Does anyone have any suggestions for house rules to make him a little more fair? CT will be played in my campaign this weekend and I want to offer a house rule on him if everyone agrees that he is too powerful.

I think a requirement that the target must be dealt damage is a good start.

The first step would be to require that the attack does not miss .
The second step would be to require that the target (figure) suffers damage from the attack .

1 hour ago, a1bert said:

The first step would be to require that the attack does not miss .
The second step would be to require that the target (figure) suffers damage from the attack .

I’d be worried that’s still too good, lol.

I might make it “target figure and one adjacent figure within CT’s line of sight” gain the conditions.

Or “exhaust after attacking to test strength. For each success (maximum of 2) one figure within 2 spaces of the target become stunned and weakened.” This would keep it as is for the most part but add some element of chance. It’s still 33% to affect two imperials, which may be a little high. Change it to “...to become focused and test insight...” would reduce that to 25%, but now we might be getting too complicated.

4 minutes ago, Uninvited Guest said:

I might make it “target figure and one adjacent figure within CT’s line of sight” gain the conditions.

Adjacent figures always have line of sight to each other. Edit: wrong figure.

Would it be worth 2XP anymore? It doesn't increase damage output, it's almost fully defensive ability.

1 minute ago, a1bert said:

Adjacent figures always have line of sight to each other.

Sorry, I’ll rephrase that: “...target figure and one figure adjacent to the target space/figure within CT’s line of sight...”

I'd rather just buy a gun with stun than use 2xp to just affect the target figure and one adjacent.

I wouldn't state "if the attack did not miss", I would rather state "if the target suffered damage". In this case, deploying figures with good defense pool or white die, would help. In example Villains like Vader or RGC can very likely get zero damage from the attack.

Also we need to also state "Exhaust when an attack is declared. If the target suffered damage ...". Because CT can potentially do 4 attack so chances to use the card are still too high.

Problem with this card is that in SWIA there is a weak and unwritten economy that is:

- 1 focus = 1 action

- 1 stun = 1 action

This card is totally broken. An experienced player can understand that at first read. I don't understand how is possible that this has even been thought by designer first instance.

That action economy is for the Rebel players. While having a unit stunned can certainly change your plans, it is not nearly so bad as the IP.

Perhaps better balance for the card should have been "Exhaust this card after you resolve an attack with a ranged weapon to weaken all hostile figures within your line of sight and within 2 spaces of the target space."

This would make the card more powerful against small unit swarms, but without shutting down melee units.

Edit: To clarify, I'm trying to say within LOS and 2 spaces both need to be satisfied.

4 hours ago, a1bert said:

Would it be worth 2XP anymore? It doesn't increase damage output, it's almost fully defensive ability.

4 hours ago, player678037 said:

I'd rather just buy a gun with stun than use 2xp to just affect the target figure and one adjacent.

Any suggestion is going to require playtesting, isn't it? Here's how I'm looking at it:

1) If CT goes first in a round, then target figure and one adjacent are probably going to be how this card gets used most often anyway. If a high health, two figure group gets deployed then it's going to be pretty likely that CT will go first and target them.

2) How often do you kill the target figure leaving no need for stun or weaken? At least this way a hostile still gains conditions.

(In case there's any question, my suggestion is not adding a damage or "does not miss" requirement.)

1 hour ago, Uninvited Guest said:

1) If CT goes first in a round, then target figure and one adjacent are probably going to be how this card gets used most often anyway. If a high health, two figure group gets deployed then it's going to be pretty likely that CT will go first and target them.

2) How often do you kill the target figure leaving no need for stun or weaken? At least this way a hostile still gains conditions.

(In case there's any question, my suggestion is not adding a damage or "does not miss" requirement.)

It's hard to say how every game goes, but my experience has been that the Rebels will get a kill in on their first activation in a round. Having CT go first to attack and stun instead of kill something isn't bad, but it also isn't nearly as good. Opening with that move can still work if the stun completely stops the IP's figure(s) from attacking. Even then, I'd usually rather have the heavy hitter go first and let the others clean up.

This is a case where the mechanics of a card match the concept, but that alone doesn't make it a well-balanced card.

Conceptually, when you pin someone down with suppressing fire, you are trying to keep them from pursuing you or from popping their heads out from cover. So yeah you can fill an empty corridor with machine gun fire to keep a guy (who you can't see) who is hiding in a doorway from sticking his head out. Thus, no LOS to the affected models and not needing to hit anyone makes perfect sense for this ability. The stun represents them either not moving into the hallway towards you or not risking leaning out to take a shot, while the weakened represents that if they do take a shot it will be hurried and less effective and that when defending they will be more susceptible to cross-fire.

That's what I think they were going for anyway, but as we all know, the execution is flawed. A lot of the suggestions here lean towards requiring damage to be dealt, but I feel that this really takes away the entire concept of "pinning them down". I would prefer a fix that keeps the concept of the action intact. Something like:

"1 Strain, Exhaust this card: Choose an unoccupied target space within 6 squares of you. Hostile figures that move onto the target space or a space adjacent to it suffer 1 damage. Hostile figures that are within two spaces of the target space while attacking suffer -2 Range."

Now that isn't perfect by any stretch, and I'm sure that someone here will come up with a more mechanically sound version, but the core idea is that you are denying an area to the enemy and are making the attacks of enemies in that area more likely to miss. An alternative version would be something like:

"Exhaust this card: Choose a hostile figure within 6 spaces that is not in your line of sight. If at any point this turn you gain LOS to that figure, it suffers 2 damage."

Again, others can do it better but the idea here is that pinning someone down means if they stick their necks out they get shot, and this represents that.

On 12/14/2018 at 11:06 PM, player678037 said:

Having CT go first to attack and stun instead of kill something isn't bad

It is bad because he activates, attacks 4 times, 2 stunned+weaken and then move 4 MPs. This is an equivalent of 5 actions which is like activating 2.5 heroes (without considering 2 stuns are 2 actions less that means an equivalent of 1 activation less for the imperial).

This is broken by design, untested and not even read once before printing cards.

I definitely agree CT is a very strong hero. This discussion is meant to focus on "Pin Them Down" though. As you point out, if CT has spent 8xp on those upgrades and has a good gun, he'll be doing a lot of damage. I'd say at that point, Pin Them Down is weaker since CT would likely just be killing everything already. There would be nothing left to stun!

CT really is an easy hero to play since he's ranged and can be built to fill so many roles.

1 hour ago, player678037 said:

CT really is an easy hero to play since he's ranged and can be built to fill so many roles.

I believer this is Wildfire's greatest strength; there will ALWAYS be good options & uses for this hero. You virtually cannot play him badly, which makes him very strong indeed!

3 hours ago, player678037 said:

I definitely agree CT is a very strong hero. This discussion is meant to focus on "Pin Them Down" though. As you point out, if CT has spent 8xp on those upgrades and has a good gun, he'll be doing a lot of damage. I'd say at that point, Pin Them Down is weaker since CT would likely just be killing everything already. There would be nothing left to stun!

That's pretty much true, he ends up cleaning up the room or stunning the toughest guys, and then focus on one of them leveraging on weakened to apply an easy +2 damage for 1 surge. If the guy doesn't die he's Stunned so all CT has to do is to go out of LoS.

It has less effect when CT is stronger but it also make any deployment useless, unless you deploy 20 points worth of figures.

More importantly in ToL extended campaign you have 8XP after 3 missions. So at second mission he's already destroying all the fun. When he gets a T2 weapon, campaign is pretty much dead.

My game group finished ToL over the weekend. We used CT, Tress, Murne, and Jyn. I will say CT was pretty powerful, but we did not think he was as overpowered as many have said he is.

Barrage is cool, but is strain heavy and allowed the defender to use a white die in addition to their normal defense. This coupled with the tokens given by the Overwheming Oppression Class deck made it very difficult for CT to actually deal much (or any) damage with Barrage.

Pin Them Down is most definitely a great card. Those two Imperial units that became Stunned could still attack after their Stun was cleared, though, so it did not render them completely useless. Thrawn was also a help to the IP. He often used Prediction on CT to dissuade CT from going first to use Pin Them Down in units that were just deployed. Death Trooper’s Squad Tactics also helped the IP as far as keeping up with actions.

The IP seemed to get a lot of threat in ToL, so they tried to keep as many units on the board as possible so that they had options if his units were Stunned/Weakened by CT.

In sum, we found CT to be a very useful character, but we didn’t find him to be overpowered and campaign ban-worthy like we believe Shyla or Gideon to be.

8 hours ago, Funky_4LOM said:

Pin Them Down is most definitely a great card. Those two Imperial units that became Stunned could still attack after their Stun was cleared, though, so it did not render them completely useless.

Melee figures that don't have Pounce and close-range figures like elite Jets, Hired Guns and Trandoshans are effectively crippled by Pin Them Down, especially since Weaken makes it harder to make accuracy and lowers their damage output overall.

Our playgroup also recently finished a ToL campaign where CT and Pin Them Down were present. I have to say, it is an interesting experience where you have the most average expectations of that something new, in this case CT, and then during the actual play you are pushed to change that initial evaluation again and again. So, Pin Them Down indeed caught our eye early on in the game but it was actually when CT got a tier 3 sniper rifle (the rifle had everything to negate those additional white dice) that he became a 4-attacks in a round superstar. However, I feel that did not matter too much as the outcome of our particular campaign got very much determined with the great spoils we got from the SPECTRE side missions way before we even got to see any of those shiny tier 3 items the shopkeeper had been keeping away from us.

Having said that if Pin Them Down feels too oppressive it could be house-ruled to be "Action: Attack a figure in your line of sight. This attack misses. The target figure is stunned and weakened. Stun and weaken another figure up to 2 spaces away from target.", which would make sense thematically as what you are trying to do is to just pin them down.. and it might not be the most clever idea to do that if there are only Rebel figures nearby.

As an imperial player going to face CT I would consider picking Nemeses deck as that comes with multiple ways to deal with the card.

24 minutes ago, Tvboy said:

Melee figures that don't have Pounce and close-range figures like elite Jets, Hired Guns and Trandoshans are effectively crippled by Pin Them Down, especially since Weaken makes it harder to make accuracy and lowers their damage output overall.

That is a good point, but our IP didn’t bring a single one of the units you mentioned into this campaign. Except for the Loth Cats that were mission units (can’t think of the proper term).

He mainly brought in Death Troopers (E/R), eJawa Scavenger, eImp Officer, Heavies (E/R), Stormies (E/R) and that’s about it for his open groups. So, he had pretty solid range.

Like I said, the Death Troopers helped him get around Pin Them Down a bit. If CT pinned down a Death Trooper, it wild activate next, clear it’s stun and then either attack or reposition, then end it’s action and select a different DT to go our an Officer that was cost 6 or lower.

I'm not really sure how the Death Trooper's Tactical Comms has anything to do with Pin Them Down, although you mentioned that the Death Trooper had to go without attacking due to being stunned and activating the Officer after that didn't change anything.

I think as a whole the Lothal missions, being played on very small and cramped maps, aren't too bad for Imperial players that only bring ranged attackers against Pin Them Down. But that being said, I played a solo game of the Speeder Bike mission in the Lothal Campaign that involved Pin Them Down, and because of the mechanics of that mission, CT was able to force 2 figures a round to have to choose between attacking that round or automatically dying to falling off the map.

..and deal with it. Don't house rule, you never know how it's going to impact the game and someone is always hurt. It's better to grumble about developers together and deal with it, then to have a victim friend

1 hour ago, Alarin said:

..and deal with it. Don't house rule, you never know how it's going to impact the game and someone is always hurt. It's better to grumble about developers together and deal with it, then to have a victim friend

I mean, if your game group feels there needs to be a house rule, then so be it.

My game group’s main and nearly only house rule is that Gideon and Shyla are both off limits for campaigns unless we agree to let them be used.

On 12/16/2018 at 1:22 PM, player678037 said:

I definitely agree CT is a very strong hero. This discussion is meant to focus on "Pin Them Down" though. As you point out, if CT has spent 8xp on those upgrades and has a good gun, he'll be doing a lot of damage. I'd say at that point, Pin Them Down is weaker since CT would likely just be killing everything already. There would be nothing left to stun!

CT really is an easy hero to play since he's ranged and can be built to fill so many roles.

I've played a full campaign with him, and you are right on the money. Once CT gets a good gun and his 4XP Wildfire attack, Pin then Down becomes a footnote. I found, by about the midpoint of the campaign, I was more interested in the weaken than the stun, because Barrage attacks add a white die to the defender, and the white die often rolls evades that cancel surges. Weaken mitigates this to make your Barrage attacks more likely to get kills.

And wouldn't we rather get kills than stuns?

(EDIT: and another reason I became more interested in weaken than stun was that the imperial player adapted by using relatively few melee or close range enemies, so even if they survived, stun only rarely prevented them from attacking, but weaken consistently deprived them of a surge they might use for damage)

I played CT in Jabba's Realm, and I would say that Pin them Down was a top tier game-changing skill in about 2 missions, early on, before the heroes get enough offense to reliably pick enemies off with their activations. After that, it was just a good workhorse skill for improving follow-on attacks. By far his more ridiculous ability is Squad Tactics, which gives more out of turn movement than any other ability in the game, and can straight up trivialize missions that weren't built for it. We did at least one mission that felt completely unwinnable for the imperial player purely because of Squad Tactics.

But by the end of the campaign, I had a Pulse Cannon with a Plasma Cell, and I was just using Wildfire and Barrage every turn to burn everything down. No actions left for stunning or squad moving when you're taking 4 attacks in a turn and one-rounding an AT-DP.

So, bottom line, nah, Pin them Down is overblown... but CT is an insanely strong hero.

10 hours ago, labcoat_samurai said:

I've played a full campaign with him, and you are right on the money. Once CT gets a good gun and his 4XP Wildfire attack, Pin then Down becomes a footnote. I found, by about the midpoint of the campaign, I was more interested in the weaken than the stun, because Barrage attacks add a white die to the defender, and the white die often rolls evades that cancel surges. Weaken mitigates this to make your Barrage attacks more likely to get kills.

And wouldn't we rather get kills than stuns?

(EDIT: and another reason I became more interested in weaken than stun was that the imperial player adapted by using relatively few melee or close range enemies, so even if they survived, stun only rarely prevented them from attacking, but weaken consistently deprived them of a surge they might use for damage)

I played CT in Jabba's Realm, and I would say that Pin them Down was a top tier game-changing skill in about 2 missions, early on, before the heroes get enough offense to reliably pick enemies off with their activations. After that, it was just a good workhorse skill for improving follow-on attacks. By far his more ridiculous ability is Squad Tactics, which gives more out of turn movement than any other ability in the game, and can straight up trivialize missions that weren't built for it. We did at least one mission that felt completely unwinnable for the imperial player purely because of Squad Tactics.

But by the end of the campaign, I had a Pulse Cannon with a Plasma Cell, and I was just using Wildfire and Barrage every turn to burn everything down. No actions left for stunning or squad moving when you're taking 4 attacks in a turn and one-rounding an AT-DP.

So, bottom line, nah, Pin them Down is overblown... but CT is an insanely strong hero.

I totally agree, he is far too strong. Playtesting (if any) has totally missed the point on CT

11 hours ago, Trevize84 said:

I totally agree, he is far too strong. Playtesting (if any) has totally missed the point on CT

I don't think he's out of line compared to other very powerful heroes, like Gideon, Fenn, or Diala. There will definitely be missions where having him trivializes the mission, but he's not the only character like that.

For instance, I recall a mission with a mechanism where pushing an elite stormtrooper through a fire dealt damage to it, and all the elite stormtroopers had to be killed. Diala could kill an elte stormtrooper with force throw without even using an action by dragging it through multiple fire spaces, and we were doing this as only the second mission of the campaign. We coasted to victory easily, and the imperial player felt he had no chance. There's a similar story mission in Jabba's Realm with a Sarlacc pit that you can try to push people into but Diala could have just freely thrown people in. As a rule, her movement shenanigans are more versatile and efficient than CT's but less extreme.

If you have a hero team that's mostly top tier heroes, the Imperial player is going to be in trouble, but I don't think the answer is to ban or house rule individual heroes. I think the answer is to restrict the group to only maybe a couple top tier heroes, unless there's a significant skill disparity to offset it.