I’m Firefight curious and would get Asterians if (not a very big if, TBH 
) I do jump in, because I think droid armies are cool.
First question: What should I get after the Strike Force box, if I’m not interested in Mastudan?
Second question: Shield drones look like a nice upgrade, but which models should represent them?
My son is collecting asterians and (like you) isnt massive on matsudan. I’m far from experienced with them, but from the lists i like the approach of, black talons can be really useful. Unfortunately, they are only available in resin!
Ive heard folk recommend the kalyshi as well - again a slightly expensive option.
In essence, your standard troops are pretty shooty, so you need to support that with some fighty stuff and potentially some armoured stuff. Otherwise you can be quite behind early on as you may struggle to get early victory points on the objectives.
Just to add… obviously the spectra is too cool a model to not get.
I can’t argue with that.
Needing fighting troops is a good shout, thank you.
The last time I played Sci-Fi was Infinity and my favourite model was my garuda tacbot. Looked cool, gave a handy tactical option and drop troops often made a good story of success or hilarious failure. So definitely getting black talons.
Just remembered something else with asterians - make sure you use shields well.
Units with shields will generally require your opponent to throw more than one units shooting at it to take ot down. If you can limit the number of units that can shoot at a shielded unit and make sure you have some shield boosting units about, you can end up VERY hard to kill. Once the shields are down you’re pretty weak, but like i say, most opponents will need one unit to remove your shields and one to kill anthing.
Thanks, I have heard something about that.
Sounds like I haven’t picked an easy army to grok, again.
My current quandry is what to use as shield drones. The model from Mantic is direct only and costs more pounds than points.
You get them with the plastic sprues of cyphers i think
I might be wrong on that, but you certainly get two types of drone with the army starter so we are using one type as the guns one and one type as the shields one!