Now that Hoth's been out for a bit, what are everyone's thoughts on the heroes? How do they compare to the heroes from the core set?

Additionally, would the Return to Hoth campaign be suitable for a new group? I've already played the core campaign twice and was looking to start up a new campaign with a new group; would it be fine for new players?

I'm playing a 2 player core game campaign with the Hoth Expansion, myself as an Imperial and my opponent playing 4 Rebels simultaneously. One of his heroes is Loku.

Loku has been instrumental in making my life as an Imperial utter hell. After getting Set Your Sights and Overwatch, he's basically letting the heroes just blow away units from across the board without trouble. When I finally played Dark Obsession and got to use Vader, that walking fish stick was the first thing flushed down the toilet.

I'm sure there are players with more experience who can probably give an answer based around some meta, but Loku seems to be doing just fine trashing me.

Now that Hoth's been out for a bit, what are everyone's thoughts on the heroes? How do they compare to the heroes from the core set?

Additionally, would the Return to Hoth campaign be suitable for a new group? I've already played the core campaign twice and was looking to start up a new campaign with a new group; would it be fine for new players?

Hoth missions are probably better than the core, especially for new players. The downside of Hoth is you have the threat missions and the rebels pretty much must do them which takes away from doing side missions for fun rewards, although this is partly compensated for if they win the first mission by getting the troopers as allies without having to do the side quest.

Loku is probably hands down the weakest hero. His biggest strength probably comes from letting the Rebels open crates for free, which can be very good, but even still he's pretty meh. The limit of 2 recon tokens really really sucks and gimps him pretty badly. His 2 accuracy can be used effectively with a couple guns like the gun that allows you to shoot 3 times, but there just isn't a lot to him.

Verena is one of the stronger heroes. On small maps or with bad positioning by the Imperials she can be both hugely deadly and nearly indestructible. With her defensive ability, parked beside an enemy and with the armor that can turn evades into blocks she has minimum 3 block. With a weapon with good surge generation to remove strain she can just keep killing and killing.

MHD-19 is also very strong. Bacta Radiator is a bit nuts. Lots of movement with fuel injector. Self focusing. Able to pull cards out to focus others or remove conditions or give them an extra 4 strain to go nuts with, he is probably competitive with if not better than Gideon for making the rest of the team do more.

Loku was really struggling to pull his weight in the campaign I was playing until really recently, and with the right weapon he is... painful to face. I think the thing is that as a sniper you may think he is primarily a shooter, while he is actually primarily a support character, just one that given the right weapon and upgrades can also help as a damage dealer.

Verena... just murders small things to a grimy paste. She is less stand out against big targets, as if she doesn't kill something she is essentially just an average combatant. However, with the right upgrades, unfortunate placing by the Imperials, and a judicious use of strain she can murder things AND move really far. Doesn't help she can often do this outside her own turn.

Not having played with the medical droid... I can't really help there. I definitely think the new heroes are a little less straight forward than the core game ones, so may not be best first choices for new players. They need a little more thought and understanding to do their best.

Campaign wise... don't see why the Return to Hoth campaign might not work for new players.

I've played it with new players. As another said, the Threat Missions are a kick in the nuts, but as the Imperial player, I play for fun, not to win.

The only consideration I'd mention for Return to Hoth and new heroes is Threat Missions (Banes / Boons). My hero players found the Banes a real pain until they got rid of them (but didn't get the Boons).

That said, the story missions we've played so far seem heftily weighted in favour of the heroes (I'm doing rather better in the side missions), so maybe new players could get by just fine. The first mission, for example ("Assault on Echo Base", I think it's called?) was trivially easy for the heroes.

Speaking as the Imperial player, Verena is just horrible... she brutally butchers my rank and file. She just gets so many attacks, and so much movement, for so little strain! Plus she has high Health and Endurance. I'm really struggling to deal with her - I think she's the most powerful Hero I've yet had to face, just edging out Jyn (our Rebel players haven't used Saska or Gideon yet).

MHD-19 seems pretty decent, he's always doing something useful whether it's attacking, healing, or buffing. We ran his personal mission (Preventative Measures) and I got Dreylen down to just 1 Health remaining, one activation from MHD-19 later and he was fully healed, from which point I was fighting a losing battle to stop him escaping. A hero that can do that kind of thing is pretty powerful, if not in terms of killing things, then in terms of making sure they win the mission.

Not so worried about Loku; either he's just not that great, or the player using him hasn't got to grips with him yet. He's just bought a gun from Equipment Deck III, though, so we'll see how he gets on from now on. (The Recon Tokens don't seem strong enough buffs to really be very worth the Strain and limitations).

(The Recon Tokens don't seem strong enough buffs to really be very worth the Strain and limitations).

Loku has a couple abilities that let him get the strain back and bounce a recon token around without spending strain, but it's pretty far into the campaign before you can do that and as good as that sounds, it just does not end up being all that great. The real kicker is he has a nice ability to give characters a permanent evade, but with only 2 recon tokens it means he can only protect 1 friendly and recon 1 enemy and that is it, he can't even recon a crate at that point, if he protects 2 friends he can do nothing else and loses most of his abilities. The 2 recon token limit is really crippling.

MHD-19 is the best support character out there IMO. Especially when you get Bacta Radiator. Traveling as a group is a must. If you have to split, he is still good, but the overal of what he brings just doesnt shine. But he IS a "healer class" type of character. He isnt going to be a damage dealer or a tank. So the person picking him MUST understand what theyre getting into so they dont become bored/upset a few missions in when they realize they dont do a lot of attacking. Its all about placement and being able to utilize his abilities.

~D

I've been thinking about this for a bit and came to a realisation. I play four player with myself as Imps. One of my friends plays Jedi. ALWAYS. Any Star Wars related stuff he is a Jedi, (even has two lightsabres and a full costume, but, he is not a cosplayer). My daughter is in love with Wookies, , so she play Graak. Teh third player tends to go for the tactical choice. But, until they release Bespin with that Jedi or another Wookie, not many of the other heroes will get much play time

Loku has been the strongest character for me, but that's because I always plan ahead so that I'm putting a recon token on my target at the start of Lotus activation and then double attacking from 6 spaces away without moving. This usually keeps his 10 hp from becoming a liability, and his 5 speed lets him quickly redeploy to wherever he needs to be. If you're only getting recon tokens onto enemies after Loku activates, I could see why he would feel underwhelming, but that's why you have to be smart about how you deploy and activate him.

Verena I think is the weakest hero in the game early on except for maybe Biv, and it takes her a while to become useful but she does eventually become very strong at the end. You have to upgrade her gun ASAP and rush Point Blank Shot before she can start doing decent damage and start reliably triggering her other abilities against anything that's got more than 3hp.

Verena is fun to play, but she needs to be in very specific situations to shine (e.g. clusters of low health figures). But in those situations, she's one of the most powerful heroes around. However, I think I would rather have a pure melee character like Diala or Gaarkhan.

I'm really surprised to see the negative comments about Loku. I think he's the best hero out of the three new ones in Hoth and the only hero that I would consider playing again in another campaign. He's great for tagging a powerful figure that will take multiple attacks to bring down. Automatic +1 damage to each attack? That's awesome. How could you not like that? The tag doesn't even require an action. And I really like his "Spectrum Scanner" ability that causes the tag to transfer to another member in a group for free. Really, really good when you're facing a group of troopers or guards.

My only complaint about Loku is that his starting weapon is crappy, and his health is only 10, so he's often the first to get wounded. But even while wounded, he has 4 Speed/Endurance, so that helps.

In our campaign he really struggled to pull his weight early on. Bizarrely even though he has the bonus range he kept failing to hit due to accuracy shortages and things (so some of it was down to bad luck), but his crappy gun really hampers him. However, in the last game of the campaign he was doing all sorts of ridiculous nonsense, including attacks that were doing 9-11 damage with very little effort. He slotted the "Sorin class tank" in 2 hits...

Verena was my nightmare for most of the campaign. When I had to rely on groups of normal stormtroopers and the like she just murdered them... and with the right upgrades she really didn't need the troopers to even be that close together to get massive chains of death (she killed 5 stomtroopers in one round once, the initial 2 being outside her own turn, and carrying her over a 1/3 of the map). She did have more trouble with individual tough targets, but then the players had Biv Bodrick to deal with them (anything less than 10 health and he would normally kill it in 1 turn... it became a running joke about the number of times he murdered Dengar, who usually only survived 1 turn). My guys only really became tenable when I started being able to field elite stormtroopers and snowtroopers, as they had enough health to make it hard for Verena to chain her attacks, and were still small enough that biv was normally wasted on them. Unfortunately by that point the two support characters (Loku and... the one from Twin Suns) had upgraded enough that they could actually fight as well.

That said, the story missions we've played so far seem heftily weighted in favour of the heroes (I'm doing rather better in the side missions), so maybe new players could get by just fine. The first mission, for example ("Assault on Echo Base", I think it's called?) was trivially easy for the heroes.

Not so worried about Loku; either he's just not that great, or the player using him hasn't got to grips with him yet. He's just bought a gun from Equipment Deck III, though, so we'll see how he gets on from now on. (The Recon Tokens don't seem strong enough buffs to really be very worth the Strain and limitations).

I found the reverse... the story missions tended to favour myself while the side missions tended to favour the rebels. I do think Loku is tricky, and starts off... underwhelming, but wuth the right upgrades and careful play he can be a real pain in the neck. I think early on one of the issues is that his +1 damage a shot thin is actually quite good, but it doesn't feel very active and so doesn't feel very satisfying to play.

(The Recon Tokens don't seem strong enough buffs to really be very worth the Strain and limitations).

Loku has a couple abilities that let him get the strain back and bounce a recon token around without spending strain, but it's pretty far into the campaign before you can do that and as good as that sounds, it just does not end up being all that great. The real kicker is he has a nice ability to give characters a permanent evade, but with only 2 recon tokens it means he can only protect 1 friendly and recon 1 enemy and that is it, he can't even recon a crate at that point, if he protects 2 friends he can do nothing else and loses most of his abilities. The 2 recon token limit is really crippling.

It makes it harder (our player didn't use the permanent evade thing, just tagging crates and tagging enemies), but I think if he could have more it would actually start to be overpowered.

Verena I think is the weakest hero in the game early on except for maybe Biv, and it takes her a while to become useful but she does eventually become very strong at the end. You have to upgrade her gun ASAP and rush Point Blank Shot before she can start doing decent damage and start reliably triggering her other abilities against anything that's got more than 3hp.

She was good at the beginning for our campaign, using mainly melee attacks. She started floundering towards the end as I was able to bring in more 5-6 health things, as she stopped being able to reliably kill them in one shot, and so setting off her murder chain (if she did set it off she seemed to be able to do slightly more damage with her follow up attacks).

Healbot now. Healbot forever.

I've been thinking about this for a bit and came to a realisation. I play four player with myself as Imps. One of my friends plays Jedi. ALWAYS. Any Star Wars related stuff he is a Jedi, (even has two lightsabres and a full costume, but, he is not a cosplayer). My daughter is in love with Wookies, , so she play Graak. Teh third player tends to go for the tactical choice. But, until they release Bespin with that Jedi or another Wookie, not many of the other heroes will get much play time

Simple inform your player that during this time period there *were no Jedi. Then take the offending piece, dip it gently in lamp oil, and send it to hell.

Meh, I dunno. If people wanna have fun, why tell them they're having wrong fun? If someone wants to be a Jedi, let them be a Jedi. It may or may not make for a more varied / tactically sound group of heroes, but if someone's having less fun than they otherwise would, I don't think it's worth the tradeoff.

Meh, I dunno. If people wanna have fun, why tell them they're having wrong fun?

Ball in a cup, man, ball in a cup. Nothing is more fun than ball in a cup.