Good morning gamers,
This will be our last unit review for the year (we'll be looking at the customizable Jedi/Super-Tacs in November and taking December off, as usual) and we're looking at an Imperial unit that I've been playing with a lot recently: 74-Z Speeder Bikes. These guys were super good in the last edition of the game, able to skew easily in several scenarios (and you could massively underbid points so you got your scenario decks and make your opponent's life difficult). In the current edition of the game, these guys are super fast, but much harder to keep alive. Let's see what their place is and what you should consider getting for them . . .
74-Z Speeder Bikes: The Profile
Like a handful of supports (including most speeder units), Speeder Bikes are a two-model unit, each with 3 Wounds for 6 Wounds total. This puts them on-par with things like AT-RTs in raw wounds, but behind units like Tauntauns and functionally behind units like Droidekas who have an abundance of shields most of the time. The biggest appeal of these guys is their relatively low points cost (currently 70, but it's fluctuated some since I started playing the game) and their incredible speed (Speed-3 with a compulsory move from Speeder 1). Defensively, their innate Cover 1 and surging white save isn't great, so most players consider these guys to be very, very fragile (and I happen to agree - I've misplayed and lost these guys SO many times!).
Offensively, they hit pretty hard for being a 70-point, two-model unit: if shooting in their forward arc, they've got a double-rainbow of 2 red/2 black/2 white with surge to hit and Impact 2, which downgrades to 1 red/1 black/1 white with surge to hit and Impact 1 when the first speeder dies (not if the first speeder dies - when the first speeder dies). The end result is that each speeder is supposed to deal about 2 hits, which means you can jump out with the compulsory move, put 2-4 hits into something, then whip around again to duck to safety. If you're lucky, this will chip away at things (including Armored units), but you won't be blowing anything away with this guy.
If you aren't looking where you want to shoot, you do have an omni-directional pistol shot of 2 black dice per Speeder and you can even split-fire if you want to with one speeder using the rainbow attack and one speeder using the pistol. Both are likely to get at least 1 hit through to the defense roll, which means you can suppress enemy units that are sitting on objectives as you pass on to another one - pretty slick, if you ask me.
That being said, the strength of Speeder Bikes has always been in taking multiple copies of them - one Speeder Bike popping out and shooting at an enemy unit is all fine and good, but if you have a line of Speeder Bikes that harass a unit that's already gone (and ideally has very few friends nearby who have yet to go), you can cripple a unit that started the round out healthy and leave it as a smoking shell or a handful of guys by the end. Since Speeders can also contest objectives, having a mob of speeders end their move near a far-flung objective or two (either by double-moving and shooting OR by triple-moving) can really swing the VPs your opponent was counting on.
There are a few upgrades you can take on these guys, but my experience with them is that you either want to lean in hard on order control with these guys or not invest in them at all (because they will die - they just will). That being said, there are some upgrades you should consider taking when fielding these guys.
Comms x1
There are a few upgrades that make sense for your Speeder Bikes - the biggest for me are HQ Uplink and Hacked Comms Unit. HQ Uplink gives you an order token, which you may not always have access to in Imperial lists (especially if Vader is in them). Faceup order tokens allow you to activate when you want to, so unless you have just Support tokens in your order pool (or a lot of Improvised Orders), you probably want to have an HQ Uplink or two on your Speeder Bikes.
Hacked Comms Unit works in a similar way, since it gives you an order token if there's an enemy unit within range 1 of you is issued an Order. This is contingent on your opponent issuing orders to its units during the Command Phase, which may not happen - AND you have to be within range 1 of someone . . . and I think generally speaking you don't want to do that. Still, if you dive bomb a lot with your Speeder Bikes (don't though), this could be useful.
There are potentially other Comms upgrades that might be good - Comms Jammer is like the reverse version of Hacked Comms Unit in that it prevents enemy units from being issued orders by a Commander within range 1 (but you still have to be up close to use it?), Spotter Uplink is a new upgrade that allows you to grant friendly units Sharpshooter 1 against enemy units within range 1 of you (again, is this a good idea?), you can theoretically give these guys an Onboard Comms Channel so they can coordinate orders to friendly Troopers (like Vader or Scout Troopers?) if you run these guys near everyone else, and Emergency Transponders are a nice way to once-per-game get an aim token or a dodge token when you draw their order from the order pool (not bad if you have points left over). Personally, I think you want to take either an HQ Uplink or nothing in this spot, but I could be convinced that another option is fine.
"Training" x1
The new upgrades pack has an upgrade called Strike and Fade in it and it allows you to exhaust the 5pt upgrade to perform a free move action after performing an attack action. While you could certainly do this just once in a game to get a clutch extra action, what usually happens is you can perform the same compulsory-move/shoot/move maneuver we discussed above, but now you can perform a compulsory-move/shoot-move/
Since there is a limit of 2 HQ Uplinks in any list, taking more than two copies of Strike and Fade seems like a bit of a waste unless you're going to spend one turn doing a compulsory-move/shoot-move/
Command Cards
There are a few command cards that help Speeder Bikes, but not many. From the generic Imperial command cards, you can remove enemy faceup order tokens with Pinned Down, which could be useful if the units who received orders are timing-critical pieces (instead of a mob of Corps units trying to capitalize on the Coordinate keyword).
Incidentally, you can benefit from Darth Vader's Master of Evil command card, since dogpiling near Vader on the turn before he plays Master of Evil could see you panicking enemy units and preventing them from punching you back. If you run Vader away from your Speeder Bikes . . . well, you're safe from long-range reprisals, I guess. Similarly, Speeder Bikes can avoid being shot at if Director Krennic plays his Annihilation Looms 3-pip command card and throws a bunch of suppression out on enemy (and friendly) units. Neither of these will do anything to units like Delta Squad who have infinite Courage, so if you're planning to do this trick against those kinds of units, keep your Speeder Bikes well away from them!
General Veers's Evasive Maneuvers 2-pip command card can issue two of your Speeder Bikes dodge tokens and give them Nimble, which can help boost their survivability some (and if you're running 4 Speeder Bikes in a Blizzard Force list with Veers, you could have orders on all four of your Speeder Bikes that round!). Veers's 3-pip Imperial Discipline can help your Strike and Fade/HQ Uplink Speeder Bikes by giving them a free recover action, which could be good on a turn after they've used Strike-and-Fade and skipped the recover (but I'm not sure this really helps you that much - I think it's better to have an order on Vader instead).
You can boost the damage of your Speeder Bikes by a tiny amount if you field them with Boba Fett and he plays his 3-pip Rule with Respect command card. This could form the backbone of an interesting death-ball list if everyone performs attacks within range of Boba Fett and then moves out of the radius to make room for others, but I don't know that Boba Fett is worth the expense right now. Similarly, any Speeder Bikes that are issued orders from Agent Kallus's 3-pip Ruthless Tactics can put out Observation tokens on enemy units to add Suppressive to the attack pool (or just reroll an attack die). You technically don't HAVE to issue the orders to the Speeder Bikes to benefit from the Observation tokens, so there's that.
74-Z Speeder Bikes: Sample Lists and Strategy
Our first list is the go-to skew list for Speeder Bikes: Blizzard Force. With the return of my beloved Imperial Officers (yaye Ruth!), we can get to 12 activations pretty easily with 4 Speeder Bikes, Vader and Ruth, and a mob of Corps units - which gives us a surprising amount of order control, since we only have three ranks in our army:
- Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith with Burst of Speed, Force Push, Saber Throw, and Inspiring Presence
- Imperial Officer with Academy Trained
- 4x Snowtroopers with T-7 Ion Snowtrooper and Imperial March
- 1x Stormtroopers with FX-9 Medical Droid
- 1x Stromtroopers
- 2x 74-Z Speeder Bikes
- 2x 74-Z Speeder Bikes with HQ Uplinks and Strike and Fade
Speeder Bikes have a harder time finding a place in Tempest Force, oddly enough, but this is a 12-act triple-AT-ST list that fits in just a single speedy squad:
- Imperial Agent with Tip of the Spear, Command and Control Uplink, and Z-6 Riot Baton
- 1x Stormtroopers with R4 Astromech
- 6x Scout Troopers
- 1x 74-Z Speeder Bikes with HQ Uplink and Strike and Fade
- 1x AT-ST with Imperial Hammers Elite Armor Pilot and 88i Twin Light Blaster
- 1x AT-ST with Imperial Hammers Elite Armor Pilot and AT-ST Mortar Launcher
- Major Marquand
Our final list is a 12-act generic Imperial list that takes two Speeder Bikes for speed, but doesn't lean into the Speeder Bike mechanic at all because it can't get four of them:
- Darth Vader, Dark Lord of the Sith with Burst of Speed, Force Push, Saber Throw, and Inspiring Presence
- Imperial Officer with Academy Trained and Command and Control Uplink
- Imperial Agent with Tip of the Spear and Stun Baton
- Imperial Agent with Defend in Depth, Electrobinoculars, and Heavy Blaster Pistol
- 4x Snowtroopers with T-7 Ion Snowtrooper and Imperial March
- 1x Stormtroopers with FX-9 Medical Droid
- 1x Stormtroopers with T-21 Stormtrooper and Targeting Scopes
- 2x 74-Z Speeder Bikes
It's unclear to me if this list should have Scout Troopers instead of Speeder Bikes - you can get three bare-bones squads and still save some points by giving up the Speeder Bikes, but this is a Speeder Bike post, so . . . I guess we'll leave the Scouts at home. :)
74-Z Speeder Bikes: Final Review
These units are fast and zippy and if you're careful with them and manage their range bands, they can really affect a game. Expect to lose a lot of them when you're first playing the game and making mistakes, but be patient, give it time, try new things, try to keep them out of range 2 of enemy units, and give up opportunities to shoot if it means you'll be safe and able to threaten a POI on the next turn.
Overall character review: 3/5 stars. I really wish these guys had Cover 2 instead of Cover 1 because they die SO EASILY! Cover isn't what it used to be, but Cover 1 has never been great and it's still not great now. If you can keep them alive (or dive bomb a LOT of them into an area of the board that's already gone), then they can be really useful. As such, I'm putting them about the middle with 3 stars.
We'll be covering the customizable Jedi and Super Tacs with our remaining posts of the year, but when we hit January, we'll be back in Empire and looking at the lowly Stormtrooper. This guy is probably not as good as the Snowtrooper these days, but they're still plenty good and very cheap red-die save units. Until then, happy hobbying!
No comments:
Post a Comment