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As most of you know by now, Fantasy Flight Games released the Star Wars: Legion Clone Wars core set at GenCon. I was very fortunate to be one of a few people to get a hold of one and I am so very excited about the new direction of the minis and the game. I am going to split this blog into two parts for the two factions: Separatist Alliance and the Galactic Republic. Before we start you can check out our unboxing video if you haven’t already.
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The first thing that struck me immediately when they first announced the Separatists is that they would operate similarly to Orks and Goblins from Warhammer Fantasy. For those of you that have not played Fantasy, the Orks and Goblins (OG) are an insane army that relies on overwhelming numbers to beat their opponents and have interesting interactions within their own army. They sometimes just do whatever they want no matter what you wanted to happen, so its coin flip on how the game will go when you field an OG army. Most of these apply to the Droid army as well.
Once again FFG is pinpoint on theme, you’re going to see waves and waves of droids on the table and it will be glorious. On average you will be fielding at least 40-48 minis in your corps units alone and then maybe another 5-8 outside of the corps. This is going to get confusing and complex but that’s why they are amazing, once you get a handle on your play style and managing your minis it can be overwhelming to your opponent. Chaos and Numbers are your friend… most merely adopt the chaos; droids were born in it.
Our very own numbers man, Kyle Dornbos, wanted to make sure that I talked about order control with the Separatists. The B1’s success hinges on order control with both their AI: Attack and Coordinate. Let’s start with AI. AI:Action is a very interesting new mechanic on the droids. Basically, all droids are “pre-programmed” to perform 1 or 2 actions unless they have a face up order token, this is part of that chaos I was mentioning earlier. With that mechanic you clearly need to be able to control which units are getting orders and when, this is where Coordinate comes in handy. The B1 droids have Coordinate: Droid Troopers, which allows a unit to issue an order to another droid trooper within range 1, creating a daisy chain of order bliss.
What does this all mean? Kyle and I put together the list to the right with the command card order control below to illustrate how to make sure you are getting perfect order control for your Separatist Army. As you can see this is 100% units and cards from the core set. Using HQ Uplink on 2 of the droid units we can make sure that the droids always (for the most part) have orders. We also gave the uplinked droids the E-60R B1 Trooper since you will have to recover on a few turns anyways. The following images demonstrate order control with each of you command cards in your hand:
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General Grievous
Aggressive Tactics
Strict Orders
Endurance
DT-57 AnnihilatorB1 Battle Droids
E-60R B1 Trooper
B1 Battle Droid
HQ UplinkB1 Battle Droids
E-60R B1 Trooper
B1 Battle Droid
HQ UplinkB1 Battle Droids
E-5C B1 Trooper
B1 Battle DroidB1 Battle Droids
E-5C B1 Trooper
B1 Battle DroidB1 Battle Droids
E-5C B1 Trooper
B1 Battle DroidB1 Battle Droids
E-5C B1 Trooper
B1 Battle DroidDroidekas
Droidekas
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In addition to putting HQ Uplink on a few of your droids you will want to keep them close. The Coordinate keyword means you can daisy chain your orders throughout your droid trooper units if they are within range 1 of each link in the chain. Here is the great news: range for coordinate is mini to mini. So, you can use cohesion and your high number of minis in each unit to really take advantage and spread it out.
General Grievous is an amazing, scary and powerful unit with one weakness: suppression. He is easily suppressed and can become a liability in your army. There are several ways that you can mitigate this through upgrade cards, Line of Sight (LoS) blocking and battlefield placement.
In the list above you can see that Grievous has both Strict Orders and Endurance. Grievous only has 2 courage and become easily suppressed then panicked. Using Endurance to mitigate the suppression is a great start but you’ll need to do more. This is where Scale comes to save the day. By using LoS terrain you can position Grievous in a way where he cannot be shot but can quickly get over terrain to attack or advance.
Since you can clamber for free without rolling dice before or after a standard move, climb, clamber or disembark action and move into, out of and through difficult terrain without penalty Scale gives you the following options:
Not only does Grievous need to manage his own suppression but also the droids. The droids can’t be suppressed but they can still panic so making sure you keep suppression from making them panic will be key too. By utilizing Strict Orders and the above order control you can make sure that you are keeping your suppression at bay.
Grievous can also further enhance his army by handing out Surge tokens with Aggressive Tactics. Surge tokens allow a unit to convert 1 or more surge dice to a hit or shield result. With the order control we covered earlier we can also use Aggressive Tactics to hand out 4 surge tokens to 4 different units giving them some options in the upcoming round.
The final piece of this mech-based puzzle are the Droidekas. These boys have a lot going on and have some tricky mechanics that can be tough to work with at first. The keywords that come into play with the Droidekas are AI: Move, Wheel Mode, Shielded 4 and Generator 1. There are some very specific ways that these need to be handled especially with the above order control tactics.
If you are on a turn where you have the handed-out order tokens and the droids are still in the stack you for the most part want to make sure they are protected especially if your plan is to wait to utilize them. I think that in this situation you either want them out of range for attacks or you want them in Wheel Mode. Wheel Mode gives your Droidekas cover 2 and speed 3, the idea would be that the turn before you had them in Wheel Mode to get them somewhere fast and placed them in a solid position to where you can wait to activate. You cannot use the flip shield tokens in Wheel Mode, but I think that you will want to wait to use these until you are in the thick of it. Also, if you are careful and play the unit right you will not be in a position where your opponent would get 5+ hits (enough to go past cover 2 and kill a mini). Now remember you will have the AI:Action in play here so you will have to either attack or move, most likely you will stay in Wheel Mode at this point and move into position with a secondary action of dodge or move again.
Now you have arrived on a turn where you will be handing an order token to your Droideka, hopefully you’ve timed it in a way to take advantage and have them attack. You have found yourself in the “thick” of it. Good news, you have 4 shields! Bad news, you roll white defense dice. I think a lot of people are going to make the mistake (as I have) of thinking this unit is a bit more resilient with those shields and generator 1 then they are. I believe a great way to mitigate this is using LoS blocking/cover but also Aggressive Tactics and give your rolly boys some surge chances too. With their blaster cannon already having suppressive and there being 2 red and 4 black dice in your attack pool, I believe a solid turn for them would be Attack -> Dodge using the surge token in your attack. This of course changes based on the game but is a well-“rounded” response.
I hope that you will have as much fun as I am having playing the Separatists and hope this primer will help when you get your hands on your units. Later this month I will be taking a look at the Clones and General Kenobi!
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