Ok the game yesterday was another victory for the republik.

we got hostage rescue, advanded position and this green card with extra barriers.

I took the list that i posted above, but kicked out one of the rifles to get a HQ Uplink. so it was:

Grievous
Aggressive Tactics

1x 2x B1 with 3 Black Dice Rifle and Hq uplink

2x B1 with 3 Black Dice Rifle

2x B1 with an extra b1

1x B2 with 3dice range 2 guy and extra B2

1x BX with sniper, vibro swords and situational awareness

1x AAT with Target link

GAR was in with: (as far as i can remember)

1 Rex Agressive Tactics
2 P1 Clones with extra trooper
2 p2 Colnes with mortar and sentinel
3 ARC STrike teams with sniper

So he had one activation more then me (expensive elite army... i see)

I wanted to test a more defensive way, so i run straight back for two rounds and only fired the tank and the snipers and try to do some chip dmg with the b1. that works... better then the blind attack of the last games. he was forced to play that range extention command card really early and must move every turn to get track.

the tank had done 24 dices in the 3 rounds we played and did 21 wounds on clones... with zero loses for the clones because of the dice gods hates me - 21 block symbols... he cant be serious... that get me in really bad mood and i give up at the middle of round 4 (mostly because it was late and this running away tactic was not that funny to play, so the motivation was a bit on the downend).

I think that i could win that game but it would be really hard. i was at a point were that retreat with chipdmg came to its limits, because i nearly reached the border of the gamemat
At that time no troup was complete dead, because i retreated every b1 group that had to much loses to prevent him from getting the scores. he had 2 groups in light cover that was killable. so it was theoretically winable... but wow i hate that kite tactics.

Next friday i test the STAPs but i dont have a good feeling about that. Perhaps i should try a 3 droideka list with the ussual B1 block to get some more suppressions on the clones to hinder them.

I am really, really thankful that i get that much help in this thread. Thanks to everyone. I think i will return to the empire era when i am done with the next one or two tests. i never win with the empire too, because bad player... but with the empire it is so super close everytime and i has so much more fun, that suggests that maybe CIA really just doesn't suit me. I will try to focus on the tipps here, but perhaps i really too impatient to play CIS sucessfully. But i am fine with that... at last its a fine army to paint.

Oh i got a question from yesterdays game, if noone mind:

We tried to play the competive terrain rules... ehh we normaly did a modified version of that and share the buildings and crates and stuff put them up and then both of us gets 4 barricades and we place them too. never got trouble with that. but yesterday we had this extra barricades card and we dont get how this is handled. barricades are normal terrain arnt they? so in the offical rules it is range 1 to everything else? thats... strange for the barricades. we like to stand them next to buildings to make the gaps between the buildings shorter and to get a more realistic looking battle field. how does the competive rules really work? just for the case that we want to use them at some point.

oh i did some photos as promised... hope i understand how to link them:

1 hour ago, .art. said:

we got hostage rescue, advanded position and this green card with extra barriers

All 3 of these are good for clones.

That's rough bud.


To be honest, even the best lists would have trouble with these objectives against clones. The terrain doesn't benefit CIS all that much either. I see a lot of wide open firing lanes for clones and only a few sparsely placed LoS blockers.

One factor may be that CIS is just not your faction and GAR is really theirs. Have you tried Rebels vs. GAR or CIS vs. Empire? I could see if the faction does not click for you that could be all that it takes no matter what/who you go against. Especially since your others games were always close. Switch it up and see if that helps. I just got rid of my Rebels for Armada for the same issue. It sucks, but some faction just don't work for everyone.

GAR right now is really the strongest faction, but CIS is at least a close second. The points change is on its way so maybe that GAR nurf will help things out?

Random tips:

• As other have said the core of any safe CIS list is 5 or 6 B1s with E5-Cs and one or two with HQ Uplink. Every turn you should throw out all B1s tokens or you are doing something wrong.
• Your leader could be decked out more. Grievous could use his blaster, both commands, and the training slot. Dooku at least two force powers. And keep them safe until you charge them in and wreak face!!! Every CIS victory usually ends with Grivous/Dooku getting into melee.
• Droidekars are too expensive if you are going for a win, best bet is either decked out tank or two staps with some snipers. If you want some ideas here are the tournament list from invaders league, you won't get better CIS list: https://www.invaderleague.com/league/season-5/season-5-single-elimination-lists
• Sort of got a home rule where people can't take three strike teams so maybe go with that since that is what really gives GAR it power spike?

Firstly I have to agree that the terrain was not placed in a way that was helpful for you to make effective use of LoS blocking for defense, that large landing pad being off to one side basically made it unimportant for the whole game I bet.

BX with sniper and swords seems like a bit of a mismatch in upgrades roles to me. The sniper wants to be at range 5 (ideally), aiming and firing. The vibroswords want to be in melee. The dioxis mine however also wants to be close in to your opponent, so seems like it is well suited to units with swords.

2 hours ago, .art. said:

yesterday we had this extra barricades card and we dont get how this is handled.

So as far as I am aware, you just place them on the battlefield with no restrictions. The competitive terrain placement only applies during Step 3 of setup "Place terrain." Fortified Positions is resolved in Step 7: Resolve the Objective and Condition Cards. You only use the setup instructions on the actual card, which has no restriction on Barricade placement other than within the deployment zone, or within range 1-2 of the deployment zone. If you want to line them up on a rooftop that is in that area, or otherwise touching other terrain, go ahead.

I will echo the above that your terrain looks very sparse. I've never played with the competitive terrain rules though, we just set up mutually agreeable boards and use a lot of LoS blocking stuff.

My friend has a lot of nice 3-D printed terrain with about 3"-4" tall modular wall sections--some with opening and closing gates. We build them to make it very hard to to have uninterrupted shooting lanes. It makes abilities like Jump and Scale very good, and the games are interesting with safe approaches to the walls and new firing lanes open up as people open gates.

As it is, you just don't have anywhere to move without getting standby-shot with no cover.

On 9/8/2020 at 3:31 AM, .art. said:

To be fair… I know that I play the droids not as good as it is possible and I am lousy tactician (otherwise I would not lose that much), but I really struggle with that army. I do not see any advantages in playing Seperatists.

The obvious advantage should be the number of troops. That is no real advantage… I am bound to the six corps limit, with that I cannot outplay the “hey my corps only costs 36 points” card to the limit where I would say that it is advantage.

The CIS is not a horde faction, so get that mindset right out of your head right now!! That was a mistake that a lot of people make (I being one of them) and FFG did not really help with how they presented the faction. Legion factions are all pretty similar with keywords being the real difference between the 4. With strike teams all factions will have similar number of activations (insert 50th thread if strike teams are a mistake).......................... If anything I could see the arugment that Rebels are closer to a horde faction.

CIS identity is closer to crazy strong expensive mpv units (Dooku, Grivous, AAT, Maul, Bane, droidekars) with B1s as filler/activation control to distract and take hits. And **** B1s are pretty good at what they do if you go into stats and whatnot. The problem you get is that GAR (especially if they are good with the faction and padded their activation) don't really care about that CIS control (insert thread about nurfing standby sharing).

All this made worse because this game can be lost on turn one on just terrain and deployment alone. You may want to try a lot of 400 point games to get a better feeling for the faction.

For competitive terrain usage, you take a mixture of los blocking, cover, and area terrain that covers about 1/4 of the battle field. Then starting with blue player place the pieces on the field outside of range 1 of all other pieces. When there is no longer space left outside of range one the terrain can be placed anywhere not touching another piece of terrain.

My local group almost exclusively use these rules, however you do need to be careful with them. With disarray and the skirmish deployments it is possible to place terrain in such a way that the tanks cannot be deployed.

Also that Republic list is gonna be tough for any faction if it is played well.

14 hours ago, RyantheFett said:

The CIS is not a horde faction, so get that mindset right out of your head right now!! That was a mistake that a lot of people make (I being one of them) and FFG did not really help with how they presented the faction. Legion factions are all pretty similar with keywords being the real difference between the 4. With strike teams all factions will have similar number of activations (insert 50th thread if strike teams are a mistake).......................... If anything I could see the arugment that Rebels are closer to a horde faction.

CIS identity is closer to crazy strong expensive mpv units (Dooku, Grivous, AAT, Maul, Bane, droidekars) with B1s as filler/activation control to distract and take hits. And **** B1s are pretty good at what they do if you go into stats and whatnot. The problem you get is that GAR (especially if they are good with the faction and padded their activation) don't really care about that CIS control (insert thread about nurfing standby sharing).

All this made worse because this game can be lost on turn one on just terrain and deployment alone. You may want to try a lot of 400 point games to get a better feeling for the faction.

CIS is not the crazy strong expensive units faction. CIS just doesnt have a cheaper commander than Grievous atm, but that doesnt mean that will always be the case. Having to take Grievious is actually whats stopping the faction from being more competitive because hes expensive and mediocre at best. You could take another whole unit of B2s or two more units of B1s if CIS had a decent 90ish point commander.

People also seem to assume you have to take a lot of B1s with CIS which is wrong. B1s are back rank objective holders and grievous guardian fodder and nothing more.

I find for CIS to work the majority of your army needs to be something more substantial than B1s. I personally think B2s are way better than B1s because of their ability to completely obliterate units in heavy cover. B2s should be the core of most CIS armies IMO. Unless you do the double tank thing.

"Grievous is not that good"....

Literally everyone else who actually plays CIS "Grievous is love, Grievous is life"

Grievious being a compulsory choice does not make him good. Hes just average. Most commanders are just average so its not like thats a bad thing. But I do think CIS will eventually get a cheaper commander thats way better.

Grievious does very little to play to the strengths of his own army. Hes expensive. Hes highly vulnerable to suppression. His command cards are selfish and he does very little to support his army and the surge tokens he gives out have a low impact on the game. A lot of the time you cant even use them because you never roll the surges. I strongly believe that CIS is supposed to heavily outnumber other factions on the ground. But Grievious being their only commander option prevents them from being able to do that.

Hes definitely not the ideal Commander for CIS. Hes just the only Commander besides Dooku and Dooku exaggerates all of Grievious' downsides even more.

The ideal commander for CIS would be a cheaper support commander like Rex/Veers/Leia in the 80-90 point range. You could fit in an extra 1-2 units of droids and support your entire army way better.

13 hours ago, .art. said:

he was forced to play that range extention command card really early

Take That Clankers is the Turn 1 Card 95% of the time, deleting 1 (possibly 2) opponent units right at the start. If the card comes later, it loses so much potential (Turn 0 aim tokens), so if you manage that your opponent doesn't use it turn 1 I'd call it a small victory already 😄

13 hours ago, .art. said:

Next friday i test the STAPs but i dont have a good feeling about that.

If you can, try go for bombing run, that's super fun with STAPs! And be super careful with STAPs. They are great but - as with all speeders - it's super easy to get trapped. Ideal move is: compulsory move, shoot, move out of sight in a position where you can repeat that the next round

13 hours ago, .art. said:

I am really, really thankful that i get that much help in this thread. Thanks to everyone. I think i will return to the empire era when i am done with the next one or two tests. i never win with the empire too, because bad player... but with the empire it is so super close everytime and i has so much more fun, that suggests that maybe CIA really just doesn't suit me. I will try to focus on the tipps here, but perhaps i really too impatient to play CIS sucessfully. But i am fine with that... at last its a fine army to paint.

It really looks like the very specific playstyle of CIS does not suit your way of playing. Has your opponent ever considered maybe not playing for the win and using the best list possible to even the odds of playing talents? I for example like to adapt my list efficiency according to my opponent. I played a game yesterday against a completely new player (tabletop in general). I used a 8 activation Han, Chewie, double Wookies, Airspeeder list and **** that was a close game and fun for both of us!

6 hours ago, Khobai said:

Grievious being a compulsory choice does not make him good. Hes just average. Most commanders are just average so its not like thats a bad thing. But I do think CIS will eventually get a cheaper commander thats way better.

Grievious does very little to play to the strengths of his own army. Hes expensive. Hes highly vulnerable to suppression. His command cards are selfish and he does very little to support his army and the surge tokens he gives out have a low impact on the game. A lot of the time you cant even use them because you never roll the surges. I strongly believe that CIS is supposed to heavily outnumber other factions on the ground. But Grievious being their only commander option prevents them from being able to do that.

Hes definitely not the ideal Commander for CIS. Hes just the only Commander besides Dooku and Dooku exaggerates all of Grievious' downsides even more.

The ideal commander for CIS would be a cheaper support commander like Rex/Veers/Leia in the 80-90 point range. You could fit in an extra 1-2 units of droids and support your entire army way better.

Yes i would like a Support Commander like Krennic or Veers... but to be fair. No idea for that came to mind. Due to the fact that they use Droids there are not that many named and famous enough Charakters that make sense. I am sure that we get Ventrez, but thats just another Saberwielder. But what do have then? The Senators? I hardly can remember anyone of them expect for that guy of the technologyleague (Tambur?). Admiral Trench would be cool but i dont believe that we get an admiral for groundforces, would be a bit strange. Luk Durd is a upgrade card allready. Whorm Loathsom would be an option... but speaking of famous... that would be a poor option.

Perhaps the leader of Deathwatch is an option... i am not sure... Pre Vizsla? But he hates Dooku after his plan for mandalore failed.

4 minutes ago, SailorMeni said:

It really looks like the very specific playstyle of CIS does not suit your way of playing. Has your opponent ever considered maybe not playing for the win and using the best list possible to even the odds of playing talents? I for example like to adapt my list efficiency according to my opponent. I played a game yesterday against a completely new player (tabletop in general). I used a 8 activation Han, Chewie, double Wookies, Airspeeder list and **** that was a close game and fun for both of us!

Hmm intresting fact is that my oppnent is not the guy who does any research in the internet because he dont want to play "that tournee cheese" and me is the guy who reads a lot of forums and watches videos to get better. We just playing casually so i think i can talk that with him. I think he hit this effective list by acident But thanks for that advice too.

After losing last match i talked with him. We will change our armies for one or two testgames after we have tested the new expansions, so that i can get a better felling for clones and try to find a weak spot.

If you don't play this list next game I'm gonna flip my ****.

General Grievous (Aggressive Tactics, Endurance)
B1 Battle Droids (HQ Uplink)
B1 Battle Droids
B1 Battle Droids
B1 Battle Droids
B1 Battle Droids
B1 Battle Droids
BX-Series Droid Commandos (Dioxis Mine Saboteur, Vibroswords)
BX-Series Droid Commandos (Strike Team) (BX-Series Droid Sniper)
BX-Series Droid Commandos (Strike Team) (BX-Series Droid Sniper)
AAT Trade Federation Battle Tank (T-Series Tactical Droid Pilot, Linked Targeting Array)

😝

Hey mate,

I know playing against Republic can be tough. They are very good, even if not played that well.
One Thing I noticed Right away in the Pictures you showed, is that your Droids are spread out wide. You don't want to do that. Droids, much like Clones, clumb all together to coordinate their orders. Order Control and coordinate is the single most important Thing when playing that army.

48 minutes ago, Qraith said:

Hey mate,

I know playing against Republic can be tough. They are very good, even if not played that well.
One Thing I noticed Right away in the Pictures you showed, is that your Droids are spread out wide. You don't want to do that. Droids, much like Clones, clumb all together to coordinate their orders. Order Control and coordinate is the single most important Thing when playing that army.

How do you deal with the Saber tanks beam weapon when youre forced to clump together though?

Its almost unfair that they force you to clump together then punish you for it at the same time. That beam weapon absolutely wrecks B1s.

Thats one of the reasons Ive been using more B2s and droidekas.

4 minutes ago, Khobai said:

How do you deal with the Saber tanks beam weapon when youre forced to clump together though?

Its almost unfair that they force you to clump together then punish you for it at the same time. That beam weapon absolutely wrecks B1s.

Thats one of the reasons Ive been using more B2s and droidekas.

Use cover. The beam weapon is really low dice count by itself, and doesn't do much damage beyond the first shot unless your dudes are in the open.

48 minutes ago, Khobai said:

How do you deal with the Saber tanks beam weapon when youre forced to clump together though?

Its almost unfair that they force you to clump together then punish you for it at the same time. That beam weapon absolutely wrecks B1s.

Thats one of the reasons Ive been using more B2s and droidekas.

Beam weapon does what? 2,3 damage to 3 units? I’ll take that for a tank activation all day over high energy shells. I’ve never seen some one using the beam turret because it’s horribly ineffective

7 hours ago, .art. said:

Yes i would like a Support Commander like Krennic or Veers... but to be fair. No idea for that came to mind. Due to the fact that they use Droids there are not that many named and famous enough Charakters that make sense. I am sure that we get Ventrez, but thats just another Saberwielder. But what do have then? The Senators? I hardly can remember anyone of them expect for that guy of the technologyleague (Tambur?). Admiral Trench would be cool but i dont believe that we get an admiral for groundforces, would be a bit strange. Luk Durd is a upgrade card allready. Whorm Loathsom would be an option... but speaking of famous... that would be a poor option.

Perhaps the leader of Deathwatch is an option... i am not sure... Pre Vizsla? But he hates Dooku after his plan for mandalore failed.

The one that comes to mind for me is Kalani. He isn't as mainstream as some of the other characters but he does show up in the Clone Wars and Rebels, so he is probably the most recognizable Super Tactical Droid.

On 9/8/2020 at 3:18 PM, Khobai said:

I think taking more than two units of B1s is a trap.

Your under valuing the B1s coordinate ability and the fact that they are so cheap u can easily fit a decent number of them into a list and still have plenty of room to fit heavy hitters like Grievous, the AAt, or Dooku

4 hours ago, lunitic501 said:

Your under valuing the B1s coordinate ability and the fact that they are so cheap u can easily fit a decent number of them into a list and still have plenty of room to fit heavy hitters like Grievous, the AAt, or Dooku

Yeah, can you imagine if clones were stuck with only two 200-250 point commanders to choose from? They'd be way worse off, because their units are also expensive, so it would truly handicap their options.

It is only because of our cheap B1s that we can afford to have expensive commanders.

In my experience, Dooku absolutely wrecks clones. His 1 pip card can lead to the removal or severe mauling of as many as 3 units in a turn.

Speaking of which, it seems to me that clones require a different thought process to handicapping their efficacy. Usually in Legion you want to entirely wipe out units to remove their activation. While this is good to do against clones, it's not always possible. Spreading the damage around can also limit how good their token sharing is. Having a standby and aims to borrow doesn't matter as much if you've cut the dice pool down some.

8 minutes ago, Sekac said:

In my experience, Dooku absolutely wrecks clones. His 1 pip card can lead to the removal or severe mauling of as many as 3 units in a turn.

I've been seeing people make a case for putting Force Choke on Dooku lately because of the ability to choose the mini. The argument being you can half a unit's power without even attacking them. Haven't tried it myself but considering the level of units with heavy upgrades equipped in our local meta, it may be interesting.

Just now, Darth Sanguis said:

I've been seeing people make a case for putting Force Choke on Dooku lately because of the ability to choose the mini. The argument being you can half a unit's power without even attacking them. Haven't tried it myself but considering the level of units with heavy upgrades equipped in our local meta, it may be interesting.

It definitely helps. Heck it does a quasi "mark for death" on multi wound heavies since you have to assign wounds to already wounded minis first.

9 minutes ago, thepopemobile100 said:

It definitely helps. Heck it does a quasi "mark for death" on multi wound heavies since you have to assign wounds to already wounded minis first.

Oh, I haven't seen that point made yet, VERY interesting!