Separatist Alliance Buying Guide

“Roger Roger.” -Battle Droid

Honesty time.  I’ve only flown the Separatist faction one time.  It did not go well.  Instead of trying to make up summaries about the ships I turned to an expert in the faction.  My friend, Austin O’Dea of Stilly Squadron.  Please enjoy his thoughts!

Austin’s Picks

The Separatist Faction (CIS) relies mostly on cheap droids to form their lists with a few organic pilots mixed in. This faction can focus on running a few aces if that is your preferred style, but where they truly shine is the swarms that can be put on the table in 6 or 7 ship variants.

The unique feature the Separatist brings to the table is the Tactical relays that give small benefits to the faction such as putting out free locks, keeping extra calculates after the end phase, adding extra hits and evades to your die results. In addition, the Networked Calculations chassis ability lets friendly ships at range 0-1 share Calculate tokens for both offense and defense. This can be substituted with the Independent Calculations ability which lets you have 2 calculates, but you lose the ability to share.

Here we will break down the packs available, and what each ship brings to the faction overall. For more information on each one simply search the name.

Standard Ships

Servants of Strife

Ah Servants, this pack is like many other triple ship packs, the best way to begin your journey into the land of Calculates, and the droid swarm. This pack comes with two Vulture droids, and the Belbullab-22 Starfighter, better known as General Grevious’s personal starfighter. Beyond the three ships, this is your only chance to grab the Belbullab ship and add the famed General to your fleet. This pack offers the best intro to the droids, and their respective aces. What you lack in initiative you make up in sheer volume of ships.

Of all the packs on this list this one feels like a must grab if you want to put together droid swarms on the table, or simply want to run General Grievous.

Vulture-Class Droid Fighter

Separatist swarm players will likely have a few of these ships in their collection, because like the Empire’s Ties they are cheap to field. This pack provides 1 Vulture droid (brown and khaki paint job), and most likely your first copy of Discord Missiles (Buzzdroids), it will also expand your vulture droids with DFS-311. While you could grab a second copy of Servants to get more vultures quickly, the Discord missiles are something the Servants does not have. Outside of Discords the vultures can do something no other faction can, sit on rocks! This offers versatility to your line up, fly around or hug a rock and act as a turret.

Hyena-Class Droid Bomber

The next droid in the Separatist arsenal, is the Hyena, or the Separatist bomber. This chassis is a bit tougher than the vulture and offers more versatility, at the cost of a slightly worse dial. Notably the bombers tend to rely more on the rest of the droids around them having networked calculations for their best effectiveness, but if you prefer the independent calculation variant this chassis becomes incredibly limited in use. There is potential here in this ship, but it comes down to your choice to run a networked swarm or not to gather the full power.

Droid Tri-Fighter

The Droid Tri is the primary interceptor of the droid faction, and honestly one of the coolest looking prequel ships out there. This ship is incredibly fun to fly, and the only ship the Seps can field that has the coveted 3 red, 3 green die combo. While considered to be not quite as powerful as other interceptor chassis, the configuration can allow you access to slam->red lock. Need a way to get into the opponent’s backfield early? 5 straight + 5 straight slam + lock, is not a bad way to open a game. The pilot abilities can also help play off the rest of your list adding things like an extra lock on an already locked ship, potential to strain a ship after firing, and steal calculate tokens from a friend the enemy is looking at. At 3 pts these fighters have some variety that can help many droid lists when flown well.

HMP Droid Gunship

The support ship of the Droid army, and arguably the best value ship in the faction. Boasting a 180-degree arc, missile, bomb, crew, cannon, and tactical relay slots, with 8 health the HMP can do it all. While clearly built as the tac relay carrier for the droid list, the other slots open a wide variety of options for this ship bringing in more ordinance for your lists. Not only can you tailor this chassis to your flying preferences, but you also gain access to the sideslip maneuver. This lets the HMP to be more unpredictable, catching your opponent more often by setting up easier nets of focused fire. Combine this with the Networked Aim chassis ability and you can reroll 1 red dice for every target lock on the ship you are shooting at.

Rogue-Class Starfighter

The best way to describe the Rogue-Class is budget X-wing. While lacking 3 red dice, the chassis health, repositions, and access to a cannon slot make it very close to the iconic X-wing. Besides this the Rogue-Class Starfighter pack comes with 2 ships and doubles up into the Scum Faction as well. You will find that the Droid pilots in this pack are not bad, but the true ace here is Cad Bane. While the droid pilots in this pack primarily offer ways to boost your defense (IG-111 helps with offense), Cad Bane is there to do whatever he needs or wants to do. The IG droids maintain the standard Networked Calculations ability that can be replaced with Independent Calculations, but Cad switches it up and brings the ability Dead to Rights. While you have bullseye the defender cannot spend green tokens. Combo that with Cad’s pilot ability to take an action (once per round) after a ship dies, and your Rogue becomes a lot more flexible in the game.

Gauntlet Fighter

This multifaction ship offers the CIS faction two decent pilots, depending on what you want them to do. Bo-Katan acts as a support piece removing non-stress red or orange tokens before a ship begins its activation. Pre-Vizsla likes to hit things hard, every other turn and only if they have equal or higher initiative, but hey 5 red dice at range 1 is not too bad.

Jango Fett’s Slave 1

The Firespray was made popular by Boba Fett from the Empire Strikes Back, and the Scum faction. This pack has the sleek blue color scheme seen in Attack of the Clones, compared to the Scum Faction variant with Boba’s worn green and brown. This ship flies very much like the Scum variant, but if you are new to this ship, it flies fast, and hits hard. Jango and Zam highlight this packs pilots with their high initiative and load out. Jango likes to go a bit slower to make full use of his pilot ability and hurt the defender’s green dice, while Zam likes to gamble. Zam can either shoot twice or gain a lock on a target. This ship feels like a great tank piece to bring to any CIS list and can hit very hard as well.

Nantex-Class Starfighter

The Geonosian ship from Attach of the Clones, brings a second interceptor to the CIS ranks. This ship does however lack the ability to reposition in the traditional sense, instead opting to use a tractor token (once you rotate the turret), to boost and roll where you want to be. A risky ability to be sure, but if you are range 1 of the enemy, why not give them the tractor token and punish them for it. This ship is a lot of fun and can be rather difficult to pick up and master, but in the right hands this ship is a menace to see across the board, because it can wreak havoc on a list that is unprepared.

Sith Infiltrator

Are you Jealous of every other faction having the Force? Are you mad at your republic player for all the cool Jedi they have? Do not worry, we have the Sith Infiltrator for our force users. The iconic Darth Maul ship gives CIS access to its only force users with the Sith Lords Maul and Dooku. Start the game cloaked, and make your opponent feel the wrath of the Dark Side with Maul shooting twice and Dooku cloaking and de-cloaking all over the board to gain the upper hand. This large base ship offers some variety of play but gives you a powerful ship and access to the Force to deal some pain to your enemies.

Card and Scenario Packs

Below you will find description of other X-wing packs with some CIS pilots and crew available that can enhance any of the ships above. The reviews above left out the pilots and crew out on purpose to talk about the chassis’ as they are out of box, leaving this section to specifically talk about what can be added to enhance your ships and crews.

Hotshots and Aces 2

Let’s just start off by saying pretty much every faction wants this. There is at least one pilot in every faction here that sees play, and every pilot has a place, but for the Separatist faction this feels like a must buy. We will only cover 4 of the 5 as the 5th feels lackluster at best, and as a vulture could simply just be a 2 pt filler for any list if you needed them, but any other vulture in the original pack can do the same thing.

Volan Das: Need a high ace Tri-fighter with the ability to throw strain at a target, well you found him. Volan loves to do a red maneuver behind the enemy, and when landing at range 1 sheds the stress for the enemy to pick up a strain, giving you access to a focus token. Volan offers a lot of fun and brings a cheaper ace to the chassis that only has lower initiative droids.

Aurra Sing: A Firespray with a native force token, Aurra is already a great pick, and the only other native force user pilot in the faction. Spend the force at range 1 of 2 enemy ships and switch red and orange tokens around. At i4 Aurra has a lot of potential to mess with the enemy in a chassis that is already quite powerful.

Durge: Admittedly outside of Cad Bane the droid Rogues feel lackluster not having the Dead to Rights ability, but Durge provides that, and with his pilot ability he is incredibly hard to kill at i5. When you would be destroyed flip all your damage cards over and remove Direct Hits and Pilot crits. This pilot offers a lot, and since he may not die most opponents tend to leave him alone, leaving your i5 ace to do whatever they want. Durge is arguably the go to Rogue, even before Cad Bane, but pair them together and watch the chaos!

The Iron Assembler: I know we said droids are cheap and fragile, but meet your new best friend, the unkillable, lovable, and all-around best droid in the game The Iron Assembler (nicknames: TIA, Iron Ass). If there was theme to the Separatists in this pack it would be Zombies. Durge comes back to life, but TIA never dies. This lovely cheap vulture sits on a rock (AND STAYS THERE) and repairs itself of 1 facedown damage card a turn 3 times a game; all the while laughing at your opponent in binary and singing its theme song “You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)”. Put it on a rock, hold an objective and just be a turret the whole game, hard to say no to this pilot as a cheap filler for any Sep list.

Siege of Coruscant

While Rebels and Empire get two battle packs the Republic and CIS get one. By itself this pack is a lot of fun and well balanced for the scenario, but for standard play there is not much here for the droids that have true staying power, as the Vultures and Hyenas lose Grappling Struts. The best pieces for standard play are probably (in no particular order) Dooku, DBS-32c, and DIS-T81.

Dooku, purely because you are i5 at 6pts, and with Roiling Anger and Malice you can keep your force up more often than the custom variant, while using Dooku’s crew ability.

DBS-32c is a major upgrade over the custom variant. Plasma Torps and free Jam when you calculate (2x per game – the new pilot ability) is something the droid faction lacks, that this ship brings, all packaged together for 3pts.

DIS-T81 brings a new ability that can be summed up like this: Don’t like your results, just reroll them . . . . . Forever! Also, you get Outmaneuver and Afterburners for a 4pt ship making this a mean Tri-Fighter.

Pride of Mandalore

This pack is very light for the CIS faction, but has the absolute best crew, and should be considered for if you want more crew, or simply split this with a friend. Pride of Mandalore gives you access to the following: Bo-Katan, Pre Vizsla, Savage Opress, and Tal Merrik.

Let’s start off with the easiest one to talk about: Tal Merrik, currently banned in standard play because the ability lets you peek at your opponent’s dial, cool but will likely never be used.

Bo-Katan gives you an upgrade to your offense letting you reroll a red die if you are at range 1-0 of the enemy. Put this on something like the HMP, and with target locks out on the field, watch the hits keep rolling. A great crew for some up-close combat.

Pre-Vizsla is designed to help you move your crew remotes into a better position. A good combo with Mandalorian Commandos.

Savage Opress is a force user crew, and the cheapest force user in the Separatist faction, making him quite valuable because you can save some loadout value for other things. His ability also lets a friendly ship in range 1-2 of your firing arc take a focus after it gains a stress, Droids with focus tokens!

Shopping List

Thank you Austin for helping me out! The Separatist faction has some many droids. Here’s the recommended shopping list.

1. Servants of Strife
2. Rogue Starfighter
3. Hyena Bomber
4. Jango’s Firespray
5. Everything else as you like.