This is a somewhat less-formal version of “what’s changed” between the old and new editions of Star Wars Legion. I’m tackling this in a way of simply what I’ve noticed that’s different, what I like about it (or don’t), and how I’m approaching all of it now. 

My History with Legion

…with Star Wars Legion. You can scroll immediately to the next part if you’re the kind of person that skips the wholesome story at the start of modern-day online recipes. Being an easily amused-and-entertained nerd I simply enjoy Star Wars. Like, all of it. I enjoy all of the films, the TV series, and have enjoyed the Thrawn novels (updated versions) as the only Star Wars books that I have read. I also love a wargame with a good rules set and nice miniatures so this ticks every box for me.

I played a lot of the first edition of Legion and even went to a bunch of one-day events held in London; I even started to get a little good at it, too. I play Separatists and have thoroughly enjoyed the painstaking build process of droids followed immediately by the incredibly easy painting process of them which just continues to be true of every droid kit that comes out.

Miniatures, Cards, and Tokens

The rules are still free to download and you’ll find that along with all of the cards you need to play available from the Atomic Mass Games website. That’s print and play sets of unit, upgrade, command, and battle (mission) cards for every faction. All the tokens that come with the kits are all the same as they were so just keep them around if you’re a returning player and if you’re new then don’t worry you’ll just get them when you buy minis. You can buy printed copies of all of the cards in packs that are currently on pre-order at time of writing and expected to be released in the next couple of months.

As far as miniatures go you’ll notice that most are pretty difficult to buy at the moment. The good news is that everything that was the resin “soft plastic” previously is getting a new, plastic, kit that seems to have much better detail. You can still use all of the existing miniatures as long as they still have rules! Some models have been removed, like Palpatine and Royal Guards, but the full list can be found here. Generic Commanders are being replaced shortly with new ones, so while they don’t have rules right now they will soon enough. There’s also a set of upgrade cards no longer in use, such as Force Lift, with a slew of new ones that have taken their place.

New Starter Sets

To go along with so many new model kits is a slew of new starter sets. I like these much better than last edition’s because you’re just buying the faction that you actually want to play! They come in at a very reasonable price and include everything you need to play some small games of Legion with:

• Measuring tools
• Dice
• Unit and Upgrade cards for the models in the box
• Command cards including the four basic, three faction, and three character ones
• Battle cards which is how you build a mission to play the game
• A Commander and 4 (or more) units for your army

The pictures of the models on each box aren’t the most helpful since many of the shown units are multiple units that are just the same kit multiple times so I’ll go into that in more detail below. This ties into one of the big changes for Corps units: a new upgrade letting you almost double the size of a squad instead of just adding one additional model. That means bigger attack dice pools, more models to have to kill, but also more points into one unit! What this means for the models though is simply that Corps unit kits now have more models in them to match. The only plastic kits that aren’t being re-done because they were already plastic are Separatists; these are being re-boxed to match the format of others instead.

In later articles we’ll be covering what to think about adding to each of these sets to create a “full” army but these are all greater starters and none of the units are “bad” that you’ll just never use later on. Always nice when that happens!

If you’re new to Star Wars Legion then it’s important to note that when building models there are now weapon options to build. You simply get to build one of each optional weapon in the kit and won’t use them all in any given game. When you take a special or heavy weapon you don’t replace the gun on an existing model in the unit but instead add a model to the unit with that weapon. There are a few, rare, instances where kit does give you an actual choice such as the plastic Wookies that let you build a melee or shooting focussed unit, but it’ll be clear where that comes up. You can also use Tabletop Admiral, a free third-party list builder to get a better sense of what each set is if you like to do it yourself!

Rebels

In here you get a brand new Luke Skywalker model along with new Rebel Trooper and Rebel Commando kits and a set of plastic Wookies that’s been out for a little while. That’s a Commander and five units in total. The Rebel Troopers as shown are as two units of  as smaller units and spread out a bit, which might be more fitting for Rebels thematically! Commandos are your scouts and will form one larger unit of four-to-five models alongside a sniper team of two. Wookies, as above, can be built to be more melee or shooting focused with some fun options like a bowcaster.

Empire

All new plastics! All the models here are brand spankin’ new. That works out at a Commander plus six units: two large units of Stormtroopers, two units of Scout Troopers, and two two-man sniper teams of Scout Troopers. Solid start. The Empire is a faction with a lot of options so you might not always use all of the Scout Troopers here if you’re theming a force a certain way but they’re not bad by any means! Vader is, unsurprisingly, one of the best Commanders in the game as well as a terrifying force to be reckoned with.

Separatists

That’s a lot of droids! Most of these are already-existing kits and not new except for Grievous who’s gotten a whole new sculpt. That’s a Commander plus four units of droids if you want to take them all as large units since both B1 and B2 battle droids are Corps units. From experience so far though it’s a lot more fun taking droids as large units since you get to roll so many dice for attacks!

Republic

This box might look slightly confusing because you get two guys with lightsabers but the one that isn’t Obi-Wan is just ageneric upgrade that can join one of the clone units. All the models here are brand new in plastic and you get a Commander and five units with two Arc Troopers forming a sniper team like other faction’s scouting units typically do. Once the rules for generic Jedi come out you’ll be able to use that guy as an Operative, but not just yet!

New Edition, New Rules

This section is certainly for the returning players reading through. Summer actually went through everything last year when the rulebook was overhauled so I’m just touching on the ones I’ve found to be most impactful for me. One of the biggest changes is how much being Blue or Red player affects the game; there’s no benefit to fielding a list with less points than your opponent any more so go ahead and slap those upgrades on! Equally, you are not just playing with one player’s Battle Card deck either. Your Battle Cards are still part of list building but both players use their decks and alternate placing cards on the board to determine what the Deployment/Objective, Secondary Objective, and each player’s personal Advantage will be. There’s still some tact to use and some control each player has to avoid really bad missions for their army.

Once you get the game going the next big change to notice is that (almost) nothing actually starts on the table. Any of your units which have Infiltrate will get to start their first activation within your marked deployment zones but everything else spends turn one walking onto the board from the edge! Either way, no units start on the board unless they have Prepared Positions making first turn very interesting in setting up for the rest of the game. Orders are issued in a similar fashion as before but now with unlimited range from the nominated Commander that turn. I really like this because you don’t have to try and think about where your Commanders are in relation with units just for issuing orders. During the first turn everything off-table is assumed to all be in range of each other for any other rules like Direct that allow additional Orders to be issued within range of the Commander or Operative that has the ability.

Backup is a new rule introduced that helps keep your Commanders and Operatives safer from long-ranged shots. I’m really glad to see this added in because I never liked that a weaker support character could so easily be sniped out! When one of your Commander Trooper or Operative Trooper units is targeted by an attack more than Range 2 (that’s 12″) away while also within Range 1/2 (that’s 3″) it gains the benefit of Backup. Only Corps units that are Troopers can provide Backup, and only while they have less Suppression tokens than their Courage stat. So long as all of those criteria are met then you get to automatically cancel two hits (not crits) from the attack. Fantastic. Easy enough to play around to still be able to get to those pesky support characters but it’ll take some planning to set up now.

Transports no longer actually hold models inside of them. Instead they’re used as big slingshots for units turn one. You decide what unit is coming on with which transport before the game starts and then during the first turn when a transport moves onto the table it dumps the unit off. That does give units a much further reach but can’t be used to move around extra-large Corps units. Any transport with an extra long base like the Persuader Class is a big winner here because of its incredibly long base giving it a longer reach.

Terrain is basically the same but I was surprised to learn that Barricades are now open ground when moving across them making them much less awkward to have on the table for infantry to be able to clamber over.

Cover often comes from terrain, or being suppressed (so long as you’re not a droid!) and the benefits from it have changed drastically. Instead of simply cancelling a hit or two you now roll white save dice to attempt to cancel some out before making your normal saves. Depending on how much cover you have lets you cancel hits on either block results or both block and surge results on the dice. I really like this overall, even though my army doesn’t benefit from it as much as some. It means that cover is less guaranteed to cancel out small dice pools while also being able to be far more effective against the larger dice pools of massive Corps units.

Vehicles and any other unit that had Armour have been nerfed a bit to be more prone to larger dice pools. I do actually like this change, it means with a nice big dice pool you still have a shot at doing some damage to vehicles but that taking “enough” weapons with Impact isn’t something you need to worry nearly as much about. Vehicles could have a weird skew feeling in the last edition where you’d have matchups just fully unable to deal with them, without rolling some lucky crits on attacks, so it’s nice to bring them down a notch. I say this as I build and paint my second Separatist AAT to run a very dumb list with two of them and also a Snail Droid.

Speeders don’t displace enemy units any more and actually take damage themselves if their mandatory move would have them end on a unit making them a bit harder to use but removed a really weird feeling rule that could be abused too. This caught me out a few times and it never felt good when it happened.

May the Dice Be With You

This is all very good. I already liked Legion a lot but this new edition just feels smoother across the board after being roughly half a dozen games into it and am definitely very keen to play more. If Star Wars and small army/skirmish wargames are your bag then this is going to be right up your alley; it helps that the rules are just excellent, too. All of the characters feel very appropriate and play how you’d expect them to on the tabletop which I just love and many even have multiple versions to show their growth over the films/series they’re in. It just feels right and good to play all the way through.

Of course, with any franchise game, it can feel like they’re hitting a point of running out of new units to be able to add in. The Weequay Pirates coming out in coming months are very cool but also pretty niche and a lot of Star Wars fans might not even be familiar with them either. It’ll be interesting to see just how deeply they start to dig into the more obscure characters and units in coming years.

Until then, I’ll be bulking out my Separatists and starting an Empire army!

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