Star Wars Legion’s World Team Championships 2025 has come and gone, and you really really should take a look at the results!
Table of Contents
Now in its second year, the Legion World Team Championships (hosted by International Gaming Events, which is essentially a small group of very eager beavers for minis gaming in England, who supply the massive amounts of terrain that is necessary to put on an event of this size. A truly impressive 28 teams of 4 (112 players) that included up to 3 teams per country (aside from England, which was able to take 4 teams because it was the host country this year). The countries and number of teams that participated were as follows:
- England (4)
- France (3)
- Denmark (2)
- Germany (2)
- Netherlands (2)
- Poland (2)
- Scotland (1)
- Switzerland (3)
- Sweden (3)
- United States of America (3)
- Wales (3)
For those curious, you can find the Longshanks page here, when you click on each team you are able to see all the lists for each one. I was captain of USA Team Blue, which was essentially (appropriately) our third-string team given the fact that it had me as the captain while our other two had Austin Miller and the menace known as Brian Baer.
When teams matched up, pairings were done in a pleasingly simple and fair way. After reviewing their opponent’s lists, each team decided on two lists that would be their own choice for matchups and two lists where the opponent would decide the matchup. You then end up with two pools of two lists per team, meaning each team gets to choose the matchups from that pool only. Though there were probably variations in strategy, the general thought I had was that you would allow your opponent to match the 2 lists that were most well-rounded while you did the matchups yourself for the lists that either had potential matchup problems OR were the most likely to exploit a bad matchup on your opponent’s end. Otherwise, teams were treated the same way players would be in a Swiss-style tournament, with draws (fairly common in this format, given that there were 4 players per team) counting as 1 tournament point while wins counted for 3. The tournament took place over six rounds in two days, and each round was played on 4 sets of identical tables to remove “table advantage” for matchup-making, it’s a system that works remarkably well! When you put it all together, you end up with a huge tournament that features amazing players that are ACTUALLY from across all the world, which was sadly not the case at this year’s Adepticon. SO, in some ways, I think that this can be thought of as an “alternate” worlds…from a certain point of view.
Anyway, I’ll get to the gushy stuff at the end, by now you’re probably curious about the players and lists that reigned supreme so let’s get to it. I’m going to very briefly show some general stats.
Big Picture Stats
It’s a small sample size generally but for one tournament it’s actually quite good…and the numbers honestly land about where I’d expect them to. The world continues to be rather rough, it seems, for Empire especially. Shadow Collective may have been extra-hurt here by the fact that they seemed to match poorly against CIS (which has a 72% win rate against Shadow) and GAR (which had an eye-popping 81% win-rate against Shadow in this tournament) which meant that they could get sniped in matchups. Empire has similar bullies, and thus the ability to target them in certain situations may have made a bad situation worse.
This list of the top upgrades is, in my opinion, a lovely snapshot of the meta when you consider the unit-unique ones. AT-RT is a bit inflated by being available in two factions but it’s no surprise that we see the Clone Medic (which may as well be an ARC upgrade now), the Sleeper Astromech, the Aqua Heavy, and the Ion Snowtrooper. The rest are plain and simple the best upgrades in their slots, so it’s a good list for newer players to consider if they want to make their lists a little leaner and meaner.
We’ll start with the undefeated players and then move on to the Top 6 Teams
Undefeated Players (in no particular order)
Michael “Ironli” Iseli (Switzerland 3 – Rebel)
Michael is a Patron of ours, I remember this because I surprisingly pronounced his name right on the cast which was a big moment for me? Anyway…
Lando, Bad Batch, Din, Triple Sleeper, Triple Laser RT: there are few better ways to spend around 800 points in this game than from the standpoint of efficiency, flexibility, and utility. I imagine that Leia could likely easily turn into a customizable commander once those release for even more utility…this is the kind of list that can adapt to multiple situations and 13 acts to boot. Scary stuff!
Oliver Dier (England 1 – Republic)
If there is one army in the world that is “the talk of the town,” it is this one, and if you want to hear all about it you can listen to either our podcast or “That’s No Moon” both of which had the man himself explaining how this off the wall 6 activation list (designed initially by Dave Grant) actually works, so I would direct the curious there if they want to find out more. What is notable is that this list performed much less well at the UKGE Grand Tournament event the week after WTC which may suggest that the combination of Player + List may be the key ingredient here more than anything but it’s something to watch for sure. Olly took down Luke Cook’s Vader list (in a very close game, though Vader was admittedly the character Olly was most scared of) and Mowgly’s 18 activation list Rebel list so he had a nice variety of strong opponents and lists to take down along the way.
Jocke01 (Sweden 3 – Rebel)
Lando, Bad Batch, Sleepers, Triple RT…sound familiar? As we’ve pointed out on our cast, Rebel Special Forces and Support are potentially the clearest examples of messy internal balance at a particular rank, a combination of the fact that Sleepers and RT are exceptionally efficient while the others (with the exception of Ewok Slingers, which are just fine) are exceptionally…not.
I will say that in the Op slot, there are real choices to be made for Rebels, although I was interested to see that Operative Luke did not show up as much as I would have thought among the top players and teams. Jyn certainly isn’t going to take a lot of models off the board by comparison, but she absolutely has the potential to be more annoying than would typically be expected for a 75-point unit. I’ll also point out that the Sleepers have Situational Awareness and Prepared Supplies. I’d be curious how often the SA actually mattered given the large dice pools we often deal with, but I’d bet the Supplies were helpful because for those who haven’t realized it yet, it’s the turn AFTER a Sleeper Cell dives in that it’s most vulnerable before they’ve activated, and Supplies mitigates that risk quite a bit for a very reasonable investment.
Julien “Gorgork” Villeroux (France 3 – Rebel)
France 3 obliterated my team 4-0, it was the only time we got wiped, which was sort of weird because then we forced France 2 to a 2-2 draw (with us having the VP advantage, but sadly still a draw) the day after but perhaps Julien with his creative list was their ace-in-the-hole. He WAS the only person in the tournament who beat William Warf (the GAR player on my team, who played Anakin ARCs and went an impressive 5-1) as well, not bad Julien! One advantage I see is that despite being 12 activations this list doesn’t have any units that are “easy” to quickly get rid of, with the possible exception of his 5-6 health Rebel Trooper units if shot pre-activation. In a way, this is kind of a bizarro version of the 12 Act Dooku list, one that exchanges ranged firepower and order control for extremely high range 2 power (the range that really matters) while still keeping a bit of board control when needed in the form of Force Push on Luke. Spending 40 points on an upgrade that doesn’t recover without an action is brave indeed, but given that Luke usually is only going to worry about one point anyway it’s not insane to take a Recover->Charge after he moves in. Then of course there are the super Fleets: when you run two you can use these as tempo pieces, which in turn is easier to take advantage of when you have a lot of Corps tokens in your bag as well as two copies of Improvised Orders. The nearly-naked landspeeders exist to dive on a distant point and put opponents in a position where they have to dedicate decent enough resources to take them down or just give up on contesting them: forcing your opponent to make rough choices works though, and at 56 points that might just be my biggest takeaway from this list.
But seriously, don’t try this one at home if you don’t know what you’re doing, this whole thing screams finesse or as they would say in France…finesse.
I’m a professional writer.
Lyla Claire (England 1 – CIS)
Lyla’s legend at the worldwide level began when she made it all the way to the finals in Worlds 2023 with her “Pink Suns” list and has only solidified since then. Lyla is the type of player who casually takes down a GT with a quad-Saber user list just because she is bored, but when it comes down to the bigger competitions she seems to have a knack for focusing on a single (but important) aspect of the game: attrition. I have always been a fan of attrition and tempo-based lists myself, even when they were less in-style than they seem to be now, so you will not find me among those who would scoff at the idea of a list that enjoys all the killing. This is not to say that it lacks other virtues at all: Dekas can get to wherever they need to (and are also maybe the most efficient/versatile unit in the game generally) and the Vibrosworded BX units can pile on to the point when it’s needed as well, all on top of a pair of beefy, Nimble, Outmaneuvering snail tanks with a bazillion dodges thanks to a combination of Kalani and the B1’s who are basically…well, you know.
Two mega-modded 11-dice attacks plus two piercing BX shots (either 4 or 12-dice depending on range, with surge hit and Sharpshooter 1 to boot) is going to waste no time deleting units starting in the very first round. If the BX’s did take the Range 3 shot (remember, they have Scout 3) then you could be talking about dealing with 8-ish hits per Snail tank and 5-ish (with Pierce 1 when it matters) per BX AFTER cover. If my napkin math is right, that’s enough to obliterate every trooper unit in the game except Bad Batch on average, and certainly plenty enough to kill 2-3 units of lesser versatility. That can be an extremely hard thing to come back from, and thus you’d REALLY be hoping that you can hide your entire army behind LOS-blocking terrain, something that is usually not-quite possible. It was funny to hear people talk throughout the entire tournament about facing Lyla and her list in a way that was reminiscent of how a normal dude would worry about being hunted by a T-1000 in a Terminator movie, I doubt that she would mind that comparison either.
Johann “jo_tanuki” S (Switzerland 2 – CIS)
If I had to pick the “breakout star” of World Team Championships it’d be Johann. The dude is only 17, and just like with our World Champion (who gets lots of practice at home against his wife who is a talented player herself) Johann is a testament to the idea that reps against strong opponents is a key ingredient to success, since he can play his dad Phillip (Switzerland Team 1) at home himself. Johann beat an array of dudes with many more years under their belts, including my own teammate Tristan Britt (forcing a draw with us overall, nice work Johan you saved your teammates!). Tristan was Top 8 at Worlds just a couple of months ago so that alone is no joke, but then Johann just kept going, eventually having beaten Dave Grant (England 1) and Nostrus (France 1) as well before the day was up.
I’m going to just try to use all my influence to see if it sticks: I think that this dude should be known as The Predator because the dude was just collecting the skulls of worthy prey all weekend. But like, we gotta make it a little more Swiss…like…Predatör…ok hang on…
Please direct all complaints to the United States Consultate to Switzerland, Rue François-Versonnex 7, 1207 Genève, Switzerland
Anyway, right, the list!
Johann made the brave but obviously successful choice to spread his strength relatively thin in order to make room for 13 acts in a Dooku Kalani list, essentially opting to uplift a Deka to a Flamer Spider while changing the usual second Aqua into a naked magna and a B1 compared to the 12 act version of this list. With a few exceptions, activation counts are indeed important for winning games…Dooku can often solo win a point (probably why Johann named the list simply “The Dookster” so if you have just the right combo of beef and firepower to take care of the rest then you can take it home even if this list obviously has less of an alpha strike and ranged firepower in general compared to the 12 act one. Definitely an awesome performance from a rising star!
The Top 6 Teams
Hell, I was just gonna do 3 but I covered 6 individuals for a TEAM event upfront so what the hell, let’s do it. Team captains (who decided matchups) are listed first among names. I tried a few ways to get the actual lists on here but none of them worked well in the blog format, for the sake of your eyes I’m linking to each of their team pages on Longshanks, their lists and factions are on the upper right when you click!
France 1: Antoine Granet, Romainswl, Anetrotro, Nostrus (6th Place)
Pretty much everyone was in agreement that we wanted to see a new winner this year (a shared PTSD of Antoine running rough-shod over all his opposing team Captains in last year’s event is to blame I think) but France 1 obviously performed very very well. Antoine himself (incredibly) actually lost one game, to none other than Mad Bull of Poland 1 who bravely led the charge to hand France their only true loss in the entire tournament (they also had two draws). I have heard that Antoine believes Ewoks truly is the best list, and he may be right, but the extraordinary things the list asks of both the player and the wallet is what is “holding it back” in my opinion. Nostrus piloted the CIS list, a testament to the idea that activations (14) can certainly win games when they feature units of such high quality as aquas and dekas…the decision to use Grievous definitely opened things up in terms of the act count there. Romain, it should be noted, was the top individual Empire player at 5-1 with an Iden-Vader-Ion Snows-Dews list that squeezes all it can out of the best units in an overall-struggling faction. Anetrotro’s Pyke spam took some licks but it’s a list that has done very well in French tournaments in the past so it’s something to watch for surely.
Germany 1: Finn Peemüller, Andreas Röder, Lukas Vorweg, Richard Rassmussen (5th Place)
In a remarkable feat of German Precision, all 4 members of this team went 4-2, but in doing so dominated Denmark and England South so much that they ended up turning the rest into one win (against my team of course), one loss (against Brian Baer’s team, of course) and a couple draws. Finn’s Imperial list exemplifies the points Dave Grant made on our podcast last week, just good clean efficient list building for Empire, making the best out of the relatively few points-efficient units they have on offer. Richard’s Rebel list is quite similar to Brian Baer’s list from Worlds, enough that it’s making my eye twitch just a bit from PTSD, but I do wonder if he missed the opportunity to double attack given the lack of unstable astromechs on his speeders. Andreas went with a 12-act droid list that trades Dooku for Grievous in order to upgrade three other units compared to the one I ran (B2’s to Magna, one deka to a Crab) which I think I would have enjoyed playing more in retrospect so good on him for some cool choices. Lukas’ GAR list is basically as much hero hammer as that faction can get right now and it certainly worked against me…I DID end up killing Rex, Anakin, and Ahsoka with a combination of Aquas and (mostly) Dooku but it came at the cost of the rest of my army and well, that’s not how you win games.
USA 2/White: Brian Baer, Joe Hicks, Luke Cook, David “DeltaDave” Johnson (4th Place)
Brian went with a slight modification to his Top 4 finishing Worlds list and unsurprisingly did very well with it, though I hope his opponents by now had read our Op-Ed to know how to deal with him on a personal level. Luke Cook over here though, he ran a list that you could have made back in 2018, though it would have hilariously been significantly more expensive with their original costs. The barrage of range 4 shots on Round 1 is, yes, little more than plinking but…it’s a LOT of plinking. When you toss in a Turn 2 New Ways with all 3 Dewbacks running in for chomping it’s a lot to deal with…it’s a deceptively powerful strategy despite how “simple” it may seem when you add it all together. Dave’s Dooku Kalani list was another one that I ended up liking more than my own when I looked at it, I totally think it would have been worth it to change my two B2 heavies and some other upgrades into 3 vibro BX units (no heavy) to contest the middle points with, despite their relative frailty in comparison…13 acts is 13 acts.
Switzerland 1: Lukas “Obi Hans” Stäbler, Silvio Stemer, Phillip S, Manuel Kälin (3rd Place)
Switzerland was a newcomer onto the WTC scene but they landed with a big splash despite the fact that, per one of their players, they brought “the entire Legion community of Switzerland” to the event. Lukas wasn’t the only player who took a Geo swarm but he is the one who took it the farthest, it’s a great list that takes a lot of skill to play and a not-insignificant amount of money as well (though, thankfully, is less expensive now with AMG’s new boxing strategy compared to before). Phillip, the Vater des Predatör, is someone who I can tell values order control: he used a Pyke Capo purely to…exist and also give another source of improvised orders, a clever trick as we await the Customizeable commander that will presumably replace him in this list, in addition to the usual suspects with the exception of a astromech-backed heavy gun bus with HQ uplink to ensure that whether he used Standing Orders of the Bad Batch 3-Pip (depending on activation advantage) he could still control the bus and both Sleepers (since the second Sleeper also had an uplink). Ryder is another nice touch, it really ensures that he can drop a sleeper bomb deep into enemy territory! Manuel brought Tempest, which is an army that is weirdly still underrated and underplayed in my opinion, yet another army that will benefit greatly from the coming advent of customizeables.
All in all, an excellent showing, especially for Switzerland’s very first appearance!
USA 1/Red: Austin Miller, Rob “Mowgly” Rowland, Isaiah Wallace, and Wes Wagner (2nd Place)
You may have heard of…well, all of these folks maybe. Their lists put together form what I would call a nightmare of a Swiss Army Knife…A Swiss Army Knifemare…
…
Anyway, you’ve got Isaiah with an update on his Worlds-winning list, shifting a bit towards a higher act count while maximizing his medic-ness with the “totally intentional” medic in the clone leader slot now filling the ranks of his ARC troopers. Then you’ve got Austin with yet another (this is like the fourth one) double Aqua list that I liked more than my own…and those are the “normal” lists. Mowgly, reeling from the nerfs to both Leia’s 2 Pip and HQ uplink itself, decided to roll with an 18 act Rebel list that features THREE FD cannons as well as the two most annoying cheap heroes on the planet to actually pin down and kill (Wicket and Jyn). Wes on the other hand had the gumption to play a list that truly does not mess around: Iden 333…where that third 3 is Dewbacks! Oh yeah and there’s also a Vader! HAVE YOU GUYS NOTICED THAT EMPIRE LISTS RUN A LOT OF VADER AND DEWBACKS???
Sorry this article is getting long, I’m starting to lose my mind just a bit…oh yeah, I do have a gripe about SOMEONE on this team. Even though the TO’s neglected to have an award for farthest traveled (just watch, they’ll start one as soon as Australia signs up) I want to point out that Isaiah would have had me beat by like…20 miles. That chump. AND THEN HE HAS THE GALL TO BARELY BEAT ME IN THE FINAL STANDINGS.
You little punk! I know where you play!
England 1 aka”England All-Stars”: Dave Grant, Lyla Claire, Geoff Porritt…………………..Olly Dier….Champions….
Also on the left is Andy Terrell, who along with his wonderful wife Louisa ran the actual tournament. Dave Nolan is in the red shirt is the TO, who was tireless both at creating high quality terrain and taking the piss out of all the Americans (deserved of course)
Last year, every USA team finished ahead of every English team in the final standings. That’s just a fact, you can ask Andy, then he’ll lie and say he forgot, then I’d remind him that he wrote an article that proves it. But sadly, tragically even, all 3 American teams only finished ahead of 3/4 of the English teams…because this freakin’ squad was on top.
England is fortunate to be comparatively travelable, which means that these folks get to play each other very often despite having separate home stores. All the players have traveled to the US and done very well in big tournaments and all of them have positively dominated the English scene. As a bonus, Geoff and Lyla are genuinely kind, humble people who even gave Isaiah and I a ride to dinner on our last night in England! Meanwhile, Dave and Olly are right bastards people who have recently graced us with their presence on Notorious Scoundrels to share their opinions on Shadow Collective and Empire meta respectively!
We’ve already covered half of these folks, but to round it out Geoff has been perfecting his list for months, he was said to have to shed his beloved Pathfinders but clearly he’s still got a high-act double X-34 Rebel list that oozes brutality despite only running one copy of sleeper cell, and without an astromech on them no less??? Dave will be the first to tell you that he would have done a couple of things differently with his list if he could do it again (in fact, he did so right here!), but his 3-3 record was more than enough to help England “come home” with this year’s World Team title.
Congratulations England 1!
Shout outs
World Team Champs is just an amazing time, it represents all the very best parts of Legion: just a bunch of people having fun and throwing dice. There were rivalries, there were blowouts, there were nail-biters, but I will be damned if there aren’t also SHOUTOUTS.
Shout out to TC of Wales 2, who I uh…well
That’s right folks, he killed 520 points, I killed zippo, nada, and I still won? Some would say it was a lovely display of the value of strategy over tactics, others would say I played like a moron and got away with it. You be the judge!
Shout out to Phillip S and Johann der Predatör
Just awesome to see such a skilled and friendly literal Legion family, Phillip also gave me lots of helpful info after the tournament including…
Shout out to André Gloor who won best painted mini AND army
The level of detail here, in both the face and the outfit, and the basing, ok that’s more than both. Throth. Wow!
Shout out to Sweden, who once again had both the best name-pun game AND the best shirt game for the second year in a row, just look, it’s damn beautiful is what it is
And speaking of Sweden…my most treasured shoutout is to Björnes Magasin for running these beautiful beautiful vehicles!
There is something in my eyes. Three beautiful fluttercraft, magnetized in all their glory. And also tears. GORGEOUS!
Only slightly less treasured a shout-out is, of course, to the American teams
This picture is impressive in how few of us are properly looking at the camera. My team (which finished an fittingly average 14th out of 28 considering I was the captain: Tristan Britt, William Warf, and John Meier, all on the right side of the picture, those guys were all awesome!) is maybe doing the best on average but I can’t see my eyes at all, I think I was trying to crush Brian’s spine as pithy vengeance for all the times he’s wronged me. Then there’s Austin, third from the left in the back…as usual I have no earthly idea.
Well, I think that’s enough article, I already can’t wait to go to Denmark for WTC next year! By the way, if you want to check out any of the streams, you can do so right here. Later!
