Closed Lanes: Legion is Beginning to Feel Like a One-Way Street
November 18, 2024
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In this article I will rank all the Rebel units in Star Wars: Legion.
The recent points update brought quite a few cuts to a slew of Rebel units, shuffling around the internal balance of the factions and (hopefully) allowing the recently struggling Rebel Alliance to compete with their red save nemeses. We’ll take a look at how things shake out for the Rebel roster after the points update. Also, while I’m sure Ewoks will shake things up, they aren’t actually out yet so they won’t be included on this list.
Tier lists like this one are meant primarily to drive discussion. These are just my opinions. If you disagree, let me know in the comments!
I’m sure you’re familiar with the S through F grades inherent in tier lists, but we’re going to add a bit more nuance to those ranks:
S- Highly competitive. These are units that should feature in most serious competitive Rebel lists, and if you aren’t running them, you have a very specific build in mind and a good reason to exclude them.
A – Competitive. These are units that will be the cornerstone of many competitive lists.
B – Solid. Good units that are good at their roles and perform them well, though they may not be the centerpiece of your list.
C – Viable. Units that can be good in specific builds that are designed to feature them, or units that support other more foundational units reasonably well but don’t stand up on their own.
D – Situational. Units that perform niche roles and are usable in certain circumstances, but you need a good reason to run them.
F – Handicap. If you are taking these units, you are probably just handicapping yourself.
Without further ado, lets dive in.
Or the “Cassian” tier, if you prefer.
Cassian was already a staple of Rebel lists before the points update, and then he got a ten point reduction via his now-free gun. Cassian brings reliable unlimited range damage that bypasses most defensive tech, and he does it while fulfilling your Commander slot. His command cards also offer excellent support to other Rebel characters. He’s a particularly good match for Ahsoka or Boba, who both feature high on this list. If you are running a Rebel list without Cassian, you need a really good reason for it.
If you are taking Cassian, you are taking K2, who offers extreme token generation for Cassian himself (or another target, if you want) while offering a reasonably durable package with a spiky slot machine pistol at close range once he gets in the mix. K2 also has some amusing objective play due to Inconspicuous.
Or the “stuff that’s just really good” tier.
Definitely not a GAR unit, the Star Wars: Rebels version of Ahsoka brings a durable, flexible force user package with solid command cards for a reasonable price. Defend 1 is an incredible keyword on any force user, doubly so on Ahsoka who can also use those dodges for offense. Perhaps most critically, she has two training slots unlike her Rebel competitors for this role (both versions of Luke) so she can take Into the Fray to weather the Deflect nerf and still have a slot open for something else.
Though only slightly older than his Empire version, Rebel Boba (or BRoba, if you prefer, which I do) fulfills a similar role in Rebels: that of a flexible linebacker unit that can make plays when necessary. BRoba doesn’t have the raw speed or offensive power as his Empire version, but even a watered down version of the Boba package makes for a very solid unit, and BRoba has some tools that his younger self doesn’t. His rocket is noticeably better, and the combination of Independent: Standby and Sentinel can force your opponent into some awkward choices, especially if you can get him into melee.
Unfortunately, the best Rebel corps unit is not really a Rebel unit at all. Pykes are still excellent units, with very strong offense and above average defense, as well as Courage 2 when you bring the Capo personnel upgrade along. Unfortunately, they don’t help fill your corps minimums, but if you’re bringing somewhere from 4-6 corps and you can find the points to bring upgraded Pykes, it’s well worth it.
If you are taking Pyke Foot Soldiers, you’ll want a Capo, and a Capo does more than a generic officer does for those Pykes for only three points more. The fact that he doesn’t fill your minimum commander slot is also less of an issue for the commander than it is for the foot soldiers, since you have an excellent alternative to check that box already (in Cassian).
Well this is a big tier. You have to fill out the meat of your roster somehow, and you’re probably going to start here.
Leia has always had solid support abilities and a decent enough command hand (especially No Time for Sorrows) and now she comes at a very affordable cost after the last points update. If you can afford it and have space in your command hand, Leia is well worth the upgrade over a generic officer.
Of course, sometimes you don’t have those points to spare or your command cards are already spoken for (maybe because you’re running Cassian and Ahsoka). Our old friend Gideon is here for you. He’s squishy, he only hands out one token, and his offense is laughable, but he’s reasonably useful and only costs 45 points.
Everyone’s favorite Wookiee remains a very solid choice to slot into any Rebel list, with his solid offensive output and extremely useful Guardian ability. Let’s face it, Rebel units are squishy, and Chewie helps take some of the edge off those painful attacks by selflessly jumping in front of those lasers to take the wounds on his attrition-immune profile. Chewie also happens to have an excellent ranged attack against Dark Troopers with his combination of Surge: Crit, Impact, and Pierce, which is rare and therefore valuable on the Rebel roster.
Both varieties of Rebel Mandos got massive points reductions in the last update. While they were very bad before, 11-12 points is a big reduction, and enough to remind people that their potent rocket attack at Range 4 actually kind of hurts a lot. They’re still extremely vulnerable to bad dice on defense and the offense downgrades when they lose minis, but they’re fast and hard hitting. If you can find ways to keep them alive (which Rebels do have tools for) you’ll get good mileage out of that package.
Let’s state the obvious here: we’re talking about sniper strike teams, not sabs. Sabs got massively hurt by the new wound allocation rules (even moreso than their sniper counterparts) and their offensive profile doesn’t really justify the huge risk anymore.
On the other hand, High Velocity and Pierce are highly valued commodities, especially in a meta where the already-good dodge and red save spam that GAR is capable of has become even better with the functional deletion of Force Choke from the scene. Though sniper strikes got the double whammy of cover changes making it much harder to line up light/no cover shots with their small pools and the short end of the wound allocation rules, they’re still a necessary part of the Rebel roster, especially when there isn’t another obvious value for their still-reasonable price point.
The landspeeder got some huge cuts in the last points update, making players reconsider if that Unstable Astromech double hardpoint build actually is any good after all. Turns out a strong seven dice pool tapped twice in a row actually does quite a bit of work if you’re looking for an alpha strike build, and now you can do that for as little as 108 points. You can of course still put R2 in one of these if you want, to double as some repair insurance while threatening to score that extra point.
You need to take some corps units to make your list legal, and Vets are the least bad option there. They still fold to any kind of concentrated fire, lacking any real defensive tech and having just vanilla surging white saves, but their offense is decent for their cost (when you take the CM-93) and they give you access to the affordable and useful Mark II, for a combined cost that comes in much cheaper than any reasonable pair of Rebel Trooper units with heavy upgrades. Vets and Mk2s are also extremely solid (and required) in an Echo Base defenders list.
These units all do something interesting but probably have cheaper and/or stronger alternatives above.
Lando got a nice cut in the points update, but it’s still a bit unclear exactly where he fits into the Rebel roster. Cassian has similarly useful command cards but a much better offensive profile, gives you access to K2, and is cheaper to boot. If you are bringing Lando, you want to be getting good use out of his Contingencies abilities, and it isn’t super clear how you are going to do that with the way that Rebel character lineup shakes out at the moment.
All that said, he has a decent gun with Sharpshooter 2 (which is huge these days) and very solid cards. You could certainly do worse for your commander slot.
Luke might be the force user that took the single biggest hit from the Deflect nerf besides Dooku. Commander Luke lacks any training slots at all for Into the Fray, and Jedi Luke only has one, which now has to be filled with Into the Fray. Jedi Luke’s offense really feels lackluster without Tenacity. Luke still has excellent command cards and his commander version is now dirt cheap, but Ahsoka comes in right between the two Luke’s in cost (only 15 more than the reduced commander Luke) and brings plenty to the table while having the required two training slots to deal with the Deflect nerf.
Commander Luke could still be solid in an Echo Base list, where you can still use Force Push to do some silly things with Hold at any Cost.
Units with small dice pools and no Sharpshooter 2 got hit hard by the cover changes, and Sabine is no exception. While she’s still fast and reasonably durable, and Explosions! still blows things up, it’s much harder to do real damage with Sabine on her non-Explosions turn, and that is a lot to pay 125+ points for. There is a case to take her with Ahsoka (for the teamwork card) or Clan Wren for Retinue (because of how solid and cheap they are now) but don’t expect Sabine to contribute to your offense like she used to.
Speaking of units with small dice pools hurt by the cover changes, here’s Han! Han had a brief renaissance after the ’21 points update when he got Steady, but his double red dice pool, while reliable into no cover or light cover, is absolutely miserable for his cost (and its range) into heavy cover, which is mostly what you’re doing these days.
Han’s command cards are still excellent and he still has Chewie (and Chewie is solid) so you might be able to make the case for him there.
Previously a very niche unit, full commandos got a nice boost in the ’21 update with the Low Profile change and their offense is respectable at Range 3. Now that larger pools with Sharpshooter are in high demand, it’s worth looking at full commandos again, and you can keep them alive with Chewie. They’re still much more expensive in the same slot than their strike team counter parts, but if you have the points they’re a decent way to up your list’s non-armor damage into cover.
This thing is really cheap now, and it’s also a dedicated Impact unit, which is a rare commodity on the Rebel roster. In a world where you still need to tech against Dark Troopers lest you get run over by them, the FD Cannon fulfills an important role for a reasonable cost.
Being unable to move is still really rough, however, and tailoring your battle deck to force your opponent to deal with your stationary dish is a lot harder than it used to be.
We might as well continue the Echo Base theme here. Tauntauns have always been disruptive and annoying units, and now you can take them for their original cost again (remember when they were meta defining terrors?) You can also take four of them in Echo Base, and there is almost certainly some unexplored territory there.
The new overhang and climb rules definitely make it pretty difficult for Tauntauns to actually melee things on certain maps, but their pistols are still decent and they’re still great in space when they don’t have to chase things up onto buildings.
Oh yeah, this thing still exists. While the (entirely justified) changes to closed transports made it much harder to deliver a W key unit to your opponent’s doorstep, the A-A5 is still a reasonable price for a support vehicle, and you’ll soon be able to put tiny, cheap murder bears in one of these, if that’s a thing you want to do.
Fast and hard hitting, while filling an in-demand role on the Rebel roster with it’s strong anti-armor attack, there is one reason the T-47 is so far down on this list: Dark Troopers. Everyone bringing the required level of Impact to play even with Dark Troopers means they’re bringing an amount sufficient to more than overkill most other armored units, especially the poor T-47.
These are all units that may nail a certain theme or have a place in specific lists, but you need a very good reason to be running them in a competitive list.
Of all the Rebel omissions from the recent point cuts, Jyn is perhaps the most stark. Her already lackluster dice pool is found even more wanting now as her shots usually just bounce straight off cover, even with her Sharpshooter 1. She is still very durable and Complete the Mission is still a situationally amazing command card, but her other command cards are outclassed by other options in her slot and you can pretty much ignore her on the table in favor of other targets.
When Din was released, he begged an answer to the question “can a melee character without force push be good enough?” So far, as with the previous experiment (Grievous) in this category, the answer is no. Din’s pistol was decent when he came out, as two red/one black with Lethal is a decent punch when catching targets out of cover, but Din is one of many Rebel heroes that, like above, have that small dice pool with Pierce and no Sharpshooter 2.
Din can still be pretty disruptive when he’s directly in your face and in melee (and he’s more likely to be able to get those out of cover shots with the pistol) but at his price point he just isn’t good enough in that role to justify it.
Unlike his Empire counterpart, IG-88, IG-11 can’t combine his attacks into one pool to make cover easier to bypass, he lacks the same reliable value in his command cards, and he has a fairly punishing AI while being difficult to give orders to. While IG-11 is capable of some very splashy plays with Self Destruct and Mechanical Carnage, that just isn’t enough reliability at his price point.
R2-D2 in D tier?!?! What have we come to?
R2 is a squishy character that doesn’t do much besides try and score victory points, and we live in a meta where bounty hunters are both effective and popular, which often makes R2 something of a liability to take. The trash can’s reign of Secret Mission induced terror is over and has been for awhile, and maybe that’s a good thing?
The first but not last Rebel corps unit in this tier, Fleets are reasonable as naked units (or medbot delivery) but they are just too squishy and unreliable to take as assault units, which is what you’re doing if you take their shotgun.
Rebel troopers really got hammered by the crossfire of the 2022 dodge nerfs, and they haven’t really recovered. Unlike Pykes, Rebel Troopers don’t have a good way to generate or keep dodges without Vigilance, and even then you are looking at just one dodge token at a given time, which is unlikely to be enough for what you’re paying. The SX-21 got an amusing decrease in the last update, but the Ithorian shotgunner is unfortunately still just structurally bad, and all of the other Rebel Trooper heavies are really crying out for a decrease unless Rebel Troopers get some kind of buff to their utility or durability that doesn’t require them to rely on Vigilance.
Boy, how I would love to just give these guys a good old fashioned generic heavy weapon that just added dice and did nothing else. Bistan is pretty solid, but he’s unique, and Pao doesn’t do what you need a heavy weapon upgrade to do (add offense), so you are probably limited to just one of these unless you are doing something specific with a bunch of infiltrating naked Pathfinders. Why can’t Melshi just walk over to a Rebel Trooper unit, pull rank, and commandeer one of those Z-6s that the Rebel Troopers probably weren’t using anyway?
Wookiees got hammered by the training upgrade increases and the Scale changes, but the Ranged Wookiees got slightly less hammered than their melee counterparts, since they didn’t use Tenacity and they weren’t as dependent on the increased mobility from Scale. These guys are still usable for what you’re getting, though still worse than their GAR counterparts who have better token access and can kick off interesting fire supports.
How the mighty furballs have fallen. Offensive Push and Tenacity were both common upgrades on Wookiees in their hayday, and the Scale changes in the CRB absolutely wrecked the Wookiee’s increased mobility from that keyword. Now Wookiees don’t move towards things any faster than a regular schmoe, and that just doesn’t cut it for what is likely a 100+ point melee unit.
If the T-47 is hurting from the obscene level of Impact necessitated by Dark Troopers existing, AT-RTs are absolutely crippled by it. The humble AT-RT has always been fragile despite it’s Armor keyword, and with everyone bringing huge quantities of Impact they just melt.
Swoops got a nice little cut in the last update, but they still suffer from the awkward implementation of how Overrun stacks (where you have to make two separate moves and can’t combine the pools). They suffer even more in Rebels where you can’t take more than two, and speeders tend to be one of those units that is great in quantities of 3+ and pretty terrible as one or two ofs.
Rebels got a lot of nice cuts in the points update, enough to make them competitive again as a faction, but there were some obvious omissions and they still have quite a few units destined to languish on the shelf. What do you think of my ranks? Where would you put some of these units? Let us know in the comments!
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