The Confederacy of Independent Systems (CIS) has officially arrived in Star Wars: Legion, and they bring a new playstyle and arsenal to the table. Coming forward in a mass horde, they overwhelm with numbers, dice, and General Grievous’s stolen lightsabers. With their access to Coordinate: Droid trooper, the mindless B1s are able to stay under control and keep your forces in near perfect control every turn. However, as we’ve learned, when they don’t have an order and AI: Attack triggers, the B1s turn into a giant mess. Therefore, getting orders on them is paramount, and there are two ways to do this: command cards and HQ Uplinks. Let’s quickly examine the second option today.

The commonly accepted consensus at this point is that two uplinks in your corp troopers is the most optimal setup for activation control. Going along these lines, there are two points to discuss for the uplinks: battlefield placement and squad choice. 

Let’s begin with squad choice.  To demonstrate this concept, lets take a look at the CIS list that I like most at the moment: 

800/800

General Grievous (Strict Orders, Aggressive Tactics, Tenacity, DT-57 “Annihilator”)

2× Battle Droids (E-60R Trooper, Battle Droid, HQ Uplink)

4× Battle Droids (E-5C Trooper, Battle Droid)

2× Droidekas (Linked Targeting Array)

One of the biggest concepts to master in legion is action economy, which can simply be defined as getting the most out of every action possible. In this list, I have two rocket launcher B1 troopers, which are an exhaustible heavy weapon choice. Similarly, uplinks are an exhaustible comms upgrade. Considering you don’t want to be taking recover actions frequently, maximizing the amount of upgrades you can refresh on each recover action becomes crucial. Therefore, stacking the uplinks and rocket troopers becomes an easy choice. 

Where to place these troopers is also an important choice. Fortunately, it’s a rather simple one as well. Lets take a battle lines deployment for example. When deploying your B1s, keeping each squad interlocked and within range one of other B1 squads is important, and allows you to daisy chain orders from one squad to another. Therefore, I am of the opinion that sticking each of your uplinks at either end of the chain is the best play. By starting the order chain from one end, you guarantee that every squad down the line will get an order (unless the jammer Tauntauns have already arrived in your lines). This also gives you some flexibility because you are not reliant on recovering every turn with a squad, it allows you to spend a turn move shooting or interacting with an uplink squad while the other one triggers the orders. 

The next option, and slightly more complicated one, is the keep both uplinks on one end of the chain. This involves two slight issues to keep in mind: the chain can be more easily interrupted due to a lack of flexibility of end choice, and you have to keep a beehive-cohesion between the two B1 squads on the end, to ensure that the “inner” uplink squad can still hit the entire chain when it triggers the uplink. While this strategy does work, it is much more complicated and does not offer the flexibility of the “double end” idea. There is one specific occurrence when this may be the better choice: when facing armor. Due to a lack of impact currently possessed by the CIS, the rocket troopers may need to be stacked together to ensure that something like a Flamer AT-RT (a B1’s nightmare) doesn’t get into range.

While the CIS faction is brand new, it comes with some killer haymakers courtesy of Grievous, but even he can’t do it alone. Keeping your B1s under control and in order is crucial to success, and I hope this quick hitter gives you some basic ideas on how to do so. For the time being, the CIS only have a few tools in their shed, so make sure that you keep those tools sharp. Speaking of the CIS, I will be taking them to CAPA Cup 2019 in Hershey, PA this weekend, and we will have a battle report of the weekend ready for you early next week! Until next time, good luck with your games, and hopefully your B1 building and clone painting isn’t too excruciating. 

-Mike

Welcome back to the Jedha Journal! We have something a little different this week for you, a guest writer! As Zach spends some time with important real life decisions, Asyer, my teammate from the Yavin Base Team League, will be joining us for a dive into the ideas and tactics of focus firing. Namely, we want to discuss the concepts of shooting to kill vs. shooting to suppress. Asyer has graciously offered to discuss the concept as a whole as well as explore the Empire’s unique exceptions to the rules. Without further ado, let’s dive in with his debut.

Surviving the Heat

Most of us tend to get caught up in the heat of battle. We lose sight of the objectives and just want to kill as much as possible. It feels really good to watch your opponent remove minis from the board, but this can lead to more game losses that you realize. I want to discuss my thoughts on remembering to focus. There are two parts of this I want to go over: focusing fire and focusing the objective. 

Focus firing isn’t just about removing models from the table. Outside of command cards and special abilities, every unit has a maximum of twelve actions it can perform. Twelve, that’s it! So, when you remove an enemy unit from the table, they also lose that unit’s remaining actions. For example, killing a unit before they activate twice takes away ten actions. By removing activations, your opponent is forced to activate key units earlier in the round, giving you more units and more chances to respond to what they are doing.

Lets take a look at Luke Skywalker for example. Luke likes to jump from cover to cover until he can get into melee with a unit and kill it. Luke likes to activate last so that you have less units that can hurt him if he gets stuck in the open. If you remove activations on Luke’s side, you put him in the uncomfortable situation of having to activate before a larger number of your own troops, and the chances Luke gets caught out in the open skyrocket. (Luke tends to die to heavy amounts of fire.)

You can also remove enemy unit actions with suppression and panic. Suppression is a great tool to use and often can win you the game. Lets take Breakthrough as an example. Unit A needs to double move to make it into the enemy deployment zone. You shoot unit A and add a suppression token to them. If unit A doesn’t clear that suppression, they can no longer score. I find it is best to add two suppression to a unit to ensure it stays suppressed. The chances to clear two are significantly lower than only having to clear one. Thanks to some wonderful suppression tables supplied our friend Orkimedes over at The Fifth Trooper, we know that you have a 34% chance to remove one suppression token, but just an 11% chance to remove both. Seems a little tougher doesn’t it?

Panic is amazing, as long as you are the one causing it. If you force a unit to panic, three things happen. First, that unit moves as fast as possible towards the nearest board edge. Second, they lose their second action that turn. Third, that unit isn’t where their player wants them (usually in the open and away from where they need to be.) Units that panic and run even a sliver off the board are instantly dead!

Focusing on the objectives is the most important thing in the game. It’s how you win! This doesn’t just mean making sure you accomplish the mission, but also keeping your opponent from scoring. Ask yourself two questions when you activate a unit: “Does this help me score victory tokens?” and “does this help me prevent my opponent from scoring victory tokens?” If you’re ahead in both victory tokens and activations then it is even more important to stop your opponent from scoring. If they can’t score, you win! However, if you can’t stop them from scoring, you need to be scoring also.

Focus fire units to remove them from the board, or stop them from getting all their actions, and your path to victory becomes much more straightforward. This topic seems pretty basic right? As usual, nuance springs eternal, and we’ll swim a little deeper into a sampling of each faction’s quirks regarding suppression, panic, and their action management, as well as whether or not focusing on eliminating or suppressing units is the better option when dealing with each faction.

-Asyer

An Inspiring Start

Both in canon and in Legion, the Rebellion’s identity comes from its leaders, its heroes, and its sense of purpose. This concept is codified into the Inspire keyword. The Rebels have a large access portal to Inspire, whether that comes from Leia herself, the Rebel Officer unit or upgrades, or a number of command cards from Luke, Jyn, and Sabine. Because the Rebel units, and especially heroes, tend to be less expensive than Imperial or GAR units, fitting in a number of these officers and heroes is extremely common, and very practical. So what does all of this mean? Shoot, shoot the rebels.

Lets take a Flyboys (Luke & Han) list for example. If you are lined up across from this, you can reasonably expect to see Luke and two Officer Z6 squads. This means that in addition to standard rally rolls, there are two individual points of inspire available per turn, and Luke’s 3-pip suppression clearing card, Return of the Jedi. Therefore, the list has a decent chance of ensuring that its units maintain their two actions throughout the turns. Additionally, with the notable exception of Luke, every unit in the list rolls white defense dice. Therefore, if your opponent can manage suppression well but fails defensive saves often, shoot to kill them. 

One final caveat to remember is that many of the rebel command cards that grant Inspire and remove suppression are two and three pip cards. This means that many of them are not played turn one, offer decent-to-good order control, and often impact the late game board state. Therefore, as an exception to the above Flyboys example, putting suppression down on the rebel army in the early rounds tends to prove more productive than going for the late game suppressive fire, as you force your opponent to play their command cards out of order, and remove their abilities to keep their unit actions running efficiently later on.

Compelling Aspirations 

As always, every rule has an exception. Normally when a unit is suppressed, it loses an action. Today, we’ll look at the Empire’s unique exception to the rule: the keyword Compel. Both Director Orsen Krennic and DT-F16 have this keyword, which reads, “After a trooper unit at range 1–2 of a friendly unit with the compel keyword performs its ‘Rally’ step, if that trooper unit is suppressed but is not panicked, it may gain 1 suppression token to perform a free move action.” A crucial element to remember is that Compel always returns a lost action, but never adds an extra one.

So, by adding a suppression token to your unit, you can take a move action as your first action. Abilities and keywords that trigger off of a move action still take effect, such as relentless and steady. You can then take a 2nd action as normal.

So now you’re thinking, “why not do that every time?” Well, adding too much suppression can lead to panic. And panic isn’t what you want. Making the choice to Compel or not is purely situational. As a general rule of thumb, I compel if it will get me into a better firing position, or to score the objective. Pushing your units that extra step to take the actions you need to win the game is where compel excels. Finding that balance of when to push without breaking them is where the difficulty lies.

Our second suppression rule breaker is our Dark Lord and Savior, the Balancer of the Force, Darth Vader, specifically the commander version. Vader has a currently unique courage of ” – “ which means he does not take or suffer from suppression. When using his courage bubble for panic tests, this means your units will never panic if they remain in range 3 of Vader. Besides, “Who is more frightening than the Lord of the Sith?” When you combine compel with Darth Vader, you get a nice bubble of “we don’t care about suppression.” This allows you to compel your units way past their normal breaking point. Be careful though, should Lord Vader fall in battle, your units will likely all panic if loaded up on suppression.

-Asyer

Fire Away

If you recall from last week, Zach wrote an excellent piece on using the clone’s Fire Support ability to prevent panic and suppression issues. To avoid repeating ourselves, I will be focusing on the clone’s decision-making process regarding focusing on killing or on suppression.

Here’s a hint, it’s in easy choice. 

At least from the outset, most GAR lists are looking at roughly eight activations. This means that there is little-to-no margin for error, and each unit’s actions must be optimized. Therefore, when taking attack actions with your units, you need to be sure that you are evening the numbers or pushing yourself into the green. With the fire support ability, wiping units becomes easier than suppressing them. It must be stated that using fire support to suppress a target is a complete waste, as you are actually dishing out half of the suppression that you would with two separate attacks. However, being able to double your attack pool means that you have a much greater chance at eliminating an enemy unit, especially one that is wounded or one with white dice saves. Finally, keep in mind that using fire support actually reduces the amount of actions that you have during the game. As Asyer mentioned above, each unit typically only has twelve actions to take during the game, and fire supporting too often can almost act as a self suppression pitfall, not allowing your units to move into scoring positions effectively later in the match.

Mechanized Minions

Last but not least, we arrive at the droid army. According to the droid trooper entry in the Rules Reference, droid trooper units do not suffer the effects or benefits of suppression tokens, but still receive them as normal. Crucially however, they can still panic when their threshold is reached. This makes it slightly easier for the CIS to keep their twelve actions, but can prove devastating if the commander is lost. Especially considering the droids do not currently have another unit besides Grievous that has a courage higher than one.

When facing off against the CIS, these unique suppression rules make the decision to focus on removing models vs. suppressing them quite simple. Assuming the CIS have a living commander, shoot to kill. Spending upwards of three attack actions to panic one B1 squad is a colossal waste of resources, and the odds of forcing a droid to panic before it dies are quite minimal. However, if you manage to kill Grievous and remove the courage bubble from the battlefield, looking to panic droid troopers is not the worst idea depending on the circumstance. This holds especially true for the Empire and their litany of suppressive weapons, as a single attack can panic the troops. 

At the end of the day, choosing whether to shoot to kill or shoot to suppress seems like a difficult choice, but generally boils down to a straightforward decision: which choice will remove more actions from the opponents unit. As a reminder, if you’d like a high profile chance to test these concepts out, the London Grand Championship runs from September 12^th-14^thand still has spots available. Come win a World’s invite, and anyone who beats Zach in Chicago will win a beer from me! I hope you enjoyed the insights Asyer provided for us, and look forward to discussing your ideas in the comments. Until next time, enjoy your games of Legion!

-Mike

To Bid or not to Bid, that is the ultimate question. Bidding in Star Wars Legion is simultaneously one of the most basic yet challenging aspects to building a list. At its core, bidding is simply determining how far below the maximum of 800 points you want to be. Your reward? The choice to either be the blue or red player, both of which come with their respective benefits and drawbacks. I will not be discussing bidding amounts, as this topic is in constant flux and has been covered previously in other blogs and podcasts.

Fight on Your Terms

The first and most obvious advantage of choosing blue player is being able to utilize the battle deck you brought with you. Running a Pathfinder and Han list? You want to guarantee that Recover the Supplies has the potential to be present. Choosing the right cards to bring with you is a topic in and of itself, and there’s a great Notorious Scoundrels podcast episode about this that I suggest you give a listen to!

Additionally, just knowing what cards are likely to turn over and what deployment options are available gives you a leg up in the game, and transitions nicely into the next benefit: picking the table edge.

When approaching a table you’ve never played on before, being able to choose the board edge gives you an advantage from the offset. Armed with the knowledge that most deployments begin in the bottom right corner for the blue player, you can help to mitigate your chances of being pinned down in a corner with no cover or even find that long sight line that overlooks the middle Key Position. Being able to avoid unfavorable deployments is a skill that can single-handedly save you losses when it matters most.

Turn Zero

Picking the battle cards and deploying your army in Legion is generally referred to as Turn Zero. As the blue player, once the cards flip over, you have the first choice to remove one of the active cards from play. Not only can this be useful in removing an early objective that would create a disadvantage for you, but it also presents an opportunity to engage in mind games with an opponent. Removing a card that your opponent does not expect or bluffing for a card in the third row can unnerve your opponent and potentially force he or she into a mistake.

Once the cards are decided and it comes time for objective and unit deployment, the next advantage appears. Being able to place the first vaporator or box allows you to screen out large areas of the board from your opponent, potentially pinning one of their vaporators into a corner or forcing them to place a box just a little too close to your army’s deployment. And speaking of deployment, as blue you get to put down the first unit. As I’ll discuss later, this is not always the best option, but a well infiltrated Pathfinder, or even Jyn if you’re bold, can give you a great option for an alpha strike or smash and grab on an objective.

Stalemates

One thing that will quickly become clear as you progress in your Legion career is that objective ties become commonplace in the higher tiers of play. When victory points (VP) are tied, the first tie breaker comes down to points destroyed, commonly referred to as MOV (Margin of Victory). However, if this score is tied as well, the blue player claims victory. This situation, or the threat of it, frequently comes into play on Sabotage the Moisture Vaporators. Because of the even numbered, defensive nature of the objective, it consistently ends in a VP tie, and forces the red player to push forward and make something happen, giving a huge positional advantage to the blue player. A wonderful example of this can be seen in the World Championship final match, which is available on FFG’s YouTube channel.

Not all is Blue

All of this is not to say that there are not significant advantages to claiming red player. The first, and most immediate, is having the final say on battle card selection. Because the selection process goes blue – red – blue – red, the red player has the option to make a final decision without fear of reprisal.

The larger advantage manifests once the cards are down and the minis start hitting the table. Deploying second allows you to react to placements by your opponent to ensure you have a counter for their placements and movements. Crucially, this also means you have a good chance of having the final deployment of the phase. This is a great opportunity for Pathfinder infiltrates, recon intel Deathtrooper advances, or pointing Luke or Boba towards an opponents weak flank.

Blue or Blue not, it’s not that Hard

There are a few simple guidelines to help streamline the choice of player color. If you approach a table and quickly realize one board edge presents a significant advantage, go blue. If you have Boba or Sabine and your opponent doesn’t, strongly consider blue to ensure Recover is an option. Basing your decision on battle deck choice holds especially true on off-kilter lists that have specific weaknesses to condition cards; for example, Flyboys probably don’t want Hostile Environment in the post Deathtrooper and Bossk world. Finally, if you expect your opponent is of a similar or higher skill level and a VP tie is likely, go blue to force them to be proactive.

Declining blue and choosing red can also be the right way to go. If you feel comfortable with starting on either board edge and want the option to choose the final card and deploy second, red works well. The final consideration for red vs. blue can also come down to activation count. If your opponent outnumbers you in activations, acting as the red player can allow you to avoid giving up multiple deployments in a row.

Recap

I hope this guide was a helpful introduction for the red-blue dilemma. The common theme of this, and most things in Legion, is to take every advantage that you can muster. If you have any further questions or want some clarification, there are tons of folks on The Legion Discord more than happy to help, so please come join us there!

Zach has been kind enough to allow me to come on board and continue to write for the Jedha Journal, and I look forward to answering any questions and interacting with you all in the future!

 

-Mike

This past week I had a game that was rather frustrating. It’s, perhaps, the first time I got “mad” at the game of Legion. Not my opponent, but the game itself. The dice gods were out to get me that day, and I think this is a fine time to address losing and how to deal with it. We’re human after all, which means we are flawed. We all want to win when playing a game, it’s natural and it’s a fact. But when you lose there are a few things you can do. You can either take the loss and learn from it or you can make excuses/blame the variance. Now don’t get me wrong, sometimes it truly will be variance. My loss this past week, was variance for the most part and we’ll get into it deeper later on, but after reflecting on it there are still things I could have done differently and still won.

Game Overview
To give some context of where we’re headed with the post, let’s go over my game very briefly. I was Red Player with a Luke/Leia/Landspeeder against a Krennic/Boba/Deathtroopers variant. It was Clear Conditions, I vetoed condition cards twice because the middle card was Hostile Environment and I don’t want that against a list that can toss out suppression, Battle Lines and Moisture Evaporators.

I, of course, started with Leia’s Coordinated Bombardment and wiped a sniper team but that was all it did, and this started the cavalcade of dice rolls we will get into. With Rebels, I tend to play a “let my opponent come to me” type of game, and this is what I did. Allowing him to move forward allowed me to move and shoot or aim in shoot in a lot of instances, especially the first round. Including the Bombardment saves, which after the sniper squad, my opponent rolled three for three saves on those. Followed that with five for five saves with Boba, which is common because he does surge. Two for two with a Stormtrooper squad in heavy cover. He had a set of bikes roll three for three, with white dice! And the Royal Guard rounds it out with a combined eight for eight on saves. If we add all of this up, my opponent rolled twenty one for twenty three in just the first round of the game on defense. I was, simply put, aggravated. Again, not at my opponent, but at the dice. After that, things just simply didn’t go my way. I had a gameplan in motion, it needed some of those shots to land and they didn’t and it set me back a bit. Not a lot, but enough. As mentioned last week, Moisture Vaporators is such an action economy game. None of those shots going through meant I needed to put more actions into more shots than I needed. So, in retrospect, instead of double moving into an objective, I needed to shoot at these threatening targets again. Especially the IRG, who were threatening a Vaporator that I needed access to. I didn’t want to plunge into their charge range. I ended up losing 3 to 2 on Vaps, which is a weird score for Vaps, but it has a lot to do with some intricacies in the game such as the moments laid out for you above.

Rather than write a full battle report, I want to just use the example placed here to go forward with what the post is about: Subsiding the anger towards the dice and realizing and accepting that that’s part of the game.

Dice Gods Giveth and Taketh Away

Any game that involves dice, there’s going to be variance and we as players need to be accepting of it. I got angry at the dice in this game, but I knew that one of my games it will be the other way around. Ironically, I fired up a game with a local guy the night after and the dice were the exact opposite of the game that I lost. The morale of the story here is: Don’t let a game that you lost because of dice, primarily, get to you. The game should, and will, balance out. It just simply has to.

Mental Game Recap

The best thing you can do after ANY game, is to go over some things that you did that perhaps could have been better. This is even more important and glaring in a loss. Think about as much of the game as you remember, and figure out ways you can make yourself a better player. While the dice in that game most likely cost me that game, it wasn’t the only factor!

I spread my army out a little too much, and I knew that when deploying, but I had a plan or two to somewhat justify it. In the end, I should have kept them more close than I left them. I played some command cards in the wrong time, after reflecting on it. Not having enough inspire in my list, certainly hurt. I’ve been talking about Rebel Officers being a staple in Rebel lists because of the amount of suppression the Empire has been conjuring up as of late. Did I listen to my own advice? Certainly not. Did it result in a loss? It actually did. My opponent panicked two of my units because of failed rallies and no inspire around to help them. This was a direct effect to being spread out too thin from my commander/rest of my army, my list building and poor action economy from earlier in the game. What do I mean by that? Well, rather than double moving and hitting the Vaporator right away, I decided to aim and shoot or move and shoot with units out of fear. Maybe that’s because of Rebel white saves, and maybe I worried too much about the Royal Guard, but in my mind it was open shots against a one in three save. Take a model or two out, then move up. Instead, they stood their ground and my plan started to backfire somewhat. I think next time, in a Vaporator game, I need to worry less about an area threat and just get the wounds off the Vaporators. Worry about handling that threat after I’ve hit the objective. My decision making, on top of the hot dice, ultimately cost me the game and I need to account for that. I need to take the game in and learn from my own mistakes. Does the game change if some of those shots go through? Sure. But these are the results, and I have a choice: make the excuse or learn from the game.

Final Thoughts

The post is somewhat all over the place, perhaps, but there’s a few underlying things that it’s meant to touch base upon: keep a clear head, even when the variance goes against you. Never get mad at your opponent for those rolls, either! Not that I did! But just a clarification. Always reminisce on the games you play, win or loss, and find things you could have done better. Every game is something to build upon and learn from. The last order of business is a bit more difficult but: always have multiple plans or at least multiple ideas of plans. You can’t enter a game with a Plan A and only a Plan A. You need a Plan B, a Plan C, maybe even a Plan D. The game of Legion is so unpredictable, thanks Dice Gods, you need to be able to change gears on the fly. But there’s only one way to do that: hit the tables and learn from your mistakes. Always have fun, even if the dice make you want to believe otherwise, because after all: it’s only just a game!

May the Force be with You

-GrandAdmiralThrawn

 

Short piece here, since I’m in Aruba and have some time to kill….and of course miss Legion and the community because I’m just an obsessed adult child. I figured a good quick topic would be about activation counts and why they matter. Even in a casual game it’s going to matter, so this fits in the casual and the competitive aspect of the game. I think as you start to dive into the game more and more you notice something about every list you build: Corps units and Strike Teams. There’s reasons for that: cheap activations and effectiveness. Sure there are cheap units like the FD Laser Canon and E-Web, as an example, but they’re useless in some of the game modes when it comes to objectives. So is it more useful to bring more Stormtrooper units or three E-Webs? Stormtroopers, all the way, because they can interact with all objectives as opposed to the E-Web. In a standard 800 point game of Legion, I want to say right now the activation count is anywhere from 9 to 11, I know some 12 activation lists are out there but they’re not common. I know Jay over at the Fifth Trooper has quite the interesting 12 activation Imperial list, if I’m not mistaken. When the Clone Era stuff drops, the droids are going to be quite the interesting list build. They’re going to come at you in hoards, and man is that going to look so cool on the table! Here are some faction specific things in terms of where you want to be with an activation count and list building.

Rebels

Competitively speaking, again all from an 800 point game perspective, Rebels want to be at least 10 activations from my experience. Any time I have gone below 10 activations, it doesn’t feel right. Especially if your opponent has 10 activations and you have 9, you’re starting the game in an uphill battle if you ask me. Especially with them dang white saves. Let’s say your opponent Maximum Firepowers a Sniper Strike Team, as an example, you’re now down two activations in the very start of the game. Here’s why that matters: your opponent is always going to have control versus you when it comes to the numbers game. Let’s say you don’t kill any of his units before round 1 ends and you enter round 2 at 10 activations/8 activations, do you feel comfortable with your opponent having two full activations more than you? Let’s say you activate all 8 of your activations, and your opponent still sits at 10….they will have 2 full activations with a total of 4 more actions to do while you just sit at the table twiddling your thumbs. It’s just the way it is with wargaming, from what I understand because this is my first ever wargame. Activation counts will always have some sort of play in the game. As much as you want to beef out units, and bring all sorts of upgrades, unless something drastic changes (like some sort of activation count cap, which would never occur) this is what you’re looking at. Unfortunately, for the Rebels, the most efficient list right now is just your typical Luke/Leia/five z6/triple snipers….which is very vanilla/boring, but it does what it needs to do. Hopefully with the Rebel Veterans, Taun Tauns and Sabine Wren coming the Rebels can kind of have some variety, competitively speaking. The Death Troopers and Bossk, coming soon, really put a damper on Rebel list building if you ask me. You need pierce and ways to deal with suppression. What’s the best/easiest way to do both of those? The twins.

Empire

The Empire has a little more wiggle room than the Rebels do, and a lot of that has to do with activation count, and what I mean by that is that they can be at 9 activations and still feel comfortable as opposed to the Rebels. A lot of that has to do with the red saves. The scary part of this, though, is that it’s still not hard for the Empire to get to 10 activations. Especially with some new, cheaper commanders in the Imperial Officer and Krennic. Sure the DeathTroopers are expensive and all, but I’m sure you can find a way to get to 10 acts with them in there. And man, are those DeathTroopers good. Again, you’re going to see a lot of list building change in the upcoming months with the new Shoretroopers, Dewbacks, and Bossk. Not to mention, it’s already having some shift right now with the tank, which seems to be the best vehicle in the game at the moment. Even with the tank being somewhat pricey, I’m still seeing the Imperials find a way to that crucial 10 activation count. Unless you want to run double tanks….then I’m not too sure what kind of activation number you’re realistically looking at. In the Invader League I have seen some double bounty lists, which is Boba/Bossk, and it’s either with Veers or the generic Imperial officer…and you say all of this to yourself and think: no way that’s going to be a ten activation list, but jokes on you because it is. As a Rebel player, it’s pretty scary to look at! It’s going to be pretty interesting to see where the competitive Imperial meta is going to go in the upcoming months. I’m not saying that the recent units for the Rebels aren’t good (Jyn, Pathfinders, Landspeeder) but I think the Imperials have better units in Krennic, Deathtroopers and the tank. Especially with the fact that they still find their way to the 10 activation count. And let’s say a Palpatine list hovers at 8 or 9 activations (most likely 9), you need to factor in Pull the Strings. That alone can make up for a smaller activation list, because your going to give some unit an extra action each round. Hint: It’s going to work really well with some range 4 lizard with a suppressive weapon.

Final Notes

There’s so many factors when building a list and the variety is truly there. I’m not saying you need to run Wonder Twins every single game to be competitive, because you don’t. I’m also not saying you NEED 10 activations to win or be competitive, because you don’t. However, it is something that definitely can define a game especially early on. Remember, this game is objectives based. You want to be able to get those objectives done and how do you do that? Have units on the board.

Another factor in building a list is to have a good token mix. That’s a bit of a tricky one for me to explain but here’s an example: Luke/Leia/5 Corps/3 snipers has a pretty good token core. More often than not you’re giving Luke and Leia their tokens in the command phase. Now your bag/stack has 5 corps and 3 special forces in there and that’s typically great variety, because you kind of have an idea of what you’re going to pull and most of the time it won’t matter which of the two you pull. Not to mention, you have full activation control over Luke and Leia. The inverse of that would be like…Luke/Leia/4 Corps/2 Snipers/FD Cannon/Landspeeder…this would mean you have 4 corps, 2 special forces, 1 heavy and 1 support token in your bag or stack. (barring any kind of comms upgrade) If this is the case, you might start pulling tokens you don’t want early or late in a round. It can really throw a wrench into your plans. Activation count matters, of course, but so does the variety in what you bring with those activations.

At the end of the day, all my rambling on really means one thing: Don’t bring a low activation list (right now) and expect it to thrive. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but if your opponent severely out activates you: it’s going to be a long, long game and a lot of idle sitting for you. Remember, you only have 12 actions per game with units. Even less when you factor in suppression. Is a list with 84 actions going to be as efficient as a list with 120 actions? My educated guess and gut are telling me no and yours should, too. In a few months, we could see the game shift to a 8 to 9 activation game with more expensive but really efficient units, but for now it seems like anywhere in 9 to 11 range is where you want to be on either side. When the Clones and Droids show up on the scene, then we could see a drastic change overall! I said this was going to be a short piece, but I guess sitting in the hotel room with a sleeping son and fiance opened up the floodgates!

May the Force be with You!

-GrandAdmiralThrawn

No, this isn’t a post about super gluing your fingers together, but we have all done that! I know it!

Cohesion is one of the most important things in the game when it comes to tactics. Especially if you want to play the game competitively and start playing more experienced players. They’ll take advantage of any simple mistake you make and the simplest mistake you can make comes with cohesion. Below I will reference the Star Wars Legion Rules Reference Guide, which you don’t receive in the Core set. The reason for that is the RRG is a living document! It’s being constantly updated by FFG online, which is great for the game in my opinion. Sure, it’s nice to have a hard copy of things, but that means the one you got in the Core set is now outdated by the new one. So on and so forth. A living rules document keeps this game constantly evolving.

There are a few little quirky things about cohesion, but the best way to think about is shown in that picture above. Just imagine the circle around your unit leader as such, use the speed 1 tool all around him if you need it to help visualize, and weigh your options.

Now, tactically speaking, let’s discuss some do’s and do not’s of cohesion, especially playing against more experienced players. The first rule of thumb, which can sometimes be broken situation depending, is that you never cohere your troopers ahead of your unit leader. (A situation this may not be true is if you move them ahead to completely obscure them from view.) The reason being for this is that if you move them ahead of your unit leader, your opponent has access to a shot much easier to that unit. Remember, range is going to be measured leader to miniature not leader to leader. So, as an example, let’s say you move and dodge with a Rebel trooper unit because you moved and measured from your unit leader and you were just outside of range 3 on an opponents unit, but decided to cohere your troopers forward, your opponent can move their unit leader to range 3 of your most forward trooper and take a shot at that unit. That’s extremely dangerous and it will allow your opponent to start taking advantage of you. You don’t want to give your opponent any competitive edge, especially one where you let them take easier shots on you.

The next trick you need to keep in mind is always keep your heavy weapon in a safe position. There’s a lot of different ways your heavy can get “sniped” and I don’t mean by actual snipers. I’ve seen it referred to as terrain scoping, and you need to try your best from letting it happen. The best way to do this is to make sure you heavy weapon is in the middle of your cohesion, that way your opponent can’t take a shot at your unit and only be able to see the heavy weapon. Because, let’s say you cohere your heavy weapon around the side of the building thinking you kept it obscure, and he’s all alone. However, your opponent can get an angle on that trooper and ONLY that trooper, then that’s the only trooper that can go down by the shot. Protect those DLT’s and Z-6 troopers by keeping them close to the unit leader. This also reigns true for medical droids and astromech droids.

Speaking of getting a shot on only a certain trooper, here’s a few things you want to keep in mind with that situation. The leader is ALWAYS the last miniature removed from a unit. So let’s say your unit leader is all your opponent can see, if he goes down, he moves and replaces a trooper in your unit. After the unit leader, droids are removed second to last if they are in your unit, because they are a non-combatant. For the most part, however, if you aren’t running any droids you want to keep those heavy weapons on the board at all costs. They’re typically the second to last trooper you remove from a trooper unit.

Now of course, the best use of cohesion is to make sure your unit’s are in some sort of cover. There are a couple of things to keep in mind:

• Half (or more) of you troopers need to be behind or in cover to gain the light or heavy cover
• If you cohere into difficult terrain in order to gain cover but your unit leader is not in the cover itself, you still only gain a one speed move
• As noted above in the picture, it always has to be a legal one speed move

When you first start out, you’ll keep your units  bunched. I know I did that, and still do that for the most part. But now that I have started playing a little more competitively, it’s better keep your guys behind the cover but somewhat spread out. More experienced wargamers/players will find ways to thread the needle and take your cover away from you, and you don’t want that. Especially as a Rebel player. I’ve had games where I’ve been super cautious with my cohesion and cover only to have that blown up by a more experience player. That’s why you play more experienced players, though. It’s a great learning experience. Playing better players will typically result in a loss, but it helps you learn the game more and become a better player yourself, I promise.

 

May the Force be with You!

-GrandAdmiralThrawn

I’ve collectively played about ten games of Legion, and plan on playing tonight! Throughout these ten games, I have a piece of advice we should all take heed to as new players: Focus on objectives, not killing everything. 

I got into the game and think to myself: destroy everything. Sometimes that will actually happen, however that’s not always the case and your focus needs to be elsewhere. It’s very easy to be blind to everything and just want to shoot things. It’s war-gaming after all and let’s be honest shooting things(as in Star Wars miniatures) is fun. That said, especially as a Rebel player, you won’t always succeed at tabling your opponent….now you’ve most likely lost the game.

In my first three games, I went all in on trying to take things out. Why? I’m not really sure. It actually worked in two of these games, which probably wasn’t a good thing for my mindset. It was the fourth game that I realized HOW important playing objectives is as opposed to shooting everything up. (Also, where you place objectives is such an important thing.) Let it be known that in most of my games we have played Recover the Supplies. Truth be told, I still have a lot to learn when it comes to objectives in other situations such as Key Positions, Sabotage the Moisture Evaporators, Intercept the Transmissions and Breakthrough. For now, though, let’s use my fourth full game as an example of how firing everything you have at your opponent can blind you to the objectives.

I was playing a Rebel list consisting of Luke, Leia, Chewbacca, three Rebel troopers with a Z6, one set of fleets with a shotgun, FD Laser Cannon and one set of sniper. Seeing as I am building my collection, this is what I had to work with knowing it isn’t “meta”. It’s still fun and somewhat competitive, though. Which is what matters the most.

My opponent was running Vader, Royal Guard, E-Web, one set of Snowtroopers with a flametrooper and officer, and I want to say four DLT stormtroopers and one naked unit of Stormies.

Below is the game we played:

(Pictures from TableTopAdmiral)

 

I’m not going into a full battle report here, because that’s not the premise of the point. I just want to briefly go over it to let you, as a new player, understand how important objectives are. Placing them. Going for them. They matter most.

Mistake 1: I was blue player and decided to put an objective right near where the (1) is on the deployment zone and one near the corner of the (2) in the deployment zone. Placing the box near the spot on the bottom was dumb. I split my forces, and in my head that seemed smart. But I think the smarter play would have been placing both boxes near the top or middle of the board. The one on the bottom ended up being an easy objective for my opponent to overtake me and grab.

Mistake 2: In Rapid Reinforcements, you drop your guys on the board and they’re “activated”. I put aside a set of regular corps and fleets. This was probably my biggest mistake, and falls in line with what will end up being Mistake 3. I placed my Fleets super aggressive and not in good cover. The thought process was to get them as close as I can on the back side of my opponent, flank them and light them up. Turns out, my Fleets got shot up and never got to activate.

Mistake 3: Focusing on shooting my opponent too much and lack of moving up the board. Late in the game my opponent had three boxes to my one. Granted, two of his boxes were being held by one Stormtrooper Leader each. That being said, he had been double moving to safety well before I started moving up my units to be able to take out the remainder of his forces to perhaps force a tie and go to points. (Leia being range 1-2 hurt here, for sure!)

Lesson Learned: Pretty simple lesson here, since it’s the basis of what I’m writing. My lack of focus on objectives cost me the game. Sitting back with Rebels is how I tend to play, other than using Luke as a forward piece, I let my opponent come to me. In theory, I still think that’s the best way to play Rebels. That said, instead of aiming and shooting or moving and shooting, next time my focus needs to be about thinking ahead and making sure I don’t lose focus on objectives. If that means I need to double move a unit, then that’s what I’m going to do. That way if my opponent has some boxes and starts to retreat(smartly) I’m not stuck down the board unable to respond.

Final thoughts: Don’t get mad or discouraged if you lose a game. It’s going to happen, especially as a new player. Take mental notes, pictures, or even write down notes(which is something I need to start doing) and use these games to learn what can make you a better player. Either way, my guess is you had fun because it’s Star Wars Legion!

 

May the Force be with you!

-GrandAdmiralThrawn