the yellow/blue dice with stun yeah they dont do a lot of damage but still have focus. Just think that could come in handy to pull of cover fire which will be a key in a lot of matches.

By the way I rolled some dice yeah Vader royal Guard is a tank vs this.

with that many guys los will be blocked. I am still not sold. like Tint said Chewie/Han has a really good shot and attacking back.

What about Weiss with a Royal guard making sure you cant get to them.

I agree that LOS is a huge issue with this list. And it isn't going to do much against Vader. (Although it's got a good chance of stripping down the rest of the Fist.)

I was just ruminating after Fizz spent most of Sunday afternoon destroying me with a trooper-heavy list. (1 elite Trooper, 2 grey Troopers, Royal Guard, E-Webb, and a Nexu) The Stormtroopers were, hands-down, 'man of the match'--it was hard as hell to overcome that many dice every round. I was just pondering what it would look like if you took the list to the logical extreme.

I have no doubt that stormtroopers are a solid option; but I think that a good Imperial squad will need to use more than just troopers, because by themselves they can't cover a wide enough range of tactics. Even a Royal Guard and an officer can make a big difference.

The big question in my mind is whether a squad of regular Stormies is better than 3 Officers. It seems to me like the Officers are probably the better choice in many cases, since they give you 2 extra Deployment cards and allow your other units to move a whole lot further.

I honestly think that the Regular Officer is undercosted...should've cost 3pts, not 2. Maybe time will prove me wrong.

Well you have a chance of losing 1 damage with the officers but they gain Focus, Cover and have the yellow dice so I think overall in a game its pretty close.

I think running a Eweb and Royal guard on one side of the map then fill out the rest of the squad with Troopers and officers could be the way to go with the swarm.

Elite Eweb 8

Royal Guard 8

Stormtrooperx3 18

Officerx3 6

Odds are this is what I would try if I was trying the trooper swarm but with out going crazy.

opps wrong post

I honestly think that the Regular Officer is undercosted...should've cost 3pts, not 2. Maybe time will prove me wrong.

I agree, but not because I think they're OP at 2 points, but because you get a huge tactical advantage taking four activations for only 8 points. A nine activation list is very buildable, meaning you're going to have 2-3 activations where your opponent is getting shot in the face or losing control of objectives.

With the LOS issue - fire and movement is your friend

Tried the swarm a few times last night. One of each officer, elite squad and four normal squad. Getting them firing is fine but they don't do enough damage to take some good cards down before being splattered. A hunter list tore them to pieces. They did ok against weaker mini swarms. One cheesey trick is to split the squads up, keep one squad away from trouble as much as you can and then it's hard for opponent to wipe cards out. Doesn't affect their squad training.

I've been so focused on campaign mode that I haven't really started looking at skirmish squad building yet. I suppose I should probably get to it.

However, on the surface, a Stormtrooper swarm looks like it would be good against midrange squads because of higher model count and deployment card count. But squads that run a big, hard-to-kill figure like Vader or RGC will make those masses of blue-green and blue-yellow a lot less effective. I think a swarm going against Vader's Fist would have to focus on killing everything except Vader and grabbing scenario points.

Swarming Tradoshan's can be funny as well Lots of BLEED

Danno decided to acquire a bunch of trandoshans to take on my trooper list. We'll see what happens later this weekend.