Flashpoint Friday: Mandalorian Raiders

... because it came up in my Assassin's random queue and I haven't covered it yet.

General Facts

Mandalorian Raiders is the last of the six story-light levelling flashpoints available to both factions that were in game at launch. That is to say - it's the last one that I haven't covered yet; in terms of the original levelling curve it was designed for levels 23-29, making it third in line after Hammer Station and Athiss. It didn't originally have a hardmode version but received one with the release of Rise of the Hutt Cartel.

These days it's available from level 15 onwards as a tactical and from level 50 onwards as a hardmode instance, like most flashpoints. Like its other story-light brethren, it doesn't have a solo version.

Fights

Mandalorian Raiders takes place on the Republic battlecruiser Allusis, which has been hijacked by the Mandalorians of Clan Varad. Their troops consist of Mandalorian warriors, their pet hounds and - as pretty much in all flashpoints - loads of droids.

The environment is your typical ship interior and therefore not very interesting, though attempts have been made to spice things up a bit with things like a bunch of lifts, but they don't really add that much.

A lot of the trash is however actually fairly challenging, with some pretty large packs here and there. Especially the ones with multiple hounds can be quite deadly.

Mandalorian Raiders features three boss encounters (plus a fairly nondescript bonus boss on hardmode), and all three of them are actually fairly interesting.

First there is Braxx the Bloodhound, a Mandalorian with two untauntable pet hounds that do more damage if they are close to him. If you have a tank, the strategy is generally to tank Brax somewhat off to the side, while the rest of the group tries to kill the hounds, who are usually jumping around like mad, constantly switching targets. If you don't have a tank, this fight takes on a whole new level of manicness.

Secondly we have the Boarding Party - which uses the premise that both factions are after the Mandalorians and takes it to an interesting new level. Basically you enter a room with a whole bunch of Mandalorian forces in it, when the back wall suddenly gets smashed, burying the Mandos, and a boarding party of the opposing faction comes through, consisting of one member of each base class of that faction. They cannot be crowd controlled, which makes the early stages of the fight pretty crazy, with what's effectively four bosses all over the place. They also get madder and madder as you kill them one by one, so that you want to make sure to kill the last two close together or the last enemy standing will be so buffed that your group runs the risk of being wiped out by powerful AoE.

It's worth mentioning that the Republic and Imperial boarding parties get treated as different bosses by the achievement system, meaning that this flashpoint requires twice as many runs on hardmode as any other to reach 100% achievement completion (as you need to do each faction's version 25 times).

Finally there's the clan leader himself, Matrix Mavrix Varad, who repeatedly leaps towards different corners of the room and summons turrets there. The trick is that these turrets need to be killed before you continue attacking the boss himself, or he'll go on to the next corner, summon more turrets, and you'll get overwhelmed. I remember having quite a few interesting wipes on him throughout the years.

Story

Clan Varad of the Mandalorians has decided to break with the rest of the Mandos (who support the Empire) in order to "search for battle", as the Empire is not offering them enough of it. For this purpose they have hijacked a Republic battlecruiser and are now running rampant raiding both Republic and Imperial colonies, giving both Republic and Empire a reason to hate them. You board their ship and fight your way through it to regain control. About halfway through, you get the option to either trap (light side) or kill (dark side) some engineers to create a disruption. The crisis ends once you have defeated the clan leader himself.

Conclusion

Like most of these early levelling flashpoints, Mandalorian Raiders features mechanically interesting boss fights and some challenging trash pulls, making it very engaging instance in terms of gameplay. In terms of atmosphere however, I always found it a little lacking, even compared to its siblings which also don't feature a very in-depth story. It doesn't feel as unfinished as Red Reaper, but just lacks a certain something in my eyes to make it truly memorable. There is a reason I didn't feature it any earlier in this series, and that's because I keep forgetting that it even exists! Hammer Station is a flying superweapon, Athiss features varied environments populated by dark Force users, Cademimu is just plain fun, Colicoid War Game is all about the puzzles, and Red Reaper has an intriguing back story. Mandalorian Raiders has.... um, Mandalorians?

This may well be personal bias speaking here, as I'm simply not very fond of the Mandalorians in general. They remind me a lot of the Klingons in Star Trek, and I never liked those very much either. Both are meant to be intriguing warrior cultures based on a code of honour but in practice usually end up being incredibly one-dimensional, so that characters from both respective cultures are often just portrayed as antagonistic douchebags purely "because it's their way". I suppose if you like Mandalorians, Mando Raiders is a good place to visit to hear Mavrix Varad go on about how you're not bad fighters but not as good as Mandalorians. The fights are definitely worth seeing! The overall setting however is a little less interesting than usual, though your mileage my vary.