little bit about my own background, I love campaigns, but it irks me that there's always 2 class decks that I would never pick: Subversive Tactics and Inspiring Leaderships

Subversive Tactics is infamously known as the un-fun deck because there's a lot of take-that going on, it focuses on overloading Rebels with strain to deny their fancy abilities

Inspiring Leadership is laughably weak for the most part, and Rebels doesn't really have to pay too much attention for roughly half of the campaign because the power doesn't really build up until you pick one of the two 4xp cards

So I've came up with 2 homemade decks as replacements. I haven't thoroughly tested them and I agree that I should perhaps come up with better namings. My goal here is to have them on a more acceptable power curve, hence they're not meant to be super-powered but they shouldn't be ridiculously weak either. Appreciate y'all feedbacks!

Bonus: I also felt that MM is in a weird spot, because its lower-cost xp are relatively strong yet one of its 4xp card is totally garbage. This partial replacement aims to nerfs (slightly) the lower xp cards and fixes the 4xp "Shock and Awe"

Raise the Alarm: what does "Active" mean? Active in IA means the card is in play, so makes no sense. So, it's either exhausted or ready, but exhausted also makes no sense (or maybe exhausted made more sense) .

Battlefield Adrenaline, Battlefield Medical Chest: Recover breaks missions, especially when not Deplete. At minimum I would add a "non-unique" requirement (but there are still a few missions where the "objective" figure is non-unique).

(And you're missing a lot of "."'s.)

3 minutes ago, a1bert said:

Raise the Alarm: what does "Active" mean? Active in IA means the card is in play, so makes no sense. So, it's either exhausted or ready, but exhausted also makes no sense.

Battlefield Adrenaline, Battlefield Medical Chest: Recover breaks missions, especially when not Deplete. At minimum I would add a "non-unique" requirement (but there are still a few missions where the "objective" figure is non-unique).

(And you're missing a lot of "."'s.)

"Active" would mean "Ready" in this case

for the 2 recovery cards, my goal was to make the Imperial figures more difficult to kill and to permit undo-ing Rebel's attacks, I tend to shy away from straight up +HP because it can be demoralizing for Rebels to attack a 20HP figure

I'm aware that perhaps not every word is up to FFG standards yet so at this point I'm not too concerned about the minor '.'s, I will post a PDF version later (this is just the 1st iteration)

Battlefield Bacta, sounds better than battlefield medical chest.

Great work on some of these. i have not had a problem with subversive tactics, since there are now some mighty powerful heroes to combat it. the core set, its tough. its still hard mode, but not as fun reducing as it once was.

great work on most of these. I'll toss comments (yays and nays) below

• Tip on naming = players more often than not will view the card title, then frame the rule-set around what the card title is perceived to be doing.
  • Infamous retail example is Diala's "WAY OF THE SARLACC" ... the sarlacc envelopes and swallows prey whole (attacker is the one surrounding), whereas the card mechanics have the hero surrounded and attacking everything else. This is a cognitive disconnect, and why it's a terrible name for the card.
  • Within your cards "Raise the Alarm" presents a similar issue. Raising an alarm is a very reactive/passive action (something else happens and the imperials respond). The mechanical application, however, has the imperial player basically goading the rebels into forcing a difficult shot in order to avoid raising threat (which is actually an agressive/active action on the imps to make it work). Any name that places the acting-party as the Imperial Player would work (couple off-hand: maintain pressure, force disadvantage, etc)
  • One other example is battlefield medical chest - stunning a hero has a disconnect between on site medicines. For that one, you could reframe it as "continued planning" and it'd probably work.
• Keep Up = if there's a way you could simplify this so that it's just 1 for 1 (rather than 2:1 conversion) it'd probably work better from player quality of life perspective. My suggestion would be 1 stm 1 mp, but you only generate/use one per activation.
• battlefield adrenaline = could go sideways if used on a tanky villain or an ATST, especially since it's an exhaust. you may want to put some restrictions on it
• love the Inspiring Leadership upgrades, elegant fixes
• Endless Ranks - The card (raw) reads (emphasis added): "When you deploy a TROOPER, reduce its deployment cost by 1." What this card actually shines at is spamming reinforcement cannon fodder onto the board (1 threat for individual storm trooper replacements galore). Adjusting it for late-game relevance would risk running broken, given you'd be doing 2-threat Elite ISB reinforcements. If you did go this route, clarify the 2-threat reduction is for GROUPS only.
• Shock and Awe = I love the thematics of this. Basically, if an imp fails an attack, the imp fails big - meaning another imp can hit a lot harder. It's a lot of flexibility you're adding, though ... just be sure it checks out in the play-testing.

Again - great work on this!

Interesting ideas; very hard to make a judgement on balance without playtesting, but you do take a lot of abilities from other classes and from Agenda cards, which is a good idea for finding effects that can be balanced, so that's a good start!

One note: Battlefield Medical Chest combined with Thrawn as an ally will allow the Imperial to stun the first hero to activate every round in a 2-hero campaign. I realize 2-hero campaigns already have balance issues, so that might not be something you want to worry about, but it's good to be aware of.

5 hours ago, thinkbomb said:

• Endless Ranks - The card (raw) reads (emphasis added): "When you deploy a TROOPER, reduce its deployment cost by 1." What this card actually shines at is spamming reinforcement cannon fodder

Reinforcing is not deploying. "a TROOPER " refers to a single group with the trooper trait.

3 hours ago, a1bert said:

Reinforcing is not deploying. "a TROOPER " refers to a single group with the trooper trait.

well, that changes my opinion of the card entirely. the raw is garbage. lol

I think I won't tell our group, made it more interesting on both ends of the table.

43 minutes ago, thinkbomb said:

well, that changes my opinion of the card entirely. the raw is garbage. lol

I think I won't tell our group, made it more interesting on both ends of the table.

Endless Ranks used to be total garbage with only the Core box (eStorm 9-1=8, rStorm 6-1=5, rE-Web 6-1=5...) and remained garbage up to ~Wave 5 (eSnow 10-1=9) but that has been changed since the release of the new TROOPERs: rRiot for 4, eRiot or eJet for 6, Dewback for 4 are great deals

I've noticed the problem started with Death Trooper spams: eDT for 3 and rDT for 2 means I have little to no reason to bring in Stormtroopers anymore, so my intention was to deny the spammable ones like rJet or eDT 4-1=3 while maintaining the cost efficiency for the higher costed ones like eJet, eRiot, Dewbacks

5 hours ago, Stompburger said:

Interesting ideas; very hard to make a judgement on balance without playtesting, but you do take a lot of abilities from other classes and from Agenda cards, which is a good idea for finding effects that can be balanced, so that's a good start!

One note: Battlefield Medical Chest combined with Thrawn as an ally will allow the Imperial to stun the first hero to activate every round in a 2-hero campaign. I realize 2-hero campaigns already have balance issues, so that might not be something you want to worry about, but it's good to be aware of.

only if the Rebels decide to activate that hero though

9 hours ago, thinkbomb said:

Shock and Awe = I love the thematics of this. Basically, if an imp fails an attack, the imp fails big - meaning another imp can hit a lot harder. It's a lot of flexibility you're adding, though ... just be sure it checks out in the play-testing.

the intention is that as Imperial I can also deliberately make my own (current) attack do less damage. For example, the +1 evade is useless if no surges were rolled for the current attack. This would allow the Imperial to trade -dmg right now for +dmg later. Also notice the strain tokens are usable by any Imperial troop, so you could have rStorms go in and take a useless shot, gain a token, then use that token as part of the AT-ST's attack

14 hours ago, ricope said:

Endless Ranks used to be total garbage with only the Core box (eStorm 9-1=8, rStorm 6-1=5, rE-Web 6-1=5...) and remained garbage up to ~Wave 5 (eSnow 10-1=9) but that has been changed since the release of the new TROOPERs: rRiot for 4, eRiot or eJet for 6, Dewback for 4 are great deals

I've noticed the problem started with Death Trooper spams: eDT for 3 and rDT for 2 means I have little to no reason to bring in Stormtroopers anymore, so my intention was to deny the spammable ones like rJet or eDT 4-1=3 while maintaining the cost efficiency for the higher costed ones like eJet, eRiot, Dewbacks

While Death Trooper spam with "Endless Ranks" is a real problem early in a campaign, it eventually loses it's effectiveness. But not before causing horrible damage to the heroes and giving the imperial a massive boost in agenda and XP.

I've house ruled that "Endless Ranks" can only be used on one Death Trooper group per deployment opportunity. Since you can add all 4 DTs as one open group, its seems fair to treat them as one deployment group when using ER. So for missions that start with "increase threat by twice the threat level and resolve an optional deployment", you can deploy 2 eDTs and 2 rDTs, and while they should cost 14 threat, this house rule would force them to still cost 13 threat.

Now there's still incentive to bring 1 DT and get the ER discount, and maybe even bring in two so you can use Tactical Comms. But the ability to spam is reduced. The imperial can still bring in an eDT every round at threat level 3, but that's all they're dropping.

TLDR: The new "Endless Ranks" could be limited to once per deployment rather than per trooper group. Outside of DTs it's not often you have enough threat to deploy multiple Trooper groups at a time.

15 hours ago, ricope said:

only if the Rebels decide to activate that hero though

If you have both this card and Thrawn (who has an identical ability), you could choose a different hero for each one, and if there are only two heroes that's all the heroes. So the first hero to activate would always be stunned until Thrawn is removed.

On 10/6/2019 at 9:52 AM, thestag said:

While Death Trooper spam with "Endless Ranks" is a real problem early in a campaign, it eventually loses it's effectiveness. But not before causing horrible damage to the heroes and giving the imperial a massive boost in agenda and XP.

I've house ruled that "Endless Ranks" can only be used on one Death Trooper group per deployment opportunity. Since you can add all 4 DTs as one open group, its seems fair to treat them as one deployment group when using ER. So for missions that start with "increase threat by twice the threat level and resolve an optional deployment", you can deploy 2 eDTs and 2 rDTs, and while they should cost 14 threat, this house rule would force them to still cost 13 threat.

Now there's still incentive to bring 1 DT and get the ER discount, and maybe even bring in two so you can use Tactical Comms. But the ability to spam is reduced. The imperial can still bring in an eDT every round at threat level 3, but that's all they're dropping.

TLDR: The new "Endless Ranks" could be limited to once per deployment rather than per trooper group. Outside of DTs it's not often you have enough threat to deploy multiple Trooper groups at a time.

I really like the notion of Endless Ranks being an exhaust. ^^

On 10/6/2019 at 10:34 AM, Stompburger said:

If you have both this card and Thrawn (who has an identical ability), you could choose a different hero for each one, and if there are only two heroes that's all the heroes. So the first hero to activate would always be stunned until Thrawn is removed.

at that point, you also have to factor in - Imperial unlocking Thrawn (or on a special mission) AND the threat cost AND the XP investment.

So ... idunno, with that setup it's hard to say if it's cruel or broken when you consider the actual cost to get that engine rolling. 8\ hard to say

On 10/6/2019 at 9:34 AM, Stompburger said:

If you have both this card and Thrawn (who has an identical ability), you could choose a different hero for each one, and if there are only two heroes that's all the heroes. So the first hero to activate would always be stunned until Thrawn is removed.

strictly speaking, Rebels still have 4 activations each round, but playing with 2 heroes you should expect to have inherent balancing issues

I always insist on playing 4 Rebel heroes for all campaigns, and if I can't find enough physical players then I just make my Rebels double-duty

10 hours ago, ricope said:

I always insist on playing 4 Rebel heroes for all campaigns, and if I can't find enough physical players then I just make my Rebels double-duty

I almost always play controlling either empire or 4 heroes. It really isn't THAT hard. ^^;

On 10/10/2019 at 9:25 AM, thinkbomb said:

I almost always play controlling either empire or 4 heroes. It really isn't THAT hard. ^^;

Sure, I can do that, but beginner Rebel players may disagree so I usually get at least 2 Rebel players (each player controlling 2) before starting a campaign