This article is a unit guide to using STAP Riders in Star Wars Legion. Fast and agile vehicles for the Confederacy of Independent Systems, STAP Riders can zip around the field, avoiding enemy fire and hitting objectives before taking off again. STAP Riders can frustrate your opponent and leave them without much of an answer to your plans. Original article by Alice Lirette with Legion 2.6 updates by Evan “Doc Velo” Paul.

Strengths

• Fast (Speed 3 with compulsory moves on a small notched base)
• Has Coordinate with troopers and vehicles, which is most everything in your army
• Difficult to hit after moving (Agile)

Weaknesses

• Fragile and will fall apart to focused fire or appropriate counter-play or pretty much any shots at all before movement in Legion 2.6
• No Impact on weapons
• Is one of the few units that is likely to “suffer” from AI with the new rules, though speeders often do move actions anyway aside from the compulsory move

Overview

75 80 points: If you lean in on the strategy that these guys are good at, you will want to run three, but that means it’s only around a quarter of your list, leaving plenty of room left over.

Defense: White with…no surges. No Armor either, but you do get Cover 1 and Agile to offer some protection and deflect a few wounds. That said, weapons with High Velocity and Critical will cut through those very quickly and cause them to break apart fast. You’ll want to slap some surge tokens on them too, if you can. Additionally, as of the new rules they will no longer benefit from terrain cover AND light cover is much worse than it used to be…so these things really go down fast.

Offense: Repeating Dual Blaster Cannons: 3 Black Dice at Range 1-3, Critical 1 and Fixed to the front. It’s…solid enough. If you have a Linked Targeting Array (you usually should) it’s decent damage, though of course we should remember that said damage will get cut in half when the first model goes down.

Agile 1: Gain a dodge token whenever making a standard move. Since you’re a speeder, you get a free move at the beginning or end of your turn, so it’s possible to make 3 moves in a turn and make yourself well-shielded from most forms of attack.

AI: Move: This can be pretty awkward, even for a unit that wants to be moving, because of the timing. Note your compulsory move doesn’t count for this. Mostly this is going to prevent you from shooting when you want to be shooting. Generally you want to be giving STAPs orders all the time anyway for Linked Targeting Array and order control, so AI should be fairly avoidable.

Coordinate: Droid Trooper, Vehicle: STAPs can pass out orders to anything in your army that isn’t a living being, so it really only excludes most of your commanders and operatives but works with just about everything else. This allows STAPs to pull double duty as “nodes” for your order chaining, to give you a bit more legroom to spread your army out and be able to give orders to those more distant units. Most of the time though, this is going to mean your STAPs are giving orders to each other.

Cover 1: Immediately negate one non-critical hit. A nice little perk when combined with Agile to deflect another hit, though this is offset by how much more difficult it is under the new cover rules for speeders to get cover from terrain (in contrast to troopers which have a much easier time).

Speeder 1: Free compulsory move and fly over terrain of up to height 1. You’re speed 3 so these guys get really zippy. As stated above it’s basically a free dodge token as well.

Upgrades

Only one slot: Comms. The good news is that overall this keeps the cost really low, letting you focus that energy on other things. The bad news is that one of the best options is uh, well…

Long Range Comlink…is no longer an option at all

The best use of this is with the Super Tactical Droid (or Kalani’s) Direct ability, which allows the SuperTac to Direct to the STAP at unlimited range. Alternatively, any commander or operative (such as a T-Series) with a Comms Relay can fling the order to the STAP when they have this upgrade since the Relay unit is the issuer.

Welp, there goes a really useful trick. This is a bit of conjecture, but this upgrade was mainly removed since the “usual” way that orders are issued (the command card) no longer has a range restriction. Unfortunately for the STAPs, they mostly enjoyed being able to get orders every round via other means (Direct or Comms Relay) and now that this card doesn’t exist in competitive play, that option is out. It’s true that STAPs very far from their Commander can now get issued orders from command cards whereas before they could only do so within Range 3, but this bonus is limited by the fact that many droid lists run commands that exclusively go to troopers, or perhaps heavies. I did actually go and count, and less than half of all Separatist commands are capable of going to a STAP.

This means that if you truly want reliable order control on the STAPs (and believe me, you do) you’ll want to have…

HQ Uplink

You’ll want a plan for how to get orders to your STAPs when they are away from the rest of your army, and having an HQ uplink on one is the easiest way to do that. Since they can Coordinate to each other, you don’t need more than one. It does need to recover to use it again though and you usually don’t have that luxury, so I’d consider it only if you don’t have a commander that’s going to be able to get you orders through a long-range comlink.

Linked Targetting Array

This should be your go-to comms upgrade for the rest of your STAPs that aren’t your “chain starter” (the one with Long Range Comms or HQ Uplink). STAPs have a decent attack and free aims make it even better. Naturally, because you’re relying on that first STAP to chain to the other STAPs, this means you’ll usually want to fly all your STAP’s together (with no more than range 1 between each unit) to get your money’s worth when it comes to face-up orders.

Strategies

It’s been said a few times that STAP riders have two main purposes in your army: to catch exposed units on flanks and to assist in completing objectives. Ideally, they will fulfill both roles. We’ll focus on those points.

Flanking

STAPs have a respectable attack and can deliver it almost anywhere due to their speed. Activation control and timing are very important here; hold your STAPs in a safe spot until late, go with all of them back to back to zoom in and hit an out-of-position target, and then go with them immediately on the following turn to hit that same target again (or something nearby) and zoom away to safety.

POI-Divers

STAPs, like all speeder support units (except, weirdly, the Fluttercraft) got a small points increase with the update to Legion 2.6 for one reason: now that all vehicles can score all objectives, vehicles that are fast have an inherent advantage. You probably follow me here but just in case, take a look at these two pictures, the first showing a starting point for a STAP, contesting one of your friendly POI’s on Breakthrough, and the second showing where it can end its movement.

Assuming you have the order control that STAPs do so love (need), you can hold off until the end of a turn and then dive an enemy POI. In this case, if the enemy was concentrated elsewhere you would be able to deny your opponent a VP and perhaps even score 2 of your own if you can dive en masse or if that particular POI has largely been left alone.

As a matter of fact, as of Legion 2.6 I’d dare to say that this role, an objective one, is even more important compared to its combat role than was the case prior to the rules update. Before there was only a smattering of objectives where vehicles could do work aside from killing other guys, but that is no longer the case. At the same time, STAPs (as is true for most speeders) are now much more vulnerable than before due to the changes in cover. Before, if a lone naked Rebel trooper unit shot at a STAP with no dodges that were partially behind a wall, it would be unlikely to take damage since the Rebel would either need a crit or three hits to even have a chance at it. Now though? The average naked Rebel trooper will do two wounds to that same STAP. I wasn’t joking when I said that most speeders got hit hard by the new math of cover as well as the inability to get terrain cover.

Stayin’ Alive

This is why avoiding a VERY quick and fiery demise is the “secret” ultimate strategy you need to know for these things. The key here goes down to the timing of your activation and the direction you go in, both of which are usually directly related to where the enemy is:

• The enemy is far away: Activate late (ideally after they already activated) and rush in to either shoot or dive a POI. Try not to be in a place where you can get shot more than once (since your dodges can mostly mitigate one attack, as long as it’s not a hefty one dice-wise).
• The enemy is already close: Activate early and either shoot, then run, then run…OR…run, then run, then run. Take Aim actions at your own risk, every Aim action means you’ll have one fewer movement to get out of range, behind a LOS blocker, or to a target POI.

Again, it all boils down to avoiding getting shot like…at all, because I can basically promise that your dice won’t save you, but your throttle just might.

When I googled STAP gifs this was the first one I noticed, take note that this frightened cat is 3000% more resilient than an actual STAP unit

List Building (for 2.6)

STAPs are an option for the Separatist Invasion Battle Force so let’s use that as an example. I wouldn’t say they’re better in this Battle Force than a normal army (none of the command cards benefit them since they can’t get Standby tokens from the 1-Pip), but I think you can build something decent here that has them in a flanker/POI role which is what they should be anyway.

In the above list you’d be able to use the relay on turn 1 and (if you’re lucky) other turns where you play a command that cannot go to the STAPs directly. You could even argue this makes the HQ unnecessary but I personally think it’s still worth the insurance, losing order control on the STAPs is going to be a big problem because it will prevent their getting a surge from Aggressive Tactics and also will potentially disallow you from activating them exactly when you want to.

Conclusion

The STAP is a very fast unit that CAN make a pretty good ranged attack despite starting their activation far from your target. This plus their latent ability to secure order control represents their primary strength. Users beware however: these things have always been flimsy but they are even more so now, so if you find yourself leaving your speeders out to die after they attack too much then you should…well.

You should STAP doing that.