Release Day and New Expansion Announcements!

The much anticipated day is finally here!

In the next several days I'll be assembling and painting my own Legion miniatures, and hopefully get in some full games as well. This should mean posts with pictures of the assembled miniatures as well as battle reports. Of course there will eventually be updates to articles in the Unit Guides as I gain more experience playing.

The humble beginnings of my Imperial army

A few days ago FFG also announced the first neutral expansion: Priority Supplies. This includes several terrain pieces which can be used as objective markers, as well as 3 new battle cards. This is particularly exciting, as it suggests that we can look forward to additional neutral expansions bringing more battle cards to the game as well as more terrain pieces specific to the Star Wars universe to add to the atmosphere of the battlefield.

We have also received news of more unit expansions: Han Solo as a new Rebel commander and Rebel Commandos as the first special forces unit.

What we can see so far of Han Solo seems to solidify some trends. He comes with 3 upgrade slots and 4 unit keywords. One of these upgrade slots is for a new category of upgrades (we don't yet know what it will be called) and 3 of his keywords are new as well. These are Low Profile, Gunslinger, and Uncanny Luck. Along with Sharpshooter and the Pierce weapon keyword, it looks like these will combine to make Han a scrappy fighter who can survive through some tough scrapes and punish enemy troopers in a firefight- even when he's outnumbered.

The Rebel Commandos are out first look at special forces units in Legion, and I don't think I could be more pleased. Points-wise they are more expensive then corps units, as one would expect, but they are also appropriately more powerful. Compared to Rebel Troopers, they have the same defense and use the same weapon, but gain an offensive surge in addition to a defensive surge. They have a better Courage value of 2, meaning they will be more resistant to suppression and panic, and they can get an additional edge with Low Profile and Sharpshooter. But of most interest is probably the utility and flexibility they can bring.

This flexibility and utility comes across in the Scout unit keyword and the 2 unit card variations. Scout allows you to make a move as soon as you deploy- essentially, they can start the game a bit outside of the designated deployment zone. This provides for some ways to potentially catch your opponent off-guard, as you might end up in range to attack a valuable unit a turn sooner than expected, or set your squad in good defensive cover, or perhaps even in a position to quickly claim an objective token.

With 2 different unit cards you can field them as a full sized squad of elites or a 2 man fire team, so it should be easy to fit your Rebel Commandos into a wide variety of lists. While we don't have much info on the exact costs and abilities of the Heavy Weapon troopers, it looks like there will be a choice between the long range firepower of the sniper or area denial from the Proton Charge trooper.

The also have the same new upgrade slot as Han Solo. My guess is this category is devoted to veteran/elite skills. The only card of this category so far is Duck and Cover, which allows you to gain a suppression token during the Apply Dodge and Cover step when you are defending against ranged attacks. Since having a suppression token improves cover by 1, this allows you a way to prevent damage when you're out in the open. Naturally this combines nicely with Low Profile (While defending, if you have light cover, improve your cover by 1.) so that you always benefit from heavy cover- though taking an extra suppression token has its downsides.

Finally, as a bit of an aside I'm really happy to see a Mon Calamari included in the Rebel Commandos, and hope so see more of them (and other cool aliens) in future expansions. At the moment the future of Legion looks very bright indeed!