Is there any items or skill combos to counter pierce? We are playing Jabbas Realm and the imperial is using the Hutt merc deck, his first skill purchase was Guild Hunters and the pierce 2 combined with the hidden has been devastating. Won our mission last night in round 3 but he was only one guy away from everyone being wounded. Concerns all will be wounded quite quickly. The imperial also brought down Shyla in 3 attacks. Impressive. We are still doing well clearing threat just concerned the imperial doesn't need many attacks to really get high damage. Party is mostly black die characters so obviously doesn't help. Gaarhan, Shyla, Vinto, Onar.

So any strategies, tactics, or item/skill combos to help counter pierce?

15 minutes ago, jomayo112 said:

Is there any items or skill combos to counter pierce? We are playing Jabbas Realm and the imperial is using the Hutt merc deck, his first skill purchase was Guild Hunters and the pierce 2 combined with the hidden has been devastating. Won our mission last night in round 3 but he was only one guy away from everyone being wounded. Concerns all will be wounded quite quickly. The imperial also brought down Shyla in 3 attacks. Impressive. We are still doing well clearing threat just concerned the imperial doesn't need many attacks to really get high damage. Party is mostly black die characters so obviously doesn't help. Gaarhan, Shyla, Vinto, Onar.

So any strategies, tactics, or item/skill combos to help counter pierce?

First off, know that that card is crazy powerful. You don't need to feel bad that your imperial player is using it to make life so tough on you :P.

And unfortunately there's not a whole lot you can do to counter pierce, per se. With Shyla specifically you can go for her 4XP skill that grants a free evade whenever she's defending: no surges = no pierce 2. Now chances are that probably won't stop the first, hidden attack from getting a surge through but it does make her a bit more resistant to multiple smaller attacks piling up.

Other than that, though, all you can really do is try to a)buy armour to increase your group's health and b)concentrate on offensive skills for your XP builds. The Hutt Mercenaries deck hits like a truck, but its weakness is that it doesn't have any defensive cards to speak of. I've been having a bit of success in my campaign with similar heroes to yours by making a point to clear the board as quickly as possible, concentrating first on units that haven't activated yet (Onar's "Don't make me hurt you" has been really valuable for this). I've found resting to be almost a lost cause in a lot of cases, since like you said the damage just builds up so quickly that whatever health I just recovered gets eaten away in no time at all. With all that said, though, it's still not a cakewalk - you can be rolling along thinking that you're in total control when suddenly some mission event drops a bunch of threat on the board and out of nowhere everyone's getting wounded left and right.

Rebel Scum go first, so just murder the hidden units. Put Onar in front because he doesn't care about pierce. Swap Gaarkhan for a support character because any party with 0 support characters is going to have issues.

13 minutes ago, Union said:

Rebel Scum go first, so just murder the hidden units. Put Onar in front because he doesn't care about pierce. Swap Gaarkhan for a support character because any party with 0 support characters is going to have issues.

Interesting point about Onar, actually, never thought of it like that.

21 minutes ago, Union said:

Rebel Scum go first, so just murder the hidden units. Put Onar in front because he doesn't care about pierce. Swap Gaarkhan for a support character because any party with 0 support characters is going to have issues.

Agreed.

Funny enough Onar and Gharkhaan are the only characters among those four that have any direct support abilities and Pierce is the direct counter to both of them.

3 hours ago, Union said:

Rebel Scum go first, so just murder the hidden units. Put Onar in front because he doesn't care about pierce. Swap Gaarkhan for a support character because any party with 0 support characters is going to have issues.

Onar cares about pierce if he has his Armour or Get Down.

14 hours ago, Majushi said:

Onar cares about pierce if he has his Armour or Get Down.

The armour can also be used to add an evade, so it's not the worst decision. But yeah, get down becomes pretty useless.

55 minutes ago, ManateeX said:

The armour can also be used to add an evade, so it's not the worst decision. But yeah, get down becomes pretty useless.

Get Down can also add an evade, so how is the armor not useless but Get Down is?

In reality neither are. You can remove the surge giving pierce 2 with either of them, which is what the OP is talking about. Majushi's point is just wrong.

6 minutes ago, Union said:

Get Down can also add an evade, so how is the armor not useless but Get Down is?

In reality neither are. You can remove the surge giving pierce 2 with either of them, which is what the OP is talking about. Majushi's point is just wrong.

I didn't realize that Get Down also added the evade (I skipped over it in my build). If that's the case then, yeah, it's still useful against the card as well.

Well, I disagree that I'm "just wrong"

first of all Get Down requires a roll, and it's not a certainty it will succeed for the evade.

the armour is flexible too, and that's great.

but saying Onar doesn't care about the pierce is just not entirely true either.

Say I get three damage and one surge. Onar has to get the evade (armour) and then block (get down) to reduce any damage. By no means a given. In the end the best he can do is reduce the damage by 1. And that's using two defensive abilities...

On 2017-03-16 at 9:28 AM, Majushi said:

Well, I disagree that I'm "just wrong"

first of all Get Down requires a roll, and it's not a certainty it will succeed for the evade.

the armour is flexible too, and that's great.

but saying Onar doesn't care about the pierce is just not entirely true either.

Say I get three damage and one surge. Onar has to get the evade (armour) and then block (get down) to reduce any damage. By no means a given. In the end the best he can do is reduce the damage by 1. And that's using two defensive abilities...

He needs to have both of those defenses before he cares about the pierce, and once he does, he can do something about it. So, no, he doesn't care about the pierce.

also if you move Onar and Vinto in aggressive ways you can probably make them the only targets for the hidden groups and/or the most appealing targets for them.

The Hidden Units will probably be farther back too so if you do this you'll probably find Shyla and Gaarkhan are closing in on juicy unactivated non-hidden imperial figures that much sooner

Prioritize abilities that give you extra Surge cancels (evades) and health. Pierce is less effective against raw health like Onar, just don't buy abilities that give blocks (which can be pierced) instead of extra health.