Welcome to our second episode of Competitive Innovations from a galaxy far, far away where we are taking a look at the global competitive scene in Star Wars: Legion on a regular basis. This time we concentrate on just one event, which was a GT taking place in the UK and is the UK’s largest Legion event of the year; Chopper Base Open (previously known as MK:GT). This re-skinned event took place in Peterborough, England on the 16th and 17th of August.
I’ll be diving into some of the top lists as well as looking at some of the stats in some detail.
Chopper Base Open GT 2025
Quick Stats
Players – 22
Faction Breakdown – CIS 32, Rebels 22, GAR 21, Empire 20, and Shadow Collective 5
Most taken unit – B1 Battle Droid
Most taken upgrade – Improvised Orders
Rounds – 6 (swiss)
Most taken command card (outside of Standing Orders) – Assault and Push
Most taken battle cards from each selection – Advanced Intel (advantage), Bunker Assault (primary) and Sweep and Clear (secondary)
Detailed stats – Chopper Base Open GT 2025 • Event 27082 • Longshanks
As the UK’s largest event it attracted some of the top players from the UK as well as some from other countries in Europe.
With the talk of town currently being about the CIS faction being top of the pile, we shall focus on some of the CIS stats from the event. CIS players made up almost a third of the field. Between the bevy of mech-loving players they brought:
- 44 units of Droidekas,
- 30 units of Aqua Droids (with all but 2 of them with the Heavy Aqua Droid),
- Kalani was spotted 21 times,
- 18 Geonosian Warrior units (1 of them with the added large squad),
- 17 units of B2 Super Battle Droids
Looking at the sabre users, General Grievous led the way, being the most favoured sabre user amongst the CIS players, seeing play in 14 lists, followed closely by Count Dooku in 10 lists (although only 4 of them took Force Push) and the Count’s Apprentice; Asajj Ventress saw play in 8 lists whilst Maul saw play in 6 lists. Out of the 24 force users in this list, 18 of them took Burst of Speed, giving them a Speed 3 move for a Round. This ties in nicely when looking at which objectives the CIS players did best in over the weekend. CIS players won 58% of their games when playing Bunker Assault and 56% of their games when playing Close the Pocket. Both of these primaries favour these speedy force users, thanks to their ability to control the centre POI in Close the Pocket and to contribute towards double wound tokens on enemy bunkers whilst also being able to easily move between the closely located POIs in Bunker Assault. Looking at the secondaries, again perhaps unsurprisingly given the speed, CIS players won 59% of their games when playing Destroy Enemy Base.
Overall, CIS had a win rate of 53%. This actually puts them behind GAR, with a win rate of 56% and just ahead of the Rebel players with 52%. The Empire players sit at a win rate of 38%. I haven’t included Shadow Collective because of the low player count. With GAR, Rebel and CIS players all sitting within 4% of each other it would seem that 3 of the 4 factions are in a good place and despite some of the help the Empire faction has had recently, with additions such as Imperial March, it looks like more help may be on the way!
Turning our attention to some of the top lists…
In 1st place was one of the German contingent – Andreas Röder. Here is his list:
Strengths of the List:
- Fitting two of the aforementioned saber-wielders into the list allows Andreas to pack a punch and can run them together or on separate flanks to target multiple POIs.
- The list has speed when it’s needed. Asajj with Burst of Speed, Sun Fac and the Geonosian Warriors add that triple move threat to easily jump between POIs, the Droidekas can roll up and enter wheel-mode allowing them to move at Speed 3 across the table, and the Aqua Droids, whilst perhaps not fast in themselves, get that range 1 and a half boost up the table with their natural infiltrate.
- Whilst perhaps not immediately obvious, the list is incredibly effective at killing things. With dice-efficient Aqua droids hitting hard from round 1 added to General Grievous and Asajj’s killing power and the longer-range threat of the Ion equipped Dwarf Spider Droid, the list is able to pack-a-punch capable of bringing most opposition lists to a standstill.
- 13 activations. Adding 11 activations to two sabre-users is no mean feat. It allows them go to last most of the time if they want to whist staying safe behind the wall of Aqua Droids.
Andreas came up against four other CIS players before defeating an Imperial player and then finally a Rebel player. Across his six games he destroyed 4612 points – that’s an average of more than 750 points per game. It was only in the final round where he failed to kill more than 650 points.
The 2nd place player was Nathan Hoole, who lost to Andreas in the final game, running a Bright Tree Village Rebel list:
Nathan took a slightly different approach to his Bright Tree Village list and has fewer Ewok Skirmishers (the melee based Corps unit) than the Ewok Slingers (the ranged based Special Forces unit). All in all he had 31 Ewok Slingers on the table, with his 3 large-sized squads. He included a sizeable amount (for Ewoks!!) of anti-armour tech which included Chewbacca in his Incognito AT-ST and 2 Rebel Trooper units with the MPL-57 Ion Trooper, one of which also had an Astromech Droid to help keep the Rebel AT-ST alive.
Looking at the Top 8 as a whole it included 5 CIS players, 2 Rebel players and 1 GAR player.
Here is a small look at some of the highlight units from remaining 6 lists in the Top 8, all going 5-1:
3rd place – Finn Peemüller – Rebel – Ahsoka, Sabine Wren, triple AT-RT and double Unstable X-34 Landspeeder
A list that’s up there as one of the ‘meta’-Rebel lists at the moment; capable of doing significant damage to any armour and able to dish out and win the early attrition war.
4th place – Even Sor – CIS – Asajj, triple Strike and Fade STAPS Riders, an AAT Battle Tank and a unit of Aqua Droids
5th place – Thomas Curtis – CIS – Poggle, 5 Geonosian Warriors and double Aqua Droids
6th place – Tom MacArthur – CIS – Double Super Tactical Droid, double Crab Droid and double Aqua Droid
7th place – Seb Ezra – CIS – Dooku, Asajj, 4 Geonosian Warriors, a Persuader Tank and an Aqua Droid
8th place – Birkhead – GAR – Cody, Obi Wan, The Bad Batch and triple BARC Speeders
Credit goes to ‘Raknar’ from The Legion Discord, for producing some regular stats which they share with the community. Below you can see the Global faction win rates with the final data point coming just after Chopper Base Open. CIS remain the most competitive faction thanks to their endless roster of ruthlessly efficient units. Rebels and GAR hover around the 50% mark whilst Empire remain floundering at the bottom. Let’s see if their upward trend continues as we ahead through the rest of this year.
And finally, to leave you with a few final stats from Chopper Base Open 2025:
Players who ended up with the Advanced Intel advantage in their game won 60% of the time, with Ordnance coming in a close 2nd with a 58% win rate. This compares with Strafing Run only winning 32% of the time. Red player won 52% of the time (so perhaps it isn’t the ‘be all and end all’ we all thought).
In our next instalment of Competitive Innovations in Star Wars: Legion we will look at more events including Evergreen Open and NOVA Open as well as a few more US-based events.
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