In Flight Report Hot Take Seperatist
Separatist Fleets
Now let's dive right into the Separtist Droid Armada the courageous Clones will be fighting. Starting out with a Munificent and some Hardcell transports. The Munificent is awesoem and everybody remembers them form the Start of Episode III but the Hardcell is that little guy taking off at the Battle of Geonosis. You may remember them from Anakin ordering an attack right above the fuel cells, because a trooper trained his entire life for battle probably doesn't know where to shoot? Don;t mind me, the splash of the starter is below.
In general, we know a little less about the Separatists currently than the Republic. Again, hopefully, that changes over the course of GenCon.
Munificent
Let's start off with the Munificent Class Frigate also known as the Banking Clan Frigate. This is the CIS's medium based ship sitting opposite the Acclamator. There should be two versions as most ships have at two (Except for the iconic Star Destroyer). We only have limited information on a single named class here. The Munificent Comms Frigate. Though we can make out the outline of an upgrade list for a Munificent, we just don't know which one it is. I'll list out what we know. I imagine
6 Hull
4 Front Shields
3 Side Shields
2 Rear Shields
Dice
Front - 2 Red, 2 Blue,
Side - 3 Red
Rear - 2 Red
Flak - 1 Red
Cmd 2
Squadron 3
Engineering 4
keywords
??
Upgrades (based on outlines)
Officer
Support Team
Defensive Retrofit
Ion Cannon
Turbolaser
Brace, Redirect and Salvo with a good speed 2 nav chart.
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| those are some tasty Arcs for a gunline OR double arcing |
That's it! That's all I can glean from screenshots. It's a command two medium though so that is very intriguing, as the Interdictor is the only other one. The CIS should be able to command it's squadrons form here more efficiently than the Republic which is good because the starfighters look like they need to be commanded even moreso than previous non-rogues. I would bet this is a little cheaper than Acclamator but not by much. Maybe low 60s for the Comms Frigate. Maybe 70's for the other and make it Squadron 4?
Also, the CIS salvo token on here to be seem much more valuable as you'll be getting shots at anything that shoots you. Also, another ship with red Flak dice. Reach out and touch those pesky and tough looking Republic Squadrons the round before you send in the droid swarm. So I'm definitely putting LTT in that turbolaser slot and probably Engine Techs. I can easily see how this cheaper chassis may want a load of upgrades though, and then it becomes not so cheap. We'll see which way if works best.
Hardcell Transport
Here is the CIS ship we seem to know more about. We have the dice for both versions and to me they look like a mix between an Hammerhead and a Neb B. Let's start by what is most likely shared between the two.
Cmd 1
5 hull
3 Front Shields
1 Side Shield
2 Rear Shields
Defense Tokens and Nav chart are unknown but base don the tokens in the above posted splash page I'm guessing a Brace, Redirect, and Evade.
Hardcell Battle Refit (52 pts)
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| Droid models on a V-19 squad dial in the background.... oops! |
Here's what we can figure out by the pictures for this variant.
Dice
Front Arc - 3 Red
Side Arc - 1 Red
Rear ARc - ZERO
Flak - 1 Blue, 1 Black
Keywords
Droid, Transport
Upgrades
Officer
Offensive Retrofit
Defensive Retrofit
Turbolaser
Overall this looks more like the Neb B than a Hammerhead. 3 front shields and all red dice with all but nothing everywhere else screams point the pointy end at them! We don't know the squadron or engineering value of this variant but I would be 3 engineering and 1 or 2 for squadrons. For 52 points it's right in line with a Neb and if it has squadron 2 these look like awesome cmd 1 squad pushers that can shoot.
The keywords are interesting as well. I imagine Droid will offer certain upgrade options similar to Clone. Perhaps something like dial sharing among ships though from what we've seen even the CIS medium is only Command 2.
Hardcell Transport
What to say about the transport version? We know it's squadron 2 because the corner picture is different than the battle refit artwork
Dice
Front Arc - 2 Red, 1 Blue
Side Arc - 1 Blue
Rear Arc - NADA
Flak - 1 Blue
Overall, seem a lot less of a shooter than the battle refit and with a name like transport that actually makes a lot of sense. If these are squadron two I imagine they are supposed to be your squadron pushers while the battle refit tries to poke red dice sized holes in the enemy. I'm not sure of the upgrades but I imagine perhaps one two offensive retrofits and a support team (maybe?). Maybe costed in the middle 40s. That seems to suite it's role as I forecast it well enough. But this is rampant speculation.
CIS Squadrons
This is where the fun begins! Granted I haven;t tried it yet but the AI keyword seem awesome and commits the CIS to using squadron commands to get the most of their starfighter swarm. The AI command looks interesting and unique to the CIS but it also doesn;t look like they have any escorts so if you want to nuke the bombers, you probably can. Though maybe they have an Ace with that ability. We'll begin with the ubiquitous Vulture Droid Starfighers.
Vulture Droid
8 pts for a 3 hull, speed 4 swarm fighter. A point above a Z-95 and not necessarily better except for the keywords potentially. A native single blue and black for squadrons doesn't seem like much but with the new keyword AI: Anti-Squadron 1, it becomes respectable. If activated by a ship, you get to add either a black or blue dice to your anti-squadron attack. And you get a reroll if you have friends nearby. So roll your blue and black, attacking a generic add a black, attacking those pesky Jedi Aces, add a blue. Don't get that accuracy just reroll. For 8 points if you can command these guys they should do some good work for you.
Vulture Droid Ace
Here we have the first revealed CIS Ace droid. DFS-311, with a stripey paint job because he likes it. Same stat line as the generic except it swaps the blue anti-squad for a red, making it even swingier. If you park this guy on an obstacle you're going to be handing out intel to all the enemy peeps and when they try to kill you they won;t get as many dice. DFS-311 also comes along with a brace and Scatter to keep it rolling along but costs 10 points more than a generic Vulture. Probably worth it, if you're looking to push bombers along.
Droid Tri-fighter
All we know is these guys are mean to ARC-170's in the movie and I imagine that is true here as well. a 3 hull fighter with Swarm, Counter, and AI. This looks to be a fearsome CIS Interceptor that can dive into a cloud of fighters and make a lot of people have a bad day. I would guess it's going to be speed 5, with Counter 2, and still probably AI: Anti-Squadron 1. Probably blue anti-ship and maybe 2 blue, 1 black anti-squadron. Coming in around 12-14 points perhaps. Definitely the interceptor analogue but we'll see on the exact details.
Hyena Bomber
Here is the only bomber of the CIS. A 4 hull, 4 speed, AI: Battery beast that has an Ace. That's all we know. I'm guessing black anti-battery and a single blue anti-squad. Maybe 9 or 10 points.
Hyena Ace
This sliver of a card is all we know about the Hyena Ace and it gives us some details regarding the Hyena bomber itself. It's speed 4, with AI: Battery 1, bomber and Heavy. The ace ability is somewhat hard to guess but I'll do my best
While attacking, [no idea of the trigger] defender, you m[ay add] 1 die to your atta[ck pool that is] already in your [armament].
I can't quite piece it all together but it's something that appears to let you add more dice to your attack with a certain trigger. Adding more black dice to a bomber never hurt anyone.
Belbulab
Here we have the highest hull fighter in the CIS. It's a 5 hull fighter with Relay! The other icon is new one that looks similar to assault but definitely has more icons in front of the main wedge. I'm guessing some form of droid command function, like when you are activated you may also activate two Droid fighters or something.
