Updated April 2024
In the immortal words of hip hop duo Kris Kross, “We commence to make you jump, jump.” This happens to also be the mantra of the Naboo Handmaidens as they commence to jump, jump all over the board in Shatterpoint.
Naboo Royal Handmaidens are available in the We Are Brave squad box.
Handmaidens come in as a 4PC support and, unlike some of their Republic counterparts, actually feel like it.
Expose Flank is a powerful, thematic, well designed ability. Obi-Wan taught us all the power of the high ground, so if just one of the two handmaidens can move to higher ground with her climb then the unit is essentially rewarded with an extra die in melee or two extra dice at range. This ability and desire to move vertically means I often deploy the handmaidens on the side of the board with more elevated objectives and/or less useful ingress points.
Coordinated Fire: Disarm is one of the more situationally useful Coordinated Fire abilities. Sometimes it doesn’t matter much, but getting a guaranteed disarm on the right unit can really mess up their next activation or out of activation attack. The threat of a five dice MagnaGuard attack is much more tolerable when they aren’t generating mad crits on their expertise.
Intercede can be a great keyword, but usually I find it doesn’t matter all that much. Often your opponent will want to target the handmaidens anyway since they’re likely squishier than nearby primaries and secondaries, and because wounding two bodies is usually better than wounding one. There is an instance where this is especially useful, though, but we’ll get to that in the synergy section.
Anyone who has read these unit guides knows that I value early tree shoves very highly. Handmaidens can’t shove at all, which is pretty sad. If they want to stop enemies from scoring they have to do it via wounds. Luckily, their damage output is pretty good. They also have the next best thing: a jump on one success. Between a move action, Expose Flank, and this jump, handmaidens can fly around the battlefield when needed. Speaking of Expose Flank, you may see that these guys start with only five attack dice. That’s bad. If you aren’t getting a focus and Sharpshooter 1 then attacking with handmaidens at range may be a waste of time.
Defensively, handmaidens are like clones-plus. They have as many or more dice than any clone supports, more health, and even potential crit mitigation. They’re still not the world’s tankiest unit, but in the realm of Republic supports they are pretty durable.
| + Pros | – Cons |
| Very mobile | No shoves in their attack tree |
| More durable than most Republic supports | Mainly reliant on Expose Flank for offensive output |
Handmaidens like being in a Republic list, they just don’t benefit from clone-synergy or hunker-synergy sub-archetypes. Padme is obviously a great paring as she can increase their damage output with Coordinated Fire. Protecting Padme with Intercede can also lead to a tricky situation where your opponent has to attack handmaidens, but if the get wounded they are still contesting due to Padme. Mace Windu also pairs well with handmaidens as they especially like his aura of Protection and Steadfast. I also like Jedi Hunter Vader as a sneaky pairing, because then handmaidens are rolling eight or nine dice in melee with decent expertise and a way to heal back the self-inflicted Vader damage. Finally, I like Padawan Ahsoka as secondary in a handmaiden plus clone support list as Ahsoka’s reactive move and attack triggers off of either one.
The easy jump and good damage helps a bit to offset no shoves from the handmiadens, but I still miss shoves. I wouldn’t pair handmaidens with another shoveless support such as Clone Commandos. Such a combo would have too little swing potential I fear.
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