Good morning gamers,
We're kicking off the new year with a unit I have been using a lot: Stormtroopers. These are the OG Corps units for the Empire and in many ways, they've been surpassed by Snowtroopers (and maybe other Corps options). Still, these guys are still the default Imperial Corps for the starter sets and they also have a lot of customizability (for both Heavy Weapons and Personnel choices, and unit cards - though we'll be looking at the Heavy Response Unit variant next time). With a new battle force that allows you to run seven of these guys, maybe we're in a new era for the humble Stormtrooper to shine. Let's see what these guys bring to the table.
Stormtroopers: The Profile
Stormtroopers are only 44pts base and have red saves - this puts them top of the list (tied with Snowtroopers) for cheapest red-dice-save unit in the game. They keep their cost down by having surging-white attack dice and a single situational special rule - and if you have ways to generate aim tokens on these units (or on units with Exemplar within range 2), these guys don't feel like they're rolling white dice. Beyond this, you have some standard stats of Speed 2, Courage 1, and 4 starting models - all in all, not bad for just over 40pts.
I'm going to be honest, when I'm building lists with Stormtroopers in them, I'm looking to spend as little as possible on them - Stormtroopers are cheap red-save units, so keeping them cheap is important. Besides the upgrades that give you extra bodies, I don't think you need anything on these guys. Still, if you happen to have some points lying around, getting a few extra upgrades might be worth taking.
Heavy Weapon x1
There are a few options that are available to Stormtroopers and I think only two of them are bad. Del Meeko still costs too much and the T-21 doesn't bring enough to the table for me (crits ain't what they used to be and you get a higher expected damage amount from the DLT-19 for the same cost). The DLT-19 is the standard upgrade for me - two surging red dice, tied for the lowest-cost Heavy at 20pts, and Impact 1 if you happen to be shooting into armor is a pretty good deal. With 14 successful icons across their armament, they rival what you get from any other upgrade (including the Personnel squad upgrade that we'll be looking at next - though admittedly, that squad is also giving you more than one extra wound). It's a long-range weapon with range 4, so you can move 6" up the board and shoot at anything that moved/started more than 6" up the board - perfect for an early-game suppression hit and possibly knocking off a wound from a unit before it gets to punch you.
The T-21 is another option, but I wouldn't bother with it on Stormtroopers (in the Imperial Remnant list, this is an EXCELLENT option for any unit that can take a Heavy Weapon upgrade and doesn't have surge to hit). 4 white dice with Critical 2 does have a higher potential damage ceiling than 2 red dice, but you're still surging to hit with the DLT-19 (which will often be equivalent to Critical 2, especially with Impact 1 offsetting the value of Armor) - and with only 12 successful icons in the armament, the overall damage against non-Cover, non-Armor units is actually lower.
The HH-12 might see a renaissance now that Cumbersome just reduces the dice pool to 3 white dice with Impact 4 instead of 3 black dice with Impact 4 - 3 surging white dice are enough to present a credible alpha-strike option (though not as good as 2 surging red dice), but 3 black dice have 15 successful icons, so if you can emplace yourself early, you're expected to do more damage than the DLT-19 (and have more Impact to boot). For 22pts, this is an excellent anti-armor choice and a decent alpha-strike choice - if you have 2pts left over, you could upgrade a DLT-19 to one of these.
Finally, we have the RT-97C, which is also 22pts and has 1 red/3 white in its armament. This gives it 16 successful icons and as high a ceiling as the T-21. It doesn't have the Impact X keyword (it doesn't have any keywords), but with surge to hit, it's clocking in as a more reliable option than the T-21, it has range 4 access like most of the other weapons, and it's got a red die for reliable alpha-strike suppression/possibly-damage. All in all, you could run one of these . . . or a DLT-19 if you want the flexibility of Impact 1 or an HH-12 if you don't mind Cumbersome.
If you own the Imperial Special Forces pack, you have access to Gideon Hask and Del Meeko. I'll say this about Del straight up - he costs too much. His alpha-strike options are worse than everyone else, he costs almost twice as much, he still has 1 health, and the healing of mechs is not enough. Leave him at home. Gideon Hask, on the other hand, only costs 7-9pts more than the other heavies and provides Courage 2, a second wound, the Leader keyword so he's taken last, and Coordinate: Corps Trooper. If you have the points (and the model), Gideon isn't a terrible take - but he's also basically a shorter-range DLT-19 that comes with extra wounds/rules . . . and gets removed last, which is theoretically good for graceful damage degradation.
Finally, we have a new Heavy Weapon option in Agent Kallus. Kallus is comparable in cost to Hask and also boosts your Courage value. He adds a second Heavy Weapon slot, so he's not removing your access to any of the previous Heavy Weapon choices except Gideon Hask. He also has a niche rule where you can give an enemy unit you're engaged with 2 immobilize tokens . . . which you're not likely to try to use with a Stormtrooper unit now that they're rolling white attack dice in melee. Personally, I'd leave Kallus for your Riot Control Stormtroopers (who we'll also cover eventually) - his offense is pretty low for his cost AND he's aim-hungry and Stormtroopers are already aim-hungry.
Personnel x1
The Stormtrooper Squad that gives you 5 guys, just went down in cost, so that looks good. If you don't have those kinds of points, a Medical Droid or an "extra guy" (to include a Specialist or Captain if you need to burn a point and want an aim token or the ability to not count as suppressed when you're not panicked) are perfectly good options. I wouldn't bother with the Comms Technician - we'll talk about him when we get to Shoretroopers someday.
Gear x1
There are a host of options here, but I don't think you need any of them. If you want Environmental Gear for Unhindered, just run Snowtroopers; if you want Electrobinoculars, get a custom commander (Academy Trained or Defend in Depth). Maybe there are good options here, but I don't think you need to burn the points.
Grenades x1
There are lots of grenade options . . . and unless you're trying to get up to range 1, you don't need any of them. Getting black dice with Impact 4 or Suppressive from Impact Grenades or Sonic Grenades are probably your best options.
Training x1
By default, you can only get Imperial March on this squad - which isn't particularly useful unless you have a squad with just a medical droid in it that you're trying to catch up to someone far away (like an Infiltrating Vader). If you chose a Stormtrooper Captain in your Personnel slot, you can take other Training upgrades, but I don't know that you need any of them.
Command Cards
This is usually the part where I talk about command cards that are useful for a unit . . . and honestly, there are command cards that do things for Corps units, but you don't need any of them. When I've run Empire in Recon games, my usual plan is to get order control on everyone that isn't a Stormtrooper before I issue orders to Stormtroopers - in this way, I have perfect order control (or nearly perfect order control), since everything (or nearly everything) in my order pool is Corps. If I want a Corps token, I just draw it from the pool. Since the command cards that help your Corps specifically also issue orders only to Corps units . . . you're kind of fighting this order control objective, so I wouldn't recommend taking anything specifically for these guys.
That said, the Coordinated Fire Imperial generic 3-pip command card allows a Corps unit that spends an aim token to shuffle that aim token to a friend - this is a nice way to get a chain of Precise 1 off with a single aim token (which might have come from an Exemplar unit's aim token OR by the use of Aid). However you get the aim token, it saves you the need to get aim tokens for everyone (you really just need it on, say, an Academy Trained Imperial Officer).
You can also get suppressive from the new Imperial Officer/Agent 3-pip Inexorable Advance and potentially a free speed-1 move afterwards (which is nice if you started off suppressed - with or without Compel active). If you field up to two of these guys in Blizzard Force (which you might - if you don't run the HRU variants), the 3-pip gives these guys Suppressive and Spur, which is a quite useful pairing if you need to get somewhere in a hurry and want to panic someone off an objective.
Stormtroopers: Sample Lists and Strategy
Our first stop is a 14-act version of the new Stormtrooper Battalion battle force. In my opinion, if you're not running this list with 7 Corps units, you should probably be running a standard list. This list has the advantage of getting both types of the new generic commanders, a good selection of melee and ranged Corps units (all the boys in white), cheap Special Forces in Scout Troopers (I presume Probe Droids will also be cheap - though without knowing their cost, I've left them out of this list), cheap Support options in E-Webs, and your choice of heavies or Vader if you want them. I've gone for a pile of activations that lean into generating aim tokens with Target 2 from the pistols of the customizable heroes (and the three options that give you Exemplar or Aid to get those aims where you want them):
- Imperial Officer with Academy Trained, Trusted Agent, and Command and Control Uplink
- Imperial Agent with Tip of the Spear, Seize the Initiative, and Heavy Blaster Pistol
- Imperial Agent with Defend in Depth, Seize the Initiative, and Heavy Blaster Pistol
- 3x Stormtroopers with DLT-19 Stormtroopers and Stormtrooper Squads
- 3x Stormtroopers with HH-12 Stormtroopers
- 1x Stormtroopers with FX-9 Medical Droid
- 2x Scout Troopers
- 2x E-Web Emplacement Troopers with Barrage Generators
Your command cards will issue 1-2 commands to your Imperial Agents - and any turn that you really need aims and you can't get them with the command cards I've chosen (both 1-pip turns or maybe your Coordinated Fire turn), you have the Seize the Initiative upgrades on each of the Agents and the Trusted Agent upgrade on the Officer to get orders. Whenever these are issued, you'll have 2 aim tokens (thanks to Target 1 on the pistols and Target 1 from the list special rules), which can be siphoned off to your Stormtroopers via the Tip of the Spear Agent OR handed off to your E-Webs via the Defend in Depth Agent. Both of these guys can move-move-shoot or aim-move-shoot if they need to trigger Long Shot while STILL handing off both aim tokens that they receive from their orders to their fellow buckethead buddies.
Our second list has a more traditional 12-act vanilla Empire build, using the vanilla Empire option and taking Vader, surrounded by a bunch of Stormtroopers and other good stuff . . . though I don't know if this is better than using Snowtroopers:
- Darth Vader with Burst of Speed, Force Choke, and Saber Throw
- Imperial Officer with Academy Trained and Command and Control Uplink
- Imperial Agent with Tip of the Spear, Seize the Initiative, and Heavy Blaster Pistol
- 2x Stormtroopers with HH-12 Stormtroopers and Stormtrooper Squads
- 1x Stormtroopers with FX-9 Medical Droid
- 1x Stormtroopers with DLT-19 Stormtrooper and Stormtrooper Specialist
- 3x Scout Troopers
- 2x 74z Speeder Bikes with HQ Uplinks and Strike and Fade
Stormtroopers: Final Review
Stormtroopers are great if you're new to Legion - they're easy to acquire, they're easy to paint, they last longer than most basic Corps units (and are cheaper than most other resilient options), and they can be equipped easily to pack a punch! I like them, but also look forward to the release of the new Snowtroopers (who I think provide a nice complement to Stormtroopers - but more on that soon).
Overall character review: 4/5 stars. These guys are not flashy, but you can get a lot of them even in Recon games and they can stick around for a long, long time. I'm not sure that there's much more to say about these guys - except that they are incredibly dependent on getting aim tokens in order to be worth having over other Imperial Corps choices.
Next time, we're looking at the other side of the coin and examining the Blizzard Force battle force exclusive version of Stormtroopers: the Stormtrooper Heavy Response Unit. This was the double-Heavy option for Stormtroopers before Kallus came along and it gives you options for doing some very interesting things. Find out what those are next time (and if they're even worth taking) - but until then, happy hobbying!
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