When you think of the antagonists
in Star Wars – be they grand organizations like the Galactic Empire, the
Separatist Confederacy, or the First Order, or perhaps less-grand organizations
like the Hutts of Tatooine or rogue bounty hunters roaming the galaxy for hire
– it’s pretty easy to pick iconic characters that you wouldn’t mind having at
your beckon call. In Imperial Assault, many missions give you these kinds of
heroes for free (either in your starting groups or reserved groups). But what
if you could take the villains you like in open groups, instead of only getting
them in select missions? If you want to do this, the only reliable way to do it
is with the amazing Imperial Class deck: Nemeses.
Nemeses: Picking Your
Champion(s)
The Nemeses deck allows you to
focus on the one thing that makes an Imperial Player’s life wonderful: the
villains of the galaxy. If you play with any other Imperial Class deck, you
need to spend your very-rare Influence points to purchase side missions that
will give you the Villain as a reward. This not only keeps your Influence from
getting you other bonuses, but also requires that you use an Open Groups slot
to field them AND the deck does nothing to help you buy that Villain in the
mission you want to use them in. It’s a pain.
In this respect more than anything
else, Nemeses is fantastic: not only do you get to keep your Influence to buy
other things, but you also get to pick two Villain units for use in the mission
(automatically getting to add one of these Villains to your hand WITHOUT taking
up an Open Groups slot). You can also change which Villains are being used in
each mission – changing from very cheap Villains early on to more expensive
ones later. The balance to be sought, therefore, is how much you care about
Villains – are they a supplement to your overall plan? Or are they the centerpiece
of your army? All of our lists today will focus on Villains that you can bring
– because you’ll always have Inspirational as one of your upgrades, you’ll want to bring Open Group units
that match at least one attribute of the Villain you choose to add to your hand
(or any Villains provided by the mission).
One last note: we’re not going to
recommend two very good Villains in this post that you could choose to take:
the Grand Inquisitor and Greedo. The reason we’re omitting these
guys is because you can get the Grand
Inquisitor FOR FREE by purchasing Targeted By The Empire or take Greedo FOR FREE by purchasing Hunter For A Fee. These cards allow
you to bring non-Villain figures AND several Villains, for a relatively small
Influence cost. So - don't use them as your Villain with Nemeses - ADD them to your Villains with Nemeses. Without further ado, let’s look at some lists, shall we?
End-Game Build #1 – Maximizing Team Firepower: Powerful Foes, Inspirational, Fearsome Presence, I’m On The Leader, Punishing Force, Devastating Legion
I’ll start off by saying that this
is the only build we’ll be viewing that brings only one of your two Villains to
the table. This deck focuses less on bringing Villains to the fight and more on
making your team as a whole more dangerous. With cards like Fearsome Presence, you’re rewarded for
having expensive figures on the board (such as Villians) in order to spam
Strain against the Rebel heroes. This is complemented quite nicely by Devastating Legion – why not also apply
a -1 Block or -1 Evade penalty to Rebel figures while you’re attacking them (so
long as there’s a Villain around to watch the carnage)? To polish off the
general benefits, we’ve taken I’m On The
Leader, which is a great way to get static damage when attacking someone
healthy – so good.
The capstone of this build,
however, is Punishing Force. This
card is rare for an Imperial Player and is easily the best card available to
the Imperial Player in the Nemeses deck: each time a Rebel finishes activating,
this card readies, allowing the next Imperial deployment card to benefit from
it (and it allows rerolling any number of attack dice) – perfect for ensuring
that your units have the best shot they possibly can of doing LOADS of damage.
Like most of the other upgrades, you don’t need Villains around to make this
upgrade useful.
Best IP Units:
·
0-0-0 (BT-1 and 0-0-0 Villain Pack)
– There are few Villains as cheap as 0-0-0,
but he’s not just a cheap unit: if you begin by performing an Invasive Procedure, you can then attack
your foe with a Red-Yellow-Green and the ability to surge for Pierce 2 and
Recover 2. While 8 health with a Black die isn’t great, it’s not bad either
(especially for 4 points). By using Powerful
Foes, you can get 0-0-0 for 1
Threat once you hit Threat Level 4. In missions before that, it’ll cost you 2-3
Threat. The downside to running 0-0-0 is that you can only synergize with
Droids, so consider pairing him with Probe Droids and Sentry Droids.
·
BT-1 (BT-1 and 0-0-0 Villain Pack)
– If you want to pack more firepower than 0-0-0,
you can take his counterpart BT-1.
With the option of either attacking with a Red-Yellow-Green-Blue attack pool or
three attacks with Red/Yellow/Blue and a Green attack die, you can do lots of
light damage or a ton of big damage. If you use Powerful Foes with this figure, you can field him for 4 Threat once
you hit Threat Level 3 (which is automatically in a short campaign and after
the first two missions in a long campaign). BT-1 also has synergies with Droids (recommending Probe Droids again), Heavy Weapons
(Heavy Stormtroopers are good), and
Hunters (Weequay
Pirates are a good bargain), which gives you many choices for Open
Groups.
·
Jabba The Hutt (Jabba’s Realm) –
For the same cost as BT-1, you can
get Jabba the Hutt. We’ve talked
about Jabba TON on this blog and for good reason – he’s good. While his
inability to surge for damage – for anything actually – is regrettable, you can
do excellent damage with his Bully
special ability, gain Threat with Plot
(invaluable for keeping your reinforcements coming), bolster friendly figures
with Financial Incentive), and
calling in a strike with a Mercenary figure thanks to Executive Order (best preceded by Financial Incentive unless the Mercenary figure is already
Focused). As both a Smuggler and Hunter, he can synergize with many Mercenary
figures, but most notably Trandoshan Hunters, Clawdite Shapeshifters, and Weequay Pirates.
·
Captain Terro (Jabba’s Realm) – Captain Terro is one of the most
powerful Imperial Villains you’ll be able to purchase with this build. With a
free 3 movement points at the start of his activation, he can move a little to
re-position himself, use his Flamethrower to do some damage and weaken a few
nearby foes, and then perform an attack with a Yellow-Green-Blue (with the
ability to get Damage 2 or Pierce 2 on your Surge). For only 7 points, you can
get him for 4 Threat once you hit Threat Level 4. Unlike our previous two
heroes, you can synergize with Troopers (tons of options there, but my favorite
are Riot Troopers and Heavy Stormtroopers) and Creatures
(Nexu
are decent, though if your Habitat allows, you should get a Wampa instead).
·
Dengar (Return to Hoth) – Dengar stands out as the only
character who is flexible in the kinds of harmful conditions he can apply. If Dengar is attacking someone without a
harmful condition, he adds a static +1 Surge to his attack results (which
joined with his static +2 Accuracy gives him the equivalent of a Blue die when
it rolls an Accuracy 2 + Surge 1 face). Being able to turn one surge into
Damage 2 and any additional surge into harmful conditions, Dengar can reliably break through a Black die and leave the target
reeling. With only 8 Health, he’s quite a bit less resilient than Captain Terro, but not TOO bad for his
cost. With only the Hunter keyword, you'll want to pair him with Trandoshan Hunters, Clawdite Shapeshifters, and Weequay Pirates.
End-Game Build #2 – Big
Dang Bosses: Powerful Foes, Inspirational, Fearsome Presence, Ringleader, Leave Them To Me, Indomitable
While you can definitely use
Villains to support your other units, sometimes we want our Villains to be the centerpiece
of our army. If you read through all of the Nemeses upgrades once, you’ll
notice immediately that many of them focus on making your Villains stronger.
Two upgrades pair well together: Powerful
Foes and Leave Them To Me. While
you start with Powerful Foes, Leave Them To Me allows you to take
both of the Villains you select during setup – one Imperial and one Mercenary. Both upgrades also
have means of getting those Villains deployed with a reduced cost, allowing
more expensive Villains to be brought to the fight.
There are two auric upgrades we’ve
chosen to take: Ringleader gives
your Villain additional movement points at the start of his activation and
boosts the strengths of adjacent friendly figures (who wouldn’t want an
additional Accuracy and Damage to their attacks?). Fearsome Presence is a bit more difficult to use (as we’ve seen
above), but since you can deploy expensive Villains more easily, triggering
this ability remains easy as the campaign progresses. We’ve also chosen to
boost the defense of our Villains by taking Indomitable – capable of adding a Black die to your Villains
whenever they’re attacked, preventing them from receiving harmful conditions,
and the ability to spend 1 Threat in order to ready the card when the Villain
is attacked again.
Best IP Units:
·
Darth Vader (Core) – If you’re
going to be able to deploy someone cheaply, you want it to be Darth Vader – there are some figure who
do almost as much damage as he does, but no one reliably resists damage like
Vader does. With Indomitable, Vader is all but unstoppable – taking very little
damage and dealing loads of damage on offense. At a whopping 18 points, he
easily triggers Fearsome Presence
and since he’s a melee figure with Brutality,
you want him to end adjacent to at least two figures. Given his VERY high cost,
you’ll want to pair him with a cheap Mercenary Villain (Greedo or Jabba The Hutt for example), allowing you to focus both Powerful
Foes and Leave Them To Me on
Vader (it costs a total of 9 Threat to play him at Threat Level 5). Because
this is virtually at the end of a long campaign (and is the end of a short
campaign), you’ll want to buy Leave Them
To Me late in the game, focusing on the other upgrades first. As both a Leader and a Brawler (and an expensive one), you'll want to pair him with Imperial Officers and Gamorrean Guards, though Tusken Raiders are great if your map has at least one desert tile.
·
Emperor Palpatine (Heart of the
Empire) – Palpatine comes in at less than half what Vader costs, making him an
easy Villain to purchase alongside another decently-high costed Villain (or you
can get him with a dirt-cheap Villain and just save a ton of Threat). Using Leave Them To Me isn’t that great with Emperor Palpatine, as you want him to
be able to use Emperor and Force Lighting each round if you
possibly can (though if you deploy far from the Rebel Heroes, you can do it to
save some cash). I recommend using Powerful
Foes to deploy him for only 6 Threat at Threat Level 3, which allows you to
use Leave Them To Me on another hero
(like Maul, who we’ll look at next) OR you just delay on buying Leave Them To Me until late in the campaign and buy Vader with it. With only the Leader trait to synergize with the rest of your team, you're basically limited to Imperial Officers, so pick your open groups based on your other hero (or just bring a lot of IOs).
·
Maul (Heart of the Empire) – Maul is not only one of the most
powerful Mercenary Villains they’ve come out with so far, but he’s incredibly
good when deployed with Leave Them To Me.
If you use this upgrade to deploy him at the start of a mission, he only costs
2 Threat and cannot be defeated until he activates in Round 2 (no matter how much Damage he takes). With Indomitable, he can get a
double-Black die to keep him alive even longer (which is good since he can’t
recover Damage). As a cheap Brawler, you can pair him with Elite Gamorrean Guards, Royal Guards, or Trandoshan Hunters.
·
IG-88 (Core) – Though more
expensive than Maul, you can by him for 5 Threat at Threat Level 3 if you use
both Powerful Foes and Leave Them To Me. IG-88 is incredibly good on offense (multiple attacks with any
two-die attack pool you want), but lacks a bit in the defense department
(though it’s nothing Indomitable
can’t fix – two Black dice with a static Block 1 is great). With the ability to
recover up to 6 Damage in a given turn (assuming you can shoot twice), you can get a bit more survivability out of him than you can
with Maul (though Maul’s higher base
health and guaranteed activation each round might tip the scales in the sith's favor). As both a Hunter and a Droid, IG-88 allows you to synergize with
·
Boba Fett (Twin Shadows) – At 1
point more expensive than IG-88, you
can get Boba Fett at Threat Level 3
for 6 Threat, which allows you to use him early in any campaign. With Indomitable giving him two Black dice
on defense with a static Block 1 + Evade 1, Boba Fett is great. Unlike the other Villains we’ve looked at so
far, Boba Fett benefits from being
Mobile, allowing you to place him better for Fearsome Presence than anyone else. On offense, Boba Fett is fantastic – the ability to
Recover 2 when you can reduce the damage he takes via Indomitable makes him incredibly good. Finally, Boba Fett is a Hunter - this means
End-Game Build #3 – Flexible
Build: Powerful Foes, Inspirational, Prepare The Ambush, Fearsome Presence, Ringleader, Leave Them To Me, Punishing Force
We’ve seen a build that focuses on
doing damage to the Rebels as fast as possible with your entire team and we’ve seen one that
glorifies your Villains to incredible heights. Now we’re turning our attention
to a more flexible build that provides more tactical benefits (often static benefits) to your
units. In addition to the standard abilities of Powerful Foes and Inspirational,
we’re adding Prepare the Ambush to
our deck, allowing us to delay activating a group so we can wait and see where
a Rebel hero is going to be before we are forced to move. This is a niche
ability and I’ve found it to be only marginally useful – most times, you want
to get use out of a deployment card as fast as possible before it dies.
However, there are times (usually with E-Web Engineers) where you want to see where a Rebel hero ends up BEFORE you
activate one of your groups. Because you’re not allowed to pass in Campaign
mode, sometimes you just want one additional turn of information before you
activate someone. This ability gives you that (as well as some extra movement
for the first group you activate.
In addition, we’ve added Ringleader and Punishing Force, which provide good offensive benefits that are (at
least sort of) static. We’ve talked about these a lot (and we’ll talk about
them some more), so we’ll move on to the last upgrades: Fearsome Presence and Leave
Them To Me. Getting Fearsome Presence
to work requires that you have kind of expensive units (or single-figure
deployment cards that you keep putting on the board). This can be hard to use
effectively, but your goal is to hit at least one figure with it. Using Leave Them To Me enables you to get
more expensive figures (Villains or grunts) onto the table, making this card
much more effective. It’s best done when the Rebels need to pass through a
deployment zone, as you can deploy someone near Rebel figures (or where they’ll
be), giving you some extra oomph out of Fearsome
Presence without activating the card.
Best IP Units:
·
Agent Blaise (Bespin Gambit) – Agent
Blaise is the lowest end of heroes you want to bring, since his cost will just
barely be above or at the threat level (necessary for Fearsome Presence). Blaise is pretty straight-forward to use: shoot
at someone (and generate 1 Threat when he attacks), perform your Activate Agent special action, and
watch the Spy/Trooper unit you deploy do awesome things. Blaise benefits
greatly from Punishing Force (to
make sure you get at least 1 Surge past the defense results), but don’t EVER
use Leave Them To Me with Blaise –
you want every activation you can with this guy. Blaise is hard to synergize with, seeing as how he's a Leader (
·
Bossk (Bespin Gambit) – Of all the
bounty hunters available in Imperial Assault, Bossk is one of the best – with a static Damage 2 + Accuracy 2, a
Red-Green combo, and a static Block on defense, Bossk is a boss (see what I did there?) wherever you put him. What
makes him even better, of course, is his ability to heal himself at the end of
each round – see our post on To The
Limit or more info on this incredible skill. For this Nemeses build, you
can get Bossk for 5 Threat at Threat Level 4 or for 4 Threat at Threat Level 5
– which is kind of a lot, to be honest. Bossk is both a Hunter and a Brawler, so any of the previous Hunter/Brawler units we've talked about are fair game (see our last section, since most of those guys were Hunters or Brawlers).
·
General Sorin (Return to Hoth) –
Sorin, on offense, isn’t much to look at – he’s basically an Elite Imperial Officer who can’t
surge for Accuracy. You don’t take Sorin, however, to fight – you take him to
make Droids and Vehicles better. We’ve talked about Sorin already in our post
on Advanced Com Systems, and most of
what was shared in that post applies here. With Ringleader as an upgrade, you can not only enable friendly figures to
attack, but you can also boost their abilities. As great as Sorin is, he only has the Leader trait, so bring along some
·
Kayn Somos (Twin Shadows) – Similar to Sorin, Kayn gives adjacent friendly
figures bonuses as well (and we talked about him also in our posts on Advanced Com Systems). Unlike
Sorin, Kayn can make adjacent friendly figures Focused when HE attacks (not
when THEY attack), which is great if you’re adjacent to figures who don’t surge
very reliably. With Ringleader
supporting Kayn’s Firing Squad
ability, you can allow two friendly figures to interrupt to perform an attack
against the same figure with a static Damage 1 + Accuracy 1 added to their
attack results. For unit syerngies, I recommend
·
General Weiss (Core) – If you want
to get the most out of Fearsome Presence,
you want a large base. You also get more out of Ringleader if you have a large base. There’s no Villain with a
larger base than General Weiss – and
with Leave Them To Me and Powerful Foes, you can deploy him for
-8 points at Threat Level 4 (making his final deployment cost 8 points, though
he starts exhausted). This is a great way to get him out at the start of a side
mission when at Threat Level 4 or higher. While the AT-ST starts with a Targeting Computer, Punishing Strike gives General Weiss the same rule
(basically). Weiss has Heavy Weapon and Vehicle synergies, so bringing along some Heavy Stormtroopers or Jet Troopers are always welcome (most other vehicles are hard to field).
In our next post, we’ll be turning our attention to one of the Imperial Class decks released in Return to Hoth: Armored Onslaught. This deck rewards the IP for having vehicles in his deck which can not only be REALLY fun for the IP, but also makes for a very different game play than other IP Class decks. Until next time, happy gaming!
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