Tabletop Game / Star Wars: Legion

Star Wars: Legion is a miniatures Wargame, first released in 2018 and initially developed by Fantasy Flight Games. It is a Spiritual Successor of-sorts to Star Wars Miniatures. In November 2020, Atomic Mass Games took stewardship of the game.

Players are given 800 points to build an army with before going to battle on a 3' x 6' table. Prior to each game, a draft is performed to determine objectives, deployment and conditions, while combat is resolved through specialised attack and defence dice. Being an objective-focused game, defeating enemy units is secondary to scoring the most victory points by the end of the 6th turn.

The game launched with two factions, the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance. 2019 saw the inclusion of the Galactic Republic and the Confederacy of Independent Systems.

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This game provides examples of:

• A Commander Is You:
  • The Galactic Empire is Elitist/Brute, with elements of Turtle. Their units tend to be simple in function, tuned to deal consistent damage without requiring much intricate micromanagement, making them the ideal faction for beginners. Their main disadvantage is their lack of mobility, as most of their units are either slow or prefer to remain hunkered down in a defensive position. This can work to their advantage when the enemy needs to come to them, but also means they can be outmanoeuvred by more mobile factions.
  • The Rebel Alliance is Balanced/Ranger, with elements of Technical; effectively a faction of Squishy Wizards and Fragile Speedsters. Their units are fast, agile, and have the potential to hit hard, but this comes at the cost of weak defensive stats that mean they can be wiped out quickly if caught in the open. They are reliant on abilities and unit interactions for their armies to operate at their full potential.
  • The Galactic Republic is Elitist/Generalist. They field a versatile Elite Army with stats that are nearly unmatched by other factions; even their Corps units are comparable to the Special Forces of other factions. The Clones' ability to share green tokens makes them adaptable to changing battlefield conditions, and it is very difficult to pin a Republic army in a position they are unspecialised for. Their main disadvantage are the small size of their armies, which puts them at risk of being overwhelmed by the larger armies of other factions.
  • The Separatist Alliance is Spammer/Technical. The bulk of their armies are made up of weak, disposable Droids that can't do much by themselves, but can be scary in numbers. The Separatist's play style revolves around taking full advantage of a Droids' ability to give orders to nearby Droids after receiving one themselves; this can give a Separatist player unprecedented control over their army. In addition, while many of their units are cheap and throwaway, their elite options lean towards the higher end of the elite spectrum, which means they can field armies that are both large and possess a few of the strongest units on the board.
• Action Initiative:
  • At the start of a game, the blue player (who gets to choose their side of the table, gets first pick during the battle deck draft, and places the first unit) is decided by the player whose army has the lower point value.
  • At the start of each turn, the player who goes first is decided by which command card they play; the fewer pips get priority.
  • In both cases if the values are identical, a coin flip decides instead.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: Aside from the 800-point limit, armies are also restricted by a cap on each rank of unit. The "Entourage" keyword lets certain commanders take a specific unit without it counting towards their rank limit: Emperor Palpatine can bring a Royal Guard squad with him, while Director Krennic can bring Death Troopers.
• Artificial Stupidity: This gets turned into a gameplay mechanic with the AI keyword, which forces droids to perform certain actions if they have not been issued an order that turn.
• Capture the Flag: 'Hostage Exchange' can be considered a variation of this, with the 'flags' starting in the middle of the board and in possession of a trooper unit; you steal the opposing hostage by destroying their escort and taking it for yourself, while ensuring the same doesn't happen to your own.
• Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Each faction is signified by their own color, which is used both on their unit cards, unit-specific tokens and unpainted bases. Rebels are red, Imperials are blue, Republic is beige, and Separatists are purple.
• Concealment Equals Cover: With very few exceptions, units hidden from view cannot be attacked. The ability to designate cover as 'light' or 'heavy' does allow for different materials to provide different levels of protection at least.
• Concussion Frags: Averted, as Concussion and Fragmentation Grenades both function differently. Concussion grenades work better against dug-in infantry, while Frags are more of an all-rounder option.
• Critical Existence Failure:
  • Played straight for troopers. As a whole, squads do lose their effectiveness as they lose members, but for individual troopers with more than one health point, it doesn't matter whether they are at full health or one point away from death, they function just as well either way.
  • Averted for vehicles. Most of them have a Resilience level. When a vehicle's damage exceeds that threshold, it can receive a random effect that represents a malfunction.
• Critical Hit: One face on each type of attack dice represents a critical hit, which deals the same amount of damage as a regular hit but bypasses cover and armor, and cannot be cancelled by a dodge token.
• Easy Communication: Averted. Your commanders can issue orders to a number of units based on which command card you have chosen and whether they are in range of the commander; those units can then be activated whenever you want on your turn. If a unit hasn't been issued an order, then you activate them by choosing a rank token at random, with you being forced to then activate a unit of that rank. In general, Comms upgrades make it easier for units to be issued orders. This does raise some questions as to why, in an advanced sci-fi setting, units need to be given specialist equipment in order to use a radio over a few dozen feet.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: For the most part, Averted. Special Forces usually fulfil a more specialist niche in armies compared to the Corps, and the mandatory requirement to take at least 3 Corps units means they aren't likely to overshadow their more expendable counterparts.
• Everything Fades: Defeated units are removed from the board, not leaving anything behind that could be used as cover or terrain.
• Faction Calculus: Each set of factions can be paired within the Powerhouse/Subversive dynamic:
  • Among the Galactic Civil War-era factions:
    • The Galactic Empire is a Powerhouse faction, featuring strong defensive stats, consistent damage output, and specialised units that can operate independently.
    • The Rebel Alliance is Subversive, favouring inconsistent attacks with high potential, cheaper Jack of All Stats units, and more opportunities for units to synergise with each other.
  • Among the Clone Wars-era factions:
    • The Galactic Republic is the Powerhouse, favouring a versatile Elite Army.
    • The Separatist Alliance is Subversive, fielding hordes of weak droids whose strength come from the ease in which they can be micro-managed.
• Fixed Damage Attack: Force Choke deals one point of damage to trooper units, completely bypassing the dice rolling.
• Fixed Forward-Facing Weapon: Many vehicles feature these. The AT-ST is the most notable example since all of it's ranged weapons are only being capable of firing forwards, while it also possesses a weak point on its rear.
• Geo Effects: Of several kinds. It can grant either light or heavy cover to units it obscures at least half of, which cancels one or two hits that the unit receives respectively. Terrain can also be 'difficult', which reduces the speed of relevant units that travel through it by 1.
• Grenade Spam: A grenade’s primary purpose is to add a status effect to a unit’s attack. When a grenade is stronger than a unit’s primary weapon however, it is adviseable to make every member of a squad use a grenade, to this trope’s effect.
• Hero Unit: The Commanders and Operatives both function like this.
• Jack of All Stats: The Corps units fall into this. Roughly average in all areas, they are capable against most opponents where a more expensive unit with Crippling Overspecialisation may falter. Due to the requirement to bring at least 3 corps units in your army, they will also make up your forces' backbone.
• Luck Manipulation Mechanic: The base game included Aim and Dodge tokens, which lets a unit reroll two attack dice and cancel one hit respectively. The Clone Wars introduces the Surge token, which lets a unit temporarily convert both offensive and defensive surge results that they wouldn't normally have access to.
• Mind Rape: Although a Light Side-exclusive power, Jedi Mind Trick works this way here; it grants two suppression tokens to its target, enough to make many basic trooper units panic if outside the range of their commander.
• Morale Mechanic:
  • Trooper units have a Courage value that represents the morale of a unit; if within range of a commander then they can use the commander's courage value instead. They are given suppression tokens if they need to defend from hits (regardless of whether those hits did any damage). In moderation, suppression can be good since they grant units cover. However, if their suppression tokens are equal to their courage value, they become suppressed and lose an action. Earn double their courage value, then they panic and attempt to run off the board.
  • The game offers multiple ways suppression can be manipulated to a units advantage. The training upgrade 'Duck and Cover' lets units give themselves a suppression token before being attacked, giving them instant cover. Jyn Erso and the Pathfinder's 'Danger Sense' keyword lets them roll extra defence dice depending on how suppressed they are. Other abilities allow a unit to take suppression tokens in exchange for an extra action.
• Mythology Gag: Many unit abilities reference specific moments and scenes from the Star Wars films and its expanded universe. For some more specific examples, check the character page.
• Never Say "Die": The rules always say a miniature is "defeated" when they are removed from the board, even though the game otherwise makes no reservations about the weapons depicted as being lethal.
• New Work, Recycled Graphics: The game's card artwork reuses many pieces of art from other Fantasy Flight-developed Star Wars games.
• Obvious Rule Patch:
  • Many abilities cannot be used against Commanders and Operatives in order to prevent a few unusual unit interactions. For one example, Force Choke (deal 1 wound to any trooper miniature as a free action) would be extremely efficient against those unit types, and overshadow the main purpose of Force Choke as a method of killing specific members of a squad.
  • The 'Hostage Exchange' objective protects the units carrying hostages from being attacked on turn 1, in order to give them a chance to take cover and not get blasted off the board first thing. In addition, the objective also prohibits the use of the 'Detonation' keyword in order to plug a potential loophole: because detonating explosive charges technically don't count as attacking a unit directly, it would still be possible to attack hostage carrying units with them on turn 1. This in-particular prevents Sabine Wren and her 'Explosives!' command card from completely breaking the objective, which in a game where the players can influence what objective gets chosen is especially important.
• Personality Powers: A few Force upgrades are restricted to either the Light Side (Jedi Mind Trick, Hope) or Dark Side (Force Choke, Anger, Fear).
• Prisoner Exchange: The premise of the 'Hostage Exchange' objective added in the 'Vital Assets' expansion. A corps unit on each side volunteers to start in the middle of the board, carrying a hostage that slows them down but gives them an additional point of courage. You gain one victory point for each hostage you control at the end of the game, and an additional point if that hostage is within your deployment zone. The expansion gives you two miniatures that can serve as hostages: Rune Haako and Senator Riyo Chuchi (the latter of which serves as a Mythology Gag to the Clone Wars episode "Hostage Crisis").
• Quality vs. Quantity: You get 800 points to build an army, with an array of upgrades for each unit to choose from. Like many of Fantasy Flight's other miniatures games, you decide whether the points go to lots of inexpensive units, fewer heavily upgraded units, or a mix of both.
• Ring Out: Any unit that leaves the board is instantly defeated. There are a few ways you can exploit this, such as through vehicle displacement or using Force Push.
• Shot to the Heart: The 'Emergency Stims' upgrade does this, delaying up to 2 wounds from a single attack until the end of your next activation.
• Support Power: Leia's Coordinated Bombardment and Veers' Maximum Firepower command cards call in off-map artillery.
• The Medic:
  • Medical droids for most factions (a 2-1B for the Rebels, an FX-9 for the Imperials, and an EV-series for the Separatists), plus the Clone Medic for the Republic are available for any squad with a Trooper upgrade slot. The droids are non-combatants, but have the ability to negate up to two wounds per game. The Clone Medic, on the other hand, can fight but can only heal one wound.
  • The 'Bacta Capsules' upgrade found through the Supply Drop condition also lets you turn any trooper unit into this, with the ability to negate a single wound.
• Turns Red:
  • The 'Anger' force upgrade, which lets its user gain an aim token when wounded.
  • The 'Tenacity' training upgrade lets its user roll an extra red dice in melee combat so long as they are wounded.
• Video Game Flamethrowers Suck: Subverted. On one hand, flamethrower weapons are always Range 1, which makes them tricky to use in a game where most units can easily outrange that. On the other hand, they all come with both the Spray (multiply the weapon's attack dice by each miniature in the squad you're attacking) and Blast (ignore cover) keywords, which makes them extremely potent against squads of infantry, and also puts them somewhat in line with their real-life purpose of destroying buildings and emplacements.
• Weather of War: At the start of each game a Condition is chosen as part of the draft, and some of them involve weather conditions.
• You Are in Command Now: If all of an army's Commanders are defeated, another unit must be promoted to Commander. That unit cannot use any of the character-specific command cards, but otherwise functions the same.