Field Report from Galactic Intelligence: Joint Operations Elite Field Commander, codenamed Stalker:
"When the Brotherhood Of The Serpent first reared their ugly heads, they were using Clone Wars-era battledroids as cannon fodder alongside their human Vipers. They presumably aquired them by finding one of the "lost" weapons caches the Seperatists seeded all across the outer and mid rims. The Brotherhood barely bothered to change their programming at all, just painted them blue, slapped one of their stupid snakehead symbol flimstiks on their chests and pointed them in our direction. Their thirty-plus year old processors were not sufficiently fast enough to adapt to the ever changing conditions on a modern battlefield. Nor was their armor up to the standards of modern Blastech firearms. Their only advantage was sheer numbers- the fact that even with their lousy targeting systems, with so many of them firing on you at once, one was bound to hit you.
In recent years, the older battledroids have pretty much disappeared from the Brotherhood's infantry, but you will still occasionally see them on routine patrols of low priority Brotherhood bases. In their place, we have begun seeing a new model of battledroid being utilized. These new models are larger, faster, better armored and better armed. Worse yet, they are smarter, capable of changing their tactics much more quickly to adapt to the changing tide of battle.
We have reason to believe that M.A.R.S. (Munitions Armor Robotics Systems) is manufacturing them for the Brotherhood, but we can not leagally prove anything. None of the deactivated or destroyed specimens we have captured have any form of manufacturing stamp nor serial numbers that we can trace to any possible manufacturer. And of course, Destro won't admit to anything.
While on an undercover mission inside the Brotherhood when these new models first appeared, Chuckles brought back the first technical readouts for our Intel team to study. These new droids are impresivly armored and very well armed. They carry a stripped-down heavy repeating blaster rifle with an underslung proton grenade launcher in place of a right arm. The power feed for the blaster comes strait from the droids on-board fusion reactor so as long as the droid has power, it can keep firing on it's targets. The proton grenade launcher has an internal twelve round magazine. There's even a heavy weapons variant that carries a full-sized proton torpedo in a shoulder-mounted launcher, which thankfully, does not show up on the battlefield in any kind of great numbers. Chuckles also brought back word that the human troops in the Brotherhood refer to them as "Copperheads" due to the high number of wires and circuits packed into their cranial cavities.
As dangerous as these Sithspawned droids are, we have received reports of an even deadlier model just now showing up leading squads of Copperheads in a Brotherhood raid on a colony in the outer rim. It seems that these droids are capable of predicting their enemies' tactics and adapting their strategy on the fly. It just never gets any easier...
Typical Copperhead:
Parts:
Body- VvV Wave 7 Overkill
Head- B.A.T. MK 4 modded w/ Wave 7 Overkill neck peg
Powerpack- Hi-Tech backpack
Heavy Weapons Variant:
Parts:
Body- DTC B.A.T. Attack Overkill
Head- B.A.T. MK 4 head modded w/ Overkill neck peg
powerpack- Hi-Tech backpack
Proton Torpedo Launcher- DTC B.A.T. Attack Overkill missile arm (heavily modded)
As you may have noticed, these droids are not nearly as heavily weathered as my usual customs. I did this purposely, not to be lazy, but to fit into my view of how Cobra likes to keep his property. I see Cobra as being incredibly arrogant and would want his troopers, droids, vehicles, etc. to appear in the best condition possible as a show of power to those he would try to subjugate.
These guys are a labor of love that I started over 6 months ago and just now had all of the necessary parts to complete
I made 6 of these guys:
There's a little detail that I'm very proud of, that unfortunately does not photograph very well due to the small size- these droids have an Aurebesch (the Star Wars written language) numerical designation on the upper right side of their powerpacks. I was only able to get one clear pic:
Here's droid #015
(As a little in-joke, the droids are numbered 004, 008, 015, 016, 023, and 042
)
For anyone interested, here's a look at the Aurebesch number key:
