IP Class Deck Review: Nemeses

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 Probe Droids and Sentry Droids, as well as Clawdite Shapeshifters and Weequay Pirates.

·         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 Trandoshan Hunters, Clawdite Shapeshifters, and Weequay Pirates are where it's at.

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 (Imperial Officers) and a Spy (ISB Infiltrators).

·         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 Imperial Officers and an Elite Imperial Officer to synergize.

·         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 Riot Troopers, Heavy Stormtroopers, and E-Web Engineers, though Stormtroopers are just fine too.

·         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!