Star Wars Legion: New Edition and Rules Update Announcement

Here you’ll find the newest tidbits from the massive rules update announcements out of Ministravaganza for Star Wars: Legion that were announced on Thursday.

I know, I know… AMG said it was a “refresh,” not a new edition. Well, call it what you want, this is practically a new game entirely, so I’m going to meet them in the middle and call it a new edition.

I’m going to try and limit my takes (tune into Scoundrels next week for those), primarily because this is just so many changes and it’s going to take some time to sort through what their net effect is, and this article is going to be ridiculously long just doing nothing but recapping the changes.

I’m also not going to go through all the unit/command card updates (We’ll do that in some later article) but we’ll hit some notable highlights.

Let’s start with the big ones first:

Battle Cards/Objectives

What changed? The cards themselves, how you score, how you arrive at the cards, bids, the red/blue dynamic, tiebreakers… everything about how you actually win and play the game, basically.

So yeah… all the old objective, condition, and deployment cards are gone. Nuked. Dead. Not in the game anymore. They’ve been completely replaced.

Is this good, bad, neither? I don’t know! It’s so wildly different its…well, at best I can say it’s nothing like what we were doing before. I’ll definitely miss the flop/veto process. I’ll attempt to summarize what the new process is, but I would advise you also go and read the actual rules text because this bit of the game definitely changed the most as far as core mechanics are concerned.

Basically, each player brings a set of three objectives, secondary objectives, and a new thing called “advantages.” The players randomly determine who is red/blue, blue gets to decide whether to use their objectives or secondaries, and then they flip a card over from that deck. Their opponent flips a card from whichever blue didn’t pick between objectives or secondaries, and then they both flip their “advantages.” After that, there is this process that sort of feels like vetoes where you can replace the face up card with another random card, except it’s not like vetoes at all, because it’s mostly random. Anyway eventually you end up with an objective, a secondary objective, and one of each player’s “advantages.” What happened to deployments, you ask? Well, they’re just part of the objective cards now. All of them are basically just different versions of battle lines, except for “Close the Pocket,” which is Disarray. Besides the fact that all these got sort of homogenized anyway, there are now significantly fewer combinations of objectives/deployments, since you’ve gone from 64 possible combinations of objective/deployment down to six. This could be of course mitigated by the presence of secondaries (for a total of 36 possible secondary/primary combinations). I guess we’ll see whether these lead to a more diverse experience or not.

Before we look at some of the missions, we need to talk about some of the new game concepts (which apply pretty universally to the new missions).

Secure

Basically, you secure objective tokens by having more unit leaders at range 1/2 of an objective token (the objective tokens are 2″ wide now, by the way). Wait, Range 1/2? Yes, that is Range one-half, not Range 1-2. That’s 3″, apparently. They’re giving us a new tool. Well, you can print a new tool, on paper, I guess. I presume they will give us a way to purchase these extremely necessary new components in actual plastic someday. Anyway…

Deployment and game length

Deployment is no longer it’s own distinct phase; basically, you spend each unit’s first action moving onto the board from where your deployment zone meets the board edge (which, again, is nearly always Battle Lines basically). They can still do something else after they move, which is likely to just be a second move unless they have a very long range weapon and there are enemy units in range for some reason.

Oh, and the game is also five turns now, which is really basically four turns, since you spend the first turn deploying. That’s a good thing(ish), because the game would be really long otherwise since they increased the points cap to 1000 points.

Wait, what?!?

Points cap increase

Yeah, the game is 1000 points now. And no, they didn’t just increase all the unit costs by 25% to compensate… if anything a lot of the units are cheaper, so this is just more stuff on the table. The force org didn’t change, so what are you going to do with all those extra points, you ask?

Double corps sizes

Why not double the cost and size of all your corps units! Oi… my wallet. Well, I was going to buy the new core sets anyway (hard plastic Rebel Troopers, yes please), but if you weren’t planning on that, well… sorry. You’re going to want to be fielding 10 man Storms and 14(!) man B1/Ewok units now.

Wait, won’t those massive units just murder things with their enormous dice pools?

Cover

I’m glad you asked! Cover is now an extra “save” (in 40k parlance) you take before your defense die roll. Basically, it no longer cancels a static number of hits; you roll a white die for each hit in the attack pool, and you cancel a hit for every block (light cover) or every block/surge (heavy cover) in your roll. This has several immediately obvious effects:

1. It makes the cover effect scale with pool size; more hits = more save chances, less hits = less save chances, which makes small pools better and large pools worse (in relative terms to the original version of the game).
2. It makes the cover benefit significantly more dice/chance dependent, since it’s a (very swingy, ahem, white dice) roll instead of a static benefit, and
3. Overall, it makes cover substantially less beneficial. On average, for example, you’d have to get a pool up to six hits (which is a lot even with double size corps pools) just to hit the average cover benefit from previous, and since it’s variable it will be much less reliable.
4. You are going to be rolling a lot more dice… twice as many, roughly, as the defender.

Also, a unit now has to be at Range 1/2 (3″) of a piece of terrain to be obscured by it, which eliminates some of the weirdness inherent from shooting from every part of the mini at once (which is still a thing, sadly).

Also, vehicles can’t get cover from terrain any more, at all. I guess their fix to the morass that was CRB vehicle cover was just to remove it entirely? Note that some vehicles, especially repulsor vehicles, will still have the “Cover X” keyword which will allow them to cancel some hits per the new cover rules above.

As you can see, each of these changes sort of naturally forces another change, which sort of invokes old lady swallowing the fly vibes for me, but we’ll see what the end result is at the end of the day after these have had time to marinate.

Are we going to get to mission examples, or what?

Mission Examples

Okay, let’s finally look at some of the missions as an example:

I’m not going to go through each of these in detail (basically it’s Breakthrough 2.0, Vaps 2.0, and Intercept 2.0), but let’s hit some central themes common to all of them:

Area Control

Basically all of the objectives involve having your units near the (pre-determined fixed location) objective points. There is no more placement of objectives Vaps/KP/Recover style, and there isn’t any more claim/sabotage/repair type actions. You move you units to these fixed locations, and then they sit there. This particular element of the mission changes feel pretty dry to me since it removes a lot of the variability (especially coupled with the paired and homogenous deployment zones), but maybe experience with these will teach me differently. Also, every unit can score every objective, so you don’t have to worry about “thumbs” anymore.

Progressive Scoring

This is a big one. All of the missions begin scoring in the second round, and as far as I can tell there isn’t any scoring variability based on the game turn afterwards (i.e., they’re worth the same on Round 2 as they are on Round 5). This is a positive, on paper anyways, since it forces you to interact with the center of the map earlier. It also means there are way more victory points available to score, which could be good or bad… I think it likely this will take away from how “close” Legion can feel and how it can have such epic game state swings from one key action to the next, and it could lead to snowballing (since if your opponent scores a lot early it will be hard to come back), but we’ll see.

Skews sad?

Maybe there are ways to skew for these that I’m just not seeing, but since they’re all essentially area control objectives, and since you don’t know whether you’ll be even using your objectives at all (and can’t bid to increase that chance), I think it will be harder to make skew lists that can take advantage of objectives. I guess this is probably a good thing if the turn zero process is substantially more random (as it appears to be) otherwise you could sort of just randomly get screwed by a lopsided objective before the game starts.

There are more ways to score (more on that below) besides the primary objectives, however.

Secondary Objectives

So yeah, there are more ways to score besides the primary objective, which is at least neat and interesting. It’s hard to tell how much these will actually matter, as they are worth less than the primaries and sort of involve things you generally need to be doing anyway (killing units, having units near enemy units, suppressing units), but they could serve as something of a “tiebreaker.”

Let’s look at them:

Basically; kill stuff, have units near enemy units, have units away from your territory, suppress things.

Advantages

This is the third type of new card. Each player brings their own deck of these and then uses one, so at least there’s still one way to affect the chance you’ll actually get to use one of the battle cards you’re bringing.

These all are pretty interesting thematically, thought their effects are all pretty minor (except the barricade one which looks to be the standout to me here) and don’t lend themselves to specific unit types, which further emphasizes to me that they’re trying to move away from being able to tailor your battle deck to specific list/unit archetypes.

Other Major Rules Changes not already talked about

I couldn’t really figure out what to call this section, so uh, let’s look at some other significant stuff.

Pass Mechanic

Basically, you can now pass equal to your activation differential minus one (if you have fewer activations), instead of just once. You can also pass if you pull a dead unit. This takes what I thought was one of the most well thought out and well done (because it was nuanced and limited) changes from the CRB and just makes it way too generous, in my opinion, because it means you’ll only ever have at most one unanswered activation at the end of a turn no matter how many you brought or how many you kill, unless you are just absolutely snowballing like crazy (since you can not pass twice in a row), but at that point it probably doesn’t matter one way or another.

Backup

This is basically free guardian or “Look Out Sir” (for the 40k initiated). This is a change that seems entirely necessary in a world where corps units are doubling in size. Note that unlike guardian this doesn’t actually pass the hits onto the other unit, it just cancels them, so this is a pretty strong deterrent not to be shooting characters near corps units unless you just can’t pass up the shot and can afford to just throw two hits into the void.

Cohesion

Cohesion now uses the Range 1/2 stick that nobody has yet, unless you are a double size corps unit, and then you use the Range 1 tool. Again, a necessary chain effect of having double size corps units.

Movement

Non-notched based troopers can now end their move touching any part of the movement tool, instead of in the little circular divot at the end. This “stretches” a speed 2 move to be more than Range 1, which is actually a big deal for a variety of reasons (most significantly, you can close an entire Range band in one move).

Also, all notched units basically get free reposition, which is much more forgiving but potentially less interesting. Note that units with “Speeder X” do not get this free reposition, thus ensuring that the Raddaugh Gnasp Fluttercraft (which gets to keep its keyword) continues to reign supreme when it comes to true mobility.

Token Sharing/Handing Out

All the token sharing/providing abilities are Range 2 now (Clone Trooper, Aid, Spotter, Take Cover, etc.), which I guess is to discourage clustering but also makes them substantially easier to use without really having to worry as much about your positioning. Yay?

Withdraw

Withdraw is now only one action. However, you can’t attack, standby, or move back into melee after a withdraw, but you can dodge, move again, etc. This feels like a massive nerf for melee units in general (since it makes it much easier to run away and/or kite) but maybe this is to offset all the objectives being basically in the center of the map.

Keyword Changes

Let’s move on to some Keyword changes. Again, this isn’t everything, just the highlights.

AI

Basically, you can ignore AI if you have a faceup or you’re at Range 3 of a friendly commander unit, which is basically always. So yeah, this isn’t really a keyword anymore. I don’t really get the reason for this change and find it extremely boring (as someone that was exploring droids again), but I guess I don’t have to worry about comms jammers anymore?

Also, Override is now Range 5, because it would be completely useless otherwise, but with the above change to AI that just kind of moves it from occasionally essential in certain lists (under the old rules) to mostly useless.

Deflect

Now doesn’t require you to spend a dodge, still doesn’t give you surge block in melee. This is unquestionably a buff from the CRB version, but not getting to surge in melee is still sad (notably, they also seem to have given the GAR force users Deflect and removed their “carve out” that allowed their masteries to circumvent this).

Detachment

Detachments no longer count against your force org maximums, and strike teams now have this keyword, so if you want to field six sniper rifles (or six sabs!) you can.

Fire Support

Fire Support now just gives you a free standby token when you get an order, which is both a great effect in and of itself and an obviously necessary change with double sized corps units. Also, Clones no longer have this. I’m glad I don’t have to buy 40 dice?

Not to get too much into the card errata, but Rex will now at least carry on the memory of the original version of Fire Support as its sole practitioner:

Infiltrate

Now instead of deploying anywhere beyond Range 3 of enemy units, you can just deploy in “Friendly Territory,” rather than having to move on from the edge of the table. That’s substantially worse than previous but still more on the table than most normal units.

Low Profile

This now adds a block to your cover roll, which is basically the same as cancelling a hit. Now that normal cover doesn’t do that, it feels substantially better in relative terms. 12 mini Ewok units rejoice!

Scout

This is now a free move onto the board (with the change to deployment) which is effectively an extra action on the first turn, which is massive. I hope you have enough copies of Recon Intel.

Ion

This now basically forces a suppression roll (similar to vehicle damaged token) instead of just straight cutting actions, which is a straight nerf to the token itself, but the Ion weapons have all had their exhaust removed and been buffed in various ways (it appears by having Critical 1 added and/or dice buffed) so this update is likely a net benefit to Ion as a keyword. It also still flips shield tokens as before.

Unit/Balance Updates

Besides all the above, we also get a whole host of brand new unit and command cards (I won’t even get to the points changes today, which also exist). I’m going to just highlight some of the biggest themes here, because there are way too many to list.

Also, most of these got new art, which is sexy and awesome and I will never complain about that.

Support Commanders

Generic Officers, T-Series, Leia, Super Tac, Veers, Krennic

Basically all of these got Exemplar(!). On stream they stated the reason for this was to make the timing of their token generation abilities more forgiving… which is odd, because Exemplar doesn’t effect the timing at all (they still need to go on their activation and use Spotter/Take Cover/etc. to generate the tokens) but it does effect how flexible the token usage is, since you don’t have to commit to the unit you’re giving it to. I’m a bit shocked that they gave such a powerful keyword to a bunch of 45-70ish point units; it is a ridiculously powerful keyword because of its flexibility (there’s a reason Padme was 85 points) and Padme doesn’t even have it anymore! GAR sad.

Also Veers has Guidance: Ground Vehicle now, because reasons. Sorry Yoda, you’re not cool anymore.

Anakin

Okay, maybe GAR less sad, because Anakin is a beast now (more than before). He lost Defend and Djem So only works in melee now, but he also lost his Flawed keyword. But…

Uh, basically, whenever something dies, Anakin gets to do a free attack or a free move. Obviously you don’t want your stuff dying, but free attacks with one of the best light saber profiles in the game are amazing. This is way more thematic for him, too. I’m sort of sad he can’t take Choke anymore, though.

Also, his command cards got a revamp:

Anakin now has Charge, Surge/Crit, and Master of the Force 1 on his unit card, and his command cards actually do things. The one pip is Son of Skywalker but better, since he doesn’t have to do the two attacks back to back, and he gets Prepared Positions as a bonus (unlike other Divulge cards this one doesn’t discard or require you to play it first turn, so it seems to just be free). The two pip makes his attack profile even more murderous, and then he gets a new three pip, General Skywalker, which is neat (free aims). Notably, this has a different name than Hero of the Clone Wars (which isn’t on the “removed cards” list) so he seems to just have four command cards now.

Also, 501st can take Clone Commandos now, Phase IIs and Phase Is are basically the same unit (more on that in a minute) and uh, they fixed some of the command cards:

All it took was a new edition, but they finally fixed it! Hahah.

Clone Troopers

So yeah, no Phase Is or Phase IIs anymore, they’re all the same unit. They lost Fire Support but they are Courage 2 and have Reliable 1, and they’re nearly the same cost as the old Phase Is (a Phase I Z-6 is 78 points, and increase of 4), so yeah. Clones still stronk.

Rebel Troopers

Rebel Troopers get Agile 1 now, so yeah, that’s hot. Otherwise they are the same.

B2 Battle Droids

No more armor, but now they have Red Saves, their base attack is 2 Black, and they have a Range 1 attack that is 1 Red. Ouch!

All Armored Units

Basically all armored units got Armor X instead of just the flat Armor keyword. This is an unambiguously good change, purely for more granularity, but it also helps likely offset what would otherwise be a frustrating strength on basically all of the new missions, which are essentially area control objectives that vehicles can score.

E-web

FINALLY it’s Range 4! Finally. Uh, I hope you own some Ewebs, Blizzard players.

Fleet Troopers

They now have Charge! And their blasters work in melee. They’re still made of peanut brittle, but this is amusing, at least. They could be an interesting counter-melee unit in a pinch.

Okay… that’s enough for now. I’m exhausted. Are you?

Summary

Totally revamped scoring system and missions, secondary objective, completely different deployment, new cover rules, double sized corps units, new game size, different game length, new range band, a whole host of completely revamped units. Not a new edition, though.

Anyway, if you have takes, post them in the comments. I need to digest.