Having played for a few months, I've grown to appreciate the value of suppression. Our group doesn't really build to take advantage of it per se, but the few times I've seen it work I've seen critical units flee the table, units not being able to aim before shooting, causing them to narrowly miss a kill, etc.

With that in mind, and with so many suppressive options available to my Seps, I thought I'd build a list centered around it. I face some Rebs and Imperials, but MOSTLY Republic. I face a lot of Obi-Wan, suspect I'll be facing quite a bit of Anakin alonside him, and normally a tank is in the mix against me as well.

I tried to give myself as much supression potential as possible while still having the long range support of my own tank. The goal would be to kind of ignore the enemy armor and cause activation loss on his side by making as many units flee or at least hunker down and have to clear stress as possible.

Have I leaned into the supression side too much? I still have 16 points to play with, so looking for feedback on that and the overall list! Thank you people!

Suppression Oppression
774/800 (7 activations)
Commanders:
- Count Dooku (200): Fear (3), Force Reflexes (5), Force Choke (5), Esteemed Leader (5) = 218
Operative:
- Cad Bane (125): Hunter (6), Electro Gauntlets (10) = 141
Corps:
- 2× Battle Droids (36): Battle Droid (5) = 82
- Battle Droids (36): Battle Droid (5), HQ Uplink (10) = 51
Support:
- Droidekas (80): Linked Targeting Array (5) = 85
Heavy:
- AAT Battle Tank (170): Lok Durd (9), High-Energy Shells (8), Armor-Piercing Shells (10) = 197

Alot of your units have the suppression key word however 7 activations is going to be hard to out activate armies with 10+ acts which was the meta pre new rrg.

Dooku is a good control unit but not as suppressive as a trained in your jedi arts G.G. turn.

The tank is a great unit for most CIS lists. And a suppressive, barrage can be devastating to a courage 1 unit, to just limit actions on 2 units.

The droidika can lay down suppression tokens but 1 unit alone can be deleted quickly.

With all of this in mind I made a list for you to look at and work with. I would see what works for you and if possible try to get more activations. Snipers can also be a good source of suppression so dont Wright them out yet.

Very good point on the activations, and especially on Grievous. I don't know why I didn't think of him at first.

Regarding 3 Droidekas, possible snipers, etc... would it be better to simply run more naked B1's? I think you can get this up to 10 activations if you cut a droideka and run naked B1's. That being said, I do like Droidekas and think they'll only get buffed (in some waY) in the future, so maybe that triple threat supressing people would make up for the lack of B1's?

Naked b1s are good for going early to buy time to activate your key pieces, chaining orders, giving orders to snipers, and doing objectives and esteemed leader damage transfer. I love b1s but I always have a purpose. Naked b1s, in the open, on average need between 6 to 8 hits to delete the unit. That means they need to hide and do their job as long as possible.

This game is an objective game, so aslong as you have one unit left alive, and you have more points you win. That being said I would first decide if you are going to bid or not. If you do bid, bid as hard as you can comfortably. With a high bid you need to then build your battle plan deck.

Now that you have these processes done it's time to build your army. Every unit in your army needs a role. Start by planning the purpose of each unit you select in your army for several different objectives you play. For example 2 naked b1s could be back capers for a few objectives.

The suppression game is grate but use it to mask your true strategy, not to be the only strategy.

2 hours ago, PhoenixOfCopper said:

Naked b1s are good for going early to buy time to activate your key pieces, chaining orders, giving orders to snipers, and doing objectives and esteemed leader damage transfer. I love b1s but I always have a purpose. Naked b1s, in the open, on average need between 6 to 8 hits to delete the unit. That means they need to hide and do their job as long as possible.

This game is an objective game, so aslong as you have one unit left alive, and you have more points you win. That being said I would first decide if you are going to bid or not. If you do bid, bid as hard as you can comfortably. With a high bid you need to then build your battle plan deck.

Now that you have these processes done it's time to build your army. Every unit in your army needs a role. Start by planning the purpose of each unit you select in your army for several different objectives you play. For example 2 naked b1s could be back capers for a few objectives.

The suppression game is grate but use it to mask your true strategy, not to be the only strategy.

Good points. I have Vital Assets and Priority Supplies coming in the mail as we speak, so my goal is to have our play group take objectives more seriously going forward. We play with them now... most of the time... but seem to always end up playing the "hold this point" objective more than anything. Some new objectives and a solid bid with this list would really give me the chance to decide how I want to play.

On 12/15/2020 at 1:15 PM, PhoenixOfCopper said:

Dooku is a good control unit but not as suppressive as a trained in your jedi arts G.G. turn.

I disagree. A Dooku Fear, Surprise, Intimidation turn allows him to pretty reliably put down 5 supression, with a floor of 4 (if he fails to roll a hit with lightning). The 4 are automatic just for dropping the card.

Grievous has a higher ceiling, but a lower floor too. A Dooku 5 supression turn is easier to pull off than a Grievous 3 supression turn. They both require 2 units in the area, but Dooku's ranged dice are better. Grievous can certainly throw a lot more out, but that depends entirely on your opponent having enough of their units in Grievous' range to be shot.

This is true. Not going to lie I forgot about the fear upgrade card and that comand card while I was writing the reply. I had cyborg helicopter on the brain.

11 hours ago, Sekac said:

I disagree. A Dooku Fear, Surprise, Intimidation turn allows him to pretty reliably put down 5 supression, with a floor of 4 (if he fails to roll a hit with lightning). The 4 are automatic just for dropping the card.

Grievous has a higher ceiling, but a lower floor too. A Dooku 5 supression turn is easier to pull off than a Grievous 3 supression turn. They both require 2 units in the area, but Dooku's ranged dice are better. Grievous can certainly throw a lot more out, but that depends entirely on your opponent having enough of their units in Grievous' range to be shot.

Glad you brought that up, and I'm not completely crazy for thinking of Dooku. I'll have to try them both. Last night ended up in a 2v2 at 500 points and I used Rebels, so I didn't get to try this, but I'm hoping to in the next few weeks.

On 12/17/2020 at 11:56 AM, Aladdynsane said:

Glad you brought that up, and I'm not completely crazy for thinking of Dooku. I'll have to try them both. Last night ended up in a 2v2 at 500 points and I used Rebels, so I didn't get to try this, but I'm hoping to in the next few weeks.

At the end of the day, I don't think either of them will dramatically change your ability to put down suppression. Both have the ability to spike hefty amounts of supression, once, in a fairly localized part of the battlefield. There are certainly large differences between the characters, but that isn't a major factor.

Regarding the list overall, I think Lok Durd is kind of a trap. He has exhaust so he's essentially once per game unless you want to spend an action on recovering. He also encourages to you to use Barrage, just to get 4 suppression down. The suppression is nice, but 2 volleys of unmodified red dice can be surprisingly ineffective--especially if your target is in cover (and they'll definitely have cover for the 2nd shot).

Ultimately, I don't think an AAT is the best option for supression list, even though it has cards that synergize with it.

If going for a supression list, I'd do something like:

794/800

General Grievous (170 + 31 = 201)
--Aggressive Tactics (15), Tenacity (4), DT-57 Annihilator (12)

B1 Battle Droids (36 + 30 = 66)
--E-60R B1 Trooper (20), HQ Uplink (10)

B1 Battle Droids (36 + 20 = 56)
--E-5s B1 Trooper (20)

B1 Battle Droids (36 + 20 = 56)
--E-5s B1 Trooper (20)

B2 Super Battle Droids (45 + 30 = 75)
--B2-HA Trooper (30)

BX-Series Droid Commandos (Strike Team) (20 + 30 = 50)
--BX-Series Droid Sniper (30)

BX-Series Droid Commandos (Strike Team) (20 + 30 = 50)
--BX-Series Droid Sniper (30)

Droidekas (80 + 0 = 80)

Droidekas (80 + 0 = 80)

Droidekas (80 + 0 = 80)

One of the tricks to using supresssion is to maximize activations. The idea of supressing a unit off the table before it activates is nice, but unlikely. A better tactic is to wait for them to activate and then pile suppression on when they can't recover it away.

I realize this is quite a bit different than your initial list, so feel free to disregard whatever is not to taste, I just wanted to throw some other concepts out there to consider.

I love droidekas, and with the recent point drop, that's where I'd start the list. Rather than an AAT and a bunch of naked droids, I like giving some utility to B1s. The E-60R/HQ can afford to recover frequently and Grievous will give them a surge to keep that missile rolling. 2 E-5s because they can surpress at range 4 if necessary and gives the B1s crit 1. Then 2 squads of BX sniper teams. This is where you'll generally send orders to keep your order pool efficient. Most turns it'll be just the droidekas or dekas+GG in the bag.

With 5 range 4 squads, all with surge->hit/crit in some form or another, and another 3 suppressive squads, you should be able to put down 11 consistently. When Grievous and B2s get close, you can spike that up into the mid-teens on a turn where you need to start putting the screws to them.

So, I may finally get to play one of these lists tomorrow. I'm still deciding on some of the pieces, but definitely think the core idea is fun. I could use some advice on ther non-unit cards, though.

For Conditions, Hostile Environment and War Weary seem like they'd fit right into this. Maybe Clear Conditions as a third?

For Deploment, still looking at this.

Objectives, though, I struggle with a bit. I want to be shooting at them and pushing them back, so I'd initially thought of Breakthrough since they'll be moving away from my deployment zone, but then again that might end with them flooding their own zone and preventing me from getting there. Maybe Intercept the Transmissions and keep pushing them off the objective? Same with Key Positions. For a third I was thinking maybe Payload? Keep pushing their own unit leaders away fom the cart? I just got this card today, so I've not played with it yet and am not sure how effective that'd be.

I like Finefield. Cis has steps and tanks that dont trigger mines. Plus that's more suppression.

Objectives in your deck should also be something your vehicles can score on so look for the ones that say unit leader and avoid the ones that say trooper unit leader.