I'm big on keeping thematic accuracy between the movies and games, and I gotta say, my stormtroopers, they are on point!

Because they suck! I mean they die in droves and cant hit anything! It's like watching then drop to ewoks, both sad and pathetic.

I'm sure some of you have been successful with them, those of you who have, what tips could you pass along?

Don't use movie tactics... use cover, move around, flank them... Or use an AT-ST and use mortar fire

Use cover, a lot. Use extra weapons, DLTs in particular, as its avg damage is actually higher than a naked 4 man squad. Provide some support, supress the enemy to reduce the quality of incoming fire.

And remeber your objectives. Stormies are just for that - supression and objective grabbing

Remember they have better heavy weapons (not just because the weapons are good, but because that hit-surge applies to the heavies too). Stormies want heavies.

Remember that you can split fire. So, if a unit with a DLT all shoots one squad, they'll apply one suppression. But if they shoot at two units (rifles at one, DLT at the other), they'll apply two suppression. It does often come at the cost of less damage, but it's often the best choice - and you're Stormies. You brought a heavy.

Remember that you have good defence dice. That makes you mobile... A bit. Rebels really want dodge in an open area. Stormies can double-move and just hope for the best. Dodge and cover are overcome by crits. Red dice defence is only overcome by pierce, which is WAY rarer. Even if it is only 1 in 6...

Remember that Empire don't need to do damage with Stormies if they're short on 'em. Speeders and ATST have the damage. Keep those Stormies alive.

Remember that most dice have the same chance of a crit (1 in 8). Dice are dice. Sometimes only crits matter. A white dice can be as good as a black one or even a red one.

Weight of statistics can be your friend. When you have that smidge of a better defence, or a smidge of a better heavy, sometimes luck will fall for you. It will fall sometimes the other way too. Stormies are more random. Sometimes a squad will tank an army. Sometimes they'll miss every shot. It happens. But it'll mess up your opponent's plan as much as yours.

(A lot of that is why the Rebel Z-6 is better than it looks... )

Stormies in hard cover a very bad for your enemies. The reduction plus the red dices make them very hard to kill. Vaders moral "-" is one of your best friends, because so they can become suppressed but they never get panic.

DLT and HH12 both have range 4, so your enemy must come to you for a fight. Use this to take good covered positions with lesser cover for your enemies.

Conclussion Grenades are much better for stormies than for rebels. The rebels must move up to range 3 to get a shooting position, with enough cover between them you can go ahead and you get the black dice with ignore cover on range 1. The rebels would not use them often, because the impact grenade is more important for them as blast and they have the black dice by nature.

Split fire to suppress trooper and concentrate fire to destroy vehicles. Remember, weapon keywords are for the pool not only for the weapon, so you can often take profit from the impact 3 of the HH12 with the white dices.

hmmm, I don't often use heavy weapons, I guess I need to change that.

Yep, that was my revelation too. Get them heavies, get respect for stormies.

When in doubt, DLT and nuthin'.

They're great troops. Good defence and hit-surge and good aim. They just have cheap-*** default weapons.

Taught the wife to play last night in a 400 point game. Unit of 5 storm troopers poised to shoot at Luke. I said you can do it but they wont cause much damage to him, but it was turn 2 so I said do it and see what happens. 5 White Dice, 5 hits, 4 damage on Luke......

(as a note, that was followed by a unit of rebels +a Z6 firing at a unit of Stormtroopers in the open and I didnt have a single hit.....

1 minute ago, VAYASAN said:

Taught the wife to play last night in a 400 point game. Unit of 5 storm troopers poised to shoot at Luke. I said you can do it but they wont cause much damage to him, but it was turn 2 so I said do it and see what happens. 5 White Dice, 5 hits, 4 damage on Luke......

(as a note, that was followed by a unit of rebels +a Z6 firing at a unit of Stormtroopers in the open and I didnt have a single hit.....

My buddies z6's have as of typing this, NEVER caused a wound... I can't even recall a hit...

This applies to my troopers as well...

Hopefully, adding a heavy, and maybe targeting scopes will change that.

7 minutes ago, Gadgetron said:

My buddies z6's have as of typing this, NEVER caused a wound... I can't even recall a hit...

This applies to my troopers as well...

Hopefully, adding a heavy, and maybe targeting scopes will change that.

Z-6 is for swing. Some swing high, some low. Have 4 of 'em, so some of the swings go your way.

Don't endorse scopes, me. Better with half an extra trooper, or grenades.

16 minutes ago, Weatsop said:

Don't endorse scopes, me. Better with half an extra trooper, or grenades.

This made me picture a stormy dragging another half of a trooper (missing legs) but still firing at the enemy hahahaha

1 minute ago, MandalorianMoose said:

This made me picture a stormy dragging another half of a trooper (missing legs) but still firing at the enemy hahahaha

That is exactly the plan. Never underestimate robot pants.

...don't take off robot pants.

(I am so happy this quote happened).

I believe it was Obi-Wan Kenobi who stated "Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise" yet for the next 5 and a half hours they couldn't hit 4 heroes and 2 droids. I mean yes they did "graze" Leia's arm but that was it!!!

I think that is why they truly lost the battle of Endor. After they actually hit Leia they didn't know what to do as that had never happened before.

Heavies and cover my friend. Heavies and cover.

1 hour ago, C3POFETT said:

I believe it was Obi-Wan Kenobi who stated "Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise" yet for the next 5 and a half hours they couldn't hit 4 heroes and 2 droids. I mean yes they did "graze" Leia's arm but that was it!!!

If you had to use those white die E-11s, you'd miss all the time too!

No matter how much you increased your Precise skill with training those rickety blasters would come back to bite you!

Just give to stormies an A280 and watch them work!

My tactic for Stormtroopers is either move. Or Shoot. Never try to do both.

Once your aiming and shooting they seem to do an acceptable minimum job.

9 minutes ago, nungunz said:

If you had to use those white die E-11s, you'd miss all the time too!

No matter how much you increased your Precise skill with training those rickety blasters would come back to bite you!

Just give to stormies an A280 and watch them work!

I agree about the A280 but isn't it great that canon has become it was the E-11s fault.

Yeah I find the E-11 explanation of Stormies inaccuracy odd. As soon as Han, Luke, or Leia were wielding one, they mowed down Stormtroopers with it.

1 hour ago, C3POFETT said:

I agree about the A280 but isn't it great that canon has become it was the E-11s fault.

Unfortunately sarcasm isn't easily conveyed via post.

Definitely agree that it is sad. I always figure the Stormtrooper Corp is similar to US Marine Corp and the Imperial Army (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Army_trooper) to be you rank and file GIs.

Stormtroopers are all about the DLT and the fact that the red armor save makes it very difficult to remove that DLT efficiently.

Well, here's the thing. You have to reconcile "Only Imperial Stormtroopers could be so precise" with the fact that they hardly hit anyone in the films - even in the parts where they're supposed to be hitting people. FFG I think has the best run that the E-11 is a cheap piece of tech, the empire has to make a bajillion of these, they aren't as good as the A280. This makes sense, the A280 and variants are actually supposed to be very good weapons, with long range, accuracy and environmental resistance - think of them like the space AK and the stormies are using an original space M16. Only cool troops are getting the E-11D and E-22 models.

I think our heroes are most accurate with an E-11 in the closed confines of the Death Star (where stormtroopers are not necessarily supposed to be hitting the escaping rebels) and even then there's a lot of missing going on at distances where a human should be capable of hitting the other guy by just throwing the gun.

12 hours ago, Gadgetron said:

My buddies z6's have as of typing this, NEVER caused a wound... I can't even recall a hit...

This applies to my troopers as well...

Hopefully, adding a heavy, and maybe targeting scopes will change that.

HEY NOW, THEY HIT!

the barricade.......

You guys are forgetting how the Stormtroopers steamrolled the Rebels aboard the Tantive IV.

And most importantly: In Episode IV they we're explicitly told NOT to hit the main characters.

20 hours ago, Gadgetron said:

My buddies z6's have as of typing this, NEVER caused a wound... I can't even recall a hit...

This applies to my troopers as well...

Hopefully, adding a heavy, and maybe targeting scopes will change that.

There’s only a 17% chance of that happening each time one fires. Even twice though? 2%

On ‎19‎.‎04‎.‎2018 at 11:27 AM, Weatsop said:

When in doubt, DLT and nuthin'.

Add some Speederbikes.

Imperial Army 101

19 hours ago, UnitOmega said:

Well, here's the thing. You have to reconcile "Only Imperial Stormtroopers could be so precise" with the fact that they hardly hit anyone in the films - even in the parts where they're supposed to be hitting people. FFG I think has the best run that the E-11 is a cheap piece of tech, the empire has to make a bajillion of these, they aren't as good as the A280. This makes sense, the A280 and variants are actually supposed to be very good weapons, with long range, accuracy and environmental resistance - think of them like the space AK and the stormies are using an original space M16. Only cool troops are getting the E-11D and E-22 models.

I think our heroes are most accurate with an E-11 in the closed confines of the Death Star (where stormtroopers are not necessarily supposed to be hitting the escaping rebels) and even then there's a lot of missing going on at distances where a human should be capable of hitting the other guy by just throwing the gun.

I mean, the rank and file where shooting exclusively at a handful of some of the most powerful characters in the setting.

You could read the “precise” quip as a sarcastic slight or take it at face value to foreshadow just how good our hero’s are.