Ranking the Units by Canon “Accuracy:” Separatists

Roger Roger! Clanker! GENERAAAAAL KENOBIIIII!

These words? They’re for the algorithm. I have no interest in such nonsense and you will find them in this document no more. No, I am NOT here for “teh memes,” I am a SCIENTIST and “The Canon” is my control group. To create this list I spent weeks pipetting small amounts of distilled statistics and keywords of Confederacy of Independent Systems (CIS) units into similarly small amounts of a compound containing the Prequel Trilogy, The Clone Wars TV Show, Battlefront 2, and the Bad Batch. I even tried several times to watch the 2008 “Clone Wars” film, which I still have not seen in its entirety, but woke up in a post-ictal haze an hour or two after each attempt. I remember that it starts on Christophsis, there’s a lot of smoke that looked about as good as one could expect from a 12 year old messing around with 3D Studio Max, a clone is petting R2 like he’s a dog for some reason…then it gets kind of hazy afterthat and ohgditsnnnnnhddn agghn

“Dave I think we nailed it, who knew that CGI emotions could look so real?!”

Commanders

Count Dooku

Much in the way Lando set the standard for Rebel commanders, so does Dooku for CIS. Not only does Makashi make total sense for a duelist but the mix of cunning and his explosive one pip calls to mind that one time that he embarrassed Anakin and Obi Wan at once in like 30 seconds. The commands are excellent too, I especially like Double the Fall (which seems like a weak card…to the un-initiated!) and You Disappoint Me (which correctly estimates distance of Anakin’s awkward CGI lightning ride before the duel even starts). The pose on the model is obviously iconically disdainful as well, as if the figure itself is disgusted at you just for being a war gamer. The only thing that keeps him from being literally perfect is that he totally jumps down from height 1 before fighting our heroes in Ep. 3 but since everything in that scene aside from close ups of his silly faces was a stunt double I’m going to give him a free pass for that one.

Grade: S

General Grievous

Grievous is Schrödinger’s Legion trooper, at once existing as a perfect replica and an incredible disappointment. Arsenal 2 on a trooper is an extremely fun idea but it did not go far enough in execution. I’ve seen the footage folks, in an early fight against some Redshirt Jedi in The Clone Wars Grievous casually locks blades with his opponent only to eviscerate him using a blaster held by his foot. So, that’s arsenal 3 at least. Then there’s his courage value. The good guys call Grievous a coward because they usually only speak in cliches anyway, but he isn’t a weenie, he’s pragmatic. When he’s definitely losing, he runs! He ain’t fully a robot, what’s the point in dying for the cause when he can live to kill more “jhheeedaaaaiiii” another day. So anyway, fleeing at 4 suppression makes total sense but being suppressed at 2 just feels lame as hell…or perhaps the guy who made a career out of killing jjhhedddaaiihkrkkrhhrhhrrr is exactly as brave as a set of scout troopers. Finally, there’s his movement. Scale is accurate but it falls short when it comes to his mobility. This is where the Legion unit cuts me the deepest: his “ground-skitter” is nowhere to be found. You know exactly what I’m talking about:

Holy crap!!!!

THAT! This is at the same time the most hilarious and the most terrifying move the dude has, and it’s nowhere to be found. Whenever I play Battlefront and some bastard bowls me over with this I go “GAH! NO, STOP IT!” every time. The more I think about it…the more angry I get, the devs probably had overrun attacks on the drawing board at least, give grievous an overrun attack with 2 reds and suppressive! Or hell let him go into “skitter mode” like a deka.

Something. Anything.

Sorry guys, when I started writing this paragraph I was all in on him being a perfectly average character but you know what comes right before “GG?”

Grade: FF

T-Series Tactical Droid

• Primarily exists to tell B1’s what to do
• Boring as all hell
• Basically garbage in a fight
• Easily killed (GRAPHIC CONTENT, seriously those people literally tore a sentient being to pieces with their hands dude…kids show)

Grade: A

Super Tactical Droid (Generic)

We’re going to split this up by the unit cards since they represent separate entities. For all three let’s keep in mind that the Legion units are annoyingly effective enablers of high-activation monstrosities that use completely balanced command cards and abilities to make other droids nasty as hell.

Alright so I did my research and I’m fairly certain that The Clone Wars only featured two Super-Tacs that weren’t the named ones we get in Legion…unless you count the later eps with Kraken, but we’ll crack open that case here in a second. Both of them were in episodes that I skipped (the “D-Squad” episodes, because they’re patently terrible) but for the science I watched the scenes and my god are these boneheads a waste of time. I’ll save you the trouble, they’re smoked by a pit droid who’s teamed up with a few astromechs and a little slug man. This one gets some points back because his gun seems to suck in both the show and the game.

Grade: C

Kraken

We’ve already established that in the strange world of Star Wars merchandise, you can earn a lot of credit for two seconds of screen time, and the three hit combo Kraken lands on Anakin Skywalker in “The Unknown” (S6: E1) is more than enough to account for this Super Tac being the meanest one in a fight in Legion. Honestly though, that’s not what I’m here to talk about.

I checked this, I double checked this, I even found out that StarWars.com literally bothered to put out an official chronological order of TCW episodes. So, after he hits Anakin with the punching spree…Anakin dismembers and kills him (in cold blood I might add…cold…sparks?). But that’s not the crazy part (Jedi committing war crimes is nothing new). No, the crazy part is that Kraken just shows up six episodes later with zero explanation. I feel for whoever wrote the Wookieepedia article and had to come up with something here:

Well done, we should all be so lucky to be rebuilt despite our destruction! We’re meant to presume that Anakin and his buds escaped on the shuttle he was killed on, so its unlikely that he was just kind of found by the CIS and put back together. Since the aforementioned “Official Timeline” confirms that these episodes are in chronical order we have to conclude that Kraken is either:

1. So valuable that his parts were rescued off-screen
2. Actually a designation for a generic super tac droid (as in, there’s a bunch of Krakens)
3. A teleporting droid God

Given that the unit is under 100 points, unique, and not SUPER hard to kill, however, he loses most of the ground he gained from punching the Boy General.

Grade: D

Kalani

I’ve always thought this was a strange name for an evil droid, it sounds more like a tasty but affordable spiced rum to me. Out of curiosity I did some googling and I wanted to provide a humbling reminder at how niche our interests truly are…here is the list of items that appear higher than this metal gentleman:

1. A reality show dancer
2. A spa retreat on The Big Island
3. A Hawaiian Themed Restaurant in Lake Tahoe

Makes me wonder how I got here in life, but I’m gonna do the healthy thing and push right past that. I think the character’s arc which stretched all the way into Rebels was honestly pretty great and Kalani demonstrates about as much competence as bad guys are allowed to have in Star Wars. I don’t know why Kalani got so much better programming than these other two doofuses but at the end of the day he’s the only one that comes close to matching the prowess of the legion unit in terms of the way it can control the battlefield. Furthermore, I’m pretty sure the character never does any fighting himself and he even cops to the fact that his soldiers suck without some extra help (Strategize 2). The cherry on top? He’s a total sweaty competitive player! His entire arc in Rebels exists so that he can walk away saying that “he won” even though the war he fought in had been over for decades, and if he were a real “person” that turned his mind to Legion you can bet your butt he’d be playing an 11 act monstrosity that featured himself.

I looked later by the way, Coconut Liqueur, I was SO CLOSE!

Grade: S

Operatives

Cad Bane

   EXT. KAMINO

Cad Bane furtively finishes setting charges in the dark corner of a mining platform

CAD BANE: Well Rex, as soon as your transport sets down you’ll be out of my client’s hair forever

A LAAT moves into view, but as soon as it flies forward enough to start descending directly down onto the pad, the charges explode prematurely, damaging nothing because the ship is still dozens of meters in the air

CAD BANE: CURSES!!!

Grade: D

Maul

I can tell a TON of thought went into both him and Juyo Mastery and it shows. Aside from his two pip, where we can assume he’s meant to tell his little probe buddies to go out spying, Maul’s commands are only concerned about himself. He sees a Jedi? Time to cut himself just a little bit to start feeling that SWEET SWEET PAIN and begin his banquet of rage. Duel of the Fates says “Get rekt, and Obi Wan? Get rekt especially, I HATE THAT GUY.” Before his card was revealed I assumed he would be a better arsenal 2 lightsaber than GG but I prefer what they actually did, even though he could handle multiple opponents Maul was at his best one-on-one. Luckily since this is the CIS article (I swear, if any of you @ me with “he’s not really a Separatist” I’m going to write an entire article about Clone fire support combos as punishment) I’m limited to the character in TPM so I don’t have to reconcile my feelings about the edge-lord scum version yet.

Grade: S

Corps

B1 Battle Droid

B2 Battle Droid

A muddled mess. They seem smarter than B1’s but they still have AI: Attack? Armor 1 and 2 health seem about right but a non surging black white seems way more anemic than what’s suggested on-screen. I do find it funny that the chonky Clone Wars versions appear to have been retconned as “B2-Heavy Assault” variants in an effort to explain the fairly severe artistic difference between them and the movies, and yet the HA model we get in the game is merely a regular one with an arm cannon. The worst part is the suggestion Legion gives us that these things are only REALLY scary when they’re led by a T-series. Off the mark, but not terrible I suppose.

Grade: C

Hang on, in melee these hulking metal beasts hit exactly as hard as a REBEL TROOPER?!

Grade: D

Special Forces

BX Series Droid Commandos

In the show these guys are real bastards, they do 8 foot bunny hops, flips, and wall jumps while encroaching on you with a sword or the more slowly march up with the shields; also they basically only go down to headshots. Also, in one scene, a BX uses the dead body of a B1 to deck a clone without even a second thought. You’ll find few who wouldn’t argue that the Legion unit needs a bit of a boost right now though, I feel like maybe Agile would capture how annoying it seemingly was to kill them.

Metal AF

Grade: B

DRK-1 Sith Probe Droids

Given that these things were the first device of its kind in X-wing, AND that they came as an entire extra unit in the Maul expansion I was genuinely surprised when I confirmed that the 10 or second seconds of “infiltrating” with their extremely loud probe sirens and speakin’ some gibberish to the main man is the entirety of their screen canon. I was able to take a look at the Maul comic as well…more whirring, more gibberish, zero fighting of any kind. The only mention of them even having a weapon comes from an FFG RPG Sourcebook (yuck, but better than West End I guess), and even then it’s a grenade launcher not a stun gun.

Grade: Womp wooomp

IG-100 Magna Guards

I have literally nothing bad to say about them, in both ROTS and the show they look like absolutely awful opponents to deal with and we all know that’s reflected in the game. As a bonus: Obi Wan has a hard time taking even one down in melee early on in the film, then when he sneaks up to Grievous on Utapau later on he decides to do the smart thing and take them down with a nice big ranged attack dice pool. Now that we’re on the subject, why the hell didn’t AMG… ||Evan you need to cut your thoughts about Obi Wan’s legitimacy in the meta down to at most 100 words, honestly it doesn’t seem appropriate for the article, have mostly deleted for now please remove this comment before publish, thanks – Kyle|| ..AND THEN MAYBE I’LL TELL NEW PLAYERS TO EVEN BOTHER TAKING IT OVER ASSAULT!

Grade: ?…fine, S

Support

Droidekas

Movie: “Master, Destroyers!” Obi Wan said with a concerned tone, as he and Qui-Gon devote all their power to deflecting the onslaught of laserblasts. Though their attackers are only a few feet away, these two highly trained Jedi choose to escape into a ventilation shaft rather than stand and fight.

Legion: “Master, Destroyers!” Obi Wan said with a gleeful tone. “Oh well, they’re only a few few feet away my young Padawan” Qui-Gon replied, “you know what to do.” Obi Wan then took aim and moved into base contact, wiping them out in a single swing. “Good thing their shields don’t work up close, eh master?”

Yoda would never have won in Canto Bight last weekend if he had to contend with the dreaded Deka!

Grade: F

Single Trooper Aerial Platform (STAP)

• In Legion: Command-chaining menaces that hit hard but can die quickly.
• In the canon: Fast, but ineffectual, partially because they’re driven by idiots.
• In Battlefront 2: Slow, AND ineffectual, still driven by an idiot (me).

Grade: C

DSD1 Dwarf Spider Droid

If this thing could only take the laser cannon? Solid A. But considering that’s the least-chosen weapon of the THREE despite being the only one that’s ever been shown on this thing anytime ever? Gotta love how they put the best ion cannon in the game on a droid vehicle, God forbid that the faction that SPENDS ALL ITS TIME FIGHTING AGAINST DROIDS WOULD… ||Evan, last warning||.

Grade: D

Heavies

NR-N99 Persuader-class Tank Droid

The Battle of Kashyyk is their only appearance of consequence, I honestly didn’t even remember that B1’s rode in on the thing but sure as hell there they are…riding on a…treaded vehicle…in the water…here in this space war…and the vehicle only has one tread so turning is….man, I’m not normally one to rag on Star Wars for not making sense but what the hell is up with this thing? Anyway, in both settings it’s big but moves with zero imagination and is quickly enough taken out by pretty much anything with impact, such as the time it was taken out by a single shot from a Fluttercraft.

Grade: A

AAT Trade Federation Battle Tank

The offense seems…fine. I do think it’s kinda funny to think of the idea that if an AAT fired its side lasers towards a Jedi at the same time as it’s main gun they’d be able to deflect the whole thing all the sudden, but whatever, I did not come here to hang the AAT on that particular little noose.

Allow me instead to use this much sturdier noose: its defense.

Let’s start by remembering the last time you actually destroyed an AAT in Legion. For me I think it was…almost a year ago? And that was with TWO AIRSPEEDERS AND THREE LASER RT’s! I’ve usually found that the way to beat them is to kill the other stuff, because 9 points of red save (usually with a surge) armor and a seemingly infinite amount of free repairs turns out to be a big pain in the ol’ “Weak Point.”

Now then, let’s take a look at how hard they are to kill in the canon:

• Exhibit A: Gungan moron accidentally destroys one with corner decoration from Sharper Image
• Exhibit B: Gungan moron accidentally destroys one with a desk ornament from Spencer’s Gifts (why do they have pilots? Most droid vehicles don’t…they’re droids)
• Exhibit C: Clone throws a single grenade and cripples one
• Exhibit D: A GAR AT-RT (?!) destroys it in the same sequence as above with 2 shots
• Exhibits E-F: Barely-armed insurgents headshot one pilot in an open cockpit and kill another with grenades thrown into said cockpit (again, why are there pilots)
• Exhibit G-I: Small lizard/frog man with sword kills one crew, tricks a doofus B1 gunner into one-shotting a second, then kills the crew he tricked for three dead tanks in less than a minute

There’s more but I think we’ve seen enough, the AAT is the most egregious canon-offender since Leia . Also, the snail droid was forgivable when graded on a curve, but I think the AAT pilot has actually set a new gold standard that we can use as units of measurement for “things in Star Wars that don’t make any damn sense.”

Grade: 1.0 AAT Pilots