Closed Lanes: Legion is Beginning to Feel Like a One-Way Street
November 18, 2024
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Atomic Mass Games gave us a peek at what’s ahead for Star Wars Legion, we’ve got everything you need to know along with some quick reactions right here!
There will be a forthcoming article to cover Shatterpoint, but let’s dive into the Legion!
Well for starters we have our first trooper unit in the support slot that is NOT an emplacement. Will Shick (AMG Head of Studio) stated that this decision was to add variety to squad building and I wholeheartedly agree with the decision!
There’s a lot of text for Advanced Targeting: 1 but it amounts to this:
With that out of the way, I’d like to also remind folks not to get TOO excited about that personnel slot, all the original personnel such as the R4 and medic droid got changed to “Imperial Corps only” with an errata, so this unit will only be able to take the standard “extra guy,” or “The Fifth Trooper” as some may say.
That Range 5 Impact gun feels like the “Wookiee Long Gun” of this set, with the way cover is those range 5 shots won’t connect much and at 4 and below the dice are better math wise with the 4 dice gun. Speaking of which, for the sake of perspective we’ll compare to Rebel Pathfinders which are also a Range 4 focused unit. A Pathfinders with Bistan (84 points) throws 7 whites and black with surge to hit which averages to forcing 3.64 saves in the open range 4, while these guys (88 points with the T-21) will average 4.48 assuming the target is a trooper (which it will be almost all the time). That’s slightly LESS than an UNAIMED Death Trooper shot with the DLT (102 points) which averages 4.61. So, appropriately it seems, the average damage is between those 2 units except that the Range troopers won’t have to recover to use the weapon next round AND is suppressive. For a little more context, that range trooper shot will deal a little more than 1 wound and always 2 suppression to a stormtrooper in heavy cover, not bad!
But here’s the kicker: Armor 1. That makes them almost immune to snipers not named Echo, Iden, or Cassian and makes them a pain for any army that isn’t able to pile their attack dice into big hits. As a final point, I think that mixing indomitable and spur is a fun way to make it somewhere in between speed 1 and 2, you really gotta work those hammies to walk around in that insulated armor I guess.
I really do have to applaud AMG for putting so much thought into the design here from a defensive perspective. If you never played the game, which was remastered a couple years ago and played great on PS4/5 by the way, the short story is that the characters had the classic Halo 1 style “rechargeable shields above permanent health” thing which is perfect here. Shielded 1 and Recharge 1 will make it a pain for snipers throughout the game, as opposed to just the beginning of the game for the Mandalorian Super Commandos whose shields can’t come back. What’s more, the Katarn Pattern Armor allows for a defense against opponents using huge attack pools to take down a shielded enemy, which is often the right strategy for something like Droidekas. This is the first time in the game that damage would be reduced by so much, if you roll all blanks against a fire supported mega shot with 14 hits you’ll still only take 1…of course you can only use it once so it sets up an interesting dynamic. I can tell you for sure they will love medics.
We know that there’s one other upgrade card in the set (their armament) as well as the Delta Force unique unit card so we’ll have to put a rain check on really evaluating this thing. One thing I WOULD like to point out though is that their gun in the game could be converted from a sniper rifle to an assault rifle to a grenade launcher so I bet it will be similar to the E-11D. It’s a strong start though, I think the nature of those weapons will greatly affect how often I’ll use that token on offense vs on defense…of course, we also can’t assume yet how things will work if you run multiple Commandos, do you get multiple Complete the Mission tokens? More to come, but I can’t wait!
From a format perspective this may be the wildest unit yet, an operative with 10 health and 5 minis. We can assume that they’ll have command cards as well which would be lovely and interesting. It seems that unlike with Inferno Squad or Clan Wren though, the added heavies are going to be exclusive to this unit, and thus the hefty 160 point squad cost is actually reflective of what you get. Therefore, in a way, this will be one of the few units in the game where you don’t have to worry about upgrade choices (aside from the Mercenary Rebel version, which was announced previously but not shown this time, but is assumedly cheaper since it would be missing Crosshair but can add Omega). Speaking of Omega, I like this design a lot and it seems to be worded in a way that should hopefully avoid rules headaches, but I’m sure folks will find a way I believe in you. Hard to say more about her without seeing the Merc unit card though.
For the Republic version we can say a lot more, but not everything since we haven’t seen the cards for 3/5’s of the unit. A range 2 base gun and steady generally makes sense since all these guys use pistols a bunch in the show, which tends to take place in cramped corridors more than open battlefields and that they’re on the move all the time. On to Hunter…sweet liberty this is a lot of text, let me grab my telescopic monocle.
Hunter has always read to me as the “First Blood” version of Stallone so I gotta say this ability (which is basically a Diet Bizarro World Force Choke) is perfect and has the potential to set up a lot of comedy when Palpatine can’t quite finish him off with his 1-Pip and Hunter saves the galaxy with just one knife. Crosshair also forms a nice middle ground in my opinion. The “sniper” part of his deal will mostly be in the first 2 rounds of the game, and will be scary indeed for any trooper unit caught out of cover. If they do have cover, a 1/4 chance of inflicting a wound with no lost tempo (due to Steady) ain’t half bad. Mid game and on he’ll be the source of Pierce 1 for their shots as well as a way to squeeze extra value out of aims with Precise 1.
Just like with Commandos it’s really not possible to pass any real judgment without the other cards but it’s a very cool start and the models (like always recently) look incredible.
That’s the end of any card text but there were plenty more product announcements!
These were described as being inspired by clandestine units as shown several times in Rebels and, later, Andor. Shick described working very closely with LFL on the design space so I am betting that from a gameplay perspective there will be a lot of new ideas. There sure are a lot of minis here: since the riot control squad is a corps then this likely is as well. Also, look, a cat! Could have been a Space Pomeranian though, big misstep by the devs IMO.
The counterpoint to partisan sabateurs is, of course, the cops. There’s a couple ways they may go about this, but I bet it’ll be similar to battle shield Wookies since we have that precedent, switching to stun batons when they get close and immobilizing some fools. This also appears to have one heavy weapon that is a rifle of some kind but the rest look to have E-11’s so it will probably be able to shoot at range 3 (without surge hit I bet to differentiate them from regular storms).
But the coolest thing is the Tactical Droids. Myself and many others have been hoping that these guys, who are very fearsome both in Jedi: Fallen Order and a particularly memorable and unsettling scene from Andor, would show up in our fair game. One could imagine they’ll have Calculate Odds, and the fact that there’s two minis makes me think that this is to allow them to be used as personnel in older Imperial Corps units. Shick used the term “serious corps melee punch” so I think we know what rank this will be, it may be hard to believe but in a few months we’ll have reached half a decade since the release of Shore Troopers!
This is the Art-Deco prequel silliness of robots that we all live for. We were told that they have two weapon options but what are they? We also know there’s two in a unit but will it be a Heavy or Support? Good questions, I got nothing, to Wookiepedia I go!
My bet is that…one of them is a blaster. Also, apparently they have a 4th degree so at least we know they’re very well educated.
This is the first terrain pack that was an AMG creation, since the crashed X-wing pack had been inherited from FFG. Like most of their packs for Marvel: Crisis Protocol and Shatterpoint it contains multiple medium/small pieces instead of one huge one which had been the status quo for Legion. It’s a welcome change since these are expensive, but this looks pretty good to help fill out a table.
Prequel era players have been hoping for a third Corps option for a long time and Aqua droids (along with the next-previewed unit) are often pitched as the best choice. Now, to be accurate, their status in this rank wasn’t confirmed but I feel pretty good about it being son. Starting with Dark Troopers, Atomic Mass has clearly shown that they’re not only willing but clearly eager to shake off the shackles of what “ranks” really mean in this game. So, they had a choice here. They could have made models that were skinny enough for a standard trooper base but also significantly taller than Wookiees (they are nearly 3 meters tall in the canon guys) or they could put it on a small notched base and have them look “normal,” or at least as normal as battle droids ever look. Their weapons are similar to B2’s in the few scenes we see them in Clone Wars but I’m sure they will be distinguished in one way or another, my prediction is actually they they’ll have Wookiee-style saves along with Unhindered and maybe Scout 1. I’d also wager they won’t have a personnel slot, that poor T-Series is like Kino Loy, he can’t swim!
Given the number of minis this is almost assuredly the third Corps unit, which we’ve been pining for…for a long time. My guess is that these will have Scout, Range 4 white dice guns, and surging white defense dice (since canonically their armor isn’t as good as clone armor. But maybe that’s just my poor imagination, because that basically makes them Pathfinders who can do some token sharing. I’m excited either way, I like the look of these guys (I think they also all have their own poses, so maybe we can stop talking about that), and am looking forward to seeing more…but this part wasn’t the real news.
This was. Oh baby, we gettin’ generic Jedi! This will basically in my opinion address the lone significant issue with squad construction for Republic: the lack of an ability to represent the parade of “Also-Ran” Jedi who are known names but only showed up in once scene or one episode pack of Clone Wars. Shick also confirmed that these would be able to attach not only to ARF troopers but ARC troopers as well, which may also give us the first real reason to run an ARC with the intent of charging in to use those pistols.
Ok, these pictures above are real and from the presentation but the rest is my analysis so bear with me. Shick said something that really caught my attention at the tail end of the segment about the Jedi attachment. I’m going to start by giving an exact quote with my formatting for emphasis.
“One of our big, pushy points, and you’re gonna see this kind of evolve over the coming releases as we push more even more into the future and 2025 just to note is gonna be a big year for us. We’re kind of on the cusp of, like, a big explosion of a lot of things we’ve been working really hard on. We mentioned at last Ministravaganza the idea of:, we’re taking the soft plastic pieces and moving them to hard plastic. We have a lot of really killer new sculpts and new characters and new releases and stuff. If you caught the last episode of the That’s No Moon interview that I did we talked about a lot about ‘faction identity’ and what does that mean and how do we make these four factions kind of unique and interesting alongside Battle Forces. We’ve been doing a lot of work internally that’s finally coming to fruition. You know we always mention about how our timeline cycles are two years from concept to completion and sometimes big projects take a little longer. But this is a bit of a view into the explosion of Legion stuff that you’re gonna start seeing at the next Adepticon when we’re together. We’re gonna have a lot of really cool stuff that’ll be finally ready to show.“
Shick also stated that these would be coming out at the same time as the resculpts of the Rebel and Imperial Troopers that were shown previously. He said there would be more to show at Ministravaganza, which will take place this July. He then concluded by showing the timeline of all the above.
Alright folks, I just gotta say…this smells a lot like a Second Edition to me. We’ve now seen resculpts of units that were entirely in Core sets, releasing at the same time (Q3 2025) and tying that in to discussions about a new philosophy, I’d be surprised if it’s anything else at this point. However, rather than spend more time speculating now, I’ll link to what I posted on Friday which gets into the details of why I think this is headed our way.
Regardless of what MAY be in the future, there’s clearly plenty to be excited about now! Special thanks to MajorDomoOCake, Legion Discord Mod, for collating screenshots.
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