Hi all,

Completely new to Imperial Assault, only played a few games but mostly been painting (which I'll try to post). All I have right now is starter and Return to Hoth. Reading other posts and watching videos my take on a good Vader list is the typical officers with the tankiest units I could find.

Vader-18

Officer-2

Officer-2

Elite Snow Troopers- 10

Snow Trooper- 7

Total-39

That leaves 1 point left for Zillo or Rule by Fear (don't have either yet).

That's 5 deployment cards and 52 health. Plus Snow troopers heal each other and I can use Reinforcement command cards for basically 8-12 more health. Vader does Vader things and focusing him allows for a pretty good trooper force to hit hard or if they ignore Vader everything else should survive pretty well.

Other command cards I'm planning are Rally and Regroup to keep Vader at full capacity.

It's hard to build a list around defense right now because with all the hunter cards in the game everything is dying in 1 hit and you don't have a chance to use your healing abilities. Even vader can't survive more than 2 rounds if your opponent decides to focus him down.

Vader is... not good :/ You'd be better off focusing on a merc list with your HK's, Nexu's, bring in Gideon and C3P0 for buffs. Or Luke/Leia.

This is exactly the list I made up if I was to use Vader som time ago, dont remeber how it worked, think it worked good, you need all the command cards that give movements and extra attacks for Vader.

Also as your upgrade, consider Unshakable, you really dont want any conditions on Vader.

I really wanted to make an ESB imperial march list with snowtroopers, Vader and e-webs, I even started converting my e-web to have a snowtroopers instead of a scout trooper, but the e-web was designed for campaign not for skirmish and I could never get the idea off the ground. The large base figures are so much slower and the skirmish maps lend themselves to more mobile figures.

Hey,

I am doing all-Hoth stuff too. Finished painting my probots, and will be painting Vader and the AT-ST next to give me a skirmish sized army of all Hoth related models. I don't paint for lists, that's a long time rule. I've been burned by too many rules changes. I refuse to do hard work in the real world to gain favors in pretend-land. Fantasy Flight might whip the rug out from under today's perfect list tomorrow. So I am making my way through all the Hoth related minis I have first, and will play Hoth themed games for awhile.

If "Snow Vader" is your theme, I think it would be very poorly served by focusing on a mercenary list with Nexu's, and rebel heroes for bonuses. Seems to be neither snow nor Vader.