Bounty can win or lose games. Bounty can change the way the enemy plays their marked character without ever requiring the player with bounty to fire a shot or even expose themselves to fire/ take any risks. Bounty can be worth as much as 25% of the total available VP's on a game (Key Position).

Why is such an overtly powerful, game plan altering ability faction specific? Imps already have way more competitive options in list building and have Operatives and commanders that are far more straight forward in their use.

If you are a game designer and care at all about creating a balanced game why would you create bounty and make it as strong as it is. An then, seeing that, why would you then not tone it down or offer the other faction a comparable method of earning VP's outside the normal mission guidelines.

I think Bounty is to unfair and should either carry a risk with it, such as, if the marked unit kills your bounty hunter then the other side gets a point, so that you don't have this one sided mini game going on the whole time where your trying not to give up Bounty Vp's while the player with bounty just goes no their merry way if they want, or actively hunts the bounty (they are under no pressure to change their game plan at all since they are in no danger of giving up a game altering VP b losing a single model)

Or the bounty should be worth a large number of point for determining Margin of Victory in the event of a VP tie, this prevents the whole calculous of how you must approach a low VP game from being changed simply due to a single, faction locked key word.

Anything that puts such a massive burden on one player while requiring no action or risk on the part of the other is a bad idea, made worse by its faction specificness.

Luke, Alex, what is your rational for leaving bounty as it is?

It's thematically sound? Didn't the Republic/Rebellion outlaw bounty hunters?

7 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

It's thematically sound? Didn't the Republic/Rebellion outlaw bounty hunters?

They definitely used them in the Aftermath series to hunt down high value Imperials. In fact i think one of the main characters is a bounty hunter.

58 minutes ago, jcmonson said:

They definitely used them in the Aftermath series to hunt down high value Imperials. In fact i think one of the main characters is a bounty hunter.

There is a bounty hunter in the main characters, but not acting as a bounty hunter. They hunt down imperial fugitives but not for a bounty, that's why she wanted to leave the team, because she needed money and those tasks didn't get her that

54 minutes ago, Lemmiwinks86 said:

There is a bounty hunter in the main characters, but not acting as a bounty hunter. They hunt down imperial fugitives but not for a bounty, that's why she wanted to leave the team, because she needed money and those tasks didn't get her that

You are right, going back over it they weren't acting as a bounty hunter for the Rebellion/New Republic. They could still add it in with that character because they were collecting bounties on Imperials when they came into contact with the team, and they were practically doing the same thing, just without being paid as part of the team. The mechanic would still work.

Probably because thematically it fits in with the Imperials who have so many famous bounty hunters. Game play wise? I’m sure Rebels will get an equivalent eventually.

Okay, thematically, it doesn't seem like a good idea to, when you are a small ragtag band, hire someone that hunts down people for money. I mean the Rebellion doesn't exactly pay great, as they use whatever they have to fight the Empire. The mercenary attitude of most bounty hunters means it is very likely that they would betray the rebellion to the Empire if offered enough credits.

Second, in aftermath as I recall, the bounty hunter was also not working for the Rebellion, but the New Republic. There is an important difference as the new republic was now the legitimate (to some) government and no longer in hiding.

NOW, game wise, you are mostly right, the bounty hunters we see are in the employ of the Empire. Rebels could get Ketsu Onyo, a bounty hunter, that ended up working with the phoenix squad (Rebels show).

Next, the upcoming separatists faction will have bounty hunters as well. So it won't be limited to one faction.

Now, you make the assumption, that there will not be a mechanic that is only for rebels upcoming. Just because you can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there.

Finally, posting to the developers on the forums isn't likely to get a response. You would do better to either post to them vie twitter, during one if their live streams, or via the direct message from the main FFG website.

Theme be darned... the rebel equivalent should have been released along side it. Without balance theme is useless and actually a detriment.

I feel it is a major advantage for Empire players, who need no help anyway, but that's not the point. The point is that 2 equally skilled, equally talented players can walk up to a table and regardless of what mission is played, or who bids and gets blue player, if one player has bounty and the other does not, one player instantly has access to another way to score VP's that the other side does not.

Imagine football, soccer, tennis, golf, etc. having rules that allow 1 team an additional method of scoring points, that poses no risk to them and the other team has no access to. They may exploit that method, or ignore it, but if the other team ignores the possibility of it scoring points, they could easily lose a close game based on that alone.

This is especially true when there is a finite number of VP's available. In missions like KP with only 3 native VP's up for grabs it swings the whole dynamic of battle, (your theme rule makes up 25% of all available VP's in the game...)

If the bounty can be collected the Imp player can simply sit back on their most easily defended objective and play for MoV. where the rebel player must then push forward onto the center KP JUST TO TIE, and then some how manage to win MoV on top of exposing their troops in the center.

How is that fair?

Many will say "well just don't give up the bounty," and this is true, BUT the opportunity cost of being able to put an arbitrary VP head hunt on any Operative or HQ with no negative ramifications will strongly influence how the marked piece is used by the rebel player in order to avoid a difficult situation like the one example I outlined above.

I don't play Luke but imagine for a second you are a rebel player with Luke, a melee focus unit that needs to close in order to make meaningful impacts on the attrition war. You slap a bounty on Luke and now, added on top of the risk of pushing Luke forward to soon and losing your commander, there is also the risk of losing him to a thematic game design choice, and then you are down 1 VP, which is often all it takes to flip a game from being an even gun fight into a situation where the rebel MUST push forward and is forced to make risky plays in order to essentially win the mission by 2 VP's instead of 1.

Anyone that has played this game seriously knows how hard it is to win Key Positions, Recover Supplies, or Moisture Vaps, by 2 VP's. It is also very hard to win these missions by 1 while retaining the MoV edge because you have to over extend in order to reach those harder points while the Imps get to set back and Aim/Shoot or Dodge/Shoot in Heavy cover.

Someone please, LOGICALLY, Justify how this is fair.

aside from pointing out how badly this can swing games, and how both sides don't have access to it, I want to offer a suggestion to amend this issue:

1. Remove Bounty all together, just play the game like it was set up, no VP adding

2. Make it a risk to use, if a player uses bounty and does not collect it their needs to be a consequence, so there is a thought process there of "is this worth using," instead of using it because why not its on the card...

2.a maybe make it optional to use and if the marked unit survives and the bounty hunter dies bounty awards a VP to the other team, this creates a meaningful decision about when/how to use bounty that has real consequences, it also offers the opportunity for counterplay against it

2.b maybe make the bounty act like it currently does but a collected bounty doubles the value of the marked unit when calculating MoV. this is still a huge edge in a lot of games that go to tie breakers, but does not force one player to extend their units forward to tie VP, losing attrition in the process.

3. create rebel alternate VP options of similar type. (if this was going to be done it should have been done already, releasing stuff that intentionally creates this VP scoring issue, even to 6-9 months does not respect your players)

The main issue is what ever is done, it needs to force decisions on the user. Right now Bounty is a fire and forget threat that Imps can fire off without thought and it may win them a close game. In order to counter that minimal brain power tactic, players on the other end of it must constantly play around this threat from turn 0 through turn 6.

I haven't felt bounty is so pass powerful that it's screening balance more than anything else.

Maybe clones and rebels get another way to get extra vp in the future while droids and emp have bounty

1 hour ago, Angry Ewok said:

Anyone that has played this game seriously knows how hard it is to win Key Positions, Recover Supplies, or Moisture Vaps, by 2 VP's. It is also very hard to win these missions by 1 while retaining the MoV edge because you have to over extend in order to reach those harder points while the Imps get to set back and Aim/Shoot or Dodge/Shoot in Heavy cover.

Someone please, LOGICALLY, Justify how this is fair.

I'll attempt.

Bounty was released along side with Infiltrate. There are currently no Imperial units with Infiltrate, on release there was only 1 unit with Bounty whilst rebels had 2 with Infiltrate. Additionally, you can have multiple units with infiltrate in an army list where an imperial could only have 1. Now 2 with Bossk.

For Recover Supplies, its quite easy for Rebels to Infiltrate and run away with the middle box. Bounty provides an additional means for imperials to even the score if this happens.

For Key Positions, you have options to infiltrate the back line objective (most of the time there is only 1 unit here holding it). The Imperial player has to focus additional resources to deal with it, therefore less units trying to claim the middle. Or can try go for the bounty.

For Intercept Transmissions, you can claim the middle earlier for quick points, or disrupt the back line with Infiltrate. Bounty can give options to even the score.

For Breakthrough you can literally infiltrate into a weakly defended area of their deployment zone. Once again bounty can give options to even the score somewhat.

For Moisture Vaporators not much you can do here, but theres not much a bounty hunter can do as well unless the rebel player makes a mistake.

For all situations an infiltrating unit can deploy to intercept the bounty hunter.

Not saying that the above is right and yes i know most people don't use units with Infiltrate anymore. I'm just saying that this is probably what the designers were thinking when they introduced Bounty and Infiltrate. FFG systems have a tradition of keeping factions asymmetrical, or 'same same but different'.

Can you show me on this doll where Boba and Bossk touched you?

3 hours ago, Lemmiwinks86 said:

There is a bounty hunter in the main characters, but not acting as a bounty hunter. They hunt down imperial fugitives but not for a bounty, that's why she wanted to leave the team, because she needed money and those tasks didn't get her that

It's mentioned that other bounty hunters are working in a direct capacity as bounty hunters for the New Republic though.

1 hour ago, That Blasted Samophlange said:

Second, in aftermath as I recall, the bounty hunter was also not working for the Rebellion, but the New Republic. There is an important difference as the new republic was now the legitimate (to some) government and no longer in hiding.

There's a new comic series that came out two weeks ago Star Wars: Target Vader, that has a faction of the Rebellion hiring bounty hunters(Dengar among them) to assassinate Vader.

I think the main reason for them not being available is probably theming. Bounty hunters have always been portrayed as antagonists in the movies even though they're an entirely legitimate and legal occupation, so only the "bad guy" factions get them. CIS, Empire and even the Sith Empire in the Old Republic MMO all get bounty hunters because they're the evil ones.

I like I like that the factions have different qualities. It would be goofy for the rebels to have bounty hunters as they are not in any of the movies, which is what 95 + percent of the people are exposed to for Star Wars.

Should the Empire get Z6s, or lots of Ion, or a Luke equivalent? No.

There were good bounty hunters that should be made available to Republic, Rebel, and Resistance armies. The episode in the Clone Wars cartoon where four or five good bounty hunters, helped by Anakin and Obi-wan, are hired by poor farmers to fend off Hondo and his pirates are just one good example. There was the bounty hunter that threw his metal hat and the one little guy that operated a bulky-looking armoured suit. I imagine that plenty of Mandalorians would have grudges against the Empire (especially after what the Empire did to Mandalore in the Rebels cartoon) and would take up bounties against certain hated Imperial commanders.

16 minutes ago, Stormtrooper721 said:

There were good bounty hunters that should be made available to Republic, Rebel, and Resistance armies. The episode in the Clone Wars cartoon where four or five good bounty hunters, helped by Anakin and Obi-wan, are hired by poor farmers to fend off Hondo and his pirates are just one good example. There was the bounty hunter that threw his metal hat and the one little guy that operated a bulky-looking armoured suit. I imagine that plenty of Mandalorians would have grudges against the Empire (especially after what the Empire did to Mandalore in the Rebels cartoon) and would take up bounties against certain hated Imperial commanders.

Those guys aren’t good, they’re working purely for money. Embo (metal hat guy) works directly for Darth Sidious.

8 minutes ago, Derrault said:

Those guys aren’t good, they’re working purely for money. Embo (metal hat guy) works directly for Darth Sidious.

On the earlier seven samurai nod episode he wasn't working for sidious but was being paid by he farmers and ended up fighting alongside Obi-Wan, iirc that was the episode Embo was introduced. As for bounty this is indeed a way for an imperial player to gain points over the rebel player and on the face of it seems unfair, however both Bossk and Boba ain't cheap and are a considerable investment on points in a game where many of the objectives are easier the more activations you get. So even if Boba does slap a bounty on , let's say the easiest to kill, Rebel Officer. Now you can use that officer as a distraction or even as a trap, as Boba is rather prone to getting shot down by Z6 troopers in the games I've played against him. Only played against Bossk once and his Armor is rebel trooper paper thin.

The only real "good" GCW mass-market bounty hunters that come to mind are Zuckuss and 4-LOM but that's digging pretty deep. Don't really see the bounty victory points being a game changer though; it's something that'll occasionally pay off rather than something to build one's battle plan around.

I could see Ketsu Onyo being a possible bounty hunter for the Rebellion. But there is so many more characters that I would like to see before her that I hope she’s not coming soon.

When the Empire gets infiltrate......

57 minutes ago, Red Castle said:

I could see Ketsu Onyo being a possible bounty hunter for the Rebellion. But there is so many more characters that I would like to see before her that I hope she’s not coming soon.

Agreed.. I'd rather see the rest of The Ghost crew first.

Nah, we need Lando before anything else... I mean, Rieekan and Crix Nadine would be great, but Lando is an absolute must have ASAP. Gotta complete the OT protagonist team.

While the Rebellion/New Republic did have a few Bounty Hunters that sided with them, and they did use some in that capacity before the battle of Jakku, which is the end of the GCW, giving the Rebels bount might blur the faction identity too much. I agree though that the Rebellion should have some way to score alternative VPs.

If bounty was the game breaking, super powerful power you seem to give it credit for being, no Imperial list would be without Boba and/or Bossk. That's far from the case. Bounty is more of a counter to the Rebel's ability to character spam, and throw out a bunch of unique, really powerful minis. The Empire doesn't really have that option.

Of the games where I've played Boba, I think bounty was collected on maybe half of them, and ended up being the game winning VP once or twice. It plays a roll, to be sure, but it's hardly game breaking.

I may be mistaken but doesn't the bounty hunter have to be alive at the end of the match to collect the bounty? Meaning that if the bounty hunter does get the mark the roles now switch to the rebel player hunting down the bounty hunter to prevent them from getting the VP.