Closed Lanes: Legion is Beginning to Feel Like a One-Way Street
November 18, 2024
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In the furor around Adepticon and Worlds, AMG finally showed off all of Commander Cody’s cards and they are quite interesting. Today we’re going to take a look at all the cards that will come in the upcoming Commander Cody release.
Commander Cody will not be coming to Legion alone. In the ‘Commander Cody’ box will come three miniatures. The two companions that come with Cody are Waxer and Boil. These two unique personal upgrades add more possibilities to your Clone Armies.
Waxer comes with Scout 1, Disciplined 1 and is the Leader Miniature. Remember you can’t add more then one mini with the ‘Leader’ distinction to each unit. Waxer’s keywords are a bit odd. Scout 1 is fine… Disciplined 1 means that the unit would remove one suppression when they receive an order. This honestly seems not worth it for 15 points when a Clone Medic is also 15 points.
Boil, on the other hand, provides Scout 1 and Guardian 1. The Guardian here is a very interesting and possibly amazing keyword. A lot of clone lists work off of trying to form clone balls that can use massive firepower while staying very durable. Guardian 1 can help this durability by concentrating damage on a single ‘naked’ squad while keeping your heavy weapon squads healthy. This is also particularly applicable to piercing shots. Often, with snipers for instance, the attack pool results in 1 hit, pierce 1. This damage could be taken by Boil’s unit and keep your more expensive squads alive.
Codys card comes with quite a few Keywords, but all we’ve seen before.
Cody starts out with the same statline as Captain Rex. Cody is a Clone Trooper, five health, two courage, red defence dice, speed two, two red in melee, and surge: crit.
Where the differences begin is where Cody gets really interesting. One of the big drawbacks of Rex is that he is only Range 2 with his pistols. Cody’s Rifle on the other hand reaches out to range 4. This allows Cody to be adding to the fight and starting Fire Supported shots with surge: crit, while staying safely at range. The gun itself is two red, one black and white die with Impact 1 and Lethal 1. One big thing to note about Cody is his lack of Sharpshooter. When you fire Cody’s Rifle with no fire support you will be looking to use the two red to clear cover and the black and white to actually do damage. Cody does surge: crit so a crit is also fairly likely. The keywords on the Rifle also help make it a potent weapon to deal with saves and armour alike.
Now that we’ve talked about his offence, we should probably actually get to the keywords.
Observe 2: Cody gets a really nifty keyword here. Observe 2 as a free action gives Cody the ability to put observe tokens down at range 3 for free. This really helps up his offensive ability.
Jump 1: Fairly simple, he can get around fairly well. Jump 1 really helps when trying to perform ‘last-firsts;’ he can jump up on a building and get back down the next turn all at speed two.
Take Cover 1: Probably the least consequential keyword. Cody really wants to be doing more than handing out a dodge token. That being said, it gives Cody the ability to give a dodge to a Saber Tank which can help keep it alive. Cody can also get two dodges on the board when he activates, which could help keep your clone ball alive.
Direct: Vehicle: A headline keyword for Cody is his Direct. This Direct is great for keeping order control on units that sometimes have a hard time getting orders in GAR. It also makes taking one off vehicles in clone lists feel less out of place. Taking a single BARC or AT-RT has never been so appealing. Not to mention you could Direct some of the bigger vehicles. You can also put a comms relay on a vehicle and basically turn this into Direct: Anything.
Target 1: Another amazing ability that will give Cody an aim token at the start of probably every turn. This, along with observe tokens, makes going for an activation one shot and/or firesupport even better. The free aim also works well with Lethal 1, as you can use the aim to get pierce and the observe tokens for rerolls.
Cody’s base cost is 105 points. This is a great deal for all he can bring and surely he’ll see a lot of play in the near future.
Cody features three upgrade slots: Gear, Training, and Command. With these slots Cody has quite a bit of customizability for the exact role you want your Cody to take. Some notable upgrades are:
Aggressive Tactics: clones love surges.
Esteemed Leader: if you want your Cody playing as an offensive piece, guardian would help keep him alive.
Portable Scanne:, if you plan on using Take Cover, you might as well get two dodges per action.
All these cards have a lot of text on them. We’re going to try and boil it down below. Also, these cards have some room for interpretation When Cody comes out there’ll likely be some forum posts clarifying some things.
Cody can Observe twice for a total of four observe tokens. Also, when you shoot an enemy, if it’s a vehicle you can spend an observe token for Impact 1. Or, if the enemy unit is a trooper you can spend an observe for Suppressive.
The strength of this command card is really in being able to play a one-pip, and on your first activation have a free aim from Target, four observe tokens, and possibly another aim from an aim action. This combined with a Fire Support can really mess some stuff up as the first activation of the turn. One down side of Fire Supports is you often need to ‘spool them up’ to get maximum effectiveness. A Cody Fire Supported here can really apply the heat.
On the topic of Fire supporting, you can throw in an RPS-6 Fire Support, and spend an observe token for Impact 4, Surge: crit, Pierce 1 and a bunch of dice. This is kind of like an Anakin Saber Throw with a fire support, but at range 3-4, with slightly less Pierce.
The Impact 1 you can get from spending an observe token can also really help plink down armoured vehicles.
Big asterisk on this card though…. It does nothing against Dark Troopers.
This question is answered not long after…..
If Cody or the other unit you order with this card take wounds, Cody can shoot them.
This card is kind of either a nothing burger, or extremely threatening, depending on the list and situation. One big boon for this card is the inclusion of Guardian, via Obi-Wan or Boil. If you order the unit that has Guardian and keep them close to Cody you will be doing multiple things. First, they will be keeping Cody alive while he’s exposed; second, they will be taking some damage so Cody can fire back. Boil is probably the best bet for this card as he can cover a massive area, and wounds on the Boil unit are far less valuable then on Obi-Wan. You could also bring some medics to make this strategy work even better.
This card orders two troopers and two vehicles (four things total which is awesome). Like the one pip, this card allows for a double observe. Additionally if you spend an observe token when making an attack with a vehicle, a friendly clone trooper can make a speed-1 move after the attack.
This card, like all cards that give out of sequence free moves, is decent at minimum. One very interesting thing about this card is that it happens during the turn, not at the beginning of it like all other movement based cards we’ve seen before, (ignoring Ashoka for now, #spoilers). This is worse in some cases, but better in others. One thing you could do with this card for instance is move a clone unit into a potential fire support in the middle of the turn when your opponent really isn’t thinking about it. You could also (with a lot of setup and list preparation) move a single unit multiple times. This could really help on Hostage Exchange for instance. This trickiness is offset however by how many things have to be true to use this ability. The target of a vehicle attack must have observe tokens. This likely means Cody has already gone, and also that a vehicle then has to shoot the very choreographed target. This card is decent, and will lead to some (nasty) tricksy (hobbitses) plays, but is more difficult to set up than other “free move” cards like No Time for Sorrows or Aggressive Negotiations.
Overall Cody seems very enticing and will see plenty of play in the months to come. Cody probably opens up a couple new archetypes in GAR which is sorely needed after GAR has basically been stuck in a handful of archetypes for awhile. The one game I’ve actually played with Cody so far, he started off a turn (with an RPS fire support and on the one pip turn) doing seven damage to a Bus, at Range 3. Cody definitely has plenty of potential and some great potential for different list ideas.
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2 Responses
Hi Tim – just want to make sure I’m picturing this correctly…I’m a newer player and I haven’t played GAR, so I might be missing something, but how would Fire Support work with Cody’s 1-pip? Since it only activates him, no one else would have a faceup token, correct?
The only situation I can think of is using Direct and a Comms Relay. Is that the only way?
ah, yes. My presumption would be you’d have a Clone Commander who has Direct as well. Though a comms relay on a vehicle would also work.