Played a game today and had my ATST completely locked down the entire game by the ion cannons from the rebels. At 800 points I could only take 4 full units of troopers Vader and the ATST while my opponent took 4 full units 3 atrts and Luke. So even though I was able to wait to deploy him till last he could just wait and place both ion units across the board move and lock him down all game. How are we supposed to deal with this since he already activated the round the ion tokens just carry over. With more than a quarter of my army disabled he just focused the rest of his stuff on everything else. How are we supposed to deal with this?

11 minutes ago, CantonFolkHero said:

Played a game today and had my ATST completely locked down the entire game by the ion cannons from the rebels. At 800 points I could only take 4 full units of troopers Vader and the ATST while my opponent took 4 full units 3 atrts and Luke. So even though I was able to wait to deploy him till last he could just wait and place both ion units across the board move and lock him down all game. How are we supposed to deal with this since he already activated the round the ion tokens just carry over. With more than a quarter of my army disabled he just focused the rest of his stuff on everything else. How are we supposed to deal with this?

Presumably by having Vader force choke those MPL troopers, killing them immediately.

I haven't played too many games but perhaps support the AT-ST with some troops? I would venture that like most RL modern combat, lone armor is easy pickings.

Either he was just split firing Ions at you (and shooting Rebel troopers elsewhere) and getting very lucky... Or he was pouring fire into your ATST to ensure the Ion going off with damage... And thus not touching the rest of your first...

Another option is to give the ATST an Order Token and sit on it until he's been forced to commit his Rebel troopers elsewhere (by you doing something to them, for example). This lets you [push hard with an order the next turn to get the ATST running first...

The ATST wont be effective on all battlefields and against all armies. An Ion heavy army on a fairly open board will be great against ATSTs, but if up against a trooper heavy army with little to no vehicles or a board full of large terrain pieces it will have wasted a lot of points on useless weapons.

It sounds to me as if your opponent designed his list specifically to deal with your list, either that or you were unlucky to face a list so clearly a bane to your list.

I dont know if your opponent and you talked before the game or not but a suggestion, even if your opponent is a close friend/relative and you play regularly, is to not tell each other what you will bring to the table and to not allow adjusting lists at the table before a game.

You are not supposed to know what you will face, or what objectives you will have. Some players might still want to specialise a list for a single purpose but that will be taking a big risk.

Was your opponent exhausting the Ion troopers each time they fired?

To fire every round they can't move, aim, or anything of the sort, they have to take a recover action each time that thing goes off.

In fact, with even one suppression token surviving past the Rally step, a Rebel Trooper squad with Ion can only fire (at most) once every other round, since they lose an action.

Also, since it uses Impact, you'd be well served getting your AT-ST behind something that grants cover.

Yeah keep them suppressed so the can either shoot or recover, not both, and if they are doing that they can't be going for objectives.