Rebel Veterans – Unit Guide

This unit guide for Star Wars: Legion will cover the Rebel Veterans and their accompanying emplacement, the Mark 2 Medium Blaster.

The Rebel Veterans are experiencing a bit of a renaissance. When they originally launched, their upgrades costed a bit too much, they were rather vulnerable for their cost and were mirrored with the far superior, meta-defining Shoretroopers which didn’t help their case much.

Time has proved positive for them, as a few point cuts and some notable buffs have rocketed them to a popular Corps pick for the Rebel Alliance. So with that let’s take a look at what we got going on here.

Strengths

• Same base gun as rebel troopers but surge to hit.
• Free Dodge tokens when issued orders.
• Come with a solid emplacement.

Weaknesses

• Still Rebels, and that means white defense dice.
• Heavy upgrade trooper can be a bit of a slot machine.
• Coordinating with your mounted gun can require a bit of work.

Overview

48 Points: Only 8 more than a naked Troopers unit and they can certainly earn that.

Defense: White with surge defense, standard Rebels. If issued an order they get a dodge token and you will want to do that as they play nice with Coordinate anyway. Lack of Nimble seriously hurts though, so don’t leave them alone as the only vulnerable target.

Offense: A-280 Blaster Rifle 1 Black die, same as their less experienced brethren but these guys have learned to aim down the sights. That surge to hit is going to come in handy and make them more dangerous.

Their melee is of course, a single black die that you want to avoid getting into at all cost.

Courage 1: Woof. Rebels don’t get any Courage 2 corps as a baseline even if these guys seem like the ones who should. As a result you have to worry about the same problem every other Galactic Civil War corps does: don’t let yourself get pinned down.

Coordinate: Emplacement Trooper While not as game busting as the Shoretroopers were, the emplacement gun that came with the troopers got a lot better with a slight buff that makes it pretty nasty to go up against now. We’ll discuss it in detail below but there are a lot of reasons this is good.

The Mk2 Medium Blaster is cheaper than another naked rebel trooper squad with far better damage output and helps draw out the rebels order pool early on, something they wrestle with often. In short it’s pretty good now!

Defend 1: Generally speaking not as good as Nimble. Nimble can mean always having a dodge token on you with Vigilance in play; Vigilance relies on getting issued orders each turn which may or may not happen. Once it’s gone, it’s gone so don’t get cocky.

Upgrades

You really only have two unique upgrades, the extra Veteran Trooper and the CM-0/93. The extra ablative wound from an extra trooper is pretty easy to skip here. At only 9 you can add it if you have the points to spare and little else to use them on but it likely will not severely change their survivability. Veterans are also not a bad purchase naked; with superior firepower to the standard Rebel Troopers without needing to push themselves into danger like Fleet Troopers do you can get away with taking them by themselves for a little extra overhead cost.

I generally avoid adding too much in the way of Personnel because of how delicate these guys can be, it’s a lot of points to dump on what can paint a target on their head. Medical Droids can be good if you have some open space and want to support a Commander or Operative you feel is at heavy risk of being focused on, such as Luke or Sabine. It’s a hefty commitment in points and whether you do or don’t is going to be up to personal preference.

You’d be missing out if you didn’t fill the heavy weapon slot though.

CM-0/93

Take note that as of two Rules Reference updates it is now Range 4 and only 26 points, a real bargain at this price. Being Range 4 helps keep them out of the way of where most of the shooting happens, at range 3. With your very soft boys any way to keep them out of the line of fire should be taken advantage of.

There’s another reason the gun is valuable: Anti-armor. Although white dice are notoriously bad, that Critical 2 is a real spotlight for the unit. The DLT-20a on Rebel Troopers occupies a similar role with its 2 Black and 1 White Range 4 gun, but that only has Critical 1. Both dice only have 1 critical symbol on them so this is the potential to do twice as many criticals.

We’ve shifted to a more armor-heavy meta in recent months. With the Clone Wars factions sporting some mean tanks and Rebels having the Party Bus it’s more important than ever to have some means to deal with armor. This isn’t going to suffice as your only Anti-Armor of course, it’s much too random for that. Combined with fire from other units though you will eventually chip off a decent chunk of damage and that is a big part of their list blown off the table.

Still, with 4 white dice you’ve effectively got a slot machine. You’ll want someone to hand out Aims if possible like K2 or C-3PO, some electro binoculars or take aim yourself. You got good range so moving up becomes less vital than it would be at range 3. I’d say maybe bring targeting scopes but these guys are still very vulnerable so I wouldn’t waste too many upgrade points on them because your opponent may take that opportunity to dispose of the threat early.

Mark-2 Medium Blaster Trooper

Comes with the box and you can consider them a pair, honestly. You can’t bring one without the Rebel Veterans but they rather cozily occupy a second corps slot, giving you two of your three right out of the gate.

Defense: Same as the vets, white die but with surge. Same rules apply with keeping it alive, potentially moreso because you don’t get Nimble or Defend. They were eventually errata’d from 3 health to 4 health which makes them just as sturdy as a naked Veterans unit but without degrading their firepower as they lose health.

Offense: You got an A-280 Blaster Rifle if you need to move but that’s not what we’re here for, we want that sweet Medium Blaster. You can’t move and fire but look at that! Critical 2 and 4 black! Combined with fire support you can do some real mean things, even if it means needing to set up early. Guard sight lines and tight corridors so you always have an open shot.

Courage 2: Alright then, I guess a Rebel Corps unit can get 2 Courage! Given how pokey these guys are it really is more crucial that ever that they not lose an action during activation and with 2 courage they hold pretty decent odds of keeping their shit together to do that. Especially if supported with a Commander with Inspire.

Fire Support: You can do some truly awful things with this if you have the right Heroes backing them up. When these units first appeared there weren’t as many truly good units to pair up with them with fire support. This has changed with a lot of strong Gunline heroes like Lando and Cassian who can hang back at range 3 (or more) and help out. Critical 2 with 4 black dice suddenly looks a lot more nasty when you can throw some red dice in with Sharpshooter, Marksman, or Pierce and use their aim tokens on your critical 2 gun.

Sentinel: Plays well with this gun, since you don’t have near the mobility of your Veteran buddies it can be hard to keep up. Rather than moving up and wasting turns, find a good safe spot to camp with a good line of sight and wait. It also is a great way to get around Cumbersome as it only applies to the same activation not the same turn. So move up and then Standby.

Strategies

As Rebels, your corps units tend to be more disposable. You’re often bringing them to shore up your Heroes or Special Forces and do some less dignified tasks like hold objectives. That doesn’t necessarily mean you want to throw their lives away! As delicate as the Veterans are, there are some tricks you can use to keep them alive and make them the most effective they can be.

Pass Out Orders

Crucially, you want to keep your Rebel Veterans and Medium Blaster troopers within range 1 as much as you can. You also want to issue them orders any time you can so more units benefit from Coordinate. This might seem like basic knowledge but it’s really important to keeping the wheels turning. More than any other army, Rebels suffer from a supremely overcrowded Order pool. Often you have a smattering of many different things going on and not as many tricks to help pass out orders and water the pool down a bit. This is one of your key ways. With just two orders you can strip 4 Corps tokens out of the pool, which in many cases will be enough to remove Corps entirely and remove a touch of randomness from the list.

Fire Support!

This is key. On it’s own Fire Support has some disadvantages, it effectively only gives the unit giving Fire Support one action (Attacking) before being forced to flip over your order and you can only do it if the unit has a face up order token. It also means you have one less activation on the turn you fire support, which can be an issue on the tail end of your turn.

On the flip side there are some real shenanigans you can get up to with it. Part of the recent popularity of Rebel Veterans is that there did not use to be the same rich vein of units to work in to Fire Support for making an effective shot. Alone a 4 Black Crit 2 gun is pretty good but you’re really hoping for those surges to do some damage. Times have changed however and there is a bounty of really good options out there.

Gunline heroes like Lando and Cassian are natural fits. They can easily be placed at range 3 (or more, with Cassian) in easy view of the same target as the Medium Blaster and their contribution to the damage pool can make a huge difference. Both characters add Pierce 1 which is always a welcome boon. Lando adds Sharpshooter 2, letting you ignore cover while Cassian adds Tactical (feeding much needed aim tokens to your Critical 2) along with Marksman (for potentially more crits if you already hit your two surges).

A Bistan Pathfinder unit also adds many more dice to the pool, increasing the odds of rolling a few surges to get those sweet sweet criticals. With Impact 1 that can be 3 or more hits against armor, which is nothing to scoff at!

Essentially, you want to pair them up with units that can offer useful keywords, add some Aim tokens to the pool, or let you throw lots of dice in the hopes of scoring more criticals.

Keep your distance and Standby

So enough about offense, lets talk defense. This goes without saying but you got a Range 4 gun, use it! Without Nimble you’re at a higher risk against sustained fire than Rebel Troopers are so don’t be so bold with pushing them up. Make effective use of cover in order to hide in a good vantage point and instead of taking unnecessary risks don’t be afraid to hold in standby instead if you can’t get close enough.

This goes similarly with the Mk2 Medium Blaster Trooper. While it may only have Range 3, with the power of Sentinel that’s all you really need. Cumbersome and being Speed-1 can be a serious hurdle to being able to do a normal attack with the Mk2. However, Cumbersome only applies to the same activation. You can move, Standby and then open fire as soon as something is foolish enough to walk into your line of sight.

Conclusion

As the humble Corps unit, the Rebel Veterans can be a real workhorse for your army. They’re more experienced than the fresh faced recruits and may be able to teach the young whippersnappers a thing or two about fighting off tyranny. If you’re looking for a soldier with a bit more grit and dedication, consider adding Veterans to your list, supported with Medium Blasters we can totally win this thing!