Closed Lanes: Legion is Beginning to Feel Like a One-Way Street
November 18, 2024
No Comments
Read More »
This article will be an updated unit guide for Cassian Andor in Star Wars: Legion.
Don’t worry, K-2SO is here too, because he goes wherever Cassian does.
It’s been a long time since we’ve done a Cassian unit guide, but he’s a bit of a staple these days (for a variety of reasons we’ll get into), so it’s time to revisit him and his sardonic mechnaical best bud.
As usual, lets start off with some strengths and weaknesses.
90 points. Very solid for what you are getting. This usually ends up being his final cost as he doesn’t really need upgrades (and his gun is free).
Defense: White/surge save, 6 health. Danger Sense 3. The Danger Sense is neat, but unreliable. Combined with the fact that he can and usually does operate far back from the front line it means he is still relatively durable for a Rebel unit.
Offense: Surge/Hit, Pierce 1, Range 1-2 Pistol with 1 Red, 2 White. Not great, not terrible. The whites really beg for use of Marksman. Cassian’s rifle/pistol config is an auto-include so you probably aren’t using the Covert Blaster very much anyway. 2 Reds in melee isn’t terrible either, but if Cassian is in melee you’ve probably done something wrong.
Courage 2: Average. Cassian also doesn’t have a command slot for Strict Orders or any sort of suppression mitigation abilities like Inspire. His command cards can strip suppression in various ways from himself or other characters. Cassian is many things, but a Corps commander, he is not.
Slots: Two training, one gear, one armament. These are all good and useful slots, but the most common way to use Cassian these days is as a pure sniper, so you he doesn’t really need much besides his rifle. Noteably he lacks a command slot which is a real drawback, because you’d defintiely be filling that one.
Covert Ops: Well, this is a money keyword. Change your rank to Operative to Infiltrate. Note that you now need an actual second Commander to use this keyword (no more promoting another unit to replace Cassian if he’s your only one).
Loadout: Swap upgrades for other, set-aside upgrades. Basically this is a side board. Very handy, but only if you take upgrades, which you often don’t.
Marksman: Spend an aim token to flip a blank to a hit, or a hit to a crit. When you have a small dice pool like Cassian does, this is invaluable to push those crits through. Marksman really helps get that sniper pools up to double crit when you power him up with aims (which K2 is great for). Don’t forget you can modify the same dice twice, if you get a blank; spend one aim to make the blank a hit and another to make that hit a crit.
Tactical 1: Aim token on move. This is great for the “run and gun” version of Cassian with his pistol config, and also gives aims to K2 because of Teamwork.
70 Points: This can feel like a lot of he’s just an aim battery for Cassian, but if you can get him into the mix after a few turns of powering up Cassian’s rifle shots it’s going to feel like a lot better value. In practice this is 80, because he’s pretty terrible without Jyn’s blaster.
Defense: 5 Health, Armor 1, Red save. K2 is tough, by Rebel standards, but five health isn’t a lot, and he can drop quickly especially if stuff with Pierce is attacking him.
Offense: 4 Red melee, surge/crit. This is a solid melee attack. He doesn’t have charge or anything, but he will womp some stuff if it gets close to him. The surge/crit really comes into play when you give him Jyn’s pistol and feed him aim tokens from Teamwork.
Courage 2: Not bad, especially when you consider K2 is a droid trooper so he doesn’t lose actions from suppression.
Slots: Comms, armament. You’re nearly always going to take Jyn’s blaster. The comms slot is interesting but I usually leave it empty. An Emergency Transponder here when you have extra points is useful for Cassian’s Crack Shot turn.
Calculate Odds: Now this is a great ability, especially combined with Teamwork where you basically get double value out of it. Don’t forget you can use this on other units that aren’t Cassian or K2, like Han, Chewie, or some Commandos/Vets!
Detachment, Cassian Andor: You can’t take K2 without Cassian, which makes sense. Notably detachments deploy within speed 1 of their parent unit, which means if Cassian Infiltrates, K2 can too.
Incognito: This is a little different from R2’s Inconspicuous. Basically K2 can’t be targeted by enemy units beyond Range 1 until he has performed an attack or interacted with an objective. It’s worth reading the full CRB entry on this one, as there are some important things not in the reminder text. Notably, K2 also loses the benefit of Incognito after defending from an attack. Note that K2 can’t score objectives like Breakthrough or Key Positions until he breaks Incognito, which means you’ll need to have a plan for him to attack something if you want him to score on objectives that don’t have a corresponding objective action for him to take.
Teamwork: Cassian Andor. Now this is fantastic. Teamwork is a great keyword, but the Teamwork units really need to be able to generate their own tokens for each other to make it work. Unlike Han and Chewie, K2 and Cassian can do that pretty capably between Calculate Odds, Tactical, and Cassian’s command cards. Cassian and K2 both love aims, in particular.
There are some important armament upgrades that define Cassian and K2, so we’ll start with those.
The A280-CFE should be stapled to Cassian’s card. The sniper config the best sniper rifle in the game, between the unlimited range, strong raw dice, High Velocity, and Pierce, which is why it is also Cumbersome and attached to a 90 point unit. High Velocity and Pierce are particularly relevant keywords in the current meta, which features a lot of frustrating units that stack defensive tech (Clones and Pykes, in particular) that rely on dodges.
However, it is only two dice, and Cassian doesn’t have Sharpshooter. Luckily, Cassian has a great keyword to force crits (Marksman), but you need to power it with aims. If you want to do more than just pick off one model a turn with this (which is still useful, don’t get me wrong), you need to be feeding Cassian aims. Your target is going to be three aims (one of which Cassian can get himself by aiming). This is because you are extremely likely to get at least one hit with Red/Black; you have about a 95% chance to do just that. However, you only have about a 55% chance to get two hits (which would allow you to force two crits with just two aims), which is why you need three aims. There are a couple of ways to get those two extra aims that Cassian needs beyond the one he gets from his aim action:
Crack Shot – You get a free aim from this one. So does K2 because of Teamwork. Since you get two shots on this turn, though, you really want a lot more than three aims. More on that later.
Last Stand – Also can give you free aims, if either Cassian or K2 is wounded.
K-2SO – K2 is unquestionably the most reliable way to get Cassian his two extra aims, since he can give aims to Cassian with Teamwork, both via Calculate Odds and by taking the good old fashioned aim action with K2. I usually Calculate on K2 himself so Cassian doesn’t accumulate any unnecessary suppression, unless you want him to do that to power Danger Sense, but if you’re doing that Cassian probably isn’t in sniper mode.
Hunter – This can get you extra aims when shooting at wounded units, but six points is a lot to ask for something that only triggers situationally. This might be worth it to you if you expect to face a lot of Wookiees or if you use Cassian a lot to go after characters.
Spotter – Rebels don’t actually have any units with this keyword, but you can always give binocs to a unit of Rebel Troopers or Fleets, or a generic officer. You probably have better things to spend your points on, but if you are forgoing K2 you will need some way to get Cassian his green token fix and you don’t have a lot of other options.
Abuse the unlimited range on this bad boy to get the leg up on other sniper teams, and go after your opponent’s highest priority units since the sniper rifle/marksman combo doesn’t really care about any of that fancy defensive tech, except Force Barrier (but even that can only block one of your two crits) and Obi Wan’s Soresu Guardian Dodges (which now override High Velocity). Try to avoid shooting units with Pierce-Immune unless they are extremely high priority targets like a force user on very low health, or you don’t have anything better to shoot. If you can somehow line up out of cover shots and save K2’s actions for other things it is worthwhile, but that isn’t much of a thing anymore since the cover change.
Two red, one black. If you can get open shots with this, with the free aim from Tactical, you are going to be pushing three hits in with Pierce. That’s a big if though. If you aren’t getting open shots, the number of hits you are pushing through is going to basically be 1:1 with how many aims you have for the first two aims, with the third aim more likely than not being wasted (you have a less than 50/50 shot to get three paint on Red/Red/Black). In practical terms that means using Cassian in his “Run and Gun” mode with the pistol isn’t actually likely to net you more offense out of him, but it does allow you to get K2 closer to the action while still sharing tokens with Cassian.
The pistol is a config of the rifle, so you can swap back and forth if necessary. I usually start with the rifle and only switch to the pistol if things get hairy up close and my opponent isn’t using a lot of dodge tokens. Don’t forget you can use Volunteer Mission to hot swap as that gives you a free recover.
Now that’s a pistol. Jyn can actually take this, which is neat…but the five whites means that it gets just as many dice as Bossk does, and with basically the same reliability at getting damage through. This means you want aim tokens. Jyn has a really hard time getting aim tokens, especially on a Range 2 gun which means she often needs to move and shoot instead of Quick Thinking/Shoot. I think you probably still just want the Range 3 gun on her.
K2, on the other hand, doesn’t have nearly as much trouble getting aims because of Cassian’s various aim generating abilities (which we covered above), K2’s own Calculate Odds, and Teamwork. K2 take a corps unit from full to limping if you’re just a bit lucky, you usually need a lightsaber to do such a thing with a unique mini. I wouldn’t leave home without it.
We’ll hit these before moving on to tactics. Like most commanders, Cassian is defined very heavily by his cards.
Cassian is essentially a character/special forces support commander, which should become rather clear through his cards.
Gunslinger, a free aim, suppression (if you want it) and a free standby. The standby is neat, but I sort of view it as a bonus more than what this card is really for. The free aim and Gunslinger make this like a focused version of Coordinated Bombardment with Pierce if you do it with his sniper rifle, or you can play it when he is up close with his pistol and do a Han impression while getting some more mileage out of the standby. You want to supercharge Cassian with aims on the turn you play this to get the most mileage out of Marksman with your double gunslinger attack.
There are a couple of ways to do this. If you can manage to line up an open shot (difficult, but sometimes still possible with extreme infiltrate angles), Crack Shot can be a turn one play. However, unless you can line up two open shots (good luck with that) you are probably still wasting some paint, since Cassian will likely have to go first before his targets move and therefore will only have two aims (one to make your open shot two paint and another to give you a crit on your second shot, which still wastes a dice).
More likely, you are not going to be able to line up two open shots, which makes this a play where you want to go late with Cassian instead of early so you can load him up on aims. K2 is the best way to do this; even with just his normal Calculate/Aim combo you end up with four aims on Cassian, which is almost certainly enough to get three crits and occasionally will be enough for four crits if you roll all paint on your dice. If you give K2 an emergency transponder you can end up with five aims on Cassian on this turn which will often be enough to get you to those four Marksman crits.
You’ll want to prioritize high threat, pierce-vulnerable targets, like Phase IIs, ARCs, Shoretroopers, Deathtroopers, and other snipers. If you can line up both members of an opposing strike team in your vision (or any other unit with two wounds left), that should probably be your #1 target, followed by the other stuff.
If you are running the “Run and Gun” (Pistol) Cassian, this does a great Han impression and also feeds K2 aims to follow up with his own pistol.
Don’t forget you can use Gunslinger off the standby attack, which theoretically gives Cassian 4 attacks in one turn.
Up to three free tokens, and Indomitable? That’s hot. Your targets need to be wounded, of course, but that usually happens at some point in the game, and this gives them a fantastic boost in whatever sticky situation they find themselves. It only works on Operatives and Commanders, which sort of makes sense anyway as there aren’t many multi-wound trooper models out there besides characters.
Good targets for this: Cassian (you have to anyway), K-2SO, Luke (both versions), Ahsoka, Han, Chewie, Sabine. Because of Indomitable this doubles as a suppression clearing card.
Note that if you play this on Cassian and/or K-2SO, it procs Teamwork, so you get twice as many tokens. In theory you could get up to 12 tokens if they both have at least three wounds and give the second order to K2. Not that you actually need 12 tokens… This trick also works on Han and Chewie, though one of your targets needs to be Cassian so you won’t get the crazy double/double effect like if you do both Cassian and K2.
Rebel free recover! Hot damn. Who thought of that one?
Anyway, this is great card. It only works on Operatives, Commanders, and Special Forces, which is fine. It also gives targeted units Danger Sense 1 and a suppression (if they want it). This is great on units that have exhaust cards, red saves, Low Profile, and/or existing Danger Sense. Good targets: Cassian, K-2SO, Luke (both versions), Sabine, Ahsoka, Han, Chewie, Full Commandos, Bistan Pathfinders(!). It doesn’t make the Pathfinders any cheaper, unfortunately.
This is the second of Cassian’s cards that helps its targets clear suppression.
Maybe you are noticing a trend here. Cassian is really good with Luke, Ahsoka, or Han/Chewie!
Now that is a unique effect. I love the card art on this one; nothing invokes “Sacrifice” like the image of K2 locking Jyn and Cassian in the vault by slamming on the terminal and then getting shot to pieces by Stormtroopers.
The “you can’t shoot something” effect is situationally very powerful, but I find it hard to set up consistently. That portion of this card is sort of like Luke’s I am a Jedi. You might only use it one out of every five games or so, but when you use it, it’s going to win you the game. This is a three pip and K2 needs to activate before the effect kicks in, so you aren’t going to be able to use this to save an out of position unit that is about to get plastered. The Guardian 4 can help keep your target alive when you lose priority, but I find it sort of unreliable for “saving” endangered units.
The Guardian 4 bit on this card is the most consistently useful part. Rebel units are squishy. K2 is not squishy. Moreover, he can be healed by the cheaply accessible Repair keyword. Even if you aren’t planning on using the actual sacrifice part of this card, the Guardian 4 by itself can get you out of some tight jams or allow you to advance and take some shots with squishier Rebel units without having to worry as much about return fire.
That said, the three pip slot is a pretty demanding one for Rebels, and this is probably one of the first ones that gets cut due to its situational nature. It’s worth considering as a Contingency card in a Cassian – Lando list.
So how do you actually use Cassian?
There are basically two ways to run him, and because of the Loadout keyword and the flexibility of Covert Ops, you can flex between roles from game to game or even within the same game as the situation dictates. You essentially have Sniper Cassian (sniper config) and “Run and Gun” Cassian (pistol config).
Cassian is your best sniper, reliably picking up 1-2 models a turn at unlimited range. I find this role most useful against GAR and Empire, where you have high value, single wound, red save targets. Against droids, if you find yourself sniping, you should be targeting Magnas or characters. Against other Rebels, good targets include characters, snipers, special forces, vets, and FDs. Cassian can also be very solid against vehicles, due to his crit generation with Marksman and his Pierce.
Positioning Sniper Cassian can be tricky, particularly if you intend to get use out of his command cards on a more aggressive character you are pairing him with (say, Luke or Ahsoka). Basically you need him to be in a spot to pick off good targets while being close enough to your Luke/Ahsoka’s assault approach but far enough not to draw too much return fire. It is a tricky balance, but an achievable one, especially with Infiltrate from Covert Ops. Even if I end up putting Cassian in my deployment zone I still use Covert Ops so that he is an operative token, which guarantees he’ll be able to go after K2 every turn (and thus get his required aims) even when his order is in the bag.
You’ll have to basically babysit Cassian with K2 to get him his aims. You can actually push K2 up a little further and still get the benefits of Calculate on Cassian, since Teamwork is Range 1-2. If K2 uses Calculate on himself and he is in Range 2 of Cassian it is just as good because of Teamwork. Usually I try to put Cassian close enough to the action (but not so close he gets shot) where K2 can get involved with his pistol or his fists if things get hairy close to your lines.
This is the more fun version of Cassian though as noted above since Cassian relies on Marksman to break cover this isn’t actually likely to increase his own offensive output. The primary benefit of this mode is allowing K2 to be involved, since K2’s range is 2 (with his own pistol). Basically you want to stake out an important area of the table (usually near an objective) and harass units that try to go near that area while not exposing yourself too much. I find this easiest on Vaporators, but it is also very doable on Recover and some other objectives. Infiltrate gives you a lot of flex here.
Use Calculate, Tactical and Last Stand to generate lots of aims and dodges for Cassian and K2 to both use. K2’s pistol in particular is really good if he is being fed aims by a running and gunning Cassian.
You almost never want to use pistol Cassian against GAR. GAR is very dangerous inside Range 3, and they are likely to have dodges to throw around against your not-High Velocity pistol. Just use the sniper against GAR and don’t think too hard about it.
Don’t forget you can use Volunteer Mission to flip your config and swap between roles as necessary.
Speaking of swapping…
This keyword has lost a lot of value since Sniper Cassian has become the primary way to use him, but if you are going with Run and Gun Cassian and have some extra points for upgrades it can still give you some use.
Take any of your upgrades, and set aside an upgrade of the same type that costs equal or lesser points. For example, you could take Hunter, and then pair it with Endurance, and grab either of them when you deploy Cassian. For those familiar with card games, this is essentially a sideboard.
Let’s look at some upgrade considerations for Cassian’s slots, if you don’t want to just run him with the sniper rifle.
Recon Intel can let you Infiltrate a little closer since it gives you a free move after you drop him, which is handy if you want to play him up close.
I think you could consider Environmental Gear on maps with a ton of difficult terrain, and there aren’t many other options cheaper than Recon Intel to pair with it anyway.
Now this is where it gets really interesting. Cassian can benefit from a lot of different training upgrades in pistol mode. I heard you like some aims with your aims.
Did I mention Cassian needs aims? This is particularly good against characters, Wookiees and Emplacements (ahem, mortars). This is usually my first choice for Cassian’s first training slot.
Moar aims. This is really expensive now, probably too expensive to justify, but note that it gets recycled with Volunteer Mission, so you’ll get at least two uses out of it which is more than more units can say for it.
I usually put this counter to Hunter, because it is the same cost and it’s possible your opponent doesn’t have any multi-wound models besides their Commander. Removing extra suppression is always handy.
I’m not a super fan of Duck and Cover on characters that are Courage 2. See: Solo, Han. However, Cassian does have two cards that strip suppression. I would consider this opposite Offensive Push if you take that, though I think I would rather have…
Overwatch combos nicely with Crack Shot if Cassian is up close.
Cassian is best when you use him to saturate long range firepower while combo-ing with characters that can benefit from his cards, which you’re going to see in both of these lists.
A list like this one has become the “standard” way to run Cassian and is among the best performing Rebel lists right now. It’s not hard to see why; there is a ton of long range firepower in this list, most of it utilizing Critical, Marksman, Sharpshooter, or High Velocity in some combination. Moreover, you manage to fit a solid linebacker/playmaker unit in Ahsoka who benefits extensively from both Last Stand and Volunteer Mission.
This is my personal favorite Rebel list right now. It stacks long range firepower in the same way as the Ahsoka list above, but stacks Pierce even harder while including Chewie to keep your fragile trooper units at full strength and Han for those annoying anti-Yoda command card shenanigans. After playing this at PAX I’m looking for ways to squeeze a third full Commando in here, as impressed as I was with them. The Ewoks are in here for the Reckless Diversion wound allocation rule gimmick (where you hide all but one model so they can only suffer one wound per shot) but I found that sort of finnicky in practice to set up and I might consider dropping them to allow Han to take Improvised Orders.
Cassian is a great value right now with a skill set in high demand in the current meta, and he slots neatly into almost anything Rebels want to be doing that isn’t a battle force. Let me know your favorite way to use him in the comments!
Copyright © 2024 The Fifth Trooper. All Rights Reserved.
4 Responses
I am not sure he can have 4 attacks? I think the rules for attack actions is once per turn unless stated otherwise. So if you attack during his activation you can’t use the standby to attack as that is also an attack action right? Still really great guide update! 🙂
the rule for one attack action is per activation, by the nature of standby it’s nearly always set off during someone else’s activation so Cassian could make an attack action and use gunslinger if someone sets off his standby
This rule is also key to why “Hello There” and “Pulse Scan” allow for two attacks for those characters in their turns
I’m not sure that is correct, unless the rule book on the AMG website is outdated. It says on page 26:
‘A unit may make multiple attacks a turn but can only perform one attack per turn, regardless of whether the attack is a free action.’
And later on it explains that standbys can be used to perform a move or attack action, so this would indicate that making another attack is not possible right?
sorry I miswrote *one attack “action” per turn.