Hey @brettpkelly,

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on whether these new Imperial cards will be enough to move a subset of players to playing Imperial lists in the competitive meta. I find all of your reasoning convincing in the article, but I am more interested in whether the Imperial changes are enough, at the very least, to create a more diverse meta (in your opinion) or if you think that the Imperial lists are still underpowered to a degree that we'll see a mostly Mercenary meta for the near future. Nice write up!

4 minutes ago, dietz057 said:

Hey @brettpkelly,

I'm curious to hear your thoughts on whether these new Imperial cards will be enough to move a subset of players to playing Imperial lists in the competitive meta. I find all of your reasoning convincing in the article, but I am more interested in whether the Imperial changes are enough, at the very least, to create a more diverse meta (in your opinion) or if you think that the Imperial lists are still underpowered to a degree that we'll see a mostly Mercenary meta for the near future. Nice write up!

I think a subset of players will move to Imperials for a while, just because of the Vader fix. Spy cards are legit, we might see some Imperial spy lists popping up. I still think Imperials will be underrepresented in the competitive scene though. With the new changes a lot of people are going to switch from Mercs to Rebels. I'll address that in my next article.

I'm a loyalist and will always stick to the empire... even if i have to borrow some merc units!

19 minutes ago, brettpkelly said:

I think a subset of players will move to Imperials for a while, just because of the Vader fix. Spy cards are legit, we might see some Imperial spy lists popping up. I still think Imperials will be underrepresented in the competitive scene though. With the new changes a lot of people are going to switch from Mercs to Rebels. I'll address that in my next article.

Interesting! My initial thoughts was that Imps would get more players away from Mercs. I think those new Trooper cards and Power Tokens give Imperial Troopers a lift. I'm not for sure if the Elite Sentry Droids are top-tier, but I bet we could find a very competitive Vehicle/Trooper list with eJets, eRiots and a Imperial star (Vader/Emperor/Blaise).

I'm looking forward to seeing your articles on the Rebs and Mercs. Spy lists w/ Roguish Smuggling Han Solo sure do look more fun to play.

I played a 4 players skirmish against 2 AT-DP's last night. Not bad, but a bit squishy to be honest. Having "assault" (to shoot twice) with a blue/yellow/red combo with a re-roll and a +3 accuracy (+1 damage if above 9 damage) is pretty dangerous to have lying around. I still think hunter cards are strong, so mercs will still be well represented. Although we'll definitely bound to see more balance among factions.

2 hours ago, kingargyle said:

I predict that if the Heart of the Empire skirmish map makes it into rotation. Smuggler's Run will be included in every Rebel list, as mission B is made for that card.

I would sure run it just because it's so epic to pull off. Especially playing on the Lam to move my smuggler in the end zone and set up the win

I feel like it's hard to put together a descent Scum list currently (haven't tested a lot, just theorycrafting). Especially if I want to include some newer stuff. My problem is, I'm not really sure I can handle Hater-Vader. On some maps I might not need to, but he's still hugging 13 points (14 with Zillo) I need to find elsewhere. Buffed up eWeequays can of course push some damage through on him, but others? Assumming he's just gonna roll an average of 4 Blocks I need a solid amount of firepower. At the same time, I need to be flexible enough to take out other lists as well like long-range Ranger lists etc.

I think Vader, more so than Luke is a figure you need a plan/answer for. Dunno if Punishing Strike would be worth it, to push Stun through on him - but it's 2 points not put in figures or generally better Upgrades.

44 minutes ago, aermet69 said:

I feel like it's hard to put together a descent Scum list currently (haven't tested a lot, just theorycrafting). Especially if I want to include some newer stuff. My problem is, I'm not really sure I can handle Hater-Vader. On some maps I might not need to, but he's still hugging 13 points (14 with Zillo) I need to find elsewhere. Buffed up eWeequays can of course push some damage through on him, but others? Assumming he's just gonna roll an average of 4 Blocks I need a solid amount of firepower. At the same time, I need to be flexible enough to take out other lists as well like long-range Ranger lists etc.

I think Vader, more so than Luke is a figure you need a plan/answer for. Dunno if Punishing Strike would be worth it, to push Stun through on him - but it's 2 points not put in figures or generally better Upgrades.

4 blocks is not average. It's 2.66 before the reroll so I'd guess 3 is closer to average.

Vader only quails before the Rebels' might! Begone, you inconsequential Scum!

-ryanjamal

Just killed Vader yesterday with IG and Weequays. Not worth it. It's still better to stay away from Vader. It just got harder to do so.

9 hours ago, TheUnsullied said:

4 blocks is not average. It's 2.66 before the reroll so I'd guess 3 is closer to average.

Yes, 3 blocks is average. There are 9 block symbols over 6 sides of the black die, so if an evade doesn't block any damage that's an average of 1.5 blocks per side, so 3 blocks total for 2 defense dice before the reroll.

If evades do block damage, then the amount of damage blocked is higher. This chart shows the average damage blocked before and after the reroll based on how much damage each surge is worth:

The amount of damage blocked by an evade depends on how many surges the attack has, but it will be somewhere between 0 and 2 (0 if they have no surges, 2 if they rolled only 1, assuming it's Weequay pirates). And if you roll 2 evades they'll only block 2 damage total (and only if the Weequays rolled 1 or more surges) because the Weequays have a Pierce 1 surge that wouldn't do anything if you have no blocks. But there's only a 1/36 chance of rolling 2 evades so that doesn't change the statistics much.

So it's hard to say how much damage an evade will block, but I'd guess it's normally going to be 1 damage (assuming Hidden Weequays). So then the average damage blocked before rerolls is 3.3, and after is 3.83.

BUT that doesn't take into account the fact that the Weequays might reroll a defense die, and that would mess with the numbers a lot. Maybe someday I'll do that calculation... probably not though

On 10/20/2017 at 10:30 AM, brettpkelly said:

If FFG sticks to their current map rotation strategy the next map will be the one from the Ahsoka Tano pack, replacing Obi-Wan's map. I haven't taken a look at the new skirmish maps yet.

Care to elaborate on this theory? I'm not sure what strategy/pattern you're referring to but love a good conspiracy theory.

I'm still holding out hope for BT-1/0-0-0 map. Think it's still possible (likely) that we get one from the droid wave next.

On 10/20/2017 at 10:02 AM, brettpkelly said:

Nal Hutta isn't going away any time soon.

Nope. Hopefully it will rotate out in April, to shake things up a bit before worlds. Definitely ready to say bye to Anchorhead. Hopefully in the next few weeks, haha.

The thing i love with vader is pairing him with the eClawdite.

Giving 2 evade token on him at start makes him never want to be attacked or else you are punished so hard for it combined with zillo.

9 hours ago, Fightwookies said:

Care to elaborate on this theory? I'm not sure what strategy/pattern you're referring to but love a good conspiracy theory.

I'm still holding out hope for BT-1/0-0-0 map. Think it's still possible (likely) that we get one from the droid wave next.

For a while the pattern was to have 1 map from each faction's booster pack in the rotation. Nal Hutta broke the pattern and I forgot about that.

Imperial map:

Training grounds (stormtrooper wave 2)-> ISB HQ (Blaise wave 6),

Merc map:

Coruscant landfill (Bantha wave 3) -> Jabba's palace (Jabba Wave 8)

Rebel map:

Nalvanian warzone (Leia Wave 5) -> Anchorhead bar (Obi Wan Wave 7)

I guess FFG didnt like Terro's map because that should have been the replacement for ISB HQ instead of Nal Hutta Swamps. If Anchorhead bar gets replaced with the Palpatine or BT-1 map the pattern will get back on track.

EDIT:

I'm looking at Terro's map "Endor Defense Station". It seems like the most turtle friendly map ever. The deployment zones are 12 spaces away from each other, also separated by doors 4 spaces from each. Between the doors there is a line of blocking terrain, so even if you open both doors you don't have a direct shot into the opponent's deployment zone. Not only that, but there are plenty of spaces outside of each deployment zone to hide in case you don't want to engage your opponent at all. That's probably why it was skipped.

1 hour ago, brettpkelly said:

Nal Hutta broke the pattern and I forgot about that.

My tinfoil theory is that they only picked Nal Hutta so that it could be rotated out before Worlds. I don't know if we'll have one from all factions, but we will have 3 new maps by May.

Just now, Fightwookies said:

My tinfoil theory is that they only picked Nal Hutta so that it could be rotated out before Worlds. I don't know if we'll have one from all factions, but we will have 3 new maps by May.

Anchorhead and Jabba's Palace should definitely be gone by worlds. I think Nal Hutta is 50/50 that it's still there.

Played in an 8 man kit tournament yesterday. There were 5 rebel squads and 3 empire. I would say there's a bit of Scum fatigue locally and people are definitely ready to give the empire a shot. Han/Chewie fixes are really fun though

4 minutes ago, brettpkelly said:

Anchorhead and Jabba's Palace should definitely be gone by worlds. I think Nal Hutta is 50/50 that it's still there.

Noooooo not Jabba's! I think that's one of the best competitive maps they've made tbh. Great choices and a lot of fun every time.

5 minutes ago, TheUnsullied said:

Noooooo not Jabba's! I think that's one of the best competitive maps they've made tbh. Great choices and a lot of fun every time.

Agreed. Jabba's is a ton of fun.

I think they picked Nal Hutta because someone at FFG wanted to push the ugnaughts as a Hunter counter. Now that the community hates the ugs and we have some other options, I'd say 80%+ that Nal Hutta is gone before worlds.

Edit: Sorry, I'm taking this way off topic

The maps used to be selected so that there was always one map from each faction so that skirmish players who preferred to specialize in a single faction would have to buy out-of-faction figure packs to be tournament legal, it was purely a sales ploy. Once they started selling the playmats, players didn't have to buy out-of-faction to be tournament legal, so there was no sales benefit from sticking to that pattern and OP (which is in a separate building from the dev team) was free to just pick the map they thought would be the best for competition.

As for Nal Hutta swamps, I believe that was the OP and dev teams responding to a common criticism that was being stated by competitive players and podcasts that range didn't really matter because all the maps were just mazes with short LOS lanes, so everyone was just attacking at range 3 and accuracy didn't really matter. As is common with FFG, they overreacted to this criticism until it hit a critical mass in Jabba's Realm.

As for the figures themselves, I like Riot troopers so far, they do good damage if you plan their movement well, and I like that they're the same deployment cost as elite jets so I have another group that can fill that points gap without having to buy a redundant copy of Jabba's Realm. You kind of have to include brawler and movement command cards though or they're too slow to catch anything, but that makes them good units to partner with Vader or Maul.

Imperial spy-smuggler list

Hi guys what you think of this list for the new meta? Can be competitive?

- agent Blaise 6

- ISB infiltrator 5

- clawdite shapeschifter 4

- zillo technique 1

- temporary alliance 1

- elite weequay pirate 7

- elite jet trooper 7

- capitan terro 7

- imperial officer 2

26 minutes ago, player2930637 said:

Imperial spy-smuggler list

Hi guys what you think of this list for the new meta? Can be competitive?

- agent Blaise 6

- ISB infiltrator 5

- clawdite shapeschifter 4

- zillo technique 1

- temporary alliance 1

- elite weequay pirate 7

- elite jet trooper 7

- capitan terro 6

- cross training

- imperial officer 2

I think Terro is 7 points. I wouldn't put rClawdites or rISBs in any competitive lists right now. Definitely not the ISBs but I still have doubts on the Clawdites.

Ok thanks

[6] Agent Blaise
[7] Captain Terro
[6] Clawdite Shapeshifter [Elite]
[1] Feeding Frenzy
[7] ISB Infiltrator [Elite]
[7] Riot Trooper [Elite]
[1] Temporary Alliance (E)
[1] Zillo Technique

I'm thinking this would be my start. That leaves 4 points. Either Greedo for a fast heavy hitter or 2x Officer for more flexibility. The eISBs have been pretty solid in the past. I don't know if they are up to snuff now though. This gives you 3 Spy groups, two of which can hang back quite a bit.

Is anyone else tempted to throw in jabba plus another ally just to boost imperial card draw?