Finally getting home from Hong Kong, I was able to crack my Star Wars Legion boxes open and start assembling. This has been a game I’ve been seriously watching every little development as I figured it was going to be some major fun.
It is a skirmish level, and highly cinematic game with lots of generally good polish. Tim and I played a couple of the opening weekend simple games and then dove into a full 800 point action.
Legion has a mission/deployment/conditions card system for normal games. You draw 3 of each type of card and then have two rounds of eliminating from those cards to end up with a deployment, a mission and battlefield conditions. By going with cards this makes the game sort of infinitely expandable much like Runewars.
This is what we had chosen. Basically playing the ‘long way’ on the 3×6′, victory tokens only if you’re able to get into the other guys deployment zone and hostile conditions meaning that you only lose suppression when you’re in terrain, not out in the open.
Here was our table setup, on the … umm … forest moon of … someplacedor.
I put my two AR-RTs on the left flank with a squad of infantry. I figured they could cover the area if the imperials pushed from that side. I put my infantry and Luke pretty much in the center. I figured I’d try and hold on the left and push on the right.
“Red leader, I see two imperial speeder bikes…” pew pew pew…
Scratch one speeder bike….
Meanwhile the AT-ST moved up, the stormtroopers and Vader setup in the center and on my far left flank another squad of stormtroopers moved up.
I moved my two AT-RTs up. Maybe two could help put a dent into that AT-ST.
Hits starting to land on the AT-ST, unfortunately the Stormtroopers and their HS12s were landing hits on my T-47…. Red Leaders … we’re going down ….. kkkkkkrk”
It’s Darth Vader! Give him all you got boys! Hey where did everyone go? Uh-o ….
Meanwhile on the left flank pinned down the Stormtroopers trying to move up and push pressure on me.
Getting towards the end of the game. Needed to make a run in order to have a chance of having anything reach the opposite side. Luke leading the charge, ran forward and delivered the final blow on the AT-ST. This set Luke up for the last turn dash to try and reach the objective.
But wait, there’s a bunch of enemy stormtroopers just outside the woods. Using a jedi mind trick causes them to panic and run away since Vader isn’t nearby to …. um… motivate them. On Luke’s turn 6 activation, he makes a run for it and just barely crosses into imperial territory for the victory.
All and all a fun time. Some thoughts about game play. You probably noticed in the picture some of the round disks, those are to make activated units (when on the rebel or imperial symbol side) or units that have orders. At the top of the turn, you select an order card and depending on the bid associated with the order card that’ll determine if you or your opponent activate first. Activations go back and forth. Additionally, the order cards determine how many units you can issue an order to (as long as they are within command range or have a radio to talk to the commander), and the remaining disks go into a bag to be drawn at random when it’s your activation. When it is your activation you have a choice, either you can activate a unit that was issued an order or you can draw from the bag and see what unit type you can activate at random. It’s a good system that works well.
Generally when you activate a unit has 2 action. It could double move, attack and move, aim, dodge, go on overwatch that kind of thing. You can’t double attack. If the unit is suppressed (and that’s big in this game) then you’re down to one action. You can suppression when you are shot at and hit. Too many suppression and your unit will panic and run away. If you are in command range of say Luke, you use his courage value thus making it harder to run away.
Jedi like Vader and Luke, well they really feel and play like Jedi. Really powerful but still able to be taken out if you employ lots and lots of firepower.
Vehicles, speeders, T47s, AT-RTs, all great vehicles, each with pluses and minuses. Given the game is point costed, sure you can run two AT-STs if you want but you won’t have much else.
The terrain rules are probably the part of the game that needs a bit of refinement. The rules reference (the lawyer version of the rules) is available online only and isn’t part of the game. Terrain is covered in the online guide and feels like they’ll probably apply updates and clarifications fairly quickly. With the game being just a week old, there are lots of questions and just when you do/don’t apply LoS, cover etc seem slightly confusing OTOH this is something I need to go back and reread so confusion could be entirely mine.
Overall, I think this is a well done skirmish game at just the right scale. I’m sure it’s going to bloom with lots of expansions and options to field a force (wookies!) as you desire.