Congratulations, You are Being Rescued - K-2SO Unit Guide

Congratulations, You are Being Rescued - K-2SO Unit Guide

K-2SO (K2) is one of my favorite characters in Star Wars and one of my favorite units in Legion. He is a wise-cracking droid who has been a fan favorite since his first appearance in Rogue One. He is a great token bot for Cassian and can be a quite formidable offensive unit. Let's see why.

  • 70 Points
  • 5 HP + Courage 2
  • Red Defense Dice
  • Surge Critical
  • Droid Trooper

He has a pretty solid stat line all around. 70 Points is an absolute steal for what he is capable of. He's got better defenses than most Rebel heroes with Red saves, Armor One, and Incognito. He still gets the hero treatment of surging crit on offense which makes him pretty formidable at times, and to top it all off he has the Droid Trooper classification so he cannot be suppressed. He does not get cover from suppression alone, but Armor pretty much negates that.

This is as good a spot as any to say, if you're bringing Cassian, you should be bringing K2. He is at least 30% of the reason why Cassian is so good. Recently, I've seen more people talk about just bringing a Trooper unit with Binocs instead of K2. While this does let Cassian get a decent amount of aims you're losing out on a ton of value from K2. Dodges, more aims, zoning, offense, objective play, one mediocre command card, and more. If you don't want to bring K2, I would probably not bring Cassian.

ᐠ .ᆺ. ᐟ\ : K2SO in Rogue One: A Star Wars Story

Keywords

Calculate Odds - Calculate Odds is his best asset. It is usually the main reason why you bring him at all. He is able to use Calc Odds on himself (so the suppression token is on him) and Teamwork the tokens to Cass. This is a really effective way to charge Cass up for a solid Sniper or Pistol shot and gives him the added benefit of a dodge. It can also be used on other units and can do some serious good for them. Ahsoka, Commandos, Han, and Boba all immediately come to mind, but there are certainly more. I would suggest using this almost every turn if possible.

Armor One - Not much to say here. Adds a little bit of durability that he doesn't usually need. It's handy since he doesn't get any suppression cover.

Detachment: Cassian Andor - I'll say it, I both love and hate this keyword. I get that they're best buddies and all but I really wish I could bring K2 in certain lists without Cassian. I wouldn't even mind if this was Detachment: Cassian or Jyn. Anyway, this is a solid keyword for getting K2 up the board at the start if you need to. He has to deploy near Cassian even if Cass infiltrates across the map.

Incognito - I love it. Incognito is phenomenal. It can be a little problematic sometimes since he can't contribute to scoring VPs if Incognito hasn't been broken. This can occasionally cause issues for early scoring/counting objectives like Intercept or payload, but by the end of the game, he should be able to break it if your opponent hasn't. K2 with unbroken Incognito is the single best zoning tool in the game. If he takes a standby while still Incog, it's nearly impossible to break without him being able to use it. Since he cannot be targeted beyond range one, a rogue sniper can't strip this standby. This trick is a really good way to hold your opponent off of middle objectives or keep one of their aggro pieces away from your army for an extra turn.

Teamwork: Cassian Andor - Teamwork is absolute gas. Sharing tokens with Cassian is incredible for both of them. It's always good and always useful. You can do things like Calculate odds on K2 and then Teamwork tokens to Cass so Cass doesn't have to deal with the extra suppression. You can use this as a way of extending Take Cover or Spotter Range by relaying the token through one of them. There are plenty of other fringe cases as well. Overall, extremely good keyword.

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Weapons

Jyn's SE-14 Blaster

This pistol is one of my favorite weapons in the whole game. It's a bit of a slot machine, but if K2 is charged up with as many aims as Cassian he can usually get 3-5 paint out of this thing. Ten points is a very nice price for what you're getting. Range Two is barely an issue but does limit him a tiny bit. Pierce is always good. Suppressive from this pistol alone has won me at least three games by itself.

It's got enough dice that it can cause some serious issues, but don't expect it to be dropping whole units left and right without some aim support. I like it for his Incog Standby Zoning since, even though they're white dice, there's always a threat of five hits with Pierce and Suppressive.

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Upgrades

Comms

Emergency Transponder

This is pretty much the only upgrade I would ever consider. It is a good way to snag an extra token on both Cass and K2. It's by no means stapled or even usually necessary but if you've got the points, why not.

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Command Card

Sacrifice

Sacrifice is slept on. There, I said it. I think Rebels have the best command cards in the entire game overall. This usually makes building a command hand a huge pain for hero hammer lists. For each pip value, there are usually 3-5 good choices depending on which units you have. Unfortunately for Sacrifice, it is a pretty situational card. Therefore, it is mostly just outshined and outplayed by most other three pips that Rebels have access to.

That said, I recently played in a tournament where I had Cass, K2, and Din. Whistling Birds is somehow more situational and worse than this card so I opted to give Sacrifice a try. I loved it. I was able to use its effect much more frequently than I had anticipated. There are three major ways that I found it useful.

  1. Red Guardian dice on white save units. This is pretty self-explanatory. I found that having this as an option to keep both Cassian and my Vets alive was pretty handy.
  2. Using its secondary effect on turn six to guarantee a win on Recover the Supplies. I was able to grab a box late game with Cassian but he was going to be stuck out in the open with two remaining wounds. Turn six I played this card, defeated K2, and just let Cassian hang out. None of my opponent's units were close enough to engage Cass which allowed me to secure the win.
  3. A very similar case but with Din and Bounty. It was down to just K2, Din, and I think a unit of Vets. It's turn five, the VPs were tied and I had to score Din's bounty to have any hope of winning since my kill points were lower. Unfortunately, in order to score the bounty I would have to expose Din and leave him in the open for a turn. Luckily for me, I had this card. Din was able to secure the bounty in the middle of T5, survive via a handful of dodges, and then T6 I played this card to guarantee that Din could not be shot at. It once again, won me the game.

Now, I'm not saying this card is better than most, or even all other options. However, it is not a very commonly used card and can throw some seriously unexpected wrenches in your opponent's plans. I would suggest at least trying it out casually before writing it off completely.

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Tactics

I already covered a lot that would normally go into this section. Zoning via Incognito Standbys and Calculating Odds on himself so Cassian doesn't get the suppression. Running him otherwise is pretty easy. He likes to stay near Cass for most if not all of the game. He is a close-range unit so if you want to attack with him you need to close the gap. It's much easier with him because of incognito. With his pistol, he is a good suppression generator and he can be a pretty formidable melee unit.

If you have no other linebackers he can kinda play that role. Five HP, red saves, armor one, and four red attack dice in melee are not bad for holding off some scaries should you need to. I would not suggest actively searching for engagements to stick him in, but he can handle himself if necessary.

esmesqualor: Where are you taking these prisoners?

Lists and Units

K2, like Cassian, loves almost every single unit Rebels has to offer. The two of them are some of the most flexible heroes Rebels have. He particularly likes Cassian, Han, Chewie, Jyn, and anything that could benefit from Calc Odds.

The lists here are all just the same as the Cassian lists. There's not really a good way to build a list around K2 support but if Cass is there, he is too.

Thank you for reading!