Kayn Somos Preview
He will certainly be a great leader to my Trooper list. Between him and the command cards, and the Stormies pack coming down the way, an entire legion of my best troops can take to the field in Skirmish with explosive results.
He seems ok.
On his own, he's weak with those two pitiful surges, though he should have pretty good range with BBG. Of course he's meant more as a support figure but the problem is his stuff only effects adjacent troopers, this pretty much gives your opponent a clear invitation to blast/cleave your forces. Also so far the only troopers we have that have a great accuracy for are e-webs. Kayn Somos near 2 e-web troopers would be a great combo... but how often is that going to happen? His great range/accuracy is going to be negated when he needs to stand near stormtroopers on the front lines.
His agenda set, doesn't seem worth taking. Regular Stormtroopers become almost worthless late in a campaign and you don't even get to keep the card unlike the one that always provides a regular Imperial Officer. And 1 influence for 3 threat (that can only be spent in trooper reinforcement) doesn't seem worth it to me.
I'm sure he'll be great in Military Might (and possibly Inspiring Leadership.) But with the other 2 classes, I wouldn't take him.
Edited by patrickmahanI really want him but I don't like the fact that his leadership requires adjacent friendlies because all the Blast abilities are going to make bunching up like that dangerous.
He would be awesome to camp behind two E-Webs, but (thankfully) that strategy won't get you anywhere.
I foresee my gaming group calling him "Kanye" once he's on the table lol!
FOr an ally he is fairly cheap and most missions feature Troopers anyway. If rebels are low on cleave/blast he can be pretty devastating, esp with the new Heavy Troopers
It's too bad he doesn't have an ability like "Priority Target" from the Elite Saboteurs. Even something that just allowed him to shoot through adjacent friendlies would be great.
Regular trooper worthless in late campaign? Not if you play military might, this guy is dream come true to any Military might player in campaign, he even gets cheaper with endless ranks
Rule by Fear isn't unique. Can you take multiple copies of the same skirmish upgrade?
I think his Firing Squad ability can still be good despite Blast. Troopers want to be positioned something like this:
T##
##T
They can activate and move next to each other to benefit from Squad Training and then separate to avoid Blast and other nastiness.
Kayn can sidle up into the middle space and give them attacks before moving away. Two attacks with Squad Training can be better than his normal single attack.
Yeah... having faced Military might stormtroopers I can attest to them not being "worthless" by the end of a campaign. While their offensive ability didn't improve too much, they became hideous tarpits to kill. Elite ones were a total pain if upgraded, but even the basic ones went from almost being killed as an incidental thing, to actually having to spend time dealing with them. It took them from "pretty much certain death in one hit, or even by stacking up cleave or blast from other attacks" to "probably take 1 attack, and maybe even 2 if you were only slightly unlucky". With how cheap they were this was a big problem.
Though to be fair, upgraded Royal Guard were an even larger problem to deal with. However, there didn't tend to be so many of them.