This weeks cards!

Deployment Cards - Probe Droid, Fenn Signis

Command Cards- Recover, Rally

If anyone is keeping track and wondering I skipped the Sit Tight command card as it has become obsolete with the new pass rules.

Also here are the links to our previous WSS threads

Week 1 - Stormtrooper, Gideon Argus, Urgency, To the Limit

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/203235-weekly-skirmish-strategy-1/?p=2063998

Week 2 - Nexu, Take Intiative, Take Cover

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/204065-weekly-skirmish-strategy-2/?p=2076973

Cursory thoughts...

Probe Droids are great. Decent attack, cheap activation, mobile so they can take advantage of impassible terrain to take pot shots, and a mobile grenade? Love it! What puts them over the edge for me is their synergy with the RGC (A personal favorite of mine)

Probe Droids are "defeated" when they self-detonate, and RGC's Executor triggers on a friendly unit being defeated. God I love doing this.

Fenn Signis I can only speak about being on the opposite side of the table from me, but... an Echo base Trooper within range of both Fenn and Luke is a terror at close range.

I can't imagine to not put Rally in a command deck. Getting rid of stun is just so helpful in any case and there's usually something that adds negative conditions in a list.

I like Recover as well as a filler as healing 2 points is often worthwhile, but it's not one of the auto-includes.

I think the regular probe droids are too slow to reach objectives and as they don't have +accuracy BYY is not that helpful either. On the other side it's only 3 pts for 5 health and a 3 dice attack. The elite ones are worse with health-points-ratio, but the improved surge abilities make them more worthwhile I think. After all it's only one unit where the empire has great trooper groups with many units for similar points. I wouldn't include them at the moment.

I haven't played Fenn in Skirmish yet. 3 dice and assault with 10 hp don't sound that bad for 10 points, but I think it only works in a rebel trooper list.

Probe Droids are "defeated" when they self-detonate, and RGC's Executor triggers on a friendly unit being defeated. God I love doing this.

But I don't want to give my opponent free points.

Probe Droids are "defeated" when they self-detonate, and RGC's Executor triggers on a friendly unit being defeated. God I love doing this.

But I don't want to give my opponent free points.

I agree, Probe droids for the free opponent points in a RGC deck. Believe me, you'll get many more points if you pull this off!

I haven't really used Fenn to great effect yet, he really seems squishy with that black die. But in the right build: Luke/Leia/Elite Rebel troopers/Gideon.... he's just that one more thing that's also silly good. A guy in our area won a 6 and 8 person store champs with that list in the same weekend.

Rally I use in every deck. One of the better 0 point cards when you least expect it and most need it.

Recover? Don't think I've ever used it, or even seen it used to great effect. A good card, one more point of healing would put it up there where it might get used more. 2 or 3? Nah, I won't waste the deck space.

I've experimented a bit with a Rebel healer list. Recovery fits in snugly. MHD, Luke, Leia, Diala. All the healing cards and other defensive cards.

You play for the breaking point, but have to be careful. If all goes well, at some point your opponent's squad is too thin to land enough damage to ever kill your remaining figures.

I like Fenn, always have.

I used to play rProbe Droid the first map rotation. When deploying south and with a pre-nerf Officer push, it could safely score points turn one on both Smuggled Goods and Get to the Ship with absolutely no way for the opponent to counter.

Pants, I forgot how broken those first missions were...

Anyway, currently I wouldn't play a rProbe for anything other than points filler, and and Officer + Rule by Fear is much better 3pt filler in my book. It is slow, fairly squishy and unreliable on attack with all the blue and yellow and mediocre surges.

The eProbe is a pretty serious upgrade. Other than (overly) costly uniques, it is the only figure to have both a heavy damage surge and a heavy Pierce surge, which shreds black defense. The attack re-roll also makes its damage output much more reliable and stable.

The problem with it is that it is a single figure group. Even with Recover, it takes exceptionally careful positioning to shield the eProbe from getting focus fired. It is a pretty glass-cannon type of figure and while losing 5VP isn't the end of the world, it isn't insignificant either.

I always considered the explosion thing more of a gimmick or even a trap. Unless your opponent doesn't pay attention, setting up a good explosion takes much planning and positioning, potentially making you miss other more beneficial plays while you're trying to set it up. And even then, you're still getting random damage which might result in a fluke, all the while you are giving away VPs and activation advantage and possibly board positioning advantage.

Fenn suffers from being very squishy - 10HP can go down surprisingly quickly. With luck or Focus, a single eStormtrooper group will drop him in a single volley, two groups won't break a sweat on him. That being said, his three-dice attack is nice, especially if he gets to use it twice and Blast around. His trooper assault thing is pretty forgettable, an extra rank-and-file trooper attack isn't anything to get excited about, especially since Rebs don't have exceptional Trooper figures the way Imps do. Other than survivability, Fenn's problem is that he does not bring anything interesting or useful to the table. Rebs already have very efficient access to Blast in the form of Sabs and abundant access to solid three-dice attacks with Luke and gratuitous Focusing of rank-and-file figures. In my book he joins most of the other unique figures on the "You seem cool enough but I can have much more bang for my buck elsewhere" bench.

In my book, Recovery is a dead weight card the same way most healing effects are dead weight in competitive CCG play. All the card does is make you expend a significant amount resources (1/15th of your card deck + an action out of your per-game action pool) in order to do something that has no impact on the board state - you aren't gaining anything, making an opponent lose anything or altering board presence - only thing you're doing is prolonging the existing board state.

For Rally, a simple calculation I do is: am I playing at least one single figure that costs 8+ pts? If yes, put in Rally, so that my investment isn't lost due to a pesky Stun token. If no, don't put in Rally, because if I'm playing a swarm of rank-and-file figures, saving one move action on a 3-4pt squad figure isn't worth the card slot that might be put to better use.

Probe Droids:
I find the elite probe droid to be absolutely cost effective and am almost always willing to spend 5 or 10 points of deployment on them. Locally they don't seem to get a huge amount of play as people seem to focus around building archetype lists(troopers, heavy weapons, brawlers, creatures), but I have never regretted taking them along in a list. The B/Y/Y dice with a built in targeting computer mean you are hitting for at least 2 surges on a roll usually with 2-3 damage. The +2 Damage, +2 pierce surges mean that their shots can punch though most defense dice(stupid 'X') and start doing damage to single figures. Their 7 health, Recover 2 and Mobile mean that they will usually stay on the board for multiple rounds, unless you opponent singles them out to be killed.

Regular probe droids are more utility deployments for me, they need a specific purpose as I would usually put those 3 points into an extra officer and rule by fear. The use of them with the RGC can be quite fun and effective, or if I know a series of maps will have lots of blocking terrain to use to my advantage I might bring some along. At 3 deployment points they suffer in every way compared to the elite version, but that can also be their strength in that they are almost disposable. When I have them around they tend to sit just behind my front line, where I can take a shot and pull back, or lunge them forward at the end of a round explode in a group of enemies.

Fenn Signis:

I also like fenn, but my only problem with Fenn is that he has just to little health or defense. If either could be bumped up just a bit more he would see game play quite often. As it stands with troopers being fairly strong post errata I have seen him being used more often. With the R/B/G dice and Assault he can hit pretty hard at a medium range, but usually that Assault ability is a trap that will get him focus fired and killed quickly. He works best when you can find a nice wall, and use figures to block line of sight to him while he can shoot back. His trooper assault ability is fun and can usually be used a couple of times a game to help get a little more damage out of those Rebel Troopers. I haven't used him with the Echo Troopers yet, but I'm looking forward to trying it.

Recover:

I tend to throw this in to command decks if I have a significant figure that I want to keep alive, or if I have card space left over for more 0 point cards. The latter doesn't happen as often anymore due to the growing number of useful 0 point cards.

Rally:

What can I say, it is a staple in many command card decks. Being able to surprise an opponent by removing a condition can be amazing. It usually works best in lists with 1 or more bigger figures that people would want to cripple with a well timed stun. It doesn't work as well in lists where there are tons of small figures as losing 1 action to a condition isn't as big of a deal.

Side note: The only time I have seen Rally fail hard was against a Jyn Hair trigger shot. Both happen at the start of a figure's activation so the person with the initiative(player playing rally) had to play rally before getting re-stunned by Jyn. Oddly I haven't seen anyone Negate a Rally card yet.

Probe droid:

Not a huge fan of the regular one. Damage is a bit low and the speed 3 is a real pain, even with mobile. For 3 points, I'd rather another officer and something like rule by fear. The self destruct is good, but again, with the slow movement it can be tricky to use and really, you're then paying 3pts for what is essentially a worse Grenadier card.

The elite probe droids on the other hand. Wow these things are awesome. More move, more health, amazing surge abilities, and a reroll when attacking, all for 2 extra points. Don't underestimate recover 2. The probe droid is super annoying to kill, and if you don't kill it quickly, it can last for ages. I've seen eProbe Droids soak up 14-15 dmg in one game.

Fenn:
Solid unit. Two attacks are great. You'll should always have a Gideon to move him and focus him. That's when he really shines because he's then free to attack twice (once with a focus). His surge abilities are a bit boring though. The blast is nice, especially when you can do it twice (due to two attacks) but it's not a game changer.
Without some troopers to benefit from his ability, he OK. With some troopers, he's good.

Common mistake I see is that people go super aggressive with him. They run him out the front, with Leia coz they want to get all those shots in... but it just ends up exposing you. Always run him next to or behind troopers. Don't throw him out in front.

Rally:
A must have in any deck that includes some unique characters. You can get away without it if you run some trooper spam but if you have some expensive units like Vehicles, RGC, Vader, Luke, Leia etc.... you're going to want to have one. Not much else to say... it gives you an action back on an important and expensive unit.

Recover:

I found this to be a bit more situational, but as above, It can be very useful to keep those expensive units alive a bit longer. Especially useful with Gideon or e/r officers. That way you can still move a bit and attack without wasting the action on a recover. Mileage may vary for merc lists that don't have easy access to move boosting abilities.

Side note:

Sit tight isn't technically obsolete. It still does something. It means you don't activate anything until you have MORE ready deployment cards. The pass rule says you can only pass if you have FEWER ready deployment cards. So in the case that you both have the same number, Sit Tight would allow you a pass where the pass rule would not.

That being said, it is basically useless and is in no way worth a spot in a command deck

Side note:

Sit tight isn't technically obsolete. It still does something. It means you don't activate anything until you have MORE ready deployment cards. The pass rule says you can only pass if you have FEWER ready deployment cards. So in the case that you both have the same number, Sit Tight would allow you a pass where the pass rule would not.

That being said, it is basically useless and is in no way worth a spot in a command deck

Counterpoint:

If you pass until you have more ready deployment cards, I will then pass until we have equal ready deployment cards.

Ultimately we are in agreement. Card sucks. Never use it.

Probe Droid: love the Elite, the amount of damage it puts out is insane. Regular is good for fun with exploding, not usually very effective though, and I usually get carried away and do it when I shouldn't. That said... once, just once, there were a bunch of enemies around an objective that had all taken a decent chunk of damage; one red dice later and four figures (plus the Droid) were gone. It can happen.

Fenn: don't really have an opinion. Not used him much, or seen him used.

Rally: essential if you list is built around one model (e.g. Vader or RGC). By the time you get down to, say, Luke being your most expensive figure, it's less of a must-have. Certainly don't bother if you're playing trooper spam. Pretty straightforward really.

Recovery: waste an entire action to recover just two Health? God, no. Maybe if it were five Health, I'd consider it. Two is just too likely to disappear to a surge or a good roll or an extra shot from just one Stormtrooper. Getting overkilled by two happens all the time, in which case Recovery would have achieved nothing. Put it like this - if your model survives the whole game, it will get possibly four, probably six, maybe eight activations, so every last one of them is precious. Using Recover is as bad as Stunning yourself, all to restore just two Health (thus not even making it significantly more likely that you will, in fact, survive the whole game). Terrible, terrible card.