Skirmish Upgrades: Zillo Technique

Good morning gamers,

To date, we’ve looked at two Imperial skirmish upgrades: Advanced Com Systems and Vader’s Finest. Both of these cards are Attachments – you pick one person to use them and that’s all they benefit. Today’s post is different: we’ll be looking at a team-beneficial upgrade: Zillo Technique. While the Empire has several units that are hard to crack, no army is more resilient than those with Zillo Technique. J

Requirements for Finalists:

While we’re not going to pick three finalists like we normally do, there are certain requirements for units that will benefit from this the most:

• The ability to draw Command cards (so you can discard them for additional Block);
• Favor double-Black-dice defense pools (basically resilient to all damage if they can ignore most/all of the attacker’s Pierce value); and
• Units with static defense results (since a little extra defense allows you to save the extra Block provided by Zillo Technique less often).

Obviously not all of the figures we’re going to include will rate on all three of these areas, but we’re looking for these kinds of elements to be visible in the army. Without further ado, let’s look at what we have to work with today:

Deployment Cards:

• Darth Vader with Driven By Hatred
• Riot Trooper
• Riot Trooper
• Jabba the Hutt
• Elite Gamorrean Guard
• Temporary Alliance
• Zillo Technique
• Unshakable

Command Cards:

• Blood Feud
• Close the Gap
• Deadly Precision
• Deathblow
• Fleet Footed
• Force Rush
• Lord of the Sith
• Planning
• Price On Their Heads
• Pummel x2
• Recovery
• Reinforcements x2
• To The Limit

This list fields 8 figures (kinda small), but they’re very hard to kill: your defense begins with two squads of regular Riot Troopers. With a free Block token, these Riot Troopers are pretty hard to hurt with two-dice attack pools (and even certain three-dice attack pools). They can be escorted by the Elite Gamorrean Guards - these guys not only have an impressive amount of health, but also have a free Block against blaster attacks (which makes them more resilient than Heavy Stormtroopers). Both the Gamorreans and the Riot Troopers are painful in melee - you want to close quickly and batter down your opponents quickly.

Leading the charge, of course, is Darth Vader – he’s nasty and tough as nails with his Double-Black-dice defense pool (and one of those is rerollable) – makes it pretty hard to break through him. While you can use Zillo Technique to protect him, he shouldn’t need it. With Force Choke (which he can activate during his activation or at the end of the round thanks to Driven By Hatred), Vader has some “range damage” capability to provide cover for your squad. Generally speaking, your opponent will probably not stay to fight Vader and his goons if they’re advancing quickly.

Presiding over your army (for that’s all he can do) is Jabba the Hutt. While Agent Blaise would save us 1 point and give us some ability to draw cards, Jabba does this more reliably. As we’ve discussed in several posts already (To The Limit, Best Ally/Villain packs, On A Diplomatic Mission, Black Market, Smuggler’s Run, Under Duress - I like Jabba, what can I say?), you can draw cards AND do Strain damage against nearby opponents if you want (or Focus your Gamorreans). Jabba can be left behind (guarding a Terminal perhaps?), providing benefits to your team without being present. With cards like Blood Feud and Price On Their Heads (to say nothing of Planning), you can make life easier for your team and smash through your opponent’s figures quickly.

Finally, the team is supplemented by Zillo Technique and Unshakable: Unshakable only applies to Vader (you could substitute this out for Motivation on Jabba the Hutt OR upgrade one of your Riot Trooper squads to a Heavy Stormtrooper squad), but ensures that any harmful conditions don’t slow him down from slashing through people. With a free reroll on offense (and a free attack at the end of the round), you want to be able to rush into your foes quickly (and 1 Strain is not that big a deal…most of the time…see our Under Duress post for the exception to the rule).

For Command cards, we’ve chosen a few Force User cards, but most are melee-character-oriented (or tactically beneficial). Vader alone benefits from Lord of the Sith, Force Rush, and Deadly Precision – see our post on Force User Command cards for more info on these. Jabba is required to play Blood Feud and Price On Their Heads – both of which you can chuck with Zillo Technique if you happen to lose Jabba before you get to play them (you can do the same with the Force User cards if you lose Vader…not very likely to happen, but just in case). Since both of these figures have special actions on their cards, you can use To The Limit with either of them to get more out of them – Unshakable will clear this on their next turn.

All of your figures (sans Jabba) benefit from Close the Gap (nice little movement pip to get them in position), and since all your figures are melee, they all benefit from Pummel and Deathblow too. Since we’re running a low figure count list, taking two copies of Reinforcements will keep our Troopers on the map (though watch out for people spreading their damage against you – retreat to keep one of the figures in each group alive if you need to). Finally, all of your figures benefit from Fleet Footed, Urgency, and Recovery – use these as you need to (and view our post on the nuances between the Fleet Footed and Urgency).

In our next post, we'll be wrapping up our series on skirmish upgrades look at the Rebel upgrade Heroic Effort. If you like running heroes and get frustrated when you can't use their command cards, this card is for you. Should be fun - until then, happy gaming!