Closed Lanes: Legion is Beginning to Feel Like a One-Way Street
November 18, 2024
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It finally happened! After years of hype we finally got to see the second Legion World Championships held at Adepticon. I had the privilege to attend. Today we’re going to go through a rundown of the event and my run at Worlds.
At Adepticon there was actually two ‘main events’. These were of course the
World Championships and the Last Chance Qualifier. The LCQ was three games on Thursday. It was guaranteed that at least four people would qualify for Worlds from the LCQ, but that also any unfilled spots in Worlds would be filled by people from the LCQ. This ended up meaning that around a dozen people qualified for worlds from the LCQ.
The LCQ meant that Worlds was guaranteed to be a ‘full’ event of 128 people. The format was a three day event. To qualify for Day 2, you had to have a 2-1 record or better on Day 1. After Day 1 it was a win or go home situation. Due to Adepticon’s schedule there was a limit of two games on Sunday, which meant there was an additional round for the top 8 on Saturday night.
All said, to be World Champion, you would have to win eight or nine games. If you were playing in the LCQ this would be ten to twelve.
I arrived to Adepticon Thursday morning with the first round of the LCQ already under way. It was great to walk into a big hall featuring all of AMG’s tabletop games. Most excitedly though was that Legion was right at the front of the hall and already packed with players vying for the chance to make Worlds the next day.
I did take the early opportunity to go over to the AMG booth and get a demo slot for Shatterpoint to help fill my day Thursday. While this isn’t a Shatterpoint review, I will say that I was intrigued by some of the game mechanics and though I’m not sold on the game yet, I will probably check it out more.
I also took the opportunity to go check out the display case AMG had with them containing some upcoming minis. I will say, all of the minis look amazing.
Now back to Legion.
I managed to get a pickup game in on Thursday to warm-up for the Championship the next day. I played against Brian Baer, and I will admit I got beat really hard. Boba on a Landspeeder can be quite scary. After this I may or may not have questioned my list choice a bit.
So after getting humbled by Brian I made my way over to the streaming crew to see if I could air my thoughts to the world.
Quick shout out before I get any further, yavinbase (David ‘Endless’ Zelenka) streamed 12 games over the weekend with some help from some others, but especially Zane (hotNfrosty on the discord). These two held the fort all weekend and allowed those from around the world to get to see some amazing games.
Streaming is always fun and this game was no different. I do recommend checking out the games that were streamed, they will remain on Twitch for awhile, afterwards they can be found on the yavinbase youtube channel. Watching these games is an excellent way to see some great players and how they play.
After the days activities were over, we headed over to Longhorn Steakhouse and we had a lovely international dinner involving Canadians, Australians, Brits, and Americans. This tournament truly felt like a world Championship. It was fun as always being Canadian and doing some cultural translation between the commonwealth and the USA, such as what a ‘pudding’ is.
For anyone who saw my LVO list, the list I took to worlds will seem very similar. For a good number of people, the theme of their list for worlds was ‘same list as before, but more impact’.
The big idea of this list is that I want to keep everything alive as long as possible with dodges, force you to engage because I have five range 4-5 weapons, and also have efficient shooting because most of my shots should have aim support.
The changes since LVO were to take out the Z-6 and replace it with a mortar and drop the clone medic. In exchange I was able to add another heavy weapon (RPS-6), impact grenades and a portable scanner.
The portable scanner is a nifty piece of tech because it allows basically any pull out of the bag (after I put some faceups out) to get two dodges on the table. This ‘puts the shields up’ especially combined with Defend 1 on Anakin.
Game one of the tournament was facing off against Kevin Connors running a Vader Boba Combo list. The game went fairly well for me. I was able to do 3 early wounds to Boba which forced him to go hide and use all his healing. I eventually took down Boba before Vader wandered into my lines. Though I was able to pull out the victory, any time Vader is allowed to wander into your lines you always have to be very careful and usually get a bit freaked out. The objective being KP really helped me out as I was able to sit at range shooting his list before engaging. I didn’t need to force a confrontation that wasn’t to my benefit.
My second game was against Danny “Kiramode” Trujillo who was running a cool Chewie/Yoda and Triple BARC list. This game I made a massive error before turn 0 was even over. The battle cards were Breakthrough, Battle Lines and Limited Visibility. Danny got an ideal flop and was able to get very advantageous battle cards. The big error I made was not setting up in the middle of my deployment zone. Danny very expertly baited me into deploying a bit off to the side and then put the rest of the army on the other side of the map. Because Danny was up on activations he would win the game unless I made something happen.
This game was certainly a cautionary tale to get practice in, especially on objectives/setups you don’t like, otherwise they will come back to haunt you.
The long and short of this game is that Danny was able to get his BARCs away and get his whole army in my zone. I dove Anakin at his army to try and do something, but he managed to kill Anakin on the way in because Anakin basically had to cross a Range 4 open part of the table. My hope was Anakin could be the ‘Chosen One’ and save everything, but instead he saved average and died.
Game three let the true stress begin. At this point I was 1-1 so my ‘win or you’re out’ journey began a game earlier than I’d like.
Game three I was up against Jason Griffith. Jason brought a twelve activation Echo Base list. Luckily in my warmup game the day before I truly saw how powerful three FD Turrets can be and I knew to respect them. With my dodges and Red saves I was really able to limit the incoming damage while taking out a couple MK turrets and also doing plink damage to the rest of the list. Anakin was also able to take up station behind the building just above the the middle Intercept Point. This meant he was pushed back positionally, and set up Anakin to go into the middle point turn six and cut a unit and push another away.
My personal goal was to go ‘deep’ on day two. I didn’t really set an exact number but I certainly wanted to win at least one game. Remembering that starting at Day two, you must win every game, or you’re effectively out of the tournament.
This game against Joel Dorigo (from Germany) was played on Sabotage, Roll Out and Supply Drop. This game against one of the ‘boogeymen’ lists (Double Darks plus stuff) was quite the challenge. Joel did seem to make an error in turn 0 by allowing Sabotage to be played. This meant, as he had the greater bid, that Joel started the game losing and had to assault my castle. Joel did a decent job of choosing targets and killing a squad. However, I did quite a few plink wounds on the way in and then Anakin was the MVP. Anakin (with a RPS firesupport) did seven wounds to a Dark Trooper squad. This plus a Djem So wound meant that the squad went from two heavy weapons and healthy, to just a unit leader in the first two activations of the turn. Joel did zap a bunch of stuff with Palp and ran towards my most exposed Vaporator with a couple small units. I killed one and gave a hug to the other, we called it there.
One of the Aussies I went to the steakhouse with was Mitch, better known as Mediocre Mitch on the Discord. We became quick friends over the weekend and now it was time for a commonwealth team kill.
This game had the opportunity to turn into mostly a game of nothing with some action at the end because it was Key Positions, with two really good LOS blockers.
However, I literally told Mitch ‘I’m bored’ and I made made some stuff happen. This game was a game of tiny fractions. Boba got a bounty claimed on Anakin, then Boba got killed. At the end of the game, it came down to whether Padmé could be killed by Bossk on his Reptilian Rampage turn with two attacks. Bossk couldn’t, so I won the game.
The funniest thing that occurred this game was when I played the wrong command card at a juncture. I told Mitch in a local I’d ask if I could switch to the one I meant, but at worlds I certainly didn’t want to. So we played on. It turns out that the misplay ended up being amazing. Padmé ended up having Danger Sense 2 with her one pip when she started to be shot on round 5, which saved her another two wounds and was the difference between her living and dying, and hence, the game.
Long story short it was a great game with a great opponent. Plus, Mitch kept me hydrated the rest of the weekend with BEvERages.
To the top 16 we go…
My first Blizzard of the weekend was piloted by Finn from Germany. Finn is an excellent player that has been around the competitive circuit at least once or twice.
This game was played on Key Positions, Major Offensive and Hostile Environment.
This game was an incredible grind. Blizzard did blizzard things and just ground my list to dust. Vader managed to get into my lines and start messing things up. I spent turn five running away from my ‘home’ Key Position to limit Vader’s effectiveness. I was then able, in turn 6, to pull a trick on the center KP that Mike ‘Dashz’ Barry did to me at LVO and force push one of Finn’s activated squads off the center point, then cohere the rest of the minis onto the point, taking up the rest of the available real estate and meaning one of his squads couldn’t make it on. At this point Finn had his own KP, I had the middle, and had 2 of my units on my home point with Vader having his Implacable activation left. However, before Finn had the chance to activate Vader, a consular (judge) called hard dice down and I ended up winning. Had Finn had enough time to activate Vader, and do a very specific order of operations, Finn would’ve won.
Regardless of the tense outcome, it was a great game and Finn is a great player.
Well making Top 8 is probably adequate to meet my goal going “deep” at Worlds. Now, can we exceed that goal?
My Top 8 game was paired up with another Blizzard list, this time against Dustin Grorud from the 5280 crew. We ended up playing Hostage Exchange (uh-oh), Danger Close, and Hostile Environment. Turn 0 my options for objective were breakthrough or hostage. My view was that hostage was better than breakthrough so that’s what I chose. The dice gods were not in my favour though and I ended up losing the turn two priority roll off. This meant vader was able to ‘do the thing’ and drop my hostage into his army, (check photo above). This put the game in Dustin’s hands. My only hope was to kill all his ‘thumbs’ and be holding a hostage at the end of the game. Unfortunately I couldn’t pull this off and Dustin ended up taking it.
Well at the end of Day 2, and the end of my tournament, I got Top 8 and Top Republic. I can’t complain about that and was honoured to be able to play in and go so far in worlds.
Now that I was just back to a random guy walking around I had some time to take in the sights and watch some great games. The morning I watched the UK grudge match of AJST vs ‘The People’s Champion’ Lyla Claire. This game was incredibly close, coming down to a single wound.
After this, I was able to check out the AMG panel and see the announcements. And wow there’s some cool stuff in the pipe. I’m really glad that store tournament kits are back on the menu and look forward to running events in my local community.
Lastly was the World Championship Final itself. I had a front row view of the defending champion (Luke Cook) vs the People’s Champion. The game was an interesting one, but at the end of the day, Luke is the forever champion for a reason.
Congrats to our once and future King, Luke Cook.
Adepticon was an amazing event to attend. I can’t thank the people who made it happen enough. To the consulars (judges), organizers, streamers, table providers, and just all the people who took the time and money to make this truly feel like a world championships, thank you.
As always, cons get torn down so fast and they’re over before you really know they’re over.
Hopefully everyone gets the chance to go to big cons in the future, especially worlds, which will be back in 2024.
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