CIS Sith

This week’s letter is the last of three from Ryan:

Hi, sithdragon13

I'm pretty new at SWM and have a question for you. I want to run a Separatist Sith squad and am having a hard time getting it to work. I have heard that this is one of the worst squads for synergy, but i really like the characters. I usually run Sidious, DLOtS, Darth Tyranus and Komari Vosa. This is augmented with several Bounty Hunters. The Separatists seem to be built mostly on droids. Do you have any thoughts on this terrible faction and how to make it work for living characters? Could you do a "Top 10" for Separatists like you did for the Republic?

The CIS Sith as I like to call them, has some great characters, but all that you have heard is correct.  They have almost no synergy what so ever.  While there are some very nice pairings you can come up with, that is about as far as you get.  Most every character is so expensive that you cannot field more than two, maybe three, without seriously hurting your activation count.  Their one saving grace is that we are now seeing enough good fringe medium and low cost characters that you can flush it out better than you could.

Currently there is only one way to really make the CIS Sith work, and that is San Hill.  You run a couple of Sith/Bounty Hunters and some activations and it will help you get the pounce on the enemy.  The problem here is that I see San as one of the best squads in the game, it is a very hard team to play.  If not executed properly, then your one character per phase limit will backfire.  The #1 thing to learn is what reinforcements to bring with Lobot.   The customization he brings is a must for and San Hill squad.  You can win or lose a game before it even starts by correctly or incorrectly choosing your reinforcements.  The other is learning to play around the one character activation and when is a good time to get rid of San.

I can’t really do a top ten list, as there are barely even ten living characters, so I will do a character-by-character breakdown.

Darth Sidious, DlotS – I actually really like this character.  He has no defensive abilities, but his he has some nice offense.  Lightning is also a way to get rid of San if you can base San next to a target.  He also deepens your squads force pool.  Not great, but triple attack and sweep are pretty nice.

General Grievous – Of the four out there, only one is truly playable.  Supreme Commander Grievous is great, but only for droids.  All fo the other pieces are horribly over costed and under powered.  General Grievous isn’t too bad, but is still pretty fragile for 44 points.  If you work around his CE, then you will almost always drop the extra point for SC Grievous, who does everything the General does but adds a +4 attack as well.

Count Dooku/Darth Tyranus – These two are perhaps two of the best of the CIS Sith.  With nice stats and decent force powers, the main difference is do you want him to be a team player?  The Dark Inspiration from Tyranus really helps when dealing with Jedi by adding to the defense, but Dooku is the better stand-alone attacker.  The main problem here is that they are both anti-jedi oriented, so against shooters they suffer a bit.

Jango Fett (CS) – um…yeah.  He’s crap.  For 47 points and no abilities, you will be better off going with the new fringe BH version.

Durge – Durge isn’t too bad of a piece, but if you want to use him, you need to center more on his commander effect than anything.  Regeneration is an overrated ability.  It has screwed up the costing of every figure its on, with maybe the exception of Bossk, BH.  It doesn’t work fast enough to shed the damage you need to.  His attack is pretty weak in today’s game.

Asajj Ventress – Asajj is a very underrated piece.  For only 34 points, she can pack quite a punch.  The CE that grants deadly attack is good, and with Dooku and Maul being followers that is a good thing.  Well, except that all of the Mauls already have it.  Her stats are actually quite good and riposte is very nice.  With loner, she can be a beast.  Its her lack of synergy that hurts her.  Not only is the deadly attack wasted with maul, but add her to Dooku and you get a very nice anti-Jedi/melee squad.  Against shooters they are dead, which of course dominate right now.

Darth Sidious (CS) – One of the best CIS pieces right now.  His pawn works great on droids with damage reduction, and Dark Master can help anyone.  Note: It does not have to be a character with a force point, so you could give it to a Fett if you wanted. J  Also, another nicely costed piece.

Darth Maul – see my last AtD for the comparison between Mauls.  The other two are your best bets.  I am not a big fan of Speeder Maul.  He is fast, but lacks the offense of the other Mauls to be truly effective, especially at the extra cost.  While I understand why they did it, the lack of flight really killed this piece.

Aurra Sing – read my MotD review on her. 

 

And there you have it.  A whole lot of really expensive pieces with almost no synergy what so ever.  If you want to use them, San Hill is really the best way to go.  Never run more than 2-3 or you will hurt your activations so much that all of the advantages of the pieces are now gone.  Thanks for the emails Ryan.  I hope this helps you out.  Later on sometime I will write a more in depth article on San Hill.  He really deserves it.  He is becoming one of the top squads in the game by experienced players.  If anyone has any questions or topics you would like me to cover, drop me a line at sithdragon13@yahoo.com.  I will get to ALL emails, so if you have sent something be patient.  I know I have a few stacked up right now.  It’s coming ;) 

 

May the Force Be With You.