Star Wars: Shatterpoint is a tabletop skirmish miniature game based on the Star Wars universe and published by Atomic Mass Games. In Shatterpoint, each team is made up of two squads of miniatures, and Atomic Mass Games generally release new miniatures for the game in Squad Packs so that you can just buy two of those packs and be ready to play the game.
In this Shatterpoint Squad Guide, we go through the rules for each squad in the game, and give you tips on how to best mix and match squads to get a strike team that’s both thematic and fun to play. For each squad in the game, this article covers:
- Why you should play the squad
- The lore behind the miniatures in the squad
- The rules of the Primary, Secondary and Support Unit of the Squad
- Suggestions for which other squad packs you could combine the squad with in a strike team
We’ll update this guide as new squad packs are released, and if you want to learn more about Star Wars: Shatterpoint, look no further than our Beginner’s Guide and our Guide to Shatterpoint Resources.
You can also see a more condensed list of all the Shatterpoint Squads here.
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Clone Wars Star Wars Shatterpoint Squad Guide
Shatterpoint Core Set Light Side Squad Guide
Why Should I Play The Light Side part of the Core Set?
While you can mix and match the units in the Core Set however you like, the “Light Side” of the box is thematically split into two “squads”: Ahsoka Tano, Bo-Katan and the Clan Kryze Mandalorians form the first squad, and Anakin, Rex and the 501st Clones form the second. Both of those squads work well internally, and they’re both great at teaching you playstyles that you’ll find in other squads across all the Shatterpoint releases. Anakin/Rex/501st Clones is what we’d pretty much consider the perfect beginner squad with an immensely powerful Primary and a set of Secondary and Support Unit that synergize really well with each other.
Lore of the Core Set Light Side Squad
The two squads represent two very different points in the Clone Wars: Anakin Skywalker, the young man who will one day spread terror across the galaxy as Darth Vader, is a soldier and a general in the incarnation we see him in in this squad, and an immensely powerful and promising young Jedi as well. The 501st Clones and their Captain Rex serve under Anakin throughout the Clone Wars, and especially Rex is a clone that fans of the animated Clone Wars series know and respect as a loyal, honorable and fearless commander of his 501st comrades.
The Ahsoka Tano in this squad is from much later in the Clone Wars, after she is no longer part of the Jedi order, depicted as she dressed and fought during the Siege of Mandalore, from which Bo-Katan (who many Star Wars fans now know as a crucial character in the The Mandalorian live action series which takes place years later) and the Clan Kryze Mandalorians also hail (note that the 501st also served in this battle with Ahsoka, but for simplicity’s sake, we’re pairing them with Anakin here). Ahsoka Tano was originally Anakin’s Padawan during the Clone Wars, and she shares much of his fierceness and determination, as well as his tendency to improvise and work outside of standard protocol. Unlike Anakin, however, this didn’t lead Ahsoka to the Dark Side, and she was active as an enemy of the Sith and the Dark Side well into the aftermath of the Galactic Civil War as a middle-aged woman.
Primaries of the Core Set Light Side Squad
General Anakin Skywalker (4 Force Points, 7 Squad Points)
General Anakin Skywalker is a very tough Primary with 11 Stamina and 3 Durability (only surpassed by his Darth Vader version) and good access to Heals. He can use Force Jump (1 Force) to Jump as an ability, and Deflect lets him do 2 damage to an enemy who attacks him at range if the attack roll contains any Failures.
What really makes Anakin stand out, however, is how good he is at Wounding enemy characters: I’m Going To End This (2 Force) lets him make two full attacks in an activation rather than just the one everyone else gets, as long as both attacks are against the same target – that’s about as close as you can get to being sure you’re Wounding a character in this game. When Anakin does Wound an enemy Primary or Secondary Unit, This is Where The Fun Begins kicks in, giving you one free space of movement of the Struggle token towards your side, which is pretty wild considering Wounding someone also just gave you an additional Momentum token. On top of all this, Wounding a Primary Unit also lets each allied Galactic Republic character Heal, which is extremely helpful if you’re running two Jedi/Clone-based squads in your strike team.
Anakin’s Form V Djem So combat stance has 3 damage on the first step of its tree, 2 on the next step, and 2 damage and a Strained condition on the third, making Anakin do very consistent damage with its 8 attack dice and good access to Critical hits on its Combat Expertise chart. The last steps of the tree has plenty of movement and a Pinned, and the Defensive Expertise chart turns an enemy Critical Hit into a normal hit even at just 1 expertise. His other stance, Form V Shien, branches out in two directions, where one is full of Shoves and ends on a Disarmed condition, and the other has plenty of Heals and a Reposition. This stance also has far more Blocks on its Defensive Expertise than the Djem So stance. None of Anakin’s stances let him make ranged attacks, but they both have good Defense characteristics for both melee and ranged.
In short, General Anakin Skywalker really plays the part as the main hero of the story: He’s hard to kill, and rarely loses a fight in close combat.
Ahsoka Tano, Jedi No More (3 Force Points, 8 Squad Points)
Ahsoka Tano, Jedi No More is a fast-moving close combat specialist who excels at turning enemy aggression to her advantage.
Force Speed (1 Force) lets her Advance as an ability, and she can also gain an Advance through Fierce Protector, an Identity Ability that lets her Advance toward an enemy character when that character Wounds one of your allies, and then Heal 3 or make a 5 dice attack against that enemy if Ahsoka is in range to do so. Fierce Protector doesn’t have any restrictions to how often it can activate, so if you keep Ahsoka close to her allies, it can serve as a deterrent that will make enemies think twice about Wounding your characters too close to her.
Ahsoka can also Deflect, letting her do 2 damage to any ranged attacker who rolls any Failures in an attack roll against her, and the big star of her datacard, What’s The Matter, Too Fast For You? (2 Force) lets her suffer only half the damage of an incoming melee attack, and then let the attacker suffer the other half, which is about as cool as defensive abilities come in this game. Attackers in Shatterpoint can stop at any step of their combat tree, of course, so no enemy is ever forced to do, say, 10 damage to Ahsoka and then end up doing 5 and suffering 5 damage instead, but it’s a pretty safe way of preventing other Jedi/Sith from one-shotting Ahsoka.
Like Anakin, Ahsoka has no ranged attacks on either of her stances, and the Defense Expertise on both stances can turn a Critical Hit into a hit, as well as giving Ahsoka a Jump, a Heal, and up to 2 Blocks. Her Jar’Kai stance starts out with 2 damage and then gives a Disarmed condition and a damage at step two, and 3 damage at step 3. After this, you can branch out into more damage and a Strained or Pinned condition, making this stance very versatile in terms of applied conditions. Her Form V Shien Reverse Grip stance starts with a damage and a Shove, and then branches out into either up to 4 Heals and a Jump and Shove, or Two Shoves, a Jump, a Pinned and some more damage. All in all, Ahsoka’s stances have the option to give you most of the effects available for combat trees, making her a very versatile fighter in close combat.
Secondaries of the Core Set Light Side Squad
CC-7567 Captain Rex (4 Points)
Captain Rex is the archetypical Clone Secondary, and he excels in providing defensive buffs and movement to other Clone Troopers or Galactic Republic characters. His Get A Move On, Soldier Tactical Ability lets him or another allied Galactic Republic character Dash and gain a Hunker token at the beginning of Rex’s activation, and Defensive Maneuver (1 Force), an Ability shared among most Clone Troopers, lets him Dash and gain a Hunker token as well.
This blends well with Bring It On, Clankers which lets a nearby Clone Trooper unit that gains a Hunker token Heal on top of that, and Brothers In Arms, which gives Rex Steadfast (so he can’t be moved by the first Shove in an attack) if he has a Hunker token. As you can see, Hunker tokens will be piling up all around Rex as soon as he gets going.
His final ability, I’m Always First, Kid (1 Force) activates when a nearby Clone Supporting Unit (in the case of this squad, the 501st Clones) makes a combat action. Then, Rex can Dash and make a 5 dice attack (melee or ranged) against their target if he has range and Line of Sight to do so.
Rex has two different starting steps in his Tactical Supremacy combat stance: One starts out with two damage and then proceeds with more damage, an Exposed condition and a Shove, and the other opens with a Shove and a damage, and then another Shove, 2 Heals and a Pinned. Both branches end in a damage and a Reposition at step 5. Rex’s Combat Expertise for Ranged and Melee is pretty standard, granting additional hits and Critical Hits, and his Defensive Expertise is pretty weak with a maximum of 2 Blocks and nothing else. What makes the stance stand out is that Rex has 7 attack dice in both melee and ranged, and he has Range 5 in ranged combat, making him one of only a few Units in the game to be equally good at ranged and melee combat.
Bo-Katan Kryze (4 Points)
Like Rex, Bo-Katan Kryze is a capable fighter who is all about making Units with the same Tags as her (in this case, Mandalorian), better at moving and fighting.
Pride of the Mandalore is her Tactics Ability, which lets another Mandalorian character Jump each time Bo-Katan activates, and Some Of Us Serve A Higher Purpose gives Protection and Steadfast to friendly Mandalorians contesting Active objectives close to Bo-Katan.
Like all Mandalorians, Bo-Katan has the Mandalorians Are Stronger Together Reactive ability, which can be used after she makes a move action. If that move ends within Range 2 of another friendly Mandalorian, Bo-Katan makes a free Focus action. This is an awesome ability that becomes extremely powerful if you move as many Mandalorian units up the board together, adding attack dice to their next attacks as they go. Bo-Katan especially benefits from it, since Mandalore Will Survive lets her Dash and Heal 2 after making a Focus Action.
Finally, Bo-Katan can Jump with Jet Pack (1 Force)
Bo-Katan’s Close Support combat stance only has Range 4 in ranged combat, but it does have 6 attack dice in ranged combat and 7 in melee combat. It starts out with 2 damage at step 1 of the combat tree, and then you can branch out towards either a Pinned ad more damage, or a Jump and a Shove, with options for more Shoves and damage further along the tree. Her Combat Expertise grants Critical hits and Hits, but also 1 damage if you reach 4 Combat Expertise, and her Defensive Expertise is pretty solid with 2 Blocks at 1-3 Expertise and 3 Blocks at 4 Expertise.
Supports of the Core Set Light Side Squad
501st Clone Troopers (3 Points)
The 501st Clone Troopers are pretty much as straightforward as Supporting Units come. Like all other Clone Troopers so far, they can Defensive Maneuver (1 Force) to Dash and gain a Hunker token, and Brothers In Arms gives them Steadfast when they have any Hunker Tokens. They really need those tokens, since they only have 7 Stamina and very few extra Blocks on their Defense Expertise chart.
A really cool little piece of tactical utility they do have is Coordinated Fire: Strained, which adds a Strained condition to any enemy attacked by another allied Galactic Republic unit if the target is within Range 5 of your 501st unit. Strained is pretty powerful, and Range 5 is pretty far, so if you’re running a Republic strike team and keep your units close to the 501st, it will get applied in most activations.
The Advanced Combat Training combat stance of the 501st doesn’t have a lot of damage in it, and almost no Combat Expertise, but it does have 7 ranged attack dice at Range 5, and a Pinned at step 1 of its combat tree, as well as a Shove, a Strained, a Heal and a Reposition across its two branches. So, while the 501st won’t do much damage, they’re great at applying conditions to targets.
Clan Kryze Mandalorians (4 Points)
Like the 501st, the Clan Kryze Mandalorians are super easy to play, and their rules are very straightforward: They can Jump with Jet Pack (1 Force) like all other Mandalorians, and also have the Mandalorians Are Stronger Together ability explained in Bo-Katan’s entry just above here. Their specialty compared to other Mandalorians is the Helmet Visor gives them Sharpshooter [1], which means they get an extra attack dice for ranged attacks when they’ve made a Focus action (usually through Mandalorians Are Stronger Together). That means making a Focus action with the Clan Kryze Mandalorians will bump their raned attack up from 6 to 8 attack dice!.
The Clan Kryze Mandalorians only have 7 Stamina, and their Skirmish Tactics combat stance is more aggressive than defensive, so make sure to keep them out of harm’s way. Their combat tree has two starting points, 1 with a damage and a Pinned condition and 1 with a damage and a Shove, and then proceeds to have multiple Shoves, a Disarmed or an Exposed condition, and a maximum damage of 6 when you get to step 5. So, once again, it’s as much about applying conditions and pushing targets as it is about doing damage for this Supporting Unit.
What should I combine with the the Core Set Light Side Squad
Anakin/Rex/501st generally combines really well with other Jedi/Clone squads, such as the Hello There Squad Pack, the This Party’s Over Squad Pack, or the Plans and Preparations Squad Pack, which all get good synergies out of both the Galactic Republic and Clone Trooper tags. These combinations represent the signature Republic Shatterpoint playstyle where Clone Troopers apply conditions and Hunker tokens all over the place, providing support for strong Jedi who often offer some buffs and tactical tricks in return.
Ahsoka/Bo-Katan/Clan Kryze Mandalorians pair up best with any squad that also features Gar Saxon and the Mandalorian Super Commandos, even though that’s thematically all wrong, but having Mandalorians Are Stronger Together affect as many Mandalorians as possible is always a good idea. Ahsoka Tano, Jedi No More herself can fit into all sorts of Galactic Republic squad combinations, and even squads outside of that, since none of her abilities interact with any specific Tags. This doesn’t mean she doesn’t belong with the Mandalorians, however: her ability to avenge Wounded characters in melee makes up for a lot of the relative vulnerability of the Mandalorians.
Dark Side of the Core Set Squad Guide
Why Should I Play the Dark Side of the Core Set?
Just like the “Light Side” of the Core Set, we’re pairing the “Dark Side” into two good beginner squads: The first is Assajj Ventress, Kalani and the B1 Battle Droids, and the other is Lord Maul, Gar Saxon and the Mandalorian Super Commandos. Also akin to the way the “Light Side” works, these two squads are great introductions to playstyles you’ll see in many other squads in Star Wars: Shatterpoint.
The first squad with Ventress as the Primary is a really fun way of playing the “unstoppable tide” kind of Separatist squad, with a powerful Primary sprinting forward to take objectives, while Kalani controls the B1 Droids, getting much more movement and damage out of them than what might look possible at first glance.
The other squad has Lord Maul storming forward, taking damage instead of using Force and growing stronger the more damaged he is – a deranged, vengefull glass cannon noone should underestimate. To support him, the squad features Gar Saxon, an excellent sniper, and his Mandalorian Super Commandos, which are basically the evil twins of Bo-Katan and her Mandalorians, allowing for a fast-moving squad that’s great at hitting targets and using terrain elevation to their advantage.
Lore the Dark Side of the Core Set
Again, the two squads can represent different periods of the Clone Wars: Assajj Ventress begins the Clone Wars as the Sith Apprentice of Count Dooku, assassinating Jedi left and right as well as commanding elements of the great Drone Army when needed. She is originally a Dathomirian, but Dooku took her under his wing, only to later betray her and inadvertently leading her back to her sisters on Dathomir. In this version, however, she is still one of the most powerful adversaries of the Jedi. Kalani and the B1 Battle Droids represent the neverending horde of droids coming out of the forges of Geonosis, who Star Wars fans know all the way back from the battle of Naboo in Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. The versions of B1 Droids employed in the Clone Wars are a bit more intelligent and independent than the mindless drones fighting on Naboo, and Kalani is a straight up artificial genius, able to command entire armies and formulate complex strategies.
Lord Maul was also present at Naboo as Darth Maul, apprentice of Darth Sidious and the killer of Jedi Qui-Gon Jinn, but he was dismembered and presumed dead after losing a duel to Qui-Gon’s now legendary Padawan, Obi-Wan Kenobi. The version of Maul we see in this squad doesn’t make his appearance until the end of season 4 of the Clone Wars animated series, where it is revealed that he did survive the duel, but was now roaming as an insane beast with mechanical spider legs, until fellow Dathomirian zabrak Savage Opress freed him and restored him with the help of the sorceries of the witches of Dathomir.
Driven by revenge and a desire for power, he hunts down his old enemies, becomes a crime lord and even the ruler of Mandalore, until, as an old man, he once again comes face to face with Kenobi. In this squad, he is joined by those Mandalorians who believed Mandalorian culture needed to stick to its martial roots, leading them to support the Galactic Empire after the Clone Wars.
Primaries of the Dark Side of the Core Set
Assajj Ventress, Sith Assassin (3 Force Points, 8 Squad Points)
Assajj Ventress, Sith Assassin is an extremely fast Primary who is geared towards Pushing enemies off objectives and staying alive while holding objectives. She is the kind of Primary you can send off on her own while the rest of your strike team works together on the other side of the board.
The first thing that makes Ventress so great at this is her two Active Abilities: Dathomirian Dexterity (1 Force) lets her Jump, and it can be used twice during an activation, and Force Push (2 Force) lets her Push a nearby enemy Range 3 away from her (which is quite a lot). Both of these are really useful on their own, but what makes them shine is that you can get them for free rather than pay Force for them if you get 4 hits on either of Ventress’ combat stances, since those have an Ability icon on their 4th step of the combat tree.
Ventress also has two Reactive Abilities: Riposte is the “do 2 damage to an attacker in melee if the attacker rolls any Failures in their attack roll” that many lightsaber users in Shatterpoint has, and Slip Away lets her Reposition and get a Hunker token when a friendly Separatist Alliance or Dathomirian character attacks an enemy she’s engaged with. Those tags make this Ability work particularly well with two Units from the Core Set: a Supporting unit of B1 Droids (Separatist Alliance) to shoot at Primaries whose counterattacks Ventress needs to avoid, or with Lord Maul (Dathomirian) if you want the two to go Jedi-hunting together.
Ventress’ Identity Ability, Sith Assassin, gives her 3 Heals when she Wounds an enemy unit, an Advance or Jump if that unit is a Primary or Secondary Unit and 2 Refresh Force if it is a Primary Unit.
With so many of her abilities focused on her Wounding enemy units, Pushing them off objectives and swiftly moving between targets, it would be a shame if Ventress wasn’t awesome in combat. Fortunately, she is. Her Form II Makashi starts with a Heal and a damage on step 1, and then branches out into a Jump/a Shove, Heals, more damage and even more Shoves or a Reposition, with 3 different end points, one of which is the Ability Icon mentioned above. Consider this her “hit and run” combat stance, great for healing up and getting away from a fight. To balance out all the Heals, the Defense Expertise of this stance isn’t very impressive.
That changes in Ventress’ Jar’Kai combat stance, where the Defense Expertise turns an enemy Critical Hit into a Hit even at 1 Expertise, and then adds multiple Blocks al the way up to 4 Expertise, where you get to turn an enemy Hit into a Failure. Jar’Kai has lots of damage in one of its branches (with a potential maximum of 9 damage), and another branch with the first three steps giving the enemy both Strained, Disarmed and Exposed, which is just terrifying. Then, both trees converge in an Ability, Icon, more damage and a Pinned to round of Ventress’ collection of conditions to apply to her target. If Makashi is “hit and run”, Jar’Kai is for just obliterating a single target, and at least making sure they’re completely ineffective in their counterattack with all those conditions and the risk of having been Force Pushed far away with the free ability at step 4 of the combat tree.
Lord Maul (3 Force Points, 8 Squad Points)
Lord Maul, is an extremely aggressive duelist who is able to damage himself in lieu of spending Force, and becomes stronger the more damage he takes.
He has two Active Abilities that mirror those of Assajj Ventress, but where her Abilities help her remove threats and move around swiftly across scenery, Maul’s help him getting stuck in in combat with his prey: Force Speed (1 Force) lets him Advance, and There Is No Place To Run (2 Force) Pulls a nearby enemy character Range 2 toward Maul and gives them the Exposed condition.
The other two Abilities on Maul’s datacard are best understood when you look at his Stamina and Wounds: He has 11 Stamina, which is high, but only 2 Durability, which is one less than most other Primaries. This means you have to be careful as soon as he gets Wounded and gets his first Injury token, and this becomes much more difficult when you realize how Maul is actually supposed to take damage and get Wounded to make the most of his Abilities. Revenge, I Must Have Revenge comes into play when Maul is Wounded by a melee attack, and lets him Dash and make a 5 dice melee attack against the character who Wounded him. With two Durability, this can happen twice before Maul is removed from the battlefield.
Maul’s Identity Ability, Sustained By Rage lets him suffer damage equal to the Force Cost of an ability rather than paying that Force Cost, as long as he’s not Wounded when doing so. It also gives him 1 extra attack dice in melee for every 3 damage he has on him, and 3 additional dice in melee for every Injured token he has. This means that you can ramp up Maul’s attack power to pretty insane heights as he takes more damage and gets his first Injury token, but you also have to constantly balance this and anticipate the damage of incoming attacks to make sure he isn’t taken out of the game completely.
Lord Maul’s Dark Rage combat stance only lets you make melee attacks, but it does a lot of damage (10 in the combat tree and two more from maximum Expertise) and up to three Shoves at step 5 of the middle branch of the combat tree. It also has a Strained condition at step 3 of the top branch, and a Jump, but it is mainly about doing lots of damage, combined with access to Heals and a Jump in its Defense Expertise.
His other combat stance, Sinister Cunning, has the same extra damage in its Combat Expertise charts for both melee and ranged attacks, and the same amount of damage in its combat tree, but fewer Shoves, and Pinned/Exposed instead of Strained. It also has 2 Heals at step 4 of the combat tree, and up to three Blocks in Defense Expertise, which is great when considering it has 6 defense dice in both melee and ranged combat to begin with. Sinister Cunning is especially powerful due to the fact that all that damage can be done at Range 4 with its Thrown Lightsaber, so it’s perfect for when you’re not ready to get fully stuck in with Maul, where Dark Rage is for when you really need to Push an enemy off an objective and hopefully Wound them at the same time.
Secondaries of the Dark Side of the Core Set
Kalani, Super Tactical Droid (5 Points)
Kalani is the most expensive Secondary Unit in the game points-wise, and with good reason: He is a massive boost to any Battle Droid-based strike team, granting movement, attacks and even Hunker Tokens to Droids all around him.
Kalani has 10 Stamina and 2 Durability, which is pretty tough for a Secondary unit, but you’re not going to want him stuck in close combat anyway. He is all about making tactical decisions behind his advancing forces. His Tactics Ability, Roger, Roger, lets all Battle Droid Supporting characters within Range 4 of him Dash at the start of his activation. If that includes 2 B1s and 2 B2s or even a couple of Magnaguards, that’s a serious amount of characters suddenly darting up the battlefield. Tactical Network (1 Force) lets a friendly nearby Battle Droid Dash as well, but also lets it either gain a Hunker Token, make a 5 dice attack or remove a condition from itself. Target, Concentrate All Firepower lets allied Battle Droids add 1 dice to their attack rolls if they make an attack against a target that’s within Range 4 of another of your Battle Droids – and not just if they’re close to Kalani, so this is a team-wide buff to Battle Droids that’s just always active.
Finally, Complete Analysis lets you spend 1 less Force to put Kalani in Reserve than you normally would, so you shouldn’t hesitate to do so to set all your droids up for when he gets his activation.
Kalani’s Cold Logic combat stance also works best when close to other Droids: It has good damage on its combat tree, and access to Disarmed and Exposed conditions as well as two Shoces and a Reposition, but it also has an Ability icon as early as step 3 on the combat tree, so you can let a nearby Droid join in with a 5 dice attack, which suddenly makes the attack actions of Kalani a lot more scary. He has low defense dice against ranged attacks and especially against melee attacks, but he’s almost equally efficient in melee and ranged combat. The only real downside to his combat stance is that his Combat Expertise charts for both ranged and melee are pretty modest, to say the least. His Defense Expertise gives him multiple blocks and even a Reposition at maximum Expertise, which is 5+ and as such will only happen if he has Hunker Tokens, is in Cover and has a very, very lucky defense roll.
Gar Saxon, Merciless Commander (4 Points)
Gar Saxon is an excellent sniper, but also great at close combat, especially when supported by his Mandalorian allies.
His Pride of the Mandalore Tactics Ability lets another friendly Mandalorian character anywhere on the battlefield Jump, and Jet Pack (1 Force) lets Saxon himself Jump, just as it is the case for all othe Mandalorians.
Like all Mandalorians, Saxon also has the Mandalorians Are Stronger Together Reactive ability to give him a Focus action when close to his brothers and sisters, and this Focus action gets even better due to the I’ve Got You In My Sights Innate Ability, which gives him 2 additional attack dice at range and a Hunker token from that Focus action, and removes the benefit of Cover from the targets of his ranged attacks.
Pack Hunter is also an Innate Ability, and it gives Saxon 2 additional attack dice for melee attacks made against targets that are already Engaged with another Mandalorian.
Gar Saxon’s Concentrated Assault combat stance works quite differently in melee and ranged combat, thanks to its Combat Expertise charts: In ranged combat, Expertise grants Critical hits and a Shove, while in melee, it grants Critical hits, normal hits and finally a damage at 4 or more Expertise. The combat tree itself has a maximum of 8 damage at step 5, and can be branched out into shoves and a Pinned condition, or a Strained condition.
Supports of the Dark Side of the Core Set
B1 Battle Droids (3 Points)
B1 Battle Droids are a Supporting Unit in the most literal sense of the word: They defend objectives and buff the attacks of other Battle Droids. They have 9 Stamina and 2 Durability, which is actually pretty tough for a Supporting Unit, so don’t be fooled by how easy their actual plastic miniatures break.
Combat A.I. Protocols lets you apply either Strained or Exposed to a nearby target of a combat action by an allied Battle Droid – an ability that’s extremely useful, since the assured application of any condition independent of the success of an attack roll is always an advantage. I Hate This Job gives the B1s Protection when they’re contesting Active objectives, letting them ignore 1 damage from any attack action, and Well, I Guess I’m In Charge Now lets you put the Order Card of the B1s at the bottom of the deck rather than in Reserve when you would otherwise be putting them in Reserve.
The Countless combat stance of the B1s is pretty terrible in melee, but good at range with 7 attack dice and Range 5, as well as up to three additional hits from Combat Expertise. Its combat tree has a maximum of 8 damage, which is a lot if both your B1 characters from the Supporting Unit are attacking the same target, and it also has a Reposition at step 2, an Exposed condition at step 3, and then a choice of Strained or Shove, so as long as the B1s don’t get into close combat, they are actually a lot more powerful than you would expect if you’re used to seeing them goofing around and being tipped over by Gungans in the prequel trilogy.
Mandalorian Super Commandos (4 Points Cost)
The Super Commandos are the melee specialist version of a Mandalorian Support unit: They have Jet Pack (1 Force) and Mandalorians Are Stronger Together just like all other Mandalorians, but they gain an additional attack dice in melee combat from their Focus actions due to Impact [1], and if they’re Engaged with an enemy character that Advances or Dashes away from them, that character suffers 2 damage from No Mercy. The Super Commandos have 8 Stamina and 2 Durability, which is average for Supporting Units.
The Disruptive Tactics combat stance of the Super Commandos has a maximum damage of 7 on its combat tree, but also steps for Strained, Disarmed, Exposed, two Shoves and a Jump, spread across three branches. If used for ranged attacks, for which the Commandos only have 5 attack dice at Range 4, maximum Combat Expertise gives a Hit and a damage, while in melee, maximum Combat Expertise (which is only 3 or more Expertise in this case) gives 2 Critical hits and a Shove. Additionally, their Defense Expertise gives 2 Blocks at 2 or more Expertise.
What should I combine with my Dark Side of the Core Set?
Ventress/Kalani/B1s combine excellently with other Separatist Squads such as Appetite for Destruction or Twice the Pride to make the most of Kalani’s droid-buffing powers, but as mentioned, Ventress also works well with Dathomirians such as Lord Maul or even the Witches of Dathomir Squad.
Lord Maul/Gar Saxon/Super Commandos have two pairings that work well without having to mix any squads: Either you ignore thematics and combine them with the Ahsoka Tano/Clan Kryze squad from the Core Set to just Mandalorians Are Stronger Together all over the place, or you go for optimal synergy with Maul’s synergy with the Dathomirian tag by combining the squad with the Witches of Dathomir Squad.
That being said, both Maul and Ventress are good Primaries for all sorts of Separatist/Dathomirian squad combinations, and the B1s and Kalani especially are some of the main ingredients of any good Separatist strike team even without Maul or Ventress.
Hello There Squad Guide
Why Should I Play The Hello There Squad?
It’s all about General Kenobi: While the 212th and Cody have their uses as one half of the Clone contingent of your Republic strike team, the real value in this squad pack is the way in which Kenobi bends the rules of the game in separate ways, letting you manipulate your Order Deck, break the rules for Hunker tokens to benefit your entire strike team – and his iconic Hello There ability that lets him jump and attack just like in the often-memed scene between him and General Grievous in Revenge of The Sith.
Lore of the Hello There Squad
The Obi-Wan Kenobi we meet in the Hello There Squad Pack, as opposed to the one in the You Cannot Run Duel Pack, is Kenobi in his mid to late thirties, serving as a Jedi general for the Republic during the Clone Wars. He is a Jedi who is deeply committed to the Jedi ideals and the responsibility he has for the men serving under him – but he also has a lot of his own Master’s (Qui-Gon Jinn) independent thinking and temper. In this Squad Pack, Kenobi is leading the 212th Clone Troopers alongside their Clone commander Cody, who we see him serve with in Revenge of the Sith – which gives the pack a dose of dramatic irony, since Cody will in time be the Clone officer who attempts to carry out the command of Order 66 to exterminate Kenobi in Emperor Palpatine’s purge of the Jedi at the dawn of the Galactic Empire. In this squad pack, however, Kenobi and the 212th are still brothers in arms, fighting for the Republic wherever they’re sent to do so.
Primary of the Hello There Squad
General Obi-Wan Kenobi (3 Force Points, 8 Squad Points)
General Obi-Wan Kenobi is an excellent boost to any Galactic Republic strike team, with the ability to manipulate the Order Deck, Heal in all sorts of ways and buff the defenses of your entire strike team.
Kenobi has 10 Stamina and 3 Durability which, combined with his many opportunities to Heal, means he’ll rarely be taken completely out in a game.
His Hello There (1 Force) Active Ability lets him Jump and then add 3 dice to his next attack roll in the same activation. This can bring one of his combat stances up to 10 attack dice (more on that below), and the other up to 8, so if you’re planning to rush in and engage an enemy Primary or just take out a key piece in your opponent’s strategy such as a Super Tactical Droid, always activate this one first.
Kenobi’s So Uncivilized (1 Force) Reactive Ability gives Kenobi a Hunker token when he’s targeted by a ranged attack, and if the attack roll for that attack had any Failures in it, the attacker takes 3 damage. While this does cost 1 Force, it remains a pretty significant upgrade to the Deflect ability of other Jedi, and it definitely makes the opponent think twice before shooting at Kenobi.
While the two abilities mentioned above define how Kenobi plays as a character on the battlefield, his other two abilities define how your entire strike team plays when you have Kenobi in it: Patience is an Innate Ability that comes into effect when you draw Kenobi in your Order Deck. When you do so and have another Order card in Reserve, you can put the reserved card on the top or bottom of your Order Deck, and put Kenobi’s Order card in Reserve, while letting Kenobi Heal 3 and Jump as you put it there. In an Order Deck of only 4 cards (Primary, Secondary, Supporting, Shatterpoint), being able to put a card on top or bottom of the deck and then place another in Reserve equals huge control over the order of your activations, so this Ability alone almost makes Kenobi worth taking in your strike team.
Knowledge and Defense is an Identity Ability that changes how Hunker tokens work for your strike team. It prevents all your units from losing Hunker tokens when they’re engaged in melee, and they can even gain Hunker tokens while Engaged with enemy characters. It also adds 1 dice to your melee defense rolls when you have one or more Hunker tokens (on top of what those Hunkers already gave you) – but that’s not all: After someone has attacked one of your Galactic Republic characters, the Unit it belongs to can spend its Hunker tokens (see what we said about Kenobi breaking the game’s rules?) and then let 1 character in the unit Heal 1 for each Hunker token you spent, and then the chracters that Healed can Dash. As if just keeping your Hunkers when Engaged wasn’t a wild enough advantage, the opportunity to suddenly treat Hunker tokens as healing booster packs after being attacked is pretty amazing and really adds to both the survivability and mobility (due to the free Dashes) of your entire Strike team.
Kenobi’s Form III Soresu combat stance is quite unusual: It only has 5 attack dice in melee and none at range, but the 3 branches of 4 steps on its combat tree are filled to the brim with great options beyond just doing damage: the first step is 2 damage and a Heal, and then you branch out into either three steps that give Strained, 2 Heals and a Jump in addition to damage, or Pinned, 3 Heals and a Shove, or Pinned, Disarmed and a Reposition. There’s just something for all situations in this combat tree, and the amount of steps you get to take on it are pretty reliably high thanks to its melee Combat Expertise Chart being full of Critical Hits – and you can make it even more reliable with the Hello There Ability described above. His other combat stance, Form IV Ataru, is much more aggressive with several 2 damage steps early in the tree, multiple Shoves, an Exposed, a Disarmed and a Pinned Condition as well as a Jump. This stance also has 6 defense in both melee and ranged, and the ability to turn a Critical hit into a Failure on its Defense Expertise Chart.
Secondary the Hello There Squad
CC-2224 Clone Commander Cody (4 Points)
Cody is in many ways comparable to Rex who we’ve covered in the Core Set above, but he’s more focused on sniping enemies on objectives.
His Tactics Ability, We’ve Got a Big Problem, lets you choose an enemy character within Range 5 who’s contesting an Active objective and give them the Exposed condition. The range restriction on this isn’t too bad, and Exposed is very strong, so make sure to bring Cody up the board to get him in range of as many objectives as possible.
Cody also has Defensive Maneuver (1 Force) like all Clones (see the guide to the Core Set above), and the Say Goodnight, Clanker Innate Ability gives him Sharpshooter [2] and lets him ignore cover for his target when he makes ranged attacks, which, combined with the way his combat stance works, actually make Cody a pretty scary sniper.
Finally, Cody’s Bring it Down Innate Ability lets nearby Clone Trooper Supporting Unit characters reroll two Failures when attacking at range if they have one or more Hunker tokens.
Cody’s Concentrated Firepower combat stance has a high maximum damage (8 from the combat tree and 2 from Combat Expertise at range), as well as Pinned, 2 Shoves, a Strained and an Ability Icon so you can Defensive Maneuver after attacking. Like Rex, Cody has 6 attack dice in both melee and ranged, but due to his Abilities, he’s always better off fighting at range.
Support the Hello There Squad
212th Clone Troopers (4 Points)
The 212th Clones are a lot like the 501st in the Core Set, with Defensive Maneuver and Brothers in Arms, but instead of giving Strained to targets of nearby allied attacks, they give Pinned instead.
Their Bullseye Training combat stance has 6 attack dice at range and 4 in melee, and its combat tree opens with a Pinned and a damage, then a Shove and a damage, then an Exposed and finally 4 (!) damage in the last step. Its Combat Expertise at range gives a Critical Hit and 2 damage at maximum Expertise, so like Cody, the 21th are great gunners. They cost 1 more point than the 501st, but that makes sense due to their firepower.
What should I play with my the Hello There Squad?
Combining this squad with Anakin/Rex/501st from the Core Set is an excellent way to start playing Shatterpoint, but all the other Jedi/Clone squad packs such as Plans and Preparations and This Party’s Over also gain maximum benefits from Kenobi’s abilities, and also give you the Clone Secondary and Supporting Unit you’ll want for the iconic Republic playstyle.
Related
Plans and Preparations Squad Guide
Why Should I Play the Plans and Preparations Squad?
The Plans And Preparation Squad Pack is the tactician’s choice for Galactic Republic strike teams, with its Order Deck manipulation and great access to Heals and Pushing enemy characters. When it comes to healing and a defensive melee playstyle, Luminara and Offee are second to none. As an added bonus, you get to play Clone Commandos as your Supporting Unit, which will delight enthusiasts for the cult hit video game Republic Commando.
Lore of the Plans and Preparations Squad
Jedi Master Luminara Unduli and her padawan Barris Offee both hail from the planet Mirial, and they served the Republic together during the Clone Wars, often teaming up with fan favorites such as Obi-Wan Kenobi or Ahsoka Tano. Luminara is best known for her great wisdom and mastery of the Force, and she was the voice of calm and reason in Ahsoka’s training more than once, as a neccessary counterweight to the impulsivity and fury of her master Anakin.
Late in the Clone Wars, Barris Offee grew disillusioned with the Republic and ended up turning her back on the Jedi order, but the version of her we get in this pack is still af faithful Jedi.
The Republic Clone Commandos are Clones especially designed and trained for fighting behind enemy lines, especially famous for doing so during the battles on Geonosis early in the Clone Wars (depicted in the Republic Commando video game). Each Commando has his own specialty and training, and they’re equipped with far more advanced gear than regular clones, such as Vibroblades and Katarn-Class Commando Armor.
Primary of the Plans and Preparations Squad
Jedi Master Luminara Unduli (3 Force, 8 Squad Points)
Luminara Unduli is a bit like General Kenobi in the sense that a big part of her appeal is how her datacard influences how your entire strike team plays, but she is also one of the best healers in the game.
Her Full Recovery (2 Force) Active Ability lets her fully heal a friendly unit within Range 3 of her, removing all damage and conditions from them – expensive in Force, but essential if you really need a worn-down unit to get back into the fight at its full efficiency.
Luminara can pay 1 Force to Dash with Sprint, but her Abilities really start to get complex and game-changing with her Reactive Ability Precise Strike (1 Force). Precise Strike can be used after Luminara makes a combat action, and it lets a nearby Galactic Republic Supporting Unit Dash if its Order Card is still in the Order Deck (so it hasn’t been drawn since you last reshuffled your Order Deck) or make a 5 dice attack if it isn’t in the Order Deck (it’s in Reserve or has already been drawn). This is a nice bonus to any combat action Luminara makes, and it gets even better when you combine it with her Flow Of The Force Identity Ability. Flow Of The Force is actually 3 abilities in one: First, it lets one allied character per Turn Dash when an enemy unit is Wounded. Second, it lets another friendly unit Heal 3 when one of your other units become Wounded by an enemy attack. Third, and most powerful, it lets you look at the top card of your Order Deck before you choose whether to reveal an Order Card or activate a Unit from Reserve.
This third effect is super strong, and fits so well with the Plans and Preparations name of this Squad Pack: It makes it easier for you to plan your next activation, which can then influence who can benefit from your Precise Strike Ability. If you combine this squad with the Hello There Squad Pack’s General Kenobi, your Order Deck-stacking powers become even greater (he can take the card in Reserve, replace it with his own, and put the card previously in Reserve at the top or bottom of the Order Deck). This kind of rules manipulation isn’t how everyone wants to play the game, but if you like planning ahead and setting up combos with your strike team, an Unduli/Kenobi strike team is great for that (shout-out to all Blue Magic The Gathering players reading this!).
Luminara has an aggressive and a defensive combat stance: Form II Makashi, the aggressive stance, opens with a damage and a Reposition, and then progresses with damage, up to 3 Shoves and a Jump. Its Defense Expertise is a bit mediocre, but it does have a Jump and 2 Blocks at maximum Expertise. Form III Soresu, the defensive stance, has up to 5 Heals, a Shove, a Pinned and a Jump, but what makes it stand out is its Defense Expertise: at maximum Expertise, it has 3 Blocks, a Critical hit turned into a Hit, and a Hit turned into a Failure. Neither of her combat stance have any ranged attacks.
Secondary of the Plans and Preparations Squad
Barriss Offee, Jedi Padawan (4 Points)
Barris Offee is basically a Secondary Unit version of Assajj Ventress, but with some added support functions: She is fast, she can Force Push, and she can get out of harm’s way, but she can also give attack dice to her Primary Unit if it is a Jedi.
Her Force Push (2 Force) Active Ability is awesome and simple: It Pushes a nearby enemy character Range 3 away from Offee, which is always a surefire way to move a character off an objective. Force Speed (1 Force) lets Offee Advance, and the Reactive Ability Slip Away lets her Reposition and gain a Hunker token if she is Engaged with an enemy character and that character is attacked by one of your Galactic Republic allies.
Faithful Padawan is Offee’s Innate Ability, and it comes into effect when Offee and a Jedi Primary Unit (so, for example, Luminara) are Engaged with the same enemy character. When this is the case, both Offee and the Jedi Primary Unit adds 2 attack dice to melee attacks against that character. The ability also gives a free “Heal” (worded as “remove 1 damage or one condition from itself” to prevent the Healing character from healing other characters instead of itself) to every allied Unit within Range 3 of Offee when she makes a Recover Action. With this ability, Offee and Unduli really become a power duo of healing and close combat prowess.
Offee’s Form III Soresu combat stance has up to 4 Pushes in it, a maximum damage of 6, an option for a Reposition, and Exposed and a Jump, and at its final step, you can go for her Force Push at no Force Cost with an Ability icon. Offee has a Reposition at just 2 Defense Expertise, and a decent 5 dice in melee defense, but with only 4 defence dice at range and no ranged attacks, she is quite vulnerable out in the open.
Support of the Plans and Preparations Squad
Republic Clone Commandos (4 Points)
Clone Commados are a specialist version of the regular Clone Troopers we see in other Squad Packs, with some nice mobility and very reliable shooting.
Just like all other Clones, they have Defensive Maneuver (1 Force) to let one of them Dash and get a Hunker token, and Brothers in Arms to make them resistant to being Pushed. Commando Armor makes them ignore the first point of damage from an attack, which is highly needed, since they only have 6 Stamina and 2 Durability, and Ascension Cables gives them Scale, which lets them Climb when they would normally Advance or Dash. This combination of Abilities makes the Commandos pretty great for a Supporting Unit when it comes to getting to and taking objectives above ground level.
All Clones have a Coordinated Fire ability, which lets them apply a specific effect to the targets of any allied attacks targeting an enemy within Range 5 of them, and in the case of the Commandos, this effect is a flat 1 point of damage, which is pretty solid, even though conditions are often worth more tactically than just a point of damage, unless you really need an enemy unit to become Wounded.
What should I play with my Plans and Preparations Squad?
This squad goes along well with most Galactic Republic-based Squad Packs, but as mentioned above, combining it with the Hello There Squad Pack lets you really manipulate your Order Deck. Since Plans and Preparations isn’t the most agressive Squad Pack out there, another good combo could be to combine it with something like the combat beast that is Mace Windu in the This Party’s Over Squad Pack.
This Party’s Over Squad Guide
Why Should I Play the This Party’s Over Squad?
Mace Windu is an absolutely formidable melee combatant, and that alone makes this squad worth bringing in your strike team, but the ARF Clone Troopers in this pack can give Exposed to all targets of your team’s attacks close to them, and Ponds lets you deploy further up the board than any other squad, so if you want to get right into the action, lightsaber-severing heads left and right, this squad pack might be just the one for you.
Lore of the This Party’s Over Squad
Jedi master Mace Windu is one of the most powerful and wise Jedi of the Clone Wars, a master swordsman and a great leader all at once. While he was also sometimes too strictly adherent to the Jedi Code, which could make him seem cold and uncaring at times, he remains one of the only Jedi to see through the lies of Chancellor Palpatine and to face him in a duel of their mastery of the Force – a battle he ultimately lost as one of the first major Jedi casualties of the fall of the Republic. In the This Party’s Over Squad Pack, he is at the height of his powers, wielding his purple lightsaber and leading the ARF recon troops which he led in the defense of the Twi’lek home planet Ryloth.
He is accompanied by Commander Ponds, another Republic hero with a tragic fate, and his ARF troopers, clones specialized in skirmish warfare and reconnaissance.
Primary of the This Party’s Over Squad
Jedi Master Mace Windu (4 Force, 6 Squad Points)
Mace Windu has one of the lowest Squad Points (he only gets to take 6 points worth of allies), but with good reason: he has one of the most reliably high damage outputs in the game, due to his ability to spend Force to reroll Failures as well as refreshing Force once per reshuffle of your Order Deck. He is able to stay in combat longer than most other Primaries, with plenty of Heals and great defenses.
His Tactics Ability, Rush To Action, lets Windu and an allied Galactic Republic Unit anywhere on the battlefield Dash. Since you will usually activate Windu twice per reshuffle of your Order Deck due to his interactions with the Shatterpoint Order Card (see below), this actually makes for a lot of mobility over the course of a game.
Windu’s Identity Ability, This Party’s Over, lets allied Galactic Republic characters ignore the first incoming Push and first point of damage of an enemy attack while they’re within Range 5 of Windu, which is a big upgrade to the sturdiness of your strike team (and it also applies to Windu himself).
Tempered Aggression is Windu’s Reactive Ability, and it quite simply lets you pay as much Force as you want to reroll Failures equal to the Force Spent in any of his attack or defense rolls – an ability that makes you really happy he’s a 4 Force Primary that has access to Refresh Force.
Speaking of Refresh Force, Windu’s Shatterpoint Innate Ability gives him bonuses when he is chosen to activate with the Shatterpoint Order Card. If he has his Form VII Vaapad combat stance Active when you do so, he makes a Focus action and gains Impact [2] until the end of the Turn, giving that combat stance 10 attack dice, and if instead he has his Jedi Master combat stance Active, he refreshes 2 Force and Heals 3. Both bonuses enhance what the Active combat stance is already good at, and really brings Windu to the top tier of Republic Jedi fighters in the game.
The Form VII Vaapad combat stance opens up with either 2 damage or a Strained and a damage, and then proceeds all the way up to a maximum of 11 damage, with access to Exposed, Disarmed, Pinned and Reposition along the way. Its Combat Expertise gives up to 3 Critical hits, and its Defense Expertise has 2 Blocks, a Critical hit turned into a hit, and a Reposition at maximum Expertise. This is definitely the aggressive stance for Windu, with 7 attack dice in melee and only 5 defense dice in both ranged and melee, but that doesn’t matter since he also has Jedi Master. The Jedi Master combat stance is much more defensive, with multiple Shoves, an Exposed and a Jump in its otherwise pretty standard combat tree, but with a Block and a Hit turned into a Failure even at 1 Defensive Expertise, and a Block, a Critical hit turned into a failure, a Hit turned into a Failure and a Reposition at 4 Expertise or more, and 6 defense dice. With the aforementioned bonuses from Shatterpoint, both stances are really strong, and offer you plenty of options regardless of what duels Windu finds himself in.
Secondary of the This Party’s Over Squad
CT-411 Commander Ponds (3 Points)
Commander Ponds is a forward deployment specialist, helping his allies move forward and defend themselves while doing so.
His Charge Tactics Ability lets one allied Galactic Republic character Dash at the start of Ponds’ activation, and Incomingmakes Clone Trooper allies close to Ponds with a Hunker Token immune to being Exposed.
Forward Scout is quite a unique Innate Ability, and it lets Clone Trooper Secondary and Supporting Units in Ponds’ squad deploy within Range 2 instead of Range 1 of their Primary Unit, allowing you deploy quite far up the board, to the point of often controlling an objective right where you deploy.
His Superior Recon combat stance does up to 7 damage, with a Reposition and a Pinned or a Shove and a Disarmed along its two combat tree paths, making for a pretty versatile combat tree. Both his Ranged and Melee Expertise gets a maximum of 2 Critical hits, and he has 5 attack dice in melee as well as 6 at range with Range 5.
Support of the This Party’s Over Squad
ARF Clone Troopers (3 Points)
The ARF Clone Troopers are specialists at advancing under fire and exposing enemy weaknesses.
They have the standard Clone Trooper package of Defensive Maneuver (a Dash and a Hunker Token for 1 Force for one character in the Unit), Brother in Arms (when they have Hunker Tokens, they ignore the first Push of an incoming attack) and Coordinated Fire, but their specific version of the latter applies Exposed to all targets of allied attacks against targets within Range 5 of the ARF Troopers, which might be the Coordinated Fire effect of all the Clones, since preventing Blocks allow your other Units to do more of what their combat tree lets them do, rather than just doing damage or applying one condition to the target.
Finally, the ARF Troopers have Lay Low, which lets them add 1 Defensive Expertise to their defense rolls against ranged attacks if they have any Hunker tokens.
Their Recon Force combat stance has a Pinned, a Push, an Exposed/Disarmed and 5 damage over the length of its combat tree, and a pretty impressive 7 attack dice at Range 5, making them crack shots that are excellent at Pinning and generally debuffing their target before stronger Units such as Windu can move into melee range of the target.
What should I play with my the This Party’s Over Squad?
The This Party’s Over combines well with all Republic Squad Packs, but perhaps especially with one of the Order Deck-manipulation squads such as Hello There or Plans and Preparations. Being as strong as it is, this squad pack can add both defensive buffs and melee power to any strike team, so if you feel your other squad is a bit more of a specialist squad and you need something that kills things and stays alive, this squad pack can be a good counterweight to a less combat-oriented squad.
We Are Brave Squad Guide
Why Should I Play the We Are Brave Squad
The Queen of Naboo and her Handmaidens are not to be underestimated, even though they look like they belong in a royal court rather than on the field of battle. Padmé and her entourage are pretty fierce ranged combatants, but what they excel at is supporting each other and the other fighters in their strike team, handing out extra attacks, extra damage, additional movement and Cover to their allies, and the Handmaidens are even able to “taunt” enemy characters so that they are entirely unable to attack your other units while they’re Engaged with the Handmaiden. If you want an unsual Galactic Republic squad that are bigger than the sum of their parts, the We Are Brave Squad Pack might be just what you’re looking for.
Lore of the We Are Brave Squad
The units in this squad represent Padmé Amidala as we meet her in Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace, the young queen of the planet Naboo, and her entourage of handmaidens. This is Padmé before she became the senator and diplomat we meet in the Clone Wars series, at a time when Anakin was just a kid, and Obi-Wan Kenobi hadn’t grown a beard yet.
The Queen of Naboo was protected in a way we don’t see anywhere else in the Star Wars universe: Instead of armored soldiers as her bodyguard, the queen was surrounded by handmaidens that were almost her doppelgangers to such a degree that Sabé, the most prominent of them, would sometimes stand in for the Queen at ceremonies or while she was away on diplomatic missions. While the Queen and her haindmaidens look like elaborately crafted porcelain dolls with their colored robes, intricate headdresses and makeup, they were still capable fighters, ready to defend the constitutional monarchy of Naboo to the death.
Primary of the We Are Brave Squad
Queen Padmé Amidala (3 Force, 8 Squad Points)
Padmé is a Galactic Republic Primary Unit that excels at boosting her allies and fighting at range.
Her Active Ability, Royal Command (1 Force), lets all characters in a friendly Galactic Republic Unit Advance. This is great for the Units in her own Squad Pack, but being able to Advance a Jedi or a bunch of Clones outside of their activation is also pretty powerful.
Like the Clones, Padmé has the Coordinated Fire Reactive Ability, but it only works with Handmaiden Units, which get 2 free damage against targets of their attacks if the target is within Range 5 of Padmé.
Her Crack Shot Innate Ability givers her Sharpshooter [2], so she gets 2 extra attack dice at range out of a Focus action, and when she does make a Focus action, she gets a free Dash.
Padmé’s Servant Of The People Identity Ability is dependent upon her Active combat stance: If she’s not Wounded , is contesting an Active objective, and her stance is Faith In Diplomacy other friendly Galactic Republic Supporting characters can contest the same objective even if they are Wounded – a pretty big boost to the objective control ability of your Supporting Units if they’re close to Padmé. If her Active stance is Aggressive Negotiations, nearby Galactic Republic Supporting characters can add 1 dice to their attack rolls. The fact that this interact with the Galactic Republic tag makes Padmé really valuable for Clone Supporting Units across the faction, making their generally good shooting even better.
Padmés Aggressive Negotiations combat stance has 7 attack dice at range and 6 in melee, and a combat tree with a maximum damage of 8. It branches out in multiple ways, but it gives you access to Exposed, two Shoves, 2 Heals and a Reposition along the way. The combat tree is best suited for ranged combat, where 3 Ranged Expertise grants it 2 Critical hits and a Hit. The Defense Expertise of this stance gives you 2 Blocks, a Critical hit turned into a Failure, and a Heal at maximum Expertise.
Her other combat stance, Faith In Diplomacy, has 6 attack dice in both ranged and melee combat, and its more straightforward combat tree gives you 3 Shoves, a Pinned, a Disarmed and up to 7 damage. Its Combat Expertise is generally a bit worse than Aggressive Negotiations, but its Defense Expertise gives you a Block, a Critical hit turned into a Failure and 2 Heals at maximum Expertise.
Secondary of the We Are Brave Squad
Sabé, Royal Bodyguard (4 Points)
True to the lore, Sabé is like a Secondary version of Padmé, good at ranged combat and excellent at boosting her allies.
Her Tactics Ability, Loyal Protectors, lets all Handmaiden characters (the Royal Handmaidens Supporting Unit and herself) Dash toward a friendly Primary character, and thanks to Bodyguard, friendly Primary and Secondary characters within Range 2 of her have Cover [1], adding 1 dice to their defense rolls against ranged attacks.
Sabé also has Coordinated Assault, a Reactive Ability that gives her a free Dash toward any target of an allied attack within Range 5 of her.
Finally, Sabé has the Expose Flank (1 Force) Active Ability, which lets her Climb. If the Climb ends at a higher point vertically than it started, Sabé makes a Focus action and gains Sharpshooter [1], meaning she suddenly has 9 attack dice at range!
Her Decoy combat stance has 7 attack dice at range and 6 in melee, and her combat tree has 3 branches, starting with a Shove and a damage, and then branching out into options such as two more Shoves, a Disarmed, a Pinned, a Strained, a Reposition, a Jump, and up to 6 damage, making her excellent at Pushing and applying conditions. In ranged combat, Expertise grats her up to 1 Critical hit and 3 Hits, and Expertise in melee gives her up to a Critical Hit, a Hit and a damage. Her Defense Expertise gives her a Block, a Critical hit turned into a Failure, and a Reposition at maximum Expertise, and all that movement combined with good ranged combat makes Sabé a pretty solid sniper for your strike team in addition to her other abilities.
Support of the We Are Brave Squad
Naboo Royal Handmaidens (4 Points)
The Royal Handmaidens are, once again, a Supporting Unit version of their superior Secondary and Primary Units, underlining the doppelganger nature of the Queen’s bodyguard.
Their Active Ability, Expose Flank (1 Force) is identical to the one described for Sabé just above, and their Coordinated Fire is like the one we see on Padmé and on Clone Trooper Supporting Units in general – only, unlike Padmé’s, it interacts with all Galactic Republic Units, and adds a Disarmed to any attack made by those units against a target within Range 5 of the Handmaidens.
Finally, the Handmaidens have the Intercede Innate Ability, which prevents enemy characters Engaged with any Handmaidens from targeting allied Primary or Secondary characters with attacks – a really cool and thematic defensive Ability.
Their Absolute Loyalty combat stance doesn’t have a strong damage output with 5 attack dice in both ranged and melee combat, and a maximum of 5 damage in its combat tree (6 when factoring in melee Combat Expertise), but it has a Jump/1 Heal, a Pinned, an Exposed and a Reposition in the tree, making it good at debuffing enemies and moving to where the Unit needs to be to shut down enemy attacks on your Primaries and Secondaries. Its Defense Expertise maxes out at a Block and a Critical hit turned into a Failure at 3 Expertise.
What should I play with my We Are Brave Squad?
This squad combines well with most Galactic Republic squads, but perhaps especially with one that’s strong in close combat, such as Anakin’s Squad from the Core Set or the This Party’s Over squad pack. While some of the synergies of the We Are Brave Squad Pack work best within the squad itself, there’s actually plenty of stuff in it that works on Galactic Republic characters or just allies in general, so it can go with anything with the Galactic Republic tag.
Twice The Pride Squad Guide
Why Should I Play the Twice The Pride Squad
Sometimes you buy a box only to use a few of the models or to never actually field anything. Right now, most of not all of the pieces of the Twice the Pride Squad is a bit overtuned. Jango is great and the Magnaguard paired with Dooku (and a lot of other Sith Primaries) are insanely scary.
Also, Dooku is a beast on and off the field. You cannot really go wrong with this pack if you want to play Seperatist, Droids or Sith really.
Lore of the Twice The Pride Squad
Apart from Anakin himself, Count Dooku is perhaps the greatest Jedi in the age of the Republic to ever fall to the Dark Side. Once the Padawan of Master Yoda himself, he grew disillusioned with the Republic and the flawed ideals of the Jedi Order, and he fell to the Dark Side with the best of intentions, hoping to right the wrongs of the Galaxy by seizing greater power than the Jedi would allow him. In time, he became a follower of Darth Sidious, as well as the Leader of the Confederacy of Independent Systems and the Separatist Army. In combat, Dooku also reveals the complexities evident in his moral struggles to find justice in the galaxy, as fights like a noble gentleman with his curved-hilt lightsaber, but also with the brutal Force lightning of the Power of the Dark Side.
Joining him in this squad is Jango Fett, the Bounty Hunter in Mandalorian armor who became the genetic father of all the clones (as well as of original trilogy fan favorite Boba Fett). An independent agent in the galaxy who only fights for his own interests and credits, Jango fights dirty with wires, his jet packs, a missile launcher and his dual blasters.
Count Dookus droid bodyguard, the Magnaguard, also feature in this squad, even though they’re just as often seen accompanying General Grievous during the Clone Wars. Unlike the rest of the Droid army, the Magnaguard fight almost like Jedi with their Electrostaffs as the dark mirror of Padmés Handmaidens, stepping in front of enemy fire to protect Count Dooku and their other superiors.
Primary of the Twice The Pride Squad
Count Dooku, Separatist Leader (4 Force, 7 Squad Points)
Count Dooku is quite an unusual Force User Primary Unit, focused on taking revenge whenever someone tries to hurt him or his allies, and wielding one of the fiercest ranged attacks in the game. He has 10 Stamina and 3 Durability, which is a bit less than most Force User Primaries in the game, but not enough that you could categorize him as squishy or vulnerable.
Dooku’s Tactics Ability, Leader Of The Separatist Army, lets Dooku and a nearby Separatist character Dash.
The rest of Dooku’s Abilities are about reacting to enemy attacks. Surely You Can Do Better lets him spend up to 3 Force to turn as many enemy Hits into Failures in an attack made against Dooku, and Twice The Pride, Double The Fall (1 Force) lets Dooku Dash and make a 5 dice attack against a character who made an attack with no Hit results in the attack roll against an ally within Range 2 of Dooku. Since the latter ability says “an allied character” and not “another allied character”, these two Abilities can interact quite well if Dooku can first remove Hits from an enemy attack roll so that attack no longer contains any, and then be able to use Twice the Pride, Double the Fall for that attack.
Brave, But Foolish is Dooku’s Identity Ability, lets him Refresh 2 Force once per turn when an allied Primary or Secondary Unit is Wounded, and then let an allied Separatist Supporting Unit Dash and make a 5 dice attack.
In short, Dooku’s Abilities are all about letting the enemy make the first move, and then destroy them on the counterattack.
His Form II Makashi combat stance has 7 attacks (and 7 defense!) in melee, and 6 attacks at Range 4. Its combat tree zig-zags between many different options, offering up to 10 damage (plus 1 damage from Ranged Expertise), 3 Shoves, an Exposed, a Strained, and no less than 2 Repositions, one of which is located at the first step of the tree, making Dooku excellent at hit and run tactics and outmaneuvering his targets. Its Melee Combat Expertise can give up to 3 Critical Hits, and its Ranged Expertise gives up to 1 Critical hit, a Hit and a damage. Finally, its excellent Defense Expertise gives you a Block and 2 Critical hits turned into Failures at 3 Expertise.
His other combat stance, Force Mastery, has only 6 attacks in melee, but an impressive 8 attacks at Range 4. Its combat tree starts out at 2 damage on step 1, and then branches out into either a defensive branch with 2 Heals, a Pinned and a Reposition, or an offensive branch with a Disarmed, a Strained and an Exposed condition, and both branches can do up to 7 damage. Its Ranged Combat Expertise gives you 3 Critical hits and a Damage at 5 or more Expertise, while its Melee Expertise only grants you 2 Critical hits and a Hit at 4 Expertise or more. The Defensive Expertise on this stance gives you 3 Critical hits at 5 or more Expertise.
Secondary of the Twice The Pride Squad
Jango Fett, Bounty Hunter (4 Points)
Jango Fett is one of the very few Secondaries in Shatterpoint who doesn’t directly interact with his allies through buffs or tags at all: He’s doing his own thing, with a bit of healing and a chance to Refresh Force being his only direct attribution to the rest of his strike team. That doesn’t mean he isn’t of great use to his team – quite the contrary – but it does mean you can fit him into almost any squad.
His only real connection to the Mandalorians he so resembles is his Jet Pack (1 Force) Ability, which lets him Jump, but you might want to save the Force for his two other Abilities that require Force to be spent: Capture Wire (1 Force) lets you pick a nearby enemy character and pull it Range 2 toward Jango and give them Pinned – an awesome way of setting up an enemy character for getting mauled by Dooku or getting tanked by your Magnaguard – and Not So Fast (1 Force) lets you roll 5 dice when an enemy unit within Range 3 of Jango activates, and then do damage to that Unit equal to the amount of Critical hits and Hits in that roll.
My Client Is Getting Impatient is Jango’s “fake Mandalorians are stronger alone” Innate Ability, letting him Jump whenever he makes a Focus action, and his other Innate Ability, I’m Just Looking To Get Paid, lets Jango Refresh 2 Force and Heal 2 whenever he Wounds an enemy Primary or Secondary Unit.
In order to Wound enemy Primaries and Secondaries, Jango would have to do a lot of damage, and fortunately, he can: His Resourceful Gunslinger combat stance might only have 6 attacks in ranged and melee combat, but the 5 steps of his combat tree are crammed with damage, with a maximum of 10 damage at either of its two fifth steps. It also has two Shoves, two Jumps, a Strained condition and an Active Ability icon, so you can Capture Wire the enemy right into your arms with a ranged attack or push them away in your melee attacks. The Ranged Expertise for his stance gives you 2 Critical hits and a Hit at maximum Expertise, and its Melee Expertise gives you a Critical hit, a Hit and a damage at maximum Expertise. Finally, his Beskar Armor Defense Expertise gives him a solid 3 Blocks at 3 or more Expertise.
Support of the Twice The Pride Squad
Magnaguard (3 Points)
The Magnaguard are one of the best defensive Supporting Units in the game, with an impressive 10 Stamina and 2 Durability and a datacard full of defensive Abilities.
Its Protection Protocols Reactive Ability lets one character in this Unit Advance towards an allied Separatist Primary Unit that made a move action, and Bodyguard lets allied Primary and Secondary characters close to characters from this units gain Cover [1], giving them an additional defense dice against ranged attacks.
Finally, Intercede prevents enemy characters engaged with this Unit while it’s not Wounded from attacking allied Primary and Secondary characters – a really awesome Ability to have on a durable, mobile Supporting Unit.
The Magnaguard’s Defensive Programs combat stance can’t be used to attack at range, but it has 6 attacks in melee, and a combat tree with 2 Shoves, a Reposition/Disarmed and a Heal/a third Shove, as well as up 6 damage. Its Melee Expertise grants you 3 Critical hits at maximum expertise, and its Defense Expertise gives you 2 Blocks at 2 or more Expertise.
What should I play with my Twice The Pride Squad Pack?
This squad combines well with any Separatist Squad Pack with a lot of interactions with Droids, which can really enhance the utility of your Magnaguard. As mentioned above, Jango can go with almost anything, while Dooku is good, stoic counterweight to more aggressive Primaries such as Maul, Ventress or Grievous.
Appetite for Destruction Squad Guide
Why Should I Play the Appetite for Destruction Squad?
The Appetite for Destruction Squad features one of the most iconic villains of the Clone Wars, the ruthless and aggressive General Grievous, combined with the Kraken Super Tactical Droid and a Supporting Unit of heavy infantry B2 Battle Droids. All of these fit well into a Separatist playstyle that favors droids advancing across the board so that the abilities of Primary and Secondary Separatist units can cause the droids to move and attack outside of their activation, providing board control and firepower far beyond what it might seem when you just look at the datacards of those droids.
Grievous is a fearsome combatant with really good movement, high damage and good access to Heals, and Kraken is the budget version of the awesome Kalani from the Core Set, allowing you to afford more points-expensive Supporting Units such as the B2 Droids or other elite Droids that might be released in the future.
Lore the Appetite for Destruction Squad
The Appetite for Destruction Squad represents the most aggressive aspect of the Droid army of the Separatist Alliance that defied the rule of the Republic during the Clone Wars. General Grievous is a terrifying cyborg with the remains of his tormented body encased in cybernetics and droid armour plating, and he served Count Dooku and the Separatists with one clear goal: to take revenge on the Jedi, who betrayed the people of Kalee, the planet where he was born. To this end, Grievous fought in close combat with the lightsabers of his Jedi victims, and while he wasn’t a Force User, and as such neither a Sith nor a Jedi, Count Dooku trained him in fighting like one.
Grievous was in charge of the Droid army of the Separatists, represented in this box by Kraken and the B2 Battle Droids, relentless mechanical warriors who serve Count Dooku unconditionally.
Primary the Appetite for Destruction Squad
General Grievous (3 Force, 8 Squad Points)
General Grievous is at the top tier of Shatterpoint Primaries when it comes to durability (11 Stamina/3 Durability like Anakin or Mace Windu), and has multiple Heals in his Abilities and on his Cunning Warlord combat stance, and that’s awesome in itself. He isn’t a defensive character, however: He is lightning fast with access to Advancing twice in an activation through his Scuttle ability (1 Force) that also lets him Scale scenery, and his Quad Arm Attack combat stance gives him 8 attack dice in melee and a maximum damage potential of 13 (!), as well as a couple of Shoves and the Disarm condition. This combination of Stamina and attack prowess makes Grievous great at going toe to toe with the beefiest characters your opponent have to offer. He can even do some close quarters area damage with I Have Been Trained In Your Jedi Arts (2 Force), and fight surprisngly well at range with 7 dice on his Cunning Warlord combat stance.
In addition to being tough on his own, Grievous is also a strategist, with the Onward Tactical Ability that lets a nearby Battle Droid character Dash when Grievous activates, and the excellent Appetite For Destruction Innate Ability, which lets a nearby Battle Droid Supporting Character Dash and make a 5 dice attack against a target that Grievous just attacked, at no Force Cost.
Finally, Wounding and enemy unit with Grievous lets you Heal twice, and if the enemy unit is a Force User, you also get to Refresh Force twice, making Grievous a good partner for more Force-intensive Primaries such as Count Dooku or Assajj Ventress and her Force Push.
Secondary the Appetite for Destruction Squad
Kraken, Super Tactical Droid (4 Points)
Kraken is a versatile Tactical Droid who is all about making the most of your Battle Droids. At the beginning of his activation, he can let himself or an allied Battle Droid Supporting Unit anywhere on the battlefield Dash, and his Tactical Network (1 Force) Ability lets a nearby Battle Droid character Dash, and then choose between getting a Hunker token, removing a condition, or making a 5 dice attack. Tactical Network is just incredibly useful, and the first key to playing Kraken well is to always, always make sure he is within range a Battle Droid he can make do all kinds of things. Remember that he can even use this ability on Battle Droids that have just been Wounded, making him a kind of robot necromancer, just like Kalani from the Core Set. It also doesn’t hurt that the third step of his combat tree has an Ability icon, letting him move Droids around through attacking as well.
Just like Kalani, Kraken spends 1 less Force than usual to be put in Reserve (so when he’s not Wounded, it’s free), so you can wait with activating him until you’ve moved all your droids into position.
On top of all his Droid-puppeteering, Kraken also has Protection and Steadfast when contesting active objectives, and his combat tree lets him pick between a Pin and a Shove in its first step, making him surprisingly good at defending and contesting objectives.
Support the Appetite for Destruction Squad
B2 Battle Droids (4 Points)
The B2 Battle Droids are a wonderfully straightforward Supporting Unit. They can pay 1 Force to Dash, or 1 Force to add 2 dice to one character’s attack roll when targeting enemies that contest Active objectives, and they have Protection so they ignore 1 incoming damage per attack made against them.
Apart from that, they just do a lot of damage for a Supporting Unit: a maximum damage potential of 11, two of which come from just rolling two Combat Expertise when shooting at range, as well as two Shoves, a Pin/Expose and a Reposition on their 5 step combat tree.
B2 aren’t that durable (8 Stamina/2 Durability), but their combat tree is really well-suited for the 5 dice attacks you’ll make with them all the time via the abilities of Kraken and Grievous, so keep them close to either of them as you advance across the board.
What should I combine with me Appetite for Destruction Squad?
The Appetite For Destruction Squad combines really well with any squad with Droids in it, due to Grievous’ and Kalani’s abilities, and the opportunity for B2 Droids to take advantages of other Units with benefits for characters with the Droid tag.
So far, the best candidates for running alongside Grievous and his droids are
- the Dark Side portion of the Core Set, with Kalani and the B1 Battle Droids combined with Assajj Ventress, who complements Grievous’ playstyle well (Lord Maul doesn’t do this as well, since his playstyle is a bit too similar to that of Grievous). This combination gives you a strike team with fast-moving, aggressive Primaries for taking objectives early on or Wounding key enemy characters, and a steadily advancing tide of droids providing support for them. Be aware that this strike team has some redundancy in the sense that Kalani/Kraken are kind of doing the same thing on the battlefield, so if you want more versatility, replace one of them with a more self-sufficient or mobile Secondary from a different set.
- the Twice The Pride Squad with Count Dooku, Jango Fett and Magnaguard. Dooku is very different from Grievous and offers some more reactivity and control to your strike team, Jango is great for zipping around and doing his own thing (unlike Kraken or Kalani), and the Magnaguard are Droids and can benefit from all your synergies related to that tag, but focus on tanking and fighting in melee instead of just blaster fire, giving you some tactical variety in a Droid strike team.
Witches of Dathomir: Mother Talzin Squad Guide
Why Should I Play the Witches of Dathomir Squad?
The Dathomir stuff has a very specific vibe and feel. They are not quite Sith, but have their on brand of Dark Force feel.
Mother Talzin is tricky to play with, but also tricky to play against. If you oppponent is not prepared, she can be quite good. Savage Opress is just a giant beat stick. The Nightsisters are a bit weak, but they do have their uses (and are better than Clones…). With just a few more pieces, you could build an Dathomir only Strike Squad.
Lore of the Witches of Dathomir
The Nightsisters of Dathomir are a people with one of the most ancient connections to the Dark Side, able to mutate their followers and even raise the dead with their dark powers. They’re not part of neither the Sith nor the Separatists, but deal with them through Faustian bargains that might benefit their allies in the short term, but always benefit the Sisters more in the long term. The Nightsisters are the people of Assajj Ventress, but also of Darth Maul who, like Savage Opress in this pack, are male Dathomirians enhanced by the magic of their superior female Dathomirian sisters.
During the Clone Wars, the Nightsisters were almost entirely wiped out by a Separatist assault seeking revenge on Assajj Ventress, but the power of their leader, Mother Talzin, endured in the spirit world, in turn leading to Savage Opress’ discovery of Darth Maul and the beginning of his second reign as Lord Maul.
Speaking of Opress: Savage was originally a Trojan Horse made as a gifted apprentice to Count Dooku as a replacement for Ventress, whom he had rejected. As time passed, Dooku had to realize that he had been betrayed, as Opress showed his true colors, helping Ventress in an attack against Dooku.
Primary of the Witches of Dathomir
Mother Talzin (3 Force, 8 Squad Points)
Mother Talzin is a masterful user of the Dark Side of the Force, draining her enemies to heal her allies and manipulating the position of friend and foe alike.
Her Tactics Ability, Obscuring Shadows, lets a character in another friendly Dathomirian Unit Dash at the start of Talzin’s activation, and her Identity Ability, Wrath of the Great Mother lets her Dash and make a 5 dice attack once per turn against an enemy character who has just Wounded another allied Unit. Life Drain lets allied Dathomirian characters Heal 1 whenever they make an attack that causes any damage to its target.
Finally, Manipulating Hand (2 Force) is an excellent Active Ability (which is nice because Talzin has an Active Ability Icon in one of her combat trees, but more on that below) that is both Force Push and Force Push at the same time. It simply lets you Dash with an enemy character within Range 4 of Talzin, letting you move that character wherever you like!
Talzin’s Great Mother combat stance has 7 attacks (and 7 defense) at range, and 6 attacks (and 6 defense) in melee. Its combat tree starts out strong with 2 damage and a Shove at step 1, and then proceeds to do up to 10 damage as well as a selection of two more Shoves, an Exposed, a Pinned and a Reposition. The already competent combat tree is helped nicely along by 2 Critical Hits and 2 Hits in maximum Ranged Expertise and a Critical hit, 2 Hits and 1 damage in maximum Melee Expertise. Its Defense Expertise gives 2 Blocks, a Critica hit turned into a Hit and a Hit turned into a Failure at 4 or more Expertise.
Her other stance, Wrath, has 7 attacks in melee and 6 attacks in ranged combat, and the same Defense Expertise as Great Mother. Its combat tree starts out with a choice between either 2 damage or 1 damage and a Disarmed condition, and then preceeds with up to 2 Heals, up to 6 damage, an Exposed and even an Active Ability Icon at step 3. Its Combat Expertise charts are more or less reversed compared to Great Mother, with more Critical hits in melee.
Secondary of the Witches of Dathomir
Savage Opress (4 Points)
Echoing the powers of his Dathomirian brother Maul, Savage Opress is a furiously fearsome melee combatant with no regard for his own safety.
He has 10 Stamina and 2 Durability, which is pretty strong for a Secondary Unit, and his defenses are helped along a bit by him having both Protection and Steadfast, so he ignores the first Shove and the first incoming damage of an attack made against him.
Opress has two Active Abilities: Dark Fury (2 Force) lets him roll 5 attack dice and then do damage equal to the amount of Critical hits and Hits in that roll against an enemy Unit within Range 2 of himself. If the target is a Force User, it gains Exposed if it suffered any damage from the ability. Furious Rush (1 Force) lets Opress Dash, or even Advance if he is Injured.
Being a tireless hunter of Jedi, Overpowering Monster lets Opress roll 2 extra attack dice when attacking Primary Units, and Unwitting Brute lets him Dash whenever a Separatist Alliance or Dathomirian Primary Unit starts its activation near him.
Opress’ combat stance, Unchained Rage, has no ranged attacks, but 7 melee attacks and only 4 defense dice against either type of attack. Its combat tree has 5 steps with two branches, each starting at 2 damage and ending at an Ability Icon (perfect for a free Dark Fury), but with either an all-damage branch of 6 damage or a condition branch with Exposed, Strained and Disarmed with a damage at each step to choose from. Its Combat Expertise gives you 2 Critical Hits and a damage at 4 Expertise or more, so if you go the full damage route, get maximum Expertise and use Dark Fury at the 5th step of the combat tree, Opress can do up to 14 damage! It won’t happen often, but if you’re attacking a Primary Unit so you add 2 attack dice, it’s not impossible.
Support of the Witches of Dathomir
Nightsister Acolytes (4 Points)
The Nightsister Acolytes are basically high damage Clone Troopers, with access to Hunker tokens and the ability to help allies by applying Exposed to their targets.
Their Acrobatic Advance (1 Force) Active Ability is basically Defensive Maneuver but with a Jump instead of a Dash (which is much better) to go along with the Hunker token, and while Nightsisters have Hunker tokens, their also add 1 dice to defense rolls against ranged attacks due to Darkness and Shadows.
On the offensive side of things, Nightsisters have Coordinated Fire, which is just like what Clones have, but it works for allied Dathomirian units and lets you apply the Exposed condition to targets of allied attacks against enemies within Range 5 of the Nightsisters. Night Hunter lets the Nightsisters add 2 dice to their attack rolls when targeting enemy characters which are Engaged with friendly Dathomirians, which will often mean Savage Opress.
What should I combine with my the Witches of Dathomir Squad?
This squad combines well with anything with more Dathomirian tags in it. At the moment, that means a Separatist squad led by either Lord Maul or Assajj Ventress, but we might see more of them in the future (Nightsister zombies from Clone Wars/Jedi Fallen Order would be great!)
Fistful of Credits Squad Guide
Why Should I Play the Fistful of Credits Squad?
The Fistful of Credits squad pack has a really unique playstyle, where two of the Units in the squad can gain the tags of other units. Its Primary Unit, Cad Bane, can threaten your opponent into moving off objectives, and he and his Secondary Unit Aurra Sing are some of the most dangerous ranged fighters in the game. Sing also lets you damage your Supporting Unit minions to make her do more damage, so if you like to fight dirty and playing outside of the Jedi/Sith divide of the Star Wars Universe, this squad pack might be just what you need.
Lore of the Fistful of Credits Squad
Cad Bane and his Bounty Hunters represent a different perspective on galactic conflict during and after the Clone Wars than that of Jedi and Sith, Light and Dark: To Bane and his companions, theres is only profit, whether it be in the service of one master or the other.
Bane shows up time and again from the earliest Clone Wars episodes all the way up to the post-Imperial world of the The Mandalorian TV series, kidnapping and assassinating mostly Republic or Rebel targets, but always for cold credits. He is an expert gunslinger and a devious tactician, and he is made all the more deadly by his second in command in this squad, the master assassin Aurra Sing, who has managed to infiltrate the Republic more than once, and almost killed Senator Amidala.
The two show up across Star Wars lore with a variety of lesser known Bounty Hunters in tow, and since neither Bane nor Sing have any problem with sacrificing their partners in crime to escape with their own life intact, their partners rarely live long enough to make a name for themselves.
Primary of the Fistful of Credits Squad
Cad Bane, Notorious Hunter (2 Force Points, 9 Squad Points)
Cad Bane is a very unusual Primary Unit with only 2 Force, but with a very high 9 Squad Points, mean he can bring any Secondary or Supporting Unit in the game that shares his Era.
His How About You Step Aside? (1 Force) Active Ability is the rare Ability that presents your opponent rather than you with a tactical decision: You pick a target within Range 3 of Bane that is contesting an Active Objective. That target can then Dash, and if it ends its move no longer contesting said objective, it gets the Disarmed condition. If it stays within contest range of the objective, it gains Exposed and Strained instead. It’s a bit of a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation for your opponent, and great fun to play for both players.
Bane’s other Active Ability, Rocket Boots (1 Force) lets him Jump, and his I’ll Take On Any Job…For The Right Price Identity Ability lets him Refresh 1 Force and Heal 1 when an allied Unit Wounds and enemy Unit, and Refresh 1 additional Force if the ally doing the Wounding had the Bounty Hunter tag. Note that, apart from Units in this squad pack, that tag only applies to one other Unit in the game at the moment, Jango Fett, so you might consider including him in your strike team along with this squad.
Finally, No One Gets Between Me And My Job (1 Force) can be activated when an ally makes a combat action, and Bane is not Engaged with any enemy characters. You then choose a target of that combat action that’s within Range 4 of Bane, and Bane can then deal 2 damage to it. If the target(s) of the combat action aren’t that close to Bane, he can instead Jump toward one of them.
His Needs No Introduction combat stance has 8 attacks at range and 6 in melee combat, and its combat tree has up to 8 damage, 2 Heals, 2 Shoves, 2 Jumps, a Pinned and a Disarmed condition spread across its branches, making it suitable for all kinds of combat situations. Both its Ranged and Melee Expertise are a bit in the middle of the road with 2 Critical Hits at maximum Expertise as well as an extra Hit at range and an extra damage in Melee, but his Defense Expertise is really great with 2 Blocks, a Critical hit turned into a Failure, a Heal and a Jump at maximum Expertise.
The As Long As I Get Paid combat stance has the same Expertise Charts as Bane’s other stance, but it is equally proficient at range and in melee with 7 attacks and 6 defense dice in both. Its combat tree is a bit more straightforward than the other one, with up to 9 damage (6 of which are on the first 3 steps!), a Disarmed, a Pinned, a Strained Condition and 1 Shove.
Secondary of the Fistful of Credits Squad
Aura Sing (5 Points)
Aurra Sing is an excellent sniper who’s able to take part in the synergies of almost any other Unit thanks to her Payday (1 Force) Ability, which lets her gain any Tag of your choice after you reveal an Order card, meaning she could be a Battle Droid during Kalani’s turn, or a Force User in another.
Her Double The Contract, Double the Payout (1 Force) Reactive Ability can be activated after Sing makes an attack, and it then lets her make a 5 dice attack against a different Unit than the one that was the target of the attack. Her other Reactive Ability, Hit and Run (1 Force) also activates after Sing making an attack, and lets her Reposition.
Finally, her Expendable Distraction Innate Ability comes into effect when Sing makes a ranged attack against a target that is Engaged with any allied characters that aren’t Wounded. Then, Sing can choose to do 2 damage to one of the allied characters Engaged with the target in order to add 3 dice to her own attack roll. This Ability really is what the Bounty Hunters in this squad are for, making for expendable screens that can take damage in order to boost Sing’s attack power.
Her Not Asking Permission combat tree has 7 attacks at Range 5 and 6 attacks in melee combat, and its Ranged combat Expertise is especially good with 1 damage even at 1 Expertise, and 2 Critical Hits and a damage at maximum Expertise. Her Melee Expertise is a lot more humble with only a Critical Hit and a Hit at 3 Expertise or more. Her Defense Expertise, however, is pretty good with a Block, a Critical hit turned into a Failure, and a Climb at 3 or more Expertise. her combat tree has up to 8 damage, and a Pinned, a Strained, an Exposed, 2 Shoves, a Climb and a Reposition across its 2 branches, making it almost as versatile as Bane’s stances
Support of the Fistful of Credits Squad
Bounty Hunters (4 Points)
The Bounty Hunters are expendable cannon fodder for Sing’s sniper sneak attacks, but also slot well into all sorts of strike teams with the same Payday (1 Force) ability as Aurra Sing, so they can gain any Tag for one Turn. Interestingly, they are also the only Unit in the squad to actually slot into both the Republic and Galactic Civil War era, hinting that there might be other Bounty Hunter squad packs coming in the future, where these guys will fit in.
Their Tactics Ability, On The Trail, lets them Dash toward an enemy character at the start of their activation, and Tools Of The Trade (1 Force) lets them either apply Disarmed to a nearby enemy Unit or gain Sharpshooter [2] and Impact [2] for one Turn, which can bring both their Ranged and Melee attack dice up to 9 when they make a Focus action.
Their Hunting Season combat stance has 6 attacks at both Range 5 and in melee combat, and its Defense Expertise has 2 Blocks and 1 Heal at maximum Expertise, which will come in handy once Sing starts doing damage to them to boost her own attacks. Both her Melee and Ranged Expertise maxes out at 2 or more Expertise with a damage at 1 Expertise and a Critical hit and a damage (Ranged) and a Hit and a damage (Melee) at maximum Expertise. The combat tree starts with a choice of either a Shove and a damage or 2 damage at step 1, and then proceeds along just one branch with a damage, a Pinned and a damage, a Shove and a damage, and finally an Exposed condition at the end.
What should I combine with my Fistful of Credits Squad?
While the Fistful of Credits squad pack only comes with 2 Force on Bane, it’s Abilities are actually quite dependant on spending Force, so bringing them in a strike team with a 4 Force Primary such as Count Dooku in the Twice the Pride squad pack is a good idea. That pack also contains Jango Fett, the only Unit outside of this squad pack to interact with the Bounty Hunter tag so far in Shatterpoint. Otherwise, the Payday Ability means this squad pack can actually work well with almost any other squad, though lore-wise, a Separatist Alliance squad pack would be the obvious choice.
Galactic Civil War Squads
Fear and Dead Men Squad Pack
Why Should I Play the Fear and Dead Men Squad Pack?
This is the first Galactic Empire-Civil War Era only squad pack released for Star Wars Shatterpoint, and both its models and rules do a great job of evoking what the Empire feels like in the original Star Wars trilogy: Vader is terrifying, ruthless and elegant, and the Stormtroopers fight in formation with military discipline, pinning down Rebels with blaster fire all over the place. If you’re a fan of the bad guys of the original trilogy and can’t wait to mimic blaster sounds and the hiss of Vader’s breathing apparatus as you carve through your opponents’ squads, this is just the squad pack for you.
Lore of the Fear and Dead Men Squad Pack
This squad pack is our second encounter with Darth Vader in Star Wars Shatterpoint, and it shows him as the arrogant warrior monk of the original trilogy: a half-human monster of arrogance and rage who thinks of himself as the apex predator of Force users in an increasingly disenchanted and technocratic galaxy ruled by the cold might of the Empire. The Stormtroopers in this squad pack are the uniform face of the empire: the faces on their helmets devoid of emotion or compassion as they march forward, ready to die for the Empire at any time. In the original trilogy, the Stormtroopers famously can’t really hit anything with their blasters, but that’s not the case in the game at all, making them all the more terrifying foes for any rebels deciding to futilely resist them or their master.
Primary Unit of the Fear and Dead Men Squad Pack
Darth Vader, The Emperor’s Servant (3 Force, 7 Squad Points)
This second version of Darth Vader so far in Star Wars Shatterpoint is an incredibly dangerous and aggressive close combat Primary for players who fancy a playstyle of reckless, all-out attack.
Like his other incarnations in this game, he has 12 Stamina and 3 Durability. His Tactics Ability, You Don’t Know the Power of the Dark Side, lets him remove 2 Damage from himself and Refresh 1 Force every time he activates, which is going to happen a lot (see his Identity Ability below).
His Active Ability, Anger, Hate, Aggression, costs 1 Force and lets him Dash and add 3 dice to his next attack in the same activation. However, if he rolls any Failures in that attack roll, he gains Exposed. This ability really sums up his playstyle: Charge at the enemy, even if it makes you vulnerable to counterattacks.
Vader has the You Are Unwise to Lower Your Defenses Reactive Ability, which lets him do 3 Damage to a character attacking him in melee if their attack roll for that attack contains any Failures. 3 Damage is above average for these “Deflect” type abilities in the game, but it does cost 1 Force to balance it out.
The only one of Vader’s abilities that has anything to do with the rest of his squad is his Perhaps I Can Find New Ways To Motivate Them Innate Ability, which lets another allied Galactic Empire character Dash whenever Vader Wounds an enemy unit.
Finally, his awesome You Cannot Hide Forever Identity Ability gives him the impressive privilege of potentially activating three times or more for every time you shuffle your Order Deck (if you include using the Shatterpoint card): If he finishes an activation without Wounding an enemy unit, and you activated him by picking him from the Order Deck rather than Shatterpointing him or picking him from Reserve, you can put his Order Card back in the Order Deck! This is a bit situational, since you can’t put Vader in Reserve or use the Shatterpoint card for him before his Order Card comes up, but if you pick him from the Order Deck, finish an Activation without Wounding anyone (remember you don’t have to take all steps in your Combat Tree in an attack!), put him back in the Order Deck, draw him again and make a normal activation, and then draw the Shatterpoint Card, you can activate him 3 times.
In principle, as long as you keep not Wounding anyone, you can just keep on putting him back in the Order Deck infinitely, but since taking down enemies is what he’s all about, you probably don’t want to do that, and it would also potentially keep you from ever shuffling your Order Deck, thus preventing you from ever refilling your Force Pool – but the potential is there if you like deck-stacking shenanigans like this one!
Darth Vader has two Combat Stances: Form V Djem So and Form V Shien.
Form V Djem So is a very aggressive close combat stance with 8 attack dice in melee, no ranged attack dice and 5 Defence dice in both ranged and melee. Its Combat Expertise is full of extra Hits, maxing out at 1 Critical Hit and 3 Hits at 4 or more Expertise. Its Defense Expertise maxes out at 3 Expertise with 2 Blocks and a Critical Hit turned into a Hit, which isn’t all that impressive for a close combat Primary.
Djem So‘s Combat Tree has 6 Damage and a Strained across the first three steps, which is a huge amount of reliable damage if you use his Anger, Rage, Aggression Ability to roll 11 attack dice. Then, it branches out into either a Jump and a Damage or a Disarmed and a Damage, and then reunites into 3 Damage and Finally a Shove. It’s a very simple, very hard-hitting Combat Tree that will rarely let you down and fits Vader’s playstyle really well.
Shien is a much more defensive stance for when you need to catch your breath between charges. It has 7 dice in melee and 5 at range (Range 4), and a lovely 6 dice in Defense for both attack modes.
Its Ranged Expertise gives you a Critical Hit and a Hit at just 1 Expertise, and adds an additional Critical Hit at 4 or more Expertise. Its Melee Expertise gives you 1 Critical Hit at 1 Expertise and maxes out at 2 Critical Hits at 4 or more Expertise. Its Defense Expertise is great, with a Block and a Heal at 1 Expertise and a maximum of 2 Blocks and 2 Heals at 4 or more Expertise.
Shien’s Combat Tree is much more versatile than Djem So‘s, but has less Damage overall. It starts out at 2 Damage and a Shove, and then branches out into two paths that never reunite. The top path goes 1 Damage and a Heal, 1 Damage and an Exposed, 2 Heals, and 2 Damage and a Shove – great for healing up and putting some distance between you and the target. The bottom path goes 1 Damage and a Pinned, 1 Damage and a Shove, 2 Damage and a Disarmed, and 1 Damage and a Reposition, which is more suited for weakening and debuffing an enemy.
All in all, Darth Vader is a massive beast in combat, and since he can activate multiple times and Heal himself up pretty well, it would be fair to characterize him as a Primary who doesn’t really need the rest of his squad, just like some of the other Dark Side users in the game.
Secondary Unit of the Fear and Dead Men Squad Pack
Stormtrooper Sergeant (3 Points)
The Stormtrooper Sergeant is a Secondary Unit with good shooting and plenty of access to healing and Conditions. He works best when he’s close to the rest of his squad. He has 9 Stamina and 2 Durability.
His Inexorable Advance Tactics Ability lets you choose an allied Galactic Empire Supporting Unit at the beginning of his activation, and let them Advance at the cost of suffering 1 Damage. This trope about suffering to excel is something that seems like it’s going to be everywhere in Galactic Empire rules writing, as we’ll see below. The Stormtrooper Supporting Unit in this squad pack is tough and can Heal, so giving them 1 Damage to Advance outside of their activation will be worth it most of the time.
The Sergeant’s Imperial Firepower Active Ability costs 1 Force and lets you choose 1 enemy character within Range 4 of two or more friendly Galactic Empire characters, and then that enemy character gains either Pinned or Disarmed. Having options for Conditions is great, but requiring the target to be close to 2 or more of your characters really encourages you to advance in close formation, so keep that in mind. This is even more true for the Coordinated Offensive Reactive Ability, which triggers when this Unit or another allied Stormtrooper character attacks. It then lets you add 1 dice to their attack roll for each friendly Stormtrooper Unit apart from the attacking unit that is within Range 5 of the target and can see it. That’s a lot of stuff to keep track of for just 1 added attack dice, since at the time we’re writing this, the Sergeant and the Supporting Unit of this squad pack are the only Stormtrooper Units in the game, but we hope that changes in the future.
Like all Stormtroopers (so far), the Sergeant has the Only Imperial Stormtroopers Are So Precise Innate Ability, which gives them Sharpshooter [1], so they add an additional attack dice in ranged attacks when they’ve made a Focus Action.
The Sergeant’s Forward Assault Combat Stance has 5 attack dice in melee but 6 at range (Range 5), and a decent 5 Defense dice in both melee and ranged combat. His Ranged Expertise maxes out at a solid Critical Hit, 2 Hits and a Pinned at 3 or more Expertise (great with an Expertise source for a Condition!) and his less impressive Melee Expertise maxes out at a Hit and a Damage at 3 or more Expertise. His Defense Expertise, which seems to be shared by all Stormtroopers, maxes out at 2 Blocks at 3 or more Expertise.
His Combat Tree starts a 1 Damage and a Heal, and for the second step, you can choose either a Damage and a Shove or a Damage and an Exposed. Then, they branch out: The top path goes 2 Heals and a Damage and then 1 Heal and 2 Damage (lots of healing!), and the bottom path goes a Reposition and a Damage and then a Shove and a Damage. All that healing further encourages keeping you squad close to each other, but the Shoves and Repositions are also great for setting up targets for Vader and making sure everyone is within range of each other for the abilities that require that.
Supporting Unit of the Fear and Dead Men Squad Pack
Stormtroopers (4 Points)
This is the baseline Supporting Unit for the Galactic Empire. They’re tough at 9 Stamina and 2 Durability, and they’re very decent ranged combatants due to their extra Focus dice from Only Imperial Stormtroopers are So Precise (see the Sergeant entry above) and their Assault Tactics Active Ability, which lets them Dash, take a Damage and then perform a free Focus Action for 1 Force.
Their other Active Ability, For The Empire (1 Force) is the first Active Ability in the game to require the use of an action to perform it. It lets you choose an enemy character who is Engaged with someone from this Unit, and then choose one of the allied characters that enemy character is Engaged with (it’s a bit clumsily written on the card). You then Push that enemy character Range 2 away from the chosen allied character and give the enemy character Exposed.
The Stormtroopers’ Assault Training Combat Stance has 5 attack dice in melee and 5 at range (Range 5), and 4 defense dice in melee and 5 at range. Its Ranged Expertise opens at a Pinned (there it is again, a theme among Stormtroopers that’s actually very thematic in the context of the original trilogy, where Rebels are always pinned down in corridors full of Imperial blaster fire) at 1 Expertise, and maxes out at a Critical Hit, a Hit, a Damage and a Pinned at 4 or more Expertise. Its Melee Expertise and Defense Expertise are just like the ones on the Combat Stance for the Sergeant in the entry above.
Its Combat Tree opens at 1 Damage, and then branches out into either a Strained and 1 Damage or 2 Heals, which are both really good options for step 2. Then, it reunites at step 3 for 1 Damage and a Shove, and then gives you the choice of either 1 Damage and an Exposed or 1 Damage and a Disarmed, and finally reunites at step 5 for 2 Damage. It’s a Combat Tree full of good options, with the access to Heals or a Strained at step 2 being one of its highlights.
What Should I Combine with my Fear and Dead Men Squad Pack?
At the moment, the most thematic choice for a companiong squad to this squad pack is the Jedi Hunters Squad Pack, even though the version of Vader in this Squad Pack doesn’t have the Inquisitorius Tag that interacts with that pack: Both squad are Galactic Civil War Era Empire squads. If you don’t care about you team being thematic, your other option is the Fearless and Inventive Squad Pack that releases at the same time as this one – they don’t have any Tag synergies, but the Secondary/Supporting unit combos of the two packs are good for very different roles, giving you some versatility to your team. The best option would be to combine it with another squad with more Stormtroopers in it, and we’ll update this entry if and when such a squad pack becomes available.
Fearless and Inventive Squad Pack
Why Should I Play the Fearless and Inventive Squad Pack?
This is the first proper Squad Pack for the Rebel Alliance, and AMG has decided to open with a deep cut of Episode 6 costumes that no fan of the Original Trilogy should miss out on. Gameplay-wise, this squad pack is a really fun (and very Original Trilogy) combo of an impressive and dangerous Jedi Primary and a really scoundrel-y Secondary and Support Unit. You’ll get to march stoically into battle with a Luke who finally (movie chronology-wise) accepts who he is, while disguised Leia, Lando and R2-D2 are running around in the background punching Stormtroopers in vulnerable spots and setting up traps and ambushes. That’s a lot of classic Star Wars magic packed in just one Squad Pack!
Lore of the Fearless and Inventive Squad Pack
This Squad Pack features our heroes of the Original Trilogy as they appear during the opening acts of Return of the Jedi, with Luke as a pretty powerful Jedi confronting Jabba the Hutt, while Leia, Lando and R2-D2 are in disguise to better blend into the hive of scum and villainy that is Jabba’s palace and his pleasure barge. All the costumes in this pack are very specific to this classic quest to get Han Solo out of his carbon prison, to the degree that only Luke looks like he’d belong anywhere else than on Tatooine. This is a pack that shows the Rebels using cunning and subterfuge as they start taking the fight back to the Empire after the devastating defeats of episode 5.
Primary of the Fearless and Inventive Squad Pack
Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker (3 Force, 7 Squad Points)
Luke is a powerful Jedi Primary with 11 Stamina and 3 Durability. His Return of the Jedi Tactics ability lets him Jump and Refresh 1 Force every time he activates, so while he only has 3 Force to begin with, a reliable Force Refresh that can happen twice for every shuffle of your deck (if you Shatterpoint Luke) is a rare and very valuable ability.
His You Can Either Profit By This, Or Be Destroyed Active ability costs 1 Force is really fun and interactive for both you and your opponent: It lets you choose and Active objective within Range 2 of Luke. Then, all enemy characters who are contesting that objective are allowed to make a Dash move (if your opponent chooses to do so!), and then Luke can Dash toward the objective and make a 5 dice melee attack. Giving you a Dash and a 5 dice melee attack in an ability for 1 Force is very powerful, but presenting the enemy with a tactical choice to either lose the contest of the objective or risk being attacked makes it even more interesting – and the outcome for you is positive whether the enemy characters Dash or stay put.
Luke has two Reactive abilities: Deflect it the standard lightsaber defence against shooting attacks, allowing you to do 2 Damage to an enemy unit that makes a Shooting attack against Luke in which they roll at least 1 Failure, and I Will Not Fight You lets Luke Heal twice and Jump after a melee attack against him which contains at least 1 Failure roll (it costs 1 Force).
Finally, his Identity ability is I Am A Jedi, Like My Father Before Me, which gives Luke Immunity to Expose when his Order Card is in the Order Deck or in Reserve, or Immunity to Pinned when his Order Card isn’t in the Order Deck, further boosting Luke’s freedom of movement and resilience.
Luke’s two combat stances are Form V Djem So and Form III Soresu.
Form V Djem So has 8 attacks in melee and none at range, but it has 5 Defense dice in both melee and ranged combat. Its Combat Expertise is pretty straightforward with 2 Hits at 1-2 Expertise, ramping up to a Critical, a Hit and a Damage at maximum Expertise. Its Defense Expertise maxes out at 4 or more Expertise with 2 Blocks and a Critical Hit turned into a Hit. Its Combat Tree has a lot of damage early in the tree, with 2 Damage at step 1, 3 at step 2 and a Damage and a Reposition at step 3. That’s a very solid first 3 steps! Then, it branches out into either a Damage and an Expose or a Damage and a Disarmed, and ends in a Strained and a Damage and finally 2 Damage and a Jump. That’s a maximum of 10 Damage and lots of conditions.
Form III Soresu is more defensive, with only 7 attack dice in melee (and still none at range), but 6 Defense dice at both melee and range. Its Combat Expertise starts at a Critical Hit and maxes out at 2 Critical Hits and a Jump, and its Defense Expertise maxes out at 2 Blocks and a Critical Hit turned into a Failure. Its Combat Tree has all sorts of Conditions as well a decent amount of damage: At step 1, it has 2 Damage and a Shove, step 2 branches out into either 2 Heals (very good for step 2 in a defensive stance!) or a Damage and another Shove, step 3 is 2 Damage and a Jump, and then the last two steps branch out into either 2 Heals and then a damage and a Shove or 2 Damage and a Pinned followed by 1 Damage and a Disarmed.
The excellent abilities and the fact that he has both an awesome aggressive stance and an equally great defensive stance makes Luke a really fun and powerful debut Primary for the Rebel Alliance.
Secondary of the Fearless and Inventive Squad Pack
Boushh (Leia Organa) (4 Points)
This first release of Leia as a Shatterpoint miniature is a bit of a weird one: She’s in full disguise and more of a bounty hunter type character than a general or princess. She has 9 Stamina and 2 Durability, and she has the Spy keyword, which lets her interact with the Support unit of this pack via her Fan Out Tactics ability, which lets her or another allied Spy Reposition at the beginning of Leia’s activation.
Leia’s Low Blow Active ability costs 2 Force, and lets you push an enemy character she’s Engaged with Range 2 away, and then you Push Leia in the same direction and make a Focus action with her – a great way to move an enemy away from your Primary or an objective while setting Leia up for a melee attack.
Her Fearless and Inventive Reactive ability costs 1 Force and can be used just before you roll dice when making a melee attack as part of a combat action with Leia. It lets you add 2 dice to the attack roll for each non-Wounded enemy character apart from the target that Leia is Engaged with, which is an awesome way to diminish the effect of enemy bodyguard characters, since you’ll just hit harder the more characters the enemy tries to protect their key characters with.
Finally, Leia’s I Want Fifty Thousand, No Less Innate ability gives you an additional Momentum token when she Wounds an enemy Primary unit, unless the enemy chooses to spend 1 Force – either outcome is great for a free ability.
Leia’s Rough and Tumble combat stance gives her 6 attack dice in both melee and range, but 6 Defense dice in melee and 5 at range. Her Ranged Combat Expertise maxes out at 2 Critical Hits and 1 Damage, while her Melee Combat Expertise maxes out at a Critical Hit and a Damage. Her Defensive Expertise starts at a Block and maxes out at a Block and a Critical Hit turned into a Failure.
The Rough and Tumble Combat Tree is very versatile, with multiple branches. It starts at a Pinned and a Damage, branches out into either a Disarmed and a Damage or a Shove and 2 Damage at step 2, then a Strained or a Damage at step 3, a Damage and an Exposed or 2 damage at step 4, and finally 3 Damage at step 5.
All in all, the Boushh version of Leia is an aggressive and dangerous Secondary that excels at messing with your opponent’s Primaries.
Support Unit of the Fearless and Inventive Squad Pack
Lando and R2-D2, Inside Job (3 Points)
Lando and R2-D2 have 7 Stamina and 2 Durability, but don’t let that convince you that they’ll go down too easily: Their Clever Disguise Innate ability renders them immune to shooting attacks when their Order Card is in the Order Deck or in Reserve!
Their Mingle Active ability lets each character in their unit Dash for 1 Force, or Advance if there are no enemies within Range 3 of them.
The Element of Surprise Reactive ability costs 1 Force and lets you add 2 dice to each attack roll of a combat action made by this unit (a Support Unit of 2 characters can always make an attack roll for each character as part of a combat action). The downside to this otherwise awesome ability is that if you roll 2 or more Failures in those attack rolls, Land and R2-D2 gain the Exposed condition.
Their other Reactive ability, Forward Planning, allows an activating friendly Primary or Secondary unit to remove one condition when they start their activation within Range 4 of this unit – an awesome supporting ability!
This unit’s On The Sly Combat Tree has 6 attack dice in melee and 5 in range (at Range 4), as well as 5 Defense dice in both melee and range. Its Ranged Combat Expertise maxes out at a Critical Hit, a Hit and a Damage, and its Melee Combat Expertise maxes out at that result as well. Its Defensive Expertise is pretty strong, maxing out at 2 Blocks and a Critical Hit turned into a Hit at 3 Expertise.
Its Combat Tree starts out at 2 Damage at step 1, has a Damage and a Shove at step 2, and then branches out into either a Heal and a Damage or a Heal and a Pinned (awesome combo) at step 3, 2 Heals or a Disarmed and a Damage or a Dash at step 4, and 2 damage at step 5 (if you take the Dash, the tree ends at step 4). Once again, the tree underscores how this unit is quite literally meant as a supporting unit, so keep it close to the rest of your squad.
What Should I Combine With My Fearless and Inventive Squad Pack?
We don’t know a lot about the Galactic Civil War era squads yet, but so far, it seems your best bet for a companion pack to this squad pack is the Jedi Hunters Squad Pack, which is completely non-thematical, but it will benefit from all the Force Refresh Luke brings to the table. We’ll update this section as more packs for the same era are revealed.
Multiple Era Squads
You Cannot Run Squad Guide
Why Should I Play the You Cannot Run Squad Pack?
The You Cannot Run Duel Pack gives you two beautiful miniatures based on the recent Obi-Wan Kenobi TV series: Darth Vader and Obi-Wan Kenobi. The box doesn’t give you a full squad to play, but it does give you a very powerful (and awesome-looking) aggressive Primary with the highest Stamina in the game, and a Secondary Force User with some of the best healing powers in the game as well. So if you feel confident breaking up the standard squad combinations of squad pack releases and start experimenting with mixing and matching Primaries and Secondaries, this might be just the place to start.
Lore of the You Cannot Run Squad Pack
After Order 66 forced the Jedi into hiding, Obi-Wan Kenobi lived a secluded life on Tatooine while secretly watching over Anakin Skywalker’s son, Luke. Neither Obi-Wan nor Darth Vader knew that the other was alive during this time, until an encounter with the Jedi-hunting Inquisitorius forced Obi-Wan out of hiding to fulfill his duty to protect those who can’t protect themselves. The diorama in this pack depicts the tragic moment when Obi-Wan and his former apprentice face each other for the first time since the Clone Wars, and it becomes clear how powerful Vader has become, and how diminished the flow of the Force within Kenobi has become in the same time-span. It’s a setup for a great comeback story and a pivotal moment for the two old friends right at the midpoint of the time between the Clone Wars and Vader’s final redemption at the end of the Galactic Civil War.
Primary of the You Cannot Run Squad Pack
Darth Vader, Jedi Hunter (4 Force, 7 Squad Points)
This incarnation of Darth Vader is a very powerful and aggressive Sith Lord with a Stamina and Durability characteristic of 12/3, which is the highest in the game so far.
All his abilities are designed for causing damage to enemy characters: Vader’s Fury (1 Force) is the only Active Ability, and lets him Advance and then add 2 damage to the damage pool of his next attack in that activation after making the attack roll – a nice addition to a movement ability since neither of Vader’s combat trees go as high damage-wise as heavy hitters such as Grievous. Vader is also great at retaliating when attacked, with Riposte letting him do 2 damage to a melee attacker if the attacker rolls any failures in their attack roll (just like he does in his Anakin form as a Clone Wars model in the Core Set), and The Sith Lord Strikes Back, lets him Dash and make a 5 dice attack against his attacker after being Wounded.
Apart from his own damage output and ability to apply conditions to the enemy (more on that just below), Vader’s main contribution to the squad he’ll lead is Your Hatred Makes You Powerful, which is an Identity Ability that lets any ally attacking in melee take 2 damage to themself and then add 3 dice to their attack roll.
Darth Vader’s Dark Rage combat stance only works in melee, but represents an extremely aggressive fighting style that, while it maxes out at “only” 10 damage including Combat Expertise, has several 2 damage steps ealry on in the tree, as well as lots of Shoves, a Strained condition at step 3 and even a Dash for himself to press forward after attacking. The Combat Expertise for this stance also has two Critical symbols for just one Expertise dice, making his attacks very reliable. This combat stance doesn’t have the best Defensive Expertise, however, so you have to roll at least 3 Expertise dice in the defense roll to just get two extra Blocks. This doesn’t matter so much when you’re a Sith Lord with 12 Stamina and you get a free 5 dice attack when someone Wounds you, though.
His other combat stance, Form V Djem So, has an excellent 7 dice at Range 4 in ranged combat, but with little access to Critical Hits in its Combat Expertise. Instead, it has a Shove at step 1 in the combat tree, a Pinned or an Exposed condition at step 3, and even a Climb at the end, making it great for locking down key targets or taking over objectives, and the Defensive Expertise on this stance also has 2 Blocks right out of the gate at 1 to 3 Expertise dice.
The final thing to note about this very powerful version of Darth Vader is that he has both the Galactic Empire and Galactic Republic Tag, and the Era tags for both the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War, meaning he can be the Primary of almost any squad you can think of.
Secondary of the You Cannot Run Squad Pack
Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Out of Hiding (4 Points)
Obi-Wan Kenobi, Jedi Out of Hiding is a Secondary Unit version of Obi-Wan Kenobi that portrays him as a shadow of his former self, but with the same core values that drove him in the Clone Wars. He seems pretty vulberable at 8 Stamina/ 2 Durability, but he has so many ways of gaining Heal that he can still soak up a lot of damage for a Secondary Unit.
His Tactics Ability, Run, lets himself or an allied character who is in close combat with an enemy character Heal and Reposition, which makes it a candidate for one of the best support/defense abilities in the game, and while it can help you heal your allies and get them out of harm’s way, remember that Heal can also be used to remove a condition, so it’s also great for removing any obstacles your close combat Primary might have on the path to Wounding an enemy character, such as a Pinned or Strained condition, and the ability doesn’t have any range requirements between Obi-Wan and the ally he aids.
Obi-Wan’s only ability with a Force Cost, Mind Trick (2 Force), lets you flat out stop an attack against a nearby friendly character. The attacker then gets to pick another target for the attack, but has to remove two dice from the attack roll.
Finally, Last Stand of the Jedi gives Obi-Wan 2 extra attack and defense dice when he has an Injured token, which is a nice bonus, but since he only has 2 Durability, you’ll rarely get a buffed attack/defense roll out of it more than once.
His Form III Soresu combat stance is pretty unique in how defensive it is, with three branches on the tree that give him combinations of Shoves, Heals and damage, and even a Jump and a Reposition. If you go for the route through the tree with the most healing, 4 hits will grant you an impressive 4 Heals, so if Obi-Wan can survive an attack against him, he has a good chance of getting healed up on his counterattack.
Like Darth Vader, Jedi Hunter, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Out of Hiding can be used in both Clone Wars and Galactic Civil War squads, but his only tags are Force User and Jedi, so he doesn’t synergize as well with clones as his Clone Wars version, and won’t benefit very much from being in Rebel squads when those start coming out. That being said, he is a really good defense buff Secondary Unit that will improve the survivability of any squad that doesn’t need a specific other Secondary to make its synergies work.
What should I combine with my You Cannot Run Squad Pack?
Basically anything. Obi-Wan Kenobi generally just improves whatever squad he’s in, but since many Secondary slots in squads are occupied by units with Abilities that are crucial to making the Supporting Units of those squads work, you’ll have to get creative. While it’s completely inappropriate lore-wise, you could swap Jango Fett in the Twice the Pride pack for Obi-Wan. Obi-Wan will probably make more sense in upcoming “interim” or Rebel squads, and we’ll update this space if or when that is the case.
Darth Vader, Jedi Hunter works well with almost anything, since his abilities aren’t tied to any specific tags, but he does work particularly well with the Secondary and Supporting Units of the Jedi Hunters Squad, who all have abilities that interact with Vader’s Inquisitorious tag. Alternatively, you can give Vader command of Rex and the 501st Clone Troopers just for old time’s sake, since clone commander Secondaries and their clone Supporting Units generally work well on their own, letting him Vader run wild with his excellent attacking power.
Jedi Hunters Squad Guide
Why Should I Play the Jedi Hunters Squad
This squad pack is the first all-Force User squad pack, with red spinning lightsabers on every character for some serious melee fighting power. It it also the first squad to feature a one character Supporting Unit, but a choice of two different Supporting Units, giving you more tactical variety than other squad packs –and its abilities are very strong around objective control, letting you literally remove control of an objective from your opponent or win a tie in an objective contest. Finally, this squad also shares the Inquisitorious tag with Darth Vader from the You Cannot Run Duel Pack, so if you want to run a terrifying, black-clad Dark Side melee squad that can cut through anything, the Jedi Hunters squad pack might be just the one for you.
Lore of the Jedi Hunters Squad
The Inquisitors of the Imperial Inquisitorious are Palpatine’s Order 66 made manifest: They live only to root out and capture or kill the Galaxy’s remaining Jedi after the rise of the Empire, and Jedi in hiding everywhere live in fear of them.
Most of them used to be Jedi or Jedi Younglings themselves, who were spared for their powers or were cunning enough to switch sides at the right time, and with their terrifying spinning lightsabers and ruthless efficiency, they’ve hunted down and fought against notorious Jedi of the interim years between the Republic and the beginning of the Rebellion such as Obi-Wan Kenobi, Ezra Bridger and his companions, and even Cal Kestis of the Jedi: Fallen Order/Survivor video games.
Primary of the Jedi Hunters Squad
Grand Inquisitor, Fallen Jedi (3 Force Points, 8 Squad Points)
The Grand Inquisitor is a Primary Unit focused on intimidating the enemy and boosting his Inquisitorious squad mates, but he can also be very strong in melee, especially when fighting for control of objectives.
His You Know Who We Are Tactics Ability lets him and an allied Inquisitorious Secondary or Supporting Unit Dash, and when an allied Inquisitorious Unit Wounds an enemy Unit, the Clearly, You Were a Poor Student Identity Ability lets the Grand Inquisitor grant 2 Heals to an Inquisitorious ally, and Refresh 2 Force it the Wounded Unit was a Force User.
His The Temple Records Are Quite Complete (1 Force) lets him flip his stance card and add 2 dice to his defense rolls when an enemy targets him in melee combat, and finally, his awesome Secrets Uncovered (2 Force) Active Ability lets him remove the control token of your opponent from an Active objective at Range 5 – an ability no other Unit in the game has at the moment, and which gives you huge control over the flow of the game, forcing the enemy to stay close to claimed objectives they want to keep scoring.
His Form II Makashi combat stance has 7 attacks in melee and 5 at Range 4, and its combat tree does up to 10 damage, as well as a Pinned, an Exposed/a Strained condition, a Shove and a Jump. Its Ranged Expertise gives you a Critical hit, a Hit and a damage at maximum Expertise, and its Melee Expertise gives you 2 Blocks and an impressive 2 damage at maximum Expertise. Its Defense Expertise simply gives you 2 Blocks and a Critical hit turned into a Hit at maximum Expertise.
His other combat stance, Form V Djem So, has much better Defensive Expertise with a Block, 2 Critical hits turned into Failures, and a Jump at maximum Expertise, while its Ranged and Melee Expertise are a little more humble than those of the Makashi stance, replacing the damage with a Hit at Ranged Expertise and removing 1 damage compared to the other stance in Melee Expertise. Its combat tree has up to 7 damage, 3 Shoves, a Disarmed/a Reposition, a Pinned condition and finally an Active Ability Icon (for free objective control removal!) across its multiple branches.
Secondary of the Jedi Hunters Squad
Third Sister, Reva (4 Points)
Third Sister is a very aggressive melee duelist that can also increase the attack power of her Inquisitorious Supporting comrades.
Her Call The Hunt (1 Force) Active Ability lets a nearby Inquisitorious Supporting Unit Dash or make a 5 dice attack, and Third Sister’s other Active Ability, Force Jump (1 Force) lets her Jump.
She can Deflect to do 2 damage to the attacker of a ranged attack against her if the attack roll contains one or more Failures, and finally, her Your Fear Betrays You (1 Force) Reactive Ability can be used when she makes a melee attack, and then you can remove 1 or more conditions from the target, and add 2 dice to your attack roll for each of those removed conditions. This can be used to really set up an enemy unit for being killed off by Third Sister by simply applying as many conditions to it as you can with your other Units first.
Her Form II Makashi combat stance only works in melee with its 7 attacks, but it has a pretty good Melee Expertise Chart that maxes out at 1 Critical hit, 2 Hits and a damage. Her Defense Expertise gives you 2 Blocks and a Critical hit turned into a Hit at maximum Expertise. Its combat tree has up to 7 damage, up to 3 Shoves, an Exposed condition and a Jump.
Support of the Jedi Hunters Squad
Fifth Brother (4 Points)
Fifth Brother is an expert at moving enemies off objectives, and then defending those objectives for you.
His excellent Force Repulse (2 Force) Active Ability lets you Push all characters within Range 2 of him Range 2 away from him – an amazing way of clearing the area around an objective to make sure you’ll gain control of it. His other Active Ablity, Force Jump (1 Force), lets him Jump, and Enfeeble lets him apply an Exposed condition to the nearby target of an allied Inquisitorious Unit’s combat action.
Fifth Brother has Protection and Steadfast when contesting Active Objectives, letting him ignore the first 1 damage and Shove of any enemy attack, and like Fourth Sister, his Inquisitorial Mandate Innate Ability lets him take control of an objective if the contest for the objective is a tie.
His Form II Makashi combat stance only has melee attacks, but 7 attack dice in melee, and a Critical hit, a Hit and a damage at maximum Melee Expertise. Its Defense Expertise simply gives you 2 Blocks at maximum Expertise, which is good enough since his melee defense dice are already 6, and his ranged defense dice are 5. His combat tree does up to 7 damage, as well as a Shove/an Exposed, a Strained, another Shove and an Active Ability Icon (for jumping or Force Repulse).
Fourth Sister (4 Points)
Your other choice of Supporting Unit, Fourth Sister, is also good at taking objectives, but pulls enemies toward her rather than away from her, and she’s a bit better at getting out of harm’s way.
She can Jump with Force Jump (1 Force), and Pull a nearby enemy character towards her with Force Pull (1 Force). Like Fifth Brother, she has Enfeeble, but instead of an Exposed, condition, she can apply a Pinned condition to the nearby target of an allied Inquisitorious Unit’s combat action.
Just like Fifth Brother, she can also take control of an Active objective if the contest is a tie, and when she is Wounded by an enemy effect, Swift Retreat lets her Reposition.
Her Form II Makashi combat stance has the same melee attacks and Melee/Ranged Expertise as Fifth Brother, but it switches its defense dice around (5 in melee, 6 in ranged). Its combat tree is also almost identical, but swaps the Exposed condition at step 1 for a Disarmed condition, and the Strained at step 2 for a Pinned condition.
What should I combine with my Jedi Hunters Squad?
Since no full squad pack yet exists that fits this one perfectly in terms of the lore, there are two principles you might use when picking a squad to accompany it in your strike team. First, you can pick any squad that has Darth Vader, Jedi Hunter as its Primary, since he interacts with the Inquisitorious tag that’s so important to the synergies of this squad pack. Second, since this is a squad pack with very little ranged attack power and a one character Supporting Unit, you might make up for that by combining it with a Battle Droid- based Separatist squad such as Ventress/Kalani/B1s (with Vader instead of Ventress as an option) or Appetite for Destruction.
