Rebel trooper upgrade expansion analysis
I have long speculated about upgrade expansions with new personell and or heavy weapons for released units, One friend even said “hey they stole your idea” when they were announced. However I think that with FFG’s history it was pretty easy to guess. 

The expansion gives us 4 new models that are new sculpts. New aliens and poses is great for customisation which I love. I have bought a bunch of alien heads to modify my models already and these are great. Can’t wait to modify that ithorian to have a Z-6. You also get a unit card and token so you can use it as an extra unit. You of course can’t get a full squad without extra models, but since we already have a bunch of new personel from the rebel specialist expansion, it’s a nice thing for rebel players that don’t already have 6 units. In the box the rebel troopers get access to 2 new heavy weapons and 2 new personel upgrades as well as some new upgrade cards.

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Heavy weapons
The first new weapon is the DLT-20A rifle. It gives the rebel troopers a range 4 gun and comes with critical 1. The cost is slightly more than a Z-6 and does an average of 1.375 wounds per attack thanks to the critical 1. So compared to a Z-6 it feels like a weaker option, while the critical can give you a potential crit to snipe through dodges and cover or hurt a vehicle. The higher price also speaks against it, so the potential strength is range 1-4.

However like many other heavy weapons the range dosen’t work well with the rebel troopers standard gun, which have range 1-3. So if you fire only att range 4, you waste the normal troopers dice and if you shoot within range 3 you don’t get any value from the extra range. So either you can use it as a split fire weapon or have a way of shooting at range 4, but doing less dmg than a Z-6 squad. Having the versitility of attacking something on range 4 at the cost of more points and the slightly less dmg of a Z-6 is a mediocre trade IMO. However I do see a potential for this gun. My plan is to use a single rebel trooper unit with this gun and grappling hooks as a backline objective holder. Get into position and snipe with he range 4 at anything that is in range, if you get a range 3 shot then great. You can just take a standard squad to sit at an objective or a sniper strike team. This unit is a little more expensive, but it can’t be killed in 2 hits like the strike teams and can deal dmg than a naked squad. I doubt I will use more than one rifle in my lists though.

The second heavy weapon is a scattergun much like the fleet troopers one, with this one being focused on anti-tank. The SX-21 comes with 2 red and 2 white and it has an average of 2 hits per attack which makes it the most effective gun availiable to the rebel troopers. The drawback is the range 1-2, which has a similar with range as the dlt rifle only reversed. You can’t use the gun togheter with the standard ones at range 3. The SX-trooper can use the normal rifle of course, but you are losing 1.5 average hits from your attack. I would love to swap this gun with the fleet troopers grenade launcher, that would be a dream come true for each unit.

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The special keyword is impact 1 which only affects vehicles atm. If I want close range anti-tank, then I rather go with a unit that can get there easier than troopers. There are of course new infantry units with armor like the dewback riders and super battledroids, however impact 1 will only be effective vs these units if you only have a single normal hit on your attack after cover. A full squad of fleet troopers with scattergun does 5.5 average hits with pierce 1 killing 3.75 stormtroopers outside cover. A full squad of rebel troopers with SX-21 does 4.5 on average killing 2.25 stormtroopers outside cover. Looking at these numbers I see no point in using the rebel trooper SX-21, at least not for attacking troopers at range 2, despite rebel troopers being slightly cheaper at 70p vs 78p of fleet troopers (including heavy weapons). Giving the rebel troopers fragmentation grenades you can dish out an average of 5.625 hits, killing 2.8125 stormtroopers outside cover. This is still worse output than the fleet troopers due to the lack of the powerful keyword pierce, however surge-crit and impact 1 will hurt vehicles if you ever get a range 1 shot. So with the fleet troopers as an option I don’t see the value of this new gun unless you really need short range anti-tank in the corps slot. Having pierce or something would have helped, or doing the swap for the fleet troopers launcher. A cool gun, even cooler model, but on paper I don’t see why they designed the card like this.

Moving on we have 2 new personel upgrades: the captain and specialist. The rebel specialist is an exhaust personell for 14 points and gives your troopers one extra gear slot as well as a free exhaust action that gives the unit a dodge token or a surge token. In the article they suggest recon Intel + emergency stims, these however is a pricy build with 28 points for the gear and specialist. Exhaust abilities should be powerful since they cost of using them multiple times. This is essentielly a free action that can be used multiple times if you recover, it is however locked to either a dodge or the new surge token. I think double gear is a bit overkill for a corp unit, I would love this personel on my pathfinders though. However going both enviormental gear + recon intel or grappling hooks is a build I might consider.

This way you can combine actions and mods with powerul anti-tank weapons, then recover all the cards with one recover.

Lastly we got the rebel captain who gives the squad access to the training slot. This is a nice thing since training gives you access to powerful cards like hunter, endurance and offensive push. Like the specialist, the squad also gains an exhaust ability. This one makes you immune to being supressed for an activation with the cost of not being able to remove supression during the activation (rally step and recover actions). This downside prevents you from doing a recover to remove supression and recover the card in the same action. For only 4 points I think this ability can be quite worthwhile and training is one of the better upgrade types.

Rebel troopers 40
Mpl ion launcher 24
Rebel specialist captain 14
Offensive push 4
Total 82p.

The ability is however pretty specific in use, but can turn games. With courage 1 you can only gain effect from the ability when you start the activation with 1 supression, but you get a 100% chance instead of a 33.3…% chance with rally. So during round 5 or maybe 6 it’s amazing to be able to guarantee to get 2 actions instead of 1 when you need to claim an objective in the end. It’s a bit specific in use though since it dosen’t work with 2 supression or more. You could combine this with a ion launcher to recover and fire each round despite being supressed.

Adendum
I did not think about commaders courage bubble that help you against panic. That means you can use this to avoid being supressed despite having more supression than your courage. So this make the captain a great contender vs officer upgrade and is a really nice upgrade to take vs enemy supression lists, extra good with Jyn or Luke for the 3 courage.

Closing thoughts:
The things that sticks out in these expansions are the offensive push. A 4p card that gives you free mods on attacks after a move action. This have the potential of becoming the upgrade card predator of old 1.0 x-wing. It’s a card that makes training a even better slot than before. The heavy weapons are a bit dissapointing. I think I will at most use the one dlt-a rifle and no scatterguns. The designers had a problem of not making these new weapons just replace the old in effectivness, but it hit the other end and the shotgun is probably not gonna see any action since fleet troopers fill that role better. The new personel upgrades are nieche, but I think they can help the ion gun. Otherwise I still prefer the officer for supression control. For the rebels this expansions feels a bit weak on paper compared to the other factions, don’t know if it’s the designers being in a rush to make 4 expansions of the same type or they didn’t wanna make stuff to powerful. I could be proven wrong then these hit the table, but I think a single copy would be enough if they hadn’t put offensive push and some real nice sculpts in there.

What are your thought?