Disclaimer: I'm only discussing the campaign mode here, skirmish is a very different beast

After the drop of Lothal I started thinking around what would be the most broken combo I can come up with, then I saw the old Military Might Imperial deck with the Endless rank:

This card was absolute garbage back when Core was released due to the extremely limited of choice: a squad of rStorm for 6-1 = 5, eStorm for 9-1=8, rEweb for 5, eE-web for 7

However with the drop of Deathtroopers, I really don't see myself taking any variants of Stormtroopers anymore

Endless Rank allows a -1 reduction in deployment, meaning you can get rDT for 2 and eDT for 3, I think this is the 1st time we see single figure Imperial Trooper deployment group at such a low threat cost

Note: rDT's "Full Detachment" means you may grab all the regular and elite "Death Trooper" deployment cards, and they all count as 1 single open group, thus bypassing the precious "# of open group" limit

DT's "Tactical Comms" also allows you to activate 2 groups consecutively and imitate a single 2-unit deployment group. However being at such a low cost meaning spamming DTs is an entirely legit strategy. This is something we've seen in HotE but that required a reward card! Now DTs (combined with Endless Rank) gives you this ability, for free!

Or... save 1 more threat and get a Dewback for 4? Or if you got extra threats to spend (ex. from mission triggers), drop 2 eJets or 2 eRiots for 6?

Looking for some thoughts and opinions on Endless Ranks here

With just the core set Endless Ranks was a useless card, all the other cards in Military Might were better value for the XP. It changed with Jabba's Realm and Jet Troopers.

I don't think that we can talk about Endless Ranks in isolation. What are the 2 XP you "trade in" to get Endless Ranks instead? What cards are you getting and in which order?

Are you getting Endless Ranks as your first card? If you do, then you are probably not getting Assault Armor at all. Assault Armor is best with multi-figure Trooper groups in early campaign. It mostly loses its effectiveness after the heroes can afford good weapons and start to single-shot figures that have 3-4 Health. So, when you have 4XP the best time for Assault Armor is over. However, it's not a bad tradeoff to skip Assault Armor completely.

I still think Sustained Fire is the best card, so my generic order (which might change depending on the campaign and heroes):

Show of Force 0XP, Endless Ranks 2XP, Sustained Fire 3XP, Combat Veterans 4XP, then depending on the XP you have available: Shock Troopers 3XP / Assault Armor 2XP / Combat Medic 1XP. (If the heroes get focused a lot, then Riot Grenades becomes good too.)

Is it worth getting Agent Blaise at this point? 6 threat to deploy. After a couple of attacks you get some threat back. Say he attacks twice and deploys once before dying -deploying on the same round as his second attack (surviving two rounds is not unrealistic) - then you get 2 threat back (assuming he landed a surge on each attack) and with the accumulated threat + a discount of 2, you can easily deploy 4 trooper units. That means you just got your refund of 6 influence that Blaise cost you, plus you made 2 attacks. If he survives longer, it just gets better.

Thoughts?

What do you mean by worth getting ? (you also say influence when you mean threat)

If you're playing Military Might , the only way to gain Blaise is from his agenda mission or as a reserved group, both of which are unreliable. (A little more certain if playing the Bespin Gambit campaign.)

11 hours ago, a1bert said:

What do you mean by worth getting ? (you also say influence when you mean threat)

If you're playing Military Might , the only way to gain Blaise is from his agenda mission or as a reserved group, both of which are unreliable. (A little more certain if playing the Bespin Gambit campaign.)

Yes I mean through the agenda suite (I do not own that box, so I don't know if the other cards in that set are decent)

Of course there is roughly 25% chance for the right agenda to appear after each mission, so you do not build your strategy around this combo, you are just happy to see it when it shows up.

I guess my queation was, is Blaise with endless ranks worth the opportunity cost of delaying deployment of troopers to get him, so you may deploy cheaper troopers later?

I guess the answer is: it depends. Ideal scenario is a side mission with 3+ threat level. He gets deployed from the start. That's max value. Getting him at the end of turn 3 is probably too late.

Ultimately, you're saving yourself a little bit of threat, but I'm not sure it's a broken amount.

I mean, let's say you bring in your Death Troopers. With Blaise and Endless Ranks, you could conceivably deploy all Death Troopers (2r 2e)for 6 threat. That's pretty, obviously better than the benchmark of 6 threat for rStormtroopers. But again, you did spend some XP on it, so it's a small investment, and all XP cards do something .

If anything, I think its value lies in much the same as the villain discounts in the Nemesis deck- more of a psychological warfare method than anything.

It has been discussed elsewhere that Endless ranks is good, but it competes with other good cards in MM.

Let's compare endless ranks with the other 2xp card then: combat armor. On a full squad, that card is worth +6hp, with the die reroll, maybe that goes up to virtually +8 hp. And because you are reinforcing the squad regularly, the card will gain value over the course of the mission. At least double. Because the card allows you to keep units longer on the map, you will be making more attacks overall (hard to put a number on this)

Endless ranks: say you deploy 20 threat worth of units, and the units, mostly deathtroopers and cheap trooper squads (heavy, jet, dewback) then with an average (with discount) deployment cost of 3, you are getting 6-7 worth of free threat. With discount that's roughly 12-14hp worth of units (hp to threat ratio is close to 2 on avg with the discount). and more units means more attacks.

Looks fairly even to me. Armor is frontloaded bonus and is stronger early campaign. Endless ranks gets better with more threat and is superior in the endgame.

On 9/1/2018 at 9:57 AM, ricope said:

Btw, Endless Ranks affects the deployment cost, and Vader's Legion uses an explicit cost, so you won't get the discount if you deploy 1 or 2 regular Stormtrooper figures.

It does make a big jump from useless to usable. It's about worth its xp now that we have rJets, Dewbacks and the Death Troopers. Getting Riots and eJets for -1 is pretty good too. I'd even say its better now than Assault Armor since it's less restrictive to only being good on 3-figure groups, which are now less common than cheap trooper options.

Probably just cements Military Might as still being the best Imperial class deck in the game.

I think it fits nicely in any 11xp build:

assault armor -> sustained fire -> veterans -> endless ranks.

with any permutations you like, based on xp gain curve and opposition.

Now something controversial ? : Skip combat veterans and assault armor, and focus on groups with only 1-2 units, and lots of jet troopers. Jets and dewback love to be close. Synergy with shock troopers. so the build is sustained fire into endless ranks into shock troopers. Fill in the last slot based on xp and matchup. may even get veterans if you are doing well.

13 hours ago, a1bert said:

Btw, Endless Ranks affects the deployment cost, and Vader's Legion uses an explicit cost, so you won't get the discount if you deploy 1 or 2 regular Stormtrooper figures.

Yes I understand, I was comparing Endless rank'ed Death troopers vs. Vader's Legion'ed stormtroopers

rStormtrooper don't even come close to rDT and with Endless rank they'd both cost 2 threat/each, and Vader's Legion requires winning a mission vs. Endless Rank costs 2xp

Can confirm this card is good now from 1st hand experience. Our Imperial player was spamming Death Troopers and eJets and said he saved at least 10 threat, though it was a longer mission (Canyon Run). It really did feel like his ranks of elite troops were endless, especially since I didn't notice he even had the card until halfway through the mission. Allowed him to deploy eJets and a reg DT in the same round several times.

Thankfully we were able to barely win and cut him off of his 4 xp cards for the finale.

I wonder if it would be brokenly bad if it had to exhaust when used, limiting the ability to once per turn?

I'm not quite sure we can assume that was the intended use, but when the card was released I believe you'd have to spend about 10 threat (with the bonus already accounted for) to benefit from it twice in a turn. That's a lot of threat, but it's conceivable enough. Definitely not happening each turn, though.

Now, for the same amount of threat, I believe you could conceivably use it four times in a turn for the same amount of threat. Still a lot of threat, but the way it's broken up more it's a bigger discount.

Then, of course, there's always the argument that newer units are more competitively priced anyway, which if true, means that it's even further a bigger discount.

And finally, if you bring the right open groups, you can pretty well ensure that you're able to use the benefits of Endless Ranks at least once per turn, which still wasn't necessarily possible with just core. Again, not sure if that's necessarily a huge advantage, but just pointing out that it's at least in some form improved as a card since launch. Not really any denying that.

Heroes and item decks have been improved since launch as well.

9 hours ago, a1bert said:

Heroes and item decks have been improved since launch as well.

I would actually disagree and say the power curve of Rebel campaign cards (hero abilities, class cards, items) has trended either neutral or negative since Jabbas Realm. Especially when you compare the new heroes to the broken core 4 (Fenn, Gideon, Diala and Mak). And I’ve still found Core items like Tactical Display, Extended Haft, Balanced Hilt, DL-44, Impact Guard, BD-1 and A-280 to be the most solid items in the armory (although tier 3 has gotten better). Meanwhile the Imperial player gets to benefit more from the insane power spike in Skirmish that happened in Jabbas Realm and onward by having access to deployment cards.

But I don’t really think Endless Ranks is in desperate need of a nerf, it’s just a solid 3xp card as long as you build your open groups around it.

I haven't seen CT or Tress in play yet so I can't comment (other than what I've heard, which is that CT is great. Tress seems subpar)

But, Ko-Tun, Drokkatta and Jarrod all are really strong.

It's hard competing with Shyla as best melee, but Jarrod with J4X is pretty strong.

Drokkatta is one of the best AoE damage dealers out there (Better than Fenn), and the token hijinks with Ko-Tun is a serious boost up on Rebel performance.

Sure, Diala has a really solid support build and Gideon is just plain broken. Mak is also pretty strong.

Bacta Pump. Seriously nerfs any harmful conditions not to mention strain use. (Do I need to mention Electrostaff for Shyla?)

Shyla and Drokkatta are better than core heroes in isolation. Jarrod becomes "invulnerable" with Mutual Progression and a little help from some armor / block power tokens, and Mechanical Master makes Jax better than most of rebel allies. Ko-Tun makes everyone one step better (and gives choice for supply cards), is fair by herself and is unstoppable with DXR-6. Tress with Bo-rifle (w/ High-Impact Guard) one-shots 8-Health figures. CT-1701 isn't bad either (the first place where I found DDC Defender useful). Vinto is also better than Mak (Mak doesn't have multi-target damage).

Gideon should not be used outside of the app. MHD-19 saving for Bacta Radiator is quite unfun for imperial player.

13 hours ago, Tvboy said:

I would actually disagree and say the power curve of Rebel campaign cards (hero abilities, class cards, items) has trended either neutral or negative since Jabbas Realm.   

I would think that neutral should be the goal by the time you’re four expansions in. Probably negative after Shyla happened. ?

It doesn't matter how strong the new heroes are, you only get to bring 4 heroes, so if they're not stronger than the broken Core 4, then the hero side isn't getting stronger. Drokkatta is not better than Fenn, her abilities are basically toned down facsimiles of Fenn's abilities. Demolish is a more flexible but less efficient Havoc Shot, Leave Noone Behind is a weaker Tactical Movement, Structural Exploitation is a weaker Trench Fighter, Thermal Explosives is a weaker version of Rebel Elite. She's basically a better designed, more interesting copy of Fenn but with the power level slightly toned down. And obviously Ko-Tun is not even close to Gideon's power level, she's just more fun since she has a true resource management mechanic and actually gets to attack people. Again, it's like they took the concept of Gideon and redesigned it into something more interesting.

Now I'm not saying that Imperials are now overpowered in campaign compared to the Rebels. I think that Rebels were truly unbeatable in the early days of campaign if they were getting the right upgrades and remembering to use them, barring Imperial Industry being played, and that now both sides have access to broken (as in powerful) stuff and have equal opportunity to steamroll the other side. I'd also like to make the point that the Empire doesn't have to hope they reveal a powerful item at the right time, they have immediate instant access to all the new deployment cards whenever they want (including uniques in the case of Nemesis). Saying that Rebel Item X is so powerful in Context Y doesn't mean anything if the Rebels never see that card become available or it only is available when the Rebels just lost a mission and don't have enough credits.

Also @a1bert , I'm not really seeing the synergy between CT and DDC, the only ability he has that scales with each attack is strafing run. I'm surprised you've not encountered the Fenn with DDC, Plasma Cell (or Weapons Expert), Tac Maneuver, Trench Fighter and Rebel Elite, which is a world killing monster that requires no more than 1000 credits.

2 hours ago, Uninvited Guest said:

I would think that neutral should be the goal by the time you’re four expansions in. Probably negative after Shyla happened. ?

Yes, but if you've paid any attention at all to the skirmish side of the game, you'd know that the power level of deployment cards has skyrocketed since Jabbas Realm came out. And the Empire gets to benefit from all these new powerful deployment cards and the Rebels don't.

Yeah, I didn't mean to try and imply that Endless ranks was broken or anything. I mean, we all know balancing is sort of a best effort kind of thing at this point, so we definitely can't for sure say whether the Rebels current status has put it on equal footing with this card's newer and improved usage. And that's totally fine.

Just that I'm curious if it came out today, I'm curious if the current game's status would cause the developers to decide to word it differently.

On ‎11‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 3:16 AM, Tvboy said:

It doesn't matter how strong the new heroes are, you only get to bring 4 heroes, so if they're not stronger than the broken Core 4, then the hero side isn't getting stronger.

That's not really a very accurate point. As pointed out by many people, there are new things besides just heroes that make the Rebels stronger.

Also, there are new and different synergies between heroes that can matter more than the raw power of one individual hero.

Having seen first hand how strong the three from Heart of the Empire are, I think that they are easily as strong as some of the Core 4 you mention on an individual basis.

Comparing anything to Gideon is a fallacy, because he is simply poorly designed. (action economy is too good)

Fenn is awesome, don't get me wrong. But his Havoc Shot is easily countered. By just standing a space apart. Drokkatta's advantage is that spreading out to avoid her abilities is even harder.