Share your thoughts. I had a fair idea of how I thought it was going to play but some things surprised me.

Jetbikes are way more maneuverable than I thought. After compulsory move, bening able to switch down the the speed 1 tool and chuck a hard 90 made them super manoeuvrable in terms of getting behind someone’s cover.

Jedi are crazy death dealers - I didn’t realise the significance of the pierce keyword till I saw how quickly either Jedi carves through basic troopers. Ouch.

‘What have you discovered so far?

Darth Vader's "reflect" skill is pretty awesome! I lost 3 rebel troopers after a salvo of laser shots towards him. Also his lightsaber throw is no joke either. The stormtroopers armor is pretty resilient, and their heavy weapon (the long blaster type weapon) was pretty good. I was kind of underwhelmed by the rebels heavy weapon choice. (the gatling gun one.) As for the speeder bikes they were target priority number one for me. They went away by turn 2. At the end of the demo I won with the rebels, I only had a full health Luke Skywalker and 3 rebel troopers left. It was a great game.

As the guys running the demos in my FLGS, I learned that the game has an amazing pull on people's interest and is capturing attention from people who have never before played anything like a miniatures game.

I ran the younger players with no command cards and no suppression, and found that they picked up the game surprisingly quickly. The biggest blank stares were probably elicited by the surge result, which took some real time for non-gamers to get. I think it went against their nature for them to understand that a result means something different from player to player, and even from offense to defense.

GOOD:

• Units don't live long. Offensive is far more effective than defense, even with dodge and cover. Very nice. no ones want defensive slog-fests.
  
• Objective system is awesome. Better than Armada and their best yet, especially with matches being decided by the objective first, instead of causalities.
  
• Models better than I thought. The models are simply awesome!
  
• ATST is diesel! This thing is wrecking machine.

NOT SO GOOD:

• Compulsory moves seem poorly implemented. They are there to simulate a fast-moving vehicle that has to move because it's going fast, yet you can instantly go from 9 speed (Speeder Bike's 3 three-speed moves - 1 compulsory) to going effectively speed 0 and rotating? It felt thematically goofy and didn't convey what they were going for with fast-moving momentum. There will never be a situation where you fly a Speeder Bike poorly resulting in having to execute a Compulsory move and crash into something. The Airspeeders hook upgrade can force you to turn and be stuck moving into something, but you will never crash due to poor flying. I don't like this.
  
• Troop units are super slow. I felt the movement templates were too short. Troops (especially speed 1) can barely go anywhere on the map once they are placed. Vader and Snowtroopers are pretty much stuck to an area within 2 feet of their starting position, assuming they move max speed and never enter non-Open terrain.
  
• LOS and Cover calculations seemed too slow. This should improve over time, but it seemed like we spent FAR TOO MUCH time figuring out LOS and Cover. Each attack required measurements to/from multiple models and that felt clumsy and slow.
  
• Terrain rules are wonky. They will need some getting used to, especially since the rules mistakenly state "bases" in one place for measuring cover, and "LOS" in another place. We didn't know which to use and both are very different. I can't say I'm a fan of all of the terrain charts. These should have been more general and simpler. Our first game with terrain and we already had about 20 disputes over what a terrain piece was ans wasn't, and once settled, it wasn't easy to keep track of the Cover and Movement properties of each piece.

30 minutes ago, Thraug said:

to going effectively speed 0 and rotating?

DRIFT. DRIIIIIIIFT.

43 minutes ago, Thraug said:

Compulsory moves seem poorly implemented. They are there to simulate a fast-moving vehicle that has to move because it's going fast, yet you can instantly go from 9 speed (Speeder Bike's 3 three-speed moves - 1 compulsory) to going effectively speed 0 and rotating? It felt thematically goofy and didn't convey what they were going for with fast-moving momentum. There will never be a situation where you fly a Speeder Bike poorly resulting in having to execute a Compulsory move and crash into something. The Airspeeders hook upgrade can force you to turn and be stuck moving into something, but you will never crash due to poor flying. I don't like this.

It sounds like you were playing with the compulsory move being allowed to be a pivot? That's not correct - you can pivot as a move action, but the compulsory move is explicitly not a move action.

So, in that case you have speeder bikes moving a minimum of speed 3 and a maximum of speed 9, which (to me) is fine - your bikes can speed up, they just can't come to a full stop.

42 minutes ago, Thraug said:

Troop units are super slow. I felt the movement templates were too short. Troops (especially speed 1) can barely go anywhere on the map once they are placed. Vader and Snowtroopers are pretty much stuck to an area within 2 feet of their starting position, assuming they move max speed and never enter non-Open terrain.

Difficult terrain slows you to a minimum of 1, so Vader and Snowtroopers completely ignore terrain penalties. (Aside from impassible terrain, obviously).

And they both have the ability to make a free attack after a move, so while speed 2 units can spend one action moving and one action shooting, those two can spend two actions moving and then attack anyways; and two speed 1 moves is a further distance than one speed 2 move. What they lack is the ability to rapidly relocate with two speed 2 moves, or to move 2 and then aim/dodge; but while trading fire they're actually faster.

42 minutes ago, Thraug said:

• Terrain rules are wonky. They will need some getting used to, especially since the rules mistakenly state "bases" in one place for measuring cover, and "LOS" in another place. We didn't know which to use and both are very different. I can't say I'm a fan of all of the terrain charts. These should have been more general and simpler. Our first game with terrain and we already had about 20 disputes over what a terrain piece was ans wasn't, and once settled, it wasn't easy to keep track of the Cover and Movement properties of each piece.

What's the issue with base/LoS? The wording on those sections is a little weird but I thought the actually mechanics made sense. You use bases to determine obstruction, but you use LoS to determine if that obstruction occludes 51% of the model and therefore grants cover.

The charts are examples, you're not meant to reference them during the game - during setup, you agree on each piece of terrain's cover and movement values (light/heavy/none, open/difficult/impassible, and whether it's different for troopers and vehicles [eg, speeders treat water as open, since they just fly over it]), and those values are all that matter. Cover and movement values ought to be fairly intuitive, and Legion follows the old standby of "stone/steel are heavy cover, wood/natural barricades/most other things are light cover".

I'd be willing to bet that half a dozen games with different types of terrain and it'd become intuitive.

49 minutes ago, UnitOmega said:

DRIFT. DRIIIIIIIFT.

My greatest regret is that I have but one upvote to give.

1 hour ago, svelok said:

It sounds like you were playing with the compulsory move being allowed to be a pivot? That's not correct - you can pivot as a move action, but the compulsory move is explicitly not a move action.

So, in that case you have speeder bikes moving a minimum of speed 3 and a maximum of speed 9, which (to me) is fine - your bikes can speed up, they just can't come to a full stop.

No, we played it correctly. Moved "9" one turn, or "6" and any needed pivot to avoid crashing. Then next turn 1 compulsory move (which can be a very short 90 degree turn), followed by any needed pivot to avoid crashing with the following turn's 1 compulsory move. Summary: you can use a pivot move to avoid any crash on the following turn's compulsory move, unless you forget to do a pivot. So yes, moving poorly with a with a Speeder Bike at speed "9" can force you to crash on the next turn's compulsory move. Moving "6" followed by a pivot avoids any crash on the next turn. It's the pivot followed by a compulsory move that is odd. Just doens't make sense.

------

1 hour ago, svelok said:

What's the issue with base/LoS? The wording on those sections is a little weird but I thought the actually mechanics made sense. You use bases to determine obstruction, but you use LoS to determine if that obstruction occludes 51% of the model and therefore grants cover.

The mechanics do make sense, but they explain cover determination in 2 different ways:

Quote

RRG pg22

1. Determine Number of Obscured Miniatures: The player traces an imaginary line from the center of the base of the attacker’s unit leader to the center of the base of a mini in the defending unit. If the imaginary line crosses either a
piece of terrain or another unit’s base, that mini is obscured.

...

2. Determine Cover: If at least half of all of the defender’s minis are obscured, that unit has cover.

Quote

RRG Pg8

COVER TYPE
Whether or not a piece of terrain provides cover varies from miniature to miniature. As a general rule, terrain that blocks line of sight to half or more of a mini provides cover, while terrain that blocks less than half of a mini does not.

Quote

RRG, pg14 (Attack)

2. Form Attack Pool: .... a. Determine Eligible Minis: Each mini in the attacker is eligible to contribute to the attack pool if that mini has line of sight to any mini in the defender.

From pg22's description of how to determine cover, the rule on pg8 makes no sense. By the definition of Form Attack Pool (RRG pg14) LOS only affects eligibility to add dice to the attack pool, not as a determination for cover. At least how I read it. It's confusing. They should have a very decriptive example of a full attack, including LOS and cover, for various terrain situations.

I think a speeder bike as portrayed in the movies is highly maneuverable. As far as on the table I think a very dense board full of buildings or cliffs or trees could present problems for the bikes. Maybe not crashing per say but it could be difficult to bring your guns to the target.

Not sure what you're not understanding, as you are setting forth the rules correctly.

Obstruction/cover is determined (only) from the viewpoint of the attacking unit leader.

LOS is determined from each particular figure.

If you just checked LOS from the leader, you would have anomalous situations where you could tuck guys behind a cliff but have them participate in attacks.

If on the other hand, you checked obstruction/cover from each figure, you would be checking about 25 possibilities for each shot, which would be unwieldy and slow.

With LOS, your dude can shoot if he can see any figure in the defending unit. Simple and straightforward the vast majority of circumstances.

42 minutes ago, Thraug said:

No, we played it correctly. Moved "9" one turn, or "6" and any needed pivot to avoid crashing. Then next turn 1 compulsory move (which can be a very short 90 degree turn), followed by any needed pivot to avoid crashing with the following turn's 1 compulsory move. Summary: you can use a pivot move to avoid any crash on the following turn's compulsory move, unless you forget to do a pivot. So yes, moving poorly with a with a Speeder Bike at speed "9" can force you to crash on the next turn's compulsory move. Moving "6" followed by a pivot avoids any crash on the next turn. It's the pivot followed by a compulsory move that is odd. Just doens't make sense.

If you move 6 and then pivot aren't you spending all your actions. Of course it is easy to avoid terrain if that is all you are trying to do.

Well I misunderstood pretty much everyone!

Yeah, as Nuke says: if you spend a pivot at the end of your turn, you probably wont crash. But then when are you shooting? You'll only have your compulsory maximum move to aim up a shot. Then shoot, then pivot.

In my experience the bikes need to either dodge or hit-and-run to stay out of range of too much of the enemy. It's a fun mechanic.

And I imagine the pivot as a sort of hand-break turn.

It's pretty easy to ignore terrain with Speeder 1 anyway. Range 1 is a pretty huge vertical difference.

Stuff we got from some proxy games!

• Concentrating fire is really important. I mean, duh, but the way defences work you generally want as many dice per attack as you can get (don't split weapons if you want to do damage), so big volleys are the way and the light. And burning dodge on the force users is always the way to go. E.g. Vader has Deflect, but only has a dodge on the first attacker. He also never gets suppression, so never gets cover from it. So the second and third shots have nothing but defensive dice to stop them.
• On the other hand, if damage is less important or impossible, you can split volleys if you have multiple weapons, to plonk on more suppression markers.
• Surprised at how well the courage system works. A squad of 5 can stand around with 4 markers and not care, but if the next volley kills 3 guys and adds one more marker, suddenly the squad could be panicking off the table. Hunker down, though, and they'll stand and fight almost to the end.
• I... also do not entirely like the cover rules. There is a lot of fiddly looking with head near table to work out if, for example, that barricade that's half way between our squads is covering enough legs to count as cover. You can get a sqaud into cover at a barricade by putting them in a backwards-facing triangle, which looks a bit derpy. Buuuut I'll get used to it.
• Being able to shoot into melee without penalty also seems weird to me, but that's just old habits I reckon.
• The duckling strategy: ATRTs walking up the field with a clump of (apparently terrified) infantry tucked in behind them.... looks dopey. But actually, it's 1. actually pretty realistic, and 2. order of activations makes it slightly less cheesy. I say slightly because you can put everyone but the unit leader behind the slab of ATRTs, have the leader to one side or even a bit in front, and then next turn you can activate the unit before the ATRT, move the leader up, and bam, the unit teleports through the vehicle.
• The tough love strategy: start your deployment with an ATRT in the middle. Two squads of troopers each place one of their guys in front of the ATRT. Activate the ATRT first. Walk over the two guys standing in front of them. Those two squads get a point of suppression, and so have a 2 in 3 chance of having light cover for free when they run up later in the turn. Works great with the duckling thing above, especially if you don't have enough ATRTs to block LOS for everyone, since after your move you'll have 2 cover. Also extremely cheesy.
• Cowering: range to enemy is dictated by the position of the leader, but they can get range to you by shooting at a trooper. So often the rest of the squad is clumped up behind the leader, to avoid giving an enemy a free shot into your squad. Different when you're looking at line of sight / cover, sure, but often there's no advantage to spreading the squad out. Just keep them at the back.
• We just found out that Vader can throw as part of his free action. He is now 100% more terrifying.

3 minutes ago, Weatsop said:

Being able to shoot into melee without penalty also seems weird to me, but that's just old habits I reckon.

I thought you couldn't be the target of a ranged attack if you're in melee?

29 minutes ago, LunarSol said:

It's pretty easy to ignore terrain with Speeder 1 anyway. Range 1 is a pretty huge vertical difference.

Heavy-cover trees are impassible for repulsors, as are high hedges and walls. Which seems super-derpy, since flying through dense forest is exactly the thing we've all seen speeder bikes actually do, and if a T-47 can't fly over a house, then I'll need to reassess how tall I think an ATAT was.

2 minutes ago, Big Easy said:

I thought you couldn't be the target of a ranged attack if you're in melee?

ARGH! You're right!

Well, that's better. Man, we swore about that a couple of time. Reading skills were the answer.

@Weatsop, suppression is per unit, not miniature. That changes a couple of things in your post.

24 minutes ago, Weatsop said:

Heavy-cover trees are impassible for repulsors, as are high hedges and walls. Which seems super-derpy, since flying through dense forest is exactly the thing we've all seen speeder bikes actually do, and if a T-47 can't fly over a house, then I'll need to reassess how tall I think an ATAT was.

Well the speeder 1 rule says that it ignores terrain under that height. So a wall would have to be higher than range 1 high to be impassable to a speeder bike.

23 minutes ago, Basylle said:

@Weatsop, suppression is per unit, not miniature. That changes a couple of things in your post.

Our group discussed that at length because the wording in the rules are a bit ambiguous, bit it it's true, then units are terrible, and you shouldn't bring them. They'll pretty much always be suppressed, and rely entirely on commanders to prevent themselves from fleeing.

I choose to believe the game isn't that dopey.

A unit of stormtroopers activate. Shoot at one squad, DLT 19 at thesquad next to it. The Rebel now has a 2-in-3 chance that their first squad is suppressed and only gets one action.

Second unit of stormtroopers activates and shoots a shot at each enemy squad. The second Rebel is now almost certainly suppressed when it activates, and has a 44% chance of fleeing.

The speeder bikes activate and shoot at both units again to add suppression. They'll have about 2 each at this point, maybe 3.

The rebels are now starting the next turn with 1-2 suppression on each. First Stormtrooper turns it into 2-3 each. Second stormtrooper turns it into 3-4 each. Bikes turn it into 4-5 each.

Bye rebels.

Leia will put a point of suppression onto 3 units. So two of those lose an action right out of the gate.

Christ, a ATST mortar adds 2 suppression to any squad they like, every single turn. That's a nearly 50% chance of panicking and fleeing. Every turn. Assuming they don't have any suppression left over from last turn.

If this is how it works, I'll be running the barest minimum 120 points of infantry, and packing everything else into vehicles.

22 minutes ago, Sk3tch said:

Well the speeder 1 rule says that it ignores terrain under that height. So a wall would have to be higher than range 1 high to be impassable to a speeder bike.

But cannot END on impassible terrain. That's where the compulsory move can hurt.

(Also, well, the meaning of the word impassible is sort of conflicting with the "ignores terrain" part, but I guess they'll have to clarify that).

6 minutes ago, Weatsop said:

Our group discussed that at length because the wording in the rules are a bit ambiguous, bit it it's true, then units are terrible, and you shouldn't bring them.

Hmm, could you share which part your group felt was ambiguous? The "Courage" and "Suppression" sections seem pretty clear to me and I'm having trouble seeing the other point of view.

8 minutes ago, Weatsop said:

If this is how it works, I'll be running the barest minimum 120 points of infantry, and packing everything else into vehicles.

This could be a viable strategy, with its own pros and cons. You have minimal units that are able to score, but if you can outkill the enemy's scoring units with your panic-free vehicles before yours are fried, then there ya go.

While playing the demo I noticed, white dice are absolutely awful. More times than you think you roll all blanks. Surprisingly more.

12 minutes ago, nashjaee said:

Hmm, could you share which part your group felt was ambiguous? The "Courage" and "Suppression" sections seem pretty clear to me and I'm having trouble seeing the other point of view.

This could be a viable strategy, with its own pros and cons. You have minimal units that are able to score, but if you can outkill the enemy's scoring units with your panic-free vehicles before yours are fried, then there ya go.

It say the unit's value in most places, not the trooper's. It's not like the unit has one wound. That's per trooper.

But then it says "the trooper unit's courage is displayed" on the card, which goes the other way. Like I said, though, if it's that way then units pretty much just have one action most of the game. We've proxied several games. Units will have at least one point of suppression almost all the time - and that's in our interpretation where Recovery doesn't take up an entire activation. If it is one courage per unit, then you can't even recover without burning your whole turn.

E.g. this sentence doesn't quite make sense:

After the “Rally” step of a trooper unit’s activation, if that unit has a number of suppression tokens assigned to it that is equal to or greater than that trooper’s courage value, that unit is suppressed.

5 minutes ago, Weatsop said:

It say the unit's value in most places, not the trooper's. It's not like the unit has one wound. That's per trooper.

But then it says "the trooper unit's courage is displayed" on the card, which goes the other way. Like I said, though, if it's that way then units pretty much just have one action most of the game. We've proxied several games. Units will have at least one point of suppression almost all the time - and that's in our interpretation where Recovery doesn't take up an entire activation. If it is one courage per unit, then you can't even recover without burning your whole turn.

E.g. this sentence doesn't quite make sense:

After the “Rally” step of a trooper unit’s activation, if that unit has a number of suppression tokens assigned to it that is equal to or greater than that trooper’s courage value, that unit is suppressed.

I see.

A point of clarification: "unit" and "trooper" are pretty much synonymous in this context. "Mini" or "miniature" refers to individual models. So I'm afraid courage and panic do indeed work as @Basylle indicated.

From page 43 of RRG:

TROOPERS
A trooper is a unit type that consists of one or more miniatures
affixed to a small round base.

Strategically, I think this means activation order becomes important. If you anticipate a key unit is going to suffer suppression this turn, do what you can to get them activated before their actions dwindle. On the flip side, take advantage of it! I imagine an AT-RT with a jammer (to hopefully delay your activation) and surrounded with backup will be a thing? I haven't done any playtesting yet, though, so just theorizing over here...

22 minutes ago, nashjaee said:

Strategically, I think this means activation order becomes important. If you anticipate a key unit is going to suffer suppression this turn, do what you can to get them activated before their actions dwindle. On the flip side, take advantage of it! I imagine an AT-RT with a jammer (to hopefully delay your activation) and surrounded with backup will be a thing? I haven't done any playtesting yet, though, so just theorizing over here...

Remember you carry over all but one of your suppression, turn to turn, with one third being lost as you start your activation. If I stack up 3 points on a unit even at the bottom of the turn, it'll start its activation with 2, and have a 44% chance to panic, and will very likely to be at least suppressed.

After the first turn, pretty much any trooper unit the enemy cares about will be suppressed. You'd need to burn a whole turn just to remove a single suppression marker, and if you have two you can only run away.

Honestly, if that's the situation then my opinion of the game declines sharply.