We played "Target of Opportunity" as second mission in the campaign (p.15 core campaign), where you need to free the rebel saboteurs and blow up the door to the Archive.
The door has Health: 8 , Defense: 5
With Nerfed Saboteurs it looked near impossible to break open the door. Pierce + 1 and Overload did not help at all, as well as the Blast 1 ability, as the Imperial player can remove figures from the front of the door, so blast effect would have no effect on the door. The saboteurs got incapacitated early due to rebel heroes not protecting them, but this should not produce huge handicap to the mission, since they are not defeated. Like this the heroes had no way of even scratching the door.
Since the nerf on Rebel Saboteurs was done with skirmish play in mind, should this mission be played with pre-nerf Saboteur stats so that it has Pierce: 2, instead of 1, witch sounds more reasonable way to open the door...
Would like to see a response to this, as if they need to go Pierce: 2 for this mission, we might replay the mission...

The mission is hard as the first side mission, but might be very easy later in the campaign (equipped heroes can destroy the door themselves). I don't think it can be helped much by using the pre-errata Rebel Saboteurs.

(The first side mission is very swingy due to very little progression on either side.)

Target of Opportunity maybe should use the original Saboteurs, but it may not be worth it to replay the mission. As the first side mission it will probably end in imperial victory anyway.

My general rule of thumb for both Rebel Sabs and Royal Guards in campaign is that if they start on the board or are brought in as a reserved group (i.e. if the mission was designed around their old power level) then I use the pre-nerf version. If the rebels choose to bring the sabs as allies or if the imperial chooses to bring Royal Guards as an open group then I use the new version.

Edit: Obviously this only applies to missions that were created before the nerf - I wouldn't use the old version of royal guards if they appear in a Heart of the Empire mission.

It's a bit more to keep track of, but I've found it to be the best way to use the new errata'd units without breaking the balance of the campaign missions.

Balance in campaign is so finnicky that I generally play Rules as Written as opposed to the errata.

Generally, this doesn't seem to affect campaign too much, though I have found a phalanx of Royal Guards can be a little punishing against some Rebel groups, so I try to avoid that whenever possible.

Really, I just do this to simplify the game. If a new expansion came out with errata cards to replace the ones that needed changes, I'd be happy to incorporate them. But I hate having to tell my players that some units need to to have certain accommodations to take into mind. That can be really frustrating, especially since we're not all that competitive anyway. It would just unnecessarily complicate things.

Im going to play that mission and we have new version saboteurs, do you think we should use the old ones?

The rebels are losing more than winning and I would like if it was enjoyable for them too.

1 minute ago, NagyLaci said:

Im going to play that mission and we have new version saboteurs, do you think we should use the old ones?

The rebels are losing more than winning and I would like if it was enjoyable for them too.

For that particular mission especially, I would definitely use the old version of the saboteurs. As @flegma said, the mission is otherwise almost impossible for the rebels if you draw it early in the campaign.

Especially if the Rebels are already losing (assuming your group isn't too competitive).

Nothing more disheartening to hear "See that card? I actually need to tell you how it's worse than it's written before we begin."

1 hour ago, subtrendy2 said:

Especially if the Rebels are already losing (assuming your group isn't too competitive).

Nothing more disheartening to hear "See that card? I actually need to tell you how it's worse than it's written before we begin."

They wouldn't even start (our Gaarkhan is afraid to end activation next to an RProbe). Luckily we have the new cards, so it can't be worse for them. I think I'll actually buff the original saboteurs.

I had to buff the rebels back to the pre-errata levels (something I didn't know about as I just picked up the game and my version has them with pierce 1). I was just baffled watching them attack the door six times a round and after two rounds only 4 damage had made it on. Round 6 I gave them pierce 2 and they scrapped out a win.

I think a lot of side missions plays very differently if you play it early on in the campaign vs. late campaign. The threat level adjustment can only do so much

For example, with the post-errata'ed Sabs (Pierce 1) it's nearly impossible to win this mission as Rebel: they desperately need that Pierce 2

but if this mission was played in late-campaign? The rebels could might as well win it easily without ever rescuing the Sabs, because at that point their own weapons offers much more firepower than Sab's Pierce

in one of the last campaign I've played, Loku drew his side mission near the end. The mission trigger says after X, bring out

now if this was played in early campaign, Rebels might have great difficulty taking them down with starter weapons

but because we played as a last (or 2nd last?) side mission, they were all taken out in like 1 activation

When we played this mission, the Rebels shot the door down on turn one, completed the mission on turn two. Never went near the Sabs, never needed to, I (as the Imperial player) stood zero chance of stopping them.

The one time we played it, we were using the errata sabs and it was mid campaign. But since Diala had gotten Shu Yen's lightsaber, she went straight for the door while the rest of the team fought off the imperials. Door opens round 2, and the mission was finished in round 3.

Those poor sabs are probably still rotting in that cell...

4 hours ago, thestag said:

Those poor sabs are probably still rotting in that cell...

This is the mission you win to get them as allies right? 🤔

Saska with DXR-6 and Plasma Cell - her 2 attacks took the door within 1 damage to be destroyed. The next hero activation took it down and the heroes didn't even need to move from their deployment positions. Mission ends round 2, first hero activation.

Target of Opportunity

11 hours ago, a1bert said:

I think requiring to activate the terminal before the Archive door can be attacked would've made this a more even fight, and probably I'll house-rule it from now on, if I end up with the mission again as the imperial player.

That's a very interesting point, although "Target of Opportunity" does have a win split ratio of nearly 85% Rebel victory 15% Imperial victory (https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/2094335/tyrants-lothal-how-balanced-each-scenario) so it's even more unbalanced than the Core mission "A New Threat" and "Flying Solo"

My guess is that "A New Threat" and "Flying Solo" are story missions meaning they're much more likely to get played than some ally's side mission, hence people weren't as vocal on Target of Opportunity than the other 2

On 3/3/2019 at 8:25 AM, a1bert said:

Saska with DXR-6 and Plasma Cell - her 2 attacks took the door within 1 damage to be destroyed. The next hero activation took it down and the heroes didn't even need to move from their deployment positions. Mission ends round 2, first hero activation.

Target of Opportunity

The fact that they didn't pick up the crate triggered me a bit

On 4/15/2018 at 6:09 PM, flegma said:

We played "Target of Opportunity" as second mission in the campaign (p.15 core campaign), where you need to free the rebel saboteurs and blow up the door to the Archive.
The door has Health: 8 , Defense: 5
With Nerfed Saboteurs it looked near impossible to break open the door. Pierce + 1 and Overload did not help at all, as well as the Blast 1 ability, as the Imperial player can remove figures from the front of the door, so blast effect would have no effect on the door. The saboteurs got incapacitated early due to rebel heroes not protecting them, but this should not produce huge handicap to the mission, since they are not defeated. Like this the heroes had no way of even scratching the door.
Since the nerf on Rebel Saboteurs was done with skirmish play in mind, should this mission be played with pre-nerf Saboteur stats so that it has Pierce: 2, instead of 1, witch sounds more reasonable way to open the door...
Would like to see a response to this, as if they need to go Pierce: 2 for this mission, we might replay the mission...

The kicker on this mission is that the door's defense scales with Threat. Our group tackled it near the end of the campaign and the Rebel Sabs were COMPLETELY USELESS against the door. They couldn't mathematically dent the thing even with perfect rolls, the heroes had to bust down the door.

We agreed that next time around we'd have to hot-fix the mission's balance, but we never got around to doing that. ^^;