I've wanted to play around with stealth device for a while now but like a number of people I ultimately blew it off. After all, why would I add an extra die that only lasts till the first hit when I can add a shield for the same point cost? Then I had a change in perspective. Shield upgrade let's you take one extra hit/crit. Stealth device allows the potential to just avoid an extra hit/crit, possibly multiple times. I decided if that extra die can cancel just one hit/crit it's effectively equal to shield upgrade. Anything beyond that is just gravy. Since this past week in my group was a mix of semi-final play for this season and poops and giggles match ups (guess which one I was in) it seemed as good a time as any to play with this mod with a less than stellar rep. So I slapped the following on the table.
“Wolffe” (51)
Clone Commander Cody (3)
R5 Astromech (4)
Stealth Device (4)
“Jag” (49)
Chancellor Palpatine (14)
R3 Astromech (3)
Stealth Device (4)
“Tucker” (31)
Stealth Device (6)
Gold Squadron Trooper (25)
Stealth Device (6)
Total: 200
I almost exclusively took evade actions Torrets and stuck to focusing the ARCs unless really good target opportunities presented themselves. On the other side of the table was Edrio, Benthic, Garvin, and Dutch. In the end I only lost Jag and eliminated all of the opposition. My biggest take away was that if you're not planning fielding the Torrents as missiles carriers SD could be worth considering. The GST took some light damage from a torpedo hit in the first round of shooting but Tucker kept dodging shots for several turns. Ultimately the evade tokens were the key to the V-19s staying alive but there were times Tucker was able to avoid two+ hit attacks which would have been far less likely without rolling three dice. Is he worth 37 points? Perhaps not but he was fun to play.
I'm not ready to consider stealth device an auto include on the ARCs. Wolffe and Jag we able to keep damage free for the first two or three rounds of combat. Jag's SD was actually knocked out from a deadman's switch on Edrio. My gut says there will be times that SU will be better if there's points and mod slot to spare though I can't put my finger on specifics. All I can say for certain is that it does feel **** good to roll two green dice for an ARC.