I would love to face off against this list with just about any of mine in a tournament.

I really do appreciate your input.

But if I happened to 'face off' with you at a tournament - in lieu of being 'destroyed' - I'm pretty sure I'd be content to just scoop, congratulate you, and then head out with my buddies for karaoke...

Obviously the "opinions?" portion of your title was misleading, and actually an invitation for a passive-aggressive rebuttal; my apologies on the misinterpretation. I do think it is fair to point out that I never said that I would destroy you, just that certain strategies from an opponent would.

My apologies for any offense, even us "competitive" types enjoy our karaoke (with our fictional buddies of course!).

The deck is crying for Provoke and Sit Tight.

I thought this, too - but because it's actually 5 activations, I've found that 'Sit Tight' didn't really help me enough to boot some of the other options in the deck. I gave it a try, though...

Obviously the "opinions?" portion of your title was misleading, and actually an invitation for a passive-aggressive rebuttal; my apologies on the misinterpretation. I do think it is fair to point out that I never said that I would destroy you, just that certain strategies from an opponent would.

My apologies for any offense, even us "competitive" types enjoy our karaoke (with our fictional buddies of course!).

No no - I do appreciate the input, truly.

And my apologies for the passive aggression - you're correct there. I was using the quotes to jab you for what struck me as borderline insults, but I was having a rough day at work too. Should have thought that through a little longer.

Seriously, re-reading it thinking to myself, 'what a d!ck'. LOL

My favorite karaoke song is Bohemian Rhapsody.

That is literally the first karaoke song I ever did. Drunk. With 3 other guys at Gen-Con.

The deck is crying for Provoke and Sit Tight.

I thought this, too - but because it's actually 5 activations, I've found that 'Sit Tight' didn't really help me enough to boot some of the other options in the deck. I gave it a try, though...

How so vs normal squads that are 7-8 acts its great. Yes on some of the speed missions it won't help because they can grab them and you cant do anything about it. You need to play it turn 1 or turn 2(maybe). In a 5 round tournaments odds are you get it at least once turn 1 and could easy be two times. Thats game changing if you can get the right match ups and missions in at least one of the other matches.

Like I said, it seemed like a good idea, but it never did me any good - mostly because by the time I drew it I had already killed enough of their figs to bring their activations down (to fewer than mine)...

It's nothing for Vader to wipe out 2 troopers a turn, esp with the officers nudging him around early...

Yes thats why I am saying its a early turn card but if you pull it its just as strong as take init if you are playing the right mission. The guy that won Adepticon pulled it at least twice turn one both vs high act builds and it was a game changing move but they were playing non speed missions both times. Just an example of the power the card can have.

The problem with sit tight turn 2 is that you might give your opponent 2-3 activations in a row to just straight murder something. So if they use an activation and kill a deployment card, they get to keep going (because you are down a deployment card). Beyond that, if you have a RGC available to attack in the open and I can get 3 units of whatever flavor to attack it 3x in a row, I have a decent chance of chunking it or killing it outright. Sit tight has been cut from almost every deck because of this weakness in its timing. If you don't play it turn 1 or as you say "maybe" turn 2 on a very select few missions, it is a dead card. Considering how strong some of the command cards are now after the Wave 1 releases, dead cards are a huge liability.

Yes but being able to play it turn one in a low act squad in a 5-6 round tournament is well worth the cost. It could also be a late game card. I only really play it right now in rebels but I have be playing a lot of Diala so dead cards are ok.

Yeah dead cards aren't good but in the right tank build I think Sit Tight is fine turn 2 just not sure about this build but think its needed because of the power it has turn 1.

I also have it in a Wookiee build.

I rescind my dissent for 'Sit Tight'. I forgot I still had it in my deck and did in fact pull it turn 1 in a match last night and used it happily, to great effect...

The build is 7-0 now. Think I'll stick with it till someone breaks it - which will happen, as it should...

I rescind my dissent for 'Sit Tight'. I forgot I still had it in my deck and did in fact pull it turn 1 in a match last night and used it happily, to great effect...

The build is 7-0 now. Think I'll stick with it till someone breaks it - which will happen, as it should...

Heh, the build is 7-1. I beat it once (out of two games) last night, but I didn't beat you. You're 7-0 with it. Someone else is 0-1 with it.

It is brutal trying to beat through Vader and the RGC, though I noticed that I didn't have to kill both as long as I was playing towards the scenario.

For record, my list was Luke, Diala, Chewie, Gideon and regular Saboteurs. We played the crate-grabbing mission on the Moisture Farm. I couldn't kill Vader the first time, but did manage to get him down the second game.

Haha! Very true, the list is no longer indestructible. Though it's not the arrow, it's the Indian, am I right? LOL

<internet tough guy>He'd punch me right in the face for that...</internet tough guy>

I played a variation of this squad last night. My son built a 52pt squad of his own so I added an Elite Officer and some Royal Guards. He had Han, Chewie, Fenn, Troopers, and more. It was a stomp...I only lost Vader at the very end, and I wiped out his entire squad, despite him rolling X-Men several times. I didn't pay attention to objectives, but just attacked his guys. He said, "Man, that's a good squad!" Having 2 hard-to-kill pieces with Brutality is devastating.

Obviously, this was not a straight 40pt list, so it cannot be considered an official test. And also, my son is only 11 years old, so he's not as much of a challenge as some people would be (though he is really developing in his tactics!). That being said, I think I did get a good taste of how the squad plays, and I like it. It's basically a "Hulk SMASH!" kind of squad, which is kinda fun to play, every now and again.

I am wondering if going at-st or Weiss as one of the beats would be better gives you an area attacker then two melee guys.

Also gives you an extra act if you go at-st over champion.

I just think Chewie with stun really gives this squad problems.

I can barely stomach playing the same list twice, nevermind 7+ times.... it would bore the hell out of me, but, then, I don't ever use the word "meta", enter tournamets and if I do its for the benefit of the rest of the guys involved), and don't care about winning.... of course, I seem to win mst of the time anyway lol, but that's because I'm a genius.... and humble...

I am kind of the same way and let that you can make small changes and it can have a huge effect on your squad with this game.

It's crap. :-)

Not all bad, and someone who could run it better than me would probably be fine with it, but the dice completely abandoned me at the tourney today. Losing the match in early round 3 because you rolled 2 blocks with Vader 4 times in a row (after his re-roll, every time) is nasty enough to send anyone home to burn their minis.

Unfortunately with me, I have to anticipate getting owned by the dice. So it's back to Vader's Fist, for now anyway...

It's crap. :-)

Not all bad, and someone who could run it better than me would probably be fine with it, but the dice completely abandoned me at the tourney today. Losing the match in early round 3 because you rolled 2 blocks with Vader 4 times in a row (after his re-roll, every time) is nasty enough to send anyone home to burn their minis.

Unfortunately with me, I have to anticipate getting owned by the dice. So it's back to Vader's Fist, for now anyway...

I'm sorry to hear that. I've had games like that too, believe me! Anyone who has played competitive miniatures games has had that.

The real questions here are about "What could you have done differently?" and "What this loss(es) tell you about the weak-points of your squad?" This thing was 7-0, which is nothing to sneeze at; that would make me want to learn from these losses and use them to be better prepared for the future.

Also what missions were you playing? This build I think has the same problem rebel han/Chewie builds have without the movement problems. They just dont have the acts to screen attacks, open doors, Missions etc. To a point the 4 act Royal Guardx2 and Elite Build this build though has the defense tricks to withstand early strikes turn one but still because the opp only has to kill 4 of the 8 guards to win a lot of missions and its low act count it will still have problems.

I think tank builds are a thing but think you need to at least have 6-7 acts in the build to make it work with 8-12 figures. Before Hida said it was 5 acts min and 7 figures I am upping that to 6-7 acts and 8 min figures with all the new doors and missions.

Don't give up on a list just because the dice failed you.

Any list is subject the fickled nature of dice, and can fail due to nothing other than bad rolls. There's things you can do to minimize that, but there's nothing you can do to completely remove them.

So don't give up on a list due to one loss, figure out if there's any other way you can improve it, or shield it from bad rolls, and then if you can't just accept that sometimes the dice will screw you over.

If this couldn't happen there wouldn't be much need to play the game itself, just compare lists and declare the winner based on who had the better one.

I concur about more tries with this list, and I may try this list out next, just to see how it goes. I question if it has enough models to cover some of the missions, but that's why we test. I like the idea of Vader and RGC as a hard-hitting dynamic duo, and neither of them goes down easy. That or Weiss + AT-ST + officers. I think that can work, despite failures by other locals in playtesting

I won the tourney that macmastermind is talking about with Royal Guard Champ, eRoyal Guard, Royal Guard, Officer x2 (aka the Family Reunion). I beat the RGC/Vader list (not macmastermind, though), Vader's Fist variant (Vader, Royal Guard, Storm Troopers, 4 Officers), and a rebel build (Chewie, Luke, Diala, Gideon, Sabs).

We played one mission on each map: Excavation counters on Massassi, marking crates on Moisture Farm, and stealing crates on Mos Eisley outskirts (sorry about lack of official names). Missions were chosen at random by the TO at the start of each round, though the maps were chosen in advance.

Speed was key in these games, including the bonus moves from the officers, the natural speed 5/6 on the RGs/TGC, and cards like Close the Gap, There are just lots of speed 4 characters, it seems, and being faster (and having reach) was just a huge advantage. The name of the game quickly turned into "Hunt down and destroy the imperial officers" for me in my first two games. They just had to go. Without the support, Vader has a very limited range of moves each turn, after he's killed whatever he committed to killing first.

Yeah, what TreeMonkey said.

The combo that took Vader down on turn 3 was just stacked and that's not going to happen often either. I think in that turn alone, I was subjected to Pummel, Flurry and Parting Blow (from another identical list, so yeah, Flurry). Throw in 3 or 4 bottom-possibility defense rolls and Vader is just toast.

But yeah, that doesn't happen every game. My mistake in the first game was running into the middle of everything with both tanks and trying to murder everything. I was water-tortured to death, but they lasted as long as I expected them to, and I was doing decent damage. The counter would've started turning fast with just one more turn, but I couldn't get out of the mess I was in. I also forgot all about Force Choke when I had Vader down to 2 hit points. My fault. He proceeded to lightning out 2 of my dudes after that mistake and one of those was my champ...

It was the combination of good luck to bad in that second loss that ruined my day. Overall, I need a list that doesn't leave me vulnerable to dice (stuns, bleeds, are really valuable to remove actions)...

And Tree, I think you had sufficient time after our match on Thursday to concoct Order 67. Well played, sir!

Overall, I need a list that doesn't leave me vulnerable to dice

I don't think such a thing exists. If the game has dice, then all lists are vulnerable to them. The best you can do is limit how much they are.

Let's say as vulnerable, then...

I have the same problem in X-Wing, too. Any finesse moves or synergies end up just failing me. Max health and max attack dice is where I have to go...