Hey folks,

So I'm running a TS deck and loving the possibilities. Heros are Diala, Mak, Jyn and MHD. I had almost decided on a superior augments build (with arc blasters, cloaks, exp arms, jet packs and (please God! ) imperial industry), to give four or five groups damage and speed boosts (plus tech support for droids), but having difficulty with those pesky white die heros. No access to Jawas, sentry droids, Weequays, ISB Infiltrators, or Inquisitor.

The problem of optimizing 2 surge-dependant attachments against mostly white die heros:

1. Arc Blasters - great in principle, especially against this group swimming in focus, but that white die gives a 4/6 chance of an evade or a dodge, *before* defensive bonuses and rerolls to avoid the "blast" part of the equation. Even if I roll the surge necessary, it's likely to get cancelled. Thus, my dream of cloaked, blasting Stormies is less than optimal (although the possible stun and stripping of focus remains).

Possible Solutions:

- give hired guns Experimental Arms to ensure the surge goes through. Great for one group, but not helpful if I need to apply a second attachment that requires surge (eg imperial industry)

-Hk's to rely on more dice and rerolls

- Rely on hired guns GY dice to get a surge through, and double up experimental arms/ imperial industry on stormtroopers?

- target MHD if he is standing adjacent to a hero and get the blast damage on the others (I suspect the heros would adapt to this quickly)

2. Imperial Industry (if I win it) - same issues. To ensure the surge, are my best options hired guns with experimental arms or hk's? Again, the issue here is how to best apply a second, surge-dependent, attachment (eg. arc blasters) against all those evades. I'd really prefer to have a cheaper, and larger, group than HK's (stunbot troopers!)

3. Many imperial figures rely on surges for damage, again, not optimal against this many white die heros.

Possible solutions: hope the +1 dmg boost from superior augments compensates even though it only applies to groups with attachments

4. BT1 and 000 - I only have access to probe droids and HK's. Would you say the side mission to pick up these two would be worthwhile to give me more droid options and take better advantage of technical support?

Anyways, although I really really want to go the Superior Augments route, I'm wondering if I should bite the bullet here and go for Adaptive Weapons (and try to red die myself to victory, and take evades out of the equation whenever possible)

If I'm missing anything, let me know. If someone has a good strategy for using superior augments build against this particular group (or if, by Jove! I've solved it! ), I'd love to hear it ?

One other option - do you have the Jawa pack? If you are committing to droids, dropping the elite jawa down for 3 and having all your droids get an extra speed boost is pretty nice. With Technical support giving a speed boost, you might have HKs with speed of 6! That might help you stay out of quick draw range, or force the rebels to chase you.

I played TS against Jyn,Mak and Diala- it went ok. The deck picks up as you go on, it starts out fairly weak (I had played military might previously). Adaptive weapons is really strong, you can have probe droids rolling blue yellow red with a reroll (elites), or HKs even better.

Cloaking device is also really really good, as that pesky white die can work for you

20 minutes ago, totalnoob said:

One other option - do you have the Jawa pack? If you are committing to droids, dropping the elite jawa down for 3 and having all your droids get an extra speed boost is pretty nice. With Technical support giving a speed boost, you might have HKs with speed of 6! That might help you stay out of quick draw range, or force the rebels to chase you.

Alas, no Jawa pack, no sentry droids. Although if I slap an attachment on an HK, I can still get a speed of 6 (technical support/ superior augments). I'm strongly considering this actually, considering how fragile they are.

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I played TS against Jyn,Mak and Diala- it went ok. The deck picks up as you go on, it starts out fairly weak (I had played military might previously). Adaptive weapons is really strong, you can have probe droids rolling blue yellow red with a reroll (elites), or HKs even better.

Argh. Every time I feel settled on superior augments, I feel swayed back towards adaptive weapons by arguments like this! Lol

If I spread enough attachments around, that +1 damage boost is comparable to changing a blue to a red, better than changing a green to a red and only slightly worse than changing a yellow to a red (but doesn't apply to figures with no attachments, of course. )

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Cloaking device is also really really good, as that pesky white die can work for you

I can't wait. I'm thinking arc blasters first though, as my heros will be flush with focus.

Maybe cloaked HK's ftw? ?

Ya, cloaking device helps survivalibility quite a bit. I think that +adaptive weapons is stronger. I didn’t get cloaking device until much later in my campaign, and I had XP regret for not purchasing it earlier.

If you get imperial industry, being able to swap for a yellow die to try and get stun is also quite useful.

38 minutes ago, totalnoob said:

If you get imperial industry, being able to swap for a yellow die to try and get stun is also quite useful.

Another +1 for Adaptive Weapons. Especially if I put imperial industry on a set of Stormies to roll YG instead of BG. Interesting...

3 hours ago, TeethAlmighty said:

Another +1 for Adaptive Weapons. Especially if I put imperial industry on a set of Stormies to roll YG instead of BG. Interesting...

If you have TechSup you can always use the starter card to get a free surge

I once played eStorm with imperial industry + experimental arms + 501st training while having Adaptive weapon. Shooting Green + Red x3 with reroll and having Stun on-demand...was not a great experience for Rebels

Superior Augments giving +1 Speed (and +1 damage) to groups that have attachments should not be underestimated. I don't think free choice of a die from Adaptive Weapons is even close to as good for 4 XP.

And if you happen to get an attachment as a reward, Superior Augments is "clearly" the better choice.

(Deploying Jawa Scavenger , Motivators gets your Droids practically anywhere...)

9 hours ago, ricope said:

I once played eStorm with imperial industry + experimental arms + 501st training while having Adaptive weapon. Shooting Green + Red x3 with reroll and having Stun on-demand...was not a great experience for Rebels

Ha ha - I can imagine!

11 hours ago, a1bert said:

Superior Augments giving +1 Speed (and +1 damage) to groups that have attachments should not be underestimated. I don't think free choice of a die from Adaptive Weapons is even close to as good for 4 XP.

I agree. I love the card! However, just to play devil's advocate for a moment, there is an opportunity cost associated with it that has to be considered, no? Rushing adaptive weapons means every one of your figures improve after about 3 or 4 games in a campaign (albeit, at the cost of accuracy, usually) .

To maximize the effectiveness of superior augments, you're probably going to get arc blasters, tech support and maybe cloaking device first (assuming no agenda reward attachments) , meaning you'll be waiting about 9-11 games to get it. That's about 6-8 games where you could have been benefiting from adaptive weapons every game.

Or, if you rush superior augments, only 1 group gets the benefit (assuming no agenda reward attachments), again reducing its effectiveness. Unless you can make the argument that 1 or 2 groups with superior augments trumps 6 to 9 groups with adaptive weapons in the early and mid game...

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And if you happen to get an attachment as a reward, Superior Augments is "clearly" the better choice.

(Deploying Jawa Scavenger , Motivators gets your Droids practically anywhere...)

This is where it gets interesting. Getting imperial industry early on gives 1 group an attachment with no XP spent. Assuming you use it on hired guns with exp. arms (to ensure surging against white die) then it could be 3-4 games before superior augments starts benefiting one group, 5-7 games before two groups benefit (say, stormies with cloak), 7-10 games before three groups benefit (eg HK's with arc blasters) , 8-11 games before 4 groups benefit (eg heavy Stormies with jet packs)...

But I've never played as the imperial or with TS before. Maybe that route actually works well vs adaptive weapons on all groups after 3-4 games? (Open to convincing! ?)

Then there's optimal use of a reward attachment like imperial industry. Assuming you use it on hired guns, you'll also want to give them experimental arms to get better surge potential against white dice. But then you're still stuck with which group to use arc blasters on. HK's are not optimal owing to cost and fragility. But changing Stormies from BG to YG allows them to be far mote effective with arc blasters against white dice, thus getting full potential from the attachment, no?

At the 10-11 XP point, the Superior Augments route seems like a no-brainer. But it takes a lot of games to get there, and those are games you could have been benefitting from adaptive weapons and optimizing certain attachments...

I see pros and cons for each path. And I actually want to go with Superior Augments. But I'm still torn!

(You would not rush Superior Augments because 4XP is too much to spend and too long to wait if you only have 1 attachment. It's probably best as the penultimate class card purchase. You might pick it up earlier if you have won a reward attachment.)

As mentioned in the other thread, I believe that superior augments is just so much better. Sure, blue green isn't as good as green yellow in the surge department, but with a reroll i've never had issues getting 1 surge from the dice and one from the starting xp card. I've also found that my units don't stay on the field long enough to have more than 2 or maybe 3 groups out on the field at a time, meaning that I have plenty of attachments to go around, even without winning an award from an agenda mission.

5 hours ago, TeethAlmighty said:

Or, if you rush superior augments, only 1 group gets the benefit (assuming no agenda reward attachments), again reducing its effectiveness. Unless you can make the argument that 1 or 2 groups with superior augments trumps 6 to 9 groups with adaptive weapons in the early and mid game...

If you have 6 to 9 deployment groups on the board, you don't even need a class deck. When you are that far ahead, you've usually already won the mission at that point. Typically you'll have 3-5 deployment groups so the difference in the number of groups that are affected is a lot less. The problem I see with Adaptive Weapons is the loss in accuracy means you are going to have to move your figures a lot closer to the Rebels. End-game heroes, even mid-game heroes can deal a lot of damage and if you allow them to attack twice (and use all their fancy abilities - Cleave, Rapid Fire, Way of the Sarlacc, etc) without straining or re-positioning, it's basically shooting fish in a barrel. Contrast that with Superior Augments which allows you to deal extra damage but also makes you be able to even better position your units with the extra movement you get (which helps on the defensive side of things).

I think my preferred upgrade order is Technical Support (1xp), either Cloaking Device or Arc Blasters (3xp) depending on the Rebel heroes, Superior Augments (4xp), and then the other 3xp that I didn't pick up. As @a1bert noted, winning an attachment reward (Imperial Industry, 501st, etc.) is helpful if you can get it prior to Superior Augments. In most campaigns, you end with at least 11xp. If you only have 10xp, maybe Adaptive Weapons could be the better option I suppose.

Regarding the question posed by the OP - there isn't anything inherent in the TS deck that helps specifically against White Dice heroes like there is in Precision Training (Pinpoint Accuracy). Experimental Arms helps a bit with evades but the things that help the most are dealing extra damage through Superior Augments (or Adaptive Weapons if you go that route), Stunning heroes with Arc Blasters - these things will help deal with any heroes regardless of defense dice. Weequays, HKs, Elite ISBs, and other deployments that either allow you to reroll defense dice or have -X are your friend when dealing with white dice heroes. Also, lots of smaller attacks against white dice heroes can be effective - even plain old regular Stormtroopers can land 3-4 damage fairly often.

16 hours ago, a1bert said:

(You would not rush Superior Augments because 4XP is too much to spend and too long to wait if you only have 1 attachment. It's probably best as the penultimate class card purchase. You might pick it up earlier if you have won a reward attachment.)

Yes, I was thinking as much. Good to have it confirmed.

At what point do you usually go for it? Two attachments? Maybe three if you've got two on one group? (E.g. hired guns with exp. Arms and either Imperial Industry or arc blasters? ) Ahh. Penultimate. Gotcha!

2 hours ago, MadFuhrer said:

As mentioned in the other thread, I believe that superior augments is just so much better. Sure, blue green isn't as good as green yellow in the surge department, but with a reroll i've never had issues getting 1 surge from the dice and one from the starting xp card.

Another vote for S.A.! My only issue is if I have the good luck to get both Imperial Industry AND Arc Blasters - both are surge dependant. Experimental arms gives one group the surge they need, but how do I optimize the other attachment against so many white die heros (and evades?). Maybe leave the hired guns alone and hope they get the surges needed via GY rolls, and put experimental arms on the Stormies? Which attachment would you assign to which group in that case?

2 hours ago, MadFuhrer said:

I've also found that my units don't stay on the field long enough to have more than 2 or maybe 3 groups out on the field at a time, meaning that I have plenty of attachments to go around, even without winning an award from an agenda mission.

Ahh, this. Thank you. @machfalcon makes a similar point below. I was looking at it in terms of the total number of deployment cards I might have in any given mission vs the real number of groups on the board at any given time (limited by threat and rebel massacring, of course! )

Still, a lot of games need to go by until I get to superior augments (vs adaptive weapons). Will the rebels snowball victories in that time?

2 hours ago, machfalcon said:

If you have 6 to 9 deployment groups on the board, you don't even need a class deck. When you are that far ahead, you've usually already won the mission at that point. Typically you'll have 3-5 deployment groups so the difference in the number of groups that are affected is a lot less.

Ha ha. Good point! I had been thinking of it more in terms of total deployment cards vs the actual number that might be on the board. So you feel 2-3 groups with attachments/superior augments + 1-2 "normals", would trump 3-5 groups with attachments and adaptive weapons?

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The problem I see with Adaptive Weapons is the loss in accuracy means you are going to have to move your figures a lot closer to the Rebels. End-game heroes, even mid-game heroes can deal a lot of damage and if you allow them to attack twice (and use all their fancy abilities - Cleave, Rapid Fire, Way of the Sarlacc, etc) without straining or re-positioning, it's basically shooting fish in a barrel. Contrast that with Superior Augments which allows you to deal extra damage but also makes you be able to even better position your units with the extra movement you get (which helps on the defensive side of things).

So less units with enhanced damage, but better survivability overall. I can see how this might slowly tip the scales.

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I think my preferred upgrade order is Technical Support (1xp), either Cloaking Device or Arc Blasters (3xp) depending on the Rebel heroes

I have 4 heros with easy access to focus (MHD through not attacking, Diala - battle meditation, Mak- Jeswandi Training, Jyn - get cocky) - is that a case where you would prioritize arc blasters?

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Regarding the question posed by the OP - there isn't anything inherent in the TS deck that helps specifically against White Dice heroes like there is in Precision Training (Pinpoint Accuracy). Experimental Arms helps a bit with evades

A question I posed to @MadFuhrer above was about strategy for applying attachments. Assuming I double up experimental arms with either arc blasters or imperial industry on one group (say, hired guns) , which other group would be the best bet to get surges for the second attachment?

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Also, lots of smaller attacks against white dice heroes can be effective - even plain old regular Stormtroopers can land 3-4 damage fairly often.

They are so squishy! But as @a1bert noted earlier, cloaking device might make them a lot braver ?

More Superior Augments love. Excellent!

The main use for Arc Blasters is that forces the heroes to spend their focused to perform the test. If the heroes get focused a lot, then Arc Blasters is the answer. The potential for Blast is just a bonus. I wouldn't put Experimental Arms and Arc Blasters to the same group - I think Experimental Arms should go to a group that can Stun, Bleed, or has a surge for +2 damage. (With Hired Guns though, you could get 4 attacks through damage from Exp Arms getting you Parting Shots and thus return both attachments for reuse.)

The white die from Cloaking Device is swingy, but makes the rebels think twice which figures to attack.

7 hours ago, a1bert said:

The main use for Arc Blasters is that forces the heroes to spend their focused to perform the test. If the heroes get focused a lot, then Arc Blasters is the answer.

This makes sense. The order in which I take arc blasters may depend on the order in which they take battle meditation, jeswandi training and get cocky ?

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I wouldn't put Experimental Arms and Arc Blasters to the same group - I think Experimental Arms should go to a group that can Stun, Bleed, or has a surge for +2 damage. (With Hired Guns though, you could get 4 attacks through damage from Exp Arms getting you Parting Shots and thus return both attachments for reuse.)

Good advice! At this point I'm hoping to draw (and win) the Imperial industry mission, in which case I'll probably double up on experimental arms and imperial industry on hired guns. Trandoshans and royal guards may also be good carriers for exp. Arms.

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The white die from Cloaking Device is swingy, but makes the rebels think twice which figures to attack.

Ha ha

I'm learning that this game is as much about misdirection as it is about power!

Thanks a1bert.