Star Wars Legion: New Battle Orders

[Kal-El814]

So Star Wars Legion is getting a pretty big update. Not being called a new edition but one could argue that with new art, new battle decks and scoring types, and a rebalance that is a new edition in everything but name:

 

Star Wars Legion: New Edition and Rules Update Announcement - The Fifth Trooper

THEFIFTHTROOPER.COM

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Here you'll find the newest tidbits from the massive rules update announcements out of Ministravaganza for Star Wars: Legion that were announced on Thursday.

 

Ministravaganza 2024 - Star Wars: Legion - War Table - New Battle Orders - atomicmassgames on Twitch

WWW.TWITCH.TV

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atomicmassgames went live on Twitch. Catch up on their Board Games VOD now.

 

Cautiously optimistic about the changes and hope things good for the long te health of the game. 

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

I was going to post this yesterday!

 

This is Legion 2.0 in all but name only.

[AbsolutSurgen]

Arrmada

X-Wing

Legion

[Kal-El814]

3 minutes ago, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

I was going to post this yesterday!

 

This is Legion 2.0 in all but name only.

Yeah more or less. 1000 points per army is nuts as well, gonna be so much plastic on the table. People are lamenting the game shortening to 5 rounds, especially since round 1 seems largely deployment based… but if it was 6 with 1000 points games would last until the heat death of the universe. I wonder if they’ll release more Legion specifics terrain, the stuff AMG makes for MCP and Shatterpoint is great, if expensive. The Legion stuff has always been more vibes based. 
 

1 minute ago, AbsolutSurgen said:

Arrmada

X-Wing

Legion

I mean it seems AMG is pretty invested in Legion; their interest in X-Wing and Armada always seemed somewhat conditional. If anything them increasing the point total here seems like an obvious way to differentiate it from Shatterpoint as it’ll be much more “army scale” and not “skirmish scale.”

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

The scale of these changes appear to go significantly beyond being considered "merely" a new edition.

 

It's like an entirely different product.

[AbsolutSurgen]

So it's going to be print-and-play for a year - card packs are a year away.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

The unofficial nickname for this new edition is "Star Wars 40K".

[Gavin King]

Been a bit since I played legion. Love the game, just is quite the time commitment. Going to have to print out and make an effort to try the new rules.

 

I'll say this though, I've never had a bad game of Legion. Always close, always fun, always memorable. 

[Kal-El814]

On 7/19/2024 at 11:11 AM, Commissar SFLUFAN said:

The scale of these changes appear to go significantly beyond being considered "merely" a new edition.

 

It's like an entirely different product.

 

I've seen a lot of hand wringing over whether or not this is a "true 2.0" or some such on a few places and I don't quite know what to make of it.

 

The industry doesn't really have a definition of what 2.0 (or second edition or whatever) is or ought to be, beyond perhaps the expectation that 1.0 / first edition content will be usable. But even this isn't always true even within the wargaming space and certainly isn't in tabletop gaming generally (Descent Second Edition / Mansions of Madness  Second Edition could use some First Edition Content, Arkham Horror Third Edition cannot use Second Edition content, etc.).

 

And to the 40K comparisons, well, it's not unheard of for same-edition content to be rendered irrelevant or significantly changed.

 

So 2.0 / Second Edition feels mainly like a marketing communication more so than anything else. With that in mind some of the comments that AMG is lying or being dishonest feel more than a little silly to me and borderline if not full on entitled. The latter especially so since I'm not aware that any actual plastic is getting removed from the game or ruleset, though I may have missed something there.

 

AMG got handed 1 thriving game (Legion), 1 dead game (Armada), and 1 game in a really rocky place (X-Wing). Making a big investment into new rules, re-issuing sculpts and units, branding, etc., makes me feel like the game has a few more years of new life and content left even if they don't jump into other eras (Sequels, High / Old Republic). I haven't bothered trying to kick the tires on the rules we've seen but I think they look okay at worst and exciting at best. As I said before making Legion the "lotsa plastic" game and Shatterpoint being the skirmish game makes a lot of sense to me. You can have a whole Shatterpoint strike force (or whatever the hell they call the whole side fielded by one player) with fewer minis than one of the new 10 mini Legion deployments. The scale not being the same is still a little disappointing in some ways I suppose, but that toothpaste was never getting crammed back into the tube.

 

I dunno. I think AMG continues to be relatively smart about what it is they're doing with both the Marvel and Star Wars IPs, particularly when it comes to their homecooked games. I hope Legion continues to do well and that X-Wing gets to come back at some point too; that system is too fun to be binned forever.