Moff Gideon – Unit Guide (Updated for Legion 2.6)

This unit guide will cover Moff Gideon: Long Live the Empire in the game, Star Wars Legion.

Moff Gideon is an Imperial Warlord who continued fighting for the Empire long after it fell. As a Commander in the Imperial Faction, he brings both support abilities and combat prowess to the battlefield. This article is a comprehensive guide of Moff Gideon. I will start with a summary of his stats, then I will discuss upgrade options and how to play Moff Gideon. Long Live the Empire!!!

Original article written by Lucas Ustick and updates for Legion 2.6 by Evan “Doc Velo” Paul.

Strengths

• Support abilities: Ruthless & Observe 1
• Entourage: Imperial Dark Troopers
• Two Command Slots
• Courage 3

Weaknesses

• Expensive
• Command cards that require Dark Troopers

Overview

Points:

Moff Gideon is tied with Iden Versio as the most expensive non-force user commander in the Empire. For this cost, you are getting a character that is able to both support your troops and battle effectively against the opponent. He can also take the Dark Saber to become a more deadly melee threat. Adding this upgrade pushes his cost up to 115 points. Gideon is an expensive character, so you need to have a plan to utilize him properly in your army.

Offense:

Moff Gideon is perhaps most offensively powerful support commander in the Empire. Gideon has Sharpshooter 1, Tactical 1, and surge to crit. Gideons Blaster Pistol averages 2.16 hits without an aim and has a median of 3 hits when aimed. He has Tactical 1 meaning you can reasonably expect to get 3 hits when moving then firing. He can also be further augmented with The Dark Saber armament upgrade. This weapon costs 15 points and gives Gideon a deadly melee weapon and Demoralize 1. The Dark Saber Averages 3.16 hits but averages ~4.6 hits when he has two aims (which is possible on his 1 pip turn). This is a great weapon to shred through enemy units once up and close.

Defense:

Moff Gideon is the hardest to kill out of the support commanders. He has 5 health and surging red saves resulting in 15 effective wounds (Veers 10 effective wounds, Krennic 9 effective wounds, Imperial Officer 6 effective wounds). This means he can support from middle of the battle unlike other support commanders. His main weakness is Pierce. Moff Gideon has no Pierce mitigation and can be quickly dealt with by piercing enemies.

Utility/Support:

On top of his solid combat stats, Moff Gideon has some powerful support abilities. As a free action he can Observe 1 each turn. While this may not seem like much it is a free re-roll every turn which is nothing to scoff at. He is also the first character to have the keyword Ruthless. This ability allows corps units with a face-up order token to take a wound to gain a free extra action. Free actions are amazing for objective play and can steal a game when used properly.

Mobility:

Moff Gideon is an average trooper when it comes to mobility with only speed 2 and no additional keywords. His 1 pip Die at My Hand gives him Relentless which can help extend his range giving him extra mobility on the turn it is played.

Upgrades

Command:

He has two command slots making him very flexible. You do not have to bring command upgrades, but these upgrades can be helpful in the right army.

Aggressive Tactics

Aggressive Tactics is expensive at 15 points but is useful when paired with units that do not surge such as Dark Troopers and Shoretroopers. The surge can make Dark Troopers and Shoretroopers even harder to kill making them even more oppressive on the table.

Improvised Orders

Improvised Orders is one of my favorite command upgrades. For only 5 points you get to re-draw a token each turn. This ability is great in armies with sub-optimal order control. Getting a second chance at drawing a token can help you maintain proper activation timing with your units.

Underworld Connections

Underworld Connections is simple, you bring it if you want to have more Mercenary units in your army. The most common usage is for double bounty hunter armies.

Training:

Seize the Initiative

If you are running an army with multiple order hungry units, Seize the Initiative can help you get better order control for the small cost of 5 points.

Tenacity

This is more of an edge case pick if you’ve already decided to bring the Darksaber and plan to be aggressive with him most of the time.

Gear:

Recon Intel

This slot used to be empty most of the time but now that Scout is one of the best keywords in the game (since it gives you action efficiency in Round 1) Recon Intel feels like a very good choice on him.

Armament:

The Darksaber

Moff Gideon has only one Armament option but it packs quite a punch. The Darksaber not only increases His combat prowess but it also gives him Demoralize 1. A well-placed suppression token can be used in a variety of ways. You can strip standby tokens before activating and you can add extra suppression on scoring turns to stop units from scoring.

As of this writing, the weapon is still 15 points, which is the tough part. The offense he gets is about equal to an Inquisitor but unlike the Inquisitors Gideon only gets a move shoot (though notably, Relentless is better than Charge) once and is not Immune: Pierce. This weapon does add to his combat efficiency though, and allows you to have somewhat of a hybrid Commander who can both support and fight. Just don’t run around assuming that he’s gonna be murdering squads left and right like he’s Anakin or something.

Commands

Die at My Hand

Moff Gideon’s 1 pip is Die at My Hand gives one order to himself. This card also gives him Relentless, 1 aim token, and 1 dodge token on the turn it is played. Die at My Hand is great for engaging with The Dark. He can consistently do 5 hits on the turn this card is played because he will usually have 3 aims (1 from the card, 2 from moving into engagement). 5 hits with Pierce 1 can cripple many units. While less flashy this card can also be used to do a peekaboo attack. You can move, then shoot for free with Relentless, then move back behind cover again.

You Have Something I Want

Moff Gideon’s 2 pip You Have Something I Want is his most unique command card. It issues two orders, but the card effect can only be used on Dark Troopers. The card makes it so you can move a Dark Trooper to any part of the battlefield outside of range 2 of opposing units, and then you give it a face-down order token. This card has two main functions, it can be used to flank/engage, or it can be used to run. You can use this card to make an aggressive play such as dropping a Dark Trooper unit behind enemy lines to threaten an objective scoring unit. This card gives you the ability to instantly threaten that previously safe unit. Dark Troopers in particular are a great flanking unit since they are so hard to kill and are able to solo multiple enemy units. While this card used to be extra-scary in the prior version of Legion because it would allow Dark Troopers to “run away” with objectives in hand, it can still be used to teleport them to a POI that is only barely defended by an enemy to upset the state of the threat bubble there considerably for your opponent.

Moment of Consideration

Moment of Consideration is Moff Gideon’s 3 pip which gives out 3 orders to either heavy or corps units. This was changed in Legion 2.6 to be extra super clear about the fact that the Fire Support of old is no longer a thing, but unlike with Captain Rex’s One-Pip which preserved the old rules by another means they decided to just make this one three standbys now. And…that’s pretty great! Particularly on Dark Troopers, whose token cannot be shot off thanks to their “-” courage value, which means you can nearly guarantee two extra shots. If this order is given under the right circumstances it can be a pretty sick combo. The third order can just be icing on the cake, your opponent will usually be forced to take their first action to shoot the Corps which may then allow BOTH your dark troopers to try their best to obliterate the offender. Spicy.

General Strategy

Moff Gideon is a support commander who can also function as a secondary combat threat. He is played best when attacking alongside other units supporting the army from within the front line. Because both Observe tokens and Ruthless can be used outside of Gideon’s activation, he is fairly timing neutral. Though he’ll want to be in LOS blocking terrain on Round 1 he shouldn’t wait too long to move towards the main fight. At the same time though, you’ll usually want to keep the Dark Troopers close to absorb the opponent’s attention and help eliminate threats

List Building for Legion 2.6

Here’s where I’ll be a little more provocative…the real reason to take Moff Gideon IS that you also want to play two Dark Troopers as well. My reason for this as simple: for a pure support commander, Krennic and Veers are far cheaper and Krennic specifically has a command (his 3-Pip) that is more globally useful. For a Commander who wants to support AND fight, Kallus is actually better at it given his ability to make solid range 3 piercing attacks at twenty less points along with the extra help you get from Contingencies 2. If you purely wanted to fight with these points then you’d be better off with a bounty hunter or spending the extra points on Vader.

While Ruthless is nice, it’s the Dark Trooper synergy that really makes the argument that Gideon is worthwhile. So, you could consider a list like this:

Gideon Dark Troopers

If your Dews charge in first your opponent may not have the time to properly hustle against the dark troopers, allowing you to give them a nice turn of triple attacks on round 3 or so with his 3-Pip.

Gideon Remnant

Of course, the Imperial Remnant Battle Force represents another opportunity for Gideon to prove useful, though this notably limits your other options to fill out the list, but it does let you do some fun stuff with the heavy slots on your regular troopers.

Conclusions

Gideon has strong support abilities and can hold his own in a fight. The main thing holding him back is his expensive cost, and by an extension of that his relative limitations as “a Dark Trooper commander.”. I won’t give any Mando season 3 spoilers, but I am interested to see if he will be revisited in Legion at some point in the future. Overall, Moff Gideon is a fun unit fighting for the supremacy of the Empire. I hope you found this unit guide helpful, till next time!