IP Strategy: Experimental Arms

By LadysingstheLando, in Imperial Assault Campaign

The tech superiority class thematically seems to play like how a "tech-ing up" strategy plays out in many games, i.e. you have to hold out a bit until the good stuff comes later.

What sort of success have you all had with experimental arms early on? Which sorts of deployments has it worked best with? It pairs well with beefy units that can stun, but in the early game, when the threat level is low, what have you IP been doing with this attachment? Do you add Royal Guard to open group and hold the attachment until they deploy or do you stick it on a group you know will die before you get the threat to deploy what you really want to stick it on? What do you do with it in Aftermath?

Any anecdotal evidence will do. Thanks.

From Tech Superiority, it's largely based on how you play.

Personally, I found that Tech Support at 1XP combined with Probe Droids (and if you can afford it, the Elite Probe Droid becomes very punishing) was great. The ability to focus or heal troops was very obnoxious...

Failsafe can be good when you have 'Heavy' hitters like the Royal Guard Champion, that you can keep in the fight just a little longer and hopefully mess up Rebel plans.

Arc Blasters is a truly golden card. (Without the card here, I'm going on memory) I believe it is not an attachment so it affects all ranged attacks giving you a chance to stun things just by shooting at them and an extra Srg ability that makes it easier to apply dmg.

Both 4 Pointers are good but Adaptive Weapons shines for the ability to swap out a die (such as running troopers closer and hitting with a Red/Green) or replacing a Probe Yellow with a Blue or Green for those ranged shots.

Arc Blasters are an attachment. If it applied to all imperial units it'd be a little overpowered, I think. It's also not a guaranteed stun even if the target takes damage -- they also test (strength) and only need one surge to avoid the stun.

Of course, the surge for blast does give it the chance to stun several figures at once, and if the rebels have non-elite allies (like troopers or saboteurs) they'd be auto-stunned.

In addition to what taleden said, if you can force an attribute test on a wounded hero, it becomes much harder to pass. A strength test is going to go poorly for every wounded hero except Gaarkhan.

Early on Fail Safe is iffy, but mid-late game it is incredibly good. At around the time the heroes are getting weapon upgrades, they will chew through imperial hp very fast, and trading 2 threat to cost them an extra attack is often worth it for your critical units. Interrupting to move away on their turn is icing; you can sometimes scoot around a corner or further away to frustrate their plans (or escape a second shot to finish you). Keeping that E-Web alive another turn might mean doing ~10 more damage than expected. The royal guard or nexu you saved might apply a bleed or stun at a critical moment.

In a game where most of the action flexibility rests with the heroes, I find Failsafe to be incredible for giving the Imperial player flexibility of his own.

Arc Blasters are also amazing; a free chance to cost the heroes an action is no joke.

On experimental arms: I think it has very little value on units without good surges (and elite probe droids because they just roll so many). On aftermath I think you may as well stick it on some stormtroopers and use it if it'll give you extra damage otherwise if you're using anything that can surge for better than 1 damage save it for them (if the rebels suspect that you want to put them on something later then they might just leave the troopers alive so you'll need to waste time having them kill themselves.

*Edit rather than posting again*: It's ridiculously good on royal guard though.

Edited by Norgrath

Yeah, in general I'm still a little dubious about the Tech class. It looks like it has some nice goodies later on, but compared to both of the other Imperial classes, its starting ability feels really much weaker, or at least must more situational. Where MM and ST get great general abilities that they can make good use of every single round, so far with TS I'm lucky to get one use per mission out of the base ability.

Yeah, in general I'm still a little dubious about the Tech class. It looks like it has some nice goodies later on, but compared to both of the other Imperial classes, its starting ability feels really much weaker, or at least must more situational. Where MM and ST get great general abilities that they can make good use of every single round, so far with TS I'm lucky to get one use per mission out of the base ability.

It's starting ability is just fine, in my opinion. Sure it's not a flat bonus each round like the other two, but a way to guarantee a surge is incredibly powerful. That could mean getting a stun from a Royal Guard, or a Bleed from some Trandoshans. It does suffer until the midpoint of the campaign, I think, as the 1-points are lame and the only good 2-point (failsafe) is only good once the rebels are routinely doing ~5 damage per attack, but the 3 and 4 tiers are crammed with some of the best abilities you can have for offense (and the cloaking is good too). Experimental Arms is definitely hard to justify in the first few missions where you're unlikely to have many powerful units with decent surges, but after the campaign gets going it's possibly the best ability of the 3.