I have one of everything and I have only won 1 game in 9 with the Rebels. It feels like the Empire is paying the dice.

How have you had success with them? How?

Offense is better than defense especially with white dice.

Don't forget your nimble ability. Heavy cover and recurring dodge tokens are what keeps you alive.

Play the objectives.

Leia is the best commander for reasons that should be obvious.

My own experience with rebels is
- spread shots with heavy weapons (like the Z-6) to cause suppression to stormtroopers that haven't activated yet to prevent them from aiming.
- AT-RT with flamer to charge head on and make the other guy focus on killing them instead of shooting at your objective-scoring troops.
- OR AT-RT with lasers to focus fire on various targets (again, before they activate) from afar to increase its survivability (I don't like the burst canon).
- Airspeeder is a hard to use tool. Avoid if you aren't confident with it. If you ahve one, always try to get rid of the long march deployment.
- Speaking of the objectives/deployment: Try to get the one that reduces visibility in the first few rounds: Imperials have better range than you so you should mitigate their advantage.
- Hug cover and dodge instead of aim with units that don't need to move but that want to shoot (you already have black dice)

3 hours ago, Patteous said:

I have one of everything and I have only won 1 game in 9 with the Rebels. It feels like the Empire is paying the dice.

How have you had success with them? How?

By one of everything do you mean you are running Luke, 3 Rebel Troopers, 2 AT-RTs, and the T-47 every game? If so you probably have 60 to 80 points ties up in upgrades that aren't really giving you a lot of payback. You might consider purchasing or borrowing an extra unit of Troopers.

I haven't done much with Rebels but here are some thoughts:

Luke really doesn't want to engage Vader. Keep him murdering everything else.

As has been mentioned use nimble to it full advantage.

38 minutes ago, NukeMaster said:

By one of everything do you mean you are running Luke, 3 Rebel Troopers, 2 AT-RTs, and the T-47 every game? If so you probably have 60 to 80 points ties up in upgrades that aren't really giving you a lot of payback. You might consider purchasing or borrowing an extra unit of Troopers.

With plans to buy 2 Fleet Troopers and Rebel Commandos when those come out, plus everything else down the line, I can’t justify buying any more rebel troopers that will only be used for a few weeks/months. I’m still having a ton of fun playing the game. I’m collecting both sides and my roommate is playing the game with me. We switched sides and did a 350 point game on a 3x3 and I trounced him with empire. I feel the empire works best with a constant advance and relentless assault, while with the rebels you’re trying to mitigate damage and limit action economy.

48 minutes ago, Patteous said:

With plans to buy 2 Fleet Troopers and Rebel Commandos when those come out, plus everything else down the line, I can’t justify buying any more rebel troopers that will only be used for a few weeks/months. I’m still having a ton of fun playing the game. I’m collecting both sides and my roommate is playing the game with me. We switched sides and did a 350 point game on a 3x3 and I trounced him with empire. I feel the empire works best with a constant advance and relentless assault, while with the rebels you’re trying to mitigate damage and limit action economy.  

I find the same thing with regards to how the two sides act.

I think the two sides are fairly analogous to the popular view of the early forces in the American Revolution. Stormtroopers are very much like redcoats in that they want to form up close together (to gain Vader's morale) and advance slowly (aim and fire). They also have effective cavalry and artillery (bikes and AT-STs). Rebels, on the other hand, want to move more quickly and envelope the enemy using precise shooting from different directions. Ideally, they shoot at distance and then fall back out of retaliatory range, focused on disruption as much as damage. Their artillery is smaller but mobile (the AT-RT). Soon we'll have minutemen (commandos) while The Empire get guardsmen who are steady and good for assault (snowtroopers).

Basically, The Empire is the empire and The Rebels are the rebels trying to form a republic. Or they're Patriots if you're that way inclined. Just don't try to work out where harpoons and tow cables come in. The Boer Wars would also work as an analogy I guess- any conflict with a formed up professional army facing a skilled and decentralised force.

To summarize my experience, Rebels win by playing with Dodge tokens and maintaining their significantly larger force. Lots of Troopers and AT-RTs is how the Rebels are intimidating. Can be a bit swarmy. That's where their strength lies.

If you're just playing with 3 or 4 groups of troopers, 1 or 2 at-rts, and an airspeeder, then that's likely why you're losing. Empire has an easier time dealing with that sort of list than one that really goes all in on activations. 8 or 9 activations with rebels is where your list should be, IMO.

Once everything we’ve seen releases I plan on running leia, 3 rebel troopers, 2 Fleet Troopers, 1 AT-RT, and both specialist builds.

Nimble or not, if troopers are out of range of a commander suppression is going to take them out of the fight quite quickly. Even if they don't panic, once they're suppressed, are you going to spend your sole action dodging? That's not moving on the objective or fighting back. Leia and certain command cards will mitigate this to a degree, but I'd still say it's worth having a vehicle or commando unit on the edges of your command bubble so that suppression and panic won't see a flank crumble. Commandos with their 2 morale will also make handy back-up commanders for when Leia dies but we've got a couple of months before we get them.

1 minute ago, Katarn said:

Nimble or not, if troopers are out of range of a commander suppression is going to take them out of the fight quite quickly. Even if they don't panic, once they're suppressed, are you going to spend your sole action dodging? That's not moving on the objective or fighting back. Leia and certain command cards will mitigate this to a degree, but I'd still say it's worth having a vehicle or commando unit on the edges of your command bubble so that suppression and panic won't see a flank crumble. Commandos with their 2 morale will also make handy back-up commanders for when Leia dies but we've got a couple of months before we get them.

Note that the commanders suppression ability only prevents panic, the action loss ability occurs as soon as suppression= courage so I don't see how that's particularly relevant when it comes to your comment on dodge , although concentrated fire from multiple units where you end up with double courage suppression is likely to cause rout

My fault, I was mixing my points.

First- a corps based force has a lot of strengths but a key weakness is that any unit outside of the commander's range is liable to panic- it's not hard to get 2 suppression on a unit. This makes AT-RTs useful to hold a flank.

Secondly- A lot of people sound like they put great store in nimble and I don't see it being all that great. You have to activate first and not be suppressed to gain any benefit. It's handy but I can't see myself basing a strategy on it right now.

In my defense, I was posting and feeding the baby simultaneously

43 minutes ago, Katarn said:

My fault, I was mixing my points.

First- a corps based force has a lot of strengths but a key weakness is that any unit outside of the commander's range is liable to panic- it's not hard to get 2 suppression on a unit. This makes AT-RTs useful to hold a flank.

Secondly- A lot of people sound like they put great store in nimble and I don't see it being all that great. You have to activate first and not be suppressed to gain any benefit. It's handy but I can't see myself basing a strategy on it right now.

In my defense, I was posting and feeding the baby simultaneously

Nimble and Precise make a difference however it isn't ksy, however the synergy does not require you activate first, there are command cards that give a token when orders are issued.

Based on what you've posted it sounds like you are sticking with minimal corps units for now (which is understandable). But I strongly believe the intended strength in Rebels is activation advantage and cheap corps units. You probably won't even outshoot the Empire with any combination of units that have been released, but you should be able to outmaneuver them as a whole by having more units.

I like to use AT-RTs to put the enemy's objective scorers under threat--any weapon can do that job depending on the situation. Flamethrower works great but it's a high priority to the enemy to target, I've had best success with it by charging towards the enemy and even using some high-priority pip command cards to ensure it gets a good roast in before it dies. I do consider a full enemy squad wipe an even swap for the AT-RT, since it's also probably drawing fire from something that would have been shooting at something more important. Rotary works well and is a little more survivable since you can control engagements and stay out of lightsaber melee a little easier. Laser cannon lets you suppress and attack from range, and could be handy against any AT-STs you might face, but it's expensive and not quite as deadly to troopers, who should probably be your main target.

Are you having trouble with Vader? He is designed to do a lot of damage (at 200 points plus upgrades, he'd better), but if you can do all you can to stay away from him or sacrifice designated units to him while others retreat (very thematic!) you can keep him at bay while you focus on objectives.

Bikes are tougher to deal with but terrain is your friend there, see if you can find some to stay out of arc until they blast by and then try to take at least one out from the rear with three wounds--- halving their threat.

I don't have experience against an AT-ST yet, but I think facing one will only strengthen your activation advantage at the expense of survivability.

In short, if you are corps unit limited I think the Empire will have an advantage, and you should consider taking turns with your friend if you don't want to be at a disadvantage. Or stick with the Rebels knowing the units available to you limit you a bit. Once you get some more units to choose from you should have the opportunity to be back on level footing.

Completely agree with you there the battle I won I had 4 rebel units and 2 ATRT vs 3 storytellers and an AT ST although choosing rapid reinforcements was a master stroke as it ended up 3 trooper units vs 1 in turns 1 and 2 letting me scoop all the victory points in turn 2. Which brings me to the other tactic , attrition is not your goal VPs are and multiple activations help, an AT ST doesn't score victory points rebel trooper leaders do, so the more of them the merrier

EDIT going back to the video I posted , I wish I could get my white defense dice to roll like that. That rebel player must have had some serious luck.