Ah, you might be right there @Norgrath. Although that type of mechanic would normally use tokens, with the one revealing the model then being substituted for the figure.

On 5/6/2017 at 2:27 PM, TauntaunScout said:

Looking over all the contents, looks like they've made an entire wave that I will not be buying. My wallet thanks the design team.

Just curious, what don't you like about it?

I missed a lot of excitement this weekend!

And wow, what a mixed bag.

The OT-feel of the first several expansions is now a thing of the past. I’m hoping this expansion keeps the game fresh and doesn't tip the game into bloated territory.

I think the AT-DP is possibly my least favourite unit in the entire range of IA. Unlike the stormtrooper variants that are defined visually and mechanically by their equipment loadouts, this walker looks like a cheap AT-ST knockoff. Mechanically, I’m sure it’s just another massive, bipedal vehicle with good health and a solid attack. Compared to the rancor (massive with reach/eating friendly figures), this is quite the disappointment for the massive slot. I’m crossing my fingers for an excellent deployment card.

I like the setting. It’s also nice to see a blend of old and new with Jyn working together with Ko-Tun Feralo (similar to Verena and Diala in RTH).

The heroes don’t pop as well compared to the trio in Jabba’s Realm (the cowboy, the amazon warrior princess, the muscle). But it’s nice to see a hero start with a companion and the wookie demolition expert mini looks really, really fun!

The Imperial units are solid. No complaints there.

Power Tokens. Okay. Okay! You take away the dice in a dice game and it looses a little bit of its magic but I think this mechanic will work well in IA. Especially from a campaign perspective since it’ll help the Rebels finish off low health enemies without spending precious actions. But my biggest fear is that they will bog down attack sequences, especially with other passive bonuses to consider from weapons and abilities.

The ally and villain wave is a complete wash for me since I’m not a fan of Rebels/Clone Wars which immediately cancels out Maul and Ahsoka... but I have to buy them because I despise tokens haha. The Emperor is a disappointment since this is a skirmish based game but let’s not go down that rabbit hole again. Was hoping he’d manipulate the gameplay outside the board but instead we got the battlefront version.

And for the 80th time can you please include equipment cards like you did with Greedo/Obi-wan/Inquisitor. Thank you.

Overall I’m excited, but nervous.

20 minutes ago, Armandhammer said:

is a complete wash for me since I’m not a fan of Rebels/Clone Wars which immediately cancels out Maul and Ahsoka... but I have to buy them because I despise tokens haha. The Emperor is a disappointment since this is a skirmish based game but let’s not go down that rabbit hole again. Was hoping he’d manipulate the gameplay outside the board but instead we got the battlefront version.

And for the 80th time can you please include equipment cards like you did with Greedo/Obi-wan/Inquisitor. Thank you.

Overall, I think he's a pretty good mix of support and attack, which I think is what he should be. He's certainly a leader, but he can hold his own all too well.

And I'd absolutely love for ally packs to have equipment. Just spitballing, but these could be fun:

Ahsoka: Jedi Robes- slight health increase, adds 1 yellow die to observation

Maul: Sith Lightsaber- take damage to deal damage

Palpatine: Royal Guard helmet- increases health, minus some accuracy when figure declares attack against you

6 hours ago, subtrendy said:

Overall, I think he's a pretty good mix of support and attack, which I think is what he should be. He's certainly a leader, but he can hold his own all too well.

And I'd absolutely love for ally packs to have equipment. Just spitballing, but these could be fun:

Ahsoka: Jedi Robes- slight health increase, adds 1 yellow die to observation

Maul: Sith Lightsaber- take damage to deal damage

Palpatine: Royal Guard helmet- increases health, minus some accuracy when figure declares attack against you

I really like those as potential items.

We could really have an entire thread dedicated to future item speculation.

On 5/5/2017 at 2:43 PM, VadersMarchKazoo said:

I'm looking forward to seeing the Imperial Class decks spoiled. We had some discussions about this in another thread and two that come to mind were something like "Martial Law" that will give a police-like feel to the empire with lots of stun and crowd control options and a second that will be something related to force users and using the dark-side of the force to give the imperial troops various buffs.

Also, side note: I'm lovin' Jyn Odan on the cover!

So I said that about Jyn at Worlds while I was looking at it with some playtesters. They told me it was a shapeshifter. LOL. They were dead serious and I noticed the card in there too.

Lets be honest. THIS should've been the expansion to introduce the Royal Guards.

3 hours ago, NeverBetTheFett said:

So I said that about Jyn at Worlds while I was looking at it with some playtesters. They told me it was a shapeshifter. LOL. They were dead serious and I noticed the card in there too.

Holy crap.

I just realized that with shapeshifters, we can get a mission like:

"Special setup - secretly distribute neutral objective tokens to the heroes. One of these tokens must be Red, the rest must be green; do not tell this to the heroes. The heroes do not look at their mission tokens, and must leave them colored side down on their hero sheet."

Then later - "The heroes reveal their objective tokens. The hero with a red objective token is the Shapeshifter. Replace their figure with the reserved Clawdite Shapeshifter; place the hero that was the shapeshifter in the Holding Cell."

You'd have to throw in some rules that let the "free" heroes have 3 of the activation tokens after the one is revealed to be a shapeshifter, if playing with less than 4 heroes, but man that would be cool! To suddenly find out that one of you was a shapeshifter after half the mission! And then you have to rescue the real one!

Or even better (or worse, if you're the Rebels): you don't do the whole token thing, and just choose a hero to become the shapeshifter - then the heroes would be wondering about each other the rest of the campaign!

And of course, we have yet to see what the shapeshifters do by default...

1 hour ago, Stompburger said:

Holy crap.

I just realized that with shapeshifters, we can get a mission like:

"Special setup - secretly distribute neutral objective tokens to the heroes. One of these tokens must be Red, the rest must be green; do not tell this to the heroes. The heroes do not look at their mission tokens, and must leave them colored side down on their hero sheet."

Then later - "The heroes reveal their objective tokens. The hero with a red objective token is the Shapeshifter. Replace their figure with the reserved Clawdite Shapeshifter; place the hero that was the shapeshifter in the Holding Cell."

You'd have to throw in some rules that let the "free" heroes have 3 of the activation tokens after the one is revealed to be a shapeshifter, if playing with less than 4 heroes, but man that would be cool! To suddenly find out that one of you was a shapeshifter after half the mission! And then you have to rescue the real one!

Or even better (or worse, if you're the Rebels): you don't do the whole token thing, and just choose a hero to become the shapeshifter - then the heroes would be wondering about each other the rest of the campaign!

And of course, we have yet to see what the shapeshifters do by default...

Something like this would be awesome! It reminds me of the traitor in Shadows of Camelot except even more of a crazy reveal!

8 hours ago, Masterchiefspiff said:

Something like this would be awesome! It reminds me of the traitor in Shadows of Camelot except even more of a crazy reveal!

Exactly, that's what I thought of as well.

I kinda doubt that's where they're going with it, but it'd be really, really cool. Maybe the shapeshifter will do that in a single mission in the campaign.

On 5/8/2017 at 10:54 AM, subtrendy said:

Just curious, what don't you like about it?

The minis and tiles

I don't need/want more indoor spaceshippy tiles.

I have two AT-ST's, don't need another 2 legged walker, least of all some new fangled nonsense like this one. AT-PT is as far as I go.

The PC's are ok but taken on the whole with the collection I have, are nothing special. Another wookie, what appears to be another female force using twi'lek (or something very like a twi'lek) who ALSO wields her lightsaber all weird and backhanded... yawn. Gimme a break. At least I could use another wookie on Hoth though.... And a sniper from SNL's coneheads. O... K..... I have never had any desire to own minis of the coneheads.

Riot control stormtroopers seem odd to me. Plus, I don't want any more hardshell humans until we get something else. Naval crew? Imperial army? Death Star gunners? Something besides more stormtroopers, please?

No Darth Maul, not now, not ever.

On 5/8/2017 at 4:20 PM, Majushi said:

I really like those as potential items.

We could really have an entire thread dedicated to future item speculation.

Unfortunately, as they keep "fixing" these overcosted units with skirmish upgrades, it makes extra attachments unavailable. Soon, we'll have IG88, Vader, Han, Chewie and more all unable to use attachments.

33 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

The minis and tiles

I don't need/want more indoor spaceshippy tiles.

I have two AT-ST's, don't need another 2 legged walker, least of all some new fangled nonsense like this one. AT-PT is as far as I go.

The PC's are ok but taken on the whole with the collection I have, are nothing special. Another wookie, what appears to be another female force using twi'lek (or something very like a twi'lek) who ALSO wields her lightsaber all weird and backhanded... yawn. Gimme a break. At least I could use another wookie on Hoth though.... And a sniper from SNL's coneheads. O... K..... I have never had any desire to own minis of the coneheads.

Riot control stormtroopers seem odd to me. Plus, I don't want any more hardshell humans until we get something else. Naval crew? Imperial army? Death Star gunners? Something besides more stormtroopers, please?

No Darth Maul, not now, not ever.

Interesting.

To each their own, I guess, but a lot of what you don't seem to like about this (urban setting, Ahsoka, Maul, more vehicles) are features that a lot of people have really been looking forward to.

Sorry you aren't psyched about this one, hope the next expansion is something more your speed.

It's to early to pass judgement on what I do or don't like about the expansion, I haven't even seen the cards yet! The AT-DP does seem like a really close version of the AT-ST.. which already collects dust. But I will wait till I have seen what it is about. I was thinking Man they could have got so much more creative with that massive slot! But then I thought well what is really left?

Im also not so happy with the walker. The AT-DP looks ugly against die AT-ST and Riot Troopers looks also odd to me. Isnt Riotcontroll a thing for Coruscant-Police? But the minis of the riottroopers themselves looks cool.

1 hour ago, TauntaunScout said:

The minis and tiles

I don't need/want more indoor spaceshippy tiles.

I have two AT-ST's, don't need another 2 legged walker, least of all some new fangled nonsense like this one. AT-PT is as far as I go.

The PC's are ok but taken on the whole with the collection I have, are nothing special. Another wookie, what appears to be another female force using twi'lek (or something very like a twi'lek) who ALSO wields her lightsaber all weird and backhanded... yawn. Gimme a break. At least I could use another wookie on Hoth though.... And a sniper from SNL's coneheads. O... K..... I have never had any desire to own minis of the coneheads.

Riot control stormtroopers seem odd to me. Plus, I don't want any more hardshell humans until we get something else. Naval crew? Imperial army? Death Star gunners? Something besides more stormtroopers, please?

No Darth Maul, not now, not ever.

The tweet I posted about Ahsoka, Maul, and Palpatine coming to IA is one of the most popular tweets we've ever posed from The Jodo Cast. People (myself included) love Ahsoka Tano.

It seems pretty clear you're not interested in the TV shows, which are a big part of Star Wars now. Maul's inclusion would make more sense if you were up to date on all of that storytelling.

So when saying " what appears to be another female force using twi'lek (or something very like a twi'lek) who ALSO wields her lightsaber all weird and backhanded... yawn." it might help to know the context of why she might have been included in the expansion.

She fits the time period of the campaign and is currently one of the most popular characters in Star Wars.

It was only a matter of time before they brought her into the game.

Riot troopers make sense given the setting is coruscant. I'm not that excited about them, but the setting makes sense.

"Something besides stormtroopers please?" Ok how about Imperial Sentry Droids?

The AT-DP is an odd choice though. I suppose they want a figure like that that's actually playable, but I would have preferred just a "fix" card for the existing AT-ST.

51 minutes ago, caseycheesecake said:

Unfortunately, as they keep "fixing" these overcosted units with skirmish upgrades, it makes extra attachments unavailable. Soon, we'll have IG88, Vader, Han, Chewie and more all unable to use attachments.

I wasn't even talking about the Skirmish Upgrades, but whatever floats your boat.

You don't have to use the upgrades by the way. Just play them without, or don't play them at all.

You're free to play this game however you want.

Riot troopers: I really like them. I've heard a lot of "oh no, more troopers", but I think these are totally cool. After all, when you look at the Empire, they are mostly troopers. You can always give them optional paint jobs. I really like how these guys fit into the story of the oppressive Empire in urban environments. My guess is that they will have some nice thematic abilities that will include, stun and/or push and will also have some nice guardian traits. They will be a great asset and a good alternative to royal guards, who don't always make sense in the campaign when there's no one to guard.

AT-DP: OK, admittedly I think the AT-ST is a better looking vehicle. But that's really the fault of the Rebels art crew rather than FFG. Ultimately, if they didn't give us AT-DPs, then people (like me) would be saying that the AT-ST aren't appropriate for the time period of HotE. My guess is that they will be much better costed and see much more use that the current AT-STs and also move in a direction to allow for Vehicle lists in skirmish. I'm looking forward to the AT-DP and will reserve my opinion about it's aesthetics for once it's painted.

Just my 2 credits.

Well the whole look of Rebels was inspired by McQuarrie concept art so they used concept art for a new walker.

This was concept art by Joe Johnston (creator of the look for Boba Fett and other stuff).

I don't mind the look, but sometimes when they dredge up old concept art, you're like cool. and other times you're like, maybe they didn't use that look for a reason lol.

Aesthetically AT-DPs are kind of a disappointment, but

1) We're getting a new walker- that's pretty neat!

and

2) We have absolutely no idea of this thing's stats. As far as we know, it could be an extremely affordable 6 threat (though, admittedly have less than stellar stats). As a campaign person, I'd love something that cheap with that kind of board presence.

Regarding troopers-

Honestly, and maybe I'm in the minority here, but I prefer having various types of stormtroopers to flesh out my ranks. Sure, they're pretty hit or miss, but I've used every type of stormtrooper I have far more than the rather lame Wing Guards.

Regarding Riot Troopers specifically-

Given the setting, they make sense. Also, given the popularity of TR-8R (not his real ID, I know) in TFA, it makes a ton of sense to add them. Finally, it gives the Empire a melee trooper, something the game has certainly never seen before. Overall, even though they may seem a bit odd, they're actually an incredibly unique addition to this game, and that's without even seeing what's on their cards.

Trooper - Brawler, maybe? Any good command card combinations for that?

18 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

And a sniper from SNL's coneheads. O... K..... I have never had any desire to own minis of the coneheads.

You're unfamiliar with the Cereans? Even Ki-Adi-Mundi? It's like you've never seen the pre...quels.... I just realized I envy you. Carry on.

22 minutes ago, Uninvited Guest said:

You're unfamiliar with the Cereans? Even Ki-Adi-Mundi? It's like you've never seen the pre...quels.... I just realized I envy you. Carry on.

It actually took me a while to realize she was Ki-Adi's species, even though I'm very familiar with him.

That being said, I am kind of aesthetically disappointed with the heroes this time. A rather generic human character (though, as an Assassins Creed fan, I'm interested to see his weapons in use), another Wookie (though, again, a demolitions hero has potential to be great) and the Cerean. That's the thing- their abilities and stuff may well be cool, but I'm not psyched to have them aesthetically like I was for Vinto, Onar, Murne, and Loku. Specifically, we already have a wookie, and a Cerean just seems like a weird choice. But hey, I won't look down on having more heroes.

3 hours ago, a1bert said:

Trooper - Brawler, maybe? Any good command card combinations for that?

The troopers are Trooper - Brawler - Guardian and have something called Crowd control that looks pretty interesting. I'm hoping this is where we see some push or stun effects.

MC Spiff gave us some spoiler-pics from worlds on another FFG/IA thread. Thread title something like "Heart of the Empire Spoiled at Worlds".

The wookiee looks like he has a coconut-shell bra on. or a thermal detonator bra.