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November 18, 2024
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Today we will explore the Black Sun Enforcers unit.
The Black Sun Enforcers are the foot soldiers of the powerful Black Sun Syndicate. The Black Sun Syndicate is a powerful criminal cartel that vies for power amongst the seedy underbelly of the galaxy. Enforcers are key to gaining and maintaining control. The Black Sun can also be hired by the CIS or Empire to bolster their forces.
In game, the Black Sun Enforcers are a close range, heavy hitting unit that has the capability to one-shot plenty of units in the game.
48 Points. Set at a price for a ‘premium’ corp choice. They are usually well worth their points. You probably won’t be taking this unit naked very often unless you decide to do a primarily or exclusively Black Sun list.
Offense. The headline of this unit is its offensive power. When you get a full Black Sun unit into range you are going to just wipe things off the board. The Black Sun Enforcers have Precise 1 which means they really want to have aims. They also have Independant: Aim 1 which helps satisfy their want of aims. We will discuss their various weapon upgrades later, but the simple basic unit with their Independent: Aim will get an average of 4.2 hits. That is very good for a naked unit.
Defense. The Black Sun are quite durable. Coming with red saves they are equivalent to the resilience of Stormtroopers. They also have the advantage of having somewhat easy access to surge tokens to raise their save a bit. The ‘standard’ builds for fighting units also usually include six minis. They can be surprisingly durable, but they are very vulnerable to pierce. They will get absolutely slaughtered by a lightsaber, which is dangerous because they often want to operate within range of a force user.
Maneuverability. Boasting the standard Move-2 of troopers they boast nothing special for movement. However, they do have Dauntless on their unit card allowing then to keep moving when under fire and suppressed. While this doesn’t increase their move it allows them to always get a move shoot or a double move which is very important for an assault unit. As long as they don’t die they will be able to keep pushing towards the enemy.
Self-Preservation. A keyword that came out with the Shadow Collective release is Self-Preservation. This keyword is a big downside for Black Sun that needs to be considered when constructing lists. This keyword prevents the Black Sun Enforcers from using the courage value of a nearby commander, unless they are of the same affiliation. The only commanders right now that have the Black Sun affiliation are the Black Sun Vigos.
The Black Sun Vigo is a fairly obvious choice of commander to go with your Enforcers. The Vigo’s courage can be used by Black Sun Enforcers when checking for panic. The other awesome synergy is Aid. This Keyword allows the Vigo to pass Aims, Dodges and Surges to your Enforcers. This allows you to pile green tokens on your Black Sun Enforcers. This can really increase their capabilities even more. Also remember that Vigos are generic commanders. You can bring up to four in a Shadow Collective list to throw tokens around. You could theoretically have 5 aims on a unit of Enforcers even before any command card shenanigans, just by aiding all the Independent tokens from your Vigos on one unit.
We again are going to look at some harder math later on, but we’ll take some overall looks at the heavy weapons here.
The first weapon is the Mag-Det Enforce. This weapon upgrade is very range limited as it can only be used at range 1. However, this weapon can really slap. This weapon provides 3 black dice, Blast, and Impact 3. All of this for only 14 points. This weapon, like the unit in general, really can do damage as long as it is able to get in range. It also provides an extra mini for half the cost of the shotgun.
The second weapon is the more expensive one, double the cost at 28 points. This weapon is identical to its Fleet Trooper counterpart, providing 2 red dice and Pierce 1 at range 1-2. This weapon really helps the Black Sun Enforcers punch through red saves. This weapon also has an added range bonus as compared to the mag-det which can be crucial.
The ‘basic’ trooper upgrade is the Black Sun Enforcer. This ‘basic’ upgrade also adds a keyword which is a nice bonus. For 11 points you get an extra mini and Cache: Dodge 1. Cache basically gives you a dodge that you can spend at anytime. This is quite useful, especially if you are facing Pierce weapons that don’t have High Velocity. Anytime you can blunt a shot, but especially if that shot is 1 or 2 saves Pierce 1, you are very happy.
.The Black Sun Vigo is a Leader Personal upgrade. This mini costs 18 points but is well worth it bringing with his Independent: Surge 1, as well as increasing your courage by 1. This upgrade is absolutely crucial to bring if you are not bringing any commander Black Sun Vigos as courage 1 is very easy to panic. Courage 2 is really the minimum to have as a bubble or on a unit with no bubble. The Independent: Surge 1 is also amazing as the Black Sun do not have surge conversion either offensively or defensively. The surge token can be used on the approach to keep your minis alive, and then when you’re close start using it offensively to really add the oomph to your shots.
We not going to cover every possible gear upgrade, just the ones that seem reasonable to take.
As an assault unit, the Black Sun Enforcers really care about mobility. Ascension Cables can really add to their mobility and open up their options. At 4 points you aren’t putting too much investment in this upgrade but still enough that you aren’t just going to toss it on without thought.
For only 2 points Environmental Gear does a lot of what Ascension Cables does. This upgrade just makes sure your assault squads keep moving at full speed.
Prepared Supplies is 5 points and provides Cache: Dodge 1. This upgrade allows you to be a bit more durable and especially potentially dodge piercing shots. Probably not the best upgrade for the Black Sun at 5 points but definitely not bad.
It should be obvious why adding Scout 1 to an assault unit is good. This upgrade just allows you to get a head start on getting your guns in range. Probably a ‘default’ upgrade. This upgrade can be easily added at only 2 points without much thought.
Targeting Scopes is an interesting upgrade for the Black Sun as it takes them to Precise 2. This is quite a lot of rerolls considering how many aims you can get them. The only disadvantage of this upgrade for the Black Sun is going from no Precise to Precise 1 is a fair bit better then going Precise 1 to 2. If you plan on getting plenty of aims to your Black Sun Enforcers and fighting without surge access, either through frag grenades or surge tokens, then targeting scopes is definitely a consideration.
As an assault unit, the Black Sun are in a good position to make use of basically any of the grenade options. Some are better then others.
The Black Sun unit that likes grenades the most are the ones with a Mag-Det Enforcer as they want to be at range 1 anyways.
Probably the weakest option for the Black Sun. Likely if you’re shooting at range 1 you have a Mag-Det already with Blast. And if you have a Scatter Gun you probably just want to stay at range 2 or can move to reduce the cover anyways.
An option that you may decide to bring if you find yourself struggling with armor or droid troopers. It’s just kinda fine on the Black Sun, your goal should be annihilation of the enemy, not stripping actions.
The only Grenade that isn’t 3 points, and there’s a reason for it. This is probably the best grenade for the Black Sun. The big ability you get here is surge to critical which is amazing with how many dice you roll. The one red die is also better than the other grenades, making whatever mini throws this grenade lose less of their offense. Surge to Crit also helps against armored targets. Combined with the Mag-Det to get Impact 3, you can really melt armor.
Impact Grenades are your big answer to armor if you want it. You can have up to Impact 8 if you really wanted it. The Frag Grenades are probably the better option for all-rounders, but, again IMPACT 8!
An interesting Option for many units. Having one or two Smoke Grenades in your list can definitely add some flexibility to your list. If you show up to a table and it is very open your Black Sun would really like to be able to lay down some smoke cover.
The weakest option for Black Sun. As with the Droid Poppers. Black Sun want to wipe away enemy units, not put tokens on them.
In this section we’re going to look at some loadouts for the Black Sun and the offensive potential of those Loadouts.
We are going to assume with all these shots that we have an Independent: Aim as baseline.
First we will observe an uber cheap loadout. Take the unit and just add a Mag-Det Enforcer. This version ends up only being 62 points. From this unit, if the whole unit ends up shooting at range 1 we get an average of 5.9 hits. This is quite a lot, especially when you consider that there is Blast so all those hits will bypass cover.
At range 2 this unit still throws 5B5W which gives us 5 hits. Still really good, though now you need to contend with cover.
This loadout will include a Mag-Det, a Vigo, and Frag Grenades all for 85 points. This loadout is definitely a ‘standard’ load out that you will see on the tables.
The average hits at range 1 for this unit, where you throw 1 frag grenade, use the Mag-Det and then use 4 regular pistols is 8.5 hits, with Blast. Into armor this pool yields 6.6 forced saves, which is pretty incredible.
At range 2 this setup still yields 6.5 hits before cover, assuming you spend the surge token you get from Independent if a surge result appears. This shows that although this unit wants to shoot at range 1 it is still effective at range 2.
For our final loadout we will look at the Scatter Gun and Vigo combination. This combo costs 94 points.
At range 2 we will get an average of 7.3 hits before cover, with Pierce 1, so even into surging red saves we would get an average of 3.4 wounds through.
All these Loadouts are again just assuming 1 aim, all these averages are just a baseline and by getting them more aims they just get more and more amazing.
Something you may notice in the lists that are presented here are that every single one of them has a bus. Turns out transporting assault units to the front and handing them aims is really good.
About as ’rounded’ as an all Black Sun list can get. This list has a mix of the loadouts we explored earlier, as well as 2 buses to give the Black Sun rides. The one bus is designed to just quickly get units to the front lines and be a bother once it’s there. That bus might also end up just riding around and delivering multiple units over the course of the game. The other bus is more of a support platform, it should also deliver a unit but it also wants to hang out for longer giving more aims to the Black Sun units.
Even more of a skew then the last list. This list features one less bus, but also more troopers and weapons. This list has one mode, run at the enemy. If this list makes it into firing range it should be able to wipe literally any list off the table, the challenge is just getting there. Remember with our exploration of the loadouts earlier that the expensive Mag-Det units are still effective at range 2. Sometimes the better play is to hang back a little bit in some safety then just put yourself in an absolutely terrible position. Sometimes the opposite is also true.
A much more rounded list than the other two. This list is an example of how a one-off Black Sun Enforcer Unit can really bring some oomph to a list. This list has a bus that will help deliver the Black Sun, and a Maul to do Maul things. Your goal is to get the Black Sun out of the bus shooting at stuff probably about turn 3, while at the same time getting Maul in. The 2 different massive threats in your opponents face will be probably too much to deal with.
The Black Sun Enforcers are quite the unit. Fairly durable, able to keep moving under fire, and able to tear apart any list they get to if/when they get there.
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2 Responses
I‘m interested why you ran sonic imploders on your two busses list when you said they were the least good upgrade and you had plenty of points to fit in Frag Grenades.
Whoops,
I think I was using legionhq to retrieve cards and accidentally exported with a changed grenade. Yes those should be frags