22 minutes ago, DarkTrooperZero said:

I think he needs a cost reduction to the tune of 15-20ish points to offset his mandatory saber throw and reflexes upgrades. With that reduction he is stronger than Luke by a smidge and costs more than Luke by a smidge. Has more raw power but is harder to use etc

I've wondered if they just added this line to Master of the Force in the rules reference. "Take X number of force upgrades free. These upgrades do not count toward the upgrades on your unit card."

Another issue I have with Vader is he effectively only has one upgrade choice after the to almost mandatory ones.

1 hour ago, MasterShake2 said:

This is not accurate, On average, you need 4.5 suppression to reliably keep Luke from having an action. If you only get 3, on average, he shrugs 1 and still has a full turn and even you land 4, clearing 2 out of 4 isn't super unlikely (coin flip). 5 does it very reliably, but that's a lot of attention to suppress one model. I should also mention the mortar is minimum range 4, how important is it to try and suppress Luke at that distance? and the likely damage output of this and a DLT assuming Luke has not cover or dodge tokens is 1 and even then the AT-ST only has about a 75% chance of working for 2 hits. Not to put even more dampeners, but even to get these 3 tokens, you're spending 2 activations, either of which Luke can interrupt and take his turn. Then the second activation doesn't suppress him next turn because he auto clears 1 at the end of the turn. I'm not saying Luke is unsupressable, but it should be never be as easy as you're making it sound.

This is true. And yes, I'd use Mortars against him early -- the point is to separate him from advancing companions, forcing your opponent to either slow down their entire advance or leave the companions vulnerable to panic later. The other option, of course, is to suppress his friends and leave him to either keep pace with them or surge ahead and leave them vulnerable to panic later. Both are helpful, and serve the purpose. Vader's not going to have to make that choice -- even if his Stormtroopers get suppressed around him, they can mostly keep up since he's slower.

1 hour ago, MasterShake2 said:

To be fair, if Luke has a dodge token, most people won't try for him either and he has 3 ways to get one without even activating (2 command cards and Leia)

I feel like counting Leia's abilities in this comparison isn't particularly fair, as that's just dumping another 90 points into one side. Luke's dodge command cards don't leave the rest of the army much tactical flexibility in issuing orders, so if you force the opponent into playing them for the dodge you're pretty safe gunning for the rest of the army.

1 hour ago, MasterShake2 said:

Luke has Impact 2 and should naturally score 1.5 crits for 3.5 average crits v Armor targets. Vader only scores .75 nat crits which only puts him .25 above Luke. I guess Vader has Pierce 3, but even against Pierce 2 the vehicle basically has to Yahtzee it's defense rolls and since everything with Armor is at best rolling white dice with surges makes it about 1 in 9 chance that you'll see a difference between Pierce 2 and 3. In short, they're about the same against Armor. Vader does Luke against troopers and specifically things like Stormtroopers that have better odds of passing all or most saves.

Mea culpa, I did forget about Luke's Impact 2, so I overstated the difference.

1 hour ago, MasterShake2 said:

Meh, Ready actions are trash and Force reflexes is good, but Luke does have more command cards that give him Dodge tokens and Leia, so Vader isn't miles ahead at least on key turns.

I feel like Master of the Force is more crucial on Saber Throw, honestly, for that very reason. Will you use it for Force Reflexes? Yes, in the opening turns. But being able to Relentless Saber Throw turn after turn on turns 3+ or 4+ is more impactful.

1 hour ago, MasterShake2 said:

You have a much higher opinion on this card than I do. I've had maybe 2 games where my opponent got a really good setup and my opponent's won neither of them. I've also seen exactly 1 game where Luke got suppressed by this card. and even then he was still close enough to charge. Also, there is no way you are panicking units in Luke's bubble. Seriously, you need an average of 9 suppression to panic things near Luke. Leia or Veers is a better option where you only need an average of 6, but both of those have Inspire, so if they hold their activation until after you master of Evil, they can dramatically reduce or eliminate the likelihood of Panic. I've done this twice with Leia very easily. It also has the problem that Return of the Jedi casually clearing 1 means if both Vader and Luke played their 3's on the same turn, Luke gets to auto clear 1 making it that much less likely you'll suppress him.

Fair point that panicking through leadership bubbles is more likely against Leia or Veers; that's more or less what I was thinking of but the thread had me tunnel-visioning on Luke so that's what I ended up typing when it came down to it. Leia's Inspire is absolutely a good counter to Master of Evil, but again, you're either forcing activation order and orders placement to deal with it, or they're relying on chance to see them through.

If you haven't seen Master of Evil brutalize an opponent on a Long March game, you should. That deployment keeps the action tight enough that there's simply nowhere to hide from it -- it's going to hit at least half your opponent's army.

39 minutes ago, kaffis said:

I feel like Master of the Force is more crucial on Saber Throw, honestly, for that very reason. Will you use it for Force Reflexes? Yes, in the opening turns. But being able to Relentless Saber Throw turn after turn on turns 3+ or 4+ is more impactful.

Um, Saber Throw doesn't exhaust. Master of the Force has no interaction with Saber Throw.

7 minutes ago, NukeMaster said:

Um, Saber Throw doesn't exhaust. Master of the Force has no interaction with Saber Throw.

Ugh. Okay, I'm clearly not doing well working from memory today.

1 hour ago, NukeMaster said:

I've wondered if they just added this line to Master of the Force in the rules reference. "Take X number of force upgrades free. These upgrades do not count toward the upgrades on your unit card."

Another issue I have with Vader is he effectively only has one upgrade choice after the to almost mandatory ones.

What about if the Rebels simply ignore Vader? That would completely devalue one of the supposedly mandatory upgrades like Force Reflexes. In that situation, you’d probably have been better off taking battlefield meditation, choke, and force push/saber throw, upgrades which aren’t dependent on the enemy charging into Vader.

Worse, reflexes depends on Vader activating before an opponent can shoot at him, which often gives them the opportunity to pick another target to fire on before they can act.

I think he's generally worth the points, but he is a lot of points. He's a beat stick that kills a lot of stuff and creates a big morale bubble. I actually think he's pretty easy to use. When you get into conversations about him being 15 points overcosted on a 225 point unit you're talking about a 7% difference in price? And the point equivalent of less than a DL-19? It's not that big a swing in an 800 point list. Sure, you can get a lot of extra stuff if you drop from Vader to Veers, but twenty points isn't going to swing a lot of games.

59 minutes ago, NukeMaster said:

Um, Saber Throw doesn't exhaust. Master of the Force has no interaction with Saber Throw.

Funny, I thought it exhausted as well when first starting out. Once I was corrected it was like my first steps into a larger world.

1 minute ago, Derrault said:

What about if the Rebels simply ignore Vader? That would completely devalue one of the supposedly mandatory upgrades like Force Reflexes. In that situation, you’d probably have been better off taking battlefield meditation, choke, and force push/saber throw, upgrades which aren’t dependent on the enemy charging into Vader.

Worse, reflexes depends on Vader activating before an opponent can shoot at him, which often gives them the opportunity to pick another target to fire on before they can act.

Just scribble out ATST on the "How to Deal with" Chart. Seriously, once opponents stopped sinking shots into my ATSTs my win rate dropped dramatically.

30 minutes ago, Derrault said:

What about if the Rebels simply ignore Vader? That would completely devalue one of the supposedly mandatory upgrades like Force Reflexes.

Then the rebels are shooting unbreakable stormtroopers and rule out having infantry within range 2 of Vader or any objective within that radius. Vader is always a scoring unit himself although he is arguably less useful in breakthrough, plus killing any lone commander makes tackling any army much easier. It makes him harder to ignore than an AT-ST.

On a separate note, the base size means an AT-ST moves faster than any infantryman without a jet pack. If rebels aren't shooting it, maybe you should ram it down their throats? With support, obviously. Especially now the internet has decided ion weapons are over costed and feeble.

2 hours ago, Brightguy said:

I think he's generally worth the points, but he is a lot of points. He's a beat stick that kills a lot of stuff and creates a big morale bubble. I actually think he's pretty easy to use. When you get into conversations about him being 15 points overcosted on a 225 point unit you're talking about a 7% difference in price? And the point equivalent of less than a DL-19? It's not that big a swing in an 800 point list. Sure, you can get a lot of extra stuff if you drop from Vader to Veers, but twenty points isn't going to swing a lot of games.

Those points are huge, 800 points is so restrictive that having or not having a DLT in a storm trooper unit can be the difference between doing damage or not. Legion points are super tight in my opinion and feel the game itself is a bit inflexible with points. Hardly ever have anything but base troopers with 1 heavy weapon.

Comms jammer, whats that, 15 points I never have free to even think about that upgrade.

9 hours ago, DarkTrooperZero said:

Those points are huge, 800 points is so restrictive that having or not having a DLT in a storm trooper unit can be the difference between doing damage or not. Legion points are super tight in my opinion and feel the game itself is a bit inflexible with points. Hardly ever have anything but base troopers with 1 heavy weapon.

Comms jammer, whats that, 15 points I never have free to even think about that upgrade.

Comms jammer will never be taken, even if they bump it up to 1000 points outside of occasional filler. You'll almost always get better mileage out of putting more figures on the table. Give me more points and I take more AT-ST/Bikes/etc.

Beyond anything Vader is scary. Rebel troops retreat and try to kite him, so does Luke. If you've been engaged in melee by Vader, you done messed up A-Aron. This then lends to his invisible sphere of area denial. Move, move, free attack saber throw has a pretty good range and 3 red dice pierce 3 is pretty **** darn good. With force reflexes giving him a free dodge token every turn it's not even safe to shoot him, what's the nature of that David Suzuki? Is that enough to warrant the points? Maybe, I think it's situational but he is an intimidating figure on the board. Just as long as you eliminate the Long March deployment card you're more or less good.

I don't really know, but I will say its easy to not use him well. If he gets out of position, deployed poorly, etc... Its tough. Hes incredibly powerful but with an Achilles heel, which I actually like.

17 hours ago, kaffis said:

1. Your opponent isn't trying hard enough to suppress Luke, then. Lob a mortar at him and follow up with a DLT and you're probably there. It's worth doing if suppressing him is going to separate him from the bulk of his troopers. Vader literally cannot lose actions to suppression, because he doesn't even take the token. He is truly relentless. Master of Evil the turn you expect your opponent to set up for his Son of Skywalker and you can shut that set-up down quick, too.

If you keep Luke in cover until the time is right for the charge, he won't really get suppressed much, and then he's in Melee. Vader's so slow he kind of has to go out into the open field and take hits. My point is that if Luke has to do that, he at least gets cover bonus from suppression. You also need to dump a TON of suppression of Luke for it to actually matter and cost him his action (4.5 suppression). If Luke is taking that many attacks, the Luke player screwed up.

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2. Play with some tables with proper amounts of terrain -- you should be able to pick up cover just fine from the stuff around you. Relying on suppression for cover is a fool's errand. Once you do that, you've got 33% more health to sustain concentrated fire. Concentrated fire that, unlike the concentrated fire directed at Luke, can't even suppress you. Most won't even try, meaning you get to your destination at full health.

I do, thank you very much. Doesn't change the fact that Vader's moves, early in the game, are way slower than Luke's move (when you are usually double moving), meaning Vader has to preplan what he is doing from the beginning of the game, and can't readjust. Luke and adjust on the fly anfd fix problems as they arise on the battlefield. Also, unless all of the terrain you are playing with is LOS blocking, there will still be open fields for Vader to die on.

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3. The Impact is NOT "basically the same" -- Luke surges to crit, which means he gets a crit against vehicles on 25% of each die's faces. Rolling six dice, that's 1.5 crits expected per attack. Vader has Impact 3, and dice so good you can often get all three hits if it's a Saber Thrown attack, and it's rare NOT to get all three if it's melee. He will slice and dice at least 3 crits against Armored targets all day long. That's literally twice as good.

I don't know where you math is coming from, but 'twice as good' is a stretch if I ever heard one. If both Luke and Vader are slashing an armored vehicle with a naked dice roll, Luke should get 3.75 hits, with 1.5 of them being Crits. Vader will get 4.5 hits, with .75 of them being Crits. This means that Luke, on average, rolls 2.25 Hits and 1.5 natural Crits. With Impact 2, that means he will end up with 3.5 hits coming in on the vehicle. Vader, by contrast, gets 3.75 Hits on average, and .75 Crits. With Impact 3, this means that Vader will, on average, score 3.75 hits on a vehicle. A difference of .25. In other words, not twice as good. Now you could bring the difference of Pierce into play here, but that will very, very rarely matter. If Luke and Vader are both chopping an AT ST (which surges to block on defense), Luke will face 1.16 blocks, and Vader will face 1.25 blocks, so Vader's extra Pierce doesn't help here. In other words, Vader does, overall, .25 more damage on a Vehicle than Luke does without an Aim. If Luke has access to an aim, since he surges to Crit, his stats go better than Vader, even if Vader has an Aim too. So, in short, yes, Vader is better than Luke, but not by much, which my point. It's basically a wash.

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4. I've never seen a player take Ready actions with Luke and feel *good* about it. Vader doesn't have to to maintain a low level of Force expenditure each turn. This is important, especially if you're comparing the two straight up -- you should really be comparing Luke to Vader+Throw so they both have a ranged attack. It's a bigger points differential, but when combined with things like Master of the Force and Relentless, you'll see he pretty handily wins categories he was losing without it, so it's well worth the points.

I will admit, I didn't explain myself well here. If Luke takes Force Push or Jedi Mindtrick as well, his Ready actions can do 2 things for him: Clear all of his suppression, and refresh ALL of his cards. If Luke has both Reflexes and, let's say, Push, one Ready action is actually really good. It allows him to use both of his force powers turn after turn if he's in the heat of the enemy, which is REALLY good. Vader can only refresh one of his cards, but does it for free, and needs both of his actions to move. Again, I'm not saying Luke is better, I'm saying it is a wash.

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5. He gets to Saber Throw on Relentless. His per-turn threat range is like 2 inches lower than Luke's. It's honestly pretty trivial. He just gets where he's going more slowly, so he's a "thrust up the middle with his troops" kind of guy rather than a flanking back-line harasser the way Luke is. Considering there's only one objective that's NOT scored at the end of the game, this isn't really the problem people make it out to be. Vader can make it into scoring position even on Long March/Breakthrough, because he just doesn't slow down for anything and you can't stop him. He draws a straight line across the battlefield, and either brutally murders or terrifies everything that approaches him while he does it.

Only problem with Saber throw is, without any surging to Crit, Vader will struggle to get past Heavy cover. He will average 2.25 Hits on three dice, with .375 Crits. If we add the Crits to the 'excess' Hit number, we get .625 Hits from Vader. In other words, Vader can sort of count on 1 hit going through, which will definitely kill 1 model. Definitely nice, but not overwhelming. As a comparison, if Luke moved and shot with his blaster, he will generate .5 Crits to get past the Heavy cover, and again, Luke's lesser Pierce doesn't hurt him. So true, Vader moves farther than Luke did on this round, and will do slightly more damage, but my argument the whole time has not been that Vader sucks (which is what everyone seems to think I said), but that Vader is OVERCOSTED. You are getting small benefits over Luke for a huge cost. I don't think it adds up.

The real problem in the Luke vs. Vader debate is really 1 card: Son of Skywalker. The strange truth is, if Luke plays correctly, he will charge Vader when Vader has 3 damage on him, and will kill Vader before he activates on that turn, ripping the heart out of the Imperial side. Don't get me wrong, I love Luke, but the devs kind of messed this one up. Luke is 160 naked, Vader is 200 naked, and if Luke is played right, Vader lives in fear of him. That's my point. Vader is good, but I would have priced him at 180, not 200, and that is a 10% difference, which in competitive games is HUGE. Again, I am NOT saying Vader is bad or terrible, he can do amazing things, I just think, in comparison to Luke, you aren't quite getting your money's worth for him. This is why I think, as the game evolves, if a new Force power doesn't come out to help Vader, he will fade. I think once Boba comes out, you will see Veers and Boba, and Vader will fade, unfortunately. I want Vader to work, but I am worried for his future.

On 5/28/2018 at 6:45 PM, SirCormac said:

Some of you are missing my point, I think. It's not that Vader can't do work, its that, over the course of tournaments and many games, he cannot, consistently, recoup his costs, in comparison to other units in the faction. We see this born out already, as most competitive Imperial list just take Veers. Is not that Vader is useless, it's that you are probably better off taking other units instead, which will help you more. I think Vader would be better costed at 180, which is my point.

I think this is simply a case of people going with what they read online and then it becomes the norm. Happens all the time in Armada.

This guy sucks cause this other guy does somethings better. Says 5 people on the internet so it must be true.

I'll say this no one is playing Jedi mind trick right now, which is in and of itself a huge mistake in the current "meta", and that will ruin a veers lists day. Vader list doesn't care. Atst mortar can ruin a veers list. Vader doesn't care.

@SirCormac sums it up, at base cost Vader lives in fear of Luke, Luke's double move followed by double attack is such a huge threat to Vader it weighs on your every move with Vader.

On the flip side Luke can avoid Vader easier.

I think that Vader usefulness will grown up each time new force cards will released. I can imagine one like "rage" only dark side to improve the attack (perhaps surge to crit and some reroll), something like force jump or your force speed. Something defensive... This version of vader will grown in power more than this version of luke due to master of evil.

just let's see an example:

vader with these non existing (but possible) cards

- Dark side Rage: dark side only .exhaust. During this attack you gain surge=crit and you can re-roll up to three die. (this basically means 3 hit with saberthrow or 6 hits with melee, with granted 3 crits against armor in two cases)

- Force speed: exhaust. free action. perform a move 1. You can disengage using this movement.

- Force protection: exhaust. (same as low profile during this round)

You can combine every of these with force reflexes, saber throw and force push with really good results. I think FFG guys will have better ideas for the future, so don't panic yet.

1 hour ago, naitsirk said:

Dark side Rage: dark side only .exhaust. During this attack you gain surge=crit and you can re-roll up to three die. (this basically means 3 hit with saberthrow or 6 hits with melee, with granted 3 crits against armor in two cases)

I think taking away almost all elements of chance (7/8 chance to hit with a reroll) is possibly over the top, not to mention not in keeping with the word 'rage.' Personally, my accuracy tends to decrease with rage.

In any case, you're right, I'm sure different force powers will make him the Swiss Army Knife of cybernetic killing machines.

17 hours ago, Tirion said:

I think this is simply a case of people going with what they read online and then it becomes the norm. Happens all the time in Armada.

This guy sucks cause this other guy does somethings better. Says 5 people on the internet so it must be true.

I'll say this no one is playing Jedi mind trick right now, which is in and of itself a huge mistake in the current "meta", and that will ruin a veers lists day. Vader list doesn't care. Atst mortar can ruin a veers list. Vader doesn't care.

I'm curious about this statement. As Corps are only Courage 1, they get suppressed with 1 token regardless of who's in charge. Putting Veers or Leia in command just drops the threshold for panicking down to 4 after the rally step, but Leia and Veers have inspire as well. Even factoring out Inspire, that's an average of 6 suppression to make something flee.

Granted that's infinitely more likely than with Vader and a lot more effort than Luke, but that's still a tall order to hit consistently enough to call it a notable weakness.

I would point out that a Vader vs Luke argument doesn’t take into account the wider army.

Vader backed with snowtroopers gives the imperials quite the offensive punch, so the combination of Vader and snowtroopers is quite solid. I don’t think Luke has a comparable support unit yet, and he often ends up running ahead of the rest of the army to get the perfect hit in.

Luke also becomes quite predictable (e.g. 9 times out of ten, I know when son of sky walker will be played), but equally Vader can be as well.

At the moment, the games I end up playing sees Luke and Vader duking it out and whoever wins that fight often carries the game.

2 hours ago, MasterShake2 said:

I'm curious about this statement. As Corps are only Courage 1, they get suppressed with 1 token regardless of who's in charge. Putting Veers or Leia in command just drops the threshold for panicking down to 4 after the rally step, but Leia and Veers have inspire as well. Even factoring out Inspire, that's an average of 6 suppression to make something flee.

2 hours ago, MasterShake2 said:

Granted that's infinitely more likely than with Vader and a lot more effort than Luke, but that's still a tall order to hit consistently enough to call it a notable weakness.

Where are you getting an average of 6? The average is 4 not counting inspire.

Jedi mind trick or a mortar, the two things I was specifically discussing, can quickly panicked something with even the slightest help

Just now, Tirion said:

Where are you getting an average of 6?

I guess he’s saying, with inspiration dropping that extra token, you need to layer on 6 tokens so when they activate they’re at 5 (2x2+1) and panicking.

1 minute ago, Drasnighta said:

I guess he’s saying, with inspiration dropping that extra token, you need to layer on 6 tokens so when they activate they’re at 5 (2x2+1) and panicking.

Except he specifically says not counting inspire

1 minute ago, Tirion said:

Except he specifically says not counting inspire

Do you need to be at Double or Double plus one?

Because it’s also after rally step, right?

perhaps he’s factoring in the odds of removing one naturally?

::shrug:: I was guessing ?

It's just double to but it is after rally which I think is 25% per dice

33 minutes ago, Tirion said:

It's just double to but it is after rally which I think is 25% per dice

He is factoring in rally which is 2 sides of a d6 (33.33...%). So on average rally will remove 1 suppression for every three. Hence to panic a 2 courage unit you will need 6 and to for a 3 courage unit 9 suppression.