Or, rather, I should say there is a dark version of him, known as R2-Q5. This droid was found on the second Death Star, and has gained notoriety mostly for his resemblance to R2-D2. In Series 3, he has found his way into Attacktix, with his own special effect to bring to the game. But is it strong enough an effect to “break” the game? Let’s take a look…
R2-Q5 has no attack, but he does have the following game effect; “At start of your turn, you may press R2’s top. If green, one of your (T) Troopers may move up to twice its normal distance.” For 10 points, you get what appears to be a 2 out of 3 chance for this effect to go off each turn.
Now, doubling the speed of your average Clone Trooper to 8, or even your run of the mill Super Battle Droid to 12 might sound like fun, but probably not game breaking. After all, for 20 points you can have the Clone Sergeant who moves 10 all of the time. But…let’s take a look at one of the more derided strikers in the game, the Grievous Bodyguard. In Series 1 he was deemed almost unplayable. So, he made a comeback in Series 3 with an impressive 12 speed and the highest Special Power ratio of any 10 point figure with an attack. (Only R2-D2’s is higher.) Now, even with these improved stats and powers, he didn’t exactly set the Attacktix world on fire. Enter R2-Q5.
R2-Q5 can boost the GBGs speed up to 24, a full 10 ‘tix faster than the next closest figure. On a normal size board, few figures are out of range after the first round of movement at that speed. Without a doubt, the GBG maximizes the effect of Q5. Is this combo enough to build a team around? I think so.
Allow me to suggest the following squad. Central to the squad is the GBG/Q5 combo. Now, Q5 is also good enough to have a Rally > (T) Trooper special, so rounding out the team with pure Troopers seems like a given. Taking GBG’s special into account pushes us further into the Droid Army. Luckily, the buffest Trooper in the game is on the Droid Army bench, the mighty Destroyer Droid. I’d also lean towards throwing in a Super Battle Droid, to assure having two shooters available for when GBG’s are out of range.
Squad:
R2-Q5 x 1 10 pts.
Grievous Bodyguard (S2) x 3 30 pts.
Destroyer Droid x 1 40 pts.
Super Battle Droid (S1) x 1 20 pts.
This squad has no Backups, as there are no Recruit powers. However, there are Rescue and Rally powers, so you do have a shot at getting some figures back into play. The plan is to launch GBGs on kamikaze runs into enemy territory. Though their attacks are weak, is all goes well they should be able to base any enemy and take them out. If their special fires on the retaliaton, all the better to get your Destroyer Droid firing both barrels. There is terrific synergy throughout this entire squad, and the deep distance a boosted GBG can go should allow you to pick off your opponents figs in an order that should minimize the effectiveness of their specials. And if all else fails, you still have the Destroyer Droid and Super Battle Droid, 3 missles a turn, to fall back on.
In closing, I believe this combo is one of the strongest in the game, and I hope you try it out for yourself. Even if all it does is focus your opponents attacks on your non-attacking figure, you’ve already done your strategy a great service.
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