This post will cover the Infantry Support Platform (ISP) for the Grand Army of the Republic in Star Wars: Legion.
The ISP which many have affectionately dubbed the ‘Swamp speeder’ is a vehicle that seemingly came out of nowhere. The ISP is a bit of an oddball with some interesting features that make it rather unique. Original article by Timbo with updates for Legion 2.6 by Evan “Doc Velo” Paul.
65 Points – The ISP is one of the cheapest heavies available at its base cost. This is deceiving however as you will likely never run it close to 65 points. With upgrades the ISP will end up costing somewhere around 90-108 points. Which is still plenty cheap for a (kinda) armored heavy. This brings it sort of in line with the X-34 in terms of cost (and, unfortunately, durability)
Offense – The offense on the ISP’s unit card is pitiful, but the hardpoints are fairly interesting. Overall the offense seems underwhelming for its cost, but can enable interesting and powerful combos.
Defense – The survivability of the ISP isn’t great. This unit comes with Armor 3 which is decent enough but is easily enough overcome by even a decently lucky shot from a Corps with a heavy. Combined with Cover 1, the ISP is going to block almost 4 hits on most attack pools. These defensive keywords are, of course, protecting only 7 wounds with a white surging save. This is the same as the Airspeeder which, in lots of cases, can be taken down quite quickly if caught flat-footed.
Maneuverability – The ISP has a maximum speed of 3 combined with a rather large base. This unit is able to move quite far when it needs to. It also has side notches allowing it to strafe, which because of the max speed 3, can be made at speed 2. The Hover: Ground keyword also allows the ISP to move over terrain which would impede it if it were a ground vehicle. The biggest problem of maneuverability for this unit is its physical model, it just is very short. This means that it cannot clear terrain that other repulsors can. It also doesn’t have a compulsory move which would make it very mobile.
Luckily, now that we’re in Legion 2.6, its maneuverability has gotten a big upgrade in the form of two changes. First, all vehicles without the “Speeder” keyword get to make a free pivot before moving, which really opens up the board in terms of getting this thing where it needs to go. Second, vehicles count for all objectives now, so in a pinch you can single or even double-move to bum-rush a point and turn the tide.
The only Pilot option for the ISP is the 327th Star Corps Elite Armor Pilots. It USED to be something that affected the old Fire Support keyword, but no longer! Now that Rex’s 1-Pip is the only memory we clone players have of the old Fire Support, any cards that were meant to directly interact with it had to change and this is no exception, it’s functionally a completely new card. The effect is fairly simple, but it’s worth noting that this takes particular advantage of the multi-attack capability of the ISP: if you split your attack with gunslinger OR hit multiple targets with the Beam gun, you’ll get more mods for the rest of your army. Naturally, this does incentivize shooting early with the ISP because if it goes last those observation tokens are guaranteed to go to waste. Therefore, if you’re going to use this, have a plan for order control (the best of which is Cody and his “Direct: Vehicle”).
When cover changed in Legion 2.6 this and most other beam weapons got a big upgrade. Cover used to very reliably gobble up the two hits you’d get from the red dice leaving you hoping for a hit on white but no longer! If you get 3 hits on 3 targets in heavy cover, you can expect them to be rolling against most of those dice. If you have order control and the Pilot upgrade as well, you’re getting a lot of work done by helping the rest of your army shoot those targets too. This weapon also very reliably can put down a suppression on three different enemy units. Many lists don’t particularly care about suppression, but two ISPs could have three enemy units with two suppression tokens each after two activations, which isn’t nothing.
This weapon brings a solid dice pool with Impact 2. As a deterrent to armour, combined with the Star Corps Pilots you could force upwards of 5 Crits to armor unaimed. This weapon also brings range 4 which can help to keep the vehicle a lot safer from enemy fire.
This weapon includes a clause that allows you to split the dice pool and keywords in half to gain gunslinger. This does allow you to shoot a couple reds at targets even if they aren’t right next to each other. This is certainly better than it used to be with old cover rules, but right now the beam weapon is still cheap enough that it’s almost always preferable. Additionally, it does not have a Range 1 band which is risky in Legion 2.6 when fights often get intense in the middle of the field.
The Twin Blaser Cannons seem to be the most vanilla option for the ISP, providing the largest dice pool. This weapon certainly won’t shred anything but could easily provide a good base of fire for you list. This weapon seems very similar to the AT-RT Rotary Blaster.
This weapon also brings Critical 2 which can be a decent armor hedge in a pinch. The clause about splitting the dice pool and keywords is also on this weapon. It’s basically the missiles with slightly better dice and slightly worse range…I’d probably rate it a little higher than the missiles at the moment because range 4 shots are a lot less common in Legion 2.6 when both sides often need to rush the middle
The best comms upgrade for the ISP, aims are good. Most of the shots you will take with the ISP will really benefit from aims.
This was a more attractive option with legacy Fire Support combined with Cody but in a pinch, this would allow a Cody list to take advantage of direct to ensure high-value units (Obi for example?) have face-ups even when you’re using a Cody 1-Pip or something.
I’ve had success with this locally, there is only one ISP but all the speedy vehicles allow you to adjust to rush points very quickly and the offense ain’t half bad either.
This is just a lot of heavily modified dice at range, I do think the commandos could be changed out for ARCs if you wanted more close-range business.
Since release, the ISP has had its moments but mostly remained in the shadows of first the Saber-Padme era and then the “Republic basically never takes vehicles” era after that. Now, however, we have Cody and more importantly the Legion 2.6 updates which have brought with them a new era, the “ISP is actually pretty good” era, in fact! It’s also an excellent model, so in my opinion there’s no time like the present for Republic players to consider checking it out.
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1 Response
I personally think that it may have a more niche setting in skirmish games as it almost has the fire power of a tank and a significant cost reduction. In a game type where hit them had and fast is a main goal, I personally think it has potential.