Finally, we have ༼ つ ◕◕ ༽つ summoned points! We aren’t just getting points, either. It’s worth quoting the actual text of the AMG tweet in detail here:
“A new points update for Star Wars: Legion has arrived! In addition, players can look forward to a series of four articles outlining the latest rule updates coming in January, dropping 12/12, 12/14, 12/19, 12/21.“
I have two headline takeaways here… the primary one is simply that these points updates may be lacking some context. As frustrating as it might be from the perspective of trying to evaluate these for their impact on competitive play in isolation, I’m not going to complain about the drip drip drip of information we’re about to get, because I can assure you we’re going to write some more articles too, reacting to those AMG articles. Drip drip drip. Click click click.
My second takeaway is… four articles. That is a lot. Potentially a lot of changes. Scared? Nervous? Excited? Yes.
Anyway, what we have in front of us is points, so we’re going to hit those. Pundits gotta pundit.
You can find the official document here. The changes in +/- form are summarized at the bottom of this article and separately in each section.
For help with these reactions, I’ve enlisted the help of the rest of the Fifth Trooper staff.
Rebels
No changes to any actual Rebel units (literally none).
Some huge neutral upgrade changes relevant for Rebels though: Vigilance +7 (12), Situational Awareness +2 (4), Burst of Speed +7 (Luke sad), Tenacity and Offensive Push +2 (very relevant for Wookiees).
Evan Paul: The best Rebel lists relied on Vigilance and Situational Awareness dodge spam; that has been hit, which is probably good. However, this feels like the “Rexstar” treatment because it’s accompanied by zero buffs to a variety of underused units, aside from the T-47 benefitting from fewer Pykes and Ion Spiders. It feels extra cruel that the generic upgrade increases hurt Sabine, Jyn, and Leia very directly when none of those are doing very well.
Jon “Bushfacts” Bushman: Oh, no changes for Rebels. Did anyone besides Rebels ever take SA? No? Weird. Rebels are running out of competitive list building options, and Operative Luke’s back is getting tired. But don’t worry guys, Rebels surge to block.
Tim: My Invader list went up by 40 points.
Kyle: Boy, Rebels sure got nuked in the “nerf dodge spam” crossfire. While some increases to the Rebel DLT Captain build were probably warranted, they didn’t get anything back in return, and a lot of the neutral upgrade hits (particularly Vigilance and Situational Awareness) hurt Rebel Trooper dodge spam a lot more than they do Pykes. It seems like it would have been low hanging fruit to give some back to criminally underused Rebel units like Jyn, Leia, AT-RTs, or generic Mandos.
Empire
DF-90 Mortar +2 (40), Death Trooper DLT-19D -4 (30)
Lucas: Empire was already arguably the best faction in the game in contention with Shadow Collective. Shadow Collective got nerfed and Empire was essentially untouched, leaving one army to rule them all. Empire can still play Iden, Bounty Hunters, and Blizzard Force in the same state as before. I am happy to see the Death Troopers lose 4 points but I would have loved to see some decreases to units like Kallus and Veers as well. Overall as of now Empire 100% came out on top in these points changes.
AJ: The fact that the Storm Heavy Response Unit has not been touched yet is the biggest shock. One can only hope that the rules changes affect this to shake up the only remaining meta list.
Tim: As a Canadian, I know when a blizzard is brewing. There is one brewing. Blizzard not getting touched is certainly interesting. We could easily see that archetype live or die by the upcoming rule changes.
Nik: No major changes seems fine. Outside of Blizzard Force, Empire is well balanced now. Maybe I’d have liked to see a small drop on Imperial Royal Guard.
Separatist Alliance
DSD Ion Blaster +15 (25), RPS Magna +6 (34)
Kyle: There are only two changes here, but they were both pretty necessary. I’m perfectly fine with Ion Spiders suddenly becoming niche rather than a staple; before they got pushed out by the now-nerfed Pykes they were essentially required for internal CIS balance reasons. This really opens up list building for droids. B1s are also huge beneficiaries of the nerfs to dodge spam overall (particularly the E-5s), even though they didn’t see any changes directly.
AJ: Six points to the Magna rocket is not really as much as I expected, especially since Retinue is the thing that helps send them over the edge. Due to Situational Awareness and Tenacity going up, I’m probably going to be getting that 6 points back by not taking training upgrades to keep the unit at the same cost.
Tue: These changes feel like my little canary bird. It seems like AMG has a general idea on what needs to be done. I’m happy about Ion cannon and RPS-6 Magna being reeled a bit back!
Lucas: The Ion Blaster the the RPS Magna both definitely needed to be nerfed; I think the change to the Ion Blaster might be a bit extreme, but I am okay with it. Pykes and Rebel DLT Captains countered B1s really hard, and now that both these units are nerfed its time for B1s to shine again. CIS also has the bounty hunters Cad Bane and Bossk which fit in super well. I think double bounty with STAPs is going to be a really strong army going forward.
Galactic Republic
ARC Troopers -6 (72), ARC Strike Team -3 (24), Phase IIs -2 (60), DC-15 -2 (24), DP-23 -2 (20), Phase I Z-6 -1 (22), Clone Comms Tech -1 (11), Clone Engineer -4 (14), Clone Medic -5 (15)
Jon “Bushfacts” Bushman: Yay! Some decreases! This certainly will open up more list building options for GAR players; maybe not the traditional Exemplar and Pyke lists that have been shining recently, but these are all long-awaited decreases that I am glad to see.
Evan Paul: The best GAR lists all had Vigilance or multiple Pykes and usually both. Clone trooper based lists are now cheaper, but don’t usually have an answer to Jedi, which is a big problem. I can only assume that Exemplar could only get worse not better, and I doubt that Clone Trooper will get changed again to make it three years in a row. Overall probably close to no net change overall which isn’t great.
Nik: GAR needs to be approached carefully, but I feel this is about right for starters. This still isn’t enough to really save the 501st though, that’ll need rules changes I think.
Kyle: Despite all these welcome little discounts on Clone Trooper units, GAR got hit really hard by the Pyke increases and the neutral upgrade increases. 501st still has a host of issues that have nothing to do with the cost of the units on their roster, and we’ll have to wait and see if those get addressed in any rules changes. On points alone, the Clone Trooper cuts are mostly a wash with the increases to other units and upgrades that GAR relied heavily upon. There are some nuggets here; the DC-15 and Clone medic in particular stand out to me as upgrades that could be quite efficient now.
Shadow Collective/Mercenaries
Pyke Capo Commander +3 (48), Pyke Syndicate Foot Soldiers +4 (44), Pyke Capo Personnel +2 (18), Black Sun Vigo Personnel +2 (20)
Nik: I’d rather have rules changes, but if you have to do points, the increases to Pykes feel right. I’d have appreciated a little love to Gar Saxon, Mandos, and Swoops. I’d like Shadow Collective to be about Maul and his Mandos, not a bunch of dodgy fish men or vans of doom.
Jon “Bushfacts” Bushman: Good points changes, but I think they just mean Shadow Collective players will play one less loaded out unit, and still be fine. Need keyword fixes. Or less of them. Mainly less of them. These are corps units that have better keywords than most special forces units. They need to be toned down.
Evan Paul: This likely brings Shadow Collective in line with most of the other factions, which of course leaves Empire standing alone atop the hill. We will surely see more Black Sun spam now, and it’s unfortunate Mandos didn’t get any help. They’re too expensive for single wound troopers.
Neutral Upgrades
Vigilance +7 (12), Burst of Speed +7 (10), Grappling Hooks +1 (2), Offensive Push +2 (6), Situational Awareness +2 (4), Tenacity +2 (6), Up Close and Personal +3 (8)
Evan Paul: Grappling hooks is the best clue to what we can expect to change with RRG, since it’s by far the only one that literally makes no sense otherwise. The training hits make it questionable what value any training upgrades give to multi-person units like corps or special forces, so Captains will probably almost disappear. Up Close and Personal should have just been errata’ed to limit to two per turn so Boba can’t spam it; he will still do it but Rex/Sabine/Han now have to weigh their options more.
Cami: Situational Awareness and Up Close & Personal stings a bit. I use those in most of my builds (Iden and Cad Bane love them). Vigilance is going to hurt a bunch, but the spamming of it lately makes it seem like a logical shift.
Kyle: The Vigilance and Situational Awareness increases were clearly targeted at dodge spam, though they effect traditional GAR and Rebel dodge spam builds significantly more than they do Pykes. The training increases are a bit of a head scratcher; those upgrades are popular (except Up Close and Personal) but that has more to do with the structure of training upgrades than cost. Tenacity in particular is the only “hit things harder in melee” upgrade and its therefore basically going to just be a +2 increase to the baseline cost of all dedicated melee units. Wookiees aren’t going to suddenly start putting Overwatch or Endurance in that slot.
Overall
Jay: I have no real reaction at this time as it seems like we are missing more info. (Thanks Jay, very official…)
Lucas: Empire seems like the clear winner here. Before the points changes, Empire and Shadow Collective seemed to be the top factions, but Empire somehow managed to basically completely dodge any nerfs. Nerfing dodge spam was necessary, but Rebels were caught in the cross fire of this nerf. I am sad to see so few points reductions outside of GAR. While GAR needed some help as a faction, there are many other units that don’t see any competitive play, and it would have been cool to see points drop on units like Agent Kallus or AT-RT’s. I think overall most of these changes are good, but I worry Empire is now going to dominate as all of the other top factions have had significant nerfs.
Evan Paul: Zoomed out, my hot take in terms of faction viability now is Rebels<GAR<CIS=SC<<<<<Empire. We’ll obviously need to see the rules updates for actual opinions, because rules/keyword changes are potentially far-reaching, and I can still hope for some errata to a variety of underused units that certainly need love.
Evan Bulriss: So, good news is my PAX list got three points cheaper (maybe I have just been a Krennic Stan this whole time?). Bad news in Rebels took a hit indirectly, but is that bad? I think the Pyke changes are just and good. The GAR stuff may not be enough, but as a pure clone list fan, I have some things I like here. This may just be long term adjustments for when Cody and his lads drop.
Tue: I’m positive about these changes. A few of them are big, but others seem like small incremental changes that people speculated around to begin with. I like small, incremental changes over world-shaking changes (looks nervously at rules changes).
Thanks TFT Staff! We’ll be back next week for some more clicks. I mean, takes.
Here are the changes in one spot, just for you, reader.
Changes summary:
Rebels:
None.
Empire:
- DF-90 Mortar +2 (40)
- Death Trooper DLT-19D -4 (30)
Separatist Alliance:
- DSD Ion Blaster +15 (25)
- RPS Magnaguard +6 (34)
Galactic Republic:
- ARC Troopers -6 (72)
- ARC Strike Team -3 (24)
- Phase IIs -2 (60)
- DC-15 -2 (24)
- DP-23 -2 (20)
- Phase I Z-6 -1 (22)
- Clone Comms Tech -1 (11)
- Clone Engineer -4 (14)
- Clone Medic -5 (15)
Shadow Collective/Mercenaries:
- Pyke Capo Commander +3 (48)
- Pyke Syndicate Foot Soldiers +4 (44)
- Pyke Capo Personnel +2 (18)
- Black Sun Vigo Personnel +2 (20)
Neutral Upgrades:
- Vigilance +7 (12)
- Burst of Speed +7 (10)
- Grappling Hooks +1 (2)
- Offensive Push +2 (6)
- Situational Awareness +2 (4)
- Tenacity +2 (6)
- Up Close and Personal +3 (8)
Speaking as someone who got into the game within the last year and plays Shadow Collective exclusively, I think the comments about Pykes needing to lose SA on top of the increases are a bit much. Yes they’re hard to punch wounds through on, but once you make them roll saves they’re just rolling surging white saves, and have terrible suppression mitigation (yes they have danger sense, but they also are native courage 1 and never getting above courage 2, so if they lose SA then something needs to change on that front to compensate, imo). A stereotypical dodgespam list with six Pykes, two Capo units, two Capo personnel upgrades and a single copy of Vigilance just increased in cost by 41 points 😅, which should tone them down a bit. And anecdotally, since I’ve been playing around with lists post-update, most of the SC lists I play now look better at 9 activations than squeezing in 10, so the cost increases combined with an effective loss of an activation seems like more than enough. AMG has made a lot of mistakes in the last year, but I think they hit the right balance with this one
As a pretty much solely Empire player, these points changes kind of make me regret buying into a small Rebels force.
These changes really just want to make me play Krennic with T-21 Storm Specialist squads even more.
Hoping the errata does better, but man these points updates really took the wind out of my sails when trying to make Rebel lists that aren’t some skew lists like double airspeeder or Echo Base Taun Tauns.
I’m in the opposite boat – Rebel player with Empire minis. Might have to switch like a dirty traitor :p