New player need help with clones.

By Dsylosis232, in Army Building

Hey fellow legion players.

I just got into the game because of the clone army. I want to build a good clone army but I need to know if I have enough time or not. I have bought so far: the clone war core set, Captain Rex, a BARC speeder expansion, a phase 1 clone trooper expansion, the card upgrade pack and the phase 1 clone trooper upgrade (well, this ones pre ordered.)

what else do I need to get to add to my army and if there’s any tips to be given to help me understand the game better?

thanks for reading and any help given. 🙂

A second core set, honestly. It's the most bang for you buck, especially if you are brand new. You will get more dice (core comes with a woefully inadequate amount of dice). And you can either trade the droids or sell them.

In the rules, you need a minimum of 3 corps, and you're lucky that the clones are more expensive points wise so you don't need a ton of units to get up to 800 points. The BARCs are mediocre.

With 3 corps, you could build a list with 2 commanders, and 2 BARCs. You may go with that until Phase II clones come out. But still, I would recommend just getting another core set, or buying at least 1 more Phase I expansion if your money is tight.

I'd recommend more Clones, either from the core, or their individual expansions. BARCs aren't good, and the only reason you'd want to hold off filling your points with Clones is you don't want to invest in them right now. Not a lot of options for Clones right now, otherwise.

I think it's important to explain to new players *why* the BARCs aren't great.

They suffer from a few main weaknesses :

- They don't contribute to the Clone token economy. Since they are a vehicle and not a clone, they can't benefit from or provide tokens.

- They are deceptively fragile since Cover 1 doesn't protect them much, their immunity to suppression means they don't get improved cover from being focus fired, and the lack of token sharing means they don't get defensive surges like Clones in the deathball do most turns. They also can't get the benefit of Obi-Wan's protection since they aren't troopers. They are also quickly damaged and become significantly less effective with 2 out of the 3 results of breaking the resilience threshold.

- Their intended role, which seems to be providing cover-free angles and offensive surges for Fire Support, relies on using Fire Support, which should be done extremely sparingly. Burning two orders at once in a low-order army should be done with the greatest care when said shot will grand you an immediate advantage or win you the game. Using 2 units to delete one that hasn't activated can be extremely powerful, but rolling poorly (or a good defense roll) can grant your opponent a huge advantage. The difference between killing off an entire unit, and killing 4 out 6 leaving them with their heavy weapon and only a single suppression token has a decisive impact on the game.

I have the droids from the original core set and a player from my local store is looking to trade them for clones. So that should be 2 more units I believe bringing my total to 5. Modify those with kenobi as my commander and maybe a BARC (even though they do sound pretty mediocre) should be just enough right? Thanks for all the help so far.

5 is a great place to start, and will more than be enough for the time being. If you pick up the Trooper expansions next month they'll include the card for another Clone squad, if you want to go that route, and you can build a full squad just using your other spare troopers.