Closed Lanes: Legion is Beginning to Feel Like a One-Way Street
November 18, 2024
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In this article, I will be covering two revealed units for the Republic faction, Yoda and Chewbacca.
We will start by covering both unit cards and command cards individually, then go into synergies between them and other units.
200 Points Yoda is a very expensive model. Also count on Yoda being more like 220-230 once upgrades are chosen. This expense is also exacerbated because GAR is an expensive faction overall. You will definitely have to build a list around Yoda to make him fit.
Defense Yoda surges on defense, and has Immune: Pierce, this means that he has as good a save as you can have. However, Yoda only has 5 wounds. Even surging red saves blank 33% of the time. Yoda only has 15 effective wounds, which can disappear really quickly in the world of clone Fire Supports. Also, one unlucky roll may mean Yoda loses most of his health, or even be defeated very quickly.
Offense Yoda’s base offense may seem relatively low for a force user. He surges to crit, rolls four red dice in melee with Pierce and Impact, and can throw four black dice at Range 2 with blast and suppressive. His offense comes from his Ataru Mastery, and his command cards which will be covered later. Ataru Mastery allows Yoda to attack twice in an activation, which can double his offensive output. If Yoda is in melee he can throw two saber attacks. This will be especially good if you are attacking expensive red save units.
Guidance The keyword Guidance allows you to take an action with another unit at range 1-2. This is such a good keyword and can be used for a myriad of things. Some possible uses could be to move a unit with Relentless/Charge/Steady to also get a free attack. You could get a unit to recover to get back exhaustible upgrades or shed suppression. You can also use this to move to and/or claim objectives. Guidance will be a keyword that’ll take a lot of experience to run Yoda effectively but can win you games.
Courage It is also important to note that Yoda has 4 Courage. This will all but insure that you won’t have troubles with units panicking when in range of Yoda, especially if you use Guidance to help get rid of suppression on units.
Yoda’s Command slot can be filled with a large variety of cards.
Clones do like getting surge tokens. However, Aggressive Tactics is 15 points, that’s probably too expensive when Yoda is in your list. I’d look to make surge tokens in other ways. Yoda also can generate and share 2 surge tokens with his 3 pip.
Yoda’s wounds are incredibly precious. Esteemed Leader might be able to save those wounds. The biggest problem with this card is that the wounds of most of the other units in GAR armies are also precious. Esteemed Leader can be used on naked clone squads to mitigate losing your most important wounds.
If you decide to surround your Yoda with Phase 1s then you probably want a copy of strict orders, either on Yoda, or another commander.
Vigilance is also very useful on Yoda as having dodges on Yoda can keep him alive. Vigilance can also be useful as Ataru Mastery grants you a dodge token when you attack, which can often leave you with a dodge token at the end of the round.
Overall Yoda should probably always have a command upgrade equipped. Vigilance or Esteemed Leader are probably the best and which you choose will be preference and what you want to do. Other upgrades might find uses depending on your list.
Yoda has a plethora of good options for force upgrades. Yoda is arguably the force user with the greatest number of good possible force upgrades.
The greatest determiner of what force upgrades you want for Yoda is what kind of role you want to use Yoda in. Do you want a support style force user that can do damage? Or an in-your-face force user who also has some good support effects?
Force Push is the only force upgrade that should probably be on Yoda nearly 100% of the time. Yoda can also make incredible use of Force Push as he can use it twice in his turn with his 1-pip. This can lead to some amazing shenanigans by being able to push a single unit twice, (which could put it out of a move-claim of an objective) or pushing two separate units which could potentially allow you to push two units of a Key Position turn 6.
Force Barrier is definitely a great upgrade on Yoda, depending on the build it may be decent or incredible, especially if Yoda is running with some Wookiees. This card is probably a go-to.
On a character that will cost over 200 points more dodges is better. Reflexes will likely not end up on Yoda due to other options but it could be equipped if you don’t want to take any other powers.
Putting out two or more suppression a turn is pretty great. Because Yoda has Master of the Force 2 you can get 2 Force powers back every turn, that could easily be Force Push and Jedi Mind Trick. Also of note is that Yoda has a Suppressive attack, this means he can reliably do four suppression to a trooper unit, and, when using his 1-pip you can lay down six suppression on a target. Yoda in this case can play with a Master of Evil style effect when/if you need it.
Battle Meditation is a consideration almost exclusively for his 2-pip. His 2-pip gives an order to himself and another unit, you could instead give two other units orders to hand them the awesome effects of the command card. The biggest problem with Battle Meditation is that it takes up a force slot that can be used for another power, and Yoda generally wants to keep all his orders.
A new Force Upgrade! Burst of Speed will force a lot of change to how force users are approached, both to play with them, and to play against them. On Yoda, Burst of Speed can allow him to cannonball into the opponents lines even more efficiently. The downside of this card is that an immobilized token would make Yoda stuck in place for a turn. However, Yoda has access to some movement shenanigans to mitigate this. If Yoda plays his 1-pip his max speed is increased to 3 meaning that with an immobilized token he would still move at speed-2. If Chewie is also backing Yoda up you could use Chewie’s command card with Yoda to move him around on Chewie’s back.
The other new Force upgrade in Yoda’s box. This card will likely (hopefully) see some FAQs to address some ideas and concerns people have. As it currently stands this card could lead you to have a Huge advantage in a game of Payload or Key Positions. Check out this episode of Notorious Scoundrels to hear more about these ideas. This card as it will likely end up will be a decent upgrade. At minimum, it will be mobile heavy cover in a faction that has good saves and good shooting. It will also lead to some fun moments where you yeet an opponent’s barricade out of the way and get an open shot on an exposed unit.
Yoda’s command cards are incredibly powerful, all three have great effects that will help sway a game.
The most unique thing about Yoda’s cards, and the thing that will force you to plan out the entire game is that his command cards “cycle”. When you play his 3 pip you get his 1 pip back, 1->2 and 2-> 3. This means that once you play your first Yoda card you are a bit stuck with the order of cards to play. There are definitely a few sequences that seem really good.
Turns out you don’t need to be a clone to share tokens.
This card is fairly straightforward overall. Hand out a bunch of orders and then hand out some tokens. The only drawback of this card is that Yoda can’t attack. In general, you should be looking to play this card in support of the rest of your army when Yoda hasn’t quite made it to the enemy yet.
The range that you can share tokens is also massive, range 3, and you don’t need LOS. This is the best token sharing effect in the game so far. This card not only gives you the ability to share tokens but also gives you a bunch of tokens. Probably you will be seeking to make even more tokens for your army on the turn you play this card. I would suggest that you probably want to make a standby token for Yoda to share on the turn you play this card. This could possibly bring some Overwatch clones back into the game.
The last point on this card is that this card does give Yoda 2 dodge tokens, don’t be afraid to play this card if Yoda is in a spot where 2 dodge tokens would be really important.
Another great card, one that seems pretty straightforward.
Basically this card will power up two trooper units, one of them being Yoda unless you have Battle Meditation. The effects given by this card are all great, a free dodge token, Outmaneuver, and Relentless. This card is already excellent on Yoda as combined with Ataru mastery you could easily get two attacks off, whether they be two ranged attacks or some melee. The other unit you give an order to with this card will likely be your 2nd most powerful unit, likely a unit of Wookiees or ARCs. It could also easily be Chewbacca or even Rex. The slightly hidden benefit of this card is that combined with Guidance you can get two attacks off with a unit. If that happens to be Rex you could attack four times because of the benefit of Gunslinger. Likely the best unit to do this on though is ARCs as you could move-move-shoot which would also activate Tactical 1 twice. Then, during Yoda’s activation you could move them again with Guidance to get another aim and free attack. Two full ARC attacks while getting to move three times and generating three aims sounds pretty good to me.
Similar to his 3-pip, this card does give Yoda one dodge. This card also gives Yoda Outmaneuver so you may find yourself in a situation where the defensive value of this card is enough to justify playing it.
So ya, it’s good.
Yoda’s 1-pip is quite incredible, giving some of the best effects in the game.
First off, This card increases Yoda’s mobility from bad to probably the best in the game. He gets a maximum speed of 3 and Jump 1. Combined with the ability to perform card actions twice during this round he can actually jump twice, making some incredible maneuvers possible. For example, he could jump over a wall, hit something with his lightsaber, and jump back over the wall out of LOS.
Next is that this card gives Yoda Charge and Disengage, incredible keywords for a force user. This card allows and encourages Yoda to act much like Operative Luke.
The most unique effect of this card is that you are able to use card actions twice in the turn. This includes Jump, Guidance and any equipped Force Powers. This is incredibly powerful and can do a huge variety of things. Using this ability effectively will take a fair bit of practice and a good understanding of the game and board state, but that is generally true for Yoda and force users as a whole. One thing that you can do is double use Guidance to get a unit to move two times before or after their activation. This means that you could quadruple move a unit during a round. This could be especially powerful in a game of hostage exchange to get your hostage to safety.
The full cycle order of Yoda’s cards is 3-2-1-3.
With this information we could plan out a few hypothetical orders to play a Yoda card every turn.
The most obvious is probably 3-2-1-3-2-1. This order allows you to use most of Yoda’s effects in a time period where they’re likely relevant. It also has the 1-pip played during the 3rd round where you’re likely using it to get in and start attacking. The 1-pip is then returned for turn 6 where it is powerful for effecting the end of game state.
Another order that seems really powerful is 1-3-2-1-3-2. This order allows Yoda to either move into position early very quickly or even to double guidance a unit turn 1 which is especially relevant in a game of hostage exchange or possibly even recover the supplies.
It seems that another really viable idea is a turn 1 standing orders play, for two reasons. One is that Yoda lists will likely be down activations so having standing orders turn 1 may mean a less severe activation disadvantage. The other reason is that it will delay you committing to the order in which you want to play Yoda’s cards for a turn letting you survey how the game is shaping up before playing his first card.
A list that smacks Yoda into a fairly typical clone gunline. Plus this list even manages to fit in a Clone Medic to up Yoda to 6 wounds.
Yoda’s force powers are fairly optional in this list, the only power that is probably mandatory is Force Push. Burst of Speed and Jedi Mind Trick are also great ideas for this list.
The general running of this list is that you want to have a solid clone gunline and use Yoda much like a typical force user, getting him in to start gutting units and causing havoc. Esteemed leader is on Yoda as his wounds are more valuable then another others in the army.
The command cards for this list are also a lot like contingencies in other lists. You probably will play primarily if not entirely Yoda cards, but you have other cards there if they are needed.
This list is incredible on hostage exchange. You can move your hostage unit up to 8 times, close to 32 inches, in the first two turns if you use the effects of Guidance, Yoda’s 1-pip, and Smokescreen.
So when the idea of putting Yoda and a Saber Tank was first raised on The Legion Discord. I personally instantly scoffed while simultaneously opening Legion HQ. It turns out to be interesting, and possibly a decent list. This is an 8 activation list which is low, and it goes all the way in on 2 expensive units.
Fundamentally the list plays similar to the Saber Tank lists covered already here
The biggest difference is that you will definitely need to get a few standbys off with the tank, both using Padmé’s and Yoda’s standby tokens. You will also need to cannonball Yoda into your enemy’s lines at some point for it to be worth bringing him.
90 Points Chewie is 90 points in a faction that already struggles to find points. He is probably best in lists where you can make use of his Guardian card. You could also seek to use Chewie as a Fire Support platform in a clone list.
Offense Commander Chewbacca has offense that is nearly identical to his Rebel variant. The only difference is that this Chewie surges to hit rather than critical. This is likely a change to prevent clones from getting super crazy Fire Supports. This is made up for with his bowcaster however, as it has Critical 1. For all practical considerations this is essentially Surge: Crit on his own shooting. Chewie’s offense is considerable. His melee attack Overwhelm has base four red which can be boosted to five red with Tenacity, this attack also has Lethal 1. Plus, he gets Charge once he is Enraged. His bowcaster is also excellent. two red, two white, Critical 1, Impact 1 and Pierce 1. This weapon can shred through high save troopers and armor alike.
Defense Chewbacca has 9 health which is his main form of defense and a big pool to use for Guardian. This massive health pool is however protected by a non-surging white save. The good news for GAR Chewie is that he comes with the keyword Reliable 2. This means that he will automatically get 2 surge tokens at the start of the Activation Phase. These will be used exclusively for defense meaning that for practical purposes Chewie surges on defense, especially if he isn’t forced to roll too many saves per turn. Keep in mind though that this is still white dice, the best way to keep chewie alive is to keep him hidden, he should be able to step out and survive a fair few dice at least.
Enrage 4 Enrage is a really good keyword for Chewie. At the surface level it makes him immune to suppression as well as giving him charge which helps turn him into a melee powerhouse. It does however get one step better. In GAR Chewbacca is a commander, meaning he has a command bubble. This means that Chewie is one of two characters in the game right now that can completely prevent friendly units from panicking.
Maneuverability Like all Wookiees Chewie has Scale. This gives him excellent maneuverability and can get him into melee and/or get open shots on units.
The training slot on Chewie is incredibly versatile, your choices will be dictated largely by what purpose you are bringing Chewie for.
A free aim token is always nice when you need it. Offensive Push is especially good if you plan to use Chewie in a primarily offensive role. Both in melee where the aim can be used to activate Lethal, as well as in ranged attacks where an aim can help ensure damage, or as a part of a Fire Support as Chewie can’t pull aims off clone troopers.
Increasing Chewie’s melee dice pool from four red to five red is great, especially because if you are seeking to use Chewie in melee you’ll want wounds on him anyways. Tenacity is also a good consideration in a Yoda list as your melee dice pools are good quality but small, an extra die can help with that.
This upgrade card is usually excellent for operatives. It is fine for Chewie. Can help time your Fire Supports or melee entry. But you can probably get orders to Chewie in other ways. Seize the Initiative can however be excellent in combination with the new Wookiee generic Command Cards. If you use Seize the Initiative when you play one of those cards then the affect will also effect Chewie.
A new upgrade that will be great on many units, Chewie isn’t likely one of them. Surge tokens are great on Chewie and his in built Reliable should cover that, Rebel Chewie might want to look at this upgrade.
A Card with Chewbacca on it, it must be good on him right? Yup. This card will be excellent on Rebel or GAR Chewie making him able to scoop up errant crits from his Guardian target.
The gear slot is a lot less versatile on Chewbacca and really there are only a couple of possible options for him. Leaving this slot empty is definitely justified.
Definitely not an upgrade that will be common, but if you can get Chewie aim tokens and you plan on using him as a fire support platform then this might be a consideration. I’d definitely pair this with Offensive Push and/or an ability like Spotter or Calculate the Odds.
Having a few units with Scout is often a good idea. Chewie especially likes scout as he wants to get up into the thick of it. You can also combo Scout with his Yoda specific Command Card. You could Scout him and then move Yoda along to his location on turn 1. This could advance Yoda ~22 inches out of the deployment turn 1 while still preserving Yoda’s card flexiblity.
Emergency Stims has been thrown around as a gear upgrade for Chewie. It would allow him to take 2 extra wounds before he died which isn’t nothing. I’m not completely convinced due to its cost but definitely could come in clutch when you need it.
It should be noted that Chewbacca only comes with 1 relevant card for the Republic. He can however use the generic Wookiee command cards covered here
This card comes with a massive brick of text.
Let’s start with the basics. This is a 2-pip that orders two units, good. The two units are probably the two most important units in your list, even better.
The basic idea of the ability of this card is that Yoda is going to ride on Chewbacca’s back.
When the card is played you get to place Yoda in base contact with Chewie, if at range 1. This already has some crazy possibilities. There is no LOS requirement for this on the card so you could pull Yoda through a wall out of harms way. You can also presumably pull Yoda out of a melee, and/or, place him into one.
The next stipulation is that Yoda can’t move, simple.
After that it says that if Chewbacca moves then you can then place Yoda into Base Contact with Chewie again. This can be used to get Yoda into melee or just give him free moves. With this you can move Yoda three times; two times with Chewie’s activation and then another time with Guidance on Chewie. With this you could move Yoda ~25 inches in 1 turn assuming Yoda starts range 1 away from Chewie.
The last stipulation is that While Yoda and Chewie are in Base Contact Chewbacca gains Deflect, can spend Yoda’s dodge tokens, and rolls red defense dice. This is fairly bonkers. Just the red defense die alone is amazing; remember that Chewie has Reliable so those red defense dice are also surging to defense. Chewie can also use Deflect and spend Yoda’s dodges which gives even more defensive bonuses for the turn.
This card will be an amazing flex card to have in your hand when playing Yoda and Chewie together. Because of Yoda’s cards cycling you will sometimes find you don’t have the right card ready in a crucial situation, Chewie’s card can help fill the gap, and possibly keep Yoda and/or Chewie alive.
Here we are somewhat recreating the battle of Kashyyyk.
This list leans into Wookiees to form the bulk of your list, fundamentally this is a melee skew list. You should be looking to smash into your lines with all the Wookiees and Yoda at the same time while R2 sneaks around to his Secret Mission.
You’re probably looking to only play Yoda’s command cards and possibly Chewie’s. Blast Off should probably also be considered as your second 1-pip as it’s a card that wins games.
Both of these characters bring a lot to the Republic faction. Both will surely find ways of spicing up Republic lists.
Hopefully we will see some players take it upon themselves to master Yoda and possibly even the Yoda-Chewie combination.
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1 Response
Yoda’s one pip would allow him to jump into melee and attack, and them jump into another unit and attack as well… that sounds very Yoda to me!