Infantry Support Platform ‘ISP’ – Unit Guide

This Post will be covering the Infantry Support Platform (ISP) for the Grand Army of the Republic in Star Wars: Legion.

The ISP which many have affectionately dubbed the ‘Swamp speeder’ is a vehicle that seemingly came out of nowhere. The ISP is a bit of an oddball with some interesting features that make it rather unique.

Strengths

• Fast
• Unique Attack Options
• Good attacks off of which to initiate fire support

Weaknesses

• White Saves
• Armor 3, not Full Armor
• The model itself is quite short

Overview

65 Points – The ISP is one of the cheapest heavies available at its base cost. This is deceiving however as you will likely never run it close to 65 points. With upgrades the ISP will end up costing somewhere around 105-120 points. This puts it more in line with the standard medium armor price point. Keep in mind that this unit costs close to what an Airspeeder can be brought for.

Offense – The offense on the ISP’s unit card is pitiful, but the hardpoints are fairly interesting. Overall the offense seems underwhelming for its cost, but can enable interesting and powerful combos.

Defense – The survivability of the ISP isn’t great. This unit comes with Armor 3 which a lot of the time will act as full armor, but with the size and dice pools in the meta right now a lot of units will just punch through that. Combined with Cover 1, the ISP is going to block 4 hits on most attack pools. These defensive keywords are protecting only 7 wounds with a white surging save. This is the same as the Airspeeder which, in lots of cases, can be taken down quite quickly if caught flat-footed.

Maneuverability – The ISP has a maximum speed of 3 combined with a rather large base. This unit is able to move quite far when it needs to. It also has side notches allowing it to strafe, which because of the max speed 3, can be made at speed 2. The Hover: Ground keyword also allows the ISP to move over terrain which would impede it if it were a ground vehicle. The biggest problem of maneuverability for this unit is its physical model, it just is very short. This means that it cannot clear terrain that other repulsors can. It also doesn’t have a compulsory move which would make it very mobile.

Upgrades

Pilot

The only Pilot option for the ISP is the 327th Star Corps Elite Armor Pilots. This pilot option gives the ISP Surge:Crit if a unit uses Fire Support. This is a very interesting upgrade as it can allow a Z-6 clone squad to have Surge:Crit for instance. This could be vital if you need to take out enemy armored units. This upgrade is definitely good but the ISP already surges to hit so most of the time this card is irrelevant. If you do plan a list around the Fire Support keyword I’d definitely include this pilot option as it gives you a big boost to anti-armor capability.

I do wish that more pilots had been included for this unit as the one pilot option is decent but pigeon-holes this unit into a specific playstyle. I also wish the Republic Pilots could be taken between vehicles as there is no Field Commander option for this vehicle.

Hardpoint

Twin Missile Pods

The first Hardpoint option for the ISP is the Twin Missile Pods. This weapon brings a solid dice pool with Impact 2. As a deterrent to armour, combined with the Star Corps Pilots you could force upwards of 5 Crits to armor unaimed. This weapon also brings range 4 which can help to keep the vehicle a lot safer from enemy fire.

This weapon includes a clause that allows you to split the dice pool and keywords in half to gain gunslinger. This can enable 2 Fire Supported shots per turn. In general, with this weapon you should probably keep it as one dice pool unless you have a couple units really weak or are losing and need to make a big play.

This weapon also only has four dice which is quite low for a <100 point heavy unit. Unless you’re using Fire Support you can’t force more than four saves and usually only two.

Twin Blaster Cannons

The Twin Blaser Cannons seem to be the most vanilla option for the ISP, providing the largest dice pool. This weapon certainly won’t shred anything but could easily provide a good base of fire for you list. This weapon seems very similar to the AT-RT Rotary Blaster.

This weapon also brings Critical 2 which can be a decent armor hedge in a pinch. The Star Corps pilots feel a lot less necessary for this weapon than the missiles as often Critical 2 is enough.

The clause about splitting the dice pool and keywords is also on this weapon. This keyword can be used in the same way as the missiles to allow for two Fire Support shots in an activation. In a pinch the Critical can also allow this weapon to somewhat reliably force saves on two targets. For instance, you could fire this weapon into two separate units with just the unit leader and fairly reliably force saves which could net you two activations in one activation.

The biggest disadvantage of this weapon is that it is range 3. This forces you to engage the enemy in their threat range generally.

Twin Beam Cannons

The last Hardpoint for the ISP is the Twin Beam Cannons. This is the third Beam weapon we’ve seen in Republic. The first was on the Saber Tank and is generally not seen in play. The other is provided by the Republic Generic 2-pip. This weapon is more like the command card weapon than the Saber Tank weapon as it has four dice. The four dice will at least give this weapon a decent shot of forcing saves through heavy cover. Breaking cover still isn’t likely though as the dice are not great quality.

This weapon is the worst of the three for the Fire Support playstyle as you cannot use Fire Support on any of the follow up Beam attacks, just the first one. This weapon also doesn’t provide any keywords to the fire supporting unit, just surge:hit (which is still really good.) The Star Corps Pilots are probably a pass with this weapon, but it is still a good 5 point armor hedge with this weapon.

The interesting thing about this weapon is of course the Beam weapon. Especially if you are able to catch a few units in the open or even light cover, you could be forcing a lot of saves for your opponent. This weapon also very reliably can put down a suppression on three different enemy units. Many lists don’t particularly care about suppression, but two ISPs could have three enemy units with two suppression tokens each after two activations, which isn’t nothing.

Comms

Comms Jammer

Comms Jammer is a decent upgrade that can really mess with your opponent. The ISP is probably not the place for Comms Jammer as you really don’t want it to be at range 1 of the enemy army, it is just too fragile for that.

HQ Uplink

HQ Uplink could be useful for your ISP as having an order token is generally a good thing. An Uplink could be useful if you need to provide your orders to your Corp to enable fire support. However, it’s probably better to use Clone Commanders to give your corp order tokens and use command cards on your ISP(s).

Hacked Comms Unit

The Hacked Comms Unit fits into the same category as Comms Jammer in that you probably don’t want your ISP at range one of the enemy army. It’s also probably better to deny your opponent orders than get one yourself, but that is mostly personal preference.

Linked Targeting Array

Probably the best comms upgrade for the ISP, aims are good. Most of the shots you will take with the ISP will really benefit from aims. If your shooting without a Fire Support you will often need aims to force a substantial amount of damage over cover. If you have a Fire Support then you will have dice to reroll and if you are fire supporting you really need to make it worth it with aims.

Long-Range Comlink

A Long-Range Comlink could come in handy if you plan to use the ISP as a flanking vehicle as it will often be out of range of your commander to receive orders.

List Ideas

Bunch of Repulsors

This list just asks the question, how many repulsor vehicles can I have? Five is the answer.

This list is a vehicle skew rush list, you need to attack your enemy, and do it quick. The various weapons are all fairly interchangeable. Fives is nice as he allows more face up orders on your corps for Fire Support opportunities. The Beam Cannons were chosen as you want to be flanking your opponent anyways, and the Beam Cannons are probably the most interesting for that. The Blaster Cannons would’ve also been a good choice for the ISPs, or even one of each. One upgrade that could be added with some changes would be commanding presence for the Clone Commander to help get those orders to the vehicles.

R2 is in this list as another threat (Secret Mission) and as a source of repair. You could easily drop in Blast Off to make Secret Mission way more likely.

Fire Support Bonanza

A list that is dedicated to the Fire Support keyword. Two units that really want to be fire supported (ISP and Padmé) with up to three shots as the ISP can split the Twin Missile Pods.

This list does not want to move much if at all. The recon intels are on the Phase 1’s to hopefully get them into a position to be ready to start fire supporting turn 1. You can add a couple more Recon Intels if you want, but, this list probably wants some control over the deck as it will really not do well at movement based objectives.

Make sure that the ISP is kept safe and R2 keeps it repaired so that it can continue to shoot all game.

A variation on the command cards, ie bringing Blast Off can allow you to threaten secret mission, but in general R2 is in this list just to repair the ISP.

A similar list concept could be applied by bringing two ISPs with fewer clones or no Padmé but it’s probably best for there to be one main shooter with a lot of options for Fire Supporting.

Fire Supporting

It’s probably a good idea to quickly touch on the keyword Fire Support considering how much it is brought up in this article.

When using Fire Support you can add the attacking dice and weapon keywords to the attack pool at the cost of flipping the fire supporting unit’s faceup order token.

In general, the main benefits of Fire Support is that cover isn’t applied twice to two attacking units, and more offensive potential can be applied at once. The downside of course is that the fire supporting unit cannot have a normal activation.

When planning on using Fire Support in a list you should strive to include out of activation movement as it can be a way to move units around the table that never activate. The two main instances of this that can go along with the ISP is recon intel to quickly get units into firing position, and Padmé’s two pip. Padmé’s two pip is especially good because it gives a unit a move that it can use to get into position, as well as the necessary order to activate Fire Support. R2’s three pip Smoke Screen can be used for the same effect.

A thing to certainly watch out for when using Fire Support is something that relates to activating units as normal. As soon as a unit has activated for the turn it can be used by enemy melee units to be ‘safe’ for the turn and be immune to ranged attacks. As units that use fire support are ‘activated’ they can be used by melee units to get into your lines with virtually no recourse.

Final Thoughts

The ISP is a vehicle that really hasn’t seen that much play yet and hopefully it sees some interesting niche uses. I have not kept it a secret in other places that I don’t think the ISP in its current form and the current meta is very good. I hope that I am proven wrong as it is quite a nifty model with some interesting play options.