First game!

By Kyle Ren, in Battle Reports

Got to play this game finally yesterday!

Wow... it's so objective based! We ended up playing the Long March, Breakthrough, and Rapid Reinforcements, so an odd game combination for sure. My squad was Luke, four Rebel Trooper squads, and three AT-RTs. His squad was an AT-ST, Vader, and three Stormtrooper squads.

Since the AT-ST mortar is a brutal sniper, I raced in to fight him. Basically, my army completely wrecked his. The AT-RTs smashed his stormtroopers, and Luke used Son of Skywalker to race up and murder Vader on round 3 before he got a chance to do anything. But his AT-ST acted as a goalkeeper, and in the end, one of his parachuted stormtrooper brigades was down to one trooper in my deployment zone, Luke got killed by the AT-ST, and the AT-RTs couldn't reach his deployment zone, so he won on objectives because of one single stormtrooper mini !

So what I found was four main things:

1. This game is pretty simple. There's plenty of different cards and keywords, and different rules for a few different types of terrain and stuff, but the basic rules are very easy to understand. A good "beginner" minis game from that standpoint.

2. The game is hugely objective based. It's highly unlikely you'll kill the enemy army, so to win, you usually need to be really making sure that you're strategically removing the opponent's options and being ready to take objectives on round 6. Even though my army absolutely wrecked my opponent's, I still lost!

3. Lots of things make Vader sad. He's so slow! He really doesn't like it when he needs to get somewhere else on the board.

4. This game is super fun! I liked it a lot. It took a pretty long time (about three hours for us) but it was just as fun as (and more balanced than) the other FFG Star Wars games.

I totally agree with Vader being slow. I like to reference him as my deadly snail. Coming from the imperial side, AT-RTs simply dominate any stormtroopers that are out of cover but if left alone can be quickly picked off with a few speeder bikes or an HH-12. While I've found the game to be less objective based, this may just be my opponent and I having not put in enough games yet.

A couple tips with Vader if you're concerned that he is slow:
1) There is a Command Card that costs 1 Wound for Vader, but he gets two activations in the round. Use then when you're getting near Luke to close distance.

2) Lightsaber Throw gives you a range attack.

3) Force Push, I believe, allows you to pull a unit Range 1 closer to Vader - another way to close distance.

4 minutes ago, Xiervak said:

A couple tips with Vader if you're concerned that he is slow:
1) There is a Command Card that costs 1 Wound for Vader, but he gets two activations in the round. Use then when you're getting near Luke to close distance.

2) Lightsaber Throw gives you a range attack.

3) Force Push, I believe, allows you to pull a unit Range 1 closer to Vader - another way to close distance.

Yeah, maybe it was just bad luck. My opponent was the Vader player. He also played that Vader card when I played Son of Skywalker, but I won the dice roll so I got to kill him before he got to do all his nasty Vader stuff.

I just kinda noticed that Vader was not well-suited to objectives that require a lot of moving around.

3 hours ago, Kieransi said:

He also played that Vader card when I played Son of Skywalker, but I won the dice roll so I got to kill him before he got to do all his nasty Vader stuff.

Must have been some awesome rolls on your part! Assuming you didn't have Aim token, Luke throwing 12 dice with surge should roll about 8 hits, then Vader should've block half of them - so he should be ok unless previously wounded.

In my experience Luke rarely defeats his father in one-on-one fights. Sadly, he really IS the only one that can contest Vader on rebel part... but he doesn't have to do it the whole game. I found that if you don't kill papa right away (or in the course of two activations) the best course of action is Force Push him away (you didn't bring it? Why?), get a Dodge from Reflexes (you didn't... well...) then run towards some small unit of troopers, smash them with charge, hopefully killing them, than run away. You can even do it if you both Pushed and Reflexed last turn - rest, push Vader away, move and charge attack. Papa will still be slow enough not to get to you, and you may end up engaged so he can't throw his lightstick at you.

4 hours ago, Shanturin said:

Must have been some awesome rolls on your part! Assuming you didn't have Aim token, Luke throwing 12 dice with surge should roll about 8 hits, then Vader should've block half of them - so he should be ok unless previously wounded.

In my experience Luke rarely defeats his father in one-on-one fights. Sadly, he really IS the only one that can contest Vader on rebel part... but he doesn't have to do it the whole game. I found that if you don't kill papa right away (or in the course of two activations) the best course of action is Force Push him away (you didn't bring it? Why?), get a Dodge from Reflexes (you didn't... well...) then run towards some small unit of troopers, smash them with charge, hopefully killing them, than run away. You can even do it if you both Pushed and Reflexed last turn - rest, push Vader away, move and charge attack. Papa will still be slow enough not to get to you, and you may end up engaged so he can't throw his lightstick at you.

Push you father away... smash a small unit of troopers... push father again , than attack him... What kind of "light side of the force" is that!?! :blink: