Note that you don't necessarily need to actually deploy the villains to get benefits from them. You can just have them added to your open groups to be able to use their traits to give bonuses.

I've used Greedo quite a bit in my campaign and he is awesome. (Not with Nemesis, just as an agenda mission earned villain) Sometimes you need to do a bit of juggling to take away LOS to avoid that last hit on him, but his damage output is greater than the combination of two hired guns.

I love to just end his movement in the middle of the heroes, daring them to attack him. He has the winning blow on two of my missions so far this campaign. One was off of a parting shot where my Rebels messed up killing him And the other was a thrown Mortar that only he could get to with his 5 speed.

See, Blaise and Terro are probably really good if you're trying to be really competitive, but I like how the Nemesis class also just lets us players who want to create a thematic and story driven experience have an easy way to gain a few villains for our story.

im using Kayn and Bossk in my campaign. using lord vaders command and greedo's agenda set.

I just brought the -5 threat to a deployment card from vaders set. should be able to get bossk for 1 threat next mission

My group is new to IA, but I think that if we like the core campaign, it's very likely we'll invest in a bunch of expansions, and the Nemeses deck looks really cool to me.

I've gathered that Boba Fett isn't the best statted villain in this game, but would he be a workable choice for a Nemesis option? At this point, I lack the experience to really understand why he's bad.

It is mostly that he is overcosted, but in addition to that,13 is a really awkward number in campaign. Even at threat 6, you cant bring him in in 2 turns.

With Nemeses, at threat 5, you can bring him in for 9. At threat 6 or with the -5 skill, you can bring him in for 8. Not Terrible. His biggest advantage is that he is the bulkiest scum villian. With indomitible, combined with with his mobility (especially with Ring Leader) he will be really hard to take down. I dont think he is a bad choice, but it may just be better to add his agenda set to the deck.

Boba wouldn't be the most strategic choice, but the Nemesis deck is probably the easiest way to bring him in now, and he is a lot of fun as far as theme goes. Nothing strikes fear into Rebel hearts like Boba Fett of Vader.

I think the whole point of the Nemesis deck is that it allows you to play some of the villains that aren't the optimal choice in a regular campaign. Reducing their cost, buffing them up, it all helps to make guys like Boba or IG-88 more viable. They still might not be as efficient (points per pound) as some other units like Bossk or Terro, but at least you can actually play them. This combined with the recent IG-88 skirmish buff makes me think we are in store for a revitalization of the core components, which will hopefully in turn help promote more skirmish for core only users who are on the fence.

I really wouldn't want to see Vader or Fett in there as Nemeses Villains....

Yeah, when they SEE Vader or Fett for the first time it strikes fear into their hearts, but once they come across them on the 5th mission or later...well....

Nothing strikes fear OUT of the hearts of Rebel Scum quite like curb stomping Vader or Fett and making them say uncle before you send them off. But if they pwn some random Inquisitor they've probably never heard of or that random green guy Han smoked in some bar, at least they won't laugh as hard at them.

I really look forward to using Vader with Indomitible and ring leader- 3 black dice, 2 free movement and stun immunity. Scary stuff.

He isnt worth taking as your starter villians tho since you can just get him into your hand via As you Wish.

It depends when you bring them in and how easy they will be to kill, late game ya they can get mowed down, early to mid game they are a tough fight. I've got a post somewhere about bringing Vader in for 0 cost, it can be done with 3 agenda cards (including As You Wish) at 4 threat and an end of round threat bonus. That combined with your regular deployments would tilt the scale in any mission.

And as Deadwolf said, Vader with Indomitable and Ringleader is much scarier, the whole point of the deck is to get units like that into play with the appropriately scaled buffs to counter act the Rebels weapon/ability upgrades.

I've decided against Armored Onslaught and have chose Nemesis for my upcoming RtH campaign.

I'm thinking about bringing Jabba and the GI. Jabba seems like he'll be really important, because he can get me extra threat in missions, can give my mercs extra attacks (especially with that one merc who shows up a lot in RtH...) and nets me extra influence if he's around at the end of the mission.

Pretty excited about this one.

1 hour ago, subtrendy said:

I've decided against Armored Onslaught and have chose Nemesis for my upcoming RtH campaign.

I'm thinking about bringing Jabba and the GI. Jabba seems like he'll be really important, because he can get me extra threat in missions, can give my mercs extra attacks (especially with that one merc who shows up a lot in RtH...) and nets me extra influence if he's around at the end of the mission.

Pretty excited about this one.

Yeah, Jabba is by far the best scum villian if you are not playing JR campaign. His traits are quite good for inspiration too.

29 minutes ago, Deadwolf said:

Yeah, Jabba is by far the best scum villian if you are not playing JR campaign. His traits are quite good for inspiration too.

Noticed that. Looks like he can buff up the Hired Guns a little bit, which is always nice

I think it may be time to resurrect this thread, as there are new units and villains. Nemesis has grown to be my favorite Imperial class (last time was a Jedi theme with Maul and the Inquisitor and it was a blast). Seriously, every pair of villains leads to different strategies.

Thrawn and Hondo are new juicy choices for Nemeses.

But in my upcoming Lothal campaign, I have threat spam build that I'd like to try:

Jabba and Blaise . Combining their abilities to give free threat. I don't think it spoils anything to predict that Hondo is a feature villain in the campaign. He also has threat boosting abilities. That's three. Then the open units to go with it:

- Elite Jawa: being a leader and a smuggler, he is an easy target for Inspirational. More to the point: Yet another threat boosting ability (though unreliable)

- Deathtroopers: Deploying multiples of these guys with Blaise at a discount is the poor man's Endless Ranks from Military might (which is today borderline broken) - Bonus: Field tactics applies on Blaise and Jabba! Now that's synergy!

- Clawdite Shapeshifter: Being a Spy, it benefits from Blaise's discount. Bein a spy and a hunter, it is yet another a very easy target for inspirational. Bein a scum, it can benefit from Jabba's executive order.

- One of: Hired guns, elite weeqways, HK hunters and elite jet troopers. The bread and butter damage dealer unit. They either benefit from inspirational or Blaise's discount. Most likely target for Prepare the Ambush, especially Weeqway Pirates as they can reposition, hide and shoot.

I hope it is as effective at spamming lots of units as it sounds on paper. They will learn to fear the swarm.

p.s. There is also a narrative twist here: Last time I used Nemeses, it was in Jabba's realm, and it won me the finale. To reward Jabba for his capture of the pesky rebels, the Empire has allowed him to make a claim on the criminal underground of Lothal. Blaise was dispatched to help with the hostile takeover (while secretly investigating Spectre activities, and making sure Jabba does not get too comfortable)

Hondo is so annoying for the Rebels in the Lothal campaign, I could see him being a prime target for Nemesis. I did not enjoy the Lothal empire class at all, I built it kind of wonky as well but I just found that i never had enough cards in my hand to place all the tokens at the end.

Some imperial class decks are like wine. They get better with age, as more units and more strategic options are available. One such deck is Military Might, with endless ranks now doing wonders with so many cheap trooper deployment cards.

The other deck that ages well is Nemeses. With the current choices of villains, this is now in my opinion up there with the best of them (MM and Tech Superiority).

After a couple of games with Jabba, I must admit: the slug is huge ! You wait for the rebels to advance, and when the time is right (end of turn 2, sometimes turn 1 or 3) you deploy him in the back, next to the start point. The rebels have this immediate hard choice of letting him be (2 threats and a free attack from your best scum unit or focus+heal every turn + one influence in the end is game changing) or they move one hero back to deal with him. But that effectively means the hero is out of the game for several turns, far away from the other heroes.

After the rebels picked CT, I changed my plans, taking Captain Terro instead of Blaise. I felt Blaise was too fragile, and too vulnerable to stun from pin them down. Terro at least has some free move. I now realize Nemeses is perhaps the best deck to counter CT! Prepare the ambush means your stunned units always have the option to move 2 and attack - especially critical for short range units like RG and Transdoshans that would be otherwise unplayable against CT. Indomitable becomes a priority card for obvious reasons, and forces CT to leave the villain alone.

10 minutes ago, Mr Licorice said:

After a couple of games with Jabba, I must admit: the slug is huge ! You wait for the rebels to advance, and when the time is right (end of turn 2, sometimes turn 1 or 3) you deploy him in the back, next to the start point. The rebels have this immediate hard choice of letting him be (2 threats and a free attack from your best scum unit or focus+heal every turn + one influence in the end is game changing) or they move one hero back to deal with him. But that effectively means the hero is out of the game for several turns, far away from the other heroes.

That's my favorite way to play Jabba, too.

And honestly, he hits pretty hard. If a hero decides to go back and take him down alone, they'll win, but they'll take some damage, too.

When I used the Nemeses deck, I used Bossk and the Royal Guard Champion. Next time around, I will likely go with at least one character that is lower cost. I had a lot of fun bringing in the RGC, though. When I was able to bring him in (like mission 5 or 6), he was practically on the same tier as the Heroes and they made sure to stay as far away from him as possible.

I have considered bringing Jabba as the Merc, but my game group finds Jabba to be much like Shyla Varad or Military Might, in the fact that they are just fun killers for the opponents.

37 minutes ago, Funky_4LOM said:

When I used the Nemeses deck, I used Bossk and the Royal Guard Champion. Next time around, I will likely go with at least one character that is lower cost. I had a lot of fun bringing in the RGC, though. When I was able to bring him in (like mission 5 or 6), he was practically on the same tier as the Heroes and they made sure to stay as far away from him as possible.

I have considered bringing Jabba as the Merc, but my game group finds Jabba to be much like Shyla Varad or Military Might, in the fact that they are just fun killers for the opponents.

Those are exactly the two I used last year to run Jabba's Realm.

Bossk was a lot of fun, but the RGC was a mess.

52 minutes ago, Funky_4LOM said:

I have considered bringing Jabba as the Merc, but my game group finds Jabba to be much like Shyla Varad or Military Might, in the fact that they are just fun killers for the opponents.

...Or CT? I guess my group and I are even.

I wouldn't say MM and Shyla are fun killers, but they make it much harder for the opposition. They require you to rethink your tactics. I think as long as both sides are balanced (MM vs a tier S hero comp) then fun is had on both sides.

18 hours ago, Mr Licorice said:

...Or CT? I guess my group and I are even.

I wouldn't say MM and Shyla are fun killers, but they make it much harder for the opposition. They require you to rethink your tactics. I think as long as both sides are balanced (MM vs a tier S hero comp) then fun is had on both sides.

No, my group considers Shyla to be a fun killer. We did not find CT to be as OP as everyone was making him out to be, maybe our minds will change on a campaign other than Lothal. There are three of us in our group and we each have selected a Hero that we don’t want to see on the board again unless we all agree upon it (Shyla, Gideon, and Murne). I personally don’t think Murne is that OP, but we agreed the best characters in the game are Shyla and Gideon.

I faced Shyla in JR using the Nemeses deck. She had the Double Vibrosword (I don’t recall the attachment) as well as her 4XP card that had Cleave. In a single attack, she could deal 6 damage to a character she wasn’t even attacking. She was the first Hero out of 4 campaigns that we had played to withdraw (I made her withdraw probably 3 times that campaign) because that was the only way to deal with her.

Hi all! that's my first post about IA (try to read that forum as far as I can, but I'm not English native speaker so tend to write few times...). That said, I'm running next campaign (Heart of the Empire) as Imperial, so thought about picking up Nemeses deck with Inquisitor & Maul duo, just for thematic regards, but it seems strong enough to be competitive. I've seen some interesting agenda cards to consider too, like those helping reducing deployment cost points, and even As You Wish from Lord Vader's Command that allows you to take Vader for a mission, giving a chance to place 3 force users villains in a game, sounds crazy fun!

I bring a question to you as well: when choosing villains on campaign preparation ¿Do you keep that information on secret, or allow your players to know what are you bringing to the campaign? In my opinion should be funnier if you place an unknown foe on a mission in which rebels don't expect to.

16 minutes ago, 3ktop said:

Hi all! that's my first post about IA (try to read that forum as far as I can, but I'm not English native speaker so tend to write few times...). That said, I'm running next campaign (Heart of the Empire) as Imperial, so thought about picking up Nemeses deck with Inquisitor & Maul duo, just for thematic regards, but it seems strong enough to be competitive. I've seen some interesting agenda cards to consider too, like those helping reducing deployment cost points, and even As You Wish from Lord Vader's Command that allows you to take Vader for a mission, giving a chance to place 3 force users villains in a game, sounds crazy fun!

I bring a question to you as well: when choosing villains on campaign preparation ¿Do you keep that information on secret, or allow your players to k  now what are you bringing to the campaign? In my opinion should be funnier if you place an unknown foe on a mission in which rebels don't expe  ct to. 

Welcome to the forum 3korp!

I have played Nemeses with Inquisitor and Maul. They are fun to play, and Maul is a real terror in the early game. But if you are facing strong damage dealers like Shyla, Vinto or Mak, they will die quickly. These are melee villains that have to be in the front lines. They are easy targets. What heroes are you facing?

To answer your question, I think I read somewhere in this forum that you reveal. @a1bert is the reference person here, he will answer this. But if you think it is more fun to keep them secret until you play them, go for it! This is what I did when I played them.

Agenda decks: anything that gives threat is good! Giving survival to your villains is also good, there is a set that lets you roll two red dice to heal damage, and another set that lets you block 3 damage, those are good. There is a also a card (don't remember which set) that gives a discount when deploying hunters? Quite good with the Inquisitor, and there are a lot of nasty hunter units now.

Considering you have to show the villain to use your basic class card, they won't remain hidden information for long.