Vehicles in Star Wars are sturdy, intimidating and powerful. The smallest are nimble and fast while the largest vehicles create a feeling of invincibility, at least on their first impression. This is true in Imperial Assault as well. From the largest walkers that can fit onto an Imperial Assault map, to powerful tanks, to heavily armored soldiers that fly with jetpacks, Vehicles bring some powerful abilities to the table.
First we’ll go over faction neutral support, then we’ll take a look at faction specific support and example lists. Vehicles don’t actually have a ton of generic support, but the pieces they do have are quite a potent mix of offensive and defensive cards.
Overrun takes advantage of the fact that most vehicles are either massive or mobile and move freely through hostile figures, allowing them to potentially deal a lot of damage among several hostile figures in a single activation. This combines powerfully with Fuel Upgrade, which boosts all friendly vehicles’ speed by 1 for the entire round, as well as boosting their durability as well. Shared Experience allows any Vehicle to convert movement into Focus, but more importantly goes back into the hand whenever a vehicle or droid is defeated, which works great with cheap vehicles like Jet Troopers and discard cost effects like Zillo Technique, along with introducing cross trait synergy with Droids.
Some more niche cards include Overcharged Weapons, a 0 point card that can function in the late game similarly to Take Initiative or Call the Vanguard, exhausting your vehicle to perform an attack on a figure before it can activate. If you have any Technician figures in your list and are trying to keep your vehicles alive longer, you can try out the updated Repair card.
In terms of faction neutral Skirmish Upgrades, Vehicles have access to Targeting Computer for 1 point, an attachment which grants a reroll on all attacks, which works best with Vehicles that can attack twice in an activation. You can opt for Scavenged Weaponry to get +1 damage instead, and have the card pass from 1 vehicle or droid to another, but you can only use the effect once per round, and your opponent gets an extra VP every time they defeat a figure with the attachment as it passes around. Finally, Heavy Fire lets you place pinpoint damage with any vehicle or heavy weapon attack regardless of dice rolls, but at the cost of multiple harmful conditions, it works much better with low cost figures than the larger more expensive ones.
Empire
True to the original trilogy, the Empire is one of the best factions for Vehicle lists and offers the most vehicle specific support out of the 3 factions. Imperial Retrofitting is a skirmish upgrade that works for just 3 specific massive vehicles in the Empire, the AT-ST, Repulsor Tank and General Weiss. This 1 point upgrade solves a lot of problems these figures have with their action economy by granting a free move action, or alternatively allowing them to bring their full weapons payload to bear by giving them assault when they don’t need the free move action. Any of these 3 figures can become a powerful centerpiece to an Imperial army with these skirmish upgrade included. It also helps that all 3 of these figures have a reduced cost in IACP along with slightly buffed abilities.
The AT-DP is another powerful massive vehicle in the Empire’s hangars, and though it hasn’t been upgraded in IACP and can’t use Imperial Retrofitting, it’s gotten a nice little boost from the updated Generals Ranks attachment, which helps to solve the DP’s biggest drawback in its horrible speed and unlock its powerful assault activations by giving it a massive speed boost when its being moved around by Officers, and a damage boost when being commanded to attack by figures like General Sorin and Emperor Palpatine.
Finally, elite Jet Troopers are a small figure trooper group that can fill out a vehicle list nicely for just 7 points and 2 figures. They are wonderfully flexible and efficient for a 3-dice attacker that can move up 6 spaces naturally with Mobile and effectively costs 3.5 points per figure, and they bring the option to bring powerful trooper command cards like Call the Vanguard and Concentrated Fire. Agile may seem unimpressive at first glance, but when used at the correct time and in combination with cards like Zillo Technique, Fuel Upgrade and Extra Armor, the Agile ability can be a powerful tool for forcing the opponent’s figures to attack Jet Troopers multiple times in order to defeat them.
Because there’s so many possible ways to build a powerful Vehicle list in the Empire faction, I’ll include 2 example lists here for what you can do, either with the Repulsor Tank and Jet Troopers or the AT-DP.
- 9 SC2-M Repulsor Tank (IACP)
- 7 Jet Trooper
- 7 Jet Trooper
- 5▪ BT-1 (IACP)
- 5▪ Del Meeko (IACP)
- 2 Imperial Officer
- 2 Imperial Officer
- 1▪ Imperial Retrofitting (IACP)
- 1▪ Rule by Fear
- 1▪ Zillo Technique
- 0▪ Advanced Com Systems (IACP)
Command Deck:
- (3) ▪ Covering Fire (IACP)
- (2) ▪ Overrun
- (2) ▪ Call the Vanguard
- (2) ▪ Price of Glory
- (2) ▪ Squad Swarm
- (1) ▪ Negation
- (1) ▪ Fuel Upgrade
- (1) ▪ Intelligence Leak
- (1) ▪ Shared Experience
- (0) ▪ Element of Surprise
- (0) ▪ Expose Weakness (IACP)
- (0) ▪ Planning
- (0) ▪ Take Initiative
- (0) ▪ Urgency
- (0) ▪ Of No Importance (IACP)
AT-DP
- 9 AT-DP
- 1 The Generals Ranks (IACP)
- 8▪ Emperor Palpatine
- 8 Heavy Stormtrooper (IACP)
- 1 (0) The Generals Ranks (IACP)
- 5▪ General Sorin (IACP)
- 2 3x Imperial Officer
- 1▪ Rule by Fear
- 1▪ Zillo Technique
- 1 Extra Armor
- 0▪ Advanced Com Systems (IACP)
- 0▪ Technician Training (IACP)
Command Deck:
- (3) ▪ Overwhelming Impact (IACP)
- (2) ▪▪ Repair (IACP)
- (2) ▪ Price of Glory
- (2) ▪ Lock On
- (2) ▪ Call the Vanguard
- (1) ▪ Field Tactician
- (1) ▪ Brace for Impact
- (1) ▪ Stealth Tactics
- (1) ▪ Negation
- (0) ▪ Element of Surprise
- (0) ▪ Planning
- (0) ▪ Take Initiative
- (0) ▪ Disorient
- (0) ▪ Fleet Footed
- (0) ▪ Celebration
Mercenaries
For a long time, the only Vehicle figure available to Mercenaries was Boba Fett, granted the vehicle trait in Season 2 to match the flavor of the Jet Troopers. IACP Season 8 has graced the faction with Gar Saxon and the Supercommandos, expanding the Mercenaries vehicular roster enough to allow building a list around the trait.
Boba Fett and the Supercommandos abilities are designed around using movement points as a resource, which makes it advantageous to include command cards that give you extra movement points like Hit and Run, Worth Every Credit, Opportunistic, and even Fleet Footed. And because Boba Fett’s Wrist Cord and Flamethrower and the Super Commando’s Jetpack Rocket are not limited to their own activation, you can use movement points gained from cards like Opportunistic and Suppressive Fire to trigger those abilities.
Block tokens from Extra Armor both synergize with Gar Saxon’s Personal Combat Shield ability, and are great with Boba Fett’s built in defenses, making him very difficult to take down. When I play the list, I tend to focus the Super Commandos first and have them be my alpha strike in round 2, usually with Call the Vanguard, using Suppressive Fire to help trigger their Rocket ability. Once the enemy’s forces have been reduced, Boba can come in and be very difficult for the opponent’s army to take down.
- 13▪ Boba Fett (IACP)
- 7 Super Commando (IACP)
- 6▪ Gar Saxon (IACP)
- 6▪ Jabba the Hutt
- 3▪ Bib Fortuna (IACP)
- 2 Jawa Scavenger
- 1▪ Heavy Fire
- 1 Extra Armor
- 1 Suppressive Fire (IACP)
Command Deck:
- (3) ▪ Assassinate (IACP)
- (2) ▪ Heightened Reflexes
- (2) ▪ Tools for the Job
- (2) ▪ Overrun
- (2) ▪ Call the Vanguard
- (1) ▪ Fuel Upgrade
- (1) ▪ Hit and Run
- (1) ▪ Negation
- (1) ▪ Primary Target
- (0) ▪ Opportunistic
- (0) ▪ Fleet Footed
- (0) ▪ Urgency
- (0) ▪ Element of Surprise
- (0) ▪ Take Initiative
- (0) ▪ Celebration
Rebels
Rebels have the fewest vehicular options of the 3 factions. Prior to IACP, the only vehicle unit in Rebels was Sabine Wren from the Tyrants of Lothal expansion. IACP introduced the Rebel AT-RT, a 2×2 size vehicle with the Massive keyword that also has the Trooper trait.
For a Rebel vehicle list, we can lean into the AT-RT’s massive keyword along with Sabine’s Parting Gift damage to make an Overrun damage focused Command deck. AT-RTs already want to get in close to attack with their Vanguard ability, so deal some extra damage when you overlap their figures with Overrun, Crush and Self-Defense, and then use Sabine’s Grenade to finish their damaged figures off. And with so much access to dealing incidental damage to figures without attacking them, Disorient can be a great card in this list for messing with your opponent’s Focus and dealing out even more damage.
Saska’s device tokens work great with Sabine and the AT-RT to upgrade their dice pools, and her Shady Contacts ability allows us to bring Vinto into this list, who probably benefits from Saska’s device tokens the most, along with adding another Hunter to justify Assassinate and Heightened Reflexes in the Command deck, as well as bringing another source of indirect damage to go with the damage this list is already dealing with the AT-RTs and Sabine.
And don’t forget, R2 can heal your vehicles in a pinch if you use his Service ability. If you want to really lean into the non-attack damage theme and get really spicy, try out Saska’s command card to deal a surprise 2 damage to every figure adjacent to the opponent’s terminal!
- 8 AT-RT (IACP)
- 8 AT-RT (IACP)
- 7▪ Sabine Wren
- 5▪ Vinto Hreeda (IACP)
- 4▪ Saska Teft (IACP)
- 3▪ R2-D2
- 3▪ Gideon Argus
- 2▪ C-3P0
Command Deck:
- (3) ▪ Assassinate (IACP)
- (3) ▪ Crush
- (2) ▪ Call the Vanguard
- (2) ▪ Heightened Reflexes
- (2) ▪ Tools for the Job
- (1) ▪ Negation
- (1) ▪ Fuel Upgrade
- (1) ▪ Intelligence Leak
- (0) ▪ Rebel Graffiti
- (0) ▪ Self-Defense
- (0) ▪ Take Initiative
- (0) ▪ Urgency
- (0) ▪ Planning
- (0) ▪ Element of Surprise
- (0) ▪ Disorient
I hope this has helped inspire you to put together a list for your next game night and try out one of these vehicle based lists in your skirmish games, or maybe to make your own vehicle list, as there are more options available to pilot, especially in the Empire, where it’s Vehicles that keep the local systems in line!