Welcome to our first Competitive Innovations from a galaxy far, far away where we will be taking a look at the global competitive scene in Star Wars: Legion on a regular basis. What is the ‘meta’ in Legion, is a question which is asked a lot at the moment in the Legion community. As we take a look through the top performing lists and units, we might start to unravel who is currently strongest in the Force.
I will typically be looking at competitive events with at least 20 participants, however this may change depending on the time of year and number of events there are to look at. I shall be looking at a few of the top performing lists in each event and giving my commentary on why those lists are doing well in the current Legion-sphere.
In today’s article we shall be covering the following events from the end of July and start of August:
Rise from the Ashes 2025 Legion Grand Tournament – Queensland, Australia
Melee in the Mountains – North Carolina, The United States
Legion at GenCon – Indiana, The United States
Legion at LoneStar Open – Texas, The United States
Rise from the Ashes 2025 Legion Grand Tournament
Quick Stats
Players – 22
Faction Breakdown – CIS 8, GAR 7, Empire 3, Rebels 3, and Shadow Collective 1
Most taken unit – B1 Battle Droid
Most taken upgrade – Linked Targeting Array
Rounds – 3
Date – 26th – 27th July 2025
Detailed stats – Rise From The Ashes 2025 Legion Grand Tournament • Event 25916 • Longshanks
Taking top spot and the only person with a 5-0 winning record was Mitch Kazmierczak with his ‘I found some STAPs, I built some STAPs, so here’s my STAPs’, Separatist list.
List:
At 14 activations, this list is probably out-activating most lists it comes up against. It contains some of the things we know are good.
Kalani – One of the best support commanders in the game. With the Strategize 2 ability it can put out plentiful dodge and aim tokens and with the very synergistic Exemplar keyword, Kalani can then share any green tokens it has with others at range 2 (assuming they share the same affiliation or faction, which rules out Bossk in this case).
Aqua Droids – These continue to be one of the big boys, the menaces, of Legion at the moment. With the Heavy Aqua Droid they have 12 wounds and throwing 9 dice at range 3 with their Infiltrate ability giving them range to most things on the table, turn 1. The icing on the cake is that as vehicles; they block LOS to any normal trooper unit behind them, helping to keep some key units safe during the early positioning phase of the game.
This list has a powerful alpha strike thanks to the aforementioned Aqua Droids the 5 E-5s models with their 2 dice, Critical 1 at range 4 shots, Bossk with his Pierce 1 range 4 shots and the fast moving trio of STAP Riders who can all move three times and shoot in an activation thanks to the new Strike and Fade upgrade card.
Despite the list being full of white saves, apart from Kalani, it is packed full of wounds – 99 to be exact. Concentrated fire power is needed to chew through the number of bodies. Beating 3 other CIS players and 2 GAR players along the way, including 6 force users, the Aqua Droids continue to show why they are one of the top units out there right now.
Melee in the Mountains
Quick Stats
Players – 24
Faction Breakdown – Rebels 7, CIS 6, Empire 5, GAR 4, and Shadow Collective 2
Most taken unit – B1 Battle Droid
Most taken upgrade – Improvised Orders
Rounds – 3
Date – 26th July 2025
Detailed stats – Melee in the Mountains • Event 25017 • Longshanks
Empire have taken a lot of slack recently for falling behind the other factions with their win rates and they ability to field efficient units. Richard Lavery took 1st place at Melee in the Mountains with his Imperial Remnant, Empire list. With 9 units (and 11 activations thanks to the Dark Troopers’ double activations), the list was small, but perfectly formed with every unit providing some heavy hitting power.
Imperial Remnant is one of the Empire’s 3 battle forces it has access to currently. It has a few special rules which include:
- You have access to Scout, Death, Storm and Shore troopers which all count as Corps units when list building. Before you can have multiple of one of those units, you need to take one of each of them. You can also mix and match their heavy weapons between them – this is where some of the real power comes into play.
- It’s a list that likes to be spread out as units get free tokens for being beyond range 2 of their commander (currently Moff Gideon is the only available commander).
Richard squeezed three large units into his list with the Shores and both Stormtroopers having the large sized squads added to each unit. The inclusion of 5 T-21 Stormtroopers gives plenty of access to Critical, something that Scout Troopers specifically are begging for as they don’t naturally surge:hit. Another quirk of the list involves the Scouts. As they count as Corps when list building, they can take the Corps only Empire specific upgrade, Imperial March. This allows units to increase their speed by 1 for their second move action in an activation. Scouts naturally have Scout 3, meaning they can take 2 Speed-3 moves (getting them 20 inches up the table) and then shooting with 12 dice with Critical 2. This means they can hit most things on the board if they want to on turn 1.
With the prominence of vehicles in lists at the moment Dark Troopers have to be careful of the amount of Impact around at the moment. With their 2 order tokens and access to aims, Dark Troopers would have been an ominous force in this list and provided confusion for opponents on what to shoot. Do you take out the ever-plodding Dark Troopers or try to take out some of the firepower from the large squads of Imperial troops?
Richard won each of his three games convincingly, with the closest of the three games coming in at 13-3 and a kill point differential of 748 in favour of Richard. Empire are not as strong as some of the other factions right now, but Imperial Remnant is certainly capable of packing a punch and somewhat makes up for the faction’s lack of efficiency in some areas.
Legion at GenCon
Quick Stats
Players – 38
Faction Breakdown – Rebels 16, CIS 9, Empire 7, GAR 5, and Shadow Collective 1
Most taken unit in the top 16 – B1 Battle Droid
Most taken upgrade – Improvised Orders
Rounds – Two heats each of 3 games per player followed by a Top 16 cut of 4 rounds
Date – 2nd August 2025
Detailed stats – Legion at GenCon Finals • Event 27318 • Longshanks
Despite the skew in the heats towards Rebels, the Top 16 cut was more balanced, with six CIS, five Rebels, three Empire and one each from GAR and Shadow Collective rounding out the field.
The final was between two players who know each other well and who were both playing Rebels.
Brian Baer’s Rebel list:
Matt Evans’ Rebel Bright Tree Village list:
The final was played with the Shifting Priority primary and Destroy the Enemy Base secondary missions. Both players had both cards in their battle decks and so a close game was always going to be inevitable. The game ended 8-7 to Brian, despite Matt killing almost double the number of points than Brian. Brian had a natural counter to the fur based Ewoks of Matt’s list, in his triple AT-RT flamer units. All coming with the Spray keyword, allowing you to roll dice per number of models in the defending unit as well as Blast stopping the Ewoks from receiving any cover, which turns off their Low Profile keyword, some burnt Ewoks were likely during the match up. An interesting and seldom seen upgrade in Hacked Comms was also placed on all three AT-RTs. This allows the unit to be issued an order if an enemy unit is issued an order within range 1 of it. This is a great tactic for stopping all of the Ewoks close by from running away before the AT-RTs can activate.
The two X-34 Landspeeders would have enjoyed being able to move onto some of the moving POIs as part the primary objective and if Chewbacca in his AT-ST dropped his Incognito early, they would have been able to line up some perfect shots with the M-45 Ion Blaster and the RPS-6 Rocket Gunner, firing both Impact and Ion into the hijacked AT-ST.
Legion at LoneStar Open
Quick Stats
Players – 36
Faction Breakdown – Empire 11, GAR 11, Rebels 6, CIS 5, and Shadow Collective 3
Most taken unit – Clone Trooper Infantry
Most taken upgrade – Into the Fray
Rounds – 6
Date – 9th-10th August 2025
Detailed stats – Star Wars Legion Grand Tournament at Lonestar Open • Event 26666 • Longshanks
Rounding out the 4th and final event in his article we have our 4th different faction winning an event. Colton Evans was running a Cody, Obi-Wan Kenobi, The Bad Batch list, which also included triple BARC Speeders. Beating all two CIS, two Empire and two Shadow Collective lists on his way to his 6-0. His list:
All 10 of these activations have a job to do. All four Clone Infantry units are kitted out with heavy weapons (and a Leader in the form of Ahsoka Tano, Jedi Padawan for one of the units), there would have been plenty of opportunities to roll dice against his opponents. Three BARC Speeders need a skillful and tactful hand. Getting the balance right of not overstretching them so that they get shot and die to a stiff breeze whilst, but keeping them useful and ready to jump on a POI when ready is not easy. Fortunately there are distractions in the list to take opponents’ focus away from the Speeders in the form of the Bad Batch, Obi-Wan and the Ahsoka Clone Infantry squad. The list would excel at the Close the Pocket and Intercept the Signals, with the former making up half of Coltan’s games at the event. With the Clone ball sticking together and trying to hold the double scoring centre POI on Close the Pocket, the BARCs and The Bad Batch can use their manoeuvrability to strike at the side POIs and at least contest them to stop the opponent scoring or hope to overload one to get a 2-point swing going each round. Obi-Wan provides a defensive reassurance to the token-sharing clones and Cody provides support to the BARCs through Direct and Observe helping to keep the rerolls going.
To close out this first Star Wars: Legion, Competitive Innovations article, it’s great to see all four factions coming away with a win at a sizeable event, perhaps showing that it is not all doom and gloom on the balance front. Looking ahead to the next article we shall be covering move events from around the globe, including a large event in the UK with 100 players – Chopper Base Open.
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