Okay, in the interest of enjoying the journey and not just winning the game, I have a question. Chain of Command is up next and I'm the Imperial.
Should I give them the win and just go straight to Last Stand?
I know it sounds lame, but hear me out. From what I've read, Desperate Hour is virtually impossible to win, but Last Stand is hard and more thematic (it has a VADER on roids!).
I feel like if I win Chain of Command, I'll just kill them in Desperate Hour and it won't be any fun.
Thoughts?
I don't know about difficulty, but I don't thnk it's more thematic to have a final confrontation with Vader, than with Weiss, who is the villain of the campaign.
I feel that the game should be played from mission to mission, this especially applies to Chain of Command/The Source since that mission determines the success of the Rebellion during the campaign. Also Weiss is awesome and the more he's in the campaign the better.
My suggestion is play Chain of Command to the best of your ability, then if you play Desperate Hour you can try to go easier (if needed).
You never know. Your players may surprise you and get lucky/absolutely nail it.
You know your players best, and the call is yours in the end.
I recently did Desperate Hour with my group, and it annihilated them. But honestly, in the end, we had all enjoyed the campaign as a whole.
Its a difficult one, for sure, but not completely impossible.
If you want to give them ideas;
1) clear starting room turn 1
2) enter hangar first action turn 2
3) kill Weiss quickly
4) run to corridor and use AT-ST to block hallway.
5) get everyone past doors before entering clearing. very important
6) good luck from there on out
Good advice.
The Rebels have won 8, and I've won 3. I'm against legendary Jyn Odan and Diala.
They have Sabs and Chewie as allies, I have Vader.
Hey! I have an idea.
What if I let them bring Chewie in for free (they've already earned him) without giving me any threat? That might help them out a bit.
Is Chain of Command as hard as Last Stand and Desperate Hour are? The two finales just look like a bloodbath waiting to happen.
We played last stand, and I will admit I lost though I did kill off Han Solo. What is funny is that we never played a scenario where they encountered Weiss until the end. Where I failed with Vader is I didn't save enough threat to power his defenses.
Salcor
The thing about difficulty late in the campaign is it's heavily based off of how strong the Rebels are.
For instance I just put my rebel characters (from a solo campaign) that had won chain of command in desperate hour (to test this hypothesis) and they killed (the first) Weiss on turn 1.
If anyone's curious the play went like this:
•Diala goes first and wipes out the stormtroopers with Way of the Sarlaac and Snap Kick.
•Royal guards move, Jyn gets a shot off to let her move next to the (south) door, they fail to stun her.
•Jyn activates, blows down the door and hits the Newly Deployed Weiss for 5 damage.
•I forget to activate Weiss (which contributed to my decision to finish the game prematurely but wouldn't have let him live through the turn).
•Gideon Activates, orders Fen to move to the doorway and attack Weiss for 3 damage, Uses hammer and anvil, Jyn hits Weiss for 8.
Now this was remarkable luck for the rebels but even If Weiss had rolled better on defense he still had an undefended attack incoming from Gideon with the DXR-6 and then Fenn and the Saboteurs could activate (Incidentally I stopped playing when I realised I'd forgotten to deploy more imperial troops after Weiss died and I was clearly failing miserably to remember stuff). Regardless of which mission you're playing Rebels with four tier 3 weapons and 14 xp will be pretty highly favoured while rebels with one or two and 10 xp will not.
The important takeaway from this is that a lot of the impressions about desperate hour being harder may be based on the fact that rebels that lose story mission 4 tend to be weaker.
EDIT: Remembered spoiler tags.
Edited by NorgrathOnly played 1 campaign through so far so I don't know about Desperate Hour but in Last Stand, as the Imperial player, I destroyed the Rebels before the game was 1/2 over. Not exactly thematic with 2 of 4 Rebels wounded with a 3rd being 1-2 hp from wounded by turn 5.
To intentionally throw a game seems pretty crappy despite what you think could be better play in the next game.
I misread the mission log and brought Weiss out of his room to early. I was thinking the AT-ST came out at the BEGINNING of round 2, not the end of it. Anyways, after I realized this I tried to protect him as best I could but he was quickly killed.
Good news: I get to play Vader in the last mission!