ARCHIVES – Descending Activation League

This is an archived post relevant to Star Wars: Legion in its original iteration. We are keeping it on the site for historical purposes but it should not be used for reference to the current version of the game

Here at our local store there seems to be a common denominator: everyone is sick of sniper strike teams. As you’re transitioning from a beginner to the competitive scene, perhaps, you’ll start noticing something in every list: three snipers. I can attest to the fact that having three snipers in a competitive setting is probably mandatory. At first, I didn’t think so, but the more I play the more I realize it’s a necessary evil. Personally, I’m not sick of the sniper war because it means I’m practicing what I call my competitive list. Practicing a list and muscle memory is so key to success if you want to take the next steps as a player in this game. However, keeping things fresh is also a good thing. When you’re helping build a growing Legion community like me and my friends are, you want everyone to be having fun. You don’t want people showing up to play and saying “three snipers, again?”. So on the heels of Imperial Discipline’s 500 point system, which you should check out, and ironically the Legion Outriders this week had a big discussion of ways to keep things fresh in your local area as well, I put together a four week league for our local store.

Format

“Regular list building rules apply, 800 point armies. Standard battle card decks. Four week league with ten days (not strict, but try our best) to set up a game with your opponent starting on x date. Challonge bracket will determine who has the bye per week, report your scores to me to enter into the league page to keep track of the standings. Swiss set up should allow us to get one undefeated person at the end but if we want to do a top two cut final week of the same format of week four, I’m open to the idea! No limitation to faction.”

• Week 1
  • Must build a list with no more than nine activations
  • Maximum two sniper strike teams per army list
• Week 2
  • Must build a list with no more than eight activations
  • Maximum one sniper strike team per army list
• Week 3
  • Must build a list with no more than seven activations
  • Maximum one sniper strike team per army list
• Week 4
  • Must build a list with no more than seven activations
  • No sniper strike teams allowed per army list

As you can see each week we start limiting activation counts and the number of sniper strike teams you are allowed to bring. I felt like six activations was too few and decided to stop at the seven mark and zero snipers on the final week. We ended up having nine participants for our local store, which is extremely exciting, and we have two brand new players. I’d like to think this is a good set up for the newer players to come into playing the game at a different level than they have been. They won’t need to create or bring what are considered super competitive lists. Heck, they might not even have enough stuff for 9+ activations at the moment anyways. I can’t wait to break them into a bigger world of Star Wars Legion with this league and I hope they enjoy it! The more players we get going towards Clone Wars the better!

I highly recommend that if you use this format to set it up on Challonge, a website for league and tournament structure, and there is a new community page where you don’t even need the participants to create an account to set anything up. Just get someone to run the league and run the Challonge site and it will generate week to week games and standings for you. It’s a great tool!

Final Notes

There will be people who will want to just play the top, competitive lists at all times and I get that. I’m almost that type of person myself, only because I want to continue to get better at this game with my top tier list. However, I do believe that list building can get very boring at the top level and this is a shake up most people can use. It’s nothing fancy and you can make it longer if you wanted and tinker around with the restrictions that you apply. At the end of the day, this game is about having fun and this is something everyone at the local store is excited about, so am I. I’m going to be working on setting up a sort of narrative campaign for after this format, once I get that done I’ll post that for everyone too! I’m going to put a lot of work into that one, though, so it may take some time!

May the Force be with You!