This article is a unit guide for the Super Tactical Droid in Star Wars: Legion.
Overview
We’ll start by looking at the unnamed Super Tactical Droid, then we will explore Kraken and Kalani.
Strengths
- Good Support Abilities
- Good Command Cards
- Survivable
Weaknesses
- Courage 2
- Weak Offence
The standard Super Tactical Droid gives us a good overview of how the entire suite of Super Tactical Droids work, boasting most of the keywords we can find between these three unit cards.
Points:
The standard Super Tactical Droid comes in at 90 points which is a solid chunk but not too high. This points value means that you’re not likely to just throw one of these characters into a list, but they are easy to build around. You can also customize these units quite a bit as they come with quite a few upgrade slots, and you will probably add upgrades to these units.
Offence:
Not at all the focus of this unit. This droid can go pew pew, but it’s not very good. Basically if you’re shooting with this droid something has gone wrong. That being said, in magical christmas land where you can get a light cover or open shot plus an aim token, the gun is good.
Defence:
For a support commander these droids are fairly sturdy, boasting 5 health and red defence dice. The Super Tactical Droids are as survivable as a Stormtrooper squad with an extra trooper. This can be a lot or not a lot depending on the situation. One big boon for survivability for these droids is that none of their abilities require Line of Sight so they can just shove their face into a wall to stay hidden. Super Tactical Droids are also often paired with Magnas who make them even more sturdy.
Support:
These droids boast some great abilities to boost your forces. They have a few signature keywords.
Strategize 1
This keyword allows the Super Tactical Droid to take an action and hand out two green tokens which is solid. This does cause it to also gain a suppression token, but that basically doesn’t matter. A lot of droid units love green tokens so getting two at once is amazing.
Direct: AI Unit
Direct: AI allows you to hand out an order to anything with AI at range 1-2. This keyword helps answer the name of the game for a lot of CIS lists which is orders, orders, and orders. You can also pair this with some upgrades we will look at later to hand orders out anywhere.
Override 1
Do you not like that pesky AI keyword? Well how about you just ignore it? Override lets you ignore AI for the cost of a suppression at range 1. This keyword can be a key strategy for lists that can’t or don’t want to hand out orders. This keyword can also come handy in a pinch when AI might lose you the game but you just decide nay.
Upgrades
Command
One of the most obvious upgrades for any droid commander is Aggressive Tactics. When the plan for your list usually involves lots of orders and many units that don’t surge, why not add surges in? But really, AT is one of the best upgrades for CIS.
Another excellent upgrade for CIS. Improv is often the way to get fully complete order control. It also gives you some flexibility mid game to change how your chains and orders are arranged.
One of the ways to hand orders out at further range. This card works with orders from your command cards as well as Direct. This can allow a ton of flexibility with how you distribute your forces and orders. This upgrade is particularly good if you have a focus piece that wants to rush up the board. *looks at magnas and snail tanks for no particular reason*
The Rest
The rest of the command upgrades are very situational. Do you struggle with suppression? Strict Orders and/or Lead by Example are your answer. Have double bounty? Well Underworld Connections it is. One of the best parts of two command slots though is not having to decide between these more situational cards and the standards, you can have both.
Comms
A Comms Relay is an excellent addition to many Super Tactical Droids. Often your goal for Super Tactical Droid lists is to get orders to everything except the Super Tactical Droid. The Comms Relay helps to complete a chain and/or get an order from a command card off the Super Tactical Droid and onto wherever it’s needed.
The Comms Relay is probably the only upgrade you’ll ever put in this slot, at least until we see different options.
Gear
Unironically not the worst upgrade for a Super Tactical Droid. Super Tactical Droids usually sit in the back behind cover. Near the end of the game when you need to rush everything forward, would you rather move at speed-2 or speed-1? Definitely not a super common take but something to think about.
A more conventional pick, a Portable Scanner allows you to double down on your token generation.
Same as the Portable Scanner. Who doesn’t want more tokens? This is especially true for a lot of CIS units that use up a lot of aims.
Command Cards
Do Not Underestimate Our Means
This 3-pip has two parts. One of them is great and you will use all the time, the other you might never use or see used.
The mostly unimportant part is that if you divulge this card you get Reinforcements on up to three units. The big ‘problem’ with this is that it only applies on AI units so no last deploying Maul for instance. Holding deployments is overall just not that good. Especially in CIS where basically everything has to be clustered anyways, your opponent should be able to figure out your plans. The exception to this is STAPs, which can benefit from being deployed last.
Now on to the good bit. This card allows you to get up to two free recovers on units with faceups. This importantly doesn’t have any requirement for where the order came from or any AI requirement, though you still need to get your target a faceup order somehow. This card could be used to recover Force Powers (with an alternative way to get an order to your force user). It could also shed suppression off Grievous if you’re that kind of masochist. The most common use that was seen was use it to recover Ion Spiders and B2 HA Rockets.
Preservation Protocols
A card with pretty sick art on it. This card allows up to 2 units to get Disengage, Impervious and 1 dodge token. There are some limitations which are bothersome. The first is that you have to order droid troopers or AI units. On top of this is that the effects only apply to units with AI or are droid troopers. (sad Grievous). However, the effects given are solid. The standout is probably disengage which is incredible for both B2s as well as Magnas. The dodge token and Impervious are also good but not nearly as show stopping as the Disengage which could really change the game state.
They Too Will Suffer
Definitely the most niche of the suite of the command cards is the one pip. This command card dictates two effects. The first is that your opponent must return a non-commander or operative order token to their order pool if able. This first effect is already solid, affecting order control is always good. The downside is usually the orders you want to bump are those of characters so this effect isn’t crazy or anything.
The second effect is that when your opponent decides that they want to go to the order pool for the first time that round, you get to dictate what rank they ‘pull’. This effect is particularly potent against lists that rely on having most of one command token in the bag with which to pull consistently, now you can decide they get the worst pull.
Orbital Strike
A special mention should go to the CIS generic two pip. This card is best used by the various Super Tactical Droids. While it might not be the most powerful attack ever, it is certainly solid. Being able to score some early wounds plus apply some suppression is never a bad thing. This card can also help you out of a pinch if saved for the mid-late game.
The Named Bois
Now we’ve gone over over all the generic pieces for the Super Tactical Droid. We now will take a look at what makes Kalani and Kraken different and unique.
Kalani
Kalani’s biggest feature is that Strategize gets boosted to Strategize 2. This allows Kalani to hand out four green tokens for one action, excellent efficiency. Kalani also has Reinforcements, which usually doesn’t come up but paired with the three pip could be interesting. It does force some tough choices sometimes with Orbital Strike, where you can hold Kalani to get vision on a fragile unit like a strike team.
Kalani also has Sharpshooter 2 which raises its offence a fair bit, especially good when paired with Orbital Strike. With Orbital Strike you should be able to force four saves, solid.
Kalani also has three command upgrade slots, probably 1-2 more than you’d ever need.
All this comes at the cost of no Override which is probably a good tradeoff.
Kraken
Kraken is the much more offensive boi. For one Kraken has Charge, second he has a solid melee attack, third he has the best gun by far. Overall Kraken is going to want to run up with your army and contribute more directly to the fight. Kraken also has the best Orbital Strike, beating out Kalani as Kraken surges to crit instead of hit, which doesn’t usually matter but is good nonetheless.
Kraken also has Override 2 instead of 1. This allows you to use Override at range 2 instead of 1 which is good if you’re leaning into Override as a part of your strategy.
Kraken also has a training upgrade which can be used for a few different things. Offensive Push isn’t the worst upgrade on him. Seize the initiative is also solid.
The big drawback of Kraken is no Direct. This means you’ll need to get your orders from elsewhere, or forgo them altogether.
Lists
First Up
The first list up is literally the last list that was in my CIS builder. This is just an attempt at a more unconventional CIS gunline with linebacker support by the Magnas. This list is able to pack quite a punch at range and also features quite a bit of Impact and Critical to help deal with a lot of the common threats on the table right now.
Ion Spiders
An oldie but a goodie. This list was quite the powerhouse awhile back, often paired with Maul. This list saw a lot of success and is probably not the worst meta call right now. Point hikes did really affect its power level though. Some versions that use the generic Super Tactical Droid also exist which saves you ten points to use elsewhere.
Let me punch em
So you want to move fast and punch things? Look no further than this list. This list wants to punch things, it’s in the name.
It contains two main elements, the B1 order chain that starts with an HQ squad and ends on a B2, and then the Magnas. This list also contains three repair bots which could easily be four with the remaining points. Kraken should also be quite survivable as he is surrounded by Guardian 6. This list even has impact 8 plus a bit of crit to help deal with armoured threats.
Final Thoughts
The Super Tactical Droids are a big mainstay of CIS list building. Combining a lot of things that we like to see on support commanders these droids bring a lot to the field.
We didn’t even get into trying to combine Geonosians with Super Tactical Droids today, that is a whole other thing. Poggle probably doesn’t want to be combined with Super Tactical Droids as they overlap a lot but not to say you can’t make a massive B2 army backed by Poggle and a Super Tactical Droid. Standard Geonosians will probably find their way into a lot of CIS lists as a 1 or 2 of assault and or objective piece. This addition should help to add some spice back into CIS list building as it has seemed a bit stale for awhile with remixes on very similar ideas being all the ‘innovating’ that seems to be done right now.
