I'm playing a campaign right now where the Imperial player has taken the Hutt Mercenaries deck. He saved up from the start for the 4XP Most Wanted, and just bought the Influence card to earn Maul. I did some calculations on the damage Maul can put out with this deck, and it seems absolutely crazy. Between Most Wanted, the starting card for the deck, and Maul's abilities, he can attack with RGY+5. Adding in Nowhere To Run and Nowhere to Hide, this goes to RGBY+7, with a surge for Pierce 3. This only applies to Heroes that currently have bounty tokens, but I'm still blown away by how much damage it is. The Rebel team is running Biv, CT, Gideon, and Tress, and Maul is capable of guaranteed one-shotting any of those heroes but Biv with this attack, and still takes out Biv >75% of the time. This isn't even a complaint post, since CT can just lay down the stun every turn, I'm just so shocked by how much damage he can put out that I felt like I had to share.

(I also realize that all those class cards could be used by other figures, but I'm singling out Maul cause he's a cheap villain with a surge for Pierce 3)

It's 3 influence and win required (or choosing to play a different side mission) to gain Maul.

You're overvaluing Pierce 3 though, what it does is remove agency from the defender, but you often see most of it going to waste. Maul is also melee. The Hutt Mercenaries deck works just as well with ranged elite groups like Weequay Pirates, and more attacks means better average damage.

Against Gideon everything is allowed. Your rebel team can afford much better weapons with Gideon than otherwise, because Gideon doesn't care what he has.

Yeah, like I said it's a totally reasonable situation. We have a crazy good Rebel team. Pierce 3 doesn't actually add damage, and there are better ways to use the cards at hand. I'm just amazed at this particular combination of things because of the high damage + consistency. We went for a different side mission, letting the Imperial have Maul and picking up Hera as an ally instead. We like seeing the villains, and it's the Imperial player's first time, so why not let the cool cards come into play? The Hutt Mercenaries class cards are already proving plenty scary on normal stormtroopers though, so I'm sure we're in for some pain the next few misssions!

Hutt Mercenaries plus anything is broken good . Most of our missions when I used that deck were over before the end of round 3. In the finale, I won in round 2. Some finale that was.

I won't be taking it again - it's just stupidly overpowered.