you might have some observations.

Vader movement being almost absurdly slow. Given that command distance is only so far (or you have to buy into comm links) from game play I wonder with objectives and deployments just how much this is going to hinder the empire until other Imperial heros/officers are available.

The T-47 and AT-ST are pure awesome sauce.

Troopers are crazy crazy brittle. The casualty rates look like they are going to be very high. Sure the game is only 6 turns yet if they are central to actually scoring objectives or whatever, going to be pretty hard when they are so easy to vaporize. Those white die really don't seem to generate many saves so almost a you get hit, you're dead without upgrades or use of terrain.

Terrain rules are feeling super light. I guess we'll know more Friday.

I am actually very excited about easy to kill infantry. I used to play the Lord of the rings battle game and it was almost impossible to do anything to the event unless you were using one of the super op heroes like Aragorn.

I've had a few thoughts from the ones I've seen. My initial observations are as follows:

Vader should never not have saber throw. He can use it every turn with his refresh. Otherwise he's probably not attacking much. 3 red die on a ranged attack is still really good.

I was surprised by how good Luke is at shooting. I was thinking he'd only be good up close, but his gun is probably better than a saber throw because his red dice would be better than the black ones he gets from saber throw.

Rebel troopers should never not have a dodge token. Your first activation with every rebel trooper should be to take a dodge token and then move towards cover. Otherwise they'll get destroyed.

I feel like the speeder bikes work best when they just take their obligatory move and then aim and shoot with their two actions. That way they can at least get a reroll on those white dice. The only exception would be if they can get behind cover.

The ATRT is pretty tanky and overall seems to be one of the more fun and versatile models. Especially since it's not a huge point sink.

Special weapons are practically mandatory. They drastically increase the number of dice you get and seem to be the best thing to take down vehicles with. I'd originally considered just running lots of vanilla squads, but after seeing the special weapons I don't think that would be very useful. Might not even be worth taking the extra trooper.

Just opinions on what I saw. Gives me list building ideas for sure.

@Omnustechni

Vader's saber throw is actually better than you think, as its not something that has to get refreshed and he can use his master of the force to refresh another force ability!

Keep your rebel troopers in cover and assign them a dodge as often as possible. Nimble is actually gonna be really annoying from what I can tell from the TTS games I've played. Also remember that suppressed units add one to their cover.

1 hour ago, devin.pike.1989 said:

I am actually very excited about easy to kill infantry. I used to play the Lord of the rings battle game and it was almost impossible to do anything to the event unless you were using one of the super op heroes like Aragorn.

Yes! I loved the simple rules but with lots of units it was like a war of attrition. That was the game that got me into miniatures.

I'm very hazy on this, can someone clarify why commander range is important?

In the command phase, you choose "assault" which says 3 units. Can you ONLY choose 3 units in range of your commander? At the demo we were allowed to choose whichever units we wanted to activate. If you can only choose units in range of your commander, those outside his/her range will go into the random pile?

How does commander range and cards like long range comm-link work?

2 minutes ago, jgibbs2 said:

I'm very hazy on this, can someone clarify why commander range is important?

In the command phase, you choose "assault" which says 3 units. Can you ONLY choose 3 units in range of your commander? At the demo we were allowed to choose whichever units we wanted to activate. If you can only choose units in range of your commander, those outside his/her range will go into the random pile?

How does commander range and cards like long range comm-link work?

You have it correct, the demo scrapped a bunch of rules for simplicity, this must have been one. It also potentially hard to get out of range on a 3’x3’ board though.

Long range comm allows you to ignore this restriction for that particular unit/model.

Just now, Thoras said:

You have it correct, the demo scrapped a bunch of rules for simplicity, this must have been one. It also potentially hard to get out of range on a 3’x3’ board though.

Long range comm allows you to ignore this restriction for that particular unit/model.

That makes sense, so the only downside to not being in range of your commander is not being able to choose when that unit activates (which can potentially be a big downside)?

@jgibbs2 yes, during the command phase you can only give order tokens to units within range 3 of your commander. Everything outside of that range would be shuffled into your random pile. Long-Range Commlink allows you to be outside of range 3 of your commander, but still be treated as if you're in range during the command phase. Battle Meditation is another good card that allows one of your commander's orders each turn to be issued to any unit, regardless of range.

That absurd slowness has me worried if snowtroopers with that same range 1 movement will be any decent or not. I like steady built in, but boy they’ll take a long time to get somewhere.

thinking of passing them up in favor of a gradual build up of units to get my army. See what SF and other corps units appear and work my way to 800 points rather than start out with 800 points of wave 1 stuff and change my mind along the way.

5 minutes ago, ScummyRebel said:

That absurd slowness has me worried if snowtroopers with that same range 1 movement will be any decent or not. I like steady built in, but boy they’ll take a long time to get somewhere.

Except unlike Vader, the Snowtroopers can start attacking from 18" away while still advancing.

Edit: I think Vader's speed is more noticeable because he has to be in melee to attack without Saber throw, and with Saber throw has to be in 12".

Snowtroopers will also be very useful in urban environments.

My question is, can you not put upgrades on other units like in Armada? If so then a lot of the choices as to what I am using will be based on that. For example, can I put a flamer with Storm Troopers and a Heavy Blaster with Snow Troopers?

Also, if Snow Troopers are slower then they would work as a good vanguard force with more ranged stuff, then get the storm boys up front with close quarters equipment. Especially in a field battle. Like Devin Pike said, Snowtroopers would be better in Urban environments.

Through the lens of a completely new miniature player...

Simple and easy to play

Gave each demo video little latitude, as it appears some got the game with little notice and filmed. Others had some notice and filmed. Game play little bit clunky with the basic/Get Started rules and totally understandable

Shots hit and, then, damage. There is not an never ending series of roles to determine if a hit really hits and, if it did, the level of damage it did or did not do

Damage adds up quickly. Makes movement and, then, army building extremely important, as troopers/soldiers disappear. Considering, you take more troops or add more vehicles?

In the minority on this but Vader's slower movement and the subsequent mad rush of Rebels to account for him ... VERY thematic, as is the level of difficulty in actually damaging him. It fits.

The damage potential of the heavier weapons is great. When they hit, they really hit and there is not an ability to "save" against them over and over.

In watching the Beast of War video, the AT-RT was decimated. Within 2 Rounds. Maybe hot dice? Made me think that vehicle needs to be moving in an aggressive manner

20 minutes ago, Ling27 said:

My question is, can you not put upgrades on other units like in Armada? If so then a lot of the choices as to what I am using will be based on that. For example, can I put a flamer with Storm Troopers and a Heavy Blaster with Snow Troopers?

Also, if Snow Troopers are slower then they would work as a good vanguard force with more ranged stuff, then get the storm boys up front with close quarters equipment. Especially in a field battle. Like Devin Pike said, Snowtroopers would be better in Urban environments.

Read the cards again, so far the specialists are restricted to their respective units.

forgive me because i haven't been watching, but is anyone double moving with vader? he's not as slow as you'd think (but gives up his saberthrow to do it). On top of saber throw force reflexes needs to be stapled to him, free dodge token that refreshes every turn, yes please!

18 minutes ago, Ling27 said:

My question is, can you not put upgrades on other units like in Armada? If so then a lot of the choices as to what I am using will be based on that. For example, can I put a flamer with Storm Troopers and a Heavy Blaster with Snow Troopers?

Also, if Snow Troopers are slower then they would work as a good vanguard force with more ranged stuff, then get the storm boys up front with close quarters equipment. Especially in a field battle. Like Devin Pike said, Snowtroopers would be better in Urban environments.

Weapon upgrades so far have been specific to the unit they come packaged with, particularly as the weapon is attached to a particular type of model. For instance, the DLT-19 Specialist card says "Stormtrooper Only." The specialist weapons for the Snowtroopers are a 1-2 ion rifle and a range 1 flamethrower. This is likely to offset their ability to fire for free after a movement order. At some point I'm sure we'll see some kind of Specialist/Trooper upgrade that breaks this paradigm, such as Shoretroopers or certain named characters.

Snowtroopers will also be a fantastic choice for setting aside when Rapid Reinforcement is selected, as on turn two they are then placed anywhere on the board outside of 12" of an opponent's units.

3 hours ago, OldSchoolEmpire said:

@Omnustechni

Vader's saber throw is actually better than you think, as its not something that has to get refreshed and he can use his master of the force to refresh another force ability!

Oh yeah. It's amazing. I meant Vader should always have saber throw. That way hopefully he can still get a decent number of attacks while he's not in range.

Couldn't Vader use Saber Throw with his relentless ability? Allowing him to attack after his second move.

1 hour ago, Ralgon said:

Read the cards again, so far the specialists are restricted to their respective units.

forgive me because i haven't been watching, but is anyone double moving with vader? he's not as slow as you'd think (but gives up his saberthrow to do it). On top of saber throw force reflexes needs to be stapled to him, free dodge token that refreshes every turn, yes please!

Why would he give up saberthrow to move twice? I thought it could be used with relentless.

36 minutes ago, NukeMaster said:

Why would he give up saberthrow to move twice? I thought it could be used with relentless.

I had understood he could NOT since relentless says “attack action” and saber throw is just a card action that ALLOWS a ranged attack action.

That’s just how im reading it though.

.

1 hour ago, Dash Two said:

In the minority on this but Vader's slower movement and the subsequent mad rush of Rebels to account for him ... VERY thematic, as is the level of difficulty in actually damaging him. It fits.

Exactly. Vader is a menace and will melt everything in front of him, including Luke. He's the hourglass that rebels will be fighting against to achieve victory. When he arrives at your base (pun intended), you're in big, big trouble. He shouldn't be a factor in every attack from turn 1, he should be zoning the Rebels out and using his command/suppression abilities.

I am constantly impressed with the simplicity of the rules and the depth of game play that the cards bring. That it takes about 2-3 games to become familiar with the game mechanics makes me very excited to get some games in. games that are easy to learn, remain the most interesting, as the game rules fade into the background and the interactions between the two players, the build of the armies, the play on the table and the luck of the dice are all going to chose the winner. Rather than some remote rule on p22 of the Blah Blah army book.

Something I may try in my Learn to Play games is to rotate the players so that each plays each side. That way you lose interest in who wins or looses and just get a feel for all the units and options.

6 hours ago, Omnustechni said:

Special weapons are practically mandatory. They drastically increase the number of dice you get and seem to be the best thing to take down vehicles with. I'd originally considered just running lots of vanilla squads, but after seeing the special weapons I don't think that would be very useful. Might not even be worth taking the extra trooper.

If you're taking a special weapon the extra trooper is more valuable - not only does it add a hit point, but the special weapon's keywords apply to the entire dice pool, so you want to be chucking as many dice as possible.