Star Wars Zero Company: The Never Ending Mando Build Explained

The Mandalorian squad leader Cly Kullervo in Star Wars Zero Company can be built into a one-operator kill switch. The trick is not raw weapon power. It is action point recycling, powered by two Astromech droids that hand their turns over to Cly while a Gunslinger passive quietly stacks damage with every shot he fires.

Quick answer: Dual-specialize Cly as Warrior + Gunslinger for the Onslaught passive, equip a Blaster Pistol with Custom Ergonomic, and use two Astromechs running Built-In Comlink and Coordinated Support to feed him up to 17 AP in one turn while he chains Quick Draw kills.

What the build needs before it works

The loop does not come online early. Cly needs his dual specialization, which lands at Cycle 18, and the squad needs droid talents deep enough to move AP around. Before that point you are playing a normal Mandalorian with good mobility and nothing else.

Operator	Role in the loop
Cly Kullervo	Warrior + Gunslinger. The only damage dealer. Spends every AP the squad can generate.
F-8 (Astromech)	AP battery. Transfers its own AP to Cly, throws grenades to strip cover.
N4R-M8 (Astromech)	Second AP battery. Runs Coordinated Support to grant AP to the whole squad.
Dantics Hawks	Medic/Heavy. Buffs Cly with Combat Stim, taunts survivors with Bulwark.

Everything on the roster besides Cly exists to hand him resources. Hawks is not there to heal much, and the droids are not there to shoot. They are throughput.

Onslaught: Why damage climbs inside a single turn

Onslaught is the reason this build scales instead of just being fast. Each attack Cly makes within one turn grants him +1 Blaster Damage, and the bonus applies only to attacks made with his primary blaster. Shot one is weak. Shot twelve is not.

That is also why the pistol beats the rifle here. A Blaster Pistol reliably costs 1 AP per shot, so a given pool of AP produces the maximum number of attacks, and therefore the maximum number of Onslaught stacks. A rifle trades shot count for per-shot damage, which is exactly the wrong trade.

Stack the Custom Ergonomic mod on top and the curve gets steeper still. Lightning Cycler and Assassin’s Scope round out the weapon, favoring rate and critical output over anything defensive.

The AP economy: Every refund source in the loop

Cly does not simply start the turn with a big pool. He earns AP back as he kills, and he receives AP from teammates. Those two streams together are what makes the turn feel like it never ends.

Source	Effect
Quick Draw V	1 AP shot, 11 base damage. Defeating an enemy restores 1 AP. Range penalty reduced to 5%.
Behind the Lines	Defeating an Exposed target with a Blaster or Sidearm restores 1 AP. Cross-trained from Hawks.
Pinpoint Parade	The first Critical Hit each turn restores 1 AP.
Built-In Comlink III	Astromech hands its own AP directly to Cly.
Coordinated Support VI	Grants all Operators +2 AP, which the droids can then forward to Cly.
Pico-5	3 Advantage. Grants a single ally one extra AP. Once per turn.

Killing an Exposed enemy with Quick Draw triggers both refunds at once. The shot cost 1 AP and returned 2, so Cly nets a point and keeps firing. Across a room full of B1 Battle Droids, the pool grows while the Onslaught stacks climb. The Astromechs on top of that can move up to 17 AP into Cly across a single turn.

Facilities upgrade screen with the Black Market marked complete and two open build slots — The facilities screen with the Black Market completed and two build slots free. Image: Bit Reactor

Loadout: Weapons, mods, and droid explosives

Cly carries the Blaster Pistol as his primary damage tool, modded with Custom Ergonomic, Lightning Cycler, and Assassin’s Scope. Nothing in his kit should compete with the pistol for AP.

Astromechs cannot equip weapons at all, so their inventory slots go entirely to explosives. Load them with Thermal Imploders, Prototype Imploders, and Concussion Grenades. Their job is to blow apart cover and leave enemies Exposed, which is the condition Behind the Lines needs to pay out.

Note: an Astromech that spends AP on a grenade is an Astromech that did not hand that AP to Cly. Throw explosives only when they create Exposed targets or open a firing lane worth more than the point they cost.

How to run the turn

Open with Hawks and apply Combat Stim VI to Cly. This grants +3 flat damage and +12 Max HP, and it is worth doing before Cly moves so every shot in the turn benefits.

Use Combat Jump IV to land inside the enemy group. It costs 2 Advantage and no AP, jumps up to 23.0m, pushes nearby enemies out of position, and inflicts 4 stacks of Burning. Free repositioning into the middle of a crowd is the whole point.

Start chaining Quick Draw shots on the weakest targets in range, such as B1 Battle Droids. Each kill refunds AP and adds an Onslaught stack, so clearing the chaff first is what powers the shots that follow.

When Cly’s AP runs low, switch to an Astromech and use Built-In Comlink to push its AP to him. Do this after the cheap kills, not before, so you are topping up a stacked turn rather than starting one.

Fire Coordinated Support to grant every Operator +2 AP, then transfer that fresh AP into Cly through the second droid. This is the point where the turn stops looking like a normal turn.

Spend the accumulated pool on the high-health targets, using Open Fire II or plain blaster shots now that Onslaught has scaled the damage. Elites that would normally take a full squad’s attention go down to Cly alone.

Close the turn with Hawks. Use Bulwark V or Unstoppable V to taunt anything still standing, pulling enemy fire away from Cly, who will be sitting in the open with no cover after all that jumping.

Why the loop stalls, and how to tell it is working

You know the build is functioning when Cly’s AP total holds steady or rises across several Quick Draw shots instead of ticking down. That is the refund chain paying out. If his damage numbers climb shot after shot without any new buff being applied, Onslaught is stacking correctly.

The loop breaks in a small number of predictable ways.

Shots that do not kill produce no refund. Quick Draw only returns AP on a defeat, so opening on a high-health target drains the pool with nothing back.
Targets that are not Exposed skip the Behind the Lines refund entirely. If the droids have not cleared cover, Cly is netting zero per kill instead of one.
Switching off the primary blaster stops Onslaught from applying, since the bonus only affects attacks made with that weapon.
Spending droid AP on grenades before transferring it leaves less to forward through Built-In Comlink.
Ending the turn with enemies alive and no taunt active exposes Cly to return fire in the open.

Run on Expert with Beskar Mode and Permadeath enabled, the margin for that last mistake is thin, which is why Bulwark is treated as part of the loop rather than an optional extra.

The appeal here is not that Cly hits hard on paper. It is that the squad turns four operators’ worth of action points into one operator’s turn, and that turn gets more dangerous the longer it runs. Once the dual specialization lands and the droids are deep enough into Coordinated Support, entire encounters resolve before the enemy gets to act.