Star Wars Miniatures Gameplay Tips
Activating A Character Without Moving It Anywhere
You probably read that title and thought, "What?!" Why would you ever want to activate a character without doing anything with it?
But there is actually a strategic advantage to doing this. If you have a character who is already well-placed and does not need to move, you can't just move on to the next initiative roll--you must activate all characters before your characters can be cleared and initiative can be rolled again. Thus, you can simply place a counter on the character without doing anything, and the activation counts as legitimate.
Using Commander Effects
Commander Effects can often change the course of a skirmish, because with them, little characters often get pumped up, and without them, an army can be decimated in a matter of a few moves by stronger characters. But what kinds of commander effects are available?
To look for these, go to BlooMilk's Character Search, check off the faction you want to look within, and then check the box beside "Commander". Scroll down to the bottom to see the full list of characters who have Commander Effects in that faction. (Remember, some Commander Effects only go off on other characters within a certain range of squares, so if you're using a Commander Effect to boost your squad, be sure your squad members are placed correctly on the map!)
Once you've chosen your Commander Effect piece, pair it with pieces that will benefit greatly from its usage--say, if the Commander Effect boosts attack way up on pieces from the same faction, use some tiny low-attack pieces in the same faction and blast opponents away. Or, if the Commander Effect boosts damage or defense, you can use that to your team-building advantage. Just don't get your Commander killed off!
IMPORTANT NOTE: When building your Commander Effect team, don't include any Droids on it if you want everyone to benefit from the effect. Droids are immune to Commander Effects, unless it specifies on the Commander Effect that it affects Droids too.
Making Use of Character Abilities
Healing
Building in a little healing can help any team stay alive longer, even if the heal is only 10 points--that 10 points could mean the difference between a figure staying in the game or not. Go to BlooMilk's Character Search, check off your faction, and then check off one of the following abilities under "Has Special Abilities" or "Has Force Powers:
- Heal 10
- Heal 20
- Heal 30
- Healing Tears
- Force Heal 20
- Force Heal 30
- Force Heal 40
One thing to keep in mind: most healers have to be able to touch the figure that needs to get healed, so often it's safer to run your hurt guy back to the healer rather than run the healer out to the hurt guy. Otherwise, your healer can get killed before they can be of use!
Force Powers
Force Powers, if your faction has some, can be awesome for special attacks or maneuvers like moving faster across the board, healing, or even deflecting an attack! Once again, BlooMilk's Character Search is your best friend for helping you find out which characters in your faction have Force Powers that you'd be interested in using. Just check off your faction and then check "Force Rating" to
Don't forget that some Fringe pieces also come with Force Powers, so if you're using Fringe a lot (or it's the basis of your team), you're not without some Force of your own!
Boosts
Some characters get special abilities that boost their attacks or defenses in response to another character being on the board, opposing characters being activated (or unactivated), and even bonuses to damage if they don't move and just attack.
Look carefully at your collection (and available pieces in your favorite faction) to see how two or three characters' boosts could combo together. For instance, if one can boost attack, another can boost defense, and a third can boost damage, you've got yourself a fairly unstoppable team!
Only usable with ranged pieces, the Combining Fire option is a great one when you've got several low-attack pieces and need to be able to hit a high defense. When you have two or more characters who can see a single target, you can have them "combine fire" to boost their attack up. (Make sure lines of sight are good for each character you want to use in Combining Fire!) For each character you use to combine fire, the attack is boosted +4. After your Combined Fire attack goes off, you mark each character that was used in the tactic, and move on with normal activations.
Combining fire is a great way for a swarm of smaller ranged pieces to take down an incredibly high defense or high attack character, who otherwise might stomp the daylights out of two or three of them at once. Now if it only worked on close-combat... :)