What have AMG got planned for Star Wars Legion? A recap of AMG's rules announcements from Ministravanganza 2024

I thought we’d have a few rules changes but not to the extent that have been shared so far. In this article I’ll do my best to cover as many of the key changes as possible and provide a few takes.

AMG have been clear that this is not a new edition, not a 2.0 or 3.0, not a new game. However they started with their new Legion logo and with everything they’ve shared so far this is a hard reset on the game of Legion that we have learnt to love and loathe over the past few years. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing (or likely somewhere in between) everyone will find things they like from this and things they don’t. Time will tell and at the end of the day only playing the game will tell. I suspect they didn’t want to brand it as a 2.0 to try to reduce groups of players ‘sticking with 1.0’ - I think that as people give this new rules set a go we will learn to love or live with it and continue to push our toy soldiers around the table (and now even more of them at once!).

Key Game Changes

The basic game is now played with 1000 point lists rather than 800 points with the aim of getting more characters and underutilised units on the board. This may also help save some of the unseen upgrade cards.

The game now happens over 5 turns rather than 6 turns. With the increase in points this will help to keep the game length from spiralling too much.

Deployment no longer exists in the same format. Units now start off the board and when activated in turn 1 you place the unit leader on the edge of the board of a friendly territory (which is the new name for the old deployment zone) and move them from there. Units who are yet to deploy are considered at all ranges and in LOS of all other friendly units (think of it like a pre-battle meeting where all the units are huddled around listening to their commander) and beyond all ranges and out of LOS of units who have deployed. A unit cannot do anything until it has deployed.

The game’s principle win condition is now to get 12 Victory Points. As you’ll see, scoring VPs on the primary objectives is now cumulative from turn 2 onwards. Objectives can be contested (equal number of unit leaders at range of the objective) or secured (you have more unit leaders at range). Secondary objectives add other ways of securing VPs during the game and then secret mission and bounty could be seen as tertiary objectives which add to your potential VPs. VPs are no scored before suppression tokens are removed, meaning suppression and the ability to remove it have a higher emphasis now.

Turn 0

Bidding is gone, the 4 card flip is gone, condition cards are gone, deployment cards are gone.

The battle cards now comprise of 6 primary objectives (which are each tied to a specific deployment), 6 secondary objectives and 6 advantage cards. A player’s battle deck will consist of 3 of each.

We’ll cover the objectives in more detail in a different article.

Turn 0 has completely changed.

Determine player colour

Each player rolls 5 black dice. The player with the most crits is blue. On a tie it’s hits and then surges. So bidding is not necessary anymore. This will hopefully lead to the less common upgrade cards being taken again.

Build the mission

The mission is made up of 1 objective, 1 secondary objective and 2 advantages cards (1 for each player). Both players contribute their battle deck to forming the mission you will play.

• Each player shuffles their 3 piles of cards (objective, secondary objective and advantage cards).

• The blue player then reveals either a objective or secondary objective.

• The red player then reveals whichever the blue didn’t.

• Then both players reveal an advantage card.

Then, starting with blue each player, each player as the chance to alter the mission, alternating between the players until both have had 2 opportunities. Players can alter the mission in the following ways.

• discard the objective and replace it with the next one from your objective pile.

• Discard the secondary objective and replace it with the next one from your secondary objective pile.

• discard your advantage card and replace it with the next one from your advantage pile.

• Discard your opponent’s advantage card and replace it with the next advantage card from their advantage pile.

• Switch from being red to blue player.

• Pass

What’s left after both players have had the chance to do this twice is the mission for the game.

The blue player then decides which side of the table they want to take. This is a big change as you’ll be able to choose this once the objectives have been selected allowing you to make an informed decision based upon the terrain on the table.

Objectives

To accompany the new objective cards, AMG have introduced new objective tokens or ‘Point of Interest’ tokens which each of the 6 objectives use. These tokens are 2 inch tokens with a silhouette which extends up from the base by 3 inches - which corresponds nicely with the new half range ruler. The POIs provide heavy cover but do not block LOS. Units contest a POI token if the unit leader is at half range of it and not panicked.

The old style objective tokens are now asset tokens. These are used in some of the secondary objectives.

With condition cards gone the condition tokens are now used as pass tokens and in some of the advantage cards.

When a unit claims an asset token it is now removed from the board and no longer follows the unit leader around the board with it. When as asset token is dropped by a player, their opponent places it at half range from the unit leader.

Passing

Passing was introduced by AMG in their rules revamp in January 2023. There were concerns raised by some players that they might over do the mechanic, but they didn’t and on the whole people agreed the implementation of passing was done well. They’ve now taken this to the next level.

At the start of each round the player with the least units assigns themselves a number of pad tokens equal to the difference in the number of units available to each player - 1. The pass token pool is reset each round. With this and the increase to 1000 points it will be interesting to see where the new average activation count comes out too. A player cannot pass twice in a row.

Cover

Another one of the changes in the January 2023 update. This one didn’t go down so well amongst lots of players. The key changes are as follows:

• Units only get cover from terrain if at least half of the miniatures in the defending unit are obscured by terrain that is at half range from the miniature

• Units do not get light cover from suppression anymore, the unit needs to be suppressed to improve its cover by 1, to a maximum of heavy cover.

• Once the cover has been determined, the defending player rolls one white defence dice for each hit result in the attack pool. The defender then continues as normal to roll their defence dice based upon the remaining hits and crit results.

  • For light cover - for every block result rolled, cancel 1 hit

  • For heavy cover - for every block or surge results rolled, cancel 1 hit

Low Profile has also been reworked so that the defending unit rolls one less white defence dice during the roll cover pool step and instead adds an additional block results for the cover pool after rolling.

Vehicles no longer benefit from cover at all, unless they have the Cover keyword on their unit card.

The POI tokens are treated as area terrain with a silhouette that is half range tall and provides heavy cover.

Ground vehicles provide heavy cover to other units, repulsor vehicles do not.

Movement

The key change here is that when moving a miniature, rather than placing a model in the beveled end of the movement tool you can place the model anywhere in contact with the movement tool. This means that each movement is slightly longer than before and a speed-2 move is now longer than range 1.

Units are now placed in cohesion using the half-range tool with units having to be at half-range of the unit leader and in Line of Sight of the unit leader. If a model cannot be placed into cohesion, please it as close as possible to the unit leader. The previous rule set used to enforce a move as the next possible action if a model was not able to be cohered correctly, but this seems to have gone. It also appears that this sentence supersedes the previous cohesion rules and so a variety of movement tricks to get to small places could be used to hide models in a unit.

Units on notched bases now receive a free pivot before they move, except for units with the Speeder keyword.

Any unit can move through any other unit unimpeded and displacement is now a thing of the past.

Withdraw has had a big change. Engaged units can now withdraw by reducing their speed to 1 and making a move action. This only costs 1 action. A unit cannot perform a standby or an attack and a withdraw in the same activation. The only exception to this are creature troopers who may attack and withdraw in the same activation.

Issuing Orders

Units have no range restrictions when issuing orders using command cards. This is a buff to those units who like to head off to the far corners of the board such as speeders. Before Turn 1, orders can be issued to units off the board.

Droids and their AI

AI only triggers if a unit does not have an order token or is beyond range 3 of a friendly commander unit. This combined with the changes to issuing orders really makes things easier for CIS armies.

Clones and their abilities

The clone trooper's sharing range has been extended to range 2, rather than range 1.

Whilst not purely tied to GAR, the Fire support key word was synonymous with the faction. It has been completely reworked and now gives a unit a standby when the unit is issued an order.

Deployment continued

The key changes to deployment were mentioned above, but three relevant key words are worth noting:

• Scout - this hasn't changed, but the move given by the Scout keyword is now used as your deployment move.

• Infiltrate - units with infiltrate can be placed anywhere in a friendly territory. Whilst less of the board is now accessible, it does allow you to delay the deployment of an infiltrate unit to respond to your opponent's turn 1 plays.

• Prepared positions - this is a new keyword. Units with this keyword are placed in friendly territory before turn 1 and are given a dodge. This is meant to represent a unit dug in to a defensive position before the battle commences.

This is also a good time to mention the changes (or obliteration of) to the transport rules.

Only corps or special forces can now be transported by a transport. This has to be chosen during setup. When orders are issued in round 1 the transport may issue an order to the unit it is transporting. As soon as the transport deploys, the transported unit may deploy, making a speed-1 move from the transport. Whilst this sounds like a complete death to transports, it can get the transported unit far up the board turn 1 as that unit can then double move when they activate.

Defensive abilities

Backup is a new rule in Legion, but similar to other wargames (as I am led to believe). Backup allows a trooper unit which is a commander or operative unit to cancel two hit results when defending against a ranged attack where the attacker is beyond range 2 away, IF, the unit is at half-range and has LOS to the unit leader of a unit that provides backup. Units which can provide backup are corps trooper units which are not suppressed. Other units which can provide backup are:

• units which are called out on a commander's or operative's Entourage keyword

• a unit with Guardian X

• Retinue units to the specified unit

Units which have Guardian cannot benefit from Backup themselves (poor ObiWan), this also applies to the Bad Batch due to their We're not Regs keyword.

Units with Deflect no longer need to spend a dodge to trigger deflect. It is always triggered against a range attack, giving the unit surge:block and if a surge is rolled the attacker suffers a wound (and only 1 wound regardless of the number of surges rolled).

Standby

The rules for standbys remain the same except when spending a standby to attack the only unit that can be attacked is the unit which set off the standby.

Vehicles and Armour

The armour keyword no longer exists without a number after it. The highest armour value in the game at the moment is Armour 5.

Vehicle damage has been simplified. Once a vehicle reaches its resilience value it gains a damage token. There is now only 1 damage token. The vehicle is basially suppressed and must roll a block or surge on a white defence dice to perform its normal number of actions. If it rolls a blank it performs one less action to normal.

Ion tokens are not as bad as they once were. If a vehicle or droid has an ion token, at the start of its activation roll a white defence dice for each ion token. If any blanks are rolled, the unit gets one fewer action.

Other keyword changes of note

All of the keywords which give out tokens have had their range extended to range 2. eg. Take Cover, Aid, Bolster etc.

Bounty Hunters now find it far easier to contribute with a VP. The hunter no longer needs to survive until the end of the game and they score the VP immediately on killing the unit. Moving onto the other VP scoring keyword, Secret Mission has been updated. A unit with the keyword gains a secret mission token if it is in enemy territory at the start of a command phase. When scoring VPs, if that unit still has the token and is in the enemy territory the VP is scored and the secret mission token removed.

Units with the Detachment keyword such as Mortars and all of the strike teams (a new addition for them) no longer count towards the maximum unit count for that rank. This means you could in theory take 12 corps or 6 special forces in a list.

Exemplar has been nerfed to ensure only 1 token can be spent whilst a unit is attacking or defending.

Override now extends to range 5 - something which pairs with the changes to issuing orders and the AI changes mentioned earlier.

Reinforcements has been changed, which was needed due to the deployment changes. It now gives units a free speed-1 move at the start of the End Phase or turn 1.

Whilst this is not a complete list of the rules changes, it should give you a good overview of what the game of Legion now is. There has been a huge amount of positivity and negativity amongst the community, but I certainly encourage everyone to reserve judgement until after playing with this new rule-set.

We shall be looking at the updated units ans upgrades and at the new battle deck in more detail in further articles.

All in all, in my opinion, changes were needed to aspects of the game. AMG went far further than perhaps most were expecting, but hopefully this ends up being a positive move for the game.

If you want to watch any of AMG's streams from the weekend back, you can find them here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWpms_ngFn4&list=PLxCfR4yTLyiELAaJli4zNfoqcSlMFQ1ru&pp=iAQB

The documents for the updated Star Wars Legion can be found here: https://www.atomicmassgames.com/swlegiondocs/