Strategic Planning is great, I've had loads of success with it. On the base set finale the other week, the Rebels burst in to a room where Elite royal guard were deployed. They killed one and seriously injured and stunned the other, rendering the group useless. With this card I was able to activate my HK Assassin droids a second time, whilst the Rebels had used a lot of resources on the royal guard.

Then of course, they had to still kill the royal guard or I could do the same thing next turn!

I think since it is a TS campaign and there are only two missions left I will buy SP now and have 1 exp remaining, then hopefully win and get 3 XP and enough to buy Lead by Example OR Optimal Tactics for the finale. The finale will have Kayn in it and killing him isn't a goal for the one mission for sure, so that is big leader boost.

Strategic Planning will help me win the current mission (Canyon Run) because I can activate the elite Tuskans up top, use their range attack, and get to re use one of my units down below. So I could go Heavies, Tuskans, Heavies, and still have whatever else is left out there.

Strategic Planning is great, I've had loads of success with it. On the base set finale the other week, the Rebels burst in to a room where Elite royal guard were deployed. They killed one and seriously injured and stunned the other, rendering the group useless. With this card I was able to activate my HK Assassin droids a second time, whilst the Rebels had used a lot of resources on the royal guard.

Then of course, they had to still kill the royal guard or I could do the same thing next turn!

Cruel. Those HKs hit like a freight truck. A powerful deck, but pretty hard to use.

So my Rebels and I had a lengthy discussion about Strategic Planning the other night and have determined the proper way to use it:

Exhaust this card and one of your deployment cards before activating a group.

So before you do anything, you have to pick and choose a deployment card and exhaust it, you can't exhaust an already exhausted card, so it has to be a deployment card you have not yet used.

Ready another of your deployment cards of equal or lesser value.

Ok, so pick another card that you have already exhausted (besides the one you just sacrificed as it says 'another') and ready it.

Each figure corresponding to both Deployment cards gains one movement point.

So all of the figures on both cards can immediately use one movement point as this is occurring BEFORE activation (outside of their activation) and must be used as an interrupt. Now I am free to activate any card I wish including the one that I just readied.

So for Canyon Run, I activate the heavy storm troopers at the bottom, use them. The Rebels go, I then exhaust Strategic Planning AND my elite Tuskans (7 cost) to READY the Heavy Storm Trooper card. I can now activate the Heavy Storm Troopers. You have to sacrifice a deployment card to get that activation, you don't get to just pick a card, activate that group and ready another card for your next turn at the same time.

Not sure if this is how you guys were trying to explain it to me, but this is how I interpreted the explanation and am glad it is all cleared up now. And if you aren't doing it this way, you are doing it wrong.

That is how you use it. Just follow all of the steps one after another.

I'm glad you have everything sorted out, and thanks for summarizing everything together for the posterity.

(I now see you meant something else with "sacrifice a group activation" than I thought in one of my replies, so my answer may have been confusing.)