I'm still going with my plan of building each of my squads around a randomly selected piece that i've never played before. This week's random piece is Darth Vader, SOTJ. This is my thrown together at 4AM squad built around him. Feel free to tear it to shreds. I might even do that myself after getting some sleep and looking at it again since besides Cade I had ideas using Emporer Palpatine, Jango, or Boba Merc. Lobot's preferred reinforcements will be Lando, DS since where I play 6 activations will be enough for Lando to get Oppritunist in most games. I'll also bring 6 Ugs in case I face a swarm and/or Dodonna/Ozzel/San squad. Against a squad centered around a single high defense beatstick I'll bring in a pair of Jawa Scouts to give Cade some spotter action. I'm also open to other suggests for possible Lobot additions.

61 Cade Skywalker, Bounty Hunter
55 Darth Vader, Scourge of the Jedi
27 Lobot
6 Ugnaught Demolitionist x2

Instead of Cade, Boba Merc seems like a good choice to me. Vader is a monster anyway.

I would tend to shy away from Cade in the squad for two reasons. The first is his lack of accurate. The second is the fact that you will have a melee beat on point or running interference who, even with his dark armour, you really cannot avoid splashing. I am planning on using the exact same build with Boba BH. I am not 100% sold on the damage output though. It is a good thing that Vader is some threat from range and cannot really be ignored or bypassed.

Another reason I like Boba over Cade in this squad is that he is harder to tie down and keep based. You do not want Cade based at the best of time but you certainly do not want it in a squad with only two damage dealers.

I considered Boba BH, but I usually only use him in gimmick squads where I use him with pieces that give him extra attacks just to see how many big D's I can get. Otherwise, While he can use Flight/Evade to stay alive better than Cade I like Cade's Double/Twin and his potential to drop 40 damage on two targets a round. I did think of Vader taking splash damage if he's next to Cade's target, but decided I was willing to risk it with two rolls to avoid the damge from each splash.

I'm hoping to use a combo of Vader out front while keeping Cade back in a room Lobot can close the door to if something gets too close.

As said above, Cade is going to start killing off vader, which isn't smart. Boba, Merc makes more sense. And with the extra points, add another ugg. Then you have enough if you wanted to run an MTB.

This is going to be a hard piece to use. You really need to have some low-to-mid cost shooters that can provide good support for him. His low HP/Defense make him a tough piece to play, and the other problem is that he has low FP.

RS Palps could help with some of that, but if you face Force Immunity or an all shooter squad, you're going to be in big trouble.

I played the squad Friday night and went 3-0 with it. As I was hoping Cade was brutal. 4 shots a round plus splash made him huge. One of the squads I faced was a Gungan swarm with 2 shieldbears and a bunch of artillerists. Every shot was giving me three or four splash oppritinities. Vader was great when he could get to the opposing squads, but he was getting wrecked on the way. The worst was against another squad using Cade with lower point jedi. I almost lost Vader in that one. Cade put enough damage on Vader that I had to run and hide or I'd have lost him to Cade's next barrage. Instead Cade had to chase after Vader so he could only take one twin attack at Vader in cover rather than the no cover double twin he could have had. Vader survived that and used LST2 to take Cade down. Later in the same game after Jaina had based him and I lost iniative she set up for a double attack to take down Vader. She made the first one dropping him to 10hp, but Riposte and Djem So let me smack her back for 60, killing her before she could make the second of the double attacks and kill him. I also guessed right that having a splash save plus a dark armor save would keep him from taking too much splash damage. For the three games he only took splash damage once.

Special mention for Lobot. In the Gungan game he let me bring in 6 more activations which i was able to use as zero point screens to keep the gungans from targeting Cade and Vader. He also gets the assist on Cade's take down of Jacen Solo. He'd moved Jacen up to the locked door so he'd be ready to move out and base my Cade once he could move his Cade over far enough to get LOS on Lobot. I saw what he was planning and used my next two activations on Lobot and my Cade. First Lobot spins and uses Override to close the door of the room he's in, cutting him off from Cade. That ends his Override on the door Jacen is next to which opens now that Lobot's turn has ended. Cade lets loose on Jacen with his double twin, killing him.

Basic thoughts after playing Vader. He was great against Melee pieces, but Dark Armor isn't nearly enough of a defense against shooters.

Another player at the tourny played Bane with Boba BH, but I didn't face him Friday night. I was wondering how this would have done against that squad.

EXtra addition after seeing Fool's post which was done while I was typing all that: When I decided to not use Boba BH as my shooter Boba Merc was one of my three main options to use instead. I passed on him though because to be really effective he needs Lobot to bring in the MTB and I didn't have any way to easily kill him off after I went through my 6 ugnaughts. The other option in case anyone was wondering was Jango who I have to say I was really wishing I'd used him when I faced the Gungans. Being able to missle a clumping of a shieldbearer and the artillerists he was shielding would have been nice.

Sounds like things went well. but...



I'm a little confused on how this worked. Override does not require LOS for the door to be held open. So I don't know how the door opened up to let you kill Jacen.. maybe I'm missing something.

To make it easier to visulize we were playing on the Death Star map. I had started in the hanger and had Lobot in the upper left corner of the hanger keeping the hanger door open by being adjacant to it. Lobot had been using override to keep the door to the control room straight across the map closed. Jacen was inside the room next to the door. When I saw he was going to move his Cade up for a shot on Lobot I used his next activation to use override to close the big hanger door Lobot was standing next to in order to cut off Cade's path to him. By switching override to the hanger door it was no longer in effect on the control room door so once Lobot's turn ended that door opened because Jacen was adjacant to it. That gave my Cade a clear shot at him.