Skirmish Upgrades: Extra Armor

Good morning gamers,

Last time, we talked about the Spectre Cell skirmish upgrade, and today, we're turning to one of my favorite upgrades (and one that was released with the Zeb and Sabine pack): Extra Armor. There's nothing fancy about this upgrade, but if it's added to the right team, it can be a GAME CHANGER. Let's see what it does and what kinds of models we want to use it with.

Extra Armor

For 1 point, you can distribute 4 Block Power Tokens (BPTs) at the start of the game. That's it. Yep, a start-of-game, one-time dump of defensive buffs. This may not seem like much, but there are a lot of ways that it can be helpful - the first of which is that it can make fragile-but-powerful units (glass cannons, as it were) just a bit more resilient. I talked about how BPTs are good on Ezra and Sabine last time (two characters who take most of the damage they receive, unless they can get a dodge on their white defense die), but any white die character who has a good combat profile is a good candidate. Even single black die models that have limited health and good combat stats can benefit from this.

Second, units that aren't able to generate power tokens love this upgrade. Since you can only have two power tokens at a time, models that generate their own power tokens aren't going to benefit from this upgrade as much, but any models that were released before Heart of the Empire are certainly good candidates (and even some who came afterwards benefit). The least useful units to benefit from this are certainly Riot Troopers, since they generate a BPT at the end of their turn if they don't have one already . . . and if they start with them, they're skipping out on a free BPT.

Third, units that have absolutely no defense dice LOVE having something they can throw in their defense. There aren't many units with no defense dice, but they do exist and they can even be pricey. Most of them also have good damage, so they're more of a glass cannon anyway than your usual glass cannon models.

This is simple enough, right? Okay, let's look at my top picks for this upgrade . . .

Star Wars Legion Unit Review: Tauntaun Riders

Hey Reader!

Following up on the Medium Blaster Trooper, today we're looking at Tauntaun Riders - arguably the crowd favorite of the "Hoth Models" that currently exist for Star Wars Legion. We will start with the profile analysis, then examine the units that synergize well with them, and then we'll discuss the tactical uses of the Tauntaun Riders, as I think sometimes they get slotted into a singular role when they are very much a multi-functional support unit.

I.  Stats: Death on the Wind

From a stats perspective, Tauntaun Riders are one of the strongest profiles in the entire Rebel army list (and one of the strongest support units in the game). You pay 90pts base for it, so it's justified, but basically all of the stats you like are on this unit: Move-3 means you can cover distance like crazy, and Agile 1 gives you a dodge token every time you do that, so you are rewarded for doing what you do.

Offensively this is a great unit: it's a solid melee attacker with 3 dice (4 if you take Tenacity and have suffered at least 1 wound), Ram 1 (converting a dice to a hit when you charge), Reposition (so you can get the angles to charge), surge to hit (so averaging 2 hits per model), and Relentless helps you get into combat more easily as you can Move-Move and still Attack on the same turn if you get into melee. And thanks to Unhindered you don't have to worry about losing move distance due to difficult terrain.

Skirmish Upgrades: Spectre Cell

Good morning gamers,

Today we're going to talk about a very niche skirmish upgrade: Spectre Cell. This upgrade was one of the driving reasons for me to get the Tyrants of Lothal expansion and the primary driver for getting Chopper and Hera. It heavily restricts the units you can run, but boy is it powerful (even after its errata). Let's see what it does!

Spectre Cell: Running the Star Wars Rebels Team

When my son and I first opened the Tyrants of Lothal box last year (we didn't get our hands on it fast enough when it came out), we looked at the Spectre Cell upgrade and said, "Well, that looks busted." The skirmish upgrade is simple: to use it, the only characters you can run are the six members of Phoenix squadron (Hera, Chopper, Kanan, Ezra, Zeb, and Sabine), all friendly figures get +1 damage and +1 block, and you can exhaust the upgrade during a friendly figure's activation to either perform an attack or give two movement points to another friendly figure. Easy right?

Yes, very easy - and FAR too powerful. A free damage with everyone and a free block with everyone was oppressive, especially in two-player games. We basically said, "Yeah, you can't use this card outside of a four-player team game." Then I looked up the erratas for Imperial Assault and found that they too thought that it was busted - at least the free damage/block part. Instead of getting a free damage/block, at the start of the round, you get to hand out 1 damage power token (DPT) and 1 block power token (BPT). That's . . . far more reasonable.