In all your play tests the Death Troopers lost badly? I would love to know who played, and what was played against them. Because they have been the most dominate thing I have played with in this set. I didn't bring them to the Vassal tournament because I honestly thought they were to good.... What about them is bad? And was Snoke/Kylo/Hux never used with them? Snoke was one of the first pieces I thought about when I started bulding. DoF with them is HUGE.






I didn't want to jack the LowerHuttacon thread, so I moved this stuff here

Ya the reducing damage bit from Unit Bodyguard and the spreadable ability of it is very very powerful.

Have you looked at the squads I built?

Just a couple of PT snippets. (All edited for brevity and pertianant information. This is not all of the PTs, but ones I felt showed a nice variety).

-DTs with 100pt Sidious vs Mandos with a rally master, captain, 4 scouts, gunslinger, gunsmith.
(From the PTer)
against Cloaked I picked him off pretty easily.

-(With Kallus, in a similar to Shmi's squad above.) They were beat down by a Jyn/Andor + RC Luke, Princess Leia, and the 3 generals.
The major damage output of Jyn and Andor just took down the DTs fairly quickly. Krennic was too valuable to risk moving too close to the action without multiple DTs next to him. As soon as a DT was separated from the rest - they were jumped on and destroyed, Leia's cannon shot being key. Of course Evade and Mobile were keys that helped keep the Rebels alive, and RC Luke getting them where they needed to be. Of course they also outactivated the Imps,which helped a lot.

-In another playtest - 100pt vader was the beast in the middle. It was the DTs only win in PTs
(From the PTer)
I wanted to try him with 100 point Vader since his CE has movement tricks for Troopers, and because the three standard bases for Imperials (Thrawn, Daala, VoLothal) are all unavailable for Krennic. The troopers were good support shooters, although Unit Bodyguard and Dark Armour don't synergise very well. OR struggled to get through Vader. Vader and Krennic's CEs allowed lots of movement, but the squad is low activation enough it's not a problem IMO.

-DTs, Krennic, a few Death Star Gunners and troopers, Motti and Jerrjerod vs Bo-Katan, Pre-Vizla, Death sabaterus, Mando captain, Kelborn, and an Outrider on speederbike.
This match was a joke. DTs whole thing is reducing damage through bodyguarding. The bike separated them all and dropped them individually like flies. When they were grouped, they were punished by Bo-Katan's Thermal Detenator.



Overall we concluded that Strafe/gallop with damage boosts (Luke and Leia on speeder, Grievous on wheel bike, etc), any enemy moving abilities (push, barrel through, repulse, etc), and direct damage - especially with splash effects (Mira of Nar Shadda, flamethrower, missles, grenades, lightning, Thermal detonator, etc) provided enough bad matchups that they were not going to be overpowered.


I will concede that Snoke/Hux were not considered - and I see that it may be an issue.


Again - community hive mind - let's brainstorm all the combos that may be problematic.

I don't think huge damage potential and huge damage reducing potential should be on the same piece, and they're not subject to disruptive either.

They're super cheap - I reckon they could be 10 points more and still be playable.

offense without movement should still be fine, if the defense is not around. losing cunning, they can still gain opportunist. and still have a lot of damage reducing properties. The issue is that they have the best damage reduction and Bodyguarding abilities in the game. literally, the best. 3 of those guys together can take so many attacks. Think about it, if someone only deals 20 damage, like my Cloning Dash Rendar squad. 4 attacks at 20 damage. you have 3 unit bodyguards next to eachother at 80 HP each.

that means that I can hit 21 times and no one dies. 21 x 20 = 420 damage and not a single one of the three dies

but if you get adjacent and the target stays the same you can do 7 and 7 and than 3 before anyone dies. so that would be 17

that is 20 x 17 = 340 damage, not a single one dies.

It's also much harder than it appears to have more than two adjacent at once on the move. In playtests, DTs were taken down the phase when they are separated. Ozzel exacerbates this, since you're only moving one at a time. So Ozzel + Piett is a detriment combo, especially considering the +31pts.

Valid discussion, but respectfully it should be in a new thread.

I think Mike was talking about his build having Death Troopers at 31 defense in cover, and doing 50 damage shots with Cunning.

31 defense with 80 hit points and unit bodyguard is a pretty huge defensive roadblock. If we're going to keep all that, I'd probably favour raising the cost of the Death Troopers (possibly by removing rapport), removing some offense, and making Jedi cut through Unit Bodyguard. Right now Jedi are just going to get slaughtered walking into the crossfire, unless they have swap or something.

While I agree that they shouldn't count as Stormtroopers, I don't see the point of the first revision. Death Troopers are the only character whose name contains "death" and are troopers, and they already count as having the same name as each other. So that effect would do nothing, unless I'm misreading it? I would say the replacement should be something like:

Characters named "Stormtrooper" count as having the same name as characters named "Death Trooper" for the purposes of special abilities whose name contains squad.

So Death Troopers can still have the benefit of their squad abilities that they got from counting as being named Stormtrooper, while not being named Stormtrooper so not able to become First Order. Unless the intent was to remove the synergy with Stormtroopers as well? In that case, the effect can just be removed altogether, as it is redundant (unless elite death troopers or some such are added?).