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Snowtrooper Officer is a power 10 piece at best - possibly 9. Power 11 pieces make squads on their own or are auto-includes in a large number of builds. Without Daala and the Snowtrooper Commander to go with him, he's possibly not even Tier 1. (But still better than many other trooper commanders out there.) The rapport is his biggest piece, but without all the attack boosts and the movement breaker from the other 2 commanders, he might sit unplayed. At best, there'd be a debate about whether his builds could compete at the top tables. He seems much better than the Snowtrooper Commander partly because we had the Commander for years and never used him. But if we only had this guy without the Commander, he'd feel the same way.
Daala: 11
Officer: 9
Commander: 9
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I do agree that the Officer is an unusual choice for an 11, since he's kind of the support commander, not the main thrust behind the build, but I think that he just adds so much to a Snow Trooper squad especially with his rapport (a Snow Trooper goes from 7 points to 5 points - that's almost 30% cheaper), that an 11 is justified. Maybe I am lacking perspective, since he's so recent, and part of several successful builds already, but I think he's so drastically cheap for what he does that an 11 is justifiable.
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With the Rapport, he's negative points in a Tier 1 build. So if that's the criteria, he's an 11. But he's reducing the cost of troopers who weren't worth 7 in the first place, so I don't know how to count that. Queen Amidala only got 10/10, and she can also be negative points in the right build. Plus she can be in more different Tier 1 builds than the Officer. I think you're giving him a new hotness boost that is unwarranted. :-)
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yeah, not so much this guy as Daala. This guy just allows a snow trooper variant that wouldn't have been if he didn't exist.
i'm not sure there is a potential t1 snow trooper squad without daala
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I agree that there's no Tier 1 Snowtrooper build without Daala, but I think the Officer is essential too. Without him, Daala squads lose activations and teeth, and I think other builds like the Raxus Primes clearly outstrip the Snow Troopers.
If you look at Lou's Michigan squad, you'd go down to about 9 Snowtroopers and you'd lose Squad Firepower, and Squad Assault would be much harder to utilise as well.
In FlyingArrow's PA build, you'd lose 5 Snowtroopers (so down to 16) and you'd lose Squad Firepower, so you'd only be on 20 damage.
Maybe the builds would evolve differently to accommodate the change, but I also think they'd possibly drop out of Tier 1 altogether. Losing a bunch of troopers and Squad Firepower is very significant.
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Han Solo, Scoundrel, from Bounty Hunters  Quote:46 points, Rebel
Hit Points: 80
Defense: 17
Attack: 9
Damage: 20
Special Abilities
Unique
Accurate Shot (Can attack an enemy with cover even if it's not the nearest enemy)
Cunning Attack (+4 Attack and +10 Damage against an enemy who has not activated this round)
Evade (When hit by an attack from a nonadjacent enemy, this character takes no damage with a save of 11)
Mobile Attack (Can move both before and after attacking)
Twin Attack (Whenever this character attacks, he makes 1 extra attack against the same target)
Force Powers
Force 1 Han Scoundrel was firmly part of the old school - before Rieekan came and gave Mobile and Evade to everyone, and before Dodonna (and I assume other meta factors as well) made Opportunist more attractive than Cunning for the Rebels. He made the top 8 at GenCon multiple times in 2007 and 2008, winning the whole thing in 2008. Quote:2008 (150) billiv15
--Speedy Cannon--
46 Han Solo, Scoundrel
45 Luke's Snowspeeder
20 Princess Leia
11 Human Bodyguard
8 Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Spirit
8 R2-D2
12 Ugnaught Demolitionist x4 *Incidentally, in the 2009 top 8, there were seven (!) Rieekans and five Han Smugglers. Despite his fall from favour, Scoundrel is still a good shooter for 46 points - as a Twin shooter he strongly benefits from the Princess Leia and Bothan Noble cannon CEs that the Rebels have available. Having a force rating is a double edged sword - he can benefit from a crucial reroll and get bodyguarded by Ferus Olin, but he also opens himself up to Vong Jedi Hunters. But there are a couple of factors that might bring Han back into favour - the emergence of Bastila and shutting down Rieekan and Dodonna mean that there's maybe a way in for the self sufficient Han Scoundrel. And the new Tantive IV Troopers are a good option for Han Scoundrel - you can build around Tantives, Lando and Han, using the MTB or Momaw Nadon to set up Han Scoundrel for strikes at the start of the round. So while he's been forgotten to some extent, which is understandable when there are so many strong Rebel Hans out there, there's still some life in Han Scoundrel. 8/10.
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TheHutts wrote:I agree that there's no Tier 1 Snowtrooper build without Daala, but I think the Officer is essential too. Without him, Daala squads lose activations and teeth, and I think other builds like the Raxus Primes clearly outstrip the Snow Troopers.
If you look at Lou's Michigan squad, you'd go down to about 9 Snowtroopers and you'd lose Squad Firepower, and Squad Assault would be much harder to utilise as well.
In FlyingArrow's PA build, you'd lose 5 Snowtroopers (so down to 16) and you'd lose Squad Firepower, so you'd only be on 20 damage.
Maybe the builds would evolve differently to accommodate the change, but I also think they'd possibly drop out of Tier 1 altogether. Losing a bunch of troopers and Squad Firepower is very significant. Sure, but it's the synergy of all these pieces. There's no Snowtrooper build without the Commander or the regular Snowtrooper piece, either. But neither of those are power 11. Daala is the only one powerful enough to create multiple different builds. I guess it depends on your definition of an 11, but I'd think that an 11 means that the piece is cheap enough and universally useful enough to wind up in many different builds (Doombot, Mas, Mouse), or it's powerful enough that it defines faction or squad type (e.g. Bastila, Daala, Yobuck, Lancer).
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I'm quite curious to see how Han Scoundrel and Tantives would fare at a tournament. He might be a good answer to Talon.
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TheHutts wrote:I do agree that the Officer is an unusual choice for an 11, since he's kind of the support commander, not the main thrust behind the build, but I think that he just adds so much to a Snow Trooper squad especially with his rapport (a Snow Trooper goes from 7 points to 5 points - that's almost 30% cheaper), that an 11 is justified. Maybe I am lacking perspective, since he's so recent, and part of several successful builds already, but I think he's so drastically cheap for what he does that an 11 is justifiable. The Officer would be the reason why Daala squads are OP if they still are. 20 HP and Squad Firepower makes the difference IMO. Without him Daala would still be good but not in this Overpowered phase. I think we made the right call on weakening Daala and the Zyg Slaver, but I think we should have taken the Rapport from the Snow Officer too.
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Darth O wrote:I'm quite curious to see how Han Scoundrel and Tantives would fare at a tournament. He might be a good answer to Talon.
Actually, Chris McNaney (Darth_Jim's son) got 2nd place in PA with Han Smuggler (opportunist) and Lando Rebel General (to give Pilot to Han) and Momaw and a bunch of Tantives. I hadn't seen that squad in action before, but it's an auto-win vs melee squads. And it can be deadly when set up properly vs almost anything else too. I'm just not sure how it would handle Talon with cloaked Klats and Zam. Talon has no reason at all to be up in the fray in that matchup, so I'd probably just keep him at the back like one of those wimpy Dodonna/Thrawn characters all game...the result would be that Han would have no legal targets when he got his free shots, because everything else would be cloaked and in cover.
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thereisnotry wrote:Darth O wrote:I'm quite curious to see how Han Scoundrel and Tantives would fare at a tournament. He might be a good answer to Talon.
Actually, Chris McNaney (Darth_Jim's son) got 2nd place in PA with Han Smuggler (opportunist) and Lando Rebel General (to give Pilot to Han) and Momaw and a bunch of Tantives. I hadn't seen that squad in action before, but it's an auto-win vs melee squads. I'd say generally that it would win against melee squads, but there are some out there that will likewise do very well against tantive's. I ran an all melee republic squad against a Muun Broker/Tantive/Luke squad and was way outactivated, but I had 4 Force Cloaked Jedi and all of them had access to force grip, so I just spent most of the game griping to death all the tantives without being shot back at. It was suprisingly effective.
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Nice. I do like the Force Cloak ability. I'd like to see it on more jedi pieces. With shooters continuing to grow in power recently, melee pieces now need a whole lot more help than they used to.
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TheHutts wrote:Han Solo, Scoundrel, from Bounty Hunters
Han Scoundrel was firmly part of the old school - before Rieekan came and gave Mobile and Evade to everyone, and before Dodonna (and I assume other meta factors as well) made Opportunist more attractive than Cunning for the Rebels. Another major factor that fueled this shift was the fact that initially for the first several years of the game, after initiative the 1st player would activate TWO characters (instead of one). This means if you won init, you could lay down 130 accurate damage (plus 20 from Leia herself) on an enemy (Han + Leia). That made for (even bigger) swings on initiative. I remember GenCon (2007 I believe) on Sunday when we were sitting and casually playing and Rob Watkins (head designer of SWM for WotC at the time) walked by. My friend Ron flagged him down and showed him this "flaw" in the game and suggested that the first to activate each round may only activate 1. You could see the lightbulb click over his head. Sure enough six months or so later new rules came out and our game has been played that way since. Thank goodness, the change was needed. Thanks Ron Longhi!
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Hooray for Ron! Never heard of him, but that's a huge correction right there. I think I learned the new initiative rule before my first game, but I can imagine many skirmishes could come down to the last initiative roll in the old rules.
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Yes, we often spoke of "the crucial initiative roll" before this change was instituted. Winning initiative is still important, but it has definitely lost something. I've actually often found that I'm fine with losing the crucial initiative roll, because I still have something equally devastating that I can do, which requires 2 activations rather than just 1.
And actually, if I recall correctly, the over-powering-ness of the Black & Blue squad (Thrawn, Lord Vader, Mas) was what really did it: Vader could swap in and pour out the damage, then win init, pour out more damage and swap away. There were very few squads that could handle that kind of a swing.
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Chadra-Fan Pilot, from Renegades and Rogues  Quote:11 points, Fringe
Hit Points: 30
Defense: 14
Attack: 6
Damage: 10
Special Abilities
Pilot
Pheromones (Cancel an attack from a living enemy within 6 squares that targets this character; the attacker can avoid this effect with a save of 11)
Stealth (If this character has cover, does not count as the nearest enemy for an attacker farther than 6 squares when choosing targets)
Stingbeam (+10 Damage against adjacent enemies. An adjacent living enemy hit by this character's attack is considered activated this round; save 11.) There's been talk on the boards lately, which I largely agree with, that the 12 point Klatooinian Assassin obseletes most other pieces in its price range. The Chadra-Fan Pilot is one piece that arguably is strong enough to have its own niche in that price range, since it has Pilot which means that it can pick up some specific Pilot synergies, and it has Stingbeam, allowing it to activate adjacent pieces. Echo24 took this squad to the top 4 in the Owensboro Regional in 2012 - the Chadra-Fan Pilot is a great choice here as it picks up Gregarious, Twin, Speed 8, and Evade from other pieces in the squad, and since the squad's other attackers has opportunist, it's a great choice to get in there and activate some pieces for Dash or Corran to Smash. Quote:--Corran Smash--
60 Corran Horn, Jedi Master
28 Dash Rendar, Renegade Smuggler
22 R2-D2 and C-3PO, Galactic Heroes
18 Klatooinian Captain
18 Twi'lek Black Sun Vigo
11 Chadra-Fan Pilot
10 Jagged Fel
9 General Dodonna
8 R7 Astromech Droid
6 Mouse Droid x2
9 Ugnaught Demolitionist x3 The Chadra-Fan Pilot's only going to shine in a handful of specific squads, like the one above, but it's very useful in those specific squads, 8/10.
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Haha, the Chadra-Fan Pilot was definitely the MVP of that squad. People don't try to attack it, since it's a relatively minor threat and there's a 50/50 chance that it's just going to cancel the attack anyway (plus Evade if they're shooting). That means he gets up there and hits with Stingbeam twice thanks to R2P0. Most of my games in that tournament involved activating at least one character with the Chadra-Fan and then hitting them hard with one of my other attackers. One of my favorite squads that I've run, tons of fun to play.
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Rebel Leader, from Alliance and Empire  Quote:18 points, Rebel
Hit Points: 50
Defense: 16
Attack: 10
Damage: 10
Special Abilities
Double Attack (On her turn, this character can make 1 extra attack instead of moving)
Commander Effect
Followers within 6 squares who combine fire grant +6 Attack instead of +4. Rebel allies gain Spotter +20. Another day, another overlooked Rebel piece; WOTC gave them a crazy deep bench of useful tools, and a Commander Effect handing out Spotter 20 is definitely a useful tool. Again, like Han Scoundrel, the emergence of a great new Rebel piece in the Tantive IV Trooper arguably helps the Leader out - since they're amazingly useful for 5 points already with Heroic Stand, having them also be able to combine fire with the big hitters for Spotter +20 might have some potential. I'm not sure how practical it will be in game terms - 18 points is a lot to tie up in a commander who's a low damage dealer for her points - but I like the idea enough to add her to my wants list on CoolStuffInc. Even without the Tantives around, she's at least good piece, even if there arguably isn't currently a meta squad for her. 7/10.
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When we played the two Massive Campaign formats, we split the non-uniques into 'good' and 'bad', basically based on whether or not the piece ever appeared at the top tables. The good ones could only be used by one player per team each week. The bad ones were 'unrestricted' and could be used by everyone each week. This was probably the best of the pieces that we had characterized as 'bad' (i.e. unrestricted). As a consequence, this was one of the stars of that format, perhaps the MVP of the whole format.
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Pair with Ackbar SC for some brutal synergy.
It gets costly but there are fewer more effective tank busters out there.
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