A Star Wars Fan Finds a War-gaming World

About a year ago I walked into a gaming store that was in my friends town, honestly just on a whim and to kill time, and ever since that day my life was changed. I knew card games(most importantly MTG) and miniature games(I had heard of Warhammer before but didn’t know much about it) existed, however, my thoughts on the subject were somewhat skewed. I have been a nerd my whole life, Star Wars being the main reason for that, but I always thought MTG and miniature games were just TOO nerdy for this nerd. Especially a nerd with friends who don’t share the same interests as passionately, at least. That was until I walked into this store and saw Star Wars plastered all over the place. From that moment on, I realized I had been ignorant for twenty seven years and it needed to change.Seeing as this is a Legion blog, well what I intend to be a Legion blog, you would think it starts there, but it doesn’t. I want to start from the top and show that Star Wars fans who don’t know about war-gaming need to find it like I have.

I asked the store owner where I should start. Looking at the prices, I knew I had to start on one, not all of them. I mean, as we all know, it’s expensive. He recommended Legion at the time, because it was new, I ended up going with Imperial Assault because of my fiance. The thought process was that she likes Star Wars and I can convince her to play a board game: voila Imperial Assault. News flash, it didn’t work out that way. The first few months I tried getting campaign off the ground but with a newborn baby that was difficult. Then I found out about Skirmish, and some podcasts, we had lift off! At least, for a little while. Finding the online IA community(which I already have a post in the making after this post about how important it is to find the online community! and local, of course) was massive for me, partly because my local community doesn’t have much going in terms of Imperial Assault. Shout out to Zion’s Finest and their Slack app channel because finding them got me engaged in the community and wanting to play. However, the writing was on the wall for me, personally: the game was dying. I only played online, I was painting (I have a painting blog already planned, too!) but for what end, and Spectre Cell entered the fold and decimated the competitive aspect of OP.

Enter: Star Wars Legion

I had been teetering on the fence for a while with Legion. As much as I loved the IA crew, I heard them bashing Legion a lot. Which I kind of get, still, to this day. That said, they couldn’t be more wrong about the game itself. I happened to buy Boba Fett for a local painting competition(I’m not that good but I wanted to have some fun) and from that point on I was all in on Legion. The model quality and size was so much better than Imperial Assault, I made the switch right then.

Here’s where joining the online community is tricky when it comes to Star Wars Legion and I plan to write about this more later but here’s a start: at first glance, it can be somewhat intimidating. I joined the Facebook groups, without even owning anything more than Boba, to just get a feel for the community. (Again, props to the IA community for getting my foot through the door, awesome people.) The thing with Facebook is that there can be a bit of negativity, and at first it was a turn off. I already had a bunch of stuff on order, and I was starting to find a local crew to potentially start playing with.(shoutout to the Derry, NH guys) But I still wanted to connect to a larger section, and that’s when I decided to join the Legion Discord channel. Without going into it much and saving it for a later date: The Discord is awesome. Join it.

Now, here’s my point to all of this: Star Wars Legion is incredible if you are just a Star Wars fan looking for something more (I’ve read most of the canonical books) or if you love games and want to toss some dice. (Put down the video games, I have) The models are great, with some exceptions, and they’re getting better. (i.e Pathfinders, Jyn) If you love Rebels, you have a lot of the original trilogy characters to choose from now and it’s AWESOME. With even more great characters on the way overall with Sabine and Bossk coming soon. Speaking of, those are going to be Legions first interchangeable models, which is fantastic!

The game itself is rather simple to learn and so thematic to Star Wars as a whole, especially if your store has terrain or if you become bold and make your own. You want to run Vader with a bunch of Stormtroopers? You got it! Palp and the Royal Guard? Heck yeah. Rebel heroes with troopers? Yep! The opportunities are endless, and going to keep getting better. Casually, the options are vast. Competitively, there’s what they call a “meta” somewhat brewing. I intend to play it both casual and competitive, but no matter what you choose: have fun!

I’m twenty seven years old and for as long as I can remember I’ve loved Star Wars. It’s been an obsession for most of my life. I always wanted to be Luke Skywalker/a Jedi. Now I get to be Luke. Is it on a game board? Absolutely. Is it any less fun? It’s more fun! I’m telling you a Star Wars fan in a War-Gamer’s world: Don’t miss out for 27 years old like I did!

-GrandAdmiralThrawn