We played Twin Shadows Mission 3: Canyon Run last night. See here for my writeup of missions 1 and 2 and character loadouts.

It was an incredibly close game. I won't spoil the ending yet.

I started by dropping a Bantha Rider as my special deployment. After the probe droid moved out of his way I moved him up to block easy access to the Yellow tokens (since as a massive figure he ignores it). He went down but it kept the heroes in that entry area for 2 full turns and they didn't really get moving until turns 3 and 4.

Meanwhile, I dealt a lot of damage but they were still going strong between their insane Health levels (Gideon with 14 Health!), all the armor and defensive skills they bought (Bacta Generator!), and C-3PO generally being a pain in the butt (his Distraction ability was killing me but every time I attacked him directly his free reroll kept him safe). Also, at one point Diala rolled 4 Dodges in a row.

Then it all shifted. Realizing they were running out of time, they started sprinting forward. Their tight phalanx of defensive buffs fell apart and I got extra threat when they smashed through the second barrier, letting me drop HK droids and elite stormtroopers with Cloaking Devices and Experimental Weapons. The tuskens all rushed forward too and that last leg became a bottleneck of death. I killed C-3PO and wounded Gideon and Diala. My new class card Hidden Detonators was used at the end of the turn to wound MHD-19, and all I needed was to finish off an already damaged Loku and that pesky R2 unit. R2 ran all the way back to the entrance and I wound up deploying a unit of Heavy Stormtroopers there to try to take him out.

But at this point, it became a "get figure from here to there" mission, and they excel at that:

• Diala goes to Force Throw Loku forward... and finally fails the Insight check for the first time in the campaign. I finished her off so that the Force throw move was off the table, but missing that roll was a plus for me.
• Loku, however, makes great use of Combat spotter to kill a critically positioned trooper, allowing him to diagonally move through my wall of troops into line of sight of Gideon.
• Gideon commands Loku forward, while MHD clears the final obstacle.
• I bring Somos around and damage Gideon who is blocking Loku.
• My probe droid hovers over the terrain to get a shot at the otherwise protected Loku, and messes him up bad.
• Loku is able to one-shot the door and move to the terminal.

At the beginning of round 8 (the final round), I had three soldiers ready to light up R2 (one had been chasing him down there) and about a million soldiers chasing the heros from behind. But Loku is at the terminal and Gideon can reach it. Luckily, Loku only has one blue die for Tech - and flubs both rolls. I poor fire into Gideon trying to kill him before he can reach the terminal but he survives. Lucky for me he is wounded and his Tech dice stink. The dice hit the table, and the Blue comes up with no surges, but the force is with him, and he manages to roll the surge they needed on the red die of all things. Rebel victory, by the absolute narrowest of margins.

Things that went right for me:

1. The HK droids being well positioned so they could stand still and attack while using Tech Support to focus each other for the next round. They were absolutely brutal.
2. The Elite Stormtroopers with Cloaking Device are even more difficult to kill with a Probe Droid healing them.
3. Those tuskens can't shoot worth a dang but in melee whoo boy do they hit hard! Those Elites were crushing Diala.

Things that went wrong for me:

1. It was hard positioning the Bantha rider and while he did his job by eating up their turns as a meat shield for the first objective, I never got to use any of his cool abilities.
2. For whatever reason I totally forgot about reinforcements and kept thinking I could only bring in complete sets of units. It is probably a combination of me being used to Skirmish and also the last two games they tended to wipe out units and not leave stragglers. In this game it may have helped to have an Elite stormtrooper come back but probably wouldn't have made a big difference as that was the only unit where it mattered (No tuskens were killed, the HKs were killed same turn, and the heavys were wiped up earlier).

Things that went right for the Rebels:

1. Defensive gear and skills. They basically had a 3x3-square bubble of auto-heal, added evade, etc.
2. Making great use of MHD's strain abilities that don't take actions, like auto-damage for 1 and heal 1.

Other Observations:

1. Gear and ability bloat is really slowing things down. Attacks are taking much longer to calculate. The Rebel players actually miss the days of only having a couple things to keep track of.
2. They had purchased the Astromech and he managed to open a single crate all game. They promptly sold him at the end of the mission.

Only one game left! I'm 0-3 but this is the one that counts!

Sounds like a fun mission. I love Canyon, it's got a special place in my heart.

I dropped a Bantha on my heroes too, a little later in the mission and in a brutal choke point. The horrified look on their faces was beautiful to me.

I think this a great mission, only downside for me is that it is quite a long side mission

also the first time I played it, I didn't realize that the Tusken snipe double >> shot that says "no other abilities can be used on this attack" also refers to the +1 damage from the elite tusken raiders. (And of course imperial class cards)

17 minutes ago, subtrendy said:

Sounds like a fun mission. I love Canyon, it's got a special place in my heart.

I dropped a Bantha on my heroes too, a little later in the mission and in a brutal choke point. The horrified look on their faces was beautiful to me.

It's the perfect thematic mission for the Bantha!

9 hours ago, frotes said:

also the first time I played it, I didn't realize that the Tusken snipe double >> shot that says "no other abilities can be used on this attack" also refers to the +1 damage from the elite tusken raiders. (And of course imperial class cards)

...It's the perfect thematic mission for the Bantha!

Yes that snipe was almost useless. I only did damage three times out of twelve and they healed all that pretty quickly. They never really felt any pressure or urgency due to the snipers.

I've been picking models thematically the whole campaign. The only one a bit outside the norm may have been HK Assassin Droids, but since I'm using the Technological Superiority deck I've been playing Kayn Somos off as sort of a tech mastermind. So of course the guy giving out cloaking devices and experimental weapons to his troops would have suped up droids protecting him too.

10 hours ago, LegoMech said:

Yes that snipe was almost useless. I only did damage three times out of twelve and they healed all that pretty quickly. They never really felt any pressure or urgency due to the snipers.

I've been picking models thematically the whole campaign. The only one a bit outside the norm may have been HK Assassin Droids, but since I'm using the Technological Superiority deck I've been playing Kayn Somos off as sort of a tech mastermind. So of course the guy giving out cloaking devices and experimental weapons to his troops would have suped up droids protecting him too.

Yeah, I found snipe to be pretty underwelming, too. However, it gives my units the possibility to deal some damage while staying well out of harm's way before they can join the fight in their normal capacity. It's not game changing, by any means, but it's a nice addition to flavor.

I've only played Canyon Run once, but I think it was my favorite mission I've played. Every report I've heard regarding it (including my own) tends to end with it coming down to the last round where one side barely succeeds.

The Bantha Rider wasn't released when I played, so I didn't get to drop it on them. In fact, neither was RtH so they didn't have MHD rapidly negating what little damage the snipers shots put out.

I'll say this though, I went 0-3 against my Rebels in that campaign. Fire in the Sky... they got steamrolled. That mission is extremely difficult for the Rebels. The one hope they had resulted in an Officer dodging Fenn's attack, preventing what would have been a very nasty Havoc Shot (Rebel Elite and Suppressive Fire).

4 hours ago, subtrendy said:

Yeah, I found snipe to be pretty underwelming, too. However, it gives my units the possibility to deal some damage while staying well out of harm's way before they can join the fight in their normal capacity. It's not game changing, by any means, but it's a nice addition to flavor.

You probably get in 2-4 Hits before rebels reach the raiders. Good for putting a few extra damage to finish off the droids

The raider damage has been a bit problematic for us as it's been what has pushed a bunch of rebels into being wounded.

Banthas are fun and I use them, but I don't expect to win with them. They're good in skirmish with beast tamer and the like but for campaign, which doesn't have that sort of thing, they're overpointed. That said I did win the last Canyon Run using an AT-ST which is even more overpointed, but I also used agenda cards to cut the cost.

26 minutes ago, Union said:

The raider damage has been a bit problematic for us as it's been what has pushed a bunch of rebels into being wounded.

Banthas are fun and I use them, but I don't expect to win with them. They're good in skirmish with beast tamer and the like but for campaign, which doesn't have that sort of thing, they're overpointed. That said I did win the last Canyon Run using an AT-ST which is even more overpointed, but I also used agenda cards to cut the cost.

Meh, I think with units like that it can be pretty subjective. Sure, in a one on one fight, a bantha isn't gonna be too heavy hitting against a hero (let alone 4) but if they can help the Imperial player run the clock by blocking 6 spaces in a choke point and slowing the Rebels significantly down, then I'd say they're well worth it. Stuff like that is really situational, but much as the Rebels cannot view the campaign as a "kill all the stormtroopers" simulator, the Empire cannot judge units based purely off of their combat efficiency.

Bantha is good for damaging the droids while blocking up a lot of space. Then they become easier pickings for the Tusken Shots

Very thematic too

And I guess it's also worth noting that at 9 pts. the Bantha is priced the same as an elite stormtrooper- but again, if it's being focused on, then your other troopers are being kept alive.

I don't know, maybe I'm optimistic about it, but I think it balances out well.

In power, I don't think Bantha is better than eST (not much is)

its just thematic here and with multiple bunched up figures (especially 2 low hp droids), this is probably the most bang you will get for your buck

Played the Bantha in Cayon Run once. It so traumatized the Rebels by slowing them down (and trampling them) that they strongly requested to not see it again. Ever. Brought it back for Impounded. They hated it there even more.

Excepting maybe playing against Fenn, the Bantha will die more easily than 4 troopers and do SIGNIFICANTLY less damage even if you have some way to drop it on the board immediately without having to save up for a turn. As I said, it's fun, but it doesn't pull it's weight.

42 minutes ago, Union said:

it's fun, but it doesn't pull it's weight.

It's a Bantha. Not much can pull it's weight.

Nothing brings me more joy than barreling down the canyon with a Bantha Rider, such a fun mission.

When we played that mission I did not have the bantha at that time, so I used instead the AT-ST to block the rebel's path. Twin shadows was my rebel group's first experience with the game. The AT-ST did not last long, but it had the psychological impact of delaying them a bit, since they acted carefully to take it down. I deployed it on the yellow deployment point after they removed the first barricade.

Regarding the Tusken raiders, I was trying to shot C-3PO but miserably failed on the dice rolls. Either I was not getting the required precision or when I did, they would roll the dodge symbol on 3PO's defence die. The latter was very thematic (Tantive IV opening scene of episode IV anyone?) and brought some good laugh as we would just imagine 3PO running around while insulting and telling R2 this was all his fault!

On 3/8/2017 at 5:31 PM, Union said:

Excepting maybe playing against Fenn, the Bantha will die more easily than 4 troopers and do SIGNIFICANTLY less damage even if you have some way to drop it on the board immediately without having to save up for a turn. As I said, it's fun, but it doesn't pull it's weight.

I have played the mission twice and both times the Imperial player banked threat for two turns and just dumped a bunch of troopers and heavy troopers into the canyon to block our path and shred us after we got through the barriers and we never had a chance of getting that terminal. Our Imperial player is rank and file to the core and dislikes using scum units if he can help it, which usually hurts him but in this mission makes it so hard to win.

Sorry for the necropost, but I think I have a pretty evil opening planned for tonight. We're playing Canyon Run (of course) and for the optional deployment during *setup*, I'm going to drop a Bantha on the heroes and play the Unchained agenda card - meaning that, when gameplay starts, they will already have been trampled once. I don't think it's even very good, I just want to surprised the heck out of them.. I hope to be able to kill either C3PO or R2D2 (or both) before their first activation.

1 hour ago, GyldenDamgaard said:

Sorry for the necropost, but I think I have a pretty evil opening planned for tonight. We're playing Canyon Run (of course) and for the optional deployment during *setup*, I'm going to drop a Bantha on the heroes and play the Unchained agenda card - meaning that, when gameplay starts, they will already have been trampled once. I don't think it's even very good, I just want to surprised the heck out of them.. I hope to be able to kill either C3PO or R2D2 (or both) before their first activation.

Sounds like fun. Sounds mean, too, but you can't not play the Bantha Rider in this mission.

Depending on their weapons, Bantha could be taken out pretty quickly for its points. So, check their max damage output to not expect the Bantha to survive too long.

Unchained would of course offset that quite a bit.

I dropped a Bantha on them, no Unchained, they did not like it one bit. It survived the first activation and took one more activation to put down.

Felt bad so I teased them by reaching for it to deploy again, but just couldn't do that to them.

EDIT: This sounded familiar. Just noticed I'd already posted previously. Ah well, it's a necropost.