This is a little older now but it's been a useful resource for me. Any plans on updating it with the extra characters from Jabbas Realm ( Onar Koma (Hero) , Shyla Varad (Hero) , Vinto Hreeda (Hero) ) and how they fit into your tier list?

I'd be interested on opinions of the "new" heroes as well. Vinto has been brutal for me to deal with. When the Rebels can deal splash damage with Fenn and then finish my bruised units with Vinto's abilities by selectively targeting en masse, I often have trouble even fielding trooper groups.

Onar seems very situational, and I personally haven't seen him effectively utilized, but I think some players have found a niche for him in which he's exceptional.

Shyla seems pretty good, from what I've heard- though, again, my Rebels are struggling in using her.

1 hour ago, subtrendy said:

Shyla seems pretty good, from what I've heard- though, again, my Rebels are struggling in using her.

In our JR campaign which we just continued playing this last weekend (we just completed the 8th mission), Shyla has been quite good. Early in the campaign, her starting weapon is very strong so we didn't feel the need to buy her an upgrade which has been helpful in allowing us to kit out the other characters. Her speed and ability to get free movement points makes her extremely "mobile" and excellent at getting to objectives or just getting into position to perform two attacks. Being able to reposition units using Mandalorian Whip made one mission fairly trivial as the Imperial player had to keep spending actions moving one particular unit back into position.

At this point, she has Full Sweep, Deadly Grace, and Responsiveness and we just picked up the Electrostaff for her prior to the previous mission. Needless to say, being able to cleave a total of 7 unmitigated damage is pretty insane and obviously the Electrostaff does great single target damage as well (she also has Extended Haft which allows cleaving the damage much more flexibly). Additionally, with +1 evade from Deadly Grace combined with combat coat, she can mitigate a lot of damage. I can see that she is going to make the last few missions of this campaign very challenging for our Imperial player.

I've been thinking about updating the guide, but it slipped my mind for the time being. As machfalcon says, Shyla is really good and I also rate Vinto highly. Onar is more middle of the pack from what we have seen so far, but he has his moments. Maybe I can get around to writing something about them tomorrow.

Hi dude, first of all I am here to congratulate you on such a well written and thought out writing, just wanted to say my thing on the tier list. I think Satska is the worse in the game, all but one of her upgrades are underwhelming. I feel now that bacta pump(I realize that when you made this list it wasn't so I wont hold it against you) is in the game Biv can actually be solidly OK, not good but decent. His strain problems are so much better and final stand is so much better knowing that you can discard the stun. Also I played a campaign with my completely IA obsessed friend, he spent 30mins - an hour ahead of time preping before missions with Verena and also perfectly planned out weapons and xp, anyways he got DDC defender, mechanical arm, point blank shot, the endurance upgrade and some other B.S. Most missions she was able to use triple attacks on round 1 while using all 7 strain available and up close and personal insanity to kill two stormtrooper groups in 1 activation. I haven't seen this anywhere else and I feel it makes her even better that fenn and diala making her god tier.

On 3/4/2017 at 7:48 PM, Dark Reaper said:

I've been thinking about updating the guide, but it slipped my mind for the time being. As machfalcon says, Shyla is really good and I also rate Vinto highly. Onar is more middle of the pack from what we have seen so far, but he has his moments. Maybe I can get around to writing something about them tomorrow.

I hope to see an Update for Jabba soon, this topic is very usefull!!

Would you rate Vinto Tier A?

I have started writing the update after several requests, I am just a little strapped for time, unfortunately. I would probably rate Shyla S, Vinto A, Onar B. I will explain in depth soon(tm).

I still think you're crazy to rate Murne as S-class. False Orders is a weak ability if the Imperial player isn't using attachments because the threat level restriction, and a smart Imperial player will put their attachments on figures that can't be targeted by False Orders. Lead from the Front is a strong ability but Murne is basically dead weight until she hits that 4xp skill. Most of her other abilities are also overcosted.

10 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

I still think you're crazy to rate Murne as S-class. False Orders is a weak ability if the Imperial player isn't using attachments because the threat level restriction, and a smart Imperial player will put their attachments on figures that can't be targeted by False Orders. Lead from the Front is a strong ability but Murne is basically dead weight until she hits that 4xp skill. Most of her other abilities are also overcosted.

I really like Company of Heroes. It's brutal for my Rebels to get Jedi Luke out for only 8 threat each mission. Even more maybe for Ahsoka or Leia at only 8 threat, or the potential for a free Hera each mission.

On 8/23/2017 at 1:38 PM, subtrendy2 said:

I really like Company of Heroes. It's brutal for my Rebels to get Jedi Luke out for only 8 threat each mission. Even more maybe for Ahsoka or Leia at only 8 threat, or the potential for a free Hera each mission.

It's the best 1XP card in the game, in my opinion. No other 1XP ability removes 4 threat each mission, guaranteed, at the start or Round 1. Its as if the ability read: "At the start of each mission, the Imperial player must choose 4 threat worth of figures. Those figures are defeated."

3 hours ago, Stompburger said:

It's the best 1XP card in the game, in my opinion. No other 1XP ability removes 4 threat each mission, guaranteed, at the start or Round 1. Its as if the ability read: "At the start of each mission, the Imperial player must choose 4 threat worth of figures. Those figures are defeated."

Ahem ahem Fenn's Tactical Movement would like a word with you

I think it's actually fairly situational: of course the 4-threat discount is awesome but

• You need Murne - the opportunity cost of "could have brought in someone else", i.e. another hero
• Rebels need to pull the ally mission - no guarantee
• Rebels need to win the ally they want - discounting Chewie from 15->11 vs. Leia from 8->4 or Lando from 6->2 are very different

Even that, "discount by 4" is a bit different than "At the start of each mission, the Imperial player must choose 4 threat worth of figures. Those figures are defeated." because the initial groups are set but there's flexibility in open groups. Reducing initial groups of 6 rStormie -> 4 rStormie will play out very differently vs. say, delaying 3 eStorm coming in for another round

But yeah Murne is pretty good...did I mention the Allied Operation combo and the ability to drop Lando for free?

Onar has been a beast in the 2 campaigns he's been in. "Don't make me hurt you" really turns him into a power house.

7 hours ago, ricope said:

Ahem ahem Fenn's Tactical Movement would like a word with you

I think it's actually fairly situational: of course the 4-threat discount is awesome but

• You need Murne - the opportunity cost of "could have brought in someone else", i.e. another hero
• Rebels need to pull the ally mission - no guarantee
• Rebels need to win the ally they want - discounting Chewie from 15->11 vs. Leia from 8->4 or Lando from 6->2 are very different

Even that, "discount by 4" is a bit different than "At the start of each mission, the Imperial player must choose 4 threat worth of figures. Those figures are defeated." because the initial groups are set but there's flexibility in open groups. Reducing initial groups of 6 rStormie -> 4 rStormie will play out very differently vs. say, delaying 3 eStorm coming in for another round

But yeah Murne is pretty good...did I mention the Allied Operation combo and the ability to drop Lando for free?

I don't know if "situational" is really the right word. It's really just that you have to meet some conditions before it's powerful. Obviously you need Murne, and an ally, but once you do it's an instant -4 threat for the Imperial player. And yes it's only good for certain allies, but there are enough of those allies now (Leia, Lando, Jedi Luke and Hera) that you can just not choose to put any others into the side mission deck.

I agree that Tactical Movement is probably about as good, but that just tells you how OP Tactical Movement is.

And obviously there are some mechanical differences between gaining 4 fewer threat and removing 4 threat from the board. But gaining 4 fewer threat is worse for the Imperial player, so I think it's a reasonable comparison. All I was saying was that if Company of Heroes said " At the start of each mission, the Imperial player must choose 4 threat worth of figures. Those figures are defeated," it would sound really powerful - but it's even better than that.

7 hours ago, ricope said:

Ahem ahem Fenn's Tactical Movement would like a word with you

And Diala's Force Adept... and oh look, Shyla's Responsiveness wants to join that conversation too...

7 hours ago, ricope said:

I think it's actually fairly situational: of course the 4-threat discount is awesome but

• You need Murne - the opportunity cost of "could have brought in someone else", i.e. another hero
• Rebels need to pull the ally mission - no guarantee
• Rebels need to win the ally they want - discounting Chewie from 15->11 vs. Leia from 8->4 or Lando from 6->2 are very different

I do however agree with Stompburger when he says it's not situational. You're going to get 1 XP for the mission in which you win the ally (in a full campaign) so Murne's player is free to wait until then. Also, it's not as though Murne is a bottom tier hero. Odds are pretty good you're not bringing her into the team just for that card, it just becomes a nice little bonus when applicable.

31 minutes ago, Stompburger said:

All I was saying was that if Company of Heroes said " At the start of each mission, the Imperial player must choose 4 threat worth of figures. Those figures are defeated," it would sound really powerful - but it's even better than that.

I wouldn't say it's better than that... unless you're taking someone like Lando who's not giving the IP enough threat to deploy anything other than a regular officer. But Jedi Luke's 8 threat is still enough to put down some Royal Guards or eJets. Starting a mission at -4 threat is much worse for the IP than gaining X - 4 threat to start the mission, especially when you can plan for it.

On 8/28/2017 at 6:57 AM, Uninvited Guest said:

I do however agree with Stompburger when he says it's not situational. You're going to get 1 XP for the mission in which you win the ally (in a full campaign) so Murne's player is free to wait until then. Also, it's not as though Murne is a bottom tier hero. Odds are pretty good you're not bringing her into the team just for that card, it just becomes a nice little bonus when applicable.

Her core abilities other than her push pistol are pretty useless because they're so easy for the Imp player to play around. I'd say she is in fact terrible until you find and win a strong ally or invest a significant amount of XP into her higher level abilities and the threat level gets high enough for her primary ability to actually matter. The times when spending a strain to use false orders on a 2-3 cost figure are better than just making your own attack are pretty corner-casey and usually require poor decisions being made by the Imperial player.

Compare Murne's core abilities to the true S-heroes like Diala and Mak, who both give a huge early offensive bonus by basically ignoring defense die and getting defensive buffs. Murne's false orders isn't significantly increasing her attack power until the Rebel players hit threat level 4. As for messing with Imperial players attachments, a half-decent imperial player will just put those attachments on figures that can't be targeted by false orders.

If it's not clear already, the figure cost restriction on false orders really kills the ability for me. I think she could be A or S class easily if it weren't for that restriction.

27 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

Her core abilities other than her push pistol are pretty useless because they're so easy for the Imp player to play around.

I'm not going to argue your main point, it's valid. But "easy for the Imp player to play around" is a hard argument to defend/prove in practice. Rebel tactics are a team effort; if the IP counters one hero he'll likely leave himself open to another, and it's the job of the Rebel players to make sure that's what happens.

To use your example of putting attachments on higher cost figures, Mak or Diala can just activate first and lay down some significant single target damage to defeat it and now the figure might not get to activate at all. The flip side, the IP puts it on a group of low cost figures and Fenn or Vinto wipes them out.

My point is it's hard for the IP to counter everything at the same time. In my current campaign I'm playing Fenn and the IP is playing the Imperial Black Ops deck and he's using Shadow Armor against one of my attacks every round. Combine with hidden and I might be shooting at -4 accuracy. I would love to have had Murne in the party using False Orders to strip the conditions or at the very least give him that to factor into his strategy. As it stands though, his focus on me has made Shyla and Jyn's objective running much easier.

Played a few more missions of our Return to Hoth campaign (only the finale left now). My Rebels are at the point where they don't really even see a reason not to bring in Jedi Luke for 8 threat now, and I'm at the point where I don't even try attacking him- I'm just generally better off focusing fire on the Rebels.

I also agree with Stompburger- it's not situational, in that it doesn't require some random set of rules. It's a strategy that smart Rebels can decide on early in the campaign, and build off of accordingly. Plus, they don't need to even invest in the skill until the literal same mission they gain the ally.

On 11/1/2016 at 7:41 AM, a1bert said:

Loku's Combat Spotter more or less makes any missions where the rebel objective is to defeat certain figure(s) a cakewalk for the rebels (borderline broken). There is no running away or blocking line of sight.

Although this is my first play of Return to Hoth, the first play with Precision Training, I have made my share of mistakes, and the rebels are not beginners, which all help, Loku and Murne are rocking in this campaign and I'm looking forward to getting at least one mission win during the campaign. https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1601266/red-snow-white-troopers-swia032

On hind-sight I should've taken any of the class decks I have played before.

Edit: Loku has Scouting Report too, so the rebels have had plenty of credits to spend.

I agree that Loku is not that bad. I have only played with him for a few missions but I believe that OverWatch is awesome. It allows you to attack any figure that declares an attack or move... This to me seems like it can be a game changer - here is my reasoning: there are certain times during a mission that you have an extra action that you don't really need to spend for example when all moving towards a door or terminal and all the baddies have been eliminated. Using Overwatch you can get a recon token that you add to the card. A round or two later, a whole new set of Imperials out and about - presto chango you can then attack a figure as soon as it activates. I agree though, that not getting extra atttacks makes him not as good of an attacker, but his role is not as a frontline attacker, he is more support in that regard.

On 11/1/2016 at 8:20 AM, Dark Reaper said:

1. Yeah, I use him a lot for comparisons here. There was some discussion on him earlier and I wanted to showcase why I think these heroes are good and he isn't.

2. I think I have written approximately 20 pages now. You obviously can't refer to everything in a vacuum, but at one point there is simply so much information you can provide or I would never finish this. The next part will hopefully be more about synergies and how heroes work together.

3. Loku is a hero who has good range and can put a minor dmg buff on enemies. His skills are often very situational and are often easy to ignore. The best heroes in the game often do the same things as he do easier. Maybe people have gotten more use out of him than I have, but I struggle to see his appeal. In our last campaign we played with him, Fenn, Gideon and Davith Elso. If you compare how much work Fenn can do with Havoc Shot and the use Loku has with his recon tokens that is definitely in Fenn's favour.

As for Suppressive Fire, it is a bit hit or miss. I like it, but it is by no means necessary.

Thanks for the thought out reply.

If you want to talk pretty useless to me that seems like Davith. I have only played a few mission with him and maybe have the wrong team around him, but he seems quite useless. In fact the only other character I have played that seems as bad is Saska. Hidden to me seems like the most useless condition in the game except for the one extra surge - but you have to spend a surge to get it?? One of his main problems in my opinion from my playing with him so far - he starts with a melee weapon but his hidden defensive provides a -2 accuracy to the enemy. Unless you are adjacent to an enemy and then run away (using an action to do so) or 3 strain (1 for his ability and 2 additional) then the -2 accuracy is not going to matter. I have not had a single Imperial attack where the -2 accuracy made a difference of whether he got hit or not. You can't get 2 hits in and move away without fully straining him out in one turn for it to matter.

Another problem I have seen with him is he is roling a white dice and has no ability to reroll on any of his cards for defense or attack AND he only has 11 health. With two big attacks from an Imperial player and two bad rolls on the die, you can be wounded. He seems practically useless without support from somone like Diala to allow a reroll.

Someone please explain how he is not the weakest character in the game.

On 10/15/2016 at 3:45 AM, Dark Reaper said:

Let's start at the bottom.

C-Tier

Biv Bodhrik:

I know a lot of people like Biv, I just can’t understand why. Of all the heroes in the game, he has arguably the worst starting weapon. The red dice is obviously brilliant, but for a character who wants to get in close and personal, his only surge option of +1accuracy is laughable. His yellow+red in combat is maybe ok-ish, but it is severely limited by not having any surge options base, having to be adjacent and costing 2 strain. His 13-4-4 statline is decent as is his ability to re-roll an attack die for a strain. His main problem is that he wants to be a frontline fighter, but that he doesn’t have a proper gap-closer

Skill cards:

Advance: Not really good enough. The possibility of moving extra spaces is always good, but compare this to “tactical movement” and weep.

Shake it Off: An OK skill. I would take it, but it isn’t close to Garkhaan’s condition removal.

Crushing Blow: I guess it is OK. The problem is that you pay 2xp to make a bad skill a little bit better.

Into the Fray: An actual good skill! +block is always good, even if it is situational.

Trophy Armour: About the same as a laminate armour. A laminate armour isn’t worth 3xp

Vibrobayonet: Again, it is not a bad skill per se, it just isn’t that good either. You will probably use “Close and Personal” only once per turn, which means it is a few more damage each round. By no means horrible, but it isn’t good and heroes need some good skills to shine…

Stay Down: Biv has 4 endurance. “Close and Personal” costs 2, this costs 2 and he doesn’t have a gap closer. On top of that, there are other heroes who do more damage and they don’t have all these restrictions.

Final Stand: This isn’t even not good; it is close to useless. My opinion is that this is the worst 4xp skill in the game. It is even bad by Biv standards. It is actually a gap closer, but it is such a horrible gap closer.

The main problem with Biv’s skill set is that it mainly supports his “Close and Personal” skill, which isn’t that good to begin with. It isn’t as game defining as “Charge” or “Havoc Shot” and he is way too situational to ever be a good hero.

The first campaign I tried Biv he seemed really bad, but with the newer campaign I am playing with him I think he can be quite good - the thing with him is you have to realize he is one dimensional - he is a blunt instrument to be used to take out a big target - if you go with his close and personal functionality all the way then he can be very good at what he does - one of the few characters that can get three attacks if he doesn't have to move too far. That is the biggest hurdle with him is that to get those 3 attacks you need to only need to move 2 spaces via strain. But with 2 strain for movement, 2 for Close and Personal then you can get three attacks in. The key I believe with him is to recognize his one-sided nature - he is not there to do objectives in regards to movement, support, etc. Use him to hit and hit hard. He does it very well.

I think your review of Jyn was spot on. I can tell you've used her a lot :-) She was one of the ones I used quite a bit at first as well. She is somewhat tricky though since she is so squishy...

FYI: in regards to your review of Gideon - it takes an ACTION and 2 strain for Gideon's command abillity (not just 2 strain). I really only tried him once because that just didn't seem that good but I really do need to try him again...

On 4/4/2017 at 10:53 PM, polkfang said:

Hi dude, first of all I am here to congratulate you on such a well written and thought out writing, just wanted to say my thing on the tier list. I think Satska is the worse in the game, all but one of her upgrades are underwhelming. I feel now that bacta pump(I realize that when you made this list it wasn't so I wont hold it against you) is in the game Biv can actually be solidly OK, not good but decent. His strain problems are so much better and final stand is so much better knowing that you can discard the stun. Also I played a campaign with my completely IA obsessed friend, he spent 30mins - an hour ahead of time preping before missions with Verena and also perfectly planned out weapons and xp, anyways he got DDC defender, mechanical arm, point blank shot, the endurance upgrade and some other B.S. Most missions she was able to use triple attacks on round 1 while using all 7 strain available and up close and personal insanity to kill two stormtrooper groups in 1 activation. I haven't seen this anywhere else and I feel it makes her even better that fenn and diala making her god tier.

I agree about Verena. When I first saw her being played - she was just so over the top that I was like never again will I play as Imperial player with her in the group. She is Over Powered compared to all other heroes in my opinion. Her class cards are just too powerful for the cost. If you compare her cards abilities for the cost there isnt' another hero in the group that gets so much for so little.

3 hours ago, adamjf1 said:

If you want to talk pretty useless to me that seems like Davith. I have only played a few mission with him and maybe have the wrong team around him, but he seems quite useless. In fact the only other character I have played that seems as bad is Saska. Hidden to me seems like the most useless condition in the game except for the one extra surge - but you have to spend a surge to get it?? One of his main problems in my opinion from my playing with him so far - he starts with a melee weapon but his hidden defensive provides a -2 accuracy to the enemy. Unless you are adjacent to an enemy and then run away (using an action to do so) or 3 strain (1 for his ability and 2 additional) then the -2 accuracy is not going to matter. I have not had a single Imperial attack where the -2 accuracy made a difference of whether he got hit or not. You can't get 2 hits in and move away without fully straining him out in one turn for it to matter.

Another problem I have seen with him is he is roling a white dice and has no ability to reroll on any of his cards for defense or attack AND he only has 11 health. With two big attacks from an Imperial player and two bad rolls on the die, you can be wounded. He seems practically useless without support from somone like Diala to allow a reroll.

Someone please explain how he is not the weakest character in the game.

Davith gets better when you get some of his XP rewards, and the big thing he's got going for him is movement. Paying 1 strain to move two spaces is huge, especially when you note that the "move 2 spaces" wording means that he can move through enemy figures and difficult (blue) terrain without taking any movement penalties. Since he can essentially "strain-move" four spaces he doesn't have to waste actions moving as often, meaning more attacks over the run of a mission. Plus, pairing that easy movement with his 2XP Blindside ability can let you do damage that can't be defended against (great for finishing off units). His two 1XP abilities are both good too, one letting you recover strain when you become hidden (which you can then spend on more free movement) and the other letting him start the mission hidden. I also really like both of his 4XP cards, but if you can get the hidden surge train going then I think Fell Swoop has the edge. Personally, unless your group is really strapped for cash, I tend to avoid the temptation to buy his lightsaber in favour of just getting him a good weapon.

But.... now that I'm done with all of the good parts, I'd actually still say that he's one of the weaker heroes for two reasons.

1) His starting weapon isn't great, and like you said at the beginning of the campaign he needs to waste a surge becoming hidden on his first attack before he can actually hope to do any damage. This all means that he's a bit of a slow starter and can be hit-or-miss at the beginning of the campaign.

2) More important that that, though, is that he loses just about all of his advantages as soon as he gets flipped to his wounded side and loses his Force Speed. I don't think that there's another character in the game that suffers as much from getting wounded, and like you said it doesn't help that he's really, really easy to kill. It's such a temptation to start the mission and think "oh man, if I force-speed and blindside these guys and then attack that guy and fell swoop the other guy I can potentially take down three or four figures on my first activation!" And sometimes you succeed, and it's awesome - and then the imperial takes his turn and proceeds to blast your Davith (who's now sitting out in front by himself) into a million pieces and then he's pretty much useless for the rest of the mission.

There is no doubt that Davith is among the worst heroes in the game, unfortunately. Jarrod is a much better designed hero in my opinion and does most of the things Davith do better.

I think ManateeX sums it up very well.

My top list of "crappiest heroes" by boxes is:

1st Twin Shadows
2st Bespin Gambit
3rd Heart of the Empire
4th Return to Hoth
5th Jabba's Realm
6th Core Set