When you think of the Galactic
Empire, there is probably nothing more iconic than Darth Vader at the head of a
sea of Stormtroopers in polished white armor. Though Stormtroopers are notorious
for not hitting their targets, they are the backbone of the Imperial war
machine and they are the terror of many people groups (both those that support
the Rebellion and those that do not). In this post, we’ll be looking at the
Imperial Class Deck that focuses on Troopers the most: Military Might.
Military Might: The
Power Of Troopers
With the release of the Core Set,
the Trooper choice for the Empire was decent: between Stormtroopers and E-Web Engineers, you had high-damage Troopers and swarm options. With each
successive release, we’ve seen new (and perhaps better) Trooper options – from Heavy Stormtroopers and Riot Troopers to Jet Troopers and Sentry Droids. When you include the handful of Trooper heroes
they’ve received (most notably CaptainTerro), Troopers can be the workhorse of any Imperial army.
Military Might, released in the Core Set, works predominantly with
Troopers, giving them bonuses to keep them alive longer or do more damage on
offense. While the primary focus of this post will be on Troopers, not all of
the Military Might cards require a Trooper to be the primary beneficiary of the
card. So, let’s see what we can do with the minions of the Empire today.
End-Game Build #1 – Troopers
Only: Show Of Force, Combat Medic, Riot Grenades, Endless Ranks, Shock Troopers, Combat Veterans (11 XP)
In most scenarios, you’ll have 2-3
open groups (rarely more than that). As such, all you really need are 3 Trooper
choices outside of the Core Set (though it helps to have more for choice and
stuff). If you focus on the upgrades that benefit Troopers only, all of your
open groups can be Troopers. Two of the upgrades we’ve chosen for this build
are attachments: one squad can carry Riot
Grenades (useful when targeting characters with poor Insight like Biv Bodhrick and Gaarkhan), while another (or the same one if you prefer) can be Combat Veterans (who benefit from bonus
Accuracy/Damage on attack and bonus Block on defense). To supplement these
attachments, our other upgrades are not assigned to particular squads, but
provide one-time benefits that help our guys (like Show Of Force to make someone Focused or Combat Medic to help a Trooper and friendly figures adjacent to
him) or static, global benefits (Endless
Ranks makes the deployment cost – not the reinforcement cost – cheaper for
Troopers, while Shock Troopers gives
any Troopers who are attacking at close range a free Surge).
Best IP Units:
· Riot Trooper (Heart of the Empire) – These guys benefit from all of it: with a
base cost of 5 points, they drop down to 4 points with Endless Ranks, making them easily recoverable in any campaign.
Their Block power token complements the bonus block from Combat Veterans very well and since they’re melee, they’ll always
get a free Surge from Shock Troopers.
If you weren’t killed, you can benefit from the Combat Medic bonus and heal those around you!
·
Sentry Droid (Heart of the Empire)
– Sentry Droids – released alongside
Riot Troopers in the Heart of the
Empire expansion – are close-range shooters, making them prime candidates to
benefit from Shock Troopers. They’re
not as defensive as Riot Troopers
are, but they have the potential to shoot more than once with a shy penalty to
their offense (which you can ignore if you make them Combat Veterans).
·
Heavy Stormtrooper (Twin Shadows) –
What can I say – a Red-Blue attack pool won’t surge very often, so you stand a
good chance of actually triggering Blast with these guys if you have Shock Troopers. Their speed makes
getting within 2 spaces a bit difficult unless they’re playing defense, so make
sure you see where the Rebels need to go and then place these guys in their
path to guarantee close-up targets.
· Stormtrooper (Core Set) – These guys were released in the Core Set and for a while were the
only three-man Trooper choices the Imperial Player had in his arsenal. With a
reroll on the attack, these guys can better utilize the double-damage faces of
their attack pool and avoid wasting surge (rely on Shock Troopers to trigger your Surge-for-Damage option).
·
Bespin Wing Guard (Bespin Gambit) – While not Imperial units, these guys are
Troopers and are available to any Imperial Player in any mission. Since these
guys can heal themselves whenever they attack, they complement the Combat Medic upgrade quite well (going
from damaged to undamaged to damaged to undamaged very quickly).
End-Game Build #2 – Balanced
Approach: Show Of Force, Assault Armor, Sustained Fire, Shock and Awe (9 XP)
While Troopers are incredible,
you’re not guaranteed to get Troopers in your starting (or reserved) units.
Even if you do, there are plenty of great units that are not Troopers at all!
If you don’t want to use Troopers and want to use something else, can you do it
with Military Might? Yes!
As mentioned previously, Show Of Force is great for anyone –
make someone Focused! You can add some additional firepower with Sustained Fire, which allows you to
attack an additional time and then become Stunned afterwards. In many ways, the
strategy here works the same way as To The Limit – look for ways to get
more utility out of your offense. I will say that this one card allows you to
basically spend both actions attacking in a given round (your first action is
spent removing the Stun, the second is spent attacking to trigger Sustained Fire) – if you can manage not
moving, it’s not bad.
To supplement these two abilities,
we have Shock and Awe and Assault Armor. Shock and Awe is a global upgrade that allows you to add a bonus
Damage to any declared attack for the low-low cost of 1 Threat (maybe). As
great as this upgrade can be, it’s hard to get much bonus out of it. Unless you
choose not to use it in a given round, you’ll never get more than two
applications of +1 Damage (and in my opinion, that’s not worth 4 XP). You could
skip buying this upgrade if you wanted to get Shock Troopers and Combat
Medic instead. Assault Armor is
one of the best upgrades in the game available to an IP – at the cost of 2 XP,
you get +2 Health on whatever deployment card receives the attachment and the
ability to reroll a Black die (which is incredible).
Best IP Units:
·
Trandoshan Hunter (Core) – We all
know that Trandoshans deal a lot of punishment (what with the Strain against
anyone within 3 spaces and the bonus Damage (or two if it’s an Elite Trandoshan Hunter) against
adjacent targets. Sustained Fire and
Show Of Force are fantastic bonuses
for Trandoshans (and the extra health from Assault
Armor is great too).
·
Elite Gamorrean Guard (Jabba’s
Realm) – Elite Gamorrean Guards are
fantastic units – Red-Red attack pool with Reach and the ability to reroll 1
attack die. With Sustained Fire, you
can get a second attack out of one of the guards and you can get more damage
out of the second guard with Show Of
Force. Assault Armor supplements
the free Block you receive from the Gamorrean
Honor Guard rule and provides a reliable defense against melee attacks
(against which the GHG rule doesn’t apply).
·
Clawdite Shapeshifter (Heart of the
Empire) – Clawdites, like most single-model deployment cards, aren’t the best
units to benefit from Assault Armor
(you’re only getting a cosmic +2 Health vs. +4/+6 Health for 2-3 figure
deployment cards), but a regular Clawdite
Shapeshifter can deal a lot of damage when Focused. Regardless of form, Sustained Fire with one of these units
is powerful – Senators heal more, Scouts shoot at long range more, and Streetrats can deal two Red die worth
of damage in a single turn. Sure, you get stunned – big deal when you can do
that kind of damage!
·
Tusken Raider (Twin Shadows) – There
isn’t much strategy involved here: Tuskens are the melee-version of Trandoshans
and their Red-Green attack pool is fantastic (and fairly reliable). Since they
have low Health, they benefit greatly from Assault
Armor, which keeps you from having to re-purchase them when both figures
invariably die.
·
Royal Guard (Core) – You know all
those good things I said about Elite Gamorreans? They all apply to Royal Guards
as well. Royal Guards are not only fantastic on offense, but because they
provide static Block bonuses to nearby non-Guardian units, they tend to be the
first targets of Rebel figures. Placing Assault
Armor on these guys not only makes the Rebels work more to kill them off,
but also takes away an attack or two that was intended for someone else
(someone weaker).
If you don’t care about what kind
of troops you bring, you can instead focus on keeping your deployment cards
alive (which is generally the best course of action). To do this, we’re going
to join the two most defensive upgrades (Assault
Armor and Combat Veterans – both
are attachments, so they’ll help no more than two units) and purchase Combat Medic to heal figures at the end
of each round. The best thing about this build is that it only costs 7 XP, so
you’ll have 2-4 additional XP in a short campaign (and not too much more in a
long campaign), so you can purchase whatever other upgrades you want.
Best IP Units:
· Riot Trooper (Heart of the Empire) – Whether you give these guys Assault Armor
or Combat Veterans, they’re very hard to kill. We’ve already talked about them,
so I won’t prolong the discussion.
·
Snowtrooper
(Return to Hoth) – If you’re going to use Combat
Medic, you can’t go wrong with Snowtroopers. You get three figures in the
deployment card, all of whom can spend an action healing any Troopers adjacent
to them. Combat Medic not only
augments this, but also heals non-Troopers adjacent to one of them. Give these
guys Assault Armor, and they’ll have
6 Health and a rerollable Black die on defense – not bad.
· Jet Trooper (Jabba’s Realm) – Jet Troopers benefit greatly from Combat Veterans
– the free Block ensures they’ll always be able to gain an Evade (useful late
in the campaign when the Hero’s weapons have good surge abilities), and the
free Damage on the attack is great too (though the Accuracy is often
unnecessary). With Mobile, you can also position these guys anywhere you want,
allowing them to trigger Combat Medic
and heal units that are spread out across the map.
· Heavy Stormtrooper (Twin Shadows) – while Shock Troopers is fantastic for Heavy
Stormtroopers, either of the defensive attachments are good as well – having
8-10 Health keeps these guys alive for a while if you give them Assault Armor, while getting a static
Block from Combat Veterans (which
becomes 2 Block when being shot at from 4+ spaces away) also keeps them alive.
Whichever you choose (though you could slap both of them on a squad of these guys), you’re looking at a hardy unit with lots of power.
· Stormtrooper (Core) – There’s something about these “vanilla” Stormtroopers that I love –
the reroll on offense is fantastic, but they get even better with Combat Veterans (and much harder to
kill with Assault Armor). Not only
do they provide 3 figures to trigger Combat
Medic, but they’re better on offense than Snowtroopers and benefit from the Focus die of Show Of Force better than any of the other options (besides maybe Heavy Stormtroopers).
In our next post, we’ll be examining the final Imperial
class deck in the Core Set: Subversive Tactics. While Technological Superiority provides both attachments and general upgrades and Military Might makes your Trooper units
stronger, Subversive Tactics focuses more on slowing Rebel Heroes from
triggering their moves (instead of making the Imperial units better). Until
next time, happy gaming!
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