Given the announcement that the clone wars are coming to legion, the Droideka is almost certainly going to be joining the game. This presents some unique challenges associated with this particular unit.

1) Movement modes: To really capture this unit there should be two different modes, one that is high speed but it can't attack and has weak defense and one that has low speed but high offence and defense. They could handle this with condition cards like they did in X-Wing or they could just leave it as the combat mode and not deal with the movement mode.

2)Shields: The Droidekas maid defense came in the form of a personal shield that could deflect most small arms fire, but was weak against things like grenades and melee weapons which moved slow enough to pass through the shield unhindered. I was thinking that it could be represented by a new keyword:

Personal Shield: If this unit is the target of a ranged attack that contains no keywords this unit gains a (red defense dice) and (defensive surge to block).

So I have done a lot of theory crafting with different units and armies hoping to god that Prequel era would be added (Praise Sheev).

I figured they could go 1 of 2 ways.

IF Droidekas moved using the Roll movement (3 speed) they defend with white defense dice with no surges

IF Droidekas moved using the normal movement speed (1 speed) they defend with red dice with surges.

If Droidekas moved during this round (2 speed), they defend using white dice with no surges

If Droidekas did not move during this round (2 speed), they defend using red dice with surges

I would much prefer if they went with the Red text idea because it makes sense that they are fast when rolling, but obviously slow when just walking.

I was speculating about this and I think they will end up making the droideka as emplacement troopers. Emplacement troopers basically count as vehicles for facing and movement (including the ability to pivot) but as troopers for everything else. I think if you put them on medium (speeder bike sized) based, put two or three in a unit, and called them emplacement troopers that would cover the movement issues.

I think you are essentially right about their shields getting a special keyword, though who knows how the effect will look. It could go so far as to have a specific vulnerability to attacks granted by grenade upgrade cards.

The Red text is along the lines of what I was thinking with the different conditions.

The standard stats would be:

White defense dice no surge

Speed 1

Offensive surge

Ranged attack only (I haven't thought about the Dice pool yet)

Shield Keyword

Condition movement: This unit can move at speed 3 but can make no attacks this round

make it take and action to switch conditions.

What if they released two models for them? A rolled up mode and an attack mode. That way you could track which movement speed and defense applied. I think the shields should be a resource that gets depleted like in Battlefront 2 (2005)

Shields 4 (Place 4 shield tokens on this unit card. When defending against non <grenade> ranged attacks, after rolling defense dice you may spend shield tokens to cancel hit or critical hit results)

->: Gain 1 shield token

There are only 6 turns In a game. The actions are not granular enough to model the behavior in a fitting way. You are designing for imperial assault, not legion.

Rolling, unfolding and putting up a shield are pretty instantaneous. I would instead give a base speed of one them an ability like

momentum: 3

If you move twice this activation you may perform an additional movement up to speed three.

Armor keyword already provides a matching effect to the shields.

While I agree that folding, unfolding, activating and deactivating the shield are pretty quick, the rolling is not necessarily that way. The thought behind making it take an activation to go between each mode is to simulate the vulnerability while moving. There is also precedent for this kind of thing with the exhaustible upgrades and the keyword encumbered. Both of those take powerful abilities and limit their use through actions. The "condition" looks at basically adding an exhaust to a unit as a standard part of that unit, rather than an upgrade.

As for the shield using the Armor keyword, they might do just that, but shields and armor have different vulnerabilities. Given that there are grenade upgrades, and that is one of the main differences between armor and shields I think it would be interesting to try and simulate those differences.

Give them an ability for sheilds that acts like extra cover, so blast and melee can damage them

Speed 1.

Action: Roll: Perform a speed 3 move action and then a standby action.

That action would use up both of the unit's actions, unless they wanted to 'walk' at speed 1 to shoot.

7 hours ago, TylerTT said:

There are only 6 turns In a game. The actions are not granular enough to model the behavior in a fitting way. You are designing for imperial assault, not legion.

Agreed. Most of the suggestions here are way too fiddly to to be likely on an official release. Whatever FFG chooses to do, it will be simpler than two full different configurations for movement.

Just give them Cumbersome...?

Move or fire.

I think Cumbersome is the easiest way to go. Anything that gets into tracking whether a unit moved in a round or not is getting into more tokens on them and getting more fiddly - that's not fun.

I would like to see them released as a two pack. The ideal set-up would have a compulsory movement when rolling, full 360 pivot on attack/defend, and require an action be spent when coming out of or going into rolling position.

the shields would be a weird one to rule in.

Small arms fire just plinked right off them all the time but even moderately bigger guns found on the back of a vehicle would slam right through it.

perhaps immune to any attack that excludes impact or pierce? which doesnt really make it immune to all that much lol....

17 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

the shields would be a weird one to rule in.

Small arms fire just plinked right off them all the time but even moderately bigger guns found on the back of a vehicle would slam right through it.

perhaps immune to any attack that excludes impact or pierce? which doesnt really make it immune to all that much lol....

I don't think that making it Immune to a type of attack is that great of an idea. It would completely nullify rebel Z-6 troopers and could potentially unbalance a game. That's one reason why I suggested Red defense dice with Surge to block. That is the highest defense possible without completely invalidating an attack. As you mentioned it should exclude Keywords such as Blast, Pierce, and Impact.

I had a thought of how shields for the Destroyer Droid could work back when I was thinking up unit stats for Clone Wars units (before the awesome announcement of them).

Shields: This unit rolls defense dice equal to the amount of attack dice the enemy unit rolled against it. Attacks with Impact or Pierce negate this bonus.

In this way, the Destroyer droids get defense dice equal to whatever number of dice the attacking unit rolls against it instead of only rolling dice equal to the amount of hits. But the type of weapons that we see typically get through the shields get through this extra defense, so Destroyer droids aren't all powerful.

Of course, shields would only be usable if the Destroyer Droid didn't use some sort of wheel form movement. I'd put the "negates the Shields keyword" under the "Wheel Form" movement.

3 minutes ago, Derpzilla88 said:

I had a thought of how shields for the Destroyer Droid could work back when I was thinking up unit stats for Clone Wars units (before the awesome announcement of them).

Shields: This unit rolls defense dice equal to the amount of attack dice the enemy unit rolled against it. Attacks with Impact or Pierce negate this bonus.

In this way, the Destroyer droids get defense dice equal to whatever number of dice the attacking unit rolls against it instead of only rolling dice equal to the amount of hits. But the type of weapons that we see typically get through the shields get through this extra defense, so Destroyer droids aren't all powerful.

Of course, shields would only be usable if the Destroyer Droid didn't use some sort of wheel form movement. I'd put the "negates the Shields keyword" under the "Wheel Form" movement.

After thinking about it for a little while an Exhaustible upgrade card could be a way to differentiate the movement.

Rough Droideka stats

Speed 1

White Defense Dice No surge

Attack: 2 red, 2 Black

Keword Personal Shield: This unit gets Red defense dice with Surge against ranged attacks that don't include Blast, Pierce, or Impact.

Upgrade (rapid movement)

Exhaustible

This unit gains speed 3 but loses Personal Shield and can not attack during the turn this is used.

This way it is like it having two different modes but handles it in the same way that Force Reflexes and other Exhaustible cards are handled

15 hours ago, jcmonson said:

After thinking about it for a little while an Exhaustible upgrade card could be a way to differentiate the movement.

Rough Droideka stats

Speed 1

White Defense Dice No surge

Attack: 2 red, 2 Black

Keword Personal Shield: This unit gets Red defense dice with Surge against ranged attacks that don't include Blast, Pierce, or Impact.

Upgrade (rapid movement)

Exhaustible

This unit gains speed 3 but loses Personal Shield and can not attack during the turn this is used.

This way it is like it having two different modes but handles it in the same way that Force Reflexes and other Exhaustible cards are handled

Is there anything to stop you from attacking and then rolling-out second action with that wording?

i wouldnt prevent them from attacking for being in rapid motion that turn (during rapid yes, coming out of rapid no)

They deploy really quick, theyre just slow as slugs when they arent rolling around. The loss of the shield is big enough penalty, especially if its going to be an action to switch and not just "when this unit activates" type of an effect.

The way I would read what I wrote is that if you use Rapid Movement you can not have attacked that turn. It might be less confusing to have the upgrade give cumbersome instead so it would read:

This unit gains speed 3 and cumbersome and looses Personal Shield

6 minutes ago, Vineheart01 said:

i wouldnt prevent them from attacking for being in rapid motion that turn (during rapid yes, coming out of rapid no)

They deploy really quick, theyre just slow as slugs when they arent rolling around. The loss of the shield is big enough penalty, especially if its going to be an action to switch and not just "when this unit activates" type of an effect.

I get what you mean, but with the upgrade card it would only take an action to go into the roll, you would automatically come out. I guess it would take some playtesting to see if it would really be to much to take away the attack as well. I am imagining it working like Force choke, where it takes an action to use the card and then it gets exhausted.

part of me feels like they should be speed2 with a comp move in rapid motion mode.

They are pretty dang fast when rolling around but not speederbike speed.

wouldn't that make them technically speed 4 as the compulsory move would have to be at speed 2 as well? In the end 2 speed 3 moves should be shorter than 3 speed 2 moves, though not as maneuverable.

Alright, so Cumbersome and Armor.

Or, like, "Shielded 2: while defending, cancel up to 2 [hit] results", and then a mediocre defense die.