I'm an IP and my "reward" for winning the first mission will apparently be the more difficult, but by all accounts more fun mission, Under Siege. I have been studying the map, the turns, and the threat buildup while also reading other players' experiences online.

The majority of the opinion claims that the AT-ST decision is a bad one. At first glance and upon planning, I agreed. After reconsidering the issue some more, I wonder if you built a strategy around planning to use it, whether it could be the better choice. As I began to plan this mission, I felt very constrained by the 2 open groups. You will have to devote one of them to your infiltrators if you don't go AT-ST. Furthermore, you will have to pay out of threat to get them in there. Does a group of Trandos or whatever cause that much havoc that it's worth: A free (14 threat!!!) figure deployment, using your saved up threat (that you would need to spend on your infiltrators) on other units, and an open group space that you don't have to use on your planned infiltrators. All three of these are worthy considerations, but upon planning for this mission, I actually think having to devote an open group may be the biggest reason to go AT-ST. Everyone keeps talking about using Nexu or using an "officer train" for you know who, but you can't make all of this work if one of your groups is Trandos or Guards for the inside job.

Obviously the main drawback to the AT-ST is that it can't get indoors, but if you parked it at the east outside door, it has fairly good (but not total) LOS on the first two rooms. Could you not implement a strategy that took advantage of this by trying to rush the back rooms knowing your AT-ST will help with the first two or is the AT-ST really not worth all three of those considerations?

Please note that I have not played this mission before which is precisely why I am asking seasoned players for their experiences. Maybe the answer to my question only becomes clear on a playthrough. Thank you for your time.

SPOILERS

ok, here's my advice as far as options. I've played this a couple of times.

Save your threat as much as you can. When you get the option to blow a door, blow up the one next to there the infiltrators come in. That back room is the hardest to take.

Make sure you have enough threat for either elite trannies or elite Royal guards for your infiltrators. If you are playing military might or tech superiority, be double sure you have freed up whatever attachment you plan on having on them by that point.

Officer chain works, but usually only as far as the X shaped crossroads in the center of the map. Anybody further back than that are usually safe, anybody further forward get to be lasersword Swiss cheese. Realize if Vader shows up, you are already too late to get the best victory conditions.

General advice.

BE AGGRESSIVE. Push your stormies *past the rebels before shooting. Make them scramble back to prevent your capturing points further into the base. If the opening prevents itself, dont be afraid to double move past them if you can get around the corner to that long hallway with the capture point. If you can focus fire on one hero, do so. Wounded heroes cannot prevent you from capturing. Dont divide your forces evenly among the two entrances. Make one a feign with one or two stormies (just enough to draw off a hero hopefully) then pound the crap out of the other entrance.

If you have access to them, Heavy stormies work a treat on this mission. Their blast can be used on the doors to hit annoying rebels behind the door (the blast goes both ways). Also blast is a dream when annoying rebels are bunched in the hallways. Also they have enough health to not die at the drop of a hat.

Not gotten a chance to use snowtroopers yet, but I suspect that their regeneration ability would be awesome in the hallways surrounded by other trooper types.

REMEMBER: KEEP PUSHING FORWARD. DONT GET PULLED IN TO A PROTRACTED SHOOTOUT.

I will tell you this Royal Guards are awesomesauce. His movement speed of 5 saved me. It was last round, I had 3 heroes wounded and 3 rooms to take. I moved one group to the back, the rebels didnt care, they just wanted to prevent me from taking the 4th. I was being nice and I could have double moved Vader instantly and taken the 4th room, but I was trying to give them chances to succeed. They Riot Grenaded Vader so he had a stun effect on him. At that point I thought I lost the mission. They had their guys blocking the hallway so i would have to spend double pts to move through. On last move I looked and I was like "Oh I still have the Royal Guard who hasnt gone yet." All my friends thought they had this. So I activate him and 10 movement pts was all it took to run out the room, down the hall (over Gaarkhan for 2 pts), and move diagnolly three spots to take the 4th room I needed. Talk about close! Technically nobody really wins in that scenario since it was Rd 8 and not Rd 6, but at least they didnt get the bonus xp!!

~D

Forget about the AT-ST. Use Officers and Royal Guards to rush to the farthest tiles, otherwise you won't have enough time. Note that you only need to take out one door and let the event handle the other.

My group were very canny so I lost this mission. They sat back and kept resting. Killed the Wookiee eventually but the rest were just too healthy at the end. The green deployment point is too far from the action to bring reinforcements in in a timely manner early to press the numbers advantage particularly when the heroes just wait and you have to remove the door first.

As Rebels I won this pretty handily by having Fenn go through the north door and blast most of the starting groups dead before they could act.

I didn't take advantage of the fact that there is only 1 green spawn point, if your players do, you're completely screwed as he can stand there and use Fenn to blast to death anything you deploy before it can act. Horrible design, both this and Luxury Cruise need another green spawn point.

Basically the mission will come down to how aggressive the Rebels are. If they don't push you at the start, you should be able to overwhelm them. Focus fire the most annoying first like Gideon or Fenn and get them off the board, then you can rush rooms. If they do push you at the start, then it will take too long to get enough firepower together to get through the doors and deal with the rebels and you're pretty much looking at a guaranteed loss.