Wide Open Meta: Exploring Star Wars Unlimited in Early Twilight of the Republic
November 22, 2024
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This article will cover the primary changes from the new Core Rulebook (CRB) and Tournament Document which were posted today by Atomic Mass Games (AMG).
You can find the actual documents here:
I’m going to try and just quickly hit the changes and what they mean for you, and keep my opinions to a minimum (for now), because there are a lot of them. Note also this won’t include things that are obviously going to get fixed (like being able to activate units twice).
Feel free to comment if I got something wrong or missed anything big.
We’ll divide this into core rule changes and keyword changes, the OP doc changes, roughly in order of how big the changes are.
All units now use Silhouettes to determine line of sight to and from, and line of sight is reciprocal, which means if unit A can see unit B, unit B can also see unit A. You draw line of sight from any part of the attacker silhouette to any part of the defender silhouette to determine if the attacker can see. Silhouettes are shaped slightly differently depending on the unit type, as below:
Small base troopers: same as before (there is no size in the rules doc but it looks to be the width of a trooper base). The fact that it’s a cylinder and not a flat template is slightly different, geometrically speaking, and has some implications for line of sight, particularly from elevation.
Notched base troopers: now use a standard template. Unclear exactly how large it is supposed to be, but you can probably extrapolate from the small base silhouette template.
Ground Vehicles: Create an imaginary cylinder from the base to the top of the hull (ignore sticky out bits like antennae and crew members). Ground vehicles now block line of sight according to the size of their cylinder (!).
Repulsor vehicles: Create an imaginary cylinder from the bottom of the hull to the top of the hull, ignoring the clear peg and any sticky out bits.
To determine cover, you no longer use the center to center line. Now for a defending mini to get cover, it just needs to be obscured from any part of the attacker’s silhouette, and for a unit to be obscured it just needs any part of its silhouette to be blocked by a piece of terrain that gives it cover (not super clear on how you do that, I couldn’t find the 50% pregame height rule anywhere). In case it wasn’t super clear in the actual rules, here is a helpful forum ruling on this point: https://forums.atomicmassgames.com/topic/8723-cover-determination/
Basically, this translates to “defender chooses the point you look from,” which is nearly always going to be somewhere on the base of the attacker, since that is most likely to cause the defender to be obstructed by intervening terrain. Essentially, you can just draw a laser line across the table from attacker to defender, and if it crosses terrain, the defender gets cover. Sorry Eye of Sauron AT-ST, this is heavy cover now for these Rebel Troopers:
For those that have been around awhile, this is actually similar to how Legion was when it first came out, with just drawing lines across the table… for about a month. Then they created the two step process where you needed both to be true to get cover (center line crosses terrain and vision obscured from top of mini).
You can sort of still do the Eye of Sauron thing with speeders (especially T-47s) since their silhouette doesn’t start until the hull, which is way up in the air.
Another way to think of this is that cover is now also reciprocal; in order for the defender to be in the open, the attacking unit leader also has to be completely in the open, unless it is touching the terrain piece in question.
This is also cover for the Rebel Troopers:
Note that vehicles don’t have nearly as generous of treatment on defense; 50% of their silhouette must be obscured to receive cover at the time of attack (this is on pages 37-38). I’m not super clear on how you decide which point to look from to decide whether it’s 50% or not… if that’s the same “every to every” process that could get really weird, especially if the pregame “50% height” discussion is gone as it appears to be.
Suppression tokens work basically the same, but the rules for panic have changed. Now, if a unit has enough tokens to panic after its rally step, it does nothing (replacing the previous “flee to table edge”), drops objectives (they always did that), stays in place, and then loses suppression equal to their courage. Panic is also a constant check, which means any time a unit has suppression tokens equal to double its courage, it counts as panicked which is relevant for the next part: panicked units cannot score objectives and any objective tokens they hold are worthless. Basically this means if you can accumulate enough suppression on a unit after it activates, it is ignored for objective purposes. Note that units that become “panicked” after they activate will not drop those tokens; they’ll just hold onto a worthless one.
For those looking for the citations here: explaining what panic is can be found on page 15 of the CRB, the losing actions bit is on page 22, and the scoring bit is on page 19.
Terrain is now split up into three different types: Scatter, Area and Obstacle, and three classifications thereof: Open, Difficult, and Impassable.
An Obstacle taller than a silhouette cannot be moved through, but can be climbed through (if not Impassable). Trooper minis cannot end movement overlapping an Obstacle, they must be fully within/on it (no hanging bases). Impassable really means it now. Nothing can move through Impassable except the Jump X keyword and Repulsor Vehicles. Climbs cannot move through Impassable terrain.
Example of new terrain: a building could be classified as Heavy Cover, Obstacle, and Open now. For minis with silhouettes shorter than the building, they could perform a Climb to move on top or through it.
I’m going to just screencap this and then distill it, because it’s actually not that complicated:
Basically, if when it is your turn, your opponent still has more stuff left to go with, you can pass. One time per round.
This is a slight buff to fire support which historically would cost you some tempo, but basically the upshot of this is: if you are down activations, it is still not great, but less bad than before.
Small base troopers now don’t move along the template, they just go straight to their end point. This is kind of “how people were doing it anyway.” Movement by notched base trooper is not affected.
Basically, all small base troopers now have speed 1 jump; no more clamber check or having to base terrain. You can move up to height 1 over obstacle terrain up to speed 1 from your current position. This is a move action, which means Relentless/Charge/Steady all work off of it. This also comes with some changes to the various vertical movement keywords.
Expert Climber – Can climb up to Height 2
Scale – Can climb up to height 2, doesn’t slow down for difficult terrain. This is basically now just grappling hooks + environmental gear.
Jump X – Exactly the same as before, can move up to height X at full speed with one move. Note that you can still only do it once; if this wasn’t clear check the example text on page 14 under card actions.
Speeder – Same as before, except you no longer suffer damage when “crashing.” Basically if you would run into something you just stop; Speeders can now essentially hover in place by running into a terrain piece they wouldn’t be able to move over.
Besides the panic changes, there is a nugget buried in here that is actually a huge change:
Basically, blue no longer wins ties; whoever has a lower bid does. I know you are thinking “how often does that actually happen?” Every game, actually. Every single game starts out with a tie score. This has massive implications for how the tone is set on a lot of objectives, especially Vaporators, but also Breakthrough, Bombing Run, and Hostage. If you have the bid, you are the aggressor now, if the game would otherwise be likely to tie.
Minis that cannot be seen can now suffer wounds, but the wound total is capped by the “wound threshold” of what you can see. This is basically the “no scoping” rule, though in practice it does a lot more than that (Reckless Diversion with a unit leader poking out anyone?). This gets a little weird with wounded multi-wound units like Wookiees, where you could potentially “overkill” into minis that can’t be seen since it uses the wound threshold and not how many wounds a mini currently has. Everyone’s favorite strike team unit leaders now have to die last, since you can wipe the hidden model with any shot.
Note that you can no longer attack something unless your unit leader can also see it, so while you can now “corner peek” with any normal old heavy weapon model, you have to throw the unit leader out there too and expose two models instead of just one.
I’m going to quick hit these because they don’t really belong in any one spot:
No more standby sharing. Rip Padme.
Can no longer be used at all in melee. For historical reference you could always trigger the keyword (in melee or ranged) by spending a dodge to gain surge/defend, but a unit only suffered wounds on a ranged attack. Now you can’t use it at all in melee to get the surge/defend.
Note that deflect-like abilities that aren’t actually deflect are unaffected. Djem So and Soresu Mastery always worked the same in ranged and melee (both did melee wounds as a feature of their ability, Obi-Wan and Anakin being such accomplished duelists). Yoda already has surge/block printed on his card. Weirdly, Block is also not affected, despite historically being identical to Deflect except for the bit about it sending ranged wounds back on surges.
Can no longer be used if you don’t already have a spare commander.
Can now move after attacking (but still not before).
Cannot fire support with Arsenal.
Can no longer split fire. UPDATE – This has been addressed via a forum post, Arsenal will be able to split fire and it will be made clear in the future.
Note that TOs of various events (notably Las Vegas Open and Worlds) have openly said that if there is a conflict between this and the event packet, the event packet takes precedence.
Strength of Schedule is now the official “first tiebreak,” followed by points destroyed, then victory points earned, then random (if it somehow gets to that).
Note that a draw is also technically possible (between lists with the same bid) so there is a way to account for those now in the scoring system; a Win is 3 points, a Loss is 0, and a Draw is 1.
Battle cards are no longer hidden information; I guess you’ll want to look at these when you decide if you want to be red or blue.
Yeah uh… I’m just going to leave this here. Round times by official format are now both hidden and variable. Yay, fun? Note the above again about the event packet/tournament rules conflicting where applicable.
Copyright © 2024 The Fifth Trooper. All Rights Reserved.
43 Responses
I’m looking for clarification, in the Tie Break Rules you’ve highlighted a portion that reads “If Players defeated the same number of points, the players whose army consisted of more points at the start of the game is the winner”
You then go on to say that the player with the LOWER bid is the winner, but I read that as the player with the HIGHER bid is the winner, wouldn’t the player with MORE points at the start of the game have a higher bid?
Bid = how many points you don’t spend on units. 780 point army is a 20 point bid, 790 point army is a 10 point bid.
Thank you for the clarification, it makes sense now.
The bid is the difference between your total army points and 800. So if your army totals 799 your bid is 1. If your army totals 775 your bid is 25. Lower starting cost, bigger bid.
So a Speeder Bike shoots over cover easier than an ATST? Makes no sense..
I believe the writer of this basic review is incorrect. I do not read any ‘bid’ however I do read “number of points” and “more points”. Perhaps too much digging for many basic nuggets that are not borne out by the rules being applied read as written… I am happy to be proven wrong.
Look its nice to see them update and fixing things but there are some changes I don’t know WHY they changed it and they are big.
We have see how it works out.
Overall I like the change but.. how I am supposed to use arsenal 2 on my rebel air speeder (maybe shot through 5th dimension)? I wonder how deep those changes has been tested.
What about the gunslinger keyword change?
Where did you find the nugget about doughnuts?? That seems wild to me with IGs and now Gideon.
https://forums.atomicmassgames.com/topic/8718-range-measurements-and-donuts/
Hey Kyle,
Where did you see that language on Doughnuts? All I could find is that for the “At Range X” (IG/Gideon for example) the unit leader must be in range 2 but the rest of the minis can cohere outside that. I can’t seem to locate where you’re saying that a single range given is the max range for abilities (I see it for weapons where it states that.)
Wow – there’s a number of things in here I’m happy about like cumbersome changes (phase 1 RPS users rejoice!) and elimination of the range donuts, but also a lot that I’m not so sure about. It’ll be interesting to try all the new rules out and see how the games change.
Hi! great recap! I think that Jump can be used twice. The description clearly says it can be performed any time the jumper could perform a move action. This include using it twice in an activation, or none if he can’t move due to immobilize tokens. The example on page 14 doesn’t say anything about how many times he can jump, it just says that he has to use one of his actions to do it, like every other action in the game, including movement.
Jump is a card action and those can only be used once per activation.
That just means the jump can be used whenever you could move, but since it’s a card action, the rules do say that any action except moving can only be done once per turn unless specifically stated otherwise. That’s why you can only use jump once per activation.
I can’t remember where but it does say in there somewhere Jump can be used only once, and Reddit users had that clarified on forums.
Found it: https://forums.atomicmassgames.com/topic/8786-jump-x/
Curious where the no more donuts rule is stated in the new book. I may just be blind. Any chance for a page number or clarification?
I’m kind of surprised about the arsenal change – still pretty new to Legion but it seemed like one of the big benefits was that you could suppress multiple units with one activation, or finish off low-health units with a weaker shot and dump extra fire to soften something else up. Was this a big issue for tournament play or something? The rule seemed pretty intuitive to me as far as splitting fire goes and felt flavorful (an AT-ST unloading a few different weapons in a big arc to keep Rebel heads down is very appropriate)
The round timer thing seems really silly. I doubt TOs will actually give you +/- 5 minutes to a round based on dice, and it isn’t like you don’t have watches either to try and keep track so I am not really sure what the rule is trying to accomplish.
You left out where compulsory moves no longer do damage if you cannot complete the move?
So what is the final ruling on Arsenal? It can or cannot split fire?
It can split fire, it was an error/typo.
Arsenal: split firing was such an edge case with one of the least impactful outcomes generally speaking, no idea what thay changes it, I love that they forgot about the T-47 next version I’ll assume it reverts back.
Not sure how I feel about its limitation with fore support.
I think forcing Blue to be the aggressor, while jarring is going to in the end make for better games. There’s plenty of objectives that skew towards your list setting up camp in the back corner and just waiting for your opponent to make a move. I think the only thing that could help is a caveat around the idea of, if no unit is removed then blue wins the tie, that would force both armies towards each other. Ultimately, I think the goal of the change is to force people to both play objectives and have armies fighting each other which is objectively more interesting gameplay.
Kyle, thank you for the article. We all appreciate your coverage of the changes. As a community, can we stop pandering to AMG and acting like the majority of these changes aren’t just worse and offer a worse “new player experience”? Can we all acknowledge that AMG was dishonest when they claimed “THIS IS NOT AN OVERHAUL OF THE LEGION RULES YOU ALL KNOW AND LOVE”? The LOS rules are worse. The cover rules are worse. Exemplar and Covert Ops and Deflect changes are worse. The tiebreakers are worse. The changes to hidden information (objective deck) is worse. Wound allocation is busted and can be cheesed by any experienced player. Panic/suppression is worse when it invalidates keywords like compel or dauntless, not to mention the implications on end of round scoring with panicked units. The fact a unit can leave the battlefield temporarily is worse. It turns out, this IS an overhaul of the legion rules that we all know and love.
Yeah well.. that’s just like your opinion man. Lol
Neither Compel nor Dauntless ever worked on a unit that was panicked. They both specifically state “…suppressed, but not panicked.”
I think he’s referring to the fact that now you can instantly become panicked after taking your dauntless/compel suppression, which prevents you from being able to use it if you are one below your panic threshold (unless you want to intentionally panic for some reason).
It feels like Kyle is avoiding the fact that AMG was dishonest in the promotion of the CRB as Swiss wrote. Deliberately inserting his own thinking into someone else’s thoughts. Someone should mentalise him LOL Oh, typo MERTALIZE
Don’t be so mean. He cannot help it… also is not the correct nomenclature “mertaliSe”. By the way, Mbweha Ben of the playbook has some excellent thoughts on the crappy new rules. Too long didn’t read version is… the new rules ARE bs. Me and him go waaaayback dude. Red dice suck on defence. Ciao.
The author cannot get simple things right due to brand blindness and delusion. FFG and AMG create brand loyalty with targeted product but in the process confirm some real self righteous attitudes. One of the reasons I stopped competitive play years ago as these folk are often not right but never acknowledge their deliberate misinformation. Fancy writing posts in blog form and elsewhere with such disdain for fact and truth. I suppose it generates chat like this which promotes the need for inflated ego. I get my wife to check my posts but do not ask permission to play a game of SWL.
I always strive to make sure my information is accurate. What specifically do you think needs corrected in this article? I tried to make this one mostly free of opinions.
Do not concern yourself Mike, he never corrects himself or acknowledges error in the continual rush to be king of the kids. The article on droid army was full of errors and never acknowledged. All he has to do in this situation is search the CRB for the word “bid” and then own up but do not hold your breath. These opinion pieces are replete with self serving phrases of misinformation in an attempt to appear relevant. Sycophancy is rife with many in this instagram/Facebook/tik -tok/gif/podcast/whatever generation. It is fascinating to see how many times these self appointed experts use their personal pronouns in defence of each other’s errors. Too many hot take, basic, personal nuggets followed by donut jargon to really take them seriously. When Yoda said in effect there is no try but do these fans took no notice. They will continue to obsequiously pander to the semi-literate screen addicted mob. No wonder the CRB is still a “hot” mess. Rant over🙂
I read that and laughed. For a moment I thought you were talking about the forum hog talk polite/lj pena, the AMG (formerly with FFG) paid social media influencer. They should check out “Word Crimes” by Weird Al Yankovic. AMG are not listening… these latest rules released are a joke and a scam… probably to move disgruntled players over to Sh-tterpaint.
How many games have you played with the new rules? By “worse” do you mean you don’t like the impact you are imagining, or is your perspective informed by actual gameplay experience?
The same question can be asked to rule defenders. The one thing I haven’t seen from defenders are why some of the more controversial rule chages (LOS, Cover, Suppression/Panic) are conceptually better than the previous rules. ‘We’ll just have to see how it plays out’ is not what I’m looking for.
So question on the weapon range doughnut changes. Iden’s sniper gun range 1- infinite, is it now restricted to range 1?
The donut rules only deal with when one range band is displayed (Iden’s has two, like most weapons in the game), which as far as I know is just the Ruthless ability, IG-11’s command card, and the Mando Rockets. In the former two cases they differed historically from the range language on every other ability in the game (which said range 1-x, generally) and in the latter case it was specifically just range 4 (unlike the Rebel Mando rockets which were 3-4), probably to prevent it from being used in the same pool as the squad’s main guns. The donut rule change that refers to “when one number is listed” fixes the IG-11 and Ruthless abilities without having to change their wording. The Mando rocket thing feels like a happy accident.
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I’ve played other miniature games with the “variable game length”, and have two thoughts: (1) You’ll note it’s only 0-5 minutes more than 150 minutes. This is not designed to add much significant length, but to minimize the ability to effectively stall since you don’t know what exact time you are stalling *to*; it’s nearly impossible to make an intentional 5 minute stall look unintentional, and thus would be easily called a violation of tournament play by a TO. (2) If you need a real-life, historically effective example of this, look to professional level soccer (non-American football). Even injury time displayed by the side ref at 45 and 90 minutes is not official: the head ref is the *only* person in the game you knows when the game will end. This gives him/her a chance to allow a particular play to finish (should a team be on a break away that could flip the outcome of the game should they score). While teams can play keep away when ahead, they *do* have to keep playing to a very minimally variable, but still uncertain, end-point. All in the vein of trying to maintain an exciting, and importantly active, game to the best ability of both teams.
Anyone know why there’s no entry for Overrun in the new CRB?
There is an entry for overrun on page 55