AAR: Star Wars Legion: I Got Luke Skywalker Killed!

         As many of us Star Wars fans in the wargaming world know, the new Fantasy Flight Games' Star Wars Legion is not suppose to be released until March 22nd. Of course, this is provided anything truly is on time. There was already a push back in the date as it is. Either way, I have to be very honest about this game originally.  I had know real interest in it. Don't get me wrong! I love the Star Wars: Imperial Assault game. I just did not have that much interest in the Legion game. I think one of the reasons were that the scale was slightly larger, eliminating the use of my existing Imperial Assault figures. The second reason was that it was still set with Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader. I get it! It is back to the basics. And with the license own by Disney, I can see the limitations involved. And then, there were the released game mechanics that were being released sections at a time. The game looked overly complex.  Or so it seemed.................
      On last Saturday, Kalissa and I decided to go out to game, since we had not gamed out and about. We really need to do this more, since we do not meet up with as many gamers as we used to. It is just a healthy gamer thing to do. So we decided to head out to our local Hobbytown, U.S.A. to play a game of Pantheon. Kalissa had sent message to the makers of the game to demo for them. Plus, we heard there was a Star Wars: Armada tournament going on. We did not want to take up much room. I lost in this game against my wife. However, we did get to hear about someone coming to the store to demo the much anticipated Star Wars Legion. They were coming to demo later that evening around when I was going to work. We were also told that they would demo the next day in Aberdeen, NC at Hitpoint Hobbies. And so I went to test out this new game before I completely write it off in my system.
     Now, that I got out all of my advanced prejudices, I want to remind people of the old childhood saying to not judge a book by it's cover, or in this case, by the writers promoting the game. For some reason, the previews of this game made it sound way more complex than it is. I was thinking that this was four rules sets slapped together to make a game. So this is a kind of review. I will run down some good news. For one, if you ever played Imperial Assault and X-Wing, the dice have the same type of set up. You have critical damage, damage, a blank side or more, and surges. Legion uses a combination of regular D6 and D8 dice. Your units have these labelled on the card to tell you what dice you will use to shoot with and what you need to defend with. Defending dice have the triangle for defend and blanks that do nothing. Of course, there are things to consider, such as, cover and unit abilities. This is all very similar to both Star Wars games I mentioned. Another rules set that is similar in tabletop perspective would be Warlords Bolt Action rules. This is based on the unit cohesion with the one inch rule for other models in the same unit, cover equals half of the unit is behind cover from the LOS of the enemy, and the every figure in a unit fires with a die. None of these features are new to the wargaming world, but they do work well together. These are the positives of the game. I will get to some negatives after explaining my experience.

This was the game before I played.

   Before I joined in a game, I got to the store to watch the first demo. For a game that was written like it was complex, it was quite easy to pick up and understand. After turn two, I knew how to play. The game play starts a turn with picking out a priority card. There are four of them that have both a unit numbers on them and a numbers up top to say what order determines who goes first. Both players have the same cards. One card you can always reuse; the others you cannot. If there is a tie for using the same card type, you roll off. The unit number on the card is the number of units you can plan to choose. The rest are randomly chosen. All units get to go and the game is a total of six turns. You have activation tokens. The circle tokens next to the figures above are the activation tokens. You place the ones down you have planned to play. You can move what you've placed down or have your opponent chose out of the remaining ones randomly to go next. Players alternate back and forth until the tokens are all used. Of course, this is just a basic melee. I am sure that other scenarios can make this a more complex game when they release it.
   Shooting was pretty strait forward. You have a card for each unit with their abilities. The unit firing has their regular weapons, plus can have added weapons that you can purchase much like Imperial Assault does. Different weapons have different dice. An example: The AT-RT I had had one weapon that I could fire 360 degree as a rifle using two white D8, one that was an add -on with a weapon card which has two D8 red and one black D8, or I could close combat with four D8 red dice. I am going from memory, so it could be a little different. You have weapons that may also have a minimum range. You can pre-measure in this game, so moving is possible to make the range you need. You shoot your target, and your opponent rolls for saves and such. Shooting at some with a light saber like good ol' Darth did not seem to not work out for me, since he can hit lasers back and damage/kill you. Some weapons have a 45 degree arc, so there are times that you cannot pull off what you may what to do based on this. There are suppression markers that you gain from taking shots just like Bolt Action that can stack up. You have to do an action to rid of one. I am not sure exactly how the whole thing works, since the demo did not use them.
    Movement seemed very similar to Star Wars Armada. They use the same movement sticks with the joint. The unit card shows the speed that they can move. This was not really a deal breaker, but can have some problems in the terrain making world. The game was demonstrated on a 3' x 3' battle mat, but a normal game is suppose to play out on a 4' x 6' board. Since they are using the sticks, it leaves the game potential for 3-D elements a little lacking. I was told that they were going to have something for buildings as another level, but true wargaming addresses much more combat field problems. It will be interesting to see how that plays out.
    As for the unit cards, they were mainly for information and abilities. They had health, range for different attacks, unit cost, movement, weapons, attack dice, defense dice, and add-ons. The add-ons were something that interest me. I noticed on the Stormtroopers a add-on slot for grenades. Grenades are always a fun thing in wargaming. It seemed like each card had a certain number of slots for these add-ons. However, they were all labelled with certain symbols. For what I could tell, you could not just load up with six types of grenades or five different rifles. I think it is a 'go one, go all' upgrade for the unit. Again, since we played a demo game before the release,  a lot these things were a mystery.
     Anyway, about my game experience. I decided to play right after watching a game. Originally, the game master was just going to allow a couple of turns of game play, but amoungst the twelve of us watching, we overrode that to let to two guys play it out. Part of the fun was watching slow motion Darth Vader walk to the Rebels like Jason in the Friday the 13th movies. It was after this game, I decided to play. I just took the Rebels side for the hell of it. The force make up on my side was Luke Skywalker, an AT-RT, and two five-men Rebel units. The opposing player had Darth Vader, two Speeder Bikes, and two five-man Storm Trooper units. It was a funny game, since every turn using the initiative cards, we both kept putting down the same cards and rolling off. In my case, the Force was not on my side. The Speeder Bikes had no problem taking out Luke. My AT-RT died in the hand of Vader, but only after taking out the Speeders. I took one unit down to two Storm Troopers, but they suddenly had Navy Seal training and kill most everyone. Either way, I had fun with it.
    So in a first impression review, I must admit that the Star War Legion game got my further attention. Fantasy Flight Games did a great job with incorporating current popular game mechanics with their working game platforms. They made the game with complex features as well as easy to understand. This is, of course, if they do not over write it and have photo examples in the core rule book. The lack of  3-D terrain ideas and terrain rules might be a set back, but does not mean the game will not be fun. And the fact that there is not a new faction by going back to the original movies looses the New feel to the game other than rules is a con. It is probably the smarter move versus the new movie characters. The plus side with the land battles of Stars Wars are the amount of factions that can be made in the future based off of the various aliens. I do look forward to that idea. I probably will not buy into the game until later on due to other game priorities, but hopefully, will they will have more factions by then.