Hi all.

My group has just started the imperial assault campaign... well, we are about 1/2 way through now. And I am having a rough time of it.

I had picked up a bunch of the expansions, like return to hoth, and a whole lot of the individual expacs (boba, leia, chewy, han, hired guns, stormtroopers, kamos (?), weiss, r2d2/c3po) and went ahead and mixed everything in (we dont use r2 as we don't have twin shadows yet - coming soon tho).

Since I had volunteered to read the rules, I became the imperial player by default (future games we run others will pick up imperial, but for now it's me). I chose the military might skill deck. I am highly regretting this decision as I cannot seem to win ANY missions to gain enough XP and influence to do anything with my doods... I thought being able to boost my trooper would be pretty neat, especially with the new snowtroopers, but I am finding that the low health total on the troopers really makes them not live to use any of the skills I'm picking to try and boost them...

The party I am up against is:

Jyn, Fenn, Verena, and Loku.... And for the love of the emperor, Fenn is like the perfect counter to me... his stupid AOE attacks (havoc shot) is decimating me so fast I cannot gain enough threat to counter my overwhelming losses... and when I spread out to not get hit, I lose out on all the buffs I gain from my perk deck....

And then, if I do spread out, Verena just runs in and kills everything with her silly kill a model and use it to kill the next, then chain reactions me down to oblivion...

Am I just hooped in this campaign, or is there any way I can make any type of come back? This group (they chose before they knew the true function of their class abilities as none of us had actually played, and only 2 of us had read any of the rules) just seems to be the perfect counter to me... I wish I had chosen subversive tactics against them.

Thoughts? Any pointers on how to use stormtroopers? Am I just hooped?

Thanks guys

Are you giving the imperial player experience via the "Additional Rewards" section of each mission where it (usually) states each player gets 1xp / hero get credits and the imperial player gains influence?

Win or lose, almost every single mission both sides are getting XP, and the rebels are getting credits and the imperials get influence.

If you arent doing that, then that is why you're having so many issues.

I'm Wondering if mixing everything in was a good idea.

Sure, It's Cool to have more heroes, more open groups and more side quests, BUT maybe this takes the balance of the core campaign.

Example:

Verena is devastating in small maps, Hoth has bigger maps to counter this. the base Campaign has a LOT of small maps.. so...She wasn't tailored to be played in these maps.

So maybe isn't you, but the choice of mixing different things.

Ps: And yeah... Subversive Tactic all the way bro.

I was full of nostalgia and awesome when I bought everything and wanted to mix it in. Sounds like doing that was my downfall. Don't get me wrong, i LOVE the game. So much so I am probably going to give FFG all my money very soon to get what's left of what I don't have.

Yes. Though, at first, I forgot to award myself XP as I interpreted "each player gets" wrong and thought it only applied to rebel players. Then After searching the forums I found out I did that wrong and back paid myself the XP I was missing. I then bought a couple XP upgrades that upgraded my troopers (One for when attacking an enemy within 2 I get a free surge, and the other was combat medic). maybe I bought the wrong upgrades... probably did...

Just looking for strats on how to best use my troopers to avoid the players i am up against...

I love Military Might.

Now the reason is because it really helps win those initial maps and get the snowball rolling downhill on those pesky Rebels, so perhaps it's not the best right now.

Upgrade One: Assault Armor.

Upgrade Two: Combat Veterans.

By the time you're purchasing Combat Veterans, you're starting to throw Elite Stormtroopers at them. 7 Health Stormies that have a defense re-roll don't just get mauled down.

One of the things I want to make sure you're doing is that you can take a Move action, and then move before and after your shot. This really makes those stormtroopers shine and a lot of new players sometimes think they have to stop moving when they fire. Stormie One activates, moves next to Stormie Two, fires his shot with a re-roll, moves back. Stormie Two activates, moves next to Stormie One, fires his shot with a re-roll. Etc. This way you don't have to end all bunched up, and if the map allows it they can still do that and all be at Range 3 from each other afterwards.

That Surge within two card is great as long as things are rolling, but it can be dangerous for your white knights as well.

Check to see if you have the Agenda set from Imperial Industry in your Agenda deck. Hopefully you do. If so, immediately save 3 Influence and keep it saved until you see an Agenda mission named "Means of Production." Purchase and play it immediately. Stack doors with Health. If you win, you get the reward card of Imperial Industry. Use it to Stun. All the time Stun.

I would constantly run Elite Stormtroopers with Assault Armor, Combat Veterans, and Imperial Industry. The Rebels never stood a chance, they just get Stunned half the time and watch the Round Counter tick away.

If you're new and Fenn is giving you trouble, remember you are not restricted to moving and then shooting. A move action gives your stormie a pot of movement point you can use during your turn.

Keep your stormies more spread out, then move one next to another (for the squad bonus), attack, then use your remaining movement points to move back away. Keep your stormies dancing back and forth and you can still get your attack bonus without painting a "BLAST ME" sign on your guys.

Secondly, dont be afraid to save up some threat. There are mission (as the imperial you get to see the missions) that dump troops on the board (reserve units) when things are triggered. If you can save up some threat and drop it all at the same turn the event triggers, you can sometimes have a wicked massive pile of units that are (hopefully) overwhelming.

Thirdly, snowtroopers, ewebs, and heavy stormies all count as troopers, so keep that in mind when dropping your augments on units and watching their interactions. Regular stormies just need to be next to a "TROOPER" not specifically the guys in his squad. Snowtrooper heal all adjacent "TROOPERS" not just his squad mates. Mix up your troopers. The complement each other amazingly. Dont forget your Heavies get bonus armor against far enemies (probably Loku and maybe Fenn) Show of Force is great for heavies and making *sure you get that surge to trigger their blast effect when you need it.

Fourth, focus fire. Verena is gonna be in your face and making you miserable. She can't do that if she's strained out and resting. If they are foolish enough to go first with her, punish them by having every enemy left standing pound the stuffins out of her. With everybody shooting, unless she's a goddess of health and agility, she will flip to wounded. This is true of anybody they have go first. Punish them, and remember the threat of force is often as useful as the force itself.

Thanks guys for all the awesome input!

I don't yet have heavy troopers as no place in town has any twin shadows in stock, plus I wouldn't be able to use them until next campaign anyways.

But I ALWAYS forget the move shoot move sequence I need to start remembering this.

As stands in current campaign I have 2 XP saved up. I am going to get the +2 health per trooper skill as soon as I can afford it (is it 2, or 3? I'm not near my box set to check right now). But once I get that, I may start to see more mileage on my troopers... And, when I do get it, when do I put it on a deployment card? when I bring them in, I just keep it near, or does it benefit all my troopers?

I've also been reading of fun things to do with probe droids... As stands, I haven't gotten any mileage on them either, as everything dies so fast. But next game will be next Saturday, and I can put all this helpful advice to the test and *hopefully* not get face-rolled as has been the current...

Just a couple of other noob questions. When a deployment card is defeated, do I put it aside, or does it come back to my "hand"...?

Also, Influence, I think I may have built my agenda deck stupidly - but I just don't understand time periods... Like... Okay the game is settled around the 3 period, right? how do you determine this? Is this more for hand-made campaigns that they put the time period on the influence cards?

Side missions - when the players draw 2 and pick one... what happens to the one they don't pick? I've just told them to shuffle it back into their side mission deck, and then draw 2 again when they need to generate another mission. I'm probably doing this wrong....

Containers - when the players pick them up during a mission, once the mission is over do we shuffle them all back together to get ready for the next mission, or, once a card is pulled from the deck it's out until the deck runs dry?

Thanks guys for putting up with me!

I played the Twilight Shadows campaign with Military Might deck and I loved it.

As suggested by others, spend some movement with stormtroopers, fire, move them away. I used them so that I used the Military Might card to make the first stormtrooper in the group focused as he often wasn't in a place next to a trooper, fired the attack and then moved the others to stand next to him, fire and move away. That gave me reroll for the other 2 stormtroopers. That was often enough to make a stormtrooper group a force to be reckoned with.

As for the deployment cards. When the last unit of the deployment group is killed, the deployment card comes to your hand and you can deploy it in status phase by paying the threat cost. Same with attachments. They return to your hand and you can attach them to a deployment card when you deploy it.

Side mission deck. Side missions have a timeline depending on the campaign I guess it relates to the movies. Return to Hoth is set after the battle of Hoth in the Empire Strikes Back movie. So, some missions like missions with Han Solo wouldn't make sense timeline-wise. As for rules, you draw 2 Side missions after the first story mission is done. Then the rebels choose which story mission to resolve. You take the card for that mission and once the mission is done, it's returned to the game box. Then the you draw one side mission for the rebels so they once again have 2 side missions to choose from. So every time they complete one, they get a new one they can select.

Supply (containers). When a mission is done, the rebels return all supplies they found and haven't used back to the supply deck. And then they cash in the crate tokens they have collected during the mission. They get 50 credits / crate token they have.

I hope I managed to answer at least some of your questions.

My first purchase, is always Endless Ranks. you can start to swarm, and it works well with combat medic, because that extra threat saved from endless ranks, is used for medic.

the move and shoot, then move into cover has saved me a few times.

Stun them! any conditions you can affect, do it.

have fun,

Ok, the way attachments work is when a unit comes into play for the first time (either deployed from your open groups or even during initial setup) you take the attachment card and set it on the deployment card (in some way so you know they are linked and don't get confused).

The bonus from the attachment applies to all members of this deployment group. It also applies to any pieces that are part of the group if you reinforce the group (so if you've got it on stomies, one of the three dies and you bring him back, the new guy gets the bonus too) In the event the unit attached is entirely destroyed, the deployment card goes back into your hand as an open group (per normal) and the attachment card stays in your play area but is no longer attached to anything (giving no bonus). Any time from there on out when you deploy a legal group that the attachment could attach to, you can again link the attachment card to the group coming into play. It stays linked to that group until the group is destroyed.

Recap

1) attachments stay in the play area

2) attachments link to units when they first come into play

3) attachments only give the bonus to the unit they are attached to

Second tutorial

During mission setup you have deployment cards in three piles. Starting groups start in play. Reserve groups (as detailed by the mission) are set aside and deployed only when triggered. And open groups which you can use threat to bring into play (this is what you would consider "in your hand"). Whenever a unit is destroyed and removed from play, the deployment card goes into your open groups pile, regardless of where it was during setup.

Example: The mission Aftermath lets you select no open groups during setup, but does have starting and reserve groups. Any time during that mission, if a group is annihilated (not a strange occurrence in that mission) that deployment card will go back into your hand, and becomes an open groups, and you are free to deploy it as if it were any other open group.

Thank you guys for all the advice.

My group is meeting tomorrow to game, and I am hoping to bring the pain and show them how to do it (because of your advice).

I'll keep you informed.

My first purchase, is always Endless Ranks. you can start to swarm, and it works well with combat medic, because that extra threat saved from endless ranks, is used for medic.

the move and shoot, then move into cover has saved me a few times.

Stun them! any conditions you can affect, do it.

have fun,

I never took ranks or medic. They just don't save you very much threat. Medic is usually a waste of threat but can rarely be useful.

Ranks will usually save you 0-3 threat per mission, usually 1. It does not work on reinforcement. It's a pretty bad card.

Medic is only going to do anything if the 2 wounds you recover would mean it is going to take 2 hits to kill a figure rather than 1. On a 3 wound trooper this is basically never. It will almost always end up being wasted threat unless you're getting it off on a high cost figure or you already have Assault Armor and Combat Veteran on your troopers. With how rarely it's good, it's not really worth the XP.

Sustained Fire is almost like having an extra trooper on the board every round, or better, can let your elite officer stun TWO rebel scum per turn, which is FAR FAR better than Endless Ranks. Something like Assault Armor, which almost doubles trooper survivability, is going to save you far far more threat than Ranks. Likewise Combat Veteran makes troopers both more durable and deadlier and is a far bigger boost than Ranks. A squad with both Combat Veteran and Assault Armor is OP.

I liked Endless Ranks in the Twin Shadows mini campaign. It gave me a full stormtrooper squad / turn or a E-Web etc. I would have had to wait for an extra turn for more threat if I hadn't had it. The heroes I was facing were Biv, Gaarkan, Jyn and Gideon. Biv was really effective dishing out massive damage to a single figure while Gaarkhan got easily close and dealt damage to few figures. Reach and Cleave 2 is a combo I really hate to see on Gaarkhan. And who's by crazy luck got those in every single campaign I've played with the accursed wookie in it. So in the campaign I treated my stormtroopers like they were cannon fodder that was cheap to replace. It worked well for me as Biv couldn't get full benefit from his hero skill and I could flood the map with stormtroopers.

In the normal campaign or with different heroes, I don't think I would take Endless Ranks. I'd probably go for troop survival though as mentioned, the medic card seems rather weak. Stormtroopers are weak and die really easy. Snowtroopers have 1 more health which helps their survival in early campaign a lot. But snowtroopers have a healing ability of their own already.

Hi!

I played a game tonight, and used the advice you gave me here to help. I have to say that it helped immensely.

I still lost, but the game was far far closer than they have been.

I had enough XP from the previous games to buy Assault armor, and having that extra 2 health per trooper really put a thorn into the rebels as they tried to push into the map. The Move up, shoot, and move out of cluster, made it so that I wasn't getting AOEd very much - which was my biggest downfall before. Many times I nearly took down a rebel, only to have them run away and next turn double heal. haha. I had much much more fun this mission than I have during any of the others.

I also used an elite probe droid to move in and out of corners and snipe the players to murderous efficiency

Next mission, I think I'll actually score a win. I can feel it!

Thanks guys

Congrats! Tell us, did they whine and moan and complain about how hard the game had become? Did they sit in slack jawed wonderment as your brand new tactics unfolded and you didn't just sit there like a stump with a "shoot me" sign?

How bad did you throw them for a loop?

Well, we played the one side quest where they had to infiltrate the "abandoned" warehouse facility. I initially placed the assault armor on the one starting group of stormies. Coupled with the elite trandosians, and the HK units (I wanted to use the HK units from my RtH set) they put up a magnificent fight. I think Fenn was only able to use his havok shot once against me, and even then, I fired up my personal shield generators to absorb the first explosion, and then he rolled crappy and didn't even hit with the second havok... so that was good.

The whole mission took 13 turns to complete, and it was a fight. I have good players, so they didn't gripe at all. And with the extra knowledge I gleamed from here, I also had amazing fun!

Best moment tho, was when I broght in an elite probe, popped out from behind a corner, focused with my one card and hit one of the players with a 1 blue, 1 green, 2 yellow blast... after that moment they refferred to the probe as a death cannon, HAHA

My first purchase, is always Endless Ranks. you can start to swarm, and it works well with combat medic, because that extra threat saved from endless ranks, is used for medic.

the move and shoot, then move into cover has saved me a few times.

Stun them! any conditions you can affect, do it.

have fun,

I never took ranks or medic. They just don't save you very much threat. Medic is usually a waste of threat but can rarely be useful.

Ranks will usually save you 0-3 threat per mission, usually 1. It does not work on reinforcement. It's a pretty bad card.

Medic is only going to do anything if the 2 wounds you recover would mean it is going to take 2 hits to kill a figure rather than 1. On a 3 wound trooper this is basically never. It will almost always end up being wasted threat unless you're getting it off on a high cost figure or you already have Assault Armor and Combat Veteran on your troopers. With how rarely it's good, it's not really worth the XP.

Sustained Fire is almost like having an extra trooper on the board every round, or better, can let your elite officer stun TWO rebel scum per turn, which is FAR FAR better than Endless Ranks. Something like Assault Armor, which almost doubles trooper survivability, is going to save you far far more threat than Ranks. Likewise Combat Veteran makes troopers both more durable and deadlier and is a far bigger boost than Ranks. A squad with both Combat Veteran and Assault Armor is OP.

cool, thanks for the input. i like your suggestions, and i did use sustained fire a lot. All i can say is that endless ranks and medic worked for me, assault Armour on regular troops and having elites on the board, medic helped with them living longer.