The Batra have two special rules and two special actions unique to their faction. Starting with the rules they have Masters of Concealment. They are able to perform the Take Cover action for free meaning that if everyone in the unit can reach a terrain feature, which has the Provides Cover condition, they will always be able to Take Cover. This represents their mastery at locating and taking advantage of any terrain around them. If there is a place to hide, a Batra can find and exploit it. It also doesn’t hurt when their advanced Batra combat suits can alter their optical appearance to assist. Is it a wall? Or is it a Batra lying in wait to ambush me? (Hint: it’s always a Batra)
The other special rule is called From Ambush. This rule means that Batra may be deployed with a Cloaked token. All this talk about cloaking and so far any hint of what it does has remained hidden. (See what I did there?) So now it is time to finally reveal what cloaking is all about. The Cloak special action is available to all Batra with the Cloak trait. When the action is taken, enemy models cannot draw Line of Sight to them. This means all projectile weapons without the Artillery or Spray trait are unable to fire on a Cloaked unit. As you might imagine this is a powerful ability. There are few caveats that Commanders should remember though.
A Cloaked unit cannot take the Cloak and Decloak action in the same activation. It takes a bit of time for the generators to turn on and off and so you must plan accordingly. In addition to this, a Cloaked unit can only take Move, Take Cover or Disengage actions. While it only costs 1 Action Point to perform the Cloak action, once you are Cloaked you are limited in what the unit can do. Lastly, a Cloaked unit can still be engaged in close combat since being Cloaked does not confer true invisibility. The enemy still sees something is there and can still swing its melee implement of choice at the blurry thing.
However even with all these caveats the Cloak ability is one of the most powerful defensive abilities in the game. Only the Batra faction has it and if you grow skilled in its use, you will blunt the amount of damage your units can receive coming out ahead with a victory. Forge yourself a story which will be sung to towards the stars for generations to come.
We hope that you are intrigued by the Batra and that will lead your clan onto many hunts collecting honor and song in May!
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