The Holocron of Admiral Ozzel

[Tai-Pan]

Right about there would be fine, I'd like to keep his cost low. I'm working on getting a playtest in with him as well.

[Tai-Pan]

Just finished a battle with this guy and thought I'd post the report.

Map: Starting Zones are enclosed by Ruin walls, leaving a narrow path to the middle. Each side's path leads to a small access to high ground, which overhangs the path in another place, leads over water and goes to a slight height near the beginning of the enemy's path. Water divides the two paths from each other. Choosing to go through the water lets more figures get height quicker, but their height is less than the height that can be gained by moving along the path and up the narrow way.

Armies:
Vader 1, Ozzel, 3x Stormtroopers
C3PO, Padawan Luke, Obi-Wan, 3x Rebel Troopers, Rebel Captain

In Round 2 the forces met in the middle. Ozzel ordered a surprise attack (18!) that caught the Rebels with their pants down. Due to the extra move, the Stormtroopers were able to move to height, including the max height on the map, and with the extra attack die they rained down fire, killing off 5 Rebel Troopers in one turn (plus the one that Ozzel nailed).

Vader saw Luke and Obi-Wan advancing along height and moved to engage, pushing Obi-Wan away from his Padawan and attacking Luke, but only managing to land one wound. Obi-Wan pushed Vader into the water and smashed him with 5 skulls for 4 wounds and Luke finished the Sith Lord off. During the next turn the two Jedi caught and killed Ozzel before he could try to surprise them again, and the Imperial Stormtroopers were no match for the fury of the two Jedi!



It was a very short battle, but a very fun one! One-shotting Vader is always cool, and Ozzel's surprise attack really surprised me!


Thoughts to Ozzel:
I was a little worried that it might be bothersome to keep him close enough to be able to attack an enemy, but it wasn't, and shouldn't be on most normal size maps. His 7 range helps with that, although it did feel slightly wrong that he could shoot further than unboosted Stormtroopers, but I think I can live with it.

I like Ambush the way it is, I think. The fact that 6 squad figures take a turn makes it already quite worthwhile (and it's good that this is limited by the X marker to once per round), even if the enemy gets a boost (then you can move figures up from your SZ). With a good surprise roll, Ozzel enables his followers to even move into the attack strength where they can threaten heroes, something I found to also be very helpful, good, and thematic (the presence of such a commander changes the game from a Hero mows his way through hundreds of Stormtroopers to a Hero needs to be very careful or eliminate the commander).

In the battle against the Rebels with their commander, he felt like the equivalent of the Rebel Commander.

As far as having several commanders around possibly leading to extremely dangerous Stormtroopers, I'm not too worried about it. For one, dangerous Stormtroopers are cool, and it gives the Stormtrooper army the potential to hold out against heroes (generally I'm eager to give up if I only have Stormtroopers left against heroes with more than a couple lives left, so that's a plus). Also, the X-Marker limits what you can do in one turn (either Surprise Attack or Send a Squad).


As far as cost goes, 70 feels pretty right.

[Arch-vile]

Can you update the SP with the latest draft of Ozzel?

[Tai-Pan]

Updated

[Porkins]

So far so good...I'm a little worried about the 6 figure bonding due to the disparity in squad size: 4-man Stormtrooper squad, so 1.5 squads get to take a full turn, 3 man Death Star Trooper squad, so 2 squads get to take a full turn, and 2-man XYZ squad so 3 squads get to take a full turn + Ozzel's turn. Of course, the surprise attack has a significant chance that it could backfire, so maybe that keeps it in check

I'm interested to see more tests!

[TREX]

I'll probably do one on this guy soon. Very eager to do this, he sounds fun. As I generally hate taking on hero heavy armies with stormtroopers.

[Tai-Pan]

I also wondered about that. In the direct comparison to the Rebel Captain, I felt that it was okay.

Rebel Captain
Every round, Cap's turn plus either 4 attacks or 6 moves

Ozzel
Once per round, Ozzel's turn plus 6 moves and attacks, possibly with +2 defense for enemies or +2 move for the squad or +2 move and +1 attack


As far as the ability feels, I would prefer it to be a set number of squads (2 would be too many, so 1 squad), but the Rebel Captain does basically the same thing, so it fits into the HoSS Canon.

However, I do see a legitimate point here. A squad has a value that can be achieved with an OM and that has to do with the number of figures and the strength of the attack. At the same cost, and assuming the squads are balanced, a 2-man squad should achieve similar offensive power as a 3-man squad. With a "6 figure" power, 1,5 squads of 4-man Stormtroopers would be less valuable than 3 squads of X (Imperial Jettroopers or whatever). In the set of figures that we now have, I don't foresee that being a big problem, but it does limit what the future could bring (that may also not be a problem, as the possibilities for figure design are limited by which figures there are, further limited because they would be Imperials. Looking at the list of unreleased figures, we can expect Scouttroopers and Imperial Guards, and I believe that's all for Imperial Squads).

[TREX]

@Tai-Pan , even with different sizes of squads, I still like it. As for now, almost no other imperial squads get really used at my house, because the stormtroopers have the numbers on them. This may be a way to get some more playtime in with the other squads. At the end of the day you gotta throw down an x marker with ozzel to do it. I'd like to test him this way as well. I'll try to do a test with him today.

[Porkins]

Yeah, right now (for me) it's at the level of "a concern", not a show-stopper. It's definitely worthy of more testing to see whether it is balanced. If it's not balanced, we can also address it by tweaking the d20 numbers.


The comparison to Rebel Captain is relevant, and at the same time not relevant. Relevant because the powers are similar, but not relevant because we didn't have plans for many rebel common squads like we did/do for Imperials. Additionally, the Rebel Captain is limited to only activating squads with the Hold Steady power.


Incidentally, we went through a zillion versions of Rebel Captain to get to where we felt like he was balanced. We had him at "activate 5 figures who can either shoot or move" and that was too powerful, which is why we ended up with the "move 6 or shoot 4" that we have now. Of course, there is not the potential downside of Surprise Attack so...


As I said, definitely worth more testing; just something to keep an eye on for now.

[Arch-vile]

Ozzel is looking good so far. He's a very high-risk, high-reward unit, and there are a lot of dials to tweak to balance him if he proves too strong (lowering range, raising points, changing d20 roll, activating fewer figures, etc.). He's one that will need more testing than most units due to his potential IMO.

[Yodaking]

Should we maybe call for a vote on initial play testing then?

[Porkins]

Originally Posted by Yodaking

Should we maybe call for a vote on initial play testing then?

Looks like Tai-pan has already started it, so yeah. from me.