Hello everyone,

I am about to start a Tyrants of Lothal Campaign and I usually like to use the Empire set that comes with the box. But looking at the Overwhelming Oppression I am kind of thinking a big no and wondering what I am missing as far as the strategy in using this card set.

One of the advantages of the Empire is you hide what is coming out, but with this you play with all your Deployment Cards face up getting rid of a big advantage. Then it seems that this Set is big on giving power tokens. But you put the power tokens on the cards in your hand and not on what is in the field. This seems to give even more of an advantage away in again showing what is coming up, it also makes it so you do not want to reinforce which can be a big advantage so you can save up your threat to deploy the cards in your hand that have the power tokens. .

I can see how you can then stack power tokens on cards that are event deployments making them even more powerful but again it lets the Rebels know what is coming which again seems to get rid of a big advantage.

Can somebody help me with how a strategy might be to use this card set?

My first thought on browsing through the class deck (not used it yet) that it looked potentially brutally powerful. Not just because it gives out loads of power tokens (which you're well aware of) but some of the cards are really nasty IMO.

• Personal Flagship provides a Villain of your choice for 1 XP? Not bad, especially if choosing a Villain that boosts other units (Agent Blaise for example - or Hondo in a non-Lothal campaign). Not amazing because decent Villains cost enough Threat to be tough to deploy, but that's Villains for you.
• TIE Fighter Patrol is nasty. Plenty of heroes suck at Insight tests - any such hero now effectively has 3 less Health, making them much easier to wound (and meaning they'll need to rest more often, meaning they get to do less cool stuff... low-Insight hero players won't enjoy this at all).
• Limitless Arsenal is horrible . Take an AT-ST or something as an open group, and even though you'll never have the Threat to deploy it, stick a power token on it. Every single Imperial figure now has the potential (one figure per round) to use that card's attack pool. Red-Red-Blue on a random Stormtrooper or 2-point rIO? Ouch!

I don't think any of those change your assessment of the deck in terms of what it does. But it looks to me (just from a read of the cards) that the power gained from all those tokens and other card effects is pretty impressive. (Not Hutt Mercenaries level of broken but still, pretty strong). Which, yeah, is traded off against the ability to surprise the heroes with what's in your hand - but how surprising does that ever really get? There's been a few times in our campaigns when I've gone "haha, A RANCOR!!!" or "I bet you weren't expecting DARTH VADER!!!" but mostly it's more like "oh, yeah, so... I have an elite E-Web" and the heroes are like "****, OK, well let's deal with that then".

So I think this deck will play very differently to most. Your role as Imperial player won't be to use subtlety and guile to outwit the heroes - it will be to use power and damage to batter and crush them.

(And actually, as someone who, just like you, tends to use the skill cards from the box... I'm not sure that's really how I want to play. I certainly don't want to punish the player who takes the lowest-Insight hero for every round of every mission, that won't be much fun for them either. So I'm currently expecting to use some different class for our Lothal campaign. But it looks to me like an Imperial player who does decide to use it won't be at a disadvantage, not AFAICT anyway).

I have not played the Jabba Relam one and I am taking a look at the Hutt Mercenaries now. I got a question on that now. the first card wanted dead the way that I read that means at the start of the mission each hero get a bounty token. And the only way that bounty token gets removed is if they get wounded, am I correct in that?

3 minutes ago, Payens said:

I have not played the Jabba Relam one and I am taking a look at the Hutt Mercenaries now. I got a question on that now. the first card wanted dead the way that I read that means at the start of the mission each hero get a bounty token. And the only way that bounty token gets removed is if they get wounded, am I correct in that?

Close. The bounty tokens persist throughout the campaign, from mission to mission.

So to start the first mission, everyone gets a token. Say during the mission, Onar, Fenn and Shyla get wounded and lose their tokens - next mission, only Diala starts with a token. That mission Onar gets wounded (didn't have a token) and then Diala (loses hers). Now nobody has a token, so all four get new ones right away.

Hope that helps!

Hutt Mercenaries : Whenever no hero has a bounty token, they all claim bounty tokens. This means you start the first mission with all heroes having bounty tokens. Bounty tokens are not discarded at the end of each mission, only when a hero is defeated - i.e. when a hero becomes wounded or withdrawn/incapacitated.

Hutt Mercenaries is like playing on Easy Mode for the Imperial player. (Or possibly Not-Fun Mode for the Rebel players, depending how you look at it). I regret using it for our Jabba campaign.

39 minutes ago, Bitterman said:

Hutt Mercenaries is like playing on Easy Mode for the Imperial player.

Not if they have MHD-19.

Yeah, it's a weird deck. Kinda seems weird that a deck themed around Thrawn sacrificed subterfuge for brute force, but I guess he was kind of the Ulysses S. Grant of Star Wars in some ways. Sometimes the best strategy is just knowing you already have the numbers to win, and ruthlessly pressing the attack.

I'm not in love with revealing what's up my sleeve, but I might give it a try in a mini-campaign sometime.

1 hour ago, a1bert said:

Not if they have MHD-19.

Ha I think that is said for almost any group MHD-19 really makes a group harder to kill with all his regen.

8 hours ago, a1bert said:

Not if they have MHD-19.

Wouldn't the additional burst damage from Hutt compensate by pushing the Rebels into wounded faster than MHD can heal them?

2 hours ago, Majushi said:

Wouldn't the additional burst damage from Hutt compensate by pushing the Rebels into wounded faster than MHD can heal them?

Depends. Most of the burst damage depends on Bounty tokens, and MHD-19 (Miracle Worker in addition to allowing heroes recover damage out of their activations) can protect the hero who has the last Bounty token or the rebels keeping the hero out of harm's way.

With bad luck and less planning though (leaving heroes with Bounty tokens easily attackable), Hutt Mercenaries could get a hero defeated once per round.

2 hours ago, a1bert said:

Depends. Most of the burst damage depends on Bounty tokens, and MHD-19 (Miracle Worker in addition to allowing heroes recover damage out of their activations) can protect the hero who has the last Bounty token or the rebels keeping the hero out of harm's way.

With bad luck and less planning though (leaving heroes with Bounty tokens easily attackable), Hutt Mercenaries could get a hero defeated once per round.

The heroes had MHD-19 when I played. Wounding heroes in a single Imperial activation meant he had no opportunity to heal anyone. Yes, that's possible only against a hero with a Bounty token, but at some point (including the next mission after any mission where all the heroes get wounded) that'll be all the heroes. And the card that lets you (IIRC, add a blue dice and ) ignore figures for line of sight meant it was literally impossible for the heroes to hide; they didn't leave themselves easily attackable, they just couldn't do anything to stop me attacking them.

IIRC the finale for Jabba's Realm has a time limit of eight rounds? I won it by wounding all the heroes in four. Not even close. And I felt pretty bad about it, because it's not like I won by skillful play. I just had tools at my disposal that the heroes had no possible counter to.

Anyway. I could rant about Hutt Mercenaries all day. Another time...

15 minutes ago, Bitterman said:

Anyway. I could rant about Hutt Mercenaries all day. Another time...

I'll add that I agree about Hutt Mercenaries, and that deck was no fun running the Imperial side with. I'm looking forward to running Jabba's Realm again with another deck

I'll just add that being able to ignore figures when determining line of sight matters much less in the Bespin Gambit campaign (and in Heart of the Empire).

Being forced to tip your hand has turned me off to the class deck as well. When I do play as the Empire, I like to surprise the Rebels with my deployments and I enjoy the tension whenever I look through my hand during the status phase or mission events. They didn't even need to have the hand revealed to make the deck work, they could have just had you reveal the card for Limitless Arsenal when you use it. I do like the theme of having Imperial ships supporting troops on the ground, I think that's pretty novel, but just flooding the table with power tokens is less exciting.

Has anyone actually tried it yet that is critiquing the deck? I played the first 4 missions of Lothal already and the deck is actually a lot of fun.

It is very powerful, but its balanced by your Rebels knowing what is coming. They still don't know exactly what you are planning to deploy, but they do get hints as to where the power tokens have gone. This leads to great mind tricks though, as you can sort of 'fake them out' on what they think you are going to deploy next. And it is by no means a waste as the power tokens don't go anywhere, they sit on the card until you decide to play it.

My favourite card so far is TIE Landers. So often in this game we are at a disadvantage of where we have to deploy, especially the beefier the Rebels get. This card really helps combat that as it is essentially up to 3 unmitigated damage per round.

Redouble your efforts is also another must buy, it adds a ton of utility to your tokens and helps make sure that they don't get wasted with the "blow up that guy he has those tokens!!" tactic the Heroes will learn to employ quickly.

It is a really fun and unique deck. I like to try out all the decks as I believe it adds flavor to the game. I'm far from "MUST WIN AT ALL COSTS" at this point, its about making it a fun experience for everyone. And as my Rebels stumble through their own new heroes, I enjoy doing it along side them with a new deck.

My heroes have all agreed this is a very cool change of pace in regards to how the games usually go.

Interesting to hear the practical experience, thanks.

Point of order - where the Class deck says you have to play with your deployment card "hand" visible to the heroes, does that include Reserved Groups? Or just Open Groups and recycling anything that's died? Because a lot of missions seem like a lot less fun (never mind advantageous/disadvantageous) if you know Palpatine is about to show up, or whatever.

12 minutes ago, Bitterman said:

Interesting to hear the practical experience, thanks.

Point of order - where the Class deck says you have to play with your deployment card "hand" visible to the heroes, does that include Reserved Groups? Or just Open Groups and recycling anything that's died? Because a lot of missions seem like a lot less fun (never mind advantageous/disadvantageous) if you know Palpatine is about to show up, or whatever.

Great question.

I initially assumed that Reserved groups would have to be revealed too, but pg. 22 of the RRG says otherwise.

Quote

Reserved Groups

During a campaign, many missions provide the Imperial player certain Deployment cards called reserved groups.

These cards are not part of his hand and are kept facedown on the table. They cannot be deployed or reinforced while facedown. Rebel players cannot look at reserved Deployment cards

...

When the last figure in a non-unique reserved group is defeated, the matching Deployment card is placed in the Imperial player’s hand. He can then deploy these figures during an optional deployment following normal deployment rules.

Right, reserved groups are set aside and are not part of the IP's hand.

Can anyone think of a situation before this class deck that would've required the distinction between "hand" and the combination of reserved and open groups? I wonder if I've played this wrong before.

Other than "Reserved groups can only be deployed by mission events." and the card backs of cards being open information, I don't think there is much that could go wrong.

Nemeses allows to reveal both cards from hand and reserved groups.

Yes I kept the reserved groups secret, so there is still that element of surprise coming at them.

After a card gets killed though from the reserved group, it goes back into your hand to be re deployed correct? Besides unique of course.

21 minutes ago, FrogTrigger said:

After a card gets killed though from the reserved group, it goes back into your hand to be re deployed correct? Besides unique of course.

Once deployed it's no longer a reserved group. All non-unique defeated groups return to the IP's hand. (Barring mission rules to the contrary.)

On 9/11/2018 at 4:51 PM, subtrendy2 said:

but I guess he was kind of the Ulysses S. Grant of Star Wars in some ways.

Wait... Thrawn had a drinking problem!? Timothy Zahn's writing had more subtlety then I realized!

4 hours ago, Uninvited Guest said:

Wait... Thrawn had a drinking problem!? Timothy Zahn's writing had more subtlety then I realized!

It really came across in Rebels.