Editing Star Wars: Legion/Tactics/CIS (section)

====B1 Battle Droids====
(36 pts. errata'ed to 38 pts.) ''"Roger, roger."''

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Upgrade Cards
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<B>Heavy Weapon Upgrades (x1 Slot)</B>

''E-5C B1 Trooper'' (18 pts. errata'ed to 16 pts.) - Adds a 'bot with a machine gun analog. '''Always''' take this if you take nothing else, as its 3 black dice will contribute about the same statistical damage as all ''six'' of your standard troopers put together.

''E-60R B1 Trooper'' (20 pts. errata'ed to 18 pts.) - Try to guess what the 'R' stands for.  Adds a 'bot with a rocket launcher, who gets tired when you fire it.  Unsurprisingly, this one is pretty good versus vehicles and things with armor.  1 red and 2 black dice is the most any B1 has the ability to dish out on their own, and '''Impact 2''' allows two hits to become crits when fired at a target with Armor.  Range 2-4 is, again, good for hunting vehicles so long as they don't get too close, and the price is fair, considering this one doesn't have cumbersome.  A solid buy, when the situation calls for it.  Be aware though- Range 4, rather than the range 3 of your normal E-5's, means that if ''AI:Attack'' triggers and you're only within range 4 of enemies, you lose out on the rest of the squad's shooting (white dice may suck but if you aren't rolling them they have zero chance of hitting). Also bear in mind that the E-60R droid also carries the same E-5 blaster as the regular droids... so you can choose to fire that, thereby wasting an action and saving the rocket shot for later.

''E-5s B1 Trooper'' (20 pts. errata'ed to 18) - Adds a 'bot with a sniper rifle.  It can shoot range 1-4, rolls 1 red and 1 white dice, and has Critical 1, to turn one surge into a crit. It's not bad- throwing red dice with the bots is a welcome change of pace, as is the critical so you can actually use one of those surges.  Like with the E-60R droid, be wary of the range 4; you may want to consider taking a security droid if you take this.

''Radiation Cannon B1 Trooper'' (22 pts. errata'ed to 16 pts.) - Adds a 'bot with... a radiation cannon.  Has range 1-2, doing two red damage and the targeted unit gains a poison token if successfully wounded by your attack (at the end of the unit's next activation, each poison token on a unit causes one wound and is removed).  The red dice are very welcome, as is the extra damage from poison, but the short range may be off-putting.

<B>Personnel Upgrades (x1 Slot)</B>

''B1 Battle Droid'' (5 pts. errata'ed to 4 pts.) - Another basic clanker.  Adding one more as a buffer between incoming fire and your E-5C weapon is a good call, if you have nothing better to spend the points on.  If you have a lot of squads, however, consider just taking another basic B1 squad.

''OOM-Series Battle Droid'' (9 pts. errata'ed to 8 pts.) - Adds an OOM-series droid. Remember that one droid in ''The Phantom Menace'' with yellow on his head and he seemed to almost have a brain? It's one of those. He increases his unit's Coordination range to 2, and becomes the new squad leader. Could be useful to anchor a battle line if you're worried about not being able to Coordinate.

''B1 Secruity Droid'' (7 pts. errata'ed to 6 pts.) - Add a Security Droid mini, allowing you to exhaust its card to ignore '''AI: Attack''' on the attached unit, until the end of the activation. For three points more than the regular B1, its an okay way to get around breaks in your command chain, or function for a turn after you commander dies, or if he is too busy stabbing people to give orders.

''EV-series Medical Droid'' (14 pts.) - adds a medic droid who can heal one poison or wound token from a friendly non-droid trooper within range 1, twice per game. He also has the "non-combatant" keyword, meaning he can't fight and can't die until only he and the squad leader are left. If you're using one of the few non-droids and really want to make sure they stay alive, this is helpful to that end.

''PK-series Worker Droid'' (12 pts.) - adds a little repair droid who can heal an ion token, wound token, or damage token from a friendly vehicle or droid unit at range 1, twice per battle. He also has the "non-combatant" keyword, meaning he can't fight and can't die until only he and the squad leader are left. Useful for keeping your AAT's or Super Tactical Droids "alive".

''T-series Tactical Droid'' (18 pts.) - adds a squad leader version of the Commander of the same name. He removes the AI: Attack keyword, adds the Reliable 1 keyword, and becomes the squad leader. He also comes with a Sidearm ranged attack (meaning it can't do the regular E-5 attack that the rest of the squad gets) doing 1 red at range 1-3. Gives the squad a little extra punch, and a free surge token to boot. Plus it helps get around the AI rule. A little pricy but not a terrible choice.

''Viper Recon Droid'' (8 pts. errata'ed to 6 pts.) - adds a mini version of the Imperial probe droids from ''Empire Strikes Back''. It has a Sidearm ranged attack (meaning it can't do the E-5 attack like the rest of the squad) that does 2 white dice at range 1-2. It also allows the squad to spend an action to put two Observation tokens on an enemy unit at range 1-3 and LOS. Each Observation token can be spent to allow one of your units to reroll an attack die when attacking that unit. Not bad and only 2 points more than a standard Roger Roger, although it will eat up one of your actions to use it.

<B>Comms Upgrades (x1 Slot)</B>

''Comms Jammer'' (5 pts.) - Prevents enemy units at range 1 from receiving orders.  Really bad if your opponent has this equipped to a melee-heavy squad.  Even though our B1s aren't that good in melee, a squad or two equipped with these in a larger point game can prevent vehicles/elite infantry/Commanders from from getting face-up orders, if you're willing to sacrifice a minimum of 51 points per squad (or 41 pts. if using the reduced cost from the rules errata) to accomplish this.  Not useless, but not great, either. 

''Comms Relay'' (5 pts.) - Allows a unit with this equipped to pass an order to another friendly unit at range 1-2, but this means the squad that "passes" the order doesn't get one.  This has the potential to allow a unit at the end of your B1 conga-line to still receive orders, but for 5 more points, you could give anything that's not a Commander ''HQ Uplink'', instead.  You could also arrange your army in such a way that a B1 squad could pass an order to a non-Trooper squad, and still get an order token from another B1 squad through the '''Coordinate: Droid Trooper''' rule. This is pretty niche, and relies on you issuing 2 orders a turn, or else having a B1 squad equipped with ''HQ Uplink''. In the former case, you could potentially save 5 points over taking ''HQ Uplink'', though.

''HQ Uplink'' (10 pts.) - Exhaust this to allow a unit to issue an order to itself.  Useful, for the turn you need that unit to activate when you need it to, or to get a surge token from ''Aggressive Tactics''.  Note that this counts as the unit issuing an order to "itself" so cards like ''Crush Them!'' or "You Disappoint Me" won't apply to them.

''Long-Range Comlink'' (5 pts.) - You always count as being within range of your commander.  Situational, and not very helpful on smaller battlefields.  Extremely useful when doing missions involving Disarray or Rapid Reinforcements, as your clankers are even worse than usual when you can't issue orders to them.

''Integrated Comms Antenna'' (3 pts.) is a Droid Trooper-only upgrade. Essentially a reverse of the Commanding Presence upgrade, it allows your unit to be issued an order if it's within range 4 of the commander instead of the normal range 3.  It's a good use of some leftover points if your force is spread out.  However, if you've got a spare Command slot on your general, Commanding Presence (which was reduced in cost to 5 pts. by the rules errata) is probably better since it's not restricted to a single unit like this upgrade is.

<B>Gear Upgrades (x0 Slots)</B>

''Electrobinoculars'' (8 pts.) - Gain the ability to spend an action to give another friendly unit at range 1 an aim token.  B1 Battle Droids can ignore this card's ''Gear'' upgrade icon requirement.
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Tactics
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Your basic infantry squad.  With 1 wound, 1 courage, and white dice for both attack and defense, don't expect them to do much on their own, but quantity has a quality all its own. In general, try to build the biggest squads you can, unless you can drop enough extra personnel to pay for another basic squad. This makes units harder to wipe in one bad round of shooting, in the former, and more targets for your opponent to spread their fire, in the latter. 

These guys come with '''A.I.: Attack''' but also '''Coordinate: Droid Trooper'''. As often as possible, you want to use Coordinate to ensure that your troopers don't fall into being forced to attack when you don't quite want them to yet. Equipping one or two squads with an HQ Uplink can be extremely useful. Coordinate also activates off itself, so, yes, you want to make a daisy chain of B1s. The final coordinate can be used to order a B2 unit, or something similar.

As in the various movies and cartoons, the B1 clankers are just awful. But there's a lot of them!  A full 8 droid squad including an E-5C is only 60 points; the nearest enemy equivalent is a 6 man Rebel squad with Z-6 for the same points. Treat the clankers as essentially a 7 man bodyguard for their heavy weapon, and soften up enemies for your heavier hitters like Grievous or Dooku.

These guys are your objective grabbers: they're numerous, cheap, and don't get suppressed. Run 6 squads of these stupid duck robots and just dogpile on any and all objective tokens. Your opponent will have to dedicate a large amount of firepower and attention to blasting a bare MINIMUM of 36 models off the table, or risk losing the game. Every non-B1 unit in the CIS hits like a truck, so if your opponent is trying to shoot 36 models who are on objectives, he is ignoring the units that bring the real pain.

With how cheap these toasters are, feel free to treat yourself and also take another expensive unit or two! The 10/27/21 rules update modified them a little bit to be slightly more expensive as a base squad and with slightly cheaper upgrades- the meta up to that point had been to spam cheap naked units and spend lots of points on expensive stuff like AATs and/or Maul. Now they're trying to gently encourage players to take upgrades on the squads, as they're a little cheaper. Seems like naked B1 spam is still the way to go, but if you've got some points, throw in some heavy weapons so the squads are actually useful for more than camping on objectives.
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