Hello All!

I would like to share a retrospective about this game and my favorite unit in it, the Elite Stormtroopers. They have good hit points to cost ratio, a great reroll ability and focus mechanic for offensive consistency, and fantastic command cards.

To start, let's wander back to midsummer 2015. This was before the passing rule and 4x4 was just on the rise. 9-Act was still considered king out of the core. It looked a little fragile, if versatile as hell. At the time the tournament missions were the three from the core. If you're not familiar with the three maps, there was a strong "Courier" theme. Each map had a scenario that revolved around getting to an objective token, and often picking it up and hauling it somewhere for a load of points.

I had a regional to prepare for. I knew three people playing in the regional that could pilot the 9-Act list at least as competently, if not better, than I could pilot any given list. Since I couldn't rely on player skill and didn't want to simply hope for better dice, I decided I had to build something that could match keep-up against 9-Act on the courier missions and have an edge on the other, more combat focused missions. For the tournament I wanted something that could punch a little harder and sit in the pocket a little better than 9-Act. So I played:

2x eStromtroopers

2x rRoyal Guard

3x rImperial Officers

9-Act for reference:

1x rStromtroopers

2x eProbe Droid

2x rRoyal Guard

4x rImperial Officers

Long, fun story made short, I won the regional. Went 5-1, 3-1 against 9-Act, dropping the last round of Swiss on one of the "fetch the McGuffins" scenarios.

Fast forward to November 2015, my first worlds. It was a fantastic event with great people. I can't wait to come back this year. I brought my troopers and they gave it their all. I now consider my list choice a misstep, but it was still a blast. 4x4 was in its zenith and Rebel Sabs was the popular (if not incredibly effective) counter, and once again I thought I could find a slight advantage in list building. In playing my regionals list against 4x4 I had faired decently, not consistently, but decently. I felt very confident in the Sabs + Luke matchups (still do, actually). But what really threw me for a loop was the Vader based lists. Not super popular at the time, but I struggled against it on some of the more combat based missions. The Bounty Hunter mission on IG88's map was particularly bad.

For a little more damage output I decided to punt an Imperial Officer in favor Vader's Finest on one unit of the Stormies. The thought process being: I can focus turn one and still get two of the focused troopers to move with the Officer order. I can then use the "Shoot and More" part of Vader's Finest to continue to help in Sab match up and to do a bit of kiting with Vader. This was probably a bit of a mistake. Actually taking Stormtroopers was probably a bit of a mistake, but such is life.

My Worlds List:

2x eStromtroopers

2x rRoyal Guard

2x rImperial Officers

Vader’s Finest

I finished distinctly middle of the pack. In 7 rounds of Swiss I went 3-4, but had pretty solid SOS which had me towards top of that pack. The repeated scenario was IG88’s Bounty Hunter scenario. Hit a Vader list both times, lost both. I lost the other 2 to silly play mistakes. Should have played 4x4 or 3x3x2 (a 4x4 variant where you punt an RG and an Officer for 2 eProbes).

Fast forward again, this time to last week, Friday March 11 ^th . IG88’s map is out of rotation and the Stormtrooper map is in. Thank goodness. The Royal Guard has been nerfed; the Imperial Officer has been nerfed. Also, thank goodness. Hoth brought us Elite Snowtroopers. You can see where I’m going from here.

I played in my first Imperial Assault Store Championship. An 8 man tourney where I took the following list:

2x eStromtroopers

1x rRoyal Guard

2x rImperial Officers

1x eSnowtroopers

I went 3-0 and felt the list performed as desired. I was a little underwhelmed by the Royal Guard. They moved quickly and made people shoot at them, which I guess is their job, but I was still not terribly impressed. The eSnowtroopers were a great add, and their focus train is pretty solid.

This Sunday I am playing in my third Store Championship (the second one I played in I played on Saturday, March 12 ^th and went 3-1 with a goofy rebel squad) and I think this chapter of the Elite Stormtrooper journey will be:

2x eStromtroopers

2x eProbe

1x rImperial Officers

1x eSnowtroopers

I have a had a great time playing this game with this unit. It will be a sad day when I come to the conclusion that, for whatever reason, a squad of Elite Stormies can’t make one of my tournament lists.

Thanks for reading!

Great story!

I agree that the eStormies are the best blend of power, durability, and flexibility. All of my (competitive) Imperial squads have 22pts to spend, because the other 18 are always spent on eStormies.

I am a beginner skirmish player and would like to learn how to play using a stormtrooper (+droids) list.

Can you please elaborate more on how you use each unit? For example,

• How and with whom do you position the officer?
• When and how do you use droids?
• How do you know in which direction to send snowtroopers vs stormtroopers?

Personally, I love eRebel Troopers, which I guess are the equivalent unit but for Rebels. Can Focus them all on turn one (if you don't desperately need to do something else), and when firing with Focus - especially if they haven't exited their space yet - they put out awesome amounts of damage. They're neither particularly tough not particularly quick, but they do well for me in pretty much every game.

I never quite made eStormtroopers work as well for me, but I can well believe other people did.

I am a beginner skirmish player and would like to learn how to play using a stormtrooper (+droids) list.

Can you please elaborate more on how you use each unit? For example,

• How and with whom do you position the officer?
• When and how do you use droids?
• How do you know in which direction to send snowtroopers vs stormtroopers?

1. The Officer's most useful turn is 1, where he can move a model from the foremost square in your deployment zone out 2. This can be very important depending on the map. The best example is the soon to be leaving Kuat Space Station map with the Data Heist scenario. It's 9 or 10 spaces from either deployment zone to the critical far terminal. Opponents failing to get a model to contend or enough models to keep that far terminal early has won me several games. After that I usually use him to hold a terminal or as an extra body near an objective (Like the Data Core room in the above scenario). He has additional uses as the deployment card to be exhausted for Take Init.

2. Others have played with Probe Droids more than I have so take this a grain of salt. I prefer Elite Probes to Regular Probes. I feel the better surges and targeting computer is very worth the two extra points. I think Probes will see increased utility, as there is excellent terrain in the Cantina map, the Stromtrooper map, and the Liea map that's about to be in rotation. This makes Mobile more valuable. I primarily use them to apply pressure of Solo models (Gideon, Liea, etc) or harder targets (RGC, Vader). I don't think very much of the droid command cards, I have gotten some use out of hunter protocol.

3. Trooper Formations/Tactics: This is kind of tricky to walk through without a map, but I'll give it a go.

• Most of the time (98ish%) each cluster of models should have models from each group. So some stormies from Group 1 and a stormie from Group 2 and a Snowtrooper generally make a cluster. Splitting up groups is also a good way to deny your opponent points as it will take them more work to kill all the models in the group.
• Try maximize rerolls. Elite Stormies top out at 5 damage a model (7 if focused), which is decent, but not great. The rerolls and the dice combo means you can achieve this a high percentage of the time, which is awesome.
• In general, since Rebel Sabs are still very popular, try to move a couple spaces next to your buddy, shoot, and move a space or two away from your buddy. This works with the Snowtroopers too; If you're not going to shoot with them, move up next to a couple buddies, heal, move away from your buddies to avoid blast. This may also be important for learning to play around Banthas.
• Don't be afraid to run the last dude in a group away from the fight. Reinforcements is a thing.
• If a Snowtrooper is only healing one or two damage, he may be better off shooting.
• Healing early damage is better than healing late damage. Going from on one point of health left to two points of health left doesn't move the needle much as most things can put two points of damage through onto a Stormie/Snowy. On the other hand going from 4 to 5 or 3 to 4 means it might take multiple shots with to take down the model.

Hopefully others will answer your questions as well. More views are always better. Hope that helps and enjoy the skirmish game!

Thank you. This is useful information and I have made some notes.

What does your command deck look like? Grenadier, reinforcements x2, new orders or covering fire, focus, take initiative those are pretty standard but do you use anything gimmicky or wildly different?

I don't think I do anything super gimmicky or away from "standard". The command deck is still a work in progress, I find that's the aspect of a squad that takes me the most time to tune and be happy with. That said for the Royal Guard variant I ran:

Grenadier

Inspiring Speech

Reinforcements x2

Focus

Negation

Pummel x2

Single Purpose

Stealth Tactics

Rally

Element of Surprise

Take Initiative

Planning

Of No Importance

I was displeased with the performance of Pummel and Single Purpose. I used Single Purpose to get an Elite Snowtroopers double heal twice. That was neat but not really worth the one point. Pummel is, of course, less effective than is was during the Royal Guard's heyday.

For today I am running:

Grenadier

Inspiring Speech

Reinforcements x2

Focus

Negation

Provoke

Strength in Numbers

Rank and File

Stealth Tactics

Rally

Element of Surprise

Take Initiative

Planning

Of No Importance

On New Orders: I used to run New Orders when I ran 3 Officers. In the Royal Guard variant (which is probably the stronger of the two lists) it may make it back in the rotation as I have three points I am unhappy with. Since the eProbe only has one leader I think that it might be a little dicey to slide in there.

On Covering Fire: I tend to run Covering Fire in Rebel trooper builds much more than Imperial ones. Rebel's yellow die generates more surges per shot and they have worse surges, so they get a lot more out of Covering Fire. I already have +2 Damage surge available on six models; focus, weaken is pretty saucy as well. There have only been a few times I've found myself really wanting a whole bunch of surges that can stun.

I love elite stormtroopers.

So much better than rebel troopers but that's not saying much since they are so weak.

I just won the last of our Store Champs with:
RGC

2x eStormtrooper

eProbe

Officer

On the low side for activations but huge points denial and a lot of consistent threats.

I am a beginner skirmish player and would like to learn how to play using a stormtrooper (+droids) list.

Can you please elaborate more on how you use each unit? For example,

• How and with whom do you position the officer?
• When and how do you use droids?
• How do you know in which direction to send snowtroopers vs stormtroopers?

1. The Officer's most useful turn is 1, where he can move a model from the foremost square in your deployment zone out 2. This can be very important depending on the map. The best example is the soon to be leaving Kuat Space Station map with the Data Heist scenario. It's 9 or 10 spaces from either deployment zone to the critical far terminal. Opponents failing to get a model to contend or enough models to keep that far terminal early has won me several games. After that I usually use him to hold a terminal or as an extra body near an objective (Like the Data Core room in the above scenario). He has additional uses as the deployment card to be exhausted for Take Init.

2. Others have played with Probe Droids more than I have so take this a grain of salt. I prefer Elite Probes to Regular Probes. I feel the better surges and targeting computer is very worth the two extra points. I think Probes will see increased utility, as there is excellent terrain in the Cantina map, the Stromtrooper map, and the Liea map that's about to be in rotation. This makes Mobile more valuable. I primarily use them to apply pressure of Solo models (Gideon, Liea, etc) or harder targets (RGC, Vader). I don't think very much of the droid command cards, I have gotten some use out of hunter protocol.

3. Trooper Formations/Tactics: This is kind of tricky to walk through without a map, but I'll give it a go.

• Most of the time (98ish%) each cluster of models should have models from each group. So some stormies from Group 1 and a stormie from Group 2 and a Snowtrooper generally make a cluster. Splitting up groups is also a good way to deny your opponent points as it will take them more work to kill all the models in the group.
• Try maximize rerolls. Elite Stormies top out at 5 damage a model (7 if focused), which is decent, but not great. The rerolls and the dice combo means you can achieve this a high percentage of the time, which is awesome.
• In general, since Rebel Sabs are still very popular, try to move a couple spaces next to your buddy, shoot, and move a space or two away from your buddy. This works with the Snowtroopers too; If you're not going to shoot with them, move up next to a couple buddies, heal, move away from your buddies to avoid blast. This may also be important for learning to play around Banthas.
• Don't be afraid to run the last dude in a group away from the fight. Reinforcements is a thing.
• If a Snowtrooper is only healing one or two damage, he may be better off shooting.
• Healing early damage is better than healing late damage. Going from on one point of health left to two points of health left doesn't move the needle much as most things can put two points of damage through onto a Stormie/Snowy. On the other hand going from 4 to 5 or 3 to 4 means it might take multiple shots with to take down the model.

Hopefully others will answer your questions as well. More views are always better. Hope that helps and enjoy the skirmish game!

Thanks for the all the tips in this thread! Just wondering if you can explain what you mean by keeping pressure on named characters with the eprobe droid?

Sure, even though eProbes don't have Priority Target, because they are Mobile and have a ranged attack it can be hard to hide a model from them. Their ranged attack is going to have between 2-7 accuracy (although I usually don't attempt shots farther than 3). With their excellent surges and the ability to generate a lot of them I find a single attack from a probe droid can drop a 5 health figure with some regularity. The reroll helps this consistency, remember to look at the outcome of the defense dice before picking the die to reroll.

So all that said, it's nice to find high value, low health solo models and try to shoot the daylights out of them. The caveat here is that sending a probe off to do this will likely get it killed, so you have to do a little value judgement before committing to the plan. Is sending a five point eProbe to kill a four point Gideon + On a Mission worth it, if after all is said and done you lose the eProbe? You bet it is! Is positioning the eProbe in a way to threaten doing that next turn worth it. Usually. It forces the opponent generally to do one of three things.

1. Do nothing, give up a Gideon. Huzzah!

2. Focus down the eProbe, slightly less huzzah, but still huzzah. Any activations they spend not trying to shoot down eStromtroopers is a good activation for you.

3. Move Gideon to irrelevant land. The least good outcome. However, this will probably limit the choices of who they can give focus out to.

Keep in mind this is only theory crafting. A crafty opponent may(will) be able to respond to that kind of posturing just as adroitly.

Edit: typo city.