So i was wondering if I did well to pick Precision Training for my first campaign as an Imperial..

Did anyone here made some.. rating of the available class deck? I know Subversive Tactics is both considered the best, but also the most annoying deck. But what about the others..?

I have found Imperial black ops (bespin) to be very fun and enjoyable. Not as good as subsersive tactics but definitely good.

I'd be interested in seeing ratings, as well- or, if it exists, a more comprehensive description on how each deck plays out. I want something that'll be a challenge without being frustrating or "anti-fun" (looking at you, Subversive Tactics).

Don't pick Precision Training for your first campaign.

Which campaign you will be playing?

Military Might is the most quickly "starting" deck that suits many uses. Show of Force and Sustained Fire are my favorites.

I have had fun with Inspiring Leadership and Imperial Black Ops, and even Technological Superiority, but the former 2 require you to pick their 4XP card as early as possible.

The one constant is that your playstyle and choice of units must match the class deck, and you should pick your Agenda sets with a vision of what class cards you will be ending up with.

The main campaign

For your first campaign (especially for the core campaign) I would suggest Technological Superiority (slightly harder) or Military Might (straightforward and powerful - you can always make missions easier for the rebels if you need to keep them interested).

Much like Rebel ability decks some cards in each deck are pretty bad and shouldn't be taken and some are amazing must takes. I've played all the decks at least once and assuming you stick to just getting the better cards all of the class decks are pretty equivalent power wise. Subversive is no more powerful than the others, the only thing that really sticks out about it is that Savage Weaponry should be a 3 pt card and Executioner should be the 1 point card. Getting Savage after the first mission is pretty rough.

Much like Rebel ability decks some cards in each deck are pretty bad and shouldn't be taken and some are amazing must takes. I've played all the decks at least once and assuming you stick to just getting the better cards all of the class decks are pretty equivalent power wise. Subversive is no more powerful than the others, the only thing that really sticks out about it is that Savage Weaponry should be a 3 pt card and Executioner should be the 1 point card. Getting Savage after the first mission is pretty rough.

I agree; Savage weaponry is by far the best card in Subversive Tactics, not only because it's so powerful but also because it's so cheap.

Not ratings, but the way I look at it, each is designed to basically adopt specific playstyles. The 'best' deck to play is the one that fits your playstyle.

Based on that:

Military Might: Offensive power. Focuses on making things hit harder and harder to kill, so they can keep hitting. Not much in the way of tricks. Wants to win via wounding. Also has a theme of using Troopers.

Technological Superiority: Adaptability/customization. Change how your units work, give them new abilities and new tactics. Also has a sub theme of Droids.

Subversive Tactics: 'Control'/stall. Limits what your opponent can do, tries to run the clock down on timed missions, or just make the Rebels less effective.

Inspiring Leadership: Set ups and surprise plays/reacting to what happens during the turn. The thinking persons deck.

Precision Training: Luck mitigation. Doesn't make your guys that much stronger, but helps make them more consistent and grants overall benefits to the Imperials.

Armoured Onslaught: Haven't played this, but it seems like a less straight forward variation on Military Might, with some benefits for Vehicles/Droids instead of Troopers.

Imperial Black Ops: Haven't really looked at this enough to see how it plays, beyond 'lots of Hide'.

Personally, I'd say Precision Targeting probably isn't the best bet for a first campaign. The simple reason for this is it's not really about power, it's about efficiency - something you probably won't really appreciate until you've had some time playing around with your units. It's the scalpel versus the blunt instrument of Military Might, and one of those is much harder to use. I'd also see Technological Superiority and possibly Armoured Onslaught being good starter decks, as they seem a bit easier to understand and use effectively.

I've only tried Military Might, Technological Superiority, Subversive Tactics and Armoured Onslaught.

Of the four, ST is definately the one you'll have most success with against new players. Unlike the other decks, this one requires the heroes to change their playstyle to become less strain dependant, or get better strain recovery.

The most fun I've had was with Armored Onslaught. Mortar and the ability the change a die to red, and then replace that die to gain +3dmg is fun!

Yhea.. i ruled out Subversive Tactics since it will be mostly about restricting the players rather than oppose their actions.

A.k.a. the "i win by annoying you" deck. Which is fine for experienced players, but my team are all board game neophytes.

Mortar and the ability the change a die to red, and then replace that die to gain +3dmg is fun!

Okay, I honestly am really confused about the benefit of this combo. Replacing a red die to gain +3 damage is, on average, a gain of 0.83 damage on one attack. Why would you buy this card?

Mortar and the ability the change a die to red, and then replace that die to gain +3dmg is fun!

Okay, I honestly am really confused about the benefit of this combo. Replacing a red die to gain +3 damage is, on average, a gain of 0.83 damage on one attack. Why would you buy this card?

It's main use is to up your minimum damage to get try and ensure your Heavy Munitions' blast goes off. But yeah, not a great card for the most part. I've never taken it.

I have found the Imperial Class decks to be fairly balanced in terms of power level with only a couple outliers.

Subversive Tactics is slightly stronger than the pack against most hero groups. Inspiring Leadership is slightly weaker than the pack.

Precision Training is a fine class deck that is versatile and has high damage potential but offers very little defense. Most of the skills are straightfoward so it is a good choice so your first time.

I have to say, i played Under Siege with Precision Training. And i could snipe ***** with the ATST from 8 squares away XD

Or was it 12..?

ST is not newbie friendly, it isn't necessarily much more powerful than the others, but just more annoying IMO. It will ruin the experience for your new players.

Military Might is the safe bet for new players, it buffs up your troops but still allows them to whack away. In later missions the buffs become less powerful as your Rebels hit harder.

Precision Training is a finesse deck where you can choose to re roll if you want, I like it because it gives me a bit of leeway when dealing with the Rebels. If they are kicking ass I can buckle down and start controlling more rolls, if I am kicking their ass I can let off a bit. But not all people play that way, so to each their own.

So if you have an unlimited stable of players and want to make it painful for them, play ST. If you want to make it a bit more fun but still challenging, play MM. If you want to be more tactical and have more control, play PT.

Mortar and the ability the change a die to red, and then replace that die to gain +3dmg is fun!

Okay, I honestly am really confused about the benefit of this combo. Replacing a red die to gain +3 damage is, on average, a gain of 0.83 damage on one attack. Why would you buy this card?

It's main use is to up your minimum damage to get try and ensure your Heavy Munitions' blast goes off. But yeah, not a great card for the most part. I've never taken it.

I took it and found it was really good for getting consistent damage when using it... Each to their own I guess...

If you are playing Precision Training, just save up for the 4xp card that grants pierce 1 to all your attacks, and then spam cheap figures like troopers and hired guns. It's a huge force multiplier, you will roll over the heroes, if that's your thing. My losing streak turned into a win streak after I got that card. Unfortunately, everything else in that deck is either meh or terrible, so it's kind of a one-trick deck.

If I were to rank the decks on power level, based on the strongest build you could focus on with each one, I'd go:

Military Might

Subversive Tactics

Tech Superiority

Precision Training (purely because of Find the Weakness)

Imperial Black Ops

Inspiring Leadership

Armored Onslaught

My ranking AO at the bottom will probably be controversial for some, but my main problem is how bad the Explosive Munitions 0xp card is, and that all the other cards are either very defensive or focus too much on spread damage. You suffer a huge accuracy drop when using Explosive Munitions for a minor boost in average damage, but then they give that mandatory blast ability, which is almost useless against rebels, but often rebels are sitting next to your troops and it punishes you if you want to shoot at range 1 to guarantee a hit with a red and green attack. The deck focuses on AOE damage, which is not really a winning strategy against rebels that split up and can rest off small amounts of residual damage. The defensive and healing buffs to vehicles is probably very useful, even game-winning, in certain missions where that's the win condition, but in any old regular mission the rebels are just going to ignore your unkillable machine and rush the objectives.

If I were to rank the decks on power level, based on the strongest build you could focus on with each one, I'd go:

Military Might

Subversive Tactics

Tech Superiority

Precision Training (purely because of Find the Weakness)

Imperial Black Ops

Inspiring Leadership

Armored Onslaught

I think this ranking lines up with what I've experienced as well, for the most part. I have only played with or against Military Might (3 core campaigns), Subversive Tactics (RAEV), Precision Training (RTH), Armored Onslaught (TS mini campaign), and Imperial Black Ops (Bespin campaign, only one mission in).

A couple of thoughts, the campaign we played against Precision Training was very one sided in favor of the Rebels but it was a RTH campaign which I think favors the Rebels, against strong Rebel heroes, vs less experienced Imperial player. I am not surprised to see you rank AO lower but has anyone played much with or against Inspiring Leadership? It seems like you could set up some nice combos using Field General and Lead by Example. Looking forward to playing that deck in a future campaign at some point.

I played Inspiring Leadership here: SWIA024 Rise and Fall of Twin Shadows .

I enjoyed the great combos available with Lead by Example, Field General and Field Officer. Strategic Planning and Supervisory Agent were the fillers.

Imperial Officer being able to Executive Order twice and attack after each was fun.

I think Inspiring Leadership would work well in Return to Hoth. I'm planning of doing exactly that at some point.

We're playing the original campaign against inspiring leadership and we've lost almost every mission.

We're playing the original campaign against inspiring leadership and we've lost almost every mission.

I played it last campaign and it was brutal.

AT-ST activates and shoots.

eOfficer Activates, tells AT-ST to shoot.

Reduced squad of rTroopers give their activation to eOfficer... who tells AT-ST to shoot.

rOfficer uses field general, tells AT-ST to shoot.

The Rebels made the mistake of trying to take Boba Fett down and I did a similar thing with him choosing recover wounds for his surge each time. Ugly, ugly, ugly.

It was pretty brutal overall. Even just having trooper squads with 1 remaining figure giving up their activation to have a full squad get their entire activation again was just brutal. And when the Rebels kill that free rOfficer to get field general off the board... 5 figures get focus and boom Rebels get wounded.

We're playing the original campaign against inspiring leadership and we've lost almost every mission.

I played it last campaign and it was brutal.

AT-ST activates and shoots.

eOfficer Activates, tells AT-ST to shoot.

Reduced squad of rTroopers give their activation to eOfficer... who tells AT-ST to shoot.

rOfficer uses field general, tells AT-ST to shoot.

This was what I was thinking was possible - in theory. However, I wasn't sure if it was possible to pull off in actual gameplay. I'm guessing getting that kind of a string of attacks is probably rare but anything remotely close to it seems pretty deadly.

One thing that the deck does lack is any sort of survivablity increase outside of deterrence through Noble Sacrifice - which seems like the Rebels could work around fairly effectively. Also, I don't see the value of Press On (at most 3 damage healed per round, more likely 1-2) or Imperial Dedication but maybe others have gotten good use out of these cards. I have found that at a certain point in many campaigns, the Rebels get pretty good at removing figures from the map so having some way of increasing the survivability of the Imperial units can be fairly important. Maybe I am overvaluing this, however.

Anyway, I am debating between Technological Superiority or Inspiring Leadership in my next Return to Hoth campaign. Both seem like they could be effective and fun in that campaign.

We're playing the original campaign against inspiring leadership and we've lost almost every mission.

I played it last campaign and it was brutal.

AT-ST activates and shoots.

eOfficer Activates, tells AT-ST to shoot.

Reduced squad of rTroopers give their activation to eOfficer... who tells AT-ST to shoot.

rOfficer uses field general, tells AT-ST to shoot.

This was what I was thinking was possible - in theory. However, I wasn't sure if it was possible to pull off in actual gameplay. I'm guessing getting that kind of a string of attacks is probably rare but anything remotely close to it seems pretty deadly.

One thing that the deck does lack is any sort of survivablity increase outside of deterrence through Noble Sacrifice - which seems like the Rebels could work around fairly effectively. Also, I don't see the value of Press On (at most 3 damage healed per round, more likely 1-2) or Imperial Dedication but maybe others have gotten good use out of these cards. I have found that at a certain point in many campaigns, the Rebels get pretty good at removing figures from the map so having some way of increasing the survivability of the Imperial units can be fairly important. Maybe I am overvaluing this, however.

Anyway, I am debating between Technological Superiority or Inspiring Leadership in my next Return to Hoth campaign. Both seem like they could be effective and fun in that campaign.

Another thing also is stunning the hard hitting figure, so that it can't execute attack orders.

Technological superiority could be amazing, because it boosts droids and you get General Sorin quite a bit in story missions. The focus and stun surge they can get, paired with experimental arms would be great. I haven't tried Inspiring Leadership (I don't have the TS expansion), but it would likely make the White Noise mission a cakewalk.

I had Press On as well and it usually didn't do any healing. Even with heavy troopers they were more often than not getting taken out completely. It could be more useful depending on which Rebels are taken, some tend to spread damage out a bit more, but with Davith and Verena both consistently hitting for 7, there wasn't much opportunity for it to work.