Unboxing: Union Assault Regiment

So we’re getting the first air assault regiment (though my stuff took forever to get here, and Enlightened also arrived already), and it looks like this is going to shake up the game quite a bit. Rotorcraft so far have been more of a support choice, but now that we’re getting a wider rollout of transport rotorcraft anti-air is going to be much more important. But I haven’t had the chance to get them on the table yet, so I’ll keep y’all posted.

 

Quick look at the new models

For New Players

If you like flying units this is the box for you, but otherwise this box provides new options rather than things the faction must have to work.

Construction/Magnetizing

Everything came together quite well. Magnetizing the Talon/Spectre was also fairly easy, and it’s a great model. A little derpy, but in a good way. I drilled the inside of the spectre windows to mount 2x1mm magnets (the piece is thick enough that it wasn’t difficult), then used that as a guide to glue 3x1mm magnets to the inside of the hull. I’m also magnetizing the underwing weapons after painting, though you could probably just glue one option. I like the gatlings more but they look a little too busy with the spectre guns, so I had to magnetize it.

Magnetizing the Talon/Spectre

You get 2 reinforcement levels of UR-47 Autogyros per box, so you will have a lot of them. You could use spares for basing your Talons/Spectres or marking officers.

 

Box Contents

Sprue Front 

Sprue Back

Summary

I think Minutemen and Dustcutters are going to be the strongest new options for Union generally, though the rotorcraft do add good forward AA options which will be important with the wider rollout of Rotorcraft. If you want to get into an airmobile playstyle this is the box you need, and there’s some neat new tools, but if you’re happy with how your list plays then I don’t think this will change too much for you.

Analysis

Infantry

As always, remember that Union has limited access to bolstered infantry slots.

Frontier Rangers

There’s a lot of unique capability here that we haven’t seen in the Union Orbat so far, but it comes at a premium cost. They’re basically Spica, which have been quite useful as a R1 objective grabber unit for me. The high range is nice for Union if you want to slowly walk up and ping some units, and Ambush with Rapid Response is also a unique combination. However, I think Union is already quite card hungry so that’s probably not the best idea to heavily rely on it.

Minutemen Shock Troopers

These look insane at first glance, till you realize aerial assault is a must. As it stands, they’re still a premier anti-static artillery unit that'll also mess up infantry. As above, I worry about how many cards you’ll need to feed them to make them work, and they will disintegrate as soon as your opponent looks at them funny. But I can see bringing a reinforced (or even full strength) unit for dealing with whatever is giving you trouble R2-3 or a basic unit for late game objective grabbing.

Note that you can’t Give Em Hell in the turn you use aerial assault, since it happens during their activation.

Armour

Frontier Dustcutters

To me these look like what blazers used to be, a flexible midfield answer. Except not scoring and actually fairly tough. 16 hits per reinforcement is nothing to sneeze at, and we have easy access to bolstered armour slots. I’m going to need to give them a try

Little hats! (Plus I recut the automata as well)

Rotorcraft

Slots are a bit of an issue. Our faction bg can’t bolster, manifest destiny can only bolster the automata, and shock & awe can’t bolster spectres either.

Also note that these are all size 3 or less, so you can hide behind terrain quite well.

Spectre Gunship

Played conservatively, this looks like an interesting sidegrade for the rolling thunder, though with no access to Full Strength slots you won’t be punching in the top bracket in regular games. Similar anti heavy, with a second anti-light or anti-air attack, at the cost of toughness (though still very tough for a rotorcraft). Using the bomb to hit units trying to be sneaky in your backfield will also be fun.

And then there’s the yolo approach of ramming it up the table and going for the bombing run asap. If you bring along automata or transport rotorcraft for target saturation and disable enemy AA this might even work.

Regroup also bears special mention: if you give em hell and your opponent shoots down a model, you can auto-fail moral to return to reserves and drop the suppression. Worth keeping in mind, even more so on the Talon.

Talon Rotor

Very interesting for fast early delivery and then sticking around to provide AA or bully infantry. We already have great transports, but Aerial Assault does add a new tool for a quick midgame response. Note that Aerial Assault doesn’t work with Rapid Response as written, but I assume that’ll get fixed. As for filling I’m looking at FS Pacifiers with teslabots in Reinforced rotors, Reinforced Command with 2 fireteams in FS rotors, or some basic units for quick objective grabbing.

UR-47 Autogyros

I haven’t been a huge fan of the Avispas, the alliance analog to these lil guys, but hopefully they’re closer to the enlightened version owing to the larger dice pool. They’re a decent enough mid table annoyance, incredibly fast, and you could use them to hunt enemy aircraft/rotorcraft or field guns. I’ll need to try them out to see if there’s anything else you can tease out of them.

Conclusion

Union was already in a solid place, and this gives us some great new options to try out. Hopefully it’ll lower our reliance on mechs. I hope to get these models painted up quickly and then update the article, but we’ll see. I’m also working on a similar review of the new Enlightened box, and since the full order of that arrived, they might hit the table first.

No AI was used here.