Star Wars: Legion announced (by distributor)

By rbaker1978, in Star Wars: Imperial Assault

Beasts of War have been told in their private demo of the game that the official OP games will be played on a 3'x 6' play area , with 1000 pts armies (although that means nothing for us so far).

http://www.beastsofwar.com/star-wars-legion/coming-tabletop-ffg/

So based on the play area, that's clearly a larger scale gaming experience compared with Imperial Assault.

Edited by Xargonaut
1 hour ago, danrimo said:

It's a different scale to IA!?

Oh FFG. How could you fail so hard.

Barely.

I wouldn't think of the scales as being sufficiently different to matter.

I was hoping it would be on a compatible scale with X-wing, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

12 hours ago, Marinealver said:

I was hoping it would be on a compatible scale with X-wing, but that doesn't appear to be the case.

Just use a lot of pegs until the ships are high enough above the action to look right.

does this game means the end of IA ? I mean two miniature games in the same era with almost the same gameplay.

8 hours ago, goncardoso said:

does this game means the end of IA ? I mean two miniature games in the same era with almost the same gameplay.

Please define 'with almost the same gameplay'. Because apart from being two games using ground troops, after seeing a demo game, I see two games that plays completely different.

-Imperial Assault is on a small grid map; Legion is on a 3'x6' table with open movement

-Imperial Assault determine range by rolling dice; Legion use range ruler

-Both games use different kind of dice and are as close as Imperial Assault dice are to X-Wing or Armada dice

-Imperial Assault has secret command cards that require some deck building

-Legion is a fixed 6 round game

-In Legion, except for heroes, Health is determine by number of units in a group, which also determine the number of dice you roll to attack

-There is cover in Legion

So, except for the common similarities inerrant to every miniature games, I see both those games as two different beast, just like Armada is to X-Wing. They share the same universe and theater, but that's pretty much it. I'm not worried one bit for the future of Imperial Assault.

Edited by Red Castle
5 hours ago, qwertyuiop said:

Just use a lot of pegs until the ships are high enough above the action to look right.

It also means the mechanics won't be the same as well. But yeah 5 peg ships will be funny if they don't tip over. You could even use it as a height 1-5 pegs.

5 hours ago, goncardoso said:

does this game means the end of IA ? I mean two miniature games in the same era with almost the same gameplay.

IA Skirmish probably, but then again it wasn't the main draw of IA and FFG didn't exactly did good with the balancing on that (you think fair ship lists and Jumpmasters was bad, HA!). But the whole balance thing does bring up some questions. It isn't the same system as runebound with the dials and everything. But at least this game would be able to cover the Battle of Hoth with AT-AT and snow speeders whcih hasn't been able to be done with past FFG games.

On 8/17/2017 at 5:29 PM, Tvboy said:

This will be the cash grab that definitively kills IA skirmish. Rune Wars probably took off like a rocket, IA attendance is drowning, makes sense to just scuttle it and reboot with a more successful system. Might as well just call this Imperial Assault skirmish version 2.0. And then they can release Imperial Assault 2nd edition with full app integration so they can start double-dipping on all the campaign players who don't play skirmish.

RIP IA.

Dang you called it. *sigh*

Why are they showcasing painted figures when the miniatures come unpainted?

IA never got that kind of special treatment!

51 minutes ago, Armandhammer said:

Why are they showcasing painted figures when the miniatures come unpainted?

IA never got that kind of special treatment!

Eye candy for potential costumers.

Legion doesn't kill IA. But it does pretty much kill IA skirmish. Of course it'll still have its followers and players and even organised play.

But I don't think FFG are going out of their way to kill IA skirmish. I just think they realised that they didn't have a ground/infantry SW game after all, because IA has always been an awkward halfway house not optimised for organised play because of the campaign/skirmish split.

I've known countless people interested in playing competitively and then being put off by the massive cost to enter. And it's all down to the tiles really.

So I think Legion isn't to Imperial Assault as Armada is to X-Wing. It's not 'epic' Imperial Assault - it's FFG having another crack at IA skirmish. And with the larger scale and 40k style rules they're deliberately going toe-to-toe with Games Workshop too.

They couldn't have done that with 15mm, sure it would've been more distinct from IA, but that scale appeals to more of a niche market and the fact that this is FFG releasing a Star Wars mini game that doesn't try to differentiate itself from its predecessors shows that they see it as IA Skirmish 2.0.

I just watched the Demo. I'm really unhappy with this nonsense that Stormtroopers use the dice with the lowest chance to hit. I loved IA for making Stormtroopers a threat. We don't run around saying "Nazi's can't hit anything" just because Indiana Jones has plot armor. That being said, the rest of it seems decent. I would play it. I like the speeder bikes and the AT-RT, but I still think the scale is too large for an AT-AT. Oh, they will come, just like capital ships in X-Wing, and you are going to need a bigger boat to accommodate them. Though, that look like a 3' by 3' table, not a 6' by 3' one.

Looks like Legion got our Endor battle?

34mm seems like the same bad decision making that turned Destiny from an easy mega hit into a slowly failing clumsy mess. Instead of getting this and adding my IA miniatures to it, I'm not getting it at all and will just play it with IA and WotC minis and print out the rules I need.

They could have had the two games work together and had releases with cards for both games etc. I'm sure some part of the idea was to not lose a hundred in sales of extra storm troopers and Vader to people that already had IA but now they're going to just lose thousands to people that say screw it, I'll stick to IA and Warmachine/40k/Infinity etc. If they think I'm going to buy yet another AT-ST, they've got their heads shoved up their keisters.

17 hours ago, goncardoso said:

does this game means the end of IA ? I mean two miniature games in the same era with almost the same gameplay.

IA is an RPG (dungeon crawler variant)

Legion is a Strategy game.

I dont see any problem here.

I don't think it's good for IA skirmish at all. This will take away those that got into it because they like painting. That being said, IA skirmish is barely staying afloat. Lately it seemed like it might be picking up new players sick of X-wing, but this will kill that. Oh well, I"m going to enjoy IA while it lasts.

I certianly hope it doesn't kill skrimish. I'm not at all interested in toying with range rulers again... ever. They've had balancing issues, but other than that - skirmish is a perfect game.

10 hours ago, VadersMarchKazoo said:

Looks like Legion got our Endor battle?

Yup, that is exactly what I was thinking. I'll bet they sell half tree models too and maybe a giant model of an Ewok treehouse. If they were going to do this, I don't know why they had to completely modify IA with the HOTE tokens. If it weren't for Sentry droids, I'd probably consider never buying HoTE. Most of it looks pretty lame. I guess I can kiss ever seeing Zuckass and 4-LOM goodbye.

I'm not quite as worried. I think that IA will remain the dungeon crawler and will continue to impress. But Legion does look like it'll give skirmish a run for its money.

I wouldn't give up hope for 4lom/Zuckus.

I only played campaign mode in IA because I dont like skirmish mode. Legion scratches my free (skirmish) mode itch.

For me the game seems different enough from IA, and it feels like that where IA focus more on a 10 characters and their individual powers, Legion is 10 squads. So the comparison of X-Wing and Armada is fair. But playing IA and just started to invest inArmada and X-Wing, I have little interest in this game.

Hmmm, so each side is 800 points each and you only get 400 per side in the starter

10 hours ago, Ace_of_Spades said:

IA is an RPG (dungeon crawler variant)

Legion is a Strategy game.

I dont see any problem here.

Are you saying Imperial Assault's skirmish mode is NOT a strategy game? Whenever I've played it competitively, it's usually turned into a game of "whoever makes the first mistake loses". Like all good strategy games.

I couldn’t agree more with the others above.

I think IA skirmish is in serious trouble and I feel sorry for those small communities out there.

Legion is truly puzzling to me right now. I just can’t stomach the idea of owning two similar Star Wars miniatures games. I feel bloated just thinking about it!

And if you own everything IA, it’s almost impossible to get excited about future Legion expansions cause they’ll have a “been there, done that” type of feel associated with them. I can’t imagine the expansions being much different besides the odd vehicle here and there.

I wish Legion took a similar approach to Games Workshop’s War of the Ring game. They basically created another set of rules to upscale the Lord of the Rings: Strategy Battle Game (new stats, figures were grouped on trays instead of moving them individually, etc.).

1 hour ago, theChony said:

Are you saying Imperial Assault's skirmish mode is NOT a strategy game? Whenever I've played it competitively, it's usually turned into a game of "whoever makes the first mistake loses". Like all good strategy games.

No. I am not saying this.

I say the whole IA (and not just the skirmish wariant) is more RPG than Strategy game to me.

And I am more optimistic than many of the forum members.