Wave 1 Ally Pack – Rebel Troopers

Rebel Trooper painted and photographed by Matthew of www.oldenhammer.com

Rebel Trooper, painted and photographed by Matthew of www.oldenhammer.com

Campaign

These guys have only very little to offer for the campaign, as their Regular Deployment Card shows. You can win them in Gideon Argus’ side mission Friends of Old without buying this pack. With this pack, you can get access to their Elite Deployment Card by earning them a 2nd time via the included Side Mission: Brace for Impact! To date, there are only 2 allies that can be won in both forms for the campaign. Since they are very similar in design to the Imperial Stormtroopers, they don’t offer much, though, in either version. Their Get into Position, which trades an attack for the focused condition, seems nice, but is difficult to pull off in the campaign. Aim, however, is a little bit more consistent. But the imperial player can get around it easily by blocking line of sight. Unsurprising, they are strongest alongside with Gideon Argus, though trading away activations from Heroes on to Rebel Troopers is rarely a good idea.

To recruit the Rebel Troopers as Allies for your campaign, you need to win them either in the side mission included in this pack called Brace for Impact or by winning Gideon Argus’ side mission from the core box called Friends of Old. If you win them in both, you get access to their elite deployment card. All these missions are playable with just the tiles from the Core Box!

Skirmish

Since last writing the review, some major changes have shaken up the Imperial Assault Skirmish meta. Trooper lists are actually viable now, which means this pack is much more important now. Firstly, their Elite Deployment Card is doing okay against many other lists. If you factor in some of the Command Cards included in their pack, they are the backbone of a whole archetype now.

With Reinforcements you can re-deploy a defeated Trooper at the start of a round. Since this pack comes with 2 copies of it, and you can include 2 of it in your deck, this can potentially revive 2 dead Troopers. It sounds a bit mediocre, but once you get the hang of it, it is insanely powerful. Strength in Numbers does well with imperial Stormtrooper lists, and the pack might be worth picking up just for this card, depending on how in love you are with your disposable troopers. The undisputed champion of the pack is Grenadier though. It alone makes buying this pack worth it if you want to run trooper lists.

Update: The evaluation of this pack has been lowered. Their viability in the current state of the game is not very high. They do have some key command cards in their pack, but it does not make them worth picking up at the first chance.

The included skirmish map Geonosis Foundry includes only tiles from the core box.

Model

The model has a similar pose as the Stormtroopers in the core box, which is a bit uneventful. There are other options to occupy your brushes.