Star Wars Legion Revamp!
Woah! Star Wars Legion has changed! AMG did not call this a new edition, but it absolutely is. You are not required to buy anything in order to play this new edition, so I get why they were hesitant to call it that. The majority of your old stuff is still legal but there are a few new things that you need to play, all of which are in a free Print-and-play document on their site.
In this article, I am going to cover all of the big changes and a few of the little ones. We are all still new to this, but I will do my best not to get anything wrong here.
I urge you to open up the new rules here and read them five or six times for yourself. https://cdn.svc.asmodee.net/production-amgcom/uploads/2024/07/SWQ_Rulebook_2.6.0.pdf
The first major change is the new objectives, battle cards, and scoring. Here is a link to the official PnP doc from AMG with all of these images in it: https://cdn.svc.asmodee.net/production-amgcom/uploads/2024/07/SWQ_BattleCards.pdf
Mission Dashboard
This is the new "Mission Dashboard." This is how you will track Objectives, Maps, Secondary Objectives, Advantages, Rounds, and Scoring. There are a lot of changes just within this picture, let's start with the easier ones. The game is now only five rounds long. I was hoping for fewer rounds personally, but the jury is out on whether this change will have any effect on the time-length of a game due to other changes. The next change is also pretty easy to understand, Scoring. Every objective has VPs that you can score, the first person to Twelve VPs wins the game and the end of the End Phase for that round. There can still be Ties, though I expect that to be less common than before.
Objectives
There are now only six objectives compared to the previous nine. They work very differently than before. Objectives now also provide the map for themselves, so every time you play X mission you will play on Y map. Here are the choices:
As you can see, there are quite a few new things and a handful of recognizable things. Looking at the map images, you can see the table setup for each objective. The Red and Blue areas are now called "Friendly Territory" or "Enemy Territory." The darker blue areas between and around the Player Territories are called "Contested Territory." Certain cards and abilities now reference these areas, so keep their names in mind. You may also notice the red circles, these are called "Points of Interest" or "POIs", they are the new objective tokens. They are now two inches wide instead of one and you are contesting them if you are at "1/2" range from them. There is a new half-range tool coming out as well, if you see any of the circles with a "1/2" in it, that is the range you are measuring there. They are placed per whatever objective you are playing. I will be diving deeper into all of these at a later date, once I have a few games on each.
At first glance, it does seem like all of these are very similar. "Go sit your units near this point to score" type objectives. I'm not sure I like that, but I have to wait to play them before passing judgment.
Secondary Objectives
These are the new "Secondary Objectives." These are what will keep the games interesting and different. There are different ways of scoring secondary VPs. These ones are pretty straightforward. It looks like three of them are "Claim" objectives while the other three are "Kill" objectives. At first glance, nothing here seems to be different from the wording we would've seen last week. I will note that when you score these VPs, it is immediate. Again, I will do a deeper dive on these later, but we still have a lot to cover here.
Advantage Cards
These are the new "Advantage Cards." None of them have any way to score VPs; instead, they change or affect the battlefields in different ways in order to provide you or your opponent with an advantage. They still feel very similar to the old Condition cards but with new and fun effects. All of these look like a ton of fun. I am super hype to try them out. They all feel pretty straightforward, so I'm going to move on.
Determining Blue Player and Mission
Well, with all of these new missions and conditions, they couldn't really keep the old system now could they? Determining Blue player is a random dice roll as opposed to a "Bid" system. I am a fan of this in other games, so I assume I will be a fan of it here. There is a lot that goes into choosing the mission cards, so I will just direct you to the best source: Page 19 of the new rulebook. A player always brings three of each kind of mission card for their own battle deck.
Okay, those are the major changes to the objectives and how to play/win the game. Now I am going to rapid-fire on some of the other changes. Some are huge, some are not. Again, I CANNOT stress this enough: READ THE RULEBOOK. There are a lot of changes. I will try my best to cover a lot of the major ones here but I may miss a few.
Deployment
So, what do you do once you've picked out your mission deck? Well, you play the game of course! Deployment is very different now. It no longer takes place during turn zero, except in a few limited cases. Now, during turn one when you activate a unit, it must move onto the table via a move action.
Cover
Cover was changed... again. Now instead of a flat number of canceled hits, you have to roll for it. The rule book goes into depth here, but so far I think I like this new system.
Standard List Size
The standard size for a game of Legion has been increased from 800 points to 1000 points. There are seemingly a lot of reasons for doing this, all of which I like.
You may now Issue Orders at any range.
Grenades can now only be thrown by one mini in a unit per attack.
There is now a Pass Pool that is determined at the beginning of the game. This awards the person with the lower amount of activations Advantage Tokens to their Pass Pool depending on the difference between the lists -1. You create this at the start of every round.
Unit Cohesion is now at range 1/2, LOS, and within a silhouette height from the leader.
Standard Moves may now end their movement by touching any part of the movement tool. A Speed-2 move is now longer than range-1.
Notched Base movement now includes a free pivot at the beginning of the move.
Withdraw is now only one action, but you cannot standby or attack within the same activation as a withdraw. You can also not move into melee and withdraw in the same activation
Backup is a new rule! This is a very neat ability. It's kinda like super-guardian baked into corps units, except they don't take any damage themselves. The hero just gets to cancel stuff for free.
Standby was changed in a few ways. You can no longer spend standbys off of moves or actions that an effect you own caused, so no more Force-Pushing units into standbys. You can also now only attack the unit that triggered the standby.
Creature Troopers may now Withdraw and Attack in the same activation. (Ryan, I know you're reading this, stay away from me with those stinky Tauns!!!)
Ground Vehicles and Repulsor Vehicles no longer benefit from terrain cover.
AI: Action has been changed. Basically, if you have an Order, are at range three of a commander, or are not on the battlefield, AI:X does not trigger.
Bounty now immediately scores a VP. So, if your Bounty Hunter dies, you still score that VP.
Deflect is now always active against ranged attacks, no more need to spend a dodge. It can also now only deflect back up to one damage total. This is HUGE for force users and I am very curious to see if anything comes of it.
Detachment:X does a lot of new stuff, but I would suggest reading the section on page 48. The biggest thing here is that Detachment units no longer count towards the total number of their rank. i.e You can now take 6 Shore and 6 Mortars or 6 Vets and 6 MK2s.
Exemplar was changed to only allow one token to be spent per attack or defense.
Fire Support was completely changed. Now, if a unit with the Fire Support keyword is issued an order, it gains a standby token.
Infiltrate was changed because it kinda had to be. It's still very good and pretty similar. Again, this is a long and complicated one on page 51.
Inspire happens at the end of the owning unit's activation.
Low Profile adds an autoblock to the cover roll.
Override now has a range of 5.
Prepared Position is a new keyword that allows the owning unit to deploy on the table with a dodge before turn one.
ReinforcementsPosition now gives you a free speed-1 at the end of turn one.
Scout:X now gives you a free speed:X move onto the table if you are undeployed when you activate.
Secret Mission was changed similarly to Bounty. You score the VP immediately when you meet the conditions of the keyword. If you die after this, it does not matter for the purposes of this keyword.
Speeder units do not get the free pivot at the start of a notched base movement. They still must perform a compulsory move. There are a few other things as well, page 55.
Tempted now allows the unit to perform a free attack or speed 2 move when a friendly unit at range 3 is defeated. Limit once per round. Anakin is going to go crazy with this.
Transport is super different. Only Corps and SF units can benefit. When the friendly transport moves onto the table the transported unit may then make a speed 1 move starting with the tool touching the transport. There's some other stuff here, page 56.
Ion tokens now act similarly to Suppression tokens. There is no more auto loss of an action, you may roll for it. Page 59.
That is all I will cover here! There are still a ton of changes to certain units, abilities, and other things. Again, I know I sound like a broken record here, but READ THE RULEBOOK. https://cdn.svc.asmodee.net/production-amgcom/uploads/2024/07/SWQ_Rulebook_2.6.0.pdf
Please let me know what your thoughts are on all the changes! Good luck out there in this new Legion world and thank you for reading!