What are people's thoughts on the differences?

I really don't think the difference is all that necessary. (although one must assume rigorous playtesting is what brought about the two format cards)

Basically, a BR with those surges has a 91% chance of getting 1 or more damage through a Black Dice and 82% chance of getting 1 of more damage through a White Dice.

Comparatively, with the -1 Damage from Crowd Control (optional obviously), those stats fall to 73% for 1+ vs Black and 76% for 1+ vs White.

Granted the 1 Strain has an entirely different meaning in Skirmish vs Campaign.

As anyone who has used the Regular Gammorreans will tell you, a -1 damage on attack is pretty debilitating (on 2 Reds at that, let alone Red Blue)

If protecting the Rebels from the strain gain was so important, why not have simply have both versions do what the Campaign version does? Or is strain in skirmish so weak it cannot handle the chance reduction?)

You would never use Crowd Control in skirmish. Strain gives the opponent the option to pick damage or discard a card. Doing 1 less damage to give them an option to either take damage or discard a card is a pointless effect.

It seems like they wrote it this way to make them slightly weaker in campaign.

I guess they assume that most of the time, people discard a card instead of taking damage in skirmish, while in campaign, strain will always hurt the character.

Since it's while attacking, the imperial player basically have the choice to convert one of his damage to strain instead. Not great, but it's nice to have the choice.

3 minutes ago, Red Castle said:

Since it's while attacking, the imperial player basically have the choice to convert one of his damage to strain instead. Not great, but it's nice to have the choice.

Needing to make the choice first, the IP needs to account for defender abilities such as Laminate Armor and High-Impact Guard in the calculations though.

Honestly, I'd much rather have the Skirmish variant in campaign (for obvious reasons)

I've always wondered why the campaign figures are so wimpy, but I don't play enough campaign to know if it makes a difference. I do know that a well-versed Imperial and a bunch of fresh-faced campaigners can be a little unbalanced in some situations, so maybe it's for the learning curve. I know you can spam tons of these guys with your threat level getting pretty high in some missions (really only 2 sets in the box though) so I guess that may be part of it as well. Campaign imperials are always looking for cheap reinforcements.

26 minutes ago, buckero0 said:

I've always wondered why the campaign figures are so wimpy, but I don't play enough campaign to know if it makes a difference. I do know that a well-versed Imperial and a bunch of fresh-faced campaigners can be a little unbalanced in some situations, so maybe it's for the learning curve. I know you can spam tons of these guys with your threat level getting pretty high in some missions (really only 2 sets in the box though) so I guess that may be part of it as well. Campaign imperials are always looking for cheap reinforcements.

Yeah, I think the reinforcement cost is probably the big issue here. At 2.5 Threat each (for the full deployment) they're pretty decent, but at 2 threat per reinforcement, these are a really strong reinforce target in early missions. And since you'll probably get them as initial or reserved groups a lot, that would get pretty annoying for the Rebels if they can't clear them out.

5 minutes ago, Stompburger said:

And since you'll probably get them as initial or reserved groups a lot, that would get pretty annoying for the Rebels if they can't clear them out.

That's what I'm kinda worried about.

It's fine for HotE if the missions are balanced off of the Riot Troopers rather than simply their threat costs, but if the troopers aren't quite worth the 5 threat as an open group, they won't see much play out of being a Starting or Reserved group.

1 hour ago, buckero0 said:

I've always wondered why the campaign figures are so wimpy, but I don't play enough campaign to know if it makes a difference.

The Imperial player in a campaign has a class deck of his or her own. This means that Imperial/Mercenary deployment cards are usually buffed in some way or another.

59 minutes ago, subtrendy2 said:

...but if the troopers aren't quite worth the 5 threat as an open group, they won't see much play out of being a Starting or Reserved group.

I actually kind of like this notion. Simply because it gives each campaign it’s own unique flavour of enemies. For example, has anyone ever brought ugnaughts or winged guards outside of Bespin? hehe.

55 minutes ago, Armandhammer said:

I actually kind of like this notion. Simply because it gives each campaign it’s own unique flavour of enemies. For example, has anyone ever brought ugnaughts or winged guards outside of Bespin? hehe.

I have, but it wasn't a particularly rewarding decision.

See, there's a tight balance to walk- on the one hand, you don't want to make your Ugnaughts so terrible that they're utterly worthless. On the other, you don't want them to be so incredibly good that they eventually become the bulk of Imperial forces via open groups in all campaigns.

Simply, I think that each unit should be worth its threat cost. If an Imperial wants to drop a Nezu on Hoth, that's up to them. If they want to bring in Snowtroopers to Tatooine, that's fine too. I'm not even a fan of the Habitat rule, either, but that's another issue entirely. Point is, I think that each unit should have its niche, and ideally no unit would be a hard pass for open groups simply because its better balanced as starting or reserved.

I think boss character fall into this, too. All in all, characters like Vader and the Royal Guard Champion seem to be better balanced when they're actually an original part of the mission, rather than when they're brought in as open groups. In the long run, I would've just preferred better deployment cards for those characters.

Strain in a campaign can clog up the rebel characters' ability to use their special abilities. So it could be in the imperial players interest sometimes to convert that one damage into a strain instead of just doing that one damage. And then add it up over multiple riot troopers. And then add in upgrades from the imperial class deck that could interact with it somehow (I'm not up to snuff on what's in all those anymore but I know it can get crazy).

But the strain mechanic in skirmish is different so I like that it's a bonus in the skirmish version and makes the unit more viable. And could be really cool depending on some cc interactions and what those elites are going to be

9 minutes ago, Masterchiefspiff said:

Strain in a campaign can clog up the rebel characters' ability to use their special abilities. So it could be in the imperial players interest sometimes to convert that one damage into a strain instead of just doing that one damage. And then add it up over multiple riot troopers. And then add in upgrades from the imperial class deck that could interact with it somehow (I'm not up to snuff on what's in all those anymore but I know it can get crazy).

But the strain mechanic in skirmish is different so I like that it's a bonus in the skirmish version and makes the unit more viable. And could be really cool depending on some cc interactions and what those elites are going to be

That's fair- add in some trandos with these guys and you might as well be running Subversive Tactics on top of whatever other class deck you have, considering your heroes will either have to constantly be resting or simply be unable to use their abilities. Much like how I worry about giving too many Imperials Stun and Bleed as surge abilities, I could see direct strain being problematic too.

The card says what it is. Crowd Control is a choice and in campaign depending on the strain of the hero, using CC can control the hero's options.

I think this change was a Design Failure

In design you should always focus on what makes a model unique, and make that aspect memorable.

In this case it was the Stun Baton and Shield. They did a well enough design with the Shield, but by changing the Stun Baton effect for each mode they ruined it for the Campaign.

Basically, if it was too strong for Campaign they should have found a different way to weaken it.

surprised they don't have a white die. That's what lept into my mind first when I saw the shield.

Having played the new campaign a bit now, I actually really like the regular Riot Troopers. Yeah Crowd Control isn't that great, but it would likely have been too strong otherwise. Their shield ability makes them pretty durable for their cost and they are no slouch offensively.

The elites are also good but they compete with Elite Jet Trooper who I feel are superior.

19 hours ago, Zrob314 said:

surprised they don't have a white die. That's what lept into my mind first when I saw the shield.

Usually, a character with low armor, evading and dodging, has a white die, a character with armor blocking attacks has a black die.

On 10/14/2017 at 2:06 PM, Zrob314 said:

surprised they don't have a white die. That's what lept into my mind first when I saw the shield.

6 hours ago, qwertyuiop said:

To be fair, he's not exactly using the shield for it's intended purpose.

But once FFG provides alternate sculpts with the Riot Troopers Shield-Surfing I'll concede they should have white dice...