“Echo station 3-T-8, we have spotted Imperial walkers.”

–Echo Base Officer, Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Imperial walkers descend to the surface of Hoth, clad in impregnable armor and lumbering forward with terrible purpose. To stand against these massive technological terrors, the Rebellion dispatches its bravest men and women to hold the line as long as they can, buying time for the rest of the Rebels to escape in transports. The courage of these soldiers is unquestionable, and with the Echo Base Troopers Ally Pack, you can bring it to your games of Imperial Assault.

In the same fashion as other Ally Packs and Villain Packs, the Echo Base Troopers Ally Pack contains two sculpted plastic Echo Base Trooper figures that you can use to replace the tokens included in the Return to Hoth expansion. Two new skirmish missions based in a Hoth Weather Shelter open your possibilities for competitive play, and a new campaign side mission that can be woven into any campaign expands your adventures in the Star Wars™ universe. In addition, new Deployment cards, skirmish upgrades, and Command cards invite you to expand your strike teams in new directions.

Today, we’ll join the Echo Base Troopers in their stalwart defense as we take a closer look at this Ally Pack.

Holding the Line

In your campaign missions, the Echo Base Troopers can be vital assets for your heroes. The heroes rarely have the time in a campaign to make a concerted effort defeating the enemies arrayed against them—if they take too many actions away from advancing towards their objectives, time runs out and the Rebels lose the mission. Yet at the same time, these Imperial player’s figures lay down constant fire against the heroes, and in almost all missions, the heroes lose the mission if all of them are wounded.

The Echo Base Troopers provide you a way to battle these threats. While your Rebel heroes focus on completing objectives, the Echo Base Troopers can attack enemy forces and simultaneously draw fire away from your heroes. In combat, the Echo Base Troopers can be highly dangerous—though there are only two figures in a unit of Echo Base Troopers, each figure is significantly more powerful than a standard Rebel Trooper .

Echo Base Troopers offer more health per figure than the Rebel Troopers, as well as substituting a white defense die for a black die and changing a yellow attack die to a green die. The Echo Base Trooper can also spend his surges to either deal more damage or increase his accuracy. In addition, Echo Base Troopers have a variety of useful abilities learned among the hostile environment of Hoth.

Firstly, Echo Base Troopers feature Efficient Travel, which allows them to ignore additional costs for moving through difficult terrain or hostile figures, helping you get these figures exactly where they can do the most damage. Echo Base Troopers also benefit from the Front Line ability: when the Echo Base Trooper is attacking, if his target is within three spaces, you may replace his blue attack die with a red die, sacrificing unnecessary range for the potential to maximize your damage!

Elite Echo Base Troopers cost two points more than a unit of standard Echo Base Troopers, but they also benefit from increased health, improved surge abilities, and an additional ability: Combat Suit. Combat Suit reduces the Pierce value of all incoming attacks by one—a highly useful addition, considering the Echo Base Trooper rolls a black defense die, which features a higher density of block results than the white die. By negating attempts to pierce your armor, you can hold the front lines of battle longer and buy the heroes more time, whether they’re escaping a collapsing cave in this expansion’s new side mission or engaging in a different campaign mission.

Fight for the Alliance

For your skirmish games, the Echo Base Troopers occupy a useful role as more resilient soldiers than the Rebel Troopers. Not only can Echo Base Troopers stand up to more damage, each Echo Base Trooper has the potential to deal more damage. You may use these troopers to defend your other figures as they attempt to complete the mission’s objectives, or you may go toe-to-toe with your opponent in a firefight.

What’s more, the Echo Base Troopers Ally Pack offers a new skirmish upgrade to the Rebel forces. For a single deployment point, the Rebels can equip any Trooper, Leader, or Guardian unit with Combat Suit . This upgrade gives the attached units an ability identical to the elite Echo Base Troopers’ Combat Suit: reducing the Pierce value of all incoming attacks by one. If your strike team is focused around a single powerful figure, such as Luke Skywalker, you could certain do worse than to equip him with Combat Suit to ensure that he stays alive as long as possible.

Alongside this skirmish upgrade, this Ally Pack includes three new Command cards for any army. If you’re struggling to turn the course of the battle against an opponent in a superior position, you could play Against the Odds . This Command card can be played at the end of the round, provided your opponent has at least eight more victory points than you. When you play Against All Odds, you may choose up to three of your figures to become Focused, potentially setting up a devastating reprisal in the next round!

The two other Command cards in this figure pack invite you to travel quickly and slip away before your opponent can marshal a coordinated response. Efficient Travel can be played at the start of a round, and it lets all your figures ignore additional costs for movement through difficult terrain and hostile figures, giving you an easy path for your figures to follow. You may also play Hit and Run on any figure as an action. This Command card allows the chosen figure to immediately perform an attack and then gain three movement points, giving you an opening to strike and dart out of range of melee figures or laser fire.

The Rebellion’s Finest

Only the Rebel Alliance’s finest troops were selected to protect its escape from the Empire’s assault on Echo Base. These soldiers are among the best in the galaxy, and you can add their strength and tenacity to your strike team with the Echo Base Troopers Ally Pack for Imperial Assault. Join us next time as we preview the bounty hunter who hunts Rebels across the galaxy at the Empire’s behest—the ruthless Dengar!

Pre-order your Echo Base Troopers Ally Pack at your local retailer today.