Unit introduction

The At-Rt (all terrain recon transport) is a clone wars era scout vehicle and works as a mobile fire support unit for the rebel alliance. At first I was lukewarm to the At-Rt being in the core box. I thought: “they couldn’t put out a core box before going to clone wars era, ugh”. However it grew on me and thanks to the alliance refit of the arc-170 in x-wing and the rebels episode where they find an abandoned clone wars base a story started in my head. A rebel force attack an imperial base that they heard have low security. When entering the facility, they find out why the security was so lacking. It’s a surplus storage facility, where they find old blaster, non functioning equipment and a large number of At-Et’s. Despite having weak armor and weapons the rebels make the best of it and since they lack spare parts and plans for maintenance. I wanted my forest world recon walkers to look muddy and rusty with the old paint job from their episode 3 appearance. Decommissioned from the empires service in favor of more advanced modern vehiclems the rebels use what they get and it’s really fitting the David vs Goliath relationship of the rebels vs empire with an at-rt going up against the at-st.

The rebel at-rt is in my opinion the most balanced unit in the game. I’m not saying it’s the best unit in the just the most balanced in both internal balance (compared with other rebel units and options) and external balance (compared to other faction units and options). It has 3 weapon options and they are all viable picks despite being very different. I often find myself annoyed at some design decisions where I just don’t understand the reasoning, but with the at-rt almost everything went right. You might think that I claim the Rt is perfect and it’s not, but close. I have 2 gripes, one being that it should have been armor 2 and surge-block. However since armor was an all or nothing keyword when it was desighned I will let it slide. The second thing is that the climbing vehicle is rarely useable and I would have preferred it just being unhindered by difficult terrain instead. You might of course find yourself on a table with a bunch of things to clamber on, where you can get cover or good line of sight. However this is not often the case in my experience.

Unit options and abilities

The At-Rt comes in at a base cost of 55p which sounds cheap, but you often want to take one of the 3 weapon options pushing the cost to 80-90p. It has a nice speed of 2 with a medium sized base that gives it quite a good mobility. 6hp and 4 resilience threshold is fine for the price and the armor keyword makes it pretty resilient to non impact weapons, however with a surgeless white dice defense, most crits will go through so don’t expect more than one block each game. Except for the 3 weapon options, the only upgrade it can take is comms. Surge-crit helps in its anti armor role and its melee weapon is not to be overlooked, 3 red dice with impact is not bad. Like mentioned before it has the armor keyword, so all normal hits than aren’t flipped via impact are canceled. It has clamber vehicle and expert climber so it can move just like a trooper with grappling hooks. Thanks to its base size it moves about an extra 1.5 small base lenght compared to a normal trooper. 

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The at-rt got 3 weapon options. The first and cheapest is the Flamethrower which comes in at 25 points. It has only range 1 and instead of a fixed dice value it gives 2 black dice per miniature in the defending unit that is in line of sight. This combined with the blast keyword makes this a nightmarish weapon vs trooper squads, especially other rebel troopers or the soon to come cis. The more models the more dice and blast takes away cover so the effectiveness is increased vs lighter armor. 2 black dice per miniature with an average of 0.625 hits per die gives you pretty good odds of getting at least as many hits as defending models in every attack.

The second and slightly more expensive is the Rotary blaster at 30 points. This is the true utility weapon of the unit if not the entire rebel faction. 5 black dice at range 1-3 with surge-crit and no keywords it is the jack of all trades. With its range, dice pool and surge-crit it can hurt both vehicles and troopers alike, but not as effective as the other 2 weapons to their specific targets. It’s the go-to weapon if you don’t need specific anti-tank or anti-infantry firepower in your list.

The third weapon is the Laser cannon which has the longest range 2-4 and highest price at 35. This gun was the sniper before the sniper teams came out. It has 2 black and 1 red with impact 3 making sure that any hits that go through cover turns into crits. Due to the range you can often just sit and go aim-shoot with a 2-3 hits every time. This gun isn’t that effective vs troopers since heavy cover nullifies most of your dice if you don’t roll crit or surge, but vs imperial vehicles you can often count on 2-3 crits every attack since they don’t have easy access to cover.

Build and tactics

The fire chicken

• At-rt 55p
• Flamer 25p

Total 80p

This is the cheapest one you can get with a weapon hardpoint. You might considering putting a hq uplink on this one to combine with “sorry about the mess” or a unique 1 pip cards as this unit screams last-first activation. The range 1 is limiting, but if you spend a turn double moving and then first activate for a move shoot next turn, you can cover a lot of distance and get the drop on an unlucky trooper unit. I suggest taking 2-3 of this unit since it’s gonna be a priority target for your opponent and it has to survive on the way to it’s targets to get any firepower from it, so having a pack makes it much harder to deal with than a single one. Han solo is a great commander for these ones, since his reckless diversion can help them walk up the battlefield without getting shot at. The “sorry about the mess” hq uplink or improvised orders can give you a nice last first activation to guarantee a burned enemy unit. I think of these ones as flaming missiles rather than fire support. You should pick on target to go after and hope you can get there before being shot down, any turns after that is just a bonus. If you are faced with a single model unit, remember you have a nice 3 red melee weapon.

The Z-6 big brother

• At-rt 55p
• Rotary blaster 30p

Total 85p

This is the basic At-Rt fire support. It works very well with your rebel troopers, commandos and any trooper unit with a range 3-4 weapon. It’s gun does an average of 3 hits, which is just shy of what a Z-6 trooper squad does, however it doesn’t lose any attack dice when suffering wounds unless you get weapon destroyed after you reach your resilience value. It also doesn’t care about suppression like troopers, so you can often do an aim-shoot to increase your dmg output. This is the At-Rt’s main strength, it’s a workhorse that delivers until its destroyed. I want my enemy to shoot att my rts because then my troopers can do their job and don’t lose effectiveness . Even with 5 wounds and chance of only having 1 action per turn from the damaged vehicle, the rotary blaster still spits out average of 3 hits per shot. Using a group of commandos with the rotary At-Rt is like giving them a mobile heavy cover that also have a gatling gun. 

Sniper RT

• At-rt 55p
• Laser cannon 35p

Total 90p

This is a stable anti-tank platform, but it has limitations when attacking infantry. The range however let’s it stay out of range of some impact firepower and stray blaster bolts and it doesn’t have to move all that much. A speed 2 move with the medium base + range 4 is a long distance on the battlefield, so this unit can work as a sniper when single models units present themselves out of cover. While the range 2 can feel limiting, you can just run into melee if someone gets that close. This is a unit that I could take 1 of, but it works fine as a pair. 2 of these can really put some consistent hurt on any ground vehicles you face when they aim-shoot together, speeders are harder targets these days with their often cover 2 protection that blocks your impact. Ironically their favourite targets are other At-Rts which they will make short work of.

Tips and tricks
Since they have so few upgrade slots I figured I would do a general tips and tricks section instead.

Reversing
I find that a lot of players, myself included forgets that ground vehicles can reverse. This has the obvious advantage of getting out of range from enemy weapons or melee units like Vader. However it can also help with getting units in your fire arc, even better than pivot does.

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Mobile cover
Even without weapons the At-Rt is a big cylinder of light cover (heavy with low profile or suppression) that can be placed where you need it. 3 naked At-Rt’s only cost 165p and that is 18hp with armor walking towards your opponent. I haven’t played with weaponless At-Rt’s, but I am tempted to do a melee rush list with them, if you want to see battle reports with that kind of army please consider supporting me on patreon.

Displacement 
When you are moving into melee with a trooper unit that has 2 or more models, you can often manager to displace one model, while moving into base contact with another. That way you give the unit 1 suppression from displacement as well as attacking them. You can also do a little dirty move when displacing your own units, that way you can displace your own unit leader in order to move then further ahead. Sure they get 1 suppression, but if it’s late in the round it will just go away in the end phase.

At-Rt’s place today
With the newest addition of tauntaun riders, the rebels have access to 3 different support units. I find that At-Rt’s work best with Han Solo or the generic officer. Leia and Luke works best with troopers due to their abilities and command cards, not that you can’t take At-Rt’s with them just that they prefer trooper focused armies. Jyn works well with most things that can take care of themselves if you use inflitrate. The tauntaun riders have better mobility and strike hard vs troopers with red dice save or better. The laser turret gives great firepower at range 4 for cheap, but the lack of mobility can be exploited by your opponent. Both are great options, but the At-Rt’s strenght is the advantage of armor and no courage as well as flexible weapon options.

List idea: Vehicle heavy. This is a list that I think can go against the new meta of more and more trooper units and less vehicles and impact. This army can march up the board and throw out dice. Rotary blaster works against most targets and the landspeeder is kited for anti-tank.

Rebell alliance

• Rebel officer
• Esteemed leader
• 55p

• Rebel officer
• Esteemed leader
• 55p

• Rebel troopers
• Z-6 trooper
• Astromech
• 70p

• Rebel troopers
• Z-6 trooper
• Astromech
• 70p

• Rebel troopers
• Z-6 trooper
• 62p

• Rebel troopers
• Z-6 trooper
• Comms specialist
• Comms relay
• 76p

• At-Rt
• Rotary blaster
• 85p

• At-Rt
• Rotary blaster
• 85p

• At-Rt
• Rotary blaster
• 85p

• X-34 landspeeder
• M-40 ion blaster
• Ryder Azadi
• Rps-6 rocket gunner
• 154p

Total: 797p

This is my analysis of the At-Rt. A fine unit that still holds up. If you are curious about the Landspeeder pls let me know in the comments, I would love to do an analysis of that unit. If you like my stuff, please consider supporting med on patreon: https://www.patreon.com/Rebelsguide