My imperials are having a tough time against rebel players who know what they are doing, and I'm racking up losses. I've already read lots and lots of tactical tips (which units and cards are best, dishing out stuns & bleeds, clog hallways, focus fire, activation order, etc etc etc), but am having more fundamental questions about top-level strategy. What is the best approach to... win? I have never succeeded in wounding all four heroes. If I am lucky enough to wound three, the fourth is usually chasing a distant objective and is away from the bulk of my firepower and the mission is about over. Trying to slow the rebs down so that time runs out before they complete objectives seems to work better. But still... they have so much mobility and are so much more powerful than my troops they simply focus on objectives, comically run right through my troops and ignore my fire (a few extra movement points to move through figures only delays them so much), and while I can slow them down it seems nearly impossible to not slow but stop them. Sometimes it seems like focusing on one character and wounding twice so that they withdraw is more effective than trying to wound all four and failing, at least with a withdrawal they lose a lot of actions. Then there are blast attacks like Fenn's havoc shot - if I bunch up to clog their movement my units get quickly decimated by Fenn. But if I spread out my units, heroes can easily run around them (curse diagonal movement!) and I miss important adjacency bonuses. Maybe I should ban Fenn, but then they'll just find and field another OP character?
To rant a bit, it gets even worse after a few missions. Each hero then has awesome gear and abilities they can use every round, meanwhile my abilities and cards don't seem to scale with theirs. I can spend 2 influence on a once-per-mission ability that is weak compared to multiple gear and card abilities they can use every round times four heroes. It is a joke how they can obliterate my turn 1 starting deployment, except that they don't bother because they they don't see it as a threat. I feel like I am throwing spitballs with all the ways they can mitigate damage. By the time I am getting 4 threat a turn, they can easily kill an AT-ST in a turn (14 threat), no way to keep up reinforcements given the efficiency they can take them down. I can make them feel challenged, but secretly most missions I look at it like "wow there is no way I can win, I can only harass them and make them feel like it was a good fight." Harass them but let them win isn't a strategy.
Again I'm not looking for advice along the lines of this is a great card or great unit to use, tactics are already 90% of the advice out there. My main question is - assuming I use good tactics what is the best overall strategic approach for winning a typical mission? Delay them? Wound them all? Focus down (withdraw) one or two heroes? Something else? My second question, related to first, is pacing - do I bank threat until I can put out enough units (along with a reserve deployment) to overwhelm them for a round or two? (even if that means I have practically no units on the board before then?) Bank threat until mid game, late game, or just throw everything I can at them early on to keep the pressure on the whole game? Are the campaign imps just a joke against skilled players? Looking at the units on the board on both sides it is clearly no match. Or am I missing something?