Welcome to the Mandalorian deep dive and the wonderful primaries that lead it. Today we are discussing The Armorer and The Mandalorian as leaders of an incredibly consistent and resilient team. If you are ever in doubt on what to play, consider the might of Mandalore as they have a splendid balance between mobility, offensive capabilities, and sturdiness.
Mandalorians are a warrior clan of people that value honor and battle. Their culture is based on combat, making them strong fighters and bounty hunters. “Stronger Together” has become a mantra of their people and is one of the core mechanics of this list. Speaking of, the list we will be focusing on today is as follows.
Let’s get a quick assessment of their strengths and weaknesses.
- Synergy: 8/10
- Movement: 7/10
- Power: 6/10
- Attrition: 8/10
- Map Control: 5/10
Mandalorians are extremely synergistic which is mainly due to Stronger Together allowing free focus actions when moving. There is also the Armorer’s innate ability which prevents the increase of force costs for all Mandos, allowing Stronger Together to always be a free ability. Nearly all the models in your list will have the ability to jump themselves or another Mandalorian aiding their overall mobility. This allows Mandos to access difficult to reach points or negate the effects of being pushed off high points as they can usually jump back on. If your opponent recognizes this, they may just opt to wound, but this isn’t that easy either. Mandalorian armor is extremely resilient allowing fantastic expertise and even access to protection with Bo Katan.
This faction is nimble and works fantastic within it’s own tag but I want to break it down even more to show why.
The Armorer
Why use a lightsaber when a Hammer or Tong will do the trick? This model is not perfect but is a cornerstone for the Mandalorian build. Her innate ability, Our Survival Is Our Strength. This Is the Way, prevents wounding from increasing the cost of your active and reactive abilities. As stated earlier, this means Stronger Together will always be free as long as she is on the board. But she adds even more synergy with her tactic, Wisdom of the Mandalore, that allows another Mandalorian and herself a jump. The Armorer can reach nearly the entire board with her free jump and active advance. I’ve started plenty of games off jumping Paz up (one of your slower models) and double advancing to hit whatever my opponent had moved up first.
Expose is rare these days and the Armorer being able to always attack an exposed target is expectantly good. You should get 4 successes almost consistently on either tree but I tend to stay on the Hammer side for 8 dice. Her damage is generally capped at 6 making her a decent finisher, but not someone you would expect to one shot a model. The best part is that she can take a hit, so after you rush her in from across the map to steal a point, your opponent is forced to displace her to retake their own home objective since wounding is not really an option.
The Mandalorian
But let’s say your opponent does get that elusive wound. Was that actually a good thing or did they just progress your board state? Everyone should be well aware of the tankiest primary in the game (take a seat Dooku) and his innate ability to reposition when an ally is wounded, but how many people know about the second part, handing out hunkers and removing conditions to models within 4? One of the faction’s weakness is that Mandalorians don’t roll many defense dice making Expose particularly powerful against them. Hunkers are a good way to help combat that weakness and the condition removal is always nice to keep them moving back on points.
While the Mandalorian’s attacks aren’t stellar, he can usually manage a push with his rifle and, worst case scenario, simply use his force push to take a point. His melee is a bit less reliable but let’s face it, you are really just putting him on a point and frustrating your opponent.
Bo-Katan Kryze
The faction has an honorary third primary with Bo-Katan, leader of the Clan Kryze. Her tactic to jump any other Mandalorian and passive steadfast and protection bubble make Bo one of the best support pieces in the game, not to mention how incredibly fast she is! This model is a fantastic pull turn 1 as she helps develop your team while also potentially reaching your opponent’s deployment if needed. Her attacks are weak, though you don’t need much to get a lucky shove and have an annoying defensive piece contesting home objectives.
How to Play
This is a faction of opportunities. If you enjoy looking at the board and exploiting weakness, then you will have a blast with the warrior clan. The main consideration with each action should be, “What point is exposed?” It is for this reason that Sabotage Showdown is a good starting point for the Mandalorians.
In this board state, we have our Armorer box on the left with the Mando and Bo on the right. This mission is good for us because we are able to clog the middle two points with defensive units such as Bo and Paz, while having an easier time reaching out to our opponents back points thanks to our high mobility.
The best draws for us on the play would be the two defensive units mentioned before. Paz Vizla is a simple draw that you use to push up the supports with his tactic We Are Mandalorians! Afterwards, he is content to advance and hunker onto the middle point. Once on a point, Paz is extremely difficult to remove; however, take caution to which side you deploy him. If you can avoid it, you won’t want to be opposite Jedi with displacement abilities.
Bo-Katan gives you more options as an opener. Either you can jump up Paz since he is your slowest model or you can jump one of the Clan Kryze supports for Bo to have Stronger Together targets. If you choose to jump Paz, then you are going to be playing the safe route of advancing Bo onto the mid line with a hunker token. This is a fine play as she only rolls 4 dice in defense. If you want to be more aggressive, or perhaps notice your opponent’s back point is not captured properly, then you can opt to move Clan Kryze up to give her a focus dash. Bo is now a jet pack away from being range 4 on the enemy’s deployment line and can maybe get a cheeky shot off.
Now lets say you are going second, then the only real change is that the Armorer can potentially turn online. While she is fast, she can’t really reach the opposite corner of the map with no ranged attack. The best time to go with Armorer is usually when your opponent has a point contested by a single model no matter what that model is. Seriously, you can be attacking into The Madalorian himself and still easily shove him off thanks to Hunter and Prey.
The Shatterpoint card, however, isn’t as simple as picking Armorer, Paz, or Bo. While all are great choices given the circumstance, you should occasionally consider your highest DPS unit in the Covert Mandalorians. The Coverts can easily double tap and take down most supports or secondaries, and using Shatterpoint to activate them means they can keep their protection active. Besides, even if they do get wounded, it’s not like their force cost will increase. Trading wounds is almost always advantageous for your team.
Never Tell Me the Odds can be considered the Mandalorian factions worst objective set. Challenging the Odds is something you almost never do thanks to starting with only 5 force. It doesn’t help that the list can’t wound that easily.
And while you have mobility, that movement is usually done through jumping and not advancing meaning the spread out points can be difficult to reach in time. Still, you should have a plan for how to handle this mission when it comes up.
Deployment should be as follows:
You want Armorer and Paz on the left side that is always active. This is because your slowest model needs to have the easiest time reaching active points.
Your best flop is going to be the “X” formation on the far right. This option allows for you to cluster your defensive units toward the center and not worry about defending your back points as much.
The worst flop is the middle, since few models can contest the lower middle point from the start of the game. Thankfully, you have multiple models that can jump other units in order to reach that point but also lots of bad draws that limit you to just holding two points and hoping for the best. Don’t worry, though, the Mandalorians are really good at standing their ground and fighting back when behind. The first card is called the “good flop” and is reasonable for you to win with. Paz suddenly becomes a great draw since he develops your models and can hold the far left point all on his own. Bo Katan and Armorer early can snipe your opponents middle objective and be difficult to remove from it. Coverts support Paz on the left flank or push towards the middle point since you have the movement and the range.
Overall, this mission set might be considered bad but you have plenty of ways to play into it!
Matchups
Before I go into the good and bad matchups, you need to understand that this faction is considered an “All Rounder” and can handle all match ups fairly easily. There are certainly going to be models you don’t want to see but I truly believe the Mandalorians can play into them all.
The Good
Iden Aggro
Before the nerf, no list could be considered good into Iden. She was fast and hit like a Star Destroyer but I always felt the Mandalorians could stand their ground. Aggressive list rely on wounding to take points instead of shoves and diceless displacement. They overwhelm you with force and numbers but Mandalorians are inherently sticky. The Coverts can hit just as hard as the ISF and are actually more likely to survive if they have protection up. Paz punishes opponents that attack near him which is all Iden really wants to do. The Mandalorian is the perfect counter to Iden’s identity as he removes conditions that she applies. This might be Commander Iden’s worst matchup.
Revenge Lists
There are a great variety of these lists right now but models like Talzin, Kannan, Princess Leia Charming, and Cassian all seek advantages when wounded. The Armorer doesn’t need her units to wound in order to maintain board position. Mandos are fast and efficient, usually ignoring wounds and focusing on bodying points with sturdy models. The Clan Kryz can push better then most any support in the game. The Mandalorian himself has a force push to get around tricky situations. The Armorer can reliably get 3 to 4 down her tree on every attack which may not do much damage, but can shove characters off points. The Mandalorians just don’t play into what Revenge wants to see.
The Bad
Moff Gideon and Thrawn
I wouldn’t say these models individually are difficult to deal with, but they do have abilities about them that make it rough for the warrior clan. The reserve tax is a tough ability to work around when you only have 5 force. Meanwhile, Thrawn provides mobility to some extremely powerful Empire units in a way that no one really can. The game plan is fairly similar for Mandos and Empire here but Empire can do it with better guns. This matchup often turns into, “can my supports survive,” because if they can’t, then you lose the objective race here.
Jedi
Specifically, deflect and force push are great vs Mandalorians. Thankfully, Galactic Republic lost their source of Coordinated Fire: Expose, which also devastates Mandalorians. However, Ki-Adi Mundi is a fantastic model that fears no Mandalorian. Force push can put the slow Paz Vizla in a terrible position and is also a way around Bo Katan’s steadfast bubble. Deflect can put Clan Kryze from 7 to 5 health which puts them in one shot range of far too many models. Even Obi Won can be difficult as this faction doesn’t kill well enough to keep clones off points. There are few Galactic Republic Jedi that the Mandalorians can handle.
Final Thoughts
To wrap this up, I want to say that the Mandalorians are likely the most adaptable competitive list in the game. There aren’t a ton of ways to build them but they can adapt to fight any opponent and are immensely difficult to find an advantage against. They have weakness but those are shored up easily enough with good synergy and efficient movement. If you aren’t sure what you want to play into the meta, consider the warrior clan from Mandalor!
Happy Shatterpointing!
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