I recently finished a campaign, where I was testing a few things and I wanted to share my thoughts.
The rebels consisted of Murne, Shyla, Davith, & Saska. The imperial was using Nemesis. The campaign was the base campaign.
I was also testing the use of the new character skirmish upgrades for Han, Chewie, IG-88, & Vader (Using them only when paid for using threat).
Chewie
I got Chewie after the first side mission. I mostly only brought him in on Story Missions, because they tend to be longer and side mission already tend to be front loaded with units. I was bringing him in for 7 and he was tremendous value. At 11, I still think he would be fair. He felt similiar to Jedi Luke, which is a good thing. Chewie doesnt hit quite as hard but his bulk makes it so the Imperial player has to ignore him and his stun and push are both quite handy in certain situations.
Nemesis
As my villians, I used Terro and Jabba. Throughout the early and mid stages of the campaign, Terro was a superstar and an ever present threat. His great traits along with him being a relatively cheap offensive threat made him very good. I would probably even bring him in future JR campaigns. However, once the Rebels got into tier 3, his effectiveness started to wane as the Rebels were able to take him out fairly easy. Davith, with his pierce 3 was particularly adept since it would often get full value vs 2 black dice.
Jabba was actually a lot worse than I thought he'd be. The problem is the map has to be just right for him to work (a large map with a spawn point away from the rebels), and the base campaign just didnt have that. Tho i used him in one early mission that I knew had an aggressive timer, so the rebels simply didnt have the time to deal with him and he worked there.
I brought in Vader in the last story mission with As You Wish. With Driven by Hatred, Indomitable, and Ringleader, Vader is an absolute beast. The free movement made it so he was often force choking and attacking, with a 2nd attack at the end. And while 2 black dice was easy enough to power through in the late stages, 3 black dice w/ rerolls was much tougher and Vader was very hard to deal with efficiently. I liked Driven by Hatred quite a bit and even without Nemesis deck, I think he could be effective (so long as the rebels cant stun anyway)
I think with Nemesis, you need a solid villian costing 7-8 like Terro or Maul and then an expensive villian for the late game like Vader, IG-88, or Fett (tho he is really in need of a card buff).
Indomitiable is also a crazy card because you can also use it on the end boss of the campaign and make him even tougher to deal with (Although in my case, the Rebels had gotten an insane amount of credits and were incredibly stacked so it didnt particularly matter).
Saska
Another thing I was testing was that I wanted to see how Saska would perform with an ideal group composition. I purposely grouped her with 2 melee so she wouldnt have an competition for ranged mods. Halfway through the campaign, I had her with a DL-44 w/ Tac Display, Plasma Cell, & Spread Barrel. In Tier 3, she had Disruptor Pistol w/Tac Display & Plasma Cell and she was hitting incredibly hard (especially with a focus from Adrenaline Injector). I also found her skill, Toolbox, to be especially useful throughout the base campaign. So yeah, I think she can be pretty good under the right conditions (but admittedly, only good when with 2 melee is pretty restrictive).
Davith
This was the first time that I had finished a campaign with Davith as he was not used in the Bespin campaign I did and I did not finish the other 2 campaigns he was in.
On this forum, he seems to have gotten a bad rep, regarded as a B tier hero, but I really didnt see that in my campaign as I felt that he performed extremely well. One of the biggest camplaints lodged against him is that he is poor while wounded, and while I agree with that assesment, there is a lot you can do to minimize that weakness. Most importantly, I think it is important to not lead with Davith, putting him out there where he will get focused fired. Often, I would wait until later in a round to activate him and between that and the Shadowsilk cloak it was rare that he was wounded early.
In the past, I have been a proponent of skipping Shrouded Lightsaber in favor of a tier 3 weapon and spending that 3 xp elsewhere but I decided to get Shrouded Lightsaber because I was running 2 melee. I ended up modding it with Balanced Hilt and High Impact Guard. When I initially looked at the best mods for the weapon, i didnt think guard was that good because it did not appear on paper that another 2 dmg surge was needed (in addition to the pierce 3 and the 2 dmg while hidden). But in practice, I found it extremely powerful. It was very powerful when Falling Leaf was used as 3 surge was very possible (especially with balanced hilt), it also allowed me to sometimes convert the hide surge into 2 damage, getting a kill and then the 2 dmg surge made it so his dps did not drop so badly when he was not hidden. And of course, he also really appreciated the defensive part of the mod as well. I actually now think that shrouded lightsaber with this setup is actually better than Ancient Lightsaber because while Ancient Lightsabers does win in a straight up contest, Falling Leaf gives a larger benefit to Shrouded, and the skill that gives an extra attack for 2 strain also works better with Shrouded.
Davith took out Terro (with 2 black dice) in a single activation twice, One shot 000, among other accomplishments. His single target dmg was very good.
Murne
I did not really do anything different than normal with Murne, played her typical support build. While having 2 melee was great for Saska, it made it much harder to get full value out of Waylay. That said, she worked quite well with Chewie (tho she works well with any ranged ally).
Shyla
The first time I played her, I used a wierd build. But this time I used the typical build of Responsiveness, both 4xp skills and swords dance. And frankly, I think that build with Electrostaff is broken. Electrostaff by itself is already stronger than it should be (matches Ancient Lightsaber for strongest single target dmg with free cleaves on top giving it a total dmg potential higher than any other by a large margin) and with Shyla, she can attack 3 times to get cleave 6 plus her cleave 3 skill (weighted head can give more cleave by at the expense of single target dmg) and her free movement makes it so the double attack happens often. In the finale, she took out 2 elite royal guards in a single activation, it was pretty gross.
Over the course of the campaign, the rebels got double credits on every story mission (tho they lost Aftermath), and won 2 agenda missions for more credits. It was the most credits i had ever seen before. The rebels were incredibly stacked. Despite playing Imperial favored Desperate Times finale, the Rebels won and was not particularly close. It is probably a good thing that the more recent campaigns no longer allow for double rewards in the Story missions (both extra credits and extra xp).
Edited by Deadwolf