I have the Dark Obsession agenda card and have been looking at the mission and working out tactics. At the start of the mission the Imperials have Vader and a Stormtrooper group. Is the Imperial side allowed to skip activation opportunities? I'd like to be able to delay Vader's activation until after all of the heroes have activated. I'm guessing that I can't but can't find the relevant line in the RRG.

No, when it is your turn to activate, you MUST activate one deployment card if able.

Thanks. I guess I'll take a couple of Probe Droids as open groups and get them out there in the optional deployment then.

Or Imperial Officers. Those guys are awesome.

Yes, normally they are, but they can't move Vader icon this mission. As my objective is to wound the heroes, self-destruct seems quite helpful.

Good tactic. Also:

Something to keep in mind is that Vader cannot interact with the token until all heroes are wounded.

The problem I ran into when I played Dark Obsession was Gideon stunning Vader repeatedly ... he mathematically removed my chances to win very early.

What weapon was Gideon using? His starting pistol rolls blue-yellow against Vader's double-black defense, which I think is only ~4% chance to get 1 unblocked damage plus 1 surge to stun, and that's not even counting Vader's defense reroll. Even with a bonus surge from an attachment or his class card, it's still only ~12%.

Kyla - I know a few groups who have been applying stun incorrectly. My own group thought that it was applied even if no damage was caused, but that is not the case. Stun is a condition and can't be applied unless damage is caused. Has this been the case with your group?

You can outfit Gideon pretty well to make great use of his stun. While early on in the campaign he's better suited for using command, later on, with the right upgrades he's a beast. His Called shot class card guarantees a surge, plus you can add a tactical display on his weapon to give him another surge. Upgrade his weapon to something that does a bit more damage (Deathhammer is choice) and Gideon is a triple threat, able to attack, stun, and command. I think many people look at Gideon's initial stats and write him off, but I like him.

I love playing Gideon, but so far I can't see us ever justifying the opportunity cost of buying weapons for him since the others could make so much better use of them while Gideon focuses on Commanding them to do so. We've also found that stun is rarely useful against Imperials because they're so often content to just stay put and shoot anyway. I could see it being a lot better against Guards or Vader, but our Imperial hasn't deployed many of them so far.

As far as upgrading characters goes, there's essentially 2 schools of thought.

1) Give each character upgrades that best brings out their innate abilities and special functions.

2) Outfit all characters to be similar/interchangeable.

They both certainly have their merits. I tend to go for the second option myself. It becomes less noticeable when any one player is lost. Plus it tends to put the enemy at a disadvantage as to who to attack when, as all allies are an equal threat. Of course no one player is really great at anything, but with XP and class cards, it's less noticeable in this game

We were in the "apply a condition and damage independent of each other" camp. There's nothing in the Rules Reference guide that states a wound has to be delivered for an activated ability to render the condition, though now reading "Attack" I see where it states that.

That would definitely have changed that scenario.

We were in the "apply a condition and damage independent of each other" camp. There's nothing in the Rules Reference guide that states a wound has to be delivered for an activated ability to render the condition, though now reading "Attack" I see where it states that.

That would definitely have changed that scenario.

It could probably be stated more clearly in more places, but I see three places this is mentioned: