Those of us who have been with Legion from the early days remember how nasty Saboteur Strike Teams were. Three Strike Teams were included in an army and were considered suicide bombers. The bomber player knew the bombers would perish, but not before the Strike Team could place and blow up a bomb in the main launching area of the enemy army, hitting several units with the bomb that of course had blast. Back then it was all thanks to the Emergency Stims upgrade which allowed the Saboteur Strike Team ignore 2 hits so they could stick around for an extra turn. That was all before Strike Teams and the Emergency Stims upgrade were increased in points.

What if there was a faction that was better at it? What if that faction had a cheap corps unit that could help with the extra cost of said Strike Teams? And what if I said, they exist? Ladies and Gentlemen I give you the BX-Series Droid Commando Strike Team with Dioxis Mine Saboteur. The BX Strike Team with Saboteur comes in at 48 points (only 2 more than the Rebel or Imperial version), but since they have Scale as a keyword, they won’t have the same movement problems or restrictions that the other two factions do. Now you’re probably thinking, ‘But the BX droids don’t have an equipment slot, so I can’t include Emergency Stims’, and you would be right. But the BX droids have access to something far better, the Deflector Shield upgrade. With the Deflector Shield upgrade and their native red defence dice, they might be able to survive placing more than one bomb before dying. The Deflector Shield may cost a whopping 18 points, but unlike Emergency Stims the 2 points of damage stoped will not kill them next round, that damage is gone and dealt with. And after the Deflector Shield is spent and if you don’t have a chance to Recover, the 2 point upgrade Situational Awareness can help take the bite out of crits that might be rolled against you. Oh and don’t worry too much about those pesky Pierce shooters, BX droids come with Impervious. But that’s not all, you could even include Comms Jammer if you really want to screw with your opponent.

So while everyone is complaining about the Republic and their sad forces, the CIS can easily be racking up the clone kills, especially since clones like to clump up. And if you’re worried about the clones and their Standbys, don’t. You should be able to approach from heavy cover since your BXs can Scale anything.

In some ways I can see why the OT faction players are complaining, but it is important to note 1 unit with everything I mentioned (BX Strike Team, Saboteur, Situational Awareness, Deflector Shields and Comms Jammer) will cost a total of 73 points each. But it does still mean this list is possible:

10 Activations - 799/800

General Grievous (175 + 27 = 202) --Aggressive Tactics (10), Strict Orders (5), DT-57 Annihilator (12)

B2 Super Battle Droids (48 + 42 = 90) --B2-ACM (26), B2 Super Battle Droid (16)

2x B1 Battle Droids (36 + 36 = 72) --E-60R (20), B1 Battle Droid (6), HQ Uplink (10)

2x B1 Battle Droids (36 + 18 = 54) --E-5C B1 Trooper (18)

B1 Battle Droids (36 + 0 = 36)

3x BX-Series Droid Commandos (Strike Team) (20 + 53 = 73) --Dioxis Mine Saboteur (28), Situational Awareness (2), Deflector Shields (18), Comms Jammer (5)

http://tabletopadmiral.com/legion/separatist/p2du68u3euEMu6ep26u69uEMuEMuEMuEMp34u8du76uEMp26u6au5eu29uEMuEMp26u6au5eu29uEMuEMp26u69uEMuEMuEMuEMp26uEMuEMuEMuEMuEMp3fuaeuacua0u01uEMp3fuaeuacua0u01uEMp3fuaeuacua0u01uEMc08

Honestly I’m surprised we haven’t seen the mad bombers out in force before now... that is if you can get your hands on a package of them. I got one and consider myself fortunate.

I actually had a great deal of success running the bomber on a full unit of sword BX droids while the other two BX were strike teams with snipers, hunter and shields. Iden got a little too close to my deploy, I used the scout 3 to get the sword BX units in mine throwing range. Round 1, BX droid threw down a mine and moved, using scale to get out of LoS, then detonated the mine immediately. Iden took a wound and a poison counter.

From then on my sniper teams basically got a free aim on their shots. Made activation econ when those units needed to retreat to recover really good. In heavy cover with those shields a strike team of BXs survived 3 shots from DTs/Iden and some ISF.


I have a list that's 3 mine throwers and 4 rad guns. "Bad gas travels fast" lol Haven't tried it yet though.

7 minutes ago, Darth Sanguis said:

I actually had a great deal of success running the bomber on a full unit of sword BX droids while the other two BX were strike teams with snipers, hunter and shields. Iden got a little too close to my deploy, I used the scout 3 to get the sword BX units in mine throwing range. Round 1, BX droid threw down a mine and moved, using scale to get out of LoS, then detonated the mine immediately. Iden took a wound and a poison counter.

From then on my sniper teams basically got a free aim on their shots. Made activation econ when those units needed to retreat to recover really good. In heavy cover with those shields a strike team of BXs survived 3 shots from DTs/Iden and some ISF.


I have a list that's 3 mine throwers and 4 rad guns. "Bad gas travels fast" lol Haven't tried it yet though.

Yeah, I’ll more than likely use a full unit with Saboteur and have the Sniper Strike Team, also with Deflector Shield, cause I only own 1 box. But as far as snipers go, the sniper war ended and BX droids won. Any sniper that requires 3 hits to kill 1 mini will mean that every Sniper will not be able to take one of them down with only 2 dice. Yeah BXs are bad@$$ and scary as heck.

Bad gas travels fast is a good one, but the only problem with the rad guns is their range. But I love that droids can’t be poisoned. I wonder if they’ll ever come out with the ordinance created by Lok Durd, the Defoliator. That would be hilarious if you could add it to your list.

I think it's a good idea in theory, and a recent War Corgi batrep shows how deadly the mines can be against Rebels. However, I don't think they will be as good against clones as you think they will be. The Dioxis mines are the only mines that don't surge to crit, which means they are more easily dodged. They are also average fewer hits than any other mines (other than Sabine's, but she gets two of them at once), which means that if they can get through armor they are very deadly, but well-armored units will frequently shrug them off. Also, the ability to use Scale to avoid standby is extremely terrain dependent. If a clone player is using standby and you are able to get a BX unit into Arm range without triggering that standby they have made a pretty big mistake.

I would also drop both Situational Awareness and Comms Jammer. I think you would be much better served spending those points elsewhere (e.g. another E-5C). Personally I would try something like this:

798/800 (10 activations)
Commanders:
- Count Dooku (205): Force Choke (5), Force Push (10), Force Reflexes (10), Aggressive Tactics (10) = 240
Corps:
- 2× Battle Droids (36): E-60R Trooper (20), Battle Droid (6), HQ Uplink (10) = 144
- 4× Battle Droids (36): E-5C Trooper (18) = 216
Special Forces:
- 3× BX Droid Strike Team (20): Dioxis Mine Saboteur (28), Deflector Shields (18) = 198

I like Grievous, but if I want to blow up as much as possible, I think Dooku's Scatter, Force Push, and 3-Pip move will enable more of that.

I think those sabs will be very nasty. Poison is gonna be very nasty vs commanders and operatives. It still needs to go through saves to deliver wounds which I learned isn't a given using the radiation gun. When it does however it's really good on red save units.

Painting my backlog before buying BX, but I really think all their options are solid. Swords, shields, snipers and sabs.

Let us know how they work out for you.

11 hours ago, Lochlan said:

I think it's a good idea in theory, and a recent War Corgi batrep shows how deadly the mines can be against Rebels. However, I don't think they will be as good against clones as you think they will be. The Dioxis mines are the only mines that don't surge to crit, which means they are more easily dodged. They are also average fewer hits than any other mines (other than Sabine's, but she gets two of them at once), which means that if they can get through armor they are very deadly, but well-armored units will frequently shrug them off. Also, the ability to use Scale to avoid standby is extremely terrain dependent. If a clone player is using standby and you are able to get a BX unit into Arm range without triggering that standby they have made a pretty big mistake.

I would also drop both Situational Awareness and Comms Jammer. I think you would be much better served spending those points elsewhere (e.g. another E-5C). Personally I would try something like this:

798/800 (10 activations)
Commanders:
- Count Dooku (205): Force Choke (5), Force Push (10), Force Reflexes (10), Aggressive Tactics (10) = 240
Corps:
- 2× Battle Droids (36): E-60R Trooper (20), Battle Droid (6), HQ Uplink (10) = 144
- 4× Battle Droids (36): E-5C Trooper (18) = 216
Special Forces:
- 3× BX Droid Strike Team (20): Dioxis Mine Saboteur (28), Deflector Shields (18) = 198

I like Grievous, but if I want to blow up as much as possible, I think Dooku's Scatter, Force Push, and 3-Pip move will enable more of that.

Most current republic lists don’t include the Armour keyword, unless they add the Saber Tank, but Then that’s usually only 1 unit in the entire army. At some point it will include the AT-RT (hopefully sooner than later, but dependant on shipments and how the RT is received by players).
If by Armour you meant the clones red dice saves, then yeah that could be a problem as even the poison damage is dependant on getting 1 point through (a poison token is only given to the target unit, if it takes damage). On average 2 white and 1 black (with surge to hit) will get 1.375 hit. Not stellar, it’s true, but with terrain scoping you can place a bomb without activating any unit’s Standby and the Scale keyword helps with that more than any other keyword because you can approach the clone castle from almost any angle. For the record, the rebel bombs of 1 red, 2 white (and surge to crit) average 1.625 hits and the imperial bombs of 1 black, 1 red (and surge to crit) average 1.5 hits. There’s actually not a lot of variation there as they’re all at about 1 hit. As for the surge to crit, I definitely can’t argue with you there. Surge to crit doubles your chances of getting a crit, but if the republic has a lot of dodges to share in their castle, it’s easy to wait till the top of the next turn when they will have none, then drop your bombs at leisure. It should also be noted that when you detonate a bomb, it usually has multiple units within the blast radius. This means that you’re not just rolling 1 attack, you should be rolling several. The clones are especially vulnerable to bombs, because their token sharing ability is range 1 (the same as the bomb). So if a clone player doesn’t move a unit out of place to take out your saboteur, that would be a mistake, but if they do, it should give a target that out of place from the clone castle.

I wrote up a whole long post about terrain scoping and other tactics. Dropping a bomb using terrain scoping is even easier because you don’t need to see your target to place a bomb beside them. As long as you can see a flat area beside the target unit and within range 1, you can place a bomb. If you’re interested, here is my post on Tactics To Use Against The Republic. I don’t think I explain the “clone castle” in there, but that’s when the clone player creates a kind of fortified position. To create the fortified position they use terrain to hide the bulk of their army and leave one or two units visible to the opposing side, so that they can use the Standbys and other tokens of those units that are completely hidden from view. This kind of formation is completely dependant on keeping some units hidden from view so that Standbys cannot be removed by enemy units shooting the unit with the Standby, and so it is dependant on line of sight blocking terrain. This also makes any unit with the Scale keyword better at attacking a castle as they have more options to attack from. And using terrain scoping against an opponent who has created a castle is a tactic that isn’t dependant on your opponent necessarily making a mistake. In life and war, you can do everything right and still fail. Cest la vie.

As far as my list, it was only used to illustrate that it’s very possible to have the bombers and to still have 10 activations at that. Please alter as you see fit. I currently only have 1 pack of BX droids and I may get a second at some point, but I don’t think I will get a third as money is an obstacle for me. But again, I was only attempting to show what is possible. In future lists it may even be better to include Maul and use the generic commander, but it depends how good Maul turns out to be. Hope that clears some things up.

I'm definitely gonna have to try this out as soon as possible....which won't be soon at all seeing as i've got 0 boxes of BX's but oh well

Ran a Grand Army match yesterday with 2 sword and mine BXs. It was beautiful. The condition was rapid reinforcements, and because of CIS order control I was able to narrow the random pool to 1 corps and 4 special forces. Made it so the BXs were the last to drop perfectly safe to deploy at range 2 of their line. He was running Palps Vader and some imp guard. Round 2 I ran the BXs in and dropped mines. It was perfect. First mine to detonate had 5 units in range, 3 got poison tokens. The next had 9 units in range 5 of which got poison tokens. I used the BXs to bog enemy melee units and thin ranged gun-liners, meanwhile all my B2s, Dooku, and Grievous focused on his ATST, then wiped out his hostage unit, and picked up the token. By the middle of round 4 he had lost Vader, and both hostage units were too far away for him to catch. I pushed the rest of my army to the middle (which for droids was just too much to slog through), we called the game there. CIS victory.

BX Swords and Mines are a fun little venture, but I think it should be noted: Don't expect them to last.

Those mines are high threat to grouped up armies, and the sword damage can't be ignored either. If you're using these to cut deep into their lines and harass them while your army works on objectives, just understand they're sacrificial. The opponent will definitely be able to focus them down.


Couldn't be happier with them.

I prefer the sabs. They are very strong, but definitely take a higher level to play well.

Here is my personal favorite army right now:

General Grievous (Aggressive Tactics, DT-57 Annihilator)
B1 Battle Droids (Radiation Cannon B1 Trooper, B1 Battle Droid)
B1 Battle Droids
B1 Battle Droids
B1 Battle Droids
BX-Series Droid Commandos (Dioxis Mine Saboteur, Tenacity, Vibroswords)
BX-Series Droid Commandos (Dioxis Mine Saboteur, Tenacity, Vibroswords)
BX-Series Droid Commandos (Strike Team) (BX-Series Droid Sniper)
STAP Riders (HQ Uplink)
STAP Riders (Command Control Array)

Sabs are fun, but I am not so sure whether there will be a comeback in tournaments. Since the point adjustments, I always felt I won in spite of them rather than because of them whenever I played them successfully.

For tournaments, they are just too dependent on a good terrain setup and the opponent.

Droid Sabs are probably the best of the three because of their defence dice, Scout 3, Scale and Impervious. Their mines do not matter as much to me, especially because they are probably a liability in a mirror match.

On the other hand another separatist list might be one of the few opponents that has an incentive to push into another droid ball. Who knows?

Time issues may also be a thing in a sablist with a lot of activations and models.

For imperials and rebels, they need to lower the cost of sabs.

They also need to further lower the cost of all the scout heavy weapons and increase the base cost of the strike teams by the same amount. That way the heavy weapons are cheaper but the overall cost of strike teams remains the same.

That would incentivize the use of heavy weapons more in the full sized units without changing the cost of strike teams.

1 hour ago, Khobai said:

For imperials and rebels, they need to lower the cost of sabs.

They also need to further lower the cost of all the scout heavy weapons and increase the base cost of the strike teams by the same amount. That way the heavy weapons are cheaper but the overall cost of strike teams remains the same.

That would incentivize the use of heavy weapons more in the full sized units without changing the cost of strike teams.

This is a very interesting idea, a simple change that allows an enticement to take full units without a major change to the rules like making strike teams detachments.

1 hour ago, Khobai said:

For imperials and rebels, they need to lower the cost of sabs.

They also need to further lower the cost of all the scout heavy weapons and increase the base cost of the strike teams by the same amount. That way the heavy weapons are cheaper but the overall cost of strike teams remains the same.

That would incentivize the use of heavy weapons more in the full sized units without changing the cost of strike teams.

So what I'm hearing is that the overall cost of strike teams will stay the same, just with a kind of points flop on the heavy weapon and strike team unit.

So... everyone will continue to take strike teams as a cheap activation and ignore the full unit?

1 hour ago, Khobai said:

For imperials and rebels, they need to lower the cost of sabs.

They also need to further lower the cost of all the scout heavy weapons and increase the base cost of the strike teams by the same amount. That way the heavy weapons are cheaper but the overall cost of strike teams remains the same.

That would incentivize the use of heavy weapons more in the full sized units without changing the cost of strike teams.

Honestly, I'm not sure this would be incentive enough because the full units lack the "heavy weapons team" keyword. I could see where it incentivizes players to bring full units by providing more HP on that sniper or saboteur, but having more HP without the heavy weapons team keyword could be irrelevant. Terrain scoping is extremely effective on the standard units, and not entirely uncommon, especially now that keywords like scale, jump, relentless, and steady are more readily available.

I do not think the full unit really needs that keyword. In most cases, it wont't have any effect.

The token is placed in range 1 of the unit leader, not the sab mini. You usually only expose the unit leader to place a token. The rest of the unit remains out of sight. It is generally not a good idea to expose the whole unit to place a token. Such trade offs are usually only worthwhile with strike teams and only in certain situations. Droid sabs may be more suitable for aggressive plays, but rebels and imps are too fragile for that.

Heavy weapon will just give you 5 vs 4 wounds before the sab mini is removed. That is nice of course, but not a game changer.

23 hours ago, Derpzilla88 said:

So what I'm hearing is that the overall cost of strike teams will stay the same, just with a kind of points flop on the heavy weapon and strike team unit.

So... everyone will continue to take strike teams as a cheap activation and ignore the full unit?

well im also assuming strike teams will get nerfed in some other way like making them detachments of the full units

strike teams obviously cant be left how they are.

but yes the points costs should be flopped around to help incentivize taking heavy weapons with full units more.

22 hours ago, Darth Sanguis said:

Honestly, I'm not sure this would be incentive enough because the full units lack the "heavy weapons team" keyword. I could see where it incentivizes players to bring full units by providing more HP on that sniper or saboteur, but having more HP without the heavy weapons team keyword could be irrelevant. Terrain scoping is extremely effective on the standard units, and not entirely uncommon, especially now that keywords like scale, jump, relentless, and steady are more readily available.

I sometimes use 2-3 naked units of scout troopers. naked scout troopers are one of the most offensively potent units in the imperial army. but I have little reason to give them heavy weapons because theyre no longer cost effective then since the heavy weapons are really overcosted.

Id be more inclined to take the sniper or saboteur with them if they were cheaper. But as it stands the heavy weapons cost too much. having a more reasonably costed 5th trooper would help increase their overall survivability as well.

So I definitely think the sniper and saboteur should come down in cost and the strike team should go up in cost by the same amount.