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?

So, our group plays campaign primarily. This won't be as applicable for Skirmish players. Anyhoo...

The big thing we did was add an auto-block result on defense on top of Composite plating. - composite plating is a good idea, but given their short range it's super easy to negate.

What this did was it pushed them to be super tank objective protectors. Required some fore-thought on the Imp Player's part, but they could be deployed ahead of the rebels and open fire. It basically made them really hard to take down unless the opposing players got in close (which, in turn, meant opening themselves up for damage). This was offset by their painful slow speed, meaning if they weren't deployed correctly they still weren't much use (risk/reward).

To contrast (since there's a few surprising similarities), Jet Troopers got an ability where they could ignore figures when drawing line of sight (because airborne and firing down on targets).

What I like most about your suggestion, though, is the ability to convert 1 damage to 1 surge. To me, that addresses the biggest issue with these guys: it's super rare to see them actually use a surge: blast. So we'll probably use that (since in theory it should be a zero-threat-value ability).

I do like the change a damage into a surge ability. That's very clever! It essentially changes makes 1 DMG into 2 DMG, but also enables the defender to roll into a single evade and have it prevent that conversion.

But I don't think it is enough. Unless you use Targeting Computer or rely on CCs, they're going to have problems shooting from far away: even with the static +2 Accuracy, they have a worse chance of rolling and spending surges for at least 6 Accuracy compared to Elite Weequays (static +2 Acc., surge for +2 Acc, reroll 1 die) or Elite Alliance Rangers (static +1 Acc., surge for +3 Acc., reroll 2 attack die).

If Heavy Stormtroopers are supposed to be the snipers of the Empire in your project, they are going to really struggle on huge maps like Lothal Wastes & Nal Hutta Swamps without something to address their Accuracy woes. If you keep the T-21 DMG-to-SURGE conversion, I'd recommend putting either a standalone surge ability for +X Accuracy or add +X Accuracy to one of the existing surge abilities, where X is a value that makes sense for the the type of Deployment. (For example, you may want to do +1 for Regular Heavies, and +2 for Elites.) If the Elite Heavies got a surge ability for +2 Accuracy, it would increase their chances of getting at least 6 Accuracy from 33% to 72%.

Edit: clarified how the Elite Heavies would get an increased chance of at least 6 Accuracy.

2 hours ago, cnemmick said:

I do like the change a damage into a surge ability. That's very clever! It essentially changes makes 1 DMG into 2 DMG, but also enables the defender to roll into a single evade and have it prevent that conversion.

But I don't think it is enough. Unless you use Targeting Computer or rely on CCs, they're going to have problems shooting from far away: even with the static +2 Accuracy, they have a worse chance of rolling and spending surges for at least 6 Accuracy compared to Elite Weequays (static +2 Acc., surge for +2 Acc, reroll 1 die) or Elite Alliance Rangers (static +1 Acc., surge for +3 Acc., reroll 2 attack die).

If Heavy Stormtroopers are supposed to be the snipers of the Empire in your project, they are going to really struggle on huge maps like Lothal Wastes & Nal Hutta Swamps without something to address their Accuracy woes. If you keep the T-21 DMG-to-SURGE conversion, I'd recommend putting either a standalone surge ability for +X Accuracy or add +X Accuracy to one of the existing surge abilities, where X is a value that makes sense for the the type of Deployment. (For example, you may want to do +1 for Regular Heavies, and +2 for Elites.) That would increase the Heavy Stormtroopers chances of getting at least 6 Accuracy from 33% to 72%.

I don't look at Heavy Stormtroopers as snipers, more like machine gunners. I agree with your assessment however, even though I like the idea of making them more damage oriented instead of increasing their defense. Here's my thoughts. Make them blue/blue. Change composite plating to something like suppressive fire : remove 1 evade from target's defense roll. Give them an autoblock instead of +2 accuracy.

On 9/7/2019 at 7:09 AM, Rikalonius said:

I don't look at Heavy Stormtroopers as snipers, more like machine gunners.

I like that idea.