Bad Batch Unit Guide (GAR and Rebels)

“…which is why we should all remember that, with a little methylation, you can start with a Wrecker, but end up with an Omega.”

Raucous applause, laughter, Nobel prizes

Ah, welcome, thank you for joining me for Part 2 of my anthology on The Bad Batch. Since you’ve just read Part 1, A Series of Lectures on the Genetic Implications of The Bad Batch.¹ I won’t repeat any of those details, so instead we can move on to something a bit more mundane but just as educational: an article on how to play them in Star Wars: Legion. How fun!

Special thanks to Kyle Dornbos who wrote the original “Rapid Reactions” that I adapted into this unit guide for Legion 2.6

Strengths

• Steady and a LOT of very reliable, highly modifiable dice at Range 1-2 and are not slouches in melee either
• 11 health behind red saves that will usually have a surge behind them
• A command card that turns it into a missile
• Courage 3
• Can either take advantage of Rex’s Scouting Party (GAR) or Omega’s ability to contest POI’s at Range 1 (Rebel)

Weaknesses

• They are pricey (especially the GAR version) and ask for order control which is not always easy to come by (especially the Rebel version)
• Unlike most expensive unique units, their attack power degrades as they take wounds
• Cannot benefit from backup (or clone sharing for the GAR version)
• No options for upgrades apart from Omega for the Rebel Version

Overview

The only difference between the Rebel and Republic unit card is the Rebels are Mercenaries and they swap Crosshair for Omega (technically optional, for a discount of ten points after you take her because you will), so we’ll discuss them together until we get to those two.

160 Points (GAR), 140 Points (Rebels). That’s a hefty sum; the most expensive base cost for a non-force user trooper unit in the game, the Bad Batch is only eclipsed by fully equipped Dark Troopers. You’re getting a lot for your 160 points though.

Equip: Hunter, Wrecker, Echo, Tech, Crosshair(GAR) Well, you have to take the required heavy upgrades, which are themselves the Bad Batch characters. They add a ton of keywords which we’ll get into below.

Unfortunately, Bad Batch doesn’t have any other upgrade slots, which means they are the first unit in the game with literally no way to modify their loadout at all, except for adding Omega to the Rebel version.

Defense: Impervious, Red Save, two wounds/model. Well this unit is an absolute slab of beef, coming out to 11 wounds (GAR) or 10 wounds (Rebels) when you include all the models. They also have Impervious and likely surges from Echo’s Reliable.

Offense: Black/White (Range 1-2), Red (Melee). These are the ranged dice that’ll be used by Tech, Echo, and Hunter. Wrecker, Crosshair, and Omega carry their own pools which does mean that the total is different for each faction, but we’ll get into that in a bit.

Scale. Ignore difficult terrain is neat, especially as a unit with Range 2 weapons. They probably don’t get much out of the vertical element of this depending on your table, but you might get lucky.

Steady. Free attack after a move; this is one of the best keywords in the game and allows them to double move before shooting or move/shoot/move, which as Han can attest is absolutely massive on a Range 2 pool.

Sharpshooter 1. Ignoring cover is good, even better in Legion 2.6 when cover is often kinda crap anyway.

We’re Not Regs. Initially this was something only Clone players would be a tiny bit sad about because it only affected Fire Support (RIP) and clone trooper token sharing. Now it affects Backup (they can’t benefit from it under any circumstance) instead of Fire Support, but it still inhibits clone sharing. Wrecker ain’t about to let some rebel trooper take a shot for him…even if that shot wouldn’t even have consequences for the trooper I guess.

Courage 3. Bad Batch is off on their own sometimes, but they’ll basically never have to worry about how far away they are from their Commander. Hell in Rebels they’re gonna probably have more courage than their Commander anyway.

But wait… there’s more! Let’s look at all the keywords the team members themselves bring to the unit.

Upgrade Options (not really options actually)

Hunter: Basically, Hunter gives you Force Choke as a coin flip. Notable differences from Force Choke besides the fact that it only works half the time:

1. It doesn’t exhaust, so you can use it every turn without having to MOTF/Recover (assuming you have range)
2. Since Bad Batch is a multiple model unit (unlike all force users) you can extend the range of this with cohesion by cohering a non-Hunter mini towards your target
3. It’s not a force power so Inquisitors can’t cancel it

This is a nice little hedge against Bad Batch getting tied up by lone unit leaders, which would otherwise be sort of a problem for them.

Wrecker: He doesn’t have any keywords, he just adds dice and health. He’s the extra beef in your double order of beef, basically. The three melee dice is actually sort of a big deal as it increases their dice ceiling by two in melee and gives you something to spend aim tokens on.

Echo: Reliable 3, which is both boring and almost certainly the most useful keyword of the entire bunch. Bad Batch doesn’t surge natively and they can’t spend clone surges, so this is going to be where most of your surge tokens come from.

Tech: Cache: Aim 1 and Dodge 1, Tactical 1. The cache tokens are neat and gives you even more of a floor for your rolls, while Tactical 1 is absolute value town on a unit that also has Steady.

Crosshair (GAR Only): Precise 1. Crosshair also gives you a weapon that is 1 red, High Velocity, Pierce 1. Note that Precise is not a weapon keyword so it applies whether you use Crosshair’s weapon or not. Adding native Pierce to this already silly attack pool is incredible. You can also split off Crosshair’s attack (which gives it Critical 1) to pick off random dudes in the open.

Instead of Crosshair, Rebels get:

Omega is only 1 health, so she reduces the total wounds of the unit from 11 to 10 compared to GAR. She also only offers 2 white dice which is not nearly as good as Crosshair with all his keywords. However, she offers a very unique ability, I’m Part of the Squad Too, which allows her to…oh yeah, ignore that big pile of reminder text above, THIS is her true ability now:

This may seem a little bit good, but it’s honestly REALLY good. Contesting POI’s can be difficult for a variety of reasons, but this not only allows you to get to it by moving less distance, it allows you to shoot targets outside of it by a very wide margin while STILL contesting.

The Whole Package

So what do you get, after all that?

Republic gets an 11 health unit that throws 2 Red, 4 Black, 4 White with Pierce 1 at Range 2 and has Steady, Sharpshooter 1, Scale, Impervious, Reliable 3, Tactical 1, Cache: Aim 1 and Dodge 1, Precise 1, and We’re Not Regs.

Rebels get a 10 health unit that throws 1 Red, 4 Black, 6 White at Range 2 and has Steady, Sharpshooter 1, Scale, Impervious, Reliable 3, Tactical 1, Cache: Aim 1 and Dodge 1, I’m Part of the Squad Too and We’re Not Regs.

Both of these units are just pure raw health and an incredibly reliable and slappy attack with extreme mobility from Steady. That sure is a lot a of keywords, amirite?

But wait, there’s more!

Just Kidding, Here’s More Package

Bad Batch only gets one command card and it basically just supercharges their existing array of keywords.

Somebody actually made a spreadsheet to keep track of all these keywords; this essentially doubles up on the existing keywords on each model, while adding Suppressive for Wrecker and Inspire 1 for Omega. Most relevant, however, it increases their speed by 1 (to speed 3) for the turn.

MOST of this is overkill, there’s a point at which the number of mods you have are just comical. I want to point out two things though:

• Speed 3 is pretty amazing, and it can be used for Turn 1 plays if the map is right (especially on Breakthrough, or if you scouted onto the board with the help of Captain Rex)
• Suppressive applies to ALL the weapons in the unit, which means that IF you so chose, you would be able to shoot at three different targets (since Wrecker and Crosshair/Omega can use different weapons from the rest of the squad) and lay down a total of 6 suppression tokens. It all depends on whether or not that will actually help you from the perspective of panicking enemy units, but it IS a thing you can do.

Tactics

Sadly this section used to be more interesting in my opinion but the ability to move them around and get extra attacks with Yoda has been removed with the November 2024 update. Still, there are a few things to consider:

General

Remember that they make for an excellent target. When you’re going to attack with them you ideally won’t be doing it randomly pulling their token from the bag though it is bound to happen sometime. They are a great last-first unit, but on that turn you act first you should just know that you’re going to take some heat on return fire unless you can go hide after your shot or dive into a melee.

Republic

Now that they…sniff…took the Yoda combo away, there are pretty much two combos:

• Scouting Party with Rex
• Getting them an order every turn with Fives, who gives zero F….Fives, about the fact that they aren’t “regs.” They’re still Clones and they can still get passed an order from him!

Rebels

Given that this is a Merc unit the only “trick” here is figuring out how to get them orders aside from their own. Han and Leia can both benefit from playing Underworld Connections so that they at least are eligible for orders from cards like No Time for Sorrows or even just Assault. Rebel players will often double-up on the value from this card by including another merc Operative such as Din Djarin or IG-11 in their list.

Wound Order

Before we close this thing out, let’s briefly ponder in which order you should take casualties on your Baddest of Batches, because despite all their beefiness they are still going to get shot and you’ll want to have a plan for how that happens.

Personally my default casualty order for each is as follows:

Republic: Wrecker, Tech, Crosshair, Echo, Hunter

Wrecker doesn’t add any keywords himself. You lose the extra red die on the attack, but since Wrecker is three wounds it also pushes back by one the wound steps on which you lose dice; basically you lose dice on 3, 5, 7, and 9 wounds instead of 2, 4, 6, etc. Tech is next since you’ve probably spent his Cache tokens by this point and Tactical 1 only really nets you one aim once you’re in range (since you can just aim then move/attack). Losing Crosshair hurts but not nearly so much as losing your surges; Echo is last before Hunter for that reason.

Rebels: Wrecker, Tech, Echo, Omega, Hunter if you’re anywhere near a POI, Omega before Echo if you are not

Basically, once you lose Echo you become a lot more killable in general, so you still want to delay his loss as much as possible but contesting at Range 1 is probably worth keeping around as long as you can IF you can actually contest it of course.

List Ideas

For Rebels, it’s hard to go wrong with the literal winner of the LVO Invitational Series of 2025 (Michael Lohse). As with most Rebel lists Bad Batch is just one plate on this Smorgasbord but it’s quite a tasty one.

This is a list of my own design, it ain’t art, but it does feature quite a bit of beef AND a scouting duo of very scary units by way of the Fives shotty squad and the Batch who will ALWAYS have face-up orders as well as a couple extra surges, and Boil can even tag along to help out with Guardian! Thanks Boil!

Summary

Bad Batch is possibly the most unique unit in the game, and also one of the most powerful. If you play either Rebels or Republic and haven’t given it a shot yet then I heartily recommend it, I think it was a challenging thing to design and I honestly think they nailed it. Let us know if we missed any Batch Tactics!

1. Ok, but in all seriousness…ok, I’m not like, a geneticist. But come on. I am literally able to accept getting a really big dude and a normal height girl all from the same genome but they shouldn’t have wildly different hair colors. And…Emerie Karr has like, red hair?! I know they could be dying it, but still, read a book Filoni. Even Game of Thrones got this more right than you and that ain’t even a space show. ↩︎