Who is your favorite or who do you think is the best ally or ally group for the Rebels in a campaign? Use whatever parameters you prefer.

For my money, it's probably Luke Skywalker, for reasons of offense, defense, and general utility.

His attack pool and surge abilities are both very good, and he has the flexibility to saber strike against enemies with multiple black dice. Blue/green/yellow rolls an average of 3.3 damage, 5.8 accuracy, and 1.7 surges. Red/yellow rolls an average of 3 damage and 1 surge.

He is fairly good at surviving, with enough health to survive at least one hit from almost anything, a passive block to shore up his durability against masses of low-damage enemies, a chance to outright ignore an attack, and (uniquely among the ally options) the ability to heal himself with a surge. On average, he will get as many blocks as someone rolling a black die would, but he has triple the chance to cancel a surge and keeps the chance to roll a dodge.

Inspiring is a great utility effect, especially because it has no cost and no limit to the number of times it can be used in a round. Phenomenal ability. On top of that, he has Speed 5, which is a great perk to help him keep up with the Rebel heroes.

Simply put, Luke is the total package as an ally. At 10 points, he's a tad expensive. But his combination of abilities makes him more than worth it.

After Luke, I'd say both versions of the Saboteurs seem worthwhile. I don't know about Han (cost), Chewbacca (cost), or either version of Trooper (efficacy). I'm excited to see what R2-D2 and C-3PO bring to the table when Twin Shadows arrives. I expect them both to be cheap utility allies.

As the Imp player, I love seeing Luke on the other side. While he's very useful, I've found that he's not useful enough to counteract the Royal Guards or Elite Trandos that I can bring in with his 10 threat. With the Savage Weaponry attachment to let the Guards stun and Bleed the rebels, they can knock out entire activations, which is way more important in the timed missions than his one attack and rerolls per round.

It depends a lot on what the mission is. Luke is phenomenal in missions where you have to cut through a really tough door, thanks to saber strike's automatic pierce 3. He would also be great in any mission where you have to take down a "boss" rolling 2 black dice. But like you said, it's a big risk to give the Imperial player 10 extra threat to start a mission.

First campaign, the Rebels acquired the Rebel Troopers.

Second campaign, we required the Saboteurs early on.

Troopers were nice and cheap, though we pretty much used them as meat shields for Gideon when we brought them.

Saboteurs are nice, especially the stun ability. Stunning Royal guards so they can’t move up and attack is really helpful. I think it would be nice if their attack had a green die as well. We never really found an opportunity to spend double surge abilities because we weren’t rolling a lot of them + subversive tactics really loves to give the imps surge cancels lol. They never really felt like they were explosive experts.

Looking forward to acquiring Luke in future campaigns.

I think the additional threat added to the imps is enough to dissuade me from ever using allies. I've never won a mission with an ally. That's not to say I'm doing it right - probably far from it - but it's enough for me to feel like it's a waste of a potential game mechanic. The additional deployment is always too much...

On 2015. 03. 27. at 5:36 PM, ThatJakeGuy said:

As the Imp player, I love seeing Luke on the other side. While he's very useful, I've found that he's not useful enough to counteract the Royal Guards or Elite Trandos that I can bring in with his 10 threat. With the Savage Weaponry attachment to let the Guards stun and Bleed the rebels, they can knock out entire activations, which is way more important in the timed missions than his one attack and rerolls per round.

How do get the guards two surges? Does it work when somebody doesn't die next to them?

I agree that the additional threat is a deterrent to bringing along allies so I typically focus on the cheap ones, C-3PO for example. Added defence and focusing a friendly figure for 2 threat is a great value. My winning percentage on the 3PO/R2 side mission is very high so it's a no-brainer to include this as one of my sides. Also rewards R2 as an ally which may be a better choice in certain situations.

My group really likes the Alliance Smuggler. For 4 points you get, white defense die, Speed 5 + loads of extra movement, surge for Stun, surge for Pierce 2, surge for Focus, AND he can interact with stuff! He's basically an extra 1/2 hero in the group. While he's a bit squishy, the built in -2 Accuracy to attack him means the Alliance Smuggler is pretty easy to keep out of danger most of the time. Like a Leatherman multitool, he will seldom kill anything for you but he is nifty as he11 to have in your pocket.

If you have Murne then most allies are great.

Without her then I'd say Ahsoka. Amazing mobility, great offense, only 8 threat cost

Hera seems like a good ally. 4 Threat for a 7 health figure with 3 dice for the attack, a free point of movement and a great support ability.

Leia is pretty phenomenal, especially if you pair her with your best damage-dealing hero.

Jedi Luke is a little squishier than you might expect, but he's also a beast.

C-3P0 is actually incredibly effective as a minor support unit, and R2 has a surprising amount of staying power.

Ahsoka is really fast, and not a bad price for what you get.

I usually go for cheap allies plus one cannon, most of the time I bring no ally anyway:

- c3po and r2d2

- Hera and c1-10p

- Alliance Smuggler

- Lando/Ahsoka/Leia

(and a belated happy 3rd birthday to this thread, lol)

I got to use Obi-wan for the first time in my current LotA campaign. None of my characters are particularly good at tech (Drokatta is my best with Green-Green) so Use the Force was a huge help when an unexpected tech test came up. Not to mention that moving activated hostile figures around with his Mind Trick ability to block line of sight of ready figures ended up being absolutely critical.

22 hours ago, subtrendy2 said:

Jedi Luke is a little squishier than you might expect, but he's also a beast.

It's not that he's squishy, it's just that once the amount of damage top his health points, he runs in hidding to Ahch-to, reconsidering the Jedi way

More seriously, many allies are situationally good. For example, there is a core mission that has the rebel players holding a little bunker. For 6 threats, I'd gladly take the rebel troopers which will give me 3 more attacks especially with Aim that will grant +1 damage and +2 accuracy to their attack.

That has me wished that we could actually bring whatever ally we want, without having to unlock them. We are already paying a cost to bring them after all (still respecting the limit of 1 ally per mission though)

Edit : I do understand though that it could be "unfair" for the imperial player unless the rules let him select his open group AFTER the rebel players decided if they bring an ally. Just imagine a 2-threat level mission where the rebels would drop Chewie on the board while the imperial player used some low-threat deployments (regular Officer, prob Droids), not expecting Chewbacca ...

1 hour ago, IanSolo_FFG said:

It's not that he's squishy, it's just that once the amount of damage top his health points, he runs in hidding to Ahch-to, reconsidering the Jedi way

More seriously, many allies are situationally good. For example, there is a core mission that has the rebel players holding a little bunker. For 6 threats, I'd gladly take the rebel troopers which will give me 3 more attacks especially with Aim that will grant +1 damage and +2 accuracy to their attack.

That has me wished that we could actually bring whatever ally we want, without having to unlock them. We are already paying a cost to bring them after all (still respecting the limit of 1 ally per mission though)

Edit : I do understand though that it could be "unfair" for the imperial player unless the rules let him select his open group AFTER the rebel players decided if they bring an ally. Just imagine a 2-threat level mission where the rebels would drop Chewie on the board while the imperial player used some low-threat deployments (regular Officer, prob Droids), not expecting Chewbacca ...

Somewhat related. and spoilers for Jabba's Realm