Star Wars: Legion Clone Wars First Reaction Part 1 – Separatist Alliance

Trained in Your Jedi Arts – Give your Order to Grievous, uplink both B1s and you will have your Droidekas left in the stack.

Ambush – Give your order to Grievous, uplink both B1s and you will have your Droidekas left in the stack.

Push – Give your order to Droidekas, uplink both B1s and you will have Grievous left in the stack.

Supreme Commander – Give your order to Grievous and one B1 and you will have your Droidekas left in the stack.

Assault – Give your order to one B1  and both Droidekas and you will have Grievous left in the stack.

Crush Them – Give your order to Grievous and both Droidekas and uplink both B1s.

Standing Orders – Give your Order to Grievous, Uplink B1(s) and you will have your Droidekas left in the stack.

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.

The Grievance of General Grievous

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:

Clamber > Move > Clamber > Move

Move > Clamber > Move > Clamber

Move -> Attack

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.

Roll You Fools

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!