The Clone Wars Era of Star Wars is without a doubt the part which has grabbed me the most. I grew up with the prequal movies being released just as I was getting into my nerd stride and Clone Wars animated series really fleshed out the time between Episode’s 2 and 3 and gave real depth to a lot of characters who just had passing roles in the films. When Shatterpoint was announced and it was revealed that the launch box and the first set of releases would all be focusing around the Clone Wars era I was overjoyed, the part of the Star Wars lore which grabbed me the most made by the company which had been producing my favourite game of the time in Marvel Crisis Protocol, what wasn’t to love?
In this guide we’re going to go through a few basics of what characters you should look to pick up and some of the starting synergies you can look to build strike teams around in Star Wars Shatterpoint if you want to focus on the Galactic Republic Clone Wars Era models.
Basics
We won’t be exhaustive here in explaining the rules, but Shatterpoint’s pretty simple: Each side in a game has two squads, these form together to form a Strike Team. Each squad contains a Primary Unit, a Secondary Unit and a Support Unit. The Primary character is usually someone key to the Star Wars Lore like a Jedi General or a Bounty Hunter of renown. Support characters tend to have names a lot of casual watchers of Star Wars would know, maybe a side character who had a few lines in a movie or a reoccurring character in a TV show such as a Clone Commander. Finally, you have the Support unit, these vary and range from single powerful characters who we all know through to the unnamed masses of different types of Clones or Ewoks. Either way the key thing is you need one of each in a Squad and two Squads for a Strike Team.
Each Primary Character comes with a set number of Squad Points ranging from 6 through to 9 and each Secondary and Support unit costs a set number of points. The only other requirement is that each character in the Strike Team is from the same Era (point in time) but as we’re only here because of the Clone Wars we’re going to just pretend this isn’t something to worry about as you wouldn’t want that pesky Luke Skywalker leading one of your squads anyway.
The other thing to be aware of, taking all of that into account, is that Atomic Mass Games sells the models for this game in ready made squads. They might not be in the most optimal combination but they’re game legal and good to go and without a doubt if you aren’t sure exactly what to take and play together you can pick up any two of the Galactic Republic Squads and form a capable Strike Team from the off.
The game itself is played Strike Team on Strike Team but it’s important to point out that a lot of events use the Premier Event official rules pack, where you take four Squads to an event and have to play them all over the course of your games. This could mean in a five round event you play e.g. Obi-wan’s Squad five times, Anakin’s once, Mace’s twice and Plo’s twice, or literally any combination so long as you use each Squad at least once. So pick up the models you like, but keep that four Squad figure in the back of your mind if you want to participate in event play.
First Steps
I’m going to be boring and say your first purchase really needs to be the Core Box. Ignoring the fact that it contains all the tokens, dice, measures and terrain you’ll need to play the game, it contains two full Squads, or one full Strike Team’s worth of Clone War Era Galactic Republic models. This is the only way to pick up Anakin and Ashoka along with the secondary and support units they come with. If you’ve got a friend who would like to go halves with you on this set then even better, as you’ve just halved the cost and got what you need out of it. But a lot of players like having their own dice and measures and only one set is contained within the box, so if you do share the cost of the big set (and it really is a game in a box) then I’d recommend picking up an additional set of measuring sticks and dice.
So where do we start with the Galactic Republic “faction?” You’ve got some really powerful primary characters, they’re Jedi after all, and arguably the best set of support characters as a whole (despite Cody) and some average supporting units. However what you have got are some really key characters which can define how the Strike Team as a whole plays when you’ve got them on the table.
In addition to the Clone Army-themed Squad in the Core Set (Anakin, Red, and the 501st), Atomic Mass Games have so far released the following character “packs,” each containing a Squad built around a theme:
- Plans & Preparations: Luminara, Barriss Offee and the Clone Commandos
- Hello There: Obi-Wan Kenobi, Cody and the 212th
- This Party’s Over: Mace Windu, Ponds and the Arf Troopers
- Lead by Example: Plo Koon, Wolf/Ahsoka and the Wolfpack Troopers
- Clone Force 99: Hunter, Wrecker/Omega & Crosshairs and Echo/Tech
I’m also going throw in the We Are Brave pack which contains Padme, Sabe and the Handmaidens. I know they’re not clones but they’re synergetic around the Galactic Republic Keyword and make an excellent addition to any collection. You’ve got seven ready-made Squads to pick through and any combination of models within those teams to build your own Strike Teams from.
Must Haves
This isn’t a definitive overview of the best possible combinations on the table; I’m just going to pick two of the best models from each category (Primary, Secondary, and Support) and explain why they’re great.
Obi-wan Kenobi: He’s the character which defines the playstyle of a single group the most in the entire game. Knowledge & Defence is the name of his Identity ability, and it allows so much flexibility you’ll never get bored of having it. Allowing friendly Galactic Republic units to retain their hunker tokens in combat is great, allowing them to use those hunker tokens to increase melee defence is brilliant and finally allowing them to spend those tokens to heal and dash is also outstanding, to the point where any single one of the three above would be just brilliant to have. This is why I rate him so highly (despite him being just an outstanding character anyway) and why he’s nearly always the first name in any list I’m designing.
Jedi Master Plo: While not as game changing as Obi-wan, Plo’s Identity ability allows others to use his expertise chart which turns the Clones into really rather durable characters, at the cost of an expose condition being placed on Plo. Clones aren’t the most survivable characters in the game, but this turns them up a little notch. I’m not saying that having Plo and Obi-wan on the table together isn’t great but if you’re putting a lot into keeping the Clones around for longer than you are going to miss out on other great abilities. Plo also brings Force Push which is otherwise hard to get into Clone-based lists and is needed for tournament play where you’ve got characters like Obi-wan Kenobi, Out of Hiding who are really difficult to remove from objectives via traditional means.
Captain Rex: Up there in the discussion for the best secondary characters in the game, Rex is an incredible support piece for clones and is about as good as most Primary characters in combat, both at ranged and in melee, with an offensive expertise chart most Jedi would be happy to have. He is also one of the most versatile characters in the game due to how many uses he has.
Ashoka Tano: She plays off the Galactic Republic Keyword so well to get off additional jumps and attacks, so if you’re planning on using that keyword on your supporting units (which you will be) then she’s great. I’ve had her take four swings a round which is amazing compared to the two you can normally get out of characters (Activation Card and Shatterpoint Card) so she’s a real Force multiplier [Groan. -Ed.] compared to most secondary choices.
Clone Commandos: Scale, Steadfast (with a hunker) and Protection are three great keywords. The Scale keyword works so well with Obi-wan and allows you to do things on terrain which other characters can’t. What they don’t have however is a shove on their damage track and as a general rule I feel you can’t have both support units without that on their damage track. But if you’re going to take one of them without then these are brilliant for it.
Echo & Tech: These are a brilliant set of supporting units. They tick most of the boxes I like (cool situational abilities, ability to get hunker tokens, early shove on their track) in my supporting Clone Units. They’re just a great all around duo and have the important keywords to make them work with the really powerful Jedi characters you have access to.
Squad Construction
With this in mind let’s look at our first two squads. I’ve picked out General Obi-wan Kenobi and Plo Koon as two must-have Primaries so let’s start with these pair. They both have 8 Squad Points allowing us to be fairly flexible with the units they have with them. I’m going to suggest that Obi-wan is the primary you want to be playing a lot, or I do anyway, just for the flexibility he brings to the table. As I said earlier he’s faction defining so lets not mess about and pretend he isn’t. With that in mind I’m also going to give him Rex and Echo & Tech. Rex is outstanding and loves everything Obi brings to the table and Echo & Tech have all the required key words to trigger all of Rex’s abilities. The three of them are the perfect package.
Moving over to Plo’s squad I’m usually going to be trying to build along with same lines. Do the supports and secondary I want work in conjunction with him? Lets go for the other two must-have’s from above for now. The Clone Commando’s are taken because everyone else in the list has access to early shoves in their damage tracks meaning I’m not breaking my own rule by including them. In addition, I’ve got two sets of Clone Trooper Supporting units with good ranged attacks which now means I can get the most out of Padawan Ahsoka. See how it’s all coming together, and the parts of the list are working together? That’s what we wanted and that’s what we’ve got, perfect.
I mentioned the Premier Event format earlier and I think now’s a good time to round out the above two squads into a set four. I really like being able to have a rough plan for most games and I think that something you should do is be able to just go hard when needed and here’s where we come to two self-contained boxes and why they’re great.
Mace Windu’s This Party’s Over box contains a really great all-out offense squad which can just be taken as-is. It’s still got the key words required to work with either of our first two squads and can take up the offensive output on the table if needed through Mace who’s a monster and the ARF’s who provide expose tokens to the enemy units with their covering fire ability. This means your Jedi and secondary units will be able to take out enemy supporting and secondary units in a single hit a lot of the time and will threaten enemy primary units if they’ve got the damage within their Track to be able to.
The other box I’m going to suggest people pick up is the Padme-led We Are Brave Box but for totally different reasons to the above. The characters in here are great but really need to taken as a complete box to be most effective due to the keyword synergy on show. They will work well with and of the other teams (especially the Obi-wan/Plo ones) but also give something a little bit different. For one they’re not just more clones which, despite how much I love them, aren’t always the be all and end all and they also give you something a little different to paint, which after a bunch of white armour might be a welcome change. On the table through Padme is outstanding and against opponents who’s output is off the chart her Identity ability in Servant of the People allows wounded characters to contest objectives. Combine this with Echo & Tech’s Fight Smarter Not Harder and you’ve got yourself a little sneaky trick opponents might not see coming allowing you to grab victory from the jaws of defeat.
This would make my single Strike Force list this:
- General Obi-Wan Kenobi, CC-7567 Captain Rex, Echo & Tech
- Jedi Master Plo Koon, Padawan Ashoka Tano, Republic Clone Troopers
With me adding an additional two squads for a Premier Event as below:
- Queen Padme Amidala, Sabe, Royal Bodyguard, Naboo Royal Handmaidens
- Jedi Master Mace Windu, CT-411 Commander Ponds, ARF Clone Troopers
Bringing It Together
Overall I really enjoy playing with the Galactic Republic side of the Clone Wars and the ability to bring the characters I’ve been watching on screen for the last 25 years together is amazing. The TV shows have expanded those films and Atomic Mass Games have really gone out of their way to bring the flavour of those characters to the tabletop. I’d really recommend playing these characters if you like synergies and layering of single powerful abilities over a strong foundation to make the whole greater than the sum of it’s parts.
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