The Elite Heavy Stormtroopers ʼ Speed 3 is their biggest problem. Actually the idea is good. They have high defense and should have high firepower, so there has to be some kind of disadvantage. But Speed 3 just made them unplayable, because they couldn't use the typical "move 2 out of cover, shoot, move 2 back into cover"-tactic. So we gave them Speed 4, and that made them very efficient. But I still don't like their design concept. The Elite Heavy Stormtrooper's attack is very similar to that of an Elite Weequay or of an Elite Ranger, but without their Rerolls, without Hide, without the Hunter Trait and without any real access to Focus. Especially their Surge for Blast 2 could be great, but with Blue-Red and all the above, they don't have that Surge reliably. In other words, even IF an Elite Heavy Stormtrooper's target has an adjacent figure (for the blast to work), then he still deals a little less damage than an Elite Stormtrooper, if you factor the Squad Training reroll in. Additionally, having a red die instead of the green one, no Surge for Accuracy, no reroll, but an inherent +2 Accuracy, the Elite Heavy Stormtrooper has a shorter average range than a normal Elite Stormtrooper. Therefore, their attack is underwhelming, whilst they have an unreasonably high defense, especially for a sniper type of trooper. In my opinion, this contrast of high defense and weak attack is a design flaw for a Heavy Stormtrooper, who (in theory) is a normal Stormtrooper armed with a T-21 heavy blaster . The T-21 heavy blaster is described to deliver massive damage at long ranges but at a low rate of fire and without optics. So we should be looking at Speed 4, Health 5 to 7, no defensive abilities, but lots of firepower, but we actually are looking at a lower Speed, more defense and the firepower of an average figure that costs 1 point less. We already changed their Speed to 4 to make them playable at all, but they absolutely should lose Composite Plating and gain some kind of bonus to their firepower, like a reroll, another attack die, or an inherent Pierce 1, +1 Damage or +1 Surge or something like that.
My idea:
Heavy Stormtrooper
The regular and elite Heavy Stormtrooper deployment cards should include the following changes:
• The Speed value should be
4
.
• The abilities should not include the "Composite Plating" ability.
Additionally, the elite Heavy Stormtrooper deployment card should include the following changes:
• An additional ability of the elite Heavy Stormtrooper should read: "
T-21 Repeating Blaster:
While attacking, you may convert 1 [Damage] to 1 [SURGE]."
What do you think?