Tournament Recap: May The Force Be With You at Element Games

Intro

Welcome to my first blog for the Fifth Trooper. I’m going to be writing from across the pond to give you an insight to how the Brits think when it comes to Legion. I’ve been playing Legion since pretty much day one but only started being competitive about 6 months after its release when I realized how much I enjoyed this game.

This weekend we saw the first of four two day events currently planned here in the UK. Justin who organized and ran the event at Element Games hosted a great two day event with some amazing tables. This was the first time I had made the trip north to Element Games and I was surprised at the size of the store and how much space they had, along with the quality of the terrain being put out on the tables for us to play on. We had 24 players turn up for the event, which meant we only need 5 rounds to have a clear winner.

Tables

There were some really amazing table themes, like this one with the Sarlaac pit.

The event was very well run but there was something that I wanted to talk about that happened at the event.  We had been told anything that was on a base like these AT-AT parts where to be treated as area terrain across all tables.

Then at the end of the day most of the players who played on the shown above table gave feedback how you could be placed in the complete open but would count as being in heavy terrain. I loved how Justin dealt with this. He took the feedback on board then said I’ll bring my jigsaw and break that terrain up for tomorrow. I just wanted to highlight this whole process. The players at the event raised it politely and where able to provide constructive feedback on the table terrain and the TO rather then being defensive took it in his stride and said let me see what I can do to fix this for the next day.

My List

I had originally been thinking about taking my triple Ion and Kraken list, but with failing to get out of the group stage of Invader league and starting to see the cracks in my own list I didn’t have as much faith. I decided to try and take Dooku and double Magna with which I had just won a local 10-man event two weeks before.

Dooku is a great control piece with his command cards giving you full control of the board and order control for your units. As he is a force user, we auto-include force push. For the other two slots I wanted to try Burst of Speed and Barrier to keep Magnas alive.

Both the Magnas are the same with Rocket and Situational Awareness; between Retinue dodges at the start of the turn and dodges from command cards, Situational Awareness helps keep them alive even longer. Then have Tenacity to help punch back once they make it into melee.

The gunline side of things is a mix of two Range 3 B1s and two Range 4 sniper B1s. This is mainly because I don’t own four snipers; I like the idea of the whole list just chipping away at Range 4, getting through heavy cover and armour with every unit having critical.

The Tactical droid and the HQ Uplink unit are to help keep order control, or if I wish to split my army in two during a mission if needed. Vigilance and the portable scanner are to keep Dooku alive. If you shoot Dooku I have double Guardian, a dodge token, and most likely a surge token.

If you shoot the Magnas I have dodges, Barrier and a repair droid. So it takes a lot of effort to kill my main heavy hitters.

Game 1

We played on this big falcon obscuring map. We agreed you could climb up and down at the nose end of the falcon, but not the engine. There were quite a few stairs if we wanted to climb it so if we ended up playing Intercept or something, I had options to get to the objective, just slower than the scaling Wookiees and jumping Yoda. We ended up playing Danger Close, Sabotage and Fortified Positions. I deployed my vaporators on my back line and gave myself the heavy cover to bunker down. My opponent put his vaporators right on his back line and deployed all the Wookiees at the closest point ready to start charging towards me.

I managed to kill 2 Wookiees on turn 1 with my shots, choosing to move and shoot. I knew if I could kill the Wookiees quickly I could score my objectives and win on points destroyed since the clones at the back would never join the fight. Turn 2 dictated how the rest of the game went. His full Wookiees charged my Magnaguard, and after spending my dodges caused a total of one wound which triggered my Tenacity to attack back. My magnas aimed and swung back dealing nine hits and nine wounds.

With the charge from the Wookiees unfortunately not having the impact that was needed, Dooku and the Magnaguards killed the Wookiees. By the time Yoda got there I had my whole army available to deal with him. Game 1 was a win to me by points destroyed.

Game 2

I was up against Iden, triple Imperial Special Forces (ISF) with support from triple Shoretroopers and mortars with heavy weapons. This is a lot of firepower to shoot off a lot of droids. I was a little worried about this match up. We ended up playing Danger close, Fortified Positions and Sabotage with me being blue again. Due to tactical strike I again followed a similar approach deploying on the far back line as possible and making sure my vaps were behind LOS blockers. My opponent also deployed quite far back as well, infiltrating one of his ISF into my deployment zone while I still had 1 magna guard unit left to place. I deployed them in melee (I didn’t realize you couldn’t until we fact checked that night) but at the time we both couldn’t think of a rule why I couldn’t. In hind sight it didn’t matter since I went first with that unit and would still done the same. I went with the Magna’s first and just took a dodge (should have been a move) and a standby. I was not killing the ISF but they were locked up. I did this for two turns while I tapped my vaps and hid. My opponent was moving towards me knowing the game, but this gave me a chance to pop out and shoot after they had double moved, then I would shoot and move back around the corner eventually killing a unit and starting me to be ahead on points. Second game a win to me by points destroyed again.

Game 3

This time I got paired against an operative Vader gunline with Dewbacks helping support. This match had the added pressure of not only securing my first-time making day two undefeated but also beating someone who had beaten my son in round one. I was blue still and we ended up playing Major Offensive, Fortified Positions and Sabotage. This game was very close. I was winning the gun fight due to the Dewbacks having to wait for Storms to move out of the way, so there was a delay in the Dewbacks and Vader hitting me. When Vader engaged, he threw Dooku onto a roof next to his Vap, doing a wound in the process, which then left four shots into Dooku. Between heavy cover, a dodge, and being in Guardian range of one of the Magnas, he survived on one health. Dooku spent his turn moving to the edge of the building ready for the next turn. I played Dooku’s one pip and force pushed a unit next to the base of the building. Dooku spent both actions safely climbing down, where he ended in melee and triggered his Relentless. Dooku killed the unit in melee and zapped another unit off the board with lightning. Dooku then proceeded to survive the remaining shots, leading to him and some B1s tapping my opponent’s vap for a 6-2 Victory point win.

Game 4

My friend Ollie and I had gone both undefeated along with one other guy, but unfortunately the pairings led to my friend and I to play. Ollie was running Operative Luke and the five DLT dodge spam list. We have faced off in the last two tournaments together, each winning a game then leading on to win the tournament. We were both excited to make day two and to play each other. Unfortunately, we played Danger Close, Fortified Positions, and you guessed it; Sabotage.

I put the Vaps on my back line and Ollie did the same. Turn 1 there was a shot from a sniper team which was force barriered. Then turn 2 I tapped all my Vaps and moved back around the LOS blockers I was near. Ollie then had to spend two turns moving up the board and I just kept repositioning my units ready to counterattack when I got the chance. There was only one other shot in the first three turns, which was a rocket at a sniper team, killing one model and in return they retreated so not to concede points.

On turn 4, Luke played full of surprises and was in heavy cover as he started moving to my least protected Vap. The Magnas and the B1s moved towards it to help cover while taking pot shots at Luke. In a streak of rather bad luck for Luke, he took four wounds off of several different potshots, with numerous consecutive rolls of straight blanks on both the white and red defense dice. This turn which should have been a great safe play from Ollie led to taking four wounds.

On turn 6, when I played Dooku’s 1 pip into I am A Jedi, the only Magnaguard unit that could charge and attack Luke did the 3 wounds needed to kill him to secure the points destroyed while also preventing Luke from touching my Vap.

Game 5 the Final

I made it to the finals to face a scary long range pierce list with Palpatine at the heart of it. We had spoken about each of our lists the night before when we went out to dinner, so I knew he had the best way of killing my Magnaguard off which would be his main focus. Then there is the issue of Palp and his lightning as well. Let’s not also forget there is a good gun line to back all this up. I had a good hard game ahead of me. I was not disappointed at all! Steve was a great person and an opponent.

He was determined not to let me play Sabotage based on my current 4-0 record with it this weekend. We played Advanced Positions, Payload, and Minefield. The Empire decided to trigger a mine turn 0 and went boom twice but only lost a single storm trooper in return. We made a comment about how the dice were to start with and hoped it didn’t dictate the game since I scored 2 hits across both attacks and him saving both if he had his surges. To both our shock, the dice swapped straight away.

I started plinking storms and Shores off the board early. In return I took a few wounds on my Magnas due due to not being able to spend my dodges on High Velocity shots and Barrier only being able to be used once per turn. I still didn’t lose a model due to my repair droid. The Payloads advanced so we both had to follow. I managed to place my units at Range 4 of him and Range 1 of the payload, so he could only fire with his Shores and mortars, which died. Meanwhile, my rockets from the Magnas were killing the Royal Guard. Things were looking good, but we were not playing fast when 1hr left was announced (2hr30min rounds including deployed and hard dice down). With us being the final table we where not going to be getting any extra time. We both realized we were not getting a full 6 turn game at this point.

I made the mistake of at the end of the turn moving my Magnas to try and contest his Payload, but I miscounted; leaving me in the open and him still getting to move his payload. Palp responded with a Burst of Speed to score to keep it moving and to zap some Magnas.  With 20 minutes left we went into our final turn both playing 1 pips. With Cunning giving me first action, I knew I had to go with Dooku. I used my Burst of Speed and I force pushed Palp off the objective, then charged the 3 man medic squad and zapped the last Royal Guard model in the open. Steve managed to save 3/3 on the medic squad leaving 1 guy left. Then he saved 2/2 on the royal guard leaving him alive. This meant Palp could zap both Magnas off the objective, which I knew was part of the trade, but I was expecting to have at least killed two units in return as well since then both of these units moved onto his payload.

Meanwhile, the B1s were pushing my cart and failing to kill a single sniper team which led to them being able to contest my objective. The only out I had left was to move my T-series out and shoot the royal guard for 1 wound to stop Steve from moving his payload. Unfortunately, the red dice rolled a blank leaving Steve able to push his objective and win the day!

It was a great final game and I had a great opponent. I would of loved to have been able to have a full 6 turn game, but that is the way of legion and we talked how we both might of played differently if we had all 6 turns. We also think that it would have not been a guarantee for either of us who would of won if we did play the full 6 turns.

Overall coming second at a two-day tournament with 24 players, only to lose in the final, I was mega happy. My son unfortunately came last but got the wooden spoon prize and got to purchase a Dewback which made his day. If you get the chance to go to a two-day tournament I will always recommend it. You meet lots of nice people, socializing and exchanging stories and making new friends the more tournaments you go to.

Thanks for sticking with me for my first and very long blog post for the Fifth Trooper.