Are the Rebels or Empire stronger? Why?

yes i know the game is pretty balanced AND many players have a preferred faction to play but which faction would you say has the edge right now?

Whichever one I am currently playing ¬_¬

I would say rebels die to hull/shield values...except when an exceptional player gets ahold of a tie swarm or manuvers multiple shuttles well.

however i think the rebel advantage is slight

I think they are very well balanced.

For beginners, I think Rebels are much stronger, because they are much more forgiving. Generic xwings are excellent, and there are 3 different ships with turrets, which make them much more accessible to new players. Whereas Empire is harder to play at the begining because your ships for the most part, are less heavily armed, less armoured and shielded, but much more manueverable. New Empire players learn to maneuver fast, as flying into your own guys is a great way to loose those vital focus actions, which can spell the end of a ship.

With experienced players, I think Empire has the slight edge. While beholden to the fical whims of luck, super dodgy interceptor squad flights can be a nightmare to play against. (Vader + Fel + Turd) Also I think the shuttle is slightly too good for its cost.

From mostly what I've seen in my limited experience playing (so a lot of this comes from reading a lot of lists) it seems like the rebels have much larger variety of competitive builds, though both seem to have good variety and the balance is far better than other miniatures games I've played.

Rebels seem center their competitive builds around three of their ships (X-Wings, B-Wings, Falcon), and the the ships they can't still have viable roles in lists (Y-wing, A-Wing, and HWK) . There's also variation and workable options of pilots within all their ships.

I don't feel like that's the case with the Imperials, but they do have cheaper ships and the advantage of being able to easily fill in with numbers with the most cost effective ship in the game.

Maybe it's due to lack of play the Tie Advanced gets, essentially taking one imperial ship out of play. Or, it could be due to the fact that with very few exceptions, Imperial pilots' abilities are more "self-centered" with fewer support options. The rebels usually have one pilot or more for each ship who can help out his team. That's thematically good, but I think it's a key to why you see more variety in Rebel builds.

Just some thoughts, though I really think the game is very balanced overall, especially when playing casually (when both players are less focused on min/maxing). Competitively, I think that it is also relatively even, but the rebels have more choices in their builds.

I think the sides are balanced pretty well. I usually play the Empire, but lately I have been playing a lot as the Rebels, and as the Rebels, I'm liking the shields/ruggedness of the vehicles. That said; sometimes I find myself depending so much on shield that I get a little lazy with maneuvers. I certainly don't consider myself a strong player - still learning.

Agility/firepower and extra dice sometimes are game changers, but solid moves seem to be crucial to winning consistently.

I think both ships are fairly balanced stat wise, I think though the imperials can adapt better on the fly once a match begins while the Rebels can really customize and specialize themselves at the squad building level.

both sides are quite balanced, but the game right now is slightly in favour of the Rebels. The Rebels change their dice results by directly modifying the dice itself, but the Imperials seem to tackle this problem by adding more dice. Hence, Rebel strategies tend to look more stable. Also, Rebels rely more on actual hp, whereas Imperials rely more on the evade dice, which can make things somewhat random / unstable at times. Moreover, Rebel strategies tend to be more focused on firepower, while Imperial strategies are focused around agility, flying around and dodging arcs, overwhelming with numbers. Since the attack dice is stronger than the defense dice, we can see where this is going. Also probably the main reason why you see people complaining about the TIEadvanced and not the Xwing

Imperial ships also tend to be a lot more maneuverable than Rebel ships, but that difference is negated by the Rebel's access to turret weapons and ions. Imperials do have access to mines and ions, but their ions tend to be stuck to large ships (and hence a lot more tricky to use), and mines seem to be more of a hard counter against other Imperials and do not do anything really particularly amazing against the Rebels (as compared to Rebel turret vs Imperials)

It's well balanced overall but for the less experienced player I'd say the Rebels because their ships are more robust and forgiving of errors.

both sides are quite balanced, but the game right now is slightly in favour of the Rebels. The Rebels change their dice results by directly modifying the dice itself, but the Imperials seem to tackle this problem by adding more dice. Hence, Rebel strategies tend to look more stable. Also, Rebels rely more on actual hp, whereas Imperials rely more on the evade dice, which can make things somewhat random / unstable at times. Moreover, Rebel strategies tend to be more focused on firepower, while Imperial strategies are focused around agility, flying around and dodging arcs, overwhelming with numbers. Since the attack dice is stronger than the defense dice, we can see where this is going. Also probably the main reason why you see people complaining about the TIEadvanced and not the Xwing

Imperial ships also tend to be a lot more maneuverable than Rebel ships, but that difference is negated by the Rebel's access to turret weapons and ions. Imperials do have access to mines and ions, but their ions tend to be stuck to large ships (and hence a lot more tricky to use), and mines seem to be more of a hard counter against other Imperials and do not do anything really particularly amazing against the Rebels (as compared to Rebel turret vs Imperials)

Excellent analysis!

I believe they are pretty well balanced. The abilities of the pilots seem to capture the theme of the factions well (rebels synergize, imps are lone warriors).

I believe the Rebels allow some forgiveness for mistakes, where if you make a mistake as Imp you pay for it.

Whereas if you are skilled at maneuvering, Imps favor you as the ships are nimble and rely on that agility to stay live.

...reply too slow. I think Duraham nailed it as well.

(Vader + Fel + Turd)

Was this intentional? Lol

I'd say rebels have the edge. B-wings with advanced sensors are quite good. They have several ships that can pass focus and locks. They also have turrets and falcons that can shoot 360 degrees.

The only trick imperials have is bombs. Carnor Jax may help, but the imperials need more than one ship to counter rebels ability to focus.

(Vader + Fel + Turd)

Was this intentional? Lol

We call him Turd Ferguson

I'd say rebels have an easier time winning Timed Tournaments, as it is easier to get full wins. However, with unlimited time, id say an imperial tie swarm has better odds at pulling out a victory.

Hmm... the rebels seem more prone to suffering from bad dice rolls, both from the perspective of missing those important shots and only rolling 1-2 evade dice, so that sort of negates the forgivingness of having shields in my view.

As Imperial, I find that you can afford to miss or just injure, since you can usually stay on the board longer, and concentrated fire is far superior to a harder hitting rebel even if it does have a turret weapon.

Whichever one wins! Duh!

Imperials, man, imperials... Stupid rebel {scum}.

Ok, now that I have that out of my system. Both factions are balanced but I strongly feel that the meta is shifting to Rebel superiority. They have hard counters to 2 of the Imperials main strengths, and one extra ship to build with. Half of the rebel ships can carry a turret and that is absolutely slaying the interceptor. The Great White Space Bus is receiving a lot of love here but the bwing is just killing it: same firepower, same shields, very maneuverable at close quarters and effective without any upgrades at all. I don't want to turn this into another tie advanced discussion but losing 15% of your build options, and then knowing there are hard counters to 2 of your other ships and it's pretty clear why imperial lists seem stagnant.

Bombs and mines could have been great but they don't really counter any rebel strength. They are a nice weapon to have against other imperials and can be used to devastating effect- or be useless. Overall it feels like the rebels access to red dice and red dice modifiers are starting to outshine the Imperial focus on luck and maneuverability. Aces isn't changing that, there will be a few more tools but none will counter turrets or the HP advantage the rebels have.

Lastly, I was slapping through the damage deck and noticed that it is also worse for the imperials (doubly so with no shields) Most do either extra damage or maneuverability nerfs- imperials already don't have enough HP and nerfing maneuverability hurts even more.

Which ever one I am flying

I think that it depends on the point value of the game. I've found in 100 point games it seems like the Imperials have a slight advantage. If you raise the point value the rebels will usually win. But really it comes down to how the ships are used and luck. I had an epic loss the other day all because I couldn't roll a hit, evade or focus to save my life, not because strategy.

at 100pts i prefer the imperials, are they more powerful? perhaps. its very close though. i think the power levels of each faction will shift again once the capital ships hit stores as the new x-wing pilots will add more options to rebel squads.

i wonder if the imperial aces expansion will live up to the hype and give imperials the edge or at least result in more imperial players going with intercepters.

or the HP advantage the rebels have.

If you look at the points per HP for both sides, it's 3.16 points per HP for Rebels and 3.27 points per HP for Imperials.

So there really isn't a huge advantage in terms of HP for the Rebels.

I like Imperials, but I only ever really fly three of their ships. Firespray, Bomber, and TIE Fighter.

Not a big fan of Interceptors mostly because it's just way too luck based. Even with perfect flying, you WILL eventually get shot at against a skilled opponent and in that scenario your fate is in the hands of the dice gods. And as said above by someone else, the Aces pack doesn't do much to change that. I know the Shuttle can be pretty great, I'm personally not real big on flying it though. And as for the Advanced, well.... we don't need to beat a dead horse.

That's half of the Imperial fleet that I'm not too crazy about, so naturally I am leaning towards Rebels currently but I understand that this is all just personal preference.

Rebels do also have my favorite ship of all time. The Y-Wing!

Right.

In terms of power, the sides are very balanced. Tie Swarm is the, or nearly the, most powerful build in the game. Unfortunately, the Imperials have few other options. I do think, however, that Aces will help change this. The RGI upgrade makes Squnits into faster X-Wings and even the Falcon should be scared of that.

The lambda shuttle adds lots of options for imperials - its still very much under the radar and many ppl dont rate it yet. imo dismissing it early as a bad ship and therefore have missed an opportunity to see how good it CAN be. i feel this will change when squads using shuttles start doing well at tournaments. there r lots of competitive squads that use the shuttle - even throwing it in with max number of tie-fighters will work but their are more creative ways to get it working well.

or the HP advantage the rebels have.

If you look at the points per HP for both sides, it's 3.16 points per HP for Rebels and 3.27 points per HP for Imperials.So there really isn't a huge advantage in terms of HP for the Rebels.

Those numbers don't really tell the story. Especially when the imperials have 2 large ships, and their beefiest fighter sitting in dock.

In game you are looking at:

3 vs 4

3 vs 5

3 vs 5

3 vs 8

3 vs 8

That's any tie except advanced vs the rebels ships. Big ships (since the YT has 2 sets of stats) are:

ORS- 10

Shuttle-10

Firespray-10

Named YT- 13

So even if you include the advanced and put it up against an Xwing you only have 2 ships that MATCH rebel HPs. This is without considering shields vs. hull where the advantage is rebel and on the big ship rebels get extra shields whereas the imperials get less hull, and the Bwing has almost as many shields as 2 ties have hull, AND get a full ties worth of hull.