Build

Taunt & Absorb Wall Build

Compel the enemy to shoot the one Operator who cannot be hurt, then kill freely on your turn.

Theorycraft

Confidence: Confirmed
Verified: 14 August 2026
Version: pre-release (no retail build)

Build summary

Players who want to control where damage lands rather than heal it afterwards. Both halves are now selectable in the Squad Builder, so it is no longer a build you have to assemble half on paper.

Campaign phase: any
Difficulty: Standard, permadeath enabled
Game version: pre-release (no retail build)
Strong against: droidekas, grouped enemies, high single-target damage

This build has not been tested

The game has not been released. Every mechanic cited below is confirmed, but the combination of them is our reasoning rather than anything played. It will be re-tested and re-labelled after 27 August 2026.

Loadout

The four bays

Weapon choices are role-based. No weapon statistics have been published, so treat them as starting points rather than optimised picks.

Bay 1
Hawks
Soldierrifle
Required on story missions, so the squad's design should assume him. Sweeping Salvo's guaranteed hit clears whatever survives the absorbed turn, and his AP grant can push the anchor back into position for 3 Advantage.
Bay 2
Custom Operator — the anchor
Heavyrepeater
The whole build. Heavy attacks reportedly taunt what they hit, and Bulwark taunts an area. Give this Operator the Grit Talent — the invulnerability is what turns a magnet into a wall.
Bay 3
Custom Operator
Medicpistol
A Medic healing one predictable target is far more efficient than one chasing scattered chip damage. Taunt is what makes the target predictable.
Bay 4
Astromech
AstromechCarries no weapon
Extra Utility slots in place of a weapon, plus a comm link that donates an Action Point — which is how the anchor affords to move and still taunt in the same turn.

Reasoning

Why it works

Mechanic by mechanic. Anything stated as confirmed traces to a source listed at the bottom of this page.

A previewer reports that a Heavy's ordinary attacks taunt whatever they hit, and that Bulwark taunts every enemy inside an area — one observed use caught four at once.
The Grit Talent grants invulnerability in stacks, where one stack absorbs one attack completely. It is not damage reduction; it is a hard stop.
Talents and Specializations are separate systems assigned independently, so the taunt and the invulnerability can be stacked onto the same Operator deliberately.
The demonstrated sequence is taunt, activate, absorb: pull a group onto one Operator, make that Operator briefly unhittable, then spend your next turn killing at leisure.
Redirection beats mitigation at the squad level. Concentrating incoming fire on one target makes healing predictable, which is worth more than raw sustain spread across four Operators.
It is also the answer to a droideka, whose shield deflects ordinary attacks — the point is not to out-damage it but to make it shoot the Operator built to survive it.

Interactions

Synergies in this squad

Found by running these four Operators through the same engine the Squad Builder uses, so this page cannot claim a pairing the builder would not report.

Execution

Example opening turn

An AP and Advantage plan. Costs are unpublished, so the order matters more than the exact budget.

Step 1
Turn 1 — Astromech: move up and scan, raising the squad's hit chance for the turn.
Step 2
Turn 1 — Heavy: move to a position with line of sight to the enemy cluster, then use Bulwark to taunt the group.
Step 3
Turn 1 — Heavy: activate Grit with the remaining Action Point. The enemy turn is now spent hitting a target that cannot be hurt.
Step 4
Turn 1 — Hawks and Medic: attack freely from cover. Taunted enemies cannot retarget them.
Step 5
Turn 2 — spend Advantage now that it has accumulated. Sweeping Salvo's guaranteed hit is worth most on whatever survived.

Strengths

Controls where damage lands, which is the only defensive tool observed that does not depend on a hit-chance roll.
Makes a single Medic unusually efficient by removing the guesswork about who needs healing.
Directly counters droidekas and any enemy that punishes a squad for spreading out.
Needs no unlocks beyond a Heavy and the Grit Talent, so it is available early.

Weaknesses

Every value in it is a floor. Bulwark's Advantage cost and radius are unpublished, and so is how long Invulnerable lasts if it is not consumed.
Grit reaches two Invulnerable stacks at its final rank, so before it is invested the wall stops exactly one attack — which a large enemy group goes straight through.
Fails completely against an enemy immune to taunt. No source says whether such enemies exist.
Both halves cost Action Points on the same turn. Bulwark is once per turn and Grit costs 1 AP, so the Heavy spends most of its turn setting the wall up rather than shooting.
Concentrating damage on one Operator concentrates Injuries there too. Three Injuries is still permanent death.

Alternatives

Safer and more aggressive versions

Including what to do when an authored Operator in this squad is permanently lost.

Safer: Swap the astromech for a second Medic-capable Operator. You lose the AP donation and the doubled Utilities, but the anchor stops being a single point of failure.
More aggressive: Swap the Medic for a Gunslinger. The taunted turn is a free window, and a class that refunds its Action Point on a kill converts that window into more of itself.
If Grit turns out not to work this way: The build collapses to an ordinary Heavy + Medic frontline, which is still viable — that page exists and is better evidenced. Treat this one as the upside case, not the baseline.

How this will be verified

Re-test in the retail build, recording version, platform and difficulty, then update the status label from theorycraft to tested. Specifically: confirm the Grit Talent exists under that name, count its stacks and record how they refresh, and check whether the Heavy's ordinary attacks taunt on every hit or on a chance.

Mechanics this build depends on

Other builds

Sources

Is Z-COM our new X-COM? Star Wars Zero Company gameplay deep dive
ChristopherOdd · Tier 3 — Hands-on preview · accessed 11 August 2026
Supports: 2:13–13:51 — Sweeping Salvo at 4 Advantage with three uses per mission; Hawks granting an ally 1 AP for 3 Advantage; Combat Recon granting 1 Advantage per unit scanned; the Grit Talent's stacking invulnerability; Heavy attacks taunting; the droideka ray shield; the Scout's Spotted status; Defense as flat damage reduction
Star Wars Zero Company: turn-based tactics that aren't just for XCOM experts
IGN · Tier 3 — Hands-on preview · accessed 11 August 2026
Supports: 2:15–12:39 — Advantage earned from successful attacks; four difficulty settings; ringing a droideka with Overwatch cones; Bonds granting health and critical damage; changing Hawks' species at the Den; the Bespin guest mission; preview-build defects including shots passing through solid cover

Open this squad

Load these four bays into the builder to change them, check the warnings, and share your version.

Open in Squad Builder

Rubric

Scored 1–5 against pre-launch evidence. Each score shows its basis — no unexplained numbers.

Damage2/5

Nothing here is built to kill quickly. The damage comes from being allowed to attack unmolested, not from any multiplier.

Control5/5

Taunt is the only observed mechanic that decides what the enemy does rather than influencing it. An area taunt caught four enemies in the one demonstration available.

Survivability4/5

Stacking invulnerability absorbs whole attacks, and a Medic on a predictable target is efficient — but it all rests on one unverified Talent.

Mobility2/5

The anchor wants to stand still and be shot. Moving it forfeits the position the taunt was set up from.

Ease of use2/5

Requires sequencing a taunt and an activation in the same turn, and requires knowing that Talents are assigned separately — which the builder does not tell you.

Campaign value3/5

Available early and needs no unlocks, but the concentration of Injuries on one Operator has a campaign cost in Medbay cycles.

Editor’s note

Confidence raised on 2026-08-14. Both load-bearing facts were single-source preview reports when this was written; both are now specified records. Bulwark taunts an area, adds Defense, and at max rank grants Impervious and Immovable. Grit costs 1 Action Point and applies Invulnerable, reaching two stacks. The build no longer rests on 'if Grit works as described'. Status stays theorycraft, and that is not an oversight: the mechanics are confirmed, the four-Operator squad around them is still this site's construction and nobody has played it. It is also no longer the illustration of why Talents need modelling, because they are modelled — the builder has a Talent slot and raises this pairing as a finding. What the confirmed numbers add is a real cost the older version could not state: Bulwark is once per turn and Grit costs an Action Point, so the Heavy spends most of its turn building the wall rather than shooting through it.