Ministravaganza 2023 Legion Round-Up

Well folks, another Ministravaganza has come and gone, let’s put everything we saw onto one post right here!

While it doesn’t feel like it to me, it’s been six whole months since we got a surprise rapid-fire round of reveals at last March’s World Championships at Adepticon. Since then we’ve had a points change, Ewoks, and Tempest Force grace our tables, and the community was more than ready to have something new to look forward to. Lucky for us, we got some much needed details on what’s coming up and when (sort of) but forget that noise for a second because after a mostly Legion news-free Day 1, Atomic Mass gave us a lovely surprise on Day 2 during their discussion on Battle Forces…can you guess what it was?

MORE BATTLE FORCES DUMMY! They’re available for download and legal for play right now and this time, none of them were even for Empire!

Battle Force: Experimental Droids (Available Now)

For a scene that’s basically thirty seconds of footage, the CIS invasion of Kashyyk has occupied the thoughts of a lot of Legion players. In a move that many of us had been hoping for ever since we saw those infamous “Heavy Response Unit” stormtroopers a year ago, this Battle Force not only comes with two “special issue” unit cards but a set of unique rules as well. There are no specific command cards for this Battle Force, so you’ll have to make do with the standard ones or the Super-Tac cards. The unique rule essentially allows your commander (which must be a generic Tactical or Super-Tactical) to hand out bonuses to other units up to three times per turn as you see fit. The unique units are below:

So it turns out that, unlike the other brand new Battle Force’s new unit card, both of these have changed a lot from their baseline. I had to do a triple take before it “computed” what differences this snail tank (which costs the same as the usual unit) had with the normal one, but this new “Prototype” version:

• Gains Command Node which is basically Direct: Corps Trooper but limited to Range 1
• Arsenal 3 from the usual Arsenal 2
• Loses Surge: Hit, Critical 1 on the Range 4 gun, and Impact 1 on the Ion Cannon
• Loses Transport: Open, I guess because they’re emerging from the water?

As for the MagnaGuards they:

• Count as a Corps trooper for rank requirements
• Lose 1 health per model but gain a mini
• Lose a training slot, a comms slot, Retinue, Guardian, and Surge: Hit
• Melee weapon is white black instead of black black
• Is 12 points cheaper

I’ll be interested in what the community can come up with. At first glance I feel like these Special Issue units both lose more than they gain, and in both cases these new unit cards are the only option for this Battle Force. The game developers talked about this Battle Force as a way to ‘buff’ the perennially struggling Droideka as well; a free aim every turn from the Commander would certainly help, but my hope is that the base unit card will still see some improvements in the future; making it more playable in one Battle Force alone would leave it in the same place everywhere else.

Battle Force: Wookiee Defenders (Available Now)

Yeah, I saved the best for last here. Players have been clamoring for a Wookiee-focused Battle Force ever since the first time the words “Battle Force” even became known to us, I wouldn’t be surprised if people hadn’t been asking about it before they existed. Well, it’s finally here and it doesn’t disappoint. While the Battle Force does allow for a few canon accurate guest stars in Yoda, a couple Phase 2 Clone Troopers, full ARCs, and some vehicles…you can leave all that stuff in the bin, because you can in fact run this as an “All-Wook Army.” Wookiee Warriors: Noble Fighters (the melee version) count as Corps for unit construction! So, if you were someone who either has a deep pool of willing friends or want to be notorious for a level of purchasing commitment that crosses the border of “eccentricity” directly into “madness,” you can in fact field Chewbacca, 6 melee Wookiee units, and 4 “shooty” (Kashyyk Defender) Wookiee units with zero upgrades at 792 points. That’s 31 Wookiee minis with at least 3 health each! Of course this is an extreme (and probably meme-ish list) example, but other lists featuring Wookiees have long included a 156 point naked clone tax…now they don’t have to. This includes Yoda-Chewie lists of course but plenty of others as well.

But wait, there’s more! Each Wookiee unit can make one speed 1 move per round when they lose a mini, so opponents who work hard to get the damage through may end up paying the price as the scruffy inexorable charge continues toward them. Finally, this Battle Force gets its own unit card as well, and it’s one near and dear to me because this is my favorite vehicle in the game.

I wrote my very first unit guide about this thing and have continued to play it off and on since it released, I even won a store championship with it a couple months ago! So, when AMG just recently made the gunner (which was already better than the bomber) less expensive and now they give it variable speed (which is the only change here, for only two points more!) I began hatching my evil plans with it immediately. For those whose eyes and hearts are “fluttering” as well, I encourage you to check out that guide I wrote: the only thing that will have changed is that the ability to make it speed 1 or 3 makes its versatility even more insane. It’s also now the game’s fastest unit: while it can technically move the same distance as a T-47 in a straight line the ability to reposition before every move allows it to completely avoid being stopped by impassable parts of the board when it wants, thus it can basically always get from Point A to Point B. This also makes it the best bomb-delivery platform in the game on Bombing Run: it can get there, time its compulsory move perfectly, and can’t be damaged by the explosion. So yeah…it’s pretty alright.

Legion Road Map

Of course, these new Battle Forces were a welcome surprise but most folks came to Ministravaganza to get a look at upcoming items that you’ll actually buy off the shelf, build, and (some day) paint. The Legion Road Map on Saturday morning of course delivered on this but also had some interesting, more general news about what’s to come later. Note that availability dates are obviously generic and are based completely on what AMG stated in the stream.

Geonosian Warriors (Corps Unit, Available Q1 2024)

You ARE in fact reading that right, they can do a Jump as a FREE action, which means they can move three times. Before you start to worry too much, they lose jump completely if they’re carrying an objective token, but consider all the other applications of moving around like a bug out of hell: bolting towards a vaporator from very far away, grabbing a token AFTER they’ve already jumped, obliterating a strike team from downtown…it’s going to have its uses. Aside from the “Weighed Down” keyword another mitigating factor is the lack of surging on attack as well as the range 2 limit on their guns. Of course, a weaker attack pool is manageable when you can deny cover completely, which is what the “Death From Above” keyword is wont to do. Some could also argue that they’re also now the easiest corps unit to actually kill in a straight fight, since they lack the defensive tech rebel troopers can boast and have only 4 minis with white surging saves. At a respectable 45 points, my first impression is that they will be different but hopefully not unbalanced. I’m also very happy they made this a full CIS unit and not a mercenary, they made the droids for cryin’ out loud!

Here’s a look at the heavies, note that we don’t know what the other side of the force pike looks like but they let slip that it might involve an Overrun attack? If so, someone should tell General Grievous because his skittering not being an Overrun is one of the game’s lingering missed-opportunities in my opinion! The sonic cannon is a very decent addition but is also fairly expensive for the cost of the unit overall, it will be interesting to see what shakes out as the usual choice.

Poggle The Lesser and Sun Fac (Commander and Operative Unit, Available Q1 2024)

Infamous in the X-Wing community for being a public menace whose asteroid-slapping toxicity rivaled even the worst meta-disrupting punks in that game’s history, I think Sun Fac will have a more normal debut in Legion. This isn’t to say he should be underestimated: As the first trooper unit with natural Cover 1, he’ll be more of a pain to take down than you might think, and when he combines that with free tokens from Retinue he could be very sneaky. His weapons are decent as well, but he’s likely more of an objective/utility piece than a pure jouster, sort of a Sabine-lite in that respect. Poggle leans even more heavily into the support zone: Compel allows the Geonosian Warriors to make sure they get their steps (flaps?) in and Entourage B2 presents an interesting opportunity to run him up with a squad of those that can relax about getting affected by AI without having to pay for a T-series upgrade. For that matter, if you have a Comms Relay on that B2 you can basically turn it into Direct: Whatever you want in a similar way to what Commander Cody does with the lone AT-RT BARC Fluttercraft that is often taken with him.

We were shown some command cards as well! Sun Fac’s 1 pip allows for another free jump for Geonosian Warriors as well as gaining Agile 1 for Mr. Fac himself, meaning that after all is said and done he’ll have up to 4 dodge tokens (command card jump, free jump, two moves) by the end of his activation…and also be nearly two feet away from where all the affected units started the turn. Poggle’s cards seem to be all about getting some leverage out of his lovely working relationship with his droid friends, bringing back a mini at full health is very nice when it was a B2! I definitely think that a Poggle B2 swarm is going to be a real deal, this card alone can restore up to 8 health worth of minis!

Fifth Brother and Seventh Sister (Operatives, Available Q2 2024)

Since they were announced we’d been wondering about how these “fine folks” would work together and now we know: basically it’s as simple as the fact that when you play both you can still play one more Operative…which allows you to run them with a bounty hunter or if you want to stay on theme, Operative Vader himself. As expected of mini-boss level Jedi, they do not have Master of the Force and their sabers only Pierce 1.

Speaking of Fifth Brother, Ram 2 is kind of nuts when he surges to hit anyway: tenacity will already be nearly-stapled on him (along with a certain other, new upgrade) which means he has a VERY good chance of getting the full boat when he’s on the way in every time. Of course, he only has Charge when he’s enraged so there isn’t a guarantee he’ll really get to use Ram to its full potential: another mitigator is the lack of Jump so he’ll need to be wary of elevation and scatter terrain on the way in.

Seventh Sister brings way more keywords to the mix (including an always-on Charge), acquiring them in exchange for a less reliable attack pool. The Interrogate keyword will be clutch in certain situations: you can even turn Kallus into someone with super-cunning so he’ll even beat Dooku every time, and this also represents the first time ANYONE can beat “Sorry About The Mess” without a Han of their own.

Fifth Brother brings two command cards of his own. The Dauntless card is neat if not rather situational in its utility, but that two pip is something else. Technically, the way it’s worded…you could gain infinite tokens of both types because you’d be repeating the triggers over and over again. I have no doubt that will be fixed by the time of release by a rules clarification, but I can’t predict where it will stop. It may be that each unit can only gain extra tokens once per timing window, which would make sense to me anyway. Since this effect is permanent, there are all sorts of ways to abuse this: Spotter, Coordinated Fire, and Governor Pryce all come to mind, not to mention that Seventh Sister can generate some tokens with her cards.

The 3-pip is interesting but won’t matter very often (since units in melee don’t get suppressed a ton, or if they are suppressed they don’t usually have aim tokens) but the other two rock. The 2-pip mostly matters for a start-of-round recover but also has the potential to make the swinging very mean indeed. Her 1-pip also makes her extremely hard to kill for a round: without Deflect she wouldn’t be quite as dangerous to shoot into as an Obi-Wan with several dodges on him after playing Knowledge and Defense but you would be at even more risk of completely wasting your time when she has an extra dice that will surge to block every time. Even the suppression she gains is likely to be gone after she rolls her indomitable dice.

You may have noticed these units are already extremely powerful for their cost, but this spoiled upgrade card is the real kicker in my opinion. Basically? These two can completely negate Force Push, aka, the card that we actually run Jedi to use. Doing so while still forcing the user to pay the cost is particularly brutal, characters with Master of the Force won’t really mind that part but characters like Ahsoka will be in an extra-bad way. There are some force users who would be expected to beat either of these inquisitors in a one-on-one fight (Anakin, Dooku, Yoda) but there are others (Ahsoka, Commander Luke, Asajj) where they’d potentially be at a disadvantage against their much cheaper opponent simply because the Inquisitors will get “Surge to Block” when they spend their dodge tokens (Block) while the other Jedi will not (standard Deflect)

I’ll be a bit direct here: running both of these characters when each have Force Push and Inquisitorius Training is only 240 points, and I think that will prove to be very cheap when it comes to what you get in return. The reason Commander Luke is still 150 points all these years later is that Force Push still wins games, and he doesn’t even have a free recover card in his list of 6. Compare Seventh Sister to Asajj Ventress as well, who has a better saber but is much easier to suppress and is EASIER to kill in melee (block v deflect again)…there are some other areas where you can quibble in a comparison, but does it really add up to 40 points? I’m also concerned about the “feels bad”-ness of forcing your opponent to pay the cost for an effect they don’t get, I get that MCP does this with characters like Loki and Scarlet Witch but this mechanic feels a bit off in Legion. There is obviously a decent amount of time until release, but just as with Blizzard Force and Dark Troopers I think there’s a very, very high chance something about this will get more expensive just a couple months after it comes out, unless the plan is to make every force user about 30 points cheaper. Here’s hoping I’m wrong I guess?

Republic Clone Commandos and Delta Squad (Available mid-2024)

We’re now out of the zone where AMG showed us any rules unfortunately, we’re not even sure of the rank for any of the rest.

This has certainly been an expansion many Republic players had been hoping for since…forever, so you can bet I’m excited along with a lot of other GAR players. I’m betting there will be at least a few similarities between this and the Inferno/ISF expansion, not the least of which is because Delta Squad itself was announced as a build option for this. That announcement in particular surprised me since Delta Squad was made famous in the Republic Commando video game (which is non-canon) was only canonized by a brief dialogue-only appearance in Clone Wars, but you will not find me complaining.

The developers focused on weapon customization, for those who don’t know one of the gimmicks of these guys is that they have one gun that can be shifted through multiple configurations Transformers-style. Since I did play that game back in the day (it’s pretty fun, and there’s a version available for the newer consoles for cheap!) I would guess that these guys (maybe just Delta) will also have some kind of Shielded access as well as something I’ve long thought would be cool: the choice to shoot standard grenades at range 2. If that doesn’t make grenades an upgrade type that matters outside of Black Sun, nothing will.

It was briefly mentioned that the Bad Batch, whose figures were definitely shown at Adepticon, would be releasing alongside these guys but nothing at all in terms of specifics was mentioned, they didn’t even show the pictures again. It does make me wonder about how well it will actually work from an internal balance perspective to launch three different (assumedly) Special Forces units at once, but I’m sure we’ll get it figured out in due time.

Imperial Range Troopers (Available Mid-2024)

This was a surprise to most folks, given that A) Empire has been getting plenty of releases lately and B) a lot of hardcore fans were scratching their heads trying to remember where these guys come from. Well, if you still haven’t nailed that one down they’re the dudes protecting the train during the hyperspace fuel heist in Solo. It was hinted-at in the painting that this is (likely) a Special Forces unit, and there haven’t been any hints as to what their “gimmick” would be, but I’m guessing their base gun (E-10R) will be Range 4. It was mentioned that Atomic Mass got the chance to figure out with LFL what the heavies would be since none were in the movie, which is neat!

LM-432 Crab Droid (Available Late 2024?)

In a continuation of CIS’ obsession with naming droids after invertebrates, we were shown a fairly left field thing to look forward to in the future in the Crab Droid. My best guess is that this will be kinda similar to a Spider Droid (climbing vehicle is a given) but with a base gun that is range 4 without cycle. It will also have Weak Point: Rear for sure and maybe even Weak Point: Range 1/Melee because these guys are most memorable to me for being shelled with extreme ease and prejudice by 212th guys just kinda climbing on top of them and killing them execution style in this clip.

I love the eyestalks, it’s a perfect example of something that makes zero sense but which makes it all the more fun…Star Wars!

Rebel (?) Saboteurs (Available Late 2024?)

Initially I mis-wrote that the pictured models were a re-print, thanks to Zack Matthews for pointing out the error! We weren’t told a TON about what the deal with these guys is, aside from the fact they were inspired by the vault robbery crew in Andor. They could of course just be a straight rebel unit, but I’m hoping they’ll be available to Republic as well given the history of Jedi and clones supporting partisan action on Onderon and Ryloth. The loth cat can go on any base!

Coming in 2025: Old Stuff Reprinted In Hard Plastic!

Another welcome surprise, this has been something in the zone of “would be cool but I can’t see AMG thinking it’s worth the cost” for years. For those who don’t know, Legion semi-shifted to hard plastic (requires more assembly but is much more detailed) with the release of the Clone Wars core sets and shifted over completely for the release of Phase 2 Clone Troopers and everything thereafter. In fact, count Dooku is the only soft plastic Separatist unit that was ever released. But for Empire and Rebels? It was all soft before then, and while it made assembly a breeze it led to troopers having less-than ideal faces, severe mold lines…and then there was Han. I won’t even post the picture here, it would be a disservice to AMG for them to even be associated with it and it may cause the readers to close the tab in horror. But, if you’re curious, you can click here.

But anyway none of that matters now, they’re gonna re-do them all! Lord only knows how long this will take but they said to generally expect it to start at least in 2025. Given that we’d be talking dozens of expansions otherwise, one can imagine that part of this will manifest as original faction core sets that will not only be re-released (which was confirmed) but which may have different units in them for all we know. It’s even possible that these re-releases may update the rules on the cards as well, this will be cooking for a long time and we’re likely going to have to wait until the next Ministravaganza to hear more but this is definitely awesome stuff, take a look at the re-designed minis!

A Note About Release Dates

If you’ve been paying attention you’ll have noticed that none of these dates are this calendar year, meaning that the Ewoks we got over the summer were the last new release we’ll be seeing until January at the soonest. Before anyone frets about the lack of new stuff for the holiday season, I think it’s prudent to point out that this is also the case for Marvel: Crisis Protocol and Star Wars: Shatterpoint, with a small caveat that Shatterpoint will have a mission pack releasing in November that is just cards with zero miniatures included. I am not an insider of course but whether the reason has to do with devoting resources to the initial launch of Shatterpoint as well as the updated core set for Marvel: Crisis Protocol, a major manufacturing change, or some kind of un-planned thing, ain’t nobody getting more minis this year so don’t fret about Legion being a “problem child.” You can fret instead about how GAR still only has two options each for Corps and Operativ sorry Kyle said we’re running too long already, maybe next time.

What are you most excited for? Let us know in the comments below!