It’s been a while since I could play some Legion. Been busy with school and other things. I finally got a game in and decided to test some units that gotten point reduction.
Rebel list 797/800 Commander -Leia Organa Commanding presence Environmental gear
Special forces -Rebel pathfinders A-300 Duck and cover Recon intel Pao
Heavy -T-47 airspeeder Ax-108 ground buzzer Linked targeting array Outer rim speeder jockey
Commanding presence is a nice upgrade, but 10 points was a bit much, now it’s a contender with esteemed leader and other stuff when down to 5p.
Chewbacca got a point reduction and with the stuff I put on him, he was about the base cost used to be. I think Chewbacca have been underated and didn’t need a reduction, but I don’t complain 😛
The ion troopers got a 8 cost reduction and are nice thing to have in your army. I doubt I will not have at least one of these in my army in future.
Pathfinders is the same point cost, but the very good duck an cover is not 4 and a staple on them thanks to danger sense, also the A-300 config is now free. So this unit I got 10 points cheaper than before. Infiltrate is a nice ability and I think these can compete with commandos for real now.
The huge thing was a fully kited airspeeder that comes in at 10 points less than the normal base cost. This is such a good thing for this amazing model. I really look forward playing alot with this one. The janky harpoon gun is only 3p so you might as well use it if you play with the speeder and skip the buzzer gun.
I faced an imperial list led by a generic officer and tested 2 shoretrooper squads with mortal teams. Also an AT-ST with 3 weapons and surge-hit pilot. It’s so fun to se both armies having these centerpiece units.
We spotted imperial walkers!
We played the scenario in downed at-st. It was fun to finally put this beautiful terrain piece to work. First turn the was an orbital bombardment as well as a airspeeder shot that dropped a few imperial troopers.
Infiltrare pathfinders are great for objective matches
In turn 3 the pathfinders took a pounding of at-st and mortar fire. The airspeeder took some dmg on the way towards the imperial line, but it strafed a squad of stormtroopers and killed of them.
With good use of Leia’s 2 pip command card and hq-uplink veterans 4 units could rush towards the at-st and the veterans picked up the objective.
“No time for sorrows”
The at-st kept pounding the rebel troopers behind the downed at-st. While the airpseeder flew past the at-st and opened fire with both the ground buzzer and forward guns.
The speeder dropped to 2 hp and got imobilized wich made it harder to turn around and shoot the at-st. I had to spend an entire activation to comp move and pivot. However the ion-troopers did a bananas roll on the at-st. That + pot shots from chewie put on a nice deal of dmg.
Think we will see alot more of these tokens.
The airspeeder had finally turned around and faced the at-st in the weakpoint. Sadly the at-st activated first and killed the veterans holding the objective. The airspeeder despite aim token only delivered 2 damaged though the defence. Bad time for dice fail. However awesome to get the airspeeder in the at-st’s weakspot.
Chewie did alot of guarding wich eventually led to his death
Grrhg uul
So when the final turn is about to begin, the at-st is destroyed and a single trooper leader is holding the objective. The empire had no way of claming the objective and winning, however it would take a miracle for the rebels to claim victory.
Despite my best effort to destroy the top positioned shoretroopers with a early speeder activation, the defence dice where strong with this one and only one trooper died. They then destroyed the rebel holding the objective leading to a draw.
However anyone can win the act 2 mission so will see who comes out on top.
Thought on the points erratta:
Chewie is still a crazy guardian beast and the reduction is just sugar on top.
Alot of expensive upgrade cards have become cheaper and the options for every unit has increased.
The airspeeder and at-st is back and better than ever. It’s great for the game that we now will see more of these centerpiece units. Targeting array was nice for the early attacks, but eventually it moved beyond even my range 4 command range. So maybe long range comlink is the way to go.
Pathfinders I haven’t played with enough, but with the reduction of their upgrade cards, I think they will be a viable pick just to win some objectives.
The new snipers are still powerful, but they must now use move actions and the scout move is now a very useful ability that must be used if you want to get early shots. It’s great that they cant just sit back at the table edge and aim-shoot non stop.
The specialist pack is a unique expansion at this point in legion. Instead of giving you a new unit it gives you 4 different personnel upgrades to your other units as well as a generic commander option. So what’s so special about the rebel specialists?
Let’s find out.
Rebel officer (unit)
“He’s right behind me, isn’t he?”
This is the unit version of the rebel officer, it’s a generic commander (no unique dot in the name) and works just the same as our other commanders with 2 differences. It’s not unique so you could have 2 of these in a single list, or even 4 in a team match. They also don’t have any unit specific command cards like Son of Skywalker for example.
Unit options and abilities
Leia light
The officer comes in at 50 points and is a light version of Leia Organa. You get inspire, take cover and sharpshooter, but only value of 1 instead of 2. A weaker blaster, melee attack and you only get 4 hp instead of 6. You get one command slot and a gear slot. So at first glance there is a lot of stuff you give up for the 40 points you save. So Leia is in my mind a far more valuable choice when you want a support character. However those 40 points can give you a lot of other stuff or you could go with double generic officers for just 10 more points than Leia.
Builds and tactics
The officer
Rebel officer 50p
Esteemed leader 5p
Total 55p.
“Look out sir!”
This is the best option for the rebel officer IMO. 4hp is very easy to snipe down and if your opponent is bringing Bossk or Boba then they have an easy bounty. Esteemed leader helps a lot and gear is not really worth it, if you load this guy up to much you are better off just picking Leia. The main thing about this unit is a cheap command bubble that can give some support with take cover and inspire for your backline or power units.
So instead of thinking how to build your officer, let’s check in what kind of lists ge works well in. Luke and Leia is a classic commander pair and it’s effective no doubt about that, however you pay a minimum of 250 points in 2 models, probably close to 300p with upgrades. Leia brings her command cards of course, but in a Luke and Leia list she is mostly backline support. Here you can swap Leia for a generic officer to get points to other stuff. Likewise if you play a Han&Chewie list you sink a lot of points into those guys and a generic officer is enough for some support and you want to focus on Solo’s command cards in that list anyway. With teamwork a single take cover Still gives 2 dodge tokens when given to Han or Chewie and the inspire 1 is enough to help Han from becoming suppressed or even panicked.
The generic brothers
“Come along, r4”
This is something I have been pondering lately, since Leia’s command cards and take cover don’t synergies well with vehicles I think that for a vehicle heavy list the double officer is something to consider. Vehicles are costly and they are fast, especially the speeders so having 2 command bubbles help a lot.
List:
2x generic officer
Esteemed leader
110p
1x Z-6 trooper squad 62p
1x Z-6 trooper squad with comms spec and comms relay 76p
2x Z-6 trooper squad with astromech 70p
3x at-rt
Rotary blaster
255p
Landspeeder
M-45 Ion blaster
RPS-6 Rocket gunner
Ryder Azadi
154p
Total: 798p
The landspeeder is kitted for anti vehicle and the astromech squads are meant to march up behind the cover of the rotary at-rt’s repairing as they go. The list have 10 activations and the 2 officers help with command range, inspire and take cover in a large area. The comms specialist is there for the comms relay that helps getting orders to your speeder or other vehicles with cards like covering fire. This list uses both 2 officers and 2 astromechs so try it if you have 2 specialists boxes and tell me how it went.
Specialists (personnel upgrades)
Officer
Who’s in charge here?…not anymore
The officer personnel upgrade cost 19p and gives the unit +1 courage and inspire 1. He also uses the units weapons and profile so for a rebel trooper squad he is 9p more expensive than the extra trooper. With the amount of suppression the empire gives out, it’s always nice to have some extra inspire, especially from a corps unit. The big thing is the courage 2 however. Your commanders courage value helps against panicking, but having courage 2 means you need 2 suppression tokens after rally to lose your 2nd action, this is great. It also means that your unit can have a suppression token that increases their cover while still operating at maximum efficiency. For a rebel trooper squad this isn’t that life changing, you get to take a dodge action a little more often. For a trooper squad with ion though this is huge, since you want to recover that the gun as possible. Normally your opponent just needs to score a single hit on your ion squad before their activation to have a 66,6% chance of them being suppressed when activated. Another unit that really needs their second action is fleet troopers, regardless of heavy weapon choice since they will need to move often to get into range with their range 2 pistols. So if you have the points it’s a well worth add, to any fleet troopers squad or trooper squad with an exhaust weapon.
Comms specialist
“Yes and a corellian coke!”
A comms specialist gives your unit a comms upgrade slot and you have to add a comms upgrade to the unit. The interesting part is that the specialist cost 9 points and like the officer it uses the same profile as the unit it’s added to. So if you add this to a fleet trooper squad you get an extra trooper for just 9 points, of course with the caveat of buying a comms upgrade. You can think of it like a discount on the comms upgrade, as well as the opportunity to give one to a corps unit. So what kind of comms upgrades so we have and what should we take?
Comms relay 5p
“Bob, go tell Luke what to do”
This is the cheapest one and it gives you some extra order control and range. Like I pointed out earlier it can help to give orders to speeders or other units that moves ahead of the army and moves out of command range, this can be achieved by giving the vehicle a comms upgrade, but this is cheaper. It also combines well with the covering fire command card since that specifies 3 corps units, this could give an order token to a vehicle, commander or well anything other than a corps unit. The effect of the card triggers with corps unit of course, but 2 is enough to give you activation control for your corps. I would use this on comms specialist in a rebel trooper squad when using vehicles or a lot of special forces/operatives or if you run a single commander.
Hq uplink 10p
“Standby ion-control…Fire!”
FFG have a history of putting Toryn Farr on good cards and this is no exception. It suites units that really needs and order like a single heavy or lone special forces unit. You will have a pretty good chance to draw corps order token from your stack anyway so it’s not super crucial. There is 2 things about this though, if you play a Luke and Leia list it gets a little bit more value. Both their 2 pip command cards gives out bonuses when a trooper unit is issued an order, it doesn’t have to be order from the commander so the hq uplink lets you get more bonuses out of those cards. The second thing is the Solo trick. Solo’s 0 pip command card that guaranteed gives you priority combos with hq uplink, His card gives order only to himself, but with hq uplink you can get a first activation with another unit like a scattergun fleet trooper squad.
Long range comlink 10p
“Yes, it’s bears armed with sticks…no I’m not drunk”
You will most likely be able to stay within command range so I don’t recommend taking it.
Comms jammer 15p
“Jam their comlink, center switch!”
You will have a hard time getting to range 1 and even harder to stay alive there so this is more suited for faster units like the landspeeder or airspeeder.
Astromech
“you nearsighted scrap pile”
This little guy comes in at only 8 points and gives the unit repair with 2 charges as a free action. Unlike the officer and comms dude he doesn’t have any arms to hold a blaster so you don’t get to add any attack dice from him, ge also gets removed last from dmg (except for the unit leader). I really like the astromech since the rules changes to repair allowing the mech to repair repulsor vehicles. This changed the potential targets from 1 to 3 and makes it much more useable. Add this dude to a Z-6 trooper squad and pair them with an at-rt and you got a potent formation where the troopers can stay behind the cover of the at-rt and repair it when needed. At-rt’s comes in at a minimum of 80p if you buy a weapon hardpoint and with only a â…™ chance of blocking dmg they will be wounded very quickly. The astromech can give your vehicles 2 extra health or remove the crippling immobilized dmg token from a flamer at-rt. The repair to repulsor vehicles is a nice bonus, however I recommend pairing these dudes with at-rt’s. Losing 1 black attack die from a trooper squad is a small price to pay for a potential extra attack with a at-rt that would have been destroyed otherwise.
Medical droid
“Guess where this is going”
Very close to his astromech cousin he has the noncombatant keyword and gives a free action with 2 charges although this is for troopers and not vehicles. Unlike the astromech it doesn’t only remove wounds from damaged troopers, it can also restore a model to it’s mother unit. With the restriction that the model died in the current round and it’s mother unit is still alive. Models with multiple wounds gets restored with 1 hp remaining.
The medical droid is expensive though with 18 points and non-combatant it’s a heavy investment. So you really want to use both charges before the game is over and hopefully in something more expensive than just a rebel trooper. It’s about target priority with the medical droids, where can you get the most value and greatest effect. I remember seeing a table with how much wounds were worth in points depending on point cost and armor save and It’s true that expensive wounds can be a priority and depending on the save, you get more out of the wounds sure. I however also look at what effect the extra wounds or models can bring. So for example Chewbacca and wookies have a terrible save as they only block â…™ hits, however they have very good offence. If you restore a wookie to a unit with tenacity, you get 2 black and 1 red dice extra of they can make a charge before taking more hits, same with Chewie as his offence in both melee and ranged is great, it is worth it to keep him alive. So while I still agree that using medics on targets with high cost and good save, I recommend that you don’t always go that route and think about what needs healing right now.
I decided to put down a list of units that pair extra well with medical droids:
Luke every wound on Luke is precious, he will most likely take about a quarter of your points and with red defence with deflect and immune pierce, he isn’t a fun target for your opponent to shoot. Since he is such a priority for your opponent, you might as well make it hard for them.
Han with the reckless diversion command card, you can force your opponent to shoot at han if possible. Thanks to low profile he will almost always have heavy cover and uncanny luck on that. He isn’t super tanky, but he will be a great dmg sponge for one round when your other units can operate almost without danger. A medical droid or two can help him survive a round like this, the more shots against han the better since it will keep your other fragile units alive.
Sabine same reason as Luke, she has very good save and is a huge threat.
Commandos and strike teams these units have the same durability as a normal trooper, but much higher cost. Keeping these units alive is key. The trick with strike teams is to try and Keep 1 member out of sight so ge can’t be targeted by hits. Then you use your medical droid to restore the lost model. This can make proton charge teams an endlessly annoyance in games.
Emplacement troopers coming in at 70 points minimum, this is a great unit to heal, since they will mostly be hit by sniper dmg that only deals 1-2 dmg at a time.
Pathfinders again price is a factor, but also the danger sense, the more shots they take the more dice they can throw in defence. A unit like this can be very hard to eliminate if placed on an objective and has a medical droid as support.
Unsung Heroes!
So that’s my analysis of the rebel specialist pack, agree disagree? You have some great tactics or lists with the specialist?
Rebels guide to the galaxy 