G9 Rigger, The Ugly Duckling

G9 Rigger-class Freighter

Overview

The G9 Rigger. If you watched the Clone Wars movie in 2008 and the first season of Clone Wars, you know this ship very well. A dumpster with two wings stapled on and way larger than it looks, the Rigger represents the first (and likely only) Rogue squadron for the Republic. It's not the slowest ship on earth with 3 speed, it's pretty tanky at 7 hull, it has solid anti-squadron with 2 blue 1 black, and has non-bomber blue battery. All for 1 point less than an ARC-170, so a pretty decent package!

When analyzing these guys, we need to split up the conversation about this squad into two parts. For one, what synergies does Rogue have in GAR, and two, what are the merits of the squadron chassis itself?

Starting with the first one. There are no upgrade cards or aces that really combo with Rogue. Hyperspace Rings, the only card in the game that grants Scout, specifically forbids interactions with Rogue. There was the incredibly broken Matchstick Y-wing ace, we don't talk about that guy, thank goodness he was fixed. There's no card like a Toryn Farr that can help all blue dice in the faction. Few officers or titles in the faction synergize with squadrons directly, and the ones that do (Ahsoka Tano Officer, Nevoota Bee, Triumphant) require a squadron activation to take advantage of them.

Compared to the faction’s mainstays, the efficient generics such as the BTL-B Y-wing, ARC-170 Squadron, and with the new ARC points drop even the Delta-7, the Rigger is in somewhat of a tough spot. It's not great into ships like the other GAR squadrons, it's decent into squadrons but requires external sources for dice correction/rerolls.

After reading all that, you might be wondering what the core design philosophies behind designing them were. If GAR seemingly has few tools to support Rogue, why did us Legacy folks add them at all? 1 answer. Flexibility. So many Republic squads are great at their given niches, like a fast hard-hitting interceptor, a tanky double die bomber, cheap swarm escort, and well-balanced Ruthless spam/black die bomber. But none of their squadrons are really great well-rounders. V-19 Torrents are closest, but require squad commands to make the most use out of them, and just taking Kickback and Axe on their own is no stall ball the same way Tycho and Shara are. Riggers on the other hand can do decently into squads and ships for their cost and don't require a squadron activation, which in certain ship-heavy lists is critical. Oftentimes it feels like cheap screens aren't really viable in Republic, you either need to commit to a bunch of aces and support tools, which overinflates the cost of your screen or you go full 134 with heavy bombers and lean into the investment.

Design Notes

When designing the squadron, we had three main goals. First, the introduction of Rogue could help provide a cheap squadron screen option that GAR traditionally lacks. Second, the chassis as a whole would be a solid all-rounder but lose out to more specialized options within the faction, and third, they should be somewhat hunks of junk, as they were in canon. With those concepts in mind, convergence to this design happened quite quickly and it stayed largely unchanged throughout playtesting, to the point that the generic squadron “went gold” over 8 months before release and only received a slight points decrease in that timeframe. They're no YT-2400, but you should consider that a good thing :)

Compared to the other Republic squads, these have one main advantage. Price per non-heavy hull. 4 of these bad boys gives you 28 hull at a 56 cost for a very solid screen. While lots of Republic ships have a decent squad value, requiring squad activations can sometimes eat into certain ship’s roles. Sure the Acclamator 1 can be a great carrier, but if you’re using it as a Boarding Troopers + Racks battering ram, then it can be trickier to justify commanding squads on that pivotal turn.

Y-wing Ruthless spam is a cornerstone of the faction, but Y-wings on their own won't stop and tie up enemy bombers. That doesn’t mean Y-wings aren’t efficient though, with Nevoota Bee + Flight Controllers they can hit super hard, and even without it they’re very efficient bomber generics. Most importantly, G9s still benefit from the Republic defensive aces, such as Luminara or Plo in their Delta-7. These aces dramatically increase the survivability and damage output of the overall squad ball at little additional cost.

The other thing that Republic fleets have in abundance is high access to Ruthless Strategist + Ordnance Pod boats, which can combine with LTT due to decent access to Bombard in the faction. This compensates for their average damage output by allowing flak out of a side hull zone to punch up well above their weight. Into lower hull squadrons, pinging a Mauler Mithel or Shara Bey twice with Ruthless in exchange for taking 1 damage on 2 Riggers is a no-brainer. They'll struggle into high hull aces like Lando, Maul, Maarek, etc, but being real for a second, most squads struggle into high hull aces, so they're not alone in that.

Their other main use case is replacing a bomber in a squad ball with a cheaper squadron that doesn't require an activation. For the Republic specifically, using commanders like Yularen or Plo, getting bombers on-target can be completely devastating. A cheeky Rigger activating in the squad phase to tie up their squads, giving you space for your bombers to get into position and smack a target can be the difference between winning games and not. ARC-170s especially need to not get bogged down in order to deliver their double blue payload. With most enemy squads not having great rerolls, a G9’s 7 hull will last a long time, at minimum 2 activations + flak. For some fleets that's enough to neuter their alpha-strike or ship shooting.

Squad Builds

This is the aforementioned screen GAR needed. No commands required, some solid hull, and pair with solid flak capabilities + Ruthless to have a great time.

We'll get to Anakin next, but for 10 extra points than a normal G9 he represents a significant boost in firepower and tankiness to a largely squadless fleet and hits hard into ships. You can honestly replace him with R2, Five-Seven or any of the cheaper Delta-7 aces for some solid buffs to the squad ball at a low cost increase.

This is your standard AAAK + Y-wings squad ball, but dropping a Y-wing for a Rigger gives you the ability to pin stuff down and do some last-first trickle damage before Kickback, Axe, Ahsoka, and Kickback throw themselves into the enemy squad ball to free up the bombers. You can season to taste with ARC-170s and drop Ahsoka + Kickback for a Luminara or Plo + generic V-19 if you prefer those. Just make sure you have FCT support for the ARCs.

Now There Are Two of Them!

Anakin Skywalker (Twilight)

Like Vader before him, Anakin has one of the widest varieties of options in the game. With this new Twilight variant of him, he now has a commander and 3 squadron variants, beating out Vader by a single squad, just missing the officer and boarding team. Sounds like we need a little Ani in an N-1 Starfighter and ETA-2 to complete the lot and have five different Anakin squadrons 😛

Getting into his stats, he keeps the G9 baseline but boosts its firepower significantly by swapping a blue for two reds into squads and a blue for red black into ships. While he won't be as consistent as Deltakin, he has the capability to absolutely wallop enemy squads. He has brace evade as the token suite, which while it's worse than the Falcon aces, is a better or equivalent suite to the other 7+ hull aces. He has Adept 2, same as all the other Anakin squads, Rogue, and Scout.

As a general design rule, both because Hyperspace Rings specifically forbid it and because a mass of Rogue squads attacking stuff turn 1 just isn't super fun, Legacy tries to avoid any easy combination of Scout + Rogue in the game. But for Riggerkin specifically, we wanted to lean into it and define his core mechanic, as Anakin has always been a bit of a rule breaker and it's thematic that he would break our own design rule. His first text reads “If you are deployed beyond distance 2 of all friendly ships, suffer 2 damage.” He can not follow Obi-Wan’s orders the rules and hyperspace in behind enemy lines to get a surgical strike on something, but he'll pay for it. But suffering damage isn't always a bad thing for him. His next ability calls forward to his future self inside the TIE Advanced and TIE Defender, reading “While attacking a squadron, if you have 5 or fewer hull points remaining, each of your red crit icons adds 1 to the damage total.”

The synergies are pretty clear. Put Anakin into danger, or deploy him ahead of the rest of the fleet, and he'll find a way to punch out of it. He's not shabby into ships either, averaging nearly 2 damage after his rerolls.

So to address the elephant in the room, why take him over Deltakin? Well, Deltakin is great on his own, but truly comes together when he synergizes with all of the other Republic squadron tools. Axe allows the limited damage that gets through Dodge to and his tokens to get reduced, Ahsoka can ping Anakin for an attack and allow him to roll 3+ extra attacks a turn rolling 2 blues with an Adept reroll. But once you add up all this support needed to make him shine, he is no longer just a 24 point squadron, and the screens that have him present tend to become bloated.

In contrast, Riggerkin is mostly a lone operator. He can work well as part of a larger squad ball of course, but he has enough hull and survivability to move around the board and deal some damage to key targets that need them and hits harder on average than most other Rogue squads in the game (except for Lando, hate that guy). In fleets that don't want to take lots of squads, Riggerkin is fantastic. He’s great at pushing ahead of the fleet and hiding on a rock, soaking up some damage, and then jumping out to kill a specific squad. Kind of like Maul, but a bit less slippery.

He’s most commonly taken as part of a small screen with generic G9 Riggers, but he’s useful elsewhere as well. In alternate gamemodes like RITR campaigns/Task Force and Fighter Group, he’s a monster and can get some really solid damage into anything you throw him at. He may receive some small tweaks in the future to make him more competitive, depending on if we collaborate with ARC to make a Deltakin nerf happen.

Droid Companion

R2-D2 (Twilight)

Starting with his chassis, R2 is defined by his efficiency. For 3 points over the generic, you gain a brace token and upgrade the battery from a blue to a non-bomber black, in exchange for dropping the battery from a black to a blue. Already a decent statline to start with. Then on top of that, priced at 17 points he’s on the cheaper end of GAR aces, meaning there’s usually room to fit him in a squad ball if you’re willing to drop another ace. But unlike most of the other aces that focus on combat, R2 is a purely support squadron.

He acts as a Comms Net, Ahsoka Tano Officer (Rebel) and squadron all in one package. Really need a nav token and you only have an engineering token? That’s ok, R2 will come and swap that engineering token into a nav for you. Have a small ship that receives a Hondo token it can’t do anything with? That’s alright, R2 can fly in, take that token, and pass a new one to another ship. While he can still work while engaged, he shines when he can dance in and out of combat to do all of his token shenanigans. Most importantly, in fleets with R2 you can take simpler token support. No need for multiple Clone Nav Officers to give you token variety when 2 Parts Resupplies can give you everything you need.

That being said, he does have some limitations compared to those upgrades. For one, he only affects ships at distance 1-2 of him, which means that the upgrades like Comms Net and CNO work across a further distance on the table. He also, as a squadron, can get tied down and end up out of position, whereas ships, especially Peltas and Consulars, can easily keep it moving.

But at 17 points, what’s not to love? In a Republic fleet without Peltas or a Radiant VII, he can really provide the extra token flexibility you need, and he’s not too shabby in combat either. He's been a very popular squadron in the listbuilding data even after the recent hotfix nerf for him, and largely because Deltakin is so good it's hard to justify Riggerkin in your standard fleets. But it's a lot easier to swap a Kickback for an R2-D2 to save on the cost of command token tech, even in a faction that has a solid token economy. You never know when you need that squadron token next turn to trigger Yularen, or if your Hondo ship dies before you can toss your Venator that SPHA-T token. R2 can really save the day in those scenarios.