So I (finally) finished the Hoth Campaign. It's actually the first full length campaign I've finished.

I won as the Imperial Player

I used the Armored Onslaught class deck and the following Agenda Sets:

Imperial Industry

The General's Scheme (Weiss)

Bombardment (Sorin)

Droid Uprising (IG-88)

Retaliation

Whatever set has the Imperial Informants card that increases threat by the threat level and Tracking Beacon that lets you draw an extra Agenda card each upgrade stage.

Thoughts on Imperial Upgrades:

Armored Onslaught was a complete Blast (pun fully intended). The starting ability to replace a die in an attack roll with a red die and add Blast resulted in a LOT of extra damage throughout the campaign.

My favorite combination was Maximum Firepower (remove a red die from a ranged attack and add 3 damage to the results) combined with Explosive Munitions. This allowed me to get within minimum range and hit really freaking hard. It was especially fun with Heavy Stormtroopers, with whom I could use the inherent +2 accuracy to hit rebels with a RR attack, one of which is guaranteed to be a 3-damage roll with Max Firepower.

The other standout card from this set is Mortar. Unopposed damage to at least one and potentially multiple heroes every round was a very powerful effect that I would not have traded for the world.

Duds: Armored Infantry (defensive rerolls on troopers next to Droids and and Vehicles) did not get triggered once, and automated repairs were only triggered twice throughout the campaign. Explosive Entry is super situational and is only worth buying if it's the last card you can afford on the last mission.

Best units with this deck:

ELITE PROBE DROIDS

I can chock up at least two direct victories to massive attacks from these beauties: Taking C3PO from 2 damage to dead in a single shot in the first side mission (6 damage), and taking Diala from 7 damage to wounded in a single shot in the finale (5 damage). Their low threat cost and high damage output makes them a threat throughout the campaign. Definitely my MVP unit.

HK Assassin Droids

These guys wreck face no matter the deck, but with the Reactive Armor upgrade they turn from Glass Cannon to just plain Cannon. Very fun units that were able to burn through white dice heroes like butter.

SC-2 M Repulsor Tank

Definitely one of my favorite open groups. The repulsor tank with Officer backup is a death dealing machine that can do half or more damage in a single activation to a hero. Great place for Reactive Armor as well as a great unit to use Restorative Supplies agenda on. I recommend buying the Armored Division agenda early on to reduce the threat cost of this beast to a very manageable 7.

The Rebels[\b]

My two erstwhile opponents (shoutouts to RogueLieutenant and mythicalmothman) were, first of all, a blast to play with. No matter what happened we were having fun and cracking jokes, including a running subplot that MHD-19 is a crazy rampaging sex-bot. Don't ask. They're also both really good players who discussed their moves and made no awful mistakes. They might say they did but they're humble like that

They ran Diala, MHD-19, Verena, and Loku

General: The rebels were always short of credits due to there not being time to grab boxes. As such, the heroes had a lot of cool gadgets but they had no 3-dice weapons. There were some upgrades that made them feel as if they had an extra die (looking at you, Vibrogenerator) and the heroes had easy access to focus via Diala, so they were able to put out some decent damage. Poor MHD never got an upgraded weapon

Diala (Played by RogueLieutenant):

From my end of the table, Diala was a constant pain in the butt. For the majority of the campaign she was equipped with a Gaffi Stick (RY melee with a native pierce 1) with the Vibrogenerator upgrade (remove 2 surges to add 2 damage to the attack), which allowed her to use Precise Strike to wreck face. Force Throw, Dancing Weapon, and Battle Meditation upgrades made her into an assassin that took down many figures as well as a potent support unit. Unfortunately, her reroll on defense would often result in the same, if not worse, results and her Force Adept rerolls on attacks almost invariably produced the same result.

MHD (Lieutenant): **** this droid. He constantly healed heroes that I had put so much work into damaging and prevented several woundings. His access to focus allowed him to do a lot of damage once or twice a mission, and he pulled off the last hits on Darth Vader in Diala's side mission and Sorin (TWICE) in the finale. A solid support hero, it's just a shame he never got a better weapon.

Loku (MythicalMothman): Loku didn't do much in the early campaign, but by the end he had a E-11 (BG with ~:+2 damage) with a Disruption Cell (+2 Acc., replace one die with a red and Extra Ammo (reroll an attack die). With the native +2 Acc., +2 from the cell, and +1 accuracy from Mon Cala Special Forces, Loku could fire RG shots with a reroll out to 6 spaces and do decent damage. Recon tokens were fun, but ultimately I was never very scared of him.

Verena (Mothman): Poor Verena was stuck with a DH-17 (GY pistol with ~: +1 damage, Pierce 1). If she'd had a better weapon, her 3 attacks a turn would have annihilated me. After seeing her fully upgraded into close combat, I was scared of Verena and I want to play her next time I get a chance to play as the heroes. Definitely one of my favorites now.

OVERALL IMPRESSIONS

I felt like I snowballed early on, especially with how cash strapped the Rebels were. This also happened in the core campaign I played. For this reason, I will be sticking with the Mini campaigns, which have less opportunity for snowballing. By the middle of the campaign, I had little fear of losing missions and no doubt I could win the whole campaign.

The Threat Mission and Bane/Boon system was a lame mechanic we eventually houseruled out. We rolled a die to see how many bane/boon would be assigned to each side whenever that mechanic came up.

Dengar is a load of fun and I will be using him in future campaigns as much as possible.

Regular Stormtroopers continue to be lame.

Thank you for reading! I hope all of your campaigns are wonderful!

great report. I like the Threat Missions. im on my second to last mission with the hoth campaign. I love the variation in some of the main mission objectives

I'm curious, did your Loku player buy the ability that let you put the recon tokens on the crates? I ask because you said that your rebels were often strapped for cash. In my Hoth campaign I found this to be Loku's real standout ability - not only do you get the extra credits, but you also get whatever useful goodies come out of the crates. And best of all, you get all that without having to spend any actions.

Edit: Also, I both agree with you and disagree with you about the threat missions. I liked the design of the missions themselves and thought that they were generally unique and fun to play. However, I didn't like the feeling of limited choice that they gave when it came time to pick the side missions. You go through all the trouble of selecting a side mission deck and choosing which green missions to put in only to pretty much ignore it for most of the campaign. Yes I know that we could have picked the side missions instead of the threat missions, but it always seemed like a better idea to eliminate the bane. I think that if I ever were to play another Hoth campaign that I would look at houseruling them out to introduce more variety.

One last note: the amount of missions where I had to kill civilians was starting to get rather tedious.

What is interesting to me is that I am currently playing the same campaign as empire with the same rebel characters and the same class and have lost most of the missions so far. We are a little more than halfway through, but the rebels in my group have some powerful weapons and have put Diala's force throw to good use. The matches were mostly very close with the exception of the most recent mission ("One Step Behind") which is exceptionally unbalanced in favor of the rebels. They even managed to win "Return to Echo Base." I don't think I have made too many egregious errors, and I am trying to stay positive, but I am worried I am dead this campaign.

One last note: the amount of missions where I had to kill civilians was starting to get rather tedious.

Kill!?

Civilians?!

No no no, I am just peacefully escorting dangerous terrorists to a humane detainment area. Wampas are very good at that sort of thing.

One last note: the amount of missions where I had to kill civilians was starting to get rather tedious.

Kill!?

Civilians?!

No no no, I am just peacefully escorting dangerous terrorists to a humane detainment area. Wampas are very good at that sort of thing.

the humane detainment area just so happens to be their grave... nothing wrong with that.

and for those who want it we offer cremation free of charge. Just come see our friendly local Heavy Stormtrooper with his flamethrower...

What is interesting to me is that I am currently playing the same campaign as empire with the same rebel characters and the same class and have lost most of the missions so far. We are a little more than halfway through, but the rebels in my group have some powerful weapons and have put Diala's force throw to good use. The matches were mostly very close with the exception of the most recent mission ("One Step Behind") which is exceptionally unbalanced in favor of the rebels. They even managed to win "Return to Echo Base." I don't think I have made too many egregious errors, and I am trying to stay positive, but I am worried I am dead this campaign.

Chin up and buy one cost Agendas. Save them all for the finale and unload a crap ton of one shot effects to cheese your way to victory.

What is interesting to me is that I am currently playing the same campaign as empire with the same rebel characters and the same class and have lost most of the missions so far. We are a little more than halfway through, but the rebels in my group have some powerful weapons and have put Diala's force throw to good use. The matches were mostly very close with the exception of the most recent mission ("One Step Behind") which is exceptionally unbalanced in favor of the rebels. They even managed to win "Return to Echo Base." I don't think I have made too many egregious errors, and I am trying to stay positive, but I am worried I am dead this campaign.

Chin up and buy one cost Agendas. Save them all for the finale and unload a crap ton of one shot effects to cheese your way to victory.

I've always wondered about that - it does seem to be the optimal way to play the game, if all you care about is winning the last mission. Has anyone tried this, and know if it's more effective than trying to get permanent upgrades by winning more of the earlier missions?

I don't like the one-shot cards and avoid them, I definitely don't save them up to hose the Rebels with, although in Hoth, if the Rebels are stockpiling boons, then I'd consider it fair play to do the same with Agenda.

The terrain one-shot and the new Greedo one-shot cards seem okay though, I'll play them. I don't like the way the cards work all that much, but sticking Greedo or a Bantha on the board is at least far more interesting than the other one-shot cards which just feel like pure cheese.

In my first campaigns I avoided single-use agendas and saved for deplete ones.

Now I don't worry so much about winning and buy and play when they seem to produce the most fun (either for myself or the rebels, doesn't matter). And I have a self-imposed limit of 4 agenda cards in play at a time.

Yeah I think the ones that add some special unit, or change something at the start of the game, aren't as annoying as one-shots.

MHD's xp card called: Adrenal Vapor is probably his best card next to Bacta Radiator.

You can use twice per round (before having to rest or recover Strain somehow) to add a yellow dice to their attacks. That's insane. Especially if you're using high end weapons.

My wife has Jyn decked out with Gunslinger and is using Sporting Blaster (BYY with Stun/+1 dmg/Pierce 2/+2 Acc) and the new weapon from Bespin Gambit, Disruptor Pistol (GR with +3 dmg).

She's insane getting Focused from Diala and the extra yellow from MHD. She's rolling 5 attack dice and she's doing about 8-12 damage per attack. Luckily she hasnt gotten her scope upgrade yet on the Disruption Cell (replace a die with a red die).

She basically gets free QuickDraws and movement points all day...

~D

So having played it, how does it compare to the original campaign? The original is pretty tough on the rebels at times and thinking of starting it with some relative newbies. Would Hoth be better to start them on?

I think the mini campaigns are best to start new players on. They're shorter, so even if you get behind it's less punishing, and they let you use a bunch of cool stuff out of the gate by giving you a lot of XP and credits right away. Also, the missions are packed with a bunch of unique figures on both sides, so they're fun too!

All this is for the Twin Shadows mini campaign BTW. I haven't played the other one.

I actually find that the mini campaigns are not as good for newbies. If you have someone who is willing to play all the way through the campaign it's worth it. The time may be a little overwhelming, but it's worth it. The mini campaigns move too quickly in every regard! The story seems very stretched and the upgrading is insane!

"So these are your starting weapons, but before you can use them and figure out your strengths and weaknesses pick ten cards. You can now buy some that you could learn in a couple of minutes are basically useless for you. Additionally, Gary, see how your guy can get blast 1 for a strain and will lose strain at the end of the round? Well now you can get some more abilities before you even have a chance to get these down! But don't worry guys, it's much less overwhelming to put 16 missions worth of content into four missions!"

The mini campaign boxes are great as additions to the preceding campaign (as side missions), but I find the mini campaigns to be week and outright not fun!

I feel the 4-mission minicampaigns are a bit too short to learn how to be effective with your abilities, and the full-length campaign is a few missions too long. (Thus my experiment with the extended 7-mission Twin Shadows campaign.)

I feel the 4-mission minicampaigns are a bit too short to learn how to be effective with your abilities, and the full-length campaign is a few missions too long. (Thus my experiment with the extended 7-mission Twin Shadows campaign.)

I've been watching that. It's really neat.

But I'm already playing a mini-campaign with this group, and will be finishing soon, so I'm thinking of a full campaign and just wondering which would be better (haven't had a chance to play Hoth yet)

Twin Shadows is good, although starting with 3 XP and 300xhero credits isn't a great way to introduce beginners. The first mission in both Hoth and the core campaign are intentionally VERY newbie friendly for both the Rebels and Imperial.

Bespin follows the Twin Shadows campaign structure exactly, however the missions are complete garbage. As much as Twin Shadows is good, Bespin is bad. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone let alone a new player.

Twin Shadows is good, although starting with 3 XP and 300xhero credits isn't a great way to introduce beginners. The first mission in both Hoth and the core campaign are intentionally VERY newbie friendly for both the Rebels and Imperial.

Bespin follows the Twin Shadows campaign structure exactly, however the missions are complete garbage. As much as Twin Shadows is good, Bespin is bad. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone let alone a new player.

Twin Shadows is good, although starting with 3 XP and 300xhero credits isn't a great way to introduce beginners. The first mission in both Hoth and the core campaign are intentionally VERY newbie friendly for both the Rebels and Imperial.

Bespin follows the Twin Shadows campaign structure exactly, however the missions are complete garbage. As much as Twin Shadows is good, Bespin is bad. I wouldn't recommend it for anyone let alone a new player.

Really? What about it don't you like? Everything I've seen of it looked to me (heroes, enemies, item cards etc). What is it about the missions that it's so bad?

The time limit missions are completely busted with no chance for the Rebels to win if the Imperial Player doesn't blatantly hand them the win. Things like not being able to rescue someone if there is an enemy within 2 means you pretty much have to kill absolutely everything on the board AND do it under a time limit. On top of that when the final citizen is rescued the boss spawns and immediately runs to the other side of the board and the time limit makes killing him impossible. To make matters EVEN WORSE, this mission relies on the Rebels not knowing what is going on, which means the mission doesn't really have any sort of replayability.

The rules for the Bespin missions also seem to be a kick in the teeth for the heroes that come with the mission. If Davith takes his awesome lightsaber as his first buy, it's almost impossible for him to break security cameras with it, but give him a crappy vibrosword and it's no problem. Similarly the stupid class deck ability to add a range requirement to all attacks coupled with -2 accuracy means Davith just gets completely screwed if he gets his lightsaber or any of the better weapons which have red dice, he has to buy a crappy weapon with a blue. Murne also gets a bit screwed, her ability to bring Lando along for 4 less points is wasted XP in the last mission where you aren't allowed to bring him, and her ability to have an ally take an extra attack is also gimped from that.

A lot of Bespin's problems would be mitigated if you brought say Fenn along rather than Davith, as his blast ability makes clogging all those stupid corridors you have to go down a really bad idea for the Imperials. Similarly Gideon is just flat out better than Murn at everything, and also doesn't suffer from having some of his abilities become useless in the final mission through no fault of your own.

If Davith takes his awesome lightsaber, he should interact with the Cams (strength test) instead of attacking. His strength test is good enough for it (only one success needed).

I have played only the first mission though, and exceptionally with just two heroes. The heroes won it handily against the Imperial Black Ops deck. I would not normally play or recommend two heroes, and even less only Davith and Murne, because with them you will effectively have two melee characters and two support characters. You would really need to love challenges if you take more than one melee character and more than one support character.

If Davith takes his awesome lightsaber, he should interact with the Cams (strength test) instead of attacking. His strength test is good enough for it (only one success needed).

His strength test is only 66% which is bad, particularly with a time limit which will turn a couple actions wasted on bad rolls into a loss. I won the first mission by taking out cameras with ranged attacks which all had 100% success rate AND didn't require an action walking up to them.

Doubly punishing melee like this makes no sense. Making better weapons work worse makes no sense. Having a physical test rather than a hacking test when you're punishing melee like this makes no sense. Adding accuracy (range) to melee attacks which weren't designed to work that way makes no sense. Ignoring reach which is melee's version of range (accuracy) and instead using ranged accuracy makes no sense.

I dunno, the requiring range thing always struck me as a case of shifting targets. Or at least that's how I would play it. Gave the melee guys attack something else.