So I've had a couple questions come up involving open groups and the Nemesis deck.

I understand that you earn the two villains for the campaign and they are available to be added to your open groups. Additionally, the starting card allows you to add a villain to your open groups on top of what the mission provides; plus a card you can purchase with XP allows you to add another, seemingly giving you both every mission once you have both cards.

Now here are the questions. Some missions say "No Open Groups". Can you add a villain to a mission that specifies "No Open Groups"?

Additionally, some of the late missions in Jabba's Realm have faction restrictions on open groups. Would those apply to your added villains as well?

I have Dengar and Royal Guard Champion as my villains. Based on the Interlude choice, my Rebels are helping Jabba. The next two story missions specify that no Scum can be chosen for open groups. Does this mean I cannot add Dengar?

Personally I read the class card as being an addition outside the confines of the mission's listed open groups. A Rebel player, a friend of mine that I trust immensely with rules, indicated that the restrictions would still apply.

Any insight is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

"No Open Groups" should be considered to be "0 Open Groups". Once you have performed the special setup, the class cards allow to add villains to your hand of 0 open groups. (A lot of the class cards don't work if you are not allowed to have a villain to reveal.)

Compare this to Saska's Gadgeteer, which allows her to attach a modification to a weapon without modification slots.

The question about "No mercenary figures" is not equally easy to answer. Because you always have earned at least one imperial figure too, it should not be overly restrictive to interpret it as written that you can't add mercenary figures into your hand of open groups by any methods. So, thematically, does the imperial player have more influence over the earned mercenary villain than Jabba?

It is only one mission. (The core campaign may have more than 1.)

I would continue a1bert's logic regarding No Mercenary Figures and No Open groups as follows;

No open groups = do not select any deployment cards in this step. This can be modified by things that add cards to your open groups, even if you couldn't select any initially.

No Mercenary figures = a limitation on what you can and cannot select.

Granted the identical wording is confusing, but one refers to the number of groups you will be selecting (0) and the other puts a limitation on the groups you can select (no mercs)