I have been working on building a strain list and I can’t decide if Under Duress is worth putting into it. To that end I have been trying to organize my thoughts about Under Duress, and have been asking myself some questions about it. I figured I should get some community thoughts on those questions as well.

1. Will people always take the damage instead of losing 2 command cards? With the exception of that damage killing a figure.

2. Slightly Tangential to the above. How much damage is needed to be worth 2 deployment points?

2a. How much damage would be needed if you were already at 7-8 activations and didn’t need another rJawa?

3. Does having Under Duress improve strain command cards, or actually hinder them because people will take damage and not burn their deck?

4. Would you use Under Duress as a “bluff” to have people take more damage, without specializing your command deck towards strain? (I put quotes around bluff, as figures like IG would still take advantage of it.)

5. How many points of a command deck should I put towards strain vs other effects?



My own answers to my questions.
1. I think very few people would drop the command cards and would instead take the damage. Command cards win games.

2. For 2 deployment points and losing an activation I’m feeling like 4-6 damage might start to be worth it.

2a. If I already had enough activations maybe 3-4 damage.

3. I’m really unsure about this, I think this question is where I’m struggling the most. I guess it depends on if the person is saving their command cards and choosing damage instead when they take a strain.

4. I could see the bluff working, but only if people were afraid of the strain.

5. I’m also really torn on this, but I’m thinking 7 command points wouldn’t be unreasonable to spend in a strain based list.

Any further thoughts or idea would be helpful as well.

Maybe also worth considering if the Strain they would take is irrelevant.

If you're already killing the figure, the strain is effectively wasted as they choose to take it as damage and there is no downside to them.

Lets say you need 4 damage to kill something, and roll enough to not need the strain damage. The ability is effectively not contributing anything in that scenario...

So I've been thinking about this a bit since yesterday, and here's what I've come up with. I think there are two main issues with Under Duress as it stands right now.

1) Lack of synergy with the Mercenary faction

I know this sounds crazy since the Mercs have about a hundred different command cards that cause strain, but hear me out. Say you're trying to make an Under Duress list - what goes in it? Well, IG for sure. Maybe you bring in Chopper from the rebels. Great start... but now what? Wing guards? Trandos? Bossk might actually be one of the better options. You can bring in a few rJawas, which aren't useless, but they're probably not winning you many games (especially if you're spending your surges on harrassing instead of damage). I think this is the main problem with Under Duress right now. The question isn't really "is Under Duress worth two points" so much as it is "is Under Duress worth spending two points and downgrading your list in other areas in order to take advantage of the ability". I think that the day we get a scum deployment like the Riot Troopers, which are already pretty good on their own but then add strain as a bonus, we might have something to combine with IG to make an Under Duress list actually worthwhile.

And yes, you can bring in the strain command cards, but then you're taking points and command card slots away from the likes of the hunter cards or the other useful staples. Again, you're sacrificing a bit in another part of your list just to make the 2-point card worthwhile.

2) The "delayed" nature of strain

To my mind there are two goals of strain/Under Duress lists: to get rid of useful command cards, and to eventually burn through the deck to convert that strain into damage. Lists that tend to draw through their deck and rely a lot on their command cards will be hurt by a strain list killing their command deck, no doubt. But for a "normal" list that wouldn't have otherwise gone through the deck (e.g. any imperial list, Spectre Cell, rebels and mercs without R2/Jabba) then the first couple of cards you throw out for strain don't really matter much. Whether I discard them for strain or whether they would have sat unused on the bottom of my deck, I wasn't going to be able to play those cards anyway.

If I don't have extra card draw and I'm expecting the game to meaningfully last four rounds (i.e. three rounds of card draws with a terminal), that means that I'm expecting to see nine of my cards before the end of the game - I can "safely" toss six to strain without it really changing the game state. Even with Under Duress, that still means that I've got a buffer of three strain to play with before I have to start making the tough decisions about whether to throw away cards or take damage. That's not terrible, but it's not great either - IG alone probably isn't going to cut it.

Which brings us to the other part of the strain "delay", the fact that you're not getting the benefit of the strain->damage transition right away. So much of this game - particularly things like Take Init, all of the hunter cards, etc. - is about taking out key figures early before they can hurt you and earn their value. If I'm attacking a big figure in round 2 and come up a few damage short, I can play assassinate/pos. advantage/grisly contest/dark energy/whatever to finish it off before it gets to activate. If I used a strain card in my deck instead, they're for sure going to take the strain as discards. Yes it sucks for them to have to throw away two command cards, but they'll still get to activate next with their big figure and do all the damage that comes along with that. A big swing like that can have a huge effect on a game. By the time the "strain train" depletes their command deck and starts going straight damage, it could be too late.

With all that said, strain's definitely not useless, and I'd love to see a list where it works. If you're against a big card draw deck it can have a big impact (yes you "wasted" some of your points on Under Duress, but now they've wasted points on R2/RHC/Black Market/whatever). I think it's just going to be tough to make a big enough difference until we get some better merc figures that strain.

you've got to get tons of command cards quick. Extra damage is extra damage, so the jawa can actually kill something that's taken a strain damage and is now weakened. The real lynchpin of this list or what's keeping it from being a "thing" or competitive, is the lack of a multiple figure unit that is worth taking for the points. Think of the Trandoshan. If the regular figures had 8 health or if the elite deployment card was costed at 8pts instead of 10, then you'd have a beast of a unit that can naturally cause strain and do decent damage and not get one-shot . Regular Trandos at 5 would be a steal, even with their crappy dice/surges.

There's a player in our community who loves this card and has made many lists around it. He was pretty successful with it at our last nationals. Most if not all players he's played with his list have no command cards by early 2nd round. I'm not kidding.

Here are my answers after playing him so many times:

1. Will people always take the damage instead of losing 2 command cards? With the exception of that damage killing a figure.

----it really depends how often you're applying straing. His list has a lot of ways to apply strain so after a while you're sick of taking damage!

2. Slightly Tangential to the above. How much damage is needed to be worth 2 deployment points?

----Again, if you're doing it often, after a while you get worried and start milling cards.

2a. How much damage would be needed if you were already at 7-8 activations and didn’t need another rJawa?

-----I'm not sure what you mean here.

3. Does having Under Duress improve strain command cards, or actually hinder them because people will take damage and not burn their deck?

-----I think it makes it worse for your opponent! So yes put in strain cards.

4. Would you use Under Duress as a “bluff” to have people take more damage, without specializing your command deck towards strain? (I put quotes around bluff, as figures like IG would still take advantage of it.)

-----He totally plays this up. "Would you like to take the damage or mill 2 cards!" Frankly I love this kind of chat in games like Imperial Assault and X-wing. Give your opponent "a choice". LOL Trash talk without being a di-ck really as you're just asking a legit question right?

5. How many points of a command deck should I put towards strain vs other effects?

-----This guy uses them ALL! Any strain giving cards he can give, he'll give. He wants your command deck gone as soon as possible.

I posted one of his lists here back in March 2018. The most recent one he had had wing guards. Yes, wing guards. He used them to park nearby other targets like IG and dare you to shoot those targets.

39 minutes ago, NeverBetTheFett said:

There's a player in our community who loves this card and has made many lists around it. He was pretty successful with it at our last nationals. Most if not all players he's played with his list have no command cards by early 2nd round. I'm not kidding.

Was that the guy who brought IG, chopper, 6 Jawas and first strike (of all things!)? That was an awesome list - by far my favourite match of the day.

15 minutes ago, ManateeX said:

Was that the guy who brought IG, chopper, 6 Jawas and first strike (of all things!)? That was an awesome list - by far my favourite match of the day.

Tell us more about the list. Can we know the full setup?

I believe a strain list isn't viable as of now at least in competitive play.

Unless you find a way to move Jabba efficiently across the map and give him Under Duress. Single Purpose would be great in that case!

32 minutes ago, Golan Trevize said:

Tell us more about the list. Can we know the full setup?

I'm trying to remember from a year ago, but basically I think it was something like:

• IG-88 w FotK
• Jabba
• Chopper
• 2x eJawa
• 4x rJawa
• First Strike
• Under Duress
• ... some other one point upgrade, not sure. Black market maybe?

I sat down against it and thought "wow, this is going to be a weird game but it shouldn't be too bad". And it started that way... but as the game went on, every single card in his deck either gave me strain or gave him victory points. I had to read half of them as he pulled them out, having never seen them before.

The play of the game came after I thought the game was pretty much over. IG was dead, chopper was dead, most of his jawas were dead and I still had most of my army left without much damage on them. At the start of the round I was leading something like 38 - 29.

That's when he played Chaotic Force (I bet you had to go read the wording on that one ). We each chose three figures from the other side, and then he rolled a 3 on the accuracy result - meaning I had nine total strain to give out, throwing away two cards at a time if I wanted to mitigate. By that point I was almost out of cards, so I was left with a dead smuggler, a dead C3P0 (celebration!) and I had just enough cards to keep a ranger alive with one health left. That one move gave him a 10-point swing, bringing him to 39 points - and if I'd had one fewer card and my ranger had taken one more damage, it would have won him the game.

On my first activation of the next turn I was able to hit Jabba with a focused Ranger from ten spaces away, playing Assassinate and pulling out the win. Just a crazy game.

1 hour ago, ManateeX said:

On my first activation of the next turn I was able to hit Jabba with a focused Ranger from ten spaces away, playing Assassinate and pulling out the win. Just a crazy game.

Yup! That was against John. He has a new VP list with Hondo. He got to 40 VPs so fast!

2 hours ago, NeverBetTheFett said:

Yup! That was against John. He has a new VP list with Hondo. He got to 40 VPs so fast!

We definitely need more spoilers, invite John into this thread

He doesn't go on this forum. But here's his squad:

Temp Alliance, Leia, Sabine, Jabba, R2D2, eJawa x2, First Strike, Black Market

He starts the game off by congratulating you that you just received 4 VPs (first strike). LOL. He's a super nice guy so it always makes me laugh when he says it.

I'll get his command card list later.