No amount of gravy, wine, and socially-enforced gratitude in my bloodstream can prevent it from boiling.
Yeah, hey, welcome to The Fifth Trooper. You see, I had a new round of unit guides to post, it was going to be a run-of-the-mill, non-controversial, milk run of a post. And yeah, it’ll get here…eventually. Today though, as I reflected on all the wonderful aspects of my life such as my wonderful wife, my two little pups, that my brother and parents are not only healthy but now all live fairly close by, the fact that I enjoy my work and colleagues, there remained a glaring truth: one that taunts me like a Hidebehind in the shadowy corners in the labyrinth of fatuous thoughts that is my mind.
There are some things about Star Wars: Legion that annoy me a little bit.
Now now, I know what you’re thinking: “But Doc, didn’t you go on and on both in an article and then a podcast last week about issues you had with the game?” Well yes, and thanks for noticing, but all that was written/spoken of in an honest effort to explore where the game may become better. What I’m going to touch on here is…well, it’s also honest, but unlike that other stuff I’m not interested in making a space for differing opinions. What follows are TRUTHS about this game, they are not flitting shapes in the sky that are open to interpretation of whether they represent a harmless dove or a hurtling stone. These are the be-waddled, gobbling, unabashed, TURKEYS OF LEGION 2.6!
And it’s time to eat.
When I was a kid I wanted to be a marine biologist. I grew up in Baltimore, Maryland and thus had access to one of the best aquariums in the world: one that my parents were glad to take me to over and over again given the inner harbor’s relative safety compared to pretty much any other part of town. I thought whales and sharks were cool as hell, and nothing incited the rage of a young Evan Paul like the idea that anyone would hunt either one for food or oil or whatever else. But crabs? This was Baltimore, crabs existed for only one purpose: to be boiled, placed in a bucket, manually smashed into pieces, and consumed covered with so much old bay you can’t see even a speck of meat under it all.
So you see, I’ve encountered a crab or two in my time, but you don’t need to have grown up near the tastiest crabs in the world with a bedroom full of “Wildlife Fact Files” to know a certain common trait that most crabs share. I’d venture that any child who is capable of even saying the word “crab” can tell you how they walk. General Motors is even advertising their wacky lateral tire feature on the Hummer EV based on their particular brand of gait.
Notice that word above? Lateral. Sideways. The opposite of “backward and forward.” Now then…Atomic Mass Games…could you please tell me…
WHY CAN THESE THINGS ONLY GO BACKWARD AND FORWARD?!
Don’t belittle me with your knowledge of the canon, I AM aware that in the shows they’re shown moving as such, but I’m a reasonable man. I’m OK (begrudgingly) with those notches on the front and back, but I am NOT ok with not having notches on the side. What’s worse: “they” are trying to suggest we should feel satisfied that, with the new free pivot all vehicles get followed by the use of Reposition that we can functionally move to the side as expertly diagrammed here:
But they should know us better than to be tricked by such a thing. Any real crab that moved like that would be sent to crab jail as an obvious doppelganger (probably a disguised lobster from the North!)
Consider my pre-order canceled.
I’ve played a lot of games of Legion over the years, hell I’ve even watched a bunch of games being streamed despite the raised eyebrows and silent judgment from my beloved wife by doing so. I even got started immediately after the Clone Wars starter was released, so no old-timer you can’t tell me I haven’t been around long enough. I say this because the following is literally a true statement despite hundreds of games and thousands of hours of invested time: I have never seen either of these miniatures on the field once.
Not once. And while I’m pretty sure someone has somewhere, like maybe 10 or less worldwide ever? But, if they truly had not? I would believe it.
Let’s start with the obvious: it’s not exactly hard to see why they never quite tore up the scene. Coordinating a full chain does take a little bit of practice but it’s completely possible to do it on your own without the need to spend 12 points on an upgrade to get some extra wiggle room. When it comes to the security droid…well, see the previous sentence: you can just, you know…GET a faceup order and save yourself the 9 points, for which you get one health, one more crappy white attack dice, and a one-time, ONE-TIME (until a Recover I suppose) use of preventing AI: Attack. That’s right, AI: Attack…a keyword that basically doesn’t even matter in Legion 2.6 anyway.
It’s no wonder why neither saw play, new players posting their prospective lists on Discord that contained either one would quickly feel their wrist smacked by the more experienced community, like a parent holding their child back from crossing the street into traffic. They’ve both had a third of their printed cost shaved off by now, but for some reason, we’re meant to believe the security droid is still worth 2 more than a regular old B1. Nice try AMG but both of these minis are going to stay exactly where I left them in January of 2020 when I purchased their box.
On the sprue.
When it’s either this, using PRINTED PAPER (yuck), using a Range 2 marker from Shatterpoint, or hoping that somebody else programmed their 3D printer correctly…well, I’m gonna go industrial baby. I even linked to specific products on Amazon in my Complete Legion Buyer’s Guide that use washers for POI’s and mounting brackets for half-range rulers, it’s actually more economical than getting 3rd Party 3D printed stuff
I get it, it was either this or let us take 4 dice Range 5 shots from triple-BX for an entire year, but maybe they could have come up with something more than a PDF as the official way to get half-range rulers and POI markers out there. MY IMMERSION!!!
Hey Troopaz (DL-44 sound effect) its ya boyyyyyyyyyyy Doc Velo here and today I’m here to give you my full unit guide for one of three total Operatives out there for the Galactic Republic. LIKE COMMENT SUBSCRIBE ALL THAT GOOD STUFF NOW LET’S GO NUTS FAM!
Now first thing y’all might notice is that she don’t got none of them keywords that enabled her command cards like Authoritative or Exemplar no more but she does get Bolster and Agile now which has a chance of getting you some SICK gains when you activate her early, which is always exactly what you want to do with an Operative who needs to actually stay alive to get an extra VP. If things are getting hot around her then by all means DIVE IN to get that Range 2 shot off, cuz ain’t none of the mean stuff out there attacking or charging you when you’re THAT close to ’em bros! Now lets look at those new comm-
-ands and as a new feature by the way you won’t have to worry about NONE of these face up orders ending up on anyone else in your army I guess Padme is just too Gucci for that now no cap! Anyway let’s see those new commands already whatya say?
Ah yeah that’s right fam I forgot that it’s only one new one and it’s more of what I’d call “a worse version of the old one” seeing as how it forces you to lose all shades of order control during the most important round of the new version of the game just to get a Secret Mission that is not only harder but also less meaningful, a lesser form of Infiltrate than the past, no dodge token when you do go for it, and a “game-changin’ keyword” (Inspire 1) if you don’t go for it.
…
Well that’s all we got for this glow-up of your girl Padme, remember to SMASH that subscribe button to help out ya boy Doc an-
Day 1 of Legion 2.6 was pretty wild. Even into the wee hours of the night, all sorts of discoveries were being made, not the least of which was this one which I was particularly excited to find:
ZING!
Now then, a little bit of context if you aren’t familiar with this unit. It’s a Corps that can only be used in the Blizzard Force Battle Force, the very first “Special Issue” unit the game ever had, which was added because the devs originally thought that Blizzard would be too weak without it (lol). Anyway, as of now it’s the only unit in the game with the “Flexible Response” keyword which…well, I’ll let you read from our very own legionquickguide.com:
That’s a must, not should, not may, not can. MUST. And so I MUST say that it was pretty silly that the card art, while objectively cool looking generally, didn’t quite fit the vibe of the unit, which again purely exists to “cheat” by piling two heavies onto one corps. As an extra dollop of inappropriate sauce, the stormtroopers are shown getting out of a LAAT…which is NOT available in Blizzard Force…making it extra dubious.
Anyway, after a couple of yucks were had at the art’s expense, it’s fair to say that pretty much everyone forgot about it. Maybe it would have been destined to be a little in-joke for those of us who knew of it but it certainly wouldn’t have competed with more famous oopsies such as “crit to block” and the “Dewbacle.”
Welp…
Imagine my surprise when I found out from an observant dude on Discord (R1BARA) that the card art had been strangely changed for a handful of units and command cards. And wouldn’t you know, one of them was the Stormtrooper Heavy Response Unit. I raced to the PDF, I had to know! Had they fixed it? Did they Photoshop in a DLT or RT-97? When I found it I was surprised to see that both the art and the artist were different now, also a great-looking piece by the way, but I wasn’t there for the aesthetics I was there to embrace the richness of artistic validity. And what did I find?
THAT THERE STILL AREN’T ANY HEAVY WEAPONS ON THIS HEAVY RESPONSE UNIT THAT IS OBLIGATED TO TAKE TWO HEAVY WEAPONS. And yeah, of course I zoomed in. I work for a respectable organization after all and also The Fifth Trooper. They all still have the standard issue E-11 white dice garbage. As a part of my thorough examination, I also noticed this guy on the right:
Perhaps this trooper, who seems to be firing about 30 degrees to the left of where he is actually looking, and holding his scope up to his right cheek instead of his visor, was meant to be a cute little nod to the age-old joke about how inaccurate stormtroopers are throughout the fiction. But the joke’s on you Atomic Mass Games, that guy may be missing ONE shot but by publishing this art piece you’ve now missed two in a row.
Looking forward to the third one though! “Happy” Thanksgiving!
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