Asajj Ventress, Kalani Super Tactical Droid and B1 Battle Droids in Star Wars: Shatterpoint

Hello there!

We know that you’re excited about the freshly released Star Wars: Shatterpoint and we are here to explain how certain units work! In this series of articles we will describe every Strike Team that will come to this new Skirmish Game. 

Today we will go with Asajj Ventress – Sith Assassin and her troupe – Super Tactical Droid Kalani and B1 Battle Droids!

Asajj Ventress, Sith Assassin

We will start with our cold-blooded assassin, Asajj herself!

In terms of abilities Asajj provides you with an aggressive skillset that promotes close-range combat (but also allows you to escape pretty easily, when a situation has gone wrong). Riposte is a Reactive ability that allows you to deal damage to your opponent after he performs a melee range attack and blank out one of his dice (attacking her in close range is quite risky, especially when you’re on low HP). Another Reactive ab. in her set is Slip Away. This defensive ability lets you escape from melee combat after an allied unit targets an enemy engaged with you with attack. After that, you will get a Hunker token, which will improve your future defense. 

As Active abilities Ventress has Dathomirian Dexterity and Force Push. First one allows her to perform a jump up to twice per turn (remember that every of these jumps require you to pay a cost). Quite a useful ability that provides you with great mobility and allows you to reach enemies or objectives quickly. Second one can be a game changer option. She can target one enemy within range 3 of herself and then push it away with range 3 tool. That can be helpful not only in case of escaping a dangerous encounter, but also can dramatically change a situation on objective and let you earn final victory points.

Last ability is her Identity one. Sith Assassin grants you bonuses after wounding an enemy unit, depending on the type of wounded character. After wounding she can Heal 3 damage and/or conditions from herself or friendly units at range 2. This is important due to her pretty low Stamina pool of 9. Then, if the wounded character was a Primary or Secondary unit, she can Advance or Jump, which allows her to reposition to, for example, take control of an objective. Then, finally, if the wounded character was a Primary unit, you refresh 2 Forces, which is the most valuable resource in the game.

9 Stamina and 3 Durability means that you will need to take 27+ damage to become defeated.

Now we need to talk about her Stances as this is an important thing for the Primary unit. 

Jar’Kai is an aggressive stance, providing 8 dice with melee attacks (despite the same amount of defense dice in both stances this one has better conversions in defense too). Scoring 6 hits leads to 6-9 damage and can activate one of your abilities (in this case Active Abilities are always free to use) or give your opponent conditions such as Disarm, Pinned, Strained or Exposed.

Form II Makashi is a bit more of a utility stance. Scoring 4 hits leads to only 4-6 damage, but can provide you 3-4 healing, move/jump/push and can activate one of your abilities as well as Jar’Kai can.

Kalani, Super Tactical Droid

Kalani, one of the most prominent of Super Tactical Droids in CIS army, is her dedicated Secondary Unit.

Kalani comes with a tactical skill set that helps you command your army. It has 2 Innate abilities – Target, Concentrate All Firepower and Complete Analysis. First one provides your Battle Droids a better firepower when they stand within range 4 of each other. Second one helps with your activation economy, giving you an option to put a Kalani card in reserve for free.

Two other abilities in Kalani’s arsenal are Roger, Roger (Tactical Ability) and Tactical Network (Active Ability). When this Droid activates each Battle Droid Supporting character within range 4 may advance. This ability greatly improves your positioning abilities and can help you reach a better position faster. Second ability provides one allied Battle Droid a dash, but after that it may gain Hunker token to improve its defense, remove one condition from itself or make a 5 dice attack.

10 stamina and 2 durability means that Cody needs 20+ damage to be defeated. 

In terms of Stance Card, Kalani’ Cold Logic is quite aggressive. In 5 hits it is able to do at least 8-9 damage. In addition, Kalani is able to give your opponent a Disarm or Exposed condition, Push him or even activate its Tactical Network ability without paying its cost and move.

B1 Battle Droids

Last unit in today’s article is B1 Battle Droids – the most common troopers across CIS Army during the Clone Wars.

This unit is made of 2 characters (remember that 3 miniatures on one base are still treated as one character) and comes with a Point Cost of 3. Their Innate abilities allows you to provide your opponent with Strained or Exposed Condition, help you even more with you activation economy by putting their order card on the bottom of your deck instead of reserves (you still need to pay the force cost) or making you harder to kill when you contest objective (which is important due to their weak defense statistics).

9 stamina and 2 durability means that your opponent is obligated to deal at least 18 damage to them, before they will be defeated.

Their Stance Card, Countless provides them with quite a punch but weak defense. After scoring 5 hits you are able to deal 7-8 damage, Push, provide conditions such as Strained or Exposed or move themselves. That means there will be opportunities when they can single handedly wound a Primary Unit. Their defense isn’t good due to the low amount of dice and very bad expertise table.

Thank you for reading today’s article and see you in the next one, where we will cover Maul and his Loyal Mandalorians.

If you want to have beautifully painted Shatterpoint miniatures, just contact us!

Check our previous article about Obi-Wan Kenobi!