Hey Guys,

I've played the Inspiring Leadership for my campaign and I have to say, it feels really good. Instead of buffing units (Technical Superiority or Military Might) or sapping the Rebels (Subversive Tactics), you give your forces additional command abilities and move your activation around. My build currently is

Field Officer (free) >> Strategic Planning (2xp) >> Field General (3xp)

The BEST card I have ever played with is Strategic Planning. Rush this, it may seem lack luster but it is impressive to use. It seems useful in any mission as it allows you to trade activations between deployment groups AND give 1 movement speed to all units in both deployment groups. This is insane, as it can definitely help you in missions where you have to do objectives OTHER than killing the Rebels. Other than that, I've used it when my storm/snow trooper group is down to 1 and I'd give the action to a droid, Nexu, E-web, Hired Guns, Tusken Raiders, a bigger trooper group, etc... You can use it when a deployment group is just too far from the Rebels and you don't want to move towards them and away from the objective. Trade that groups action with ones that already are in the heat of battle.

The Field Officer is pretty decent. With the trooper group, I can position better to avoid Cleave/Blast damage and essentially spreading out to avoid devastating chain kills. Its really cool when a trooper unit can move units like Royal Gaurds and E-webs for better positioning too. It's a really nice starter ability but can feel really useless at times when you don't have any bigger units to position.

Finally, Field General is a card I've only begun to use last mission. It's amazing. I just used it to let a Royal Guard attack WITH a storm trooper group. That was 4 attacks on 1 poor, poor Rebel who was surrounded. My friends call it the "Evil Gideon" card. And once I get Masterstrok... I mean Lead by Example, it will be a force to be reckoned with. Not much to say other than "Wow, this is DOPE as ****". I can double command move too with field officer than field general as they're different actions. You'd use that to HAUL *** if a plan doesn't work.

Example, terminal A needs to be activated so I of course swarm terminal A hard. I realize Rebels are smart and ignore the units, send one guy down the hall to activate the terminal, now terminal B needs to be activated and its on the other side of the map. HAUL ***, use the field officer/general to move 2 additional units and start moving/shooting. And you'd probably do this earlier, before the terminal A activates. By then Terminal B and the path to it is pretty block and the Rebels now have to fight up to Terminal B.

So I am madly in love with Inspiring Leadership right now. I've only played Technological Superiority, and the buffs I got with Arc Blasters/Cloak/Adaptive weapons were good but not really fun. I stun, dodge and roll a die of my choice. Unfortunately the Rebels have better toys to play with than me, with Mak removing white dies, Garkhaan cleaving and Gideons absurd efficiency. I felt absolutely out gunned.

With inspiring leadership, good judgment and insight will get you a step ahead of the Rebels. My friends certainly caught more surprises from this deck than the Tech one.

"OH, whew that Nexu already went... wait what do you mean he re-activates. **** NO!"

"Okay, the royal guard already went. What? You command move him? okay... Oh.. you now command attack.. well ****, you stunned me when i was going to move and activate the terminal. **** you Heretic"

You get the idea. More surprises, more fun for me and the Rebels. I was going for Subversive Tactics, but it's too harsh. I think my friends are getting too good thought. Honestly I have NOT won a single mission in our second campaign but I don't blame the deck. I blame me for being pretty bad with thinking ahead. But the recent two missions I NEARLY won. Got all heroes wounded except one (who had 1 health left.......) and the other got 2 wounded and the other 2 were closes to being wounded.

So if you're doing a new campaign, try this deck out. I've seen people do other builds. Mine is focused on those tasty tasty commands, extra actions (lead by example) and swapping actions.

It can be a fun deck but can be hard to use sometimes and does have it's flaws. When it works, it works well, allowing you to order a heavy hitting unit to attack multiple times or to have a depleted group give up it's activation for a full strength group.

The problems with the deck is that it's a bit of a "win more" deck as it lacks any sort of catch up or defense. If the Rebels are being successful keeping the board relatively clear of Imperials then the deck won't help you and you're just going to lose harder. Given that the deck only gives you 2 free threat, almost no healing and practically no defense, you really have to play conservatively in a lot of missions and just let the Rebels have a free round or two as you build up enough threat to get enough units on the board to be able to pressure them.

So the deck works very well in Twin Shadows, which it comes from, because it tends to be Imperial favored and for the same reason it would work in Bespin. In core and Hoth it would be a bit more hit or miss, working really well in some missions and not very well in others.