Seeing several topics asking for advice, strangely mostly for Rebels, I thought I'd make a quick guide on how to maximize your chances as a freedom fighter liberating the galaxy from the evil empire... Or terrorists spreading destruction against the good emperor.
This will be in several parts, ranging from army building, in depth look at upgrades, objectives to pick and avoid, to generic battle advice.
1) Army Building.
"A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him" Douglas MacArthur
Currently, the rebels have few options compared to the empire, with only one trooper choice, and only one commander. That doesn't mean that our lists are predictable, just that the tools will, for now, be well known.
1a) Commanders
The only commander currently available is Luke Skywalker. Since he's our only choice, well, he's a must have. He has access to two force powers and 1 gear item. To me there are three main builds for him:
- Naked: No upgrades.
- The opportunistic: Battle meditation, Force push
- The brawler: Force reflexes, Jedi Mind tricks, targeting scopes
Naked luke is there to provide a morale bubble to prevent your troops from fleeing while still trying to keep the costs down. He's your choice when you want to take more upgrades for the army.
Opportunistic is more of a support role: Advancing with your biggest blob of troops, he will advance carefully then when the timing is right, using force push to move units out of cover or away from objectives so your units can have a better chance at killing them or to prevent scoring.
Brawler is on the other hand a more direct commander: Suppressing units at the right time, ideally outside of their commander's range, this build intends to aim + charge between targets, stopping occasionally to recharge his force powers, trying to avoid his daddy until the time is right. His main disadvantage is a rather high cost, as well as being a target all the time which is why you should stack dodge.
Leia Organa is the upcoming commander, but I haven't proxied her yet so I can't say much, apart from that she's going to be quite cheap and good to support the troops and to finish off squads that are almost dead.
1b) Corps
Once again, we currently only have one choice of corps, and that is the Rebel trooper. As the only choice, this unit is your bread and butter: Fairly cheap but if correctly used pretty survivable, the rebel troopers have decent firepower and some interesting options.
First, you can always add a trooper for a squad size of 5 for fairly cheap. This will make your unit relatively resilient to losses, up its firepower by a nice amount, and since troopers are generally good at scoring objectives, it is always nice to have them even slightly more survivable.
Secondly, they have access to two heavy weapons: The Z-6 and the MPL-57 Ion. The Z-6 is a decent choice since it basically provides the firepower of a 5 man squad of imperial troopers into a single model. But keep in mind that that firepower is mediocre at best. The Z-6 is to be used to add hitpoints to your squad primarily since it is so cheap, and offer the opportunity to split fire to different targets in the off-chance that you may suppress them. The Ion however is a fairly costly tool to limit the enemy vehicle's field of action thanks to its ion, but it'll make your units more static since using it exhausts it and if you reload with it, you won't shoot and dodge as you should (see later). It's a choice really. I like to have at least one in my list.
For the other options, I don't personally give them grenades, or at best Concussion grenades, because they already throw black dice in ranged attacks. They have basically no chance for now to be so close to an AT-ST so no need for impact grenades, but they can sometimes end up rather close to speeder bikes: Removing the Cover 1 these guys have is always a pleasure.
I also don't give them targeting scopes because they don't generally aim+shoot, and I don't give them grappling hooks because it's a very situational tool.
Since they are rather cheap, you can take quite a lot of them. If you have the choice, always try to max out your number of squads of these guys in order to have more orders than your opponent and to control more objectives. Numbers are key.
The upcoming fleet troopers will provide a totally different play-style, but since I haven't tried to proxy them yet, I won't give any advice on them.
With the current units available, always try to have the maximum of troopers (6 units of at least 5 men) in order to gain numerical and strategical advantage.
1c) Special forces
We don't have any, but Rebel Commandos will be coming later, and they seem neat, providing quite tougher units.
1d) Support
Currently, the only choice are the AT-RT, a rather fragile walker with a variety of weapons available to it. It is quite fast, has the neat advantage of having surge-> Crit on the offense, but suffers from the worst save currently available in game (Only has 1/6 chance to make a save) and while it has armour, that doesn't save its life that often because of the many imperials with impact. Always keep that in mind.
I equip mine with one of two weapons: Either the Laser canon or the Flamethrower, never with the Rotary blaster.
With the laser canon, you get a tool that will be able to shoot at targets at long range: Up to range 4, at the cost of a minimum range of 2 (but then you have your pathetic secondary for those shot ranges). This compensates for two things: The empire generally have the longer range weapons, which you will mitigate this way, and the AT-RT have pathetic saves, so keeping out of range of squad-level weapons is a good thing to last longer. Taking several of these is great to focus fire from several angles, and despite it being an anti-armour weapon by design, it is pretty decent at taking down anything that hasn't activated yet, just to add some suppression. Note however that it has a minimum range of 2, so if the opponent gets at that range, you can either engage it in melee with three red dice that crit on surges or reverse to shoot.
With the flamethrower, you have a terror weapon. If it ever gets in range of the opponent, his troops will melt like an ice cube in a furnace. Therefore, your opponent will do all it can to stop it. Taking a pair of these and rushing them towards enemy squads in cover is a horrendous experience for the opponent, and they will focus fire in such a way that all your other troops will be able to advance rather safely to secure objectives or get better positions. Just remember that they are pretty much suicide units and once they reach their resilience threshold, they're basically useless because most of the time they won't be able to move to get in range to shoot and shoot in the same turn. If you take several of them (I recommend at least two) one of them could be equipped with a comms jammer. This one will do a double move at the end of your turn to get close to your next targets: Since they won't be able to receive orders from the start, it can be obnoxious. Just don't do it on all of them because the cost would be too high.
Finally you have the Rotary Blaster. It's a decent weapon to be honest, but it only basically provides the firepower of a squad of troopers (with the added bonus of surge to crit) for twice the cost and a much lower chance of survival (worse saves and no use of cover, while facing a lot of weapons with Impact), because to shoot, you need to get in range of everybody's guns. This one never lives long to be honest, and rarely pays its points back. Really not my favourite configuration.
I like to have 3 of these guys in my list when I don't take an airspeeder. A single one doesn't often yield good enough results, two is a good number if properly equipped.
1e) Heavy
Once again: Single choice, the T-47 Airspeeder. Or as I call it the Luxurious Scalpel. This is your main anti-armour unit. Sadly, there isn't much armour at the moment in the empire. Is is a tool that is very, very hard to use without experience. Rather fragile, it has great firepower to the front, great mobility, and some interesting options.
First, let's talk about its rear guns: It can either have a Harpoon, or a ground buzzer. The ground buzzer is fairly costly, but somewhat effective because with this vehicle it is easy to aim+shoot thanks to the compulsory move. But again, it is fairly costly. Generally, you're better off with just the Harpoon. Ironically, you're better off with the harpoon not because of its amusing ability, but because with a single red dice it is fairly easy to cause a hit and thus a suppression on an enemy unit as you fly by for cheap, to take advantage of your Arsenal 2.
You can also upgrade it to have a pilot: Wedge. This allows it to make it somewhat more nimble, but honestly it isn't necessary most of the time. Only pick it to get out of bad positioning when you begin playing it, but after a while you'll learn to do without.
Finally, you get some comms options, with either the long range commlink which can be useful if you don't run Luke with battle meditation to be sure of when you are going to play it, or the comm jammers which are totally ill-suited to this vehicle (much more efficient on the speeder bikes) because you really don't want it that close to foes.
But as I'll explain later, it is a very hard to use tool that requires a good reading of the battle to be of any use whatsoever. Not recommended for beginners.
2) The battle plan
"No battle plan survives contact with the enemy" (Helmuth von Moltke)
2a) Generic advice
Always remember legion is an objective game. Your ultimate goal is to accomplish the mission, whatever the cost. You are rebels, and know that your troopers are sacrificing themselves for the greater good. But that doesn't mean they should die for nothing. Always keep an eye on what the objective is, and do all you can to score points that way. In order to do that, always try to preserve your scoring units. A lone squad leader, last survivor of his squad is still able to score, so don't waste him, don't let him die. Make the enemy waste attacks on him by dropping him in cover, with dodge, our of line of sight, in range from your commander so he doesn't rout... Anything to preserve your scoring units. And your scoring units are only your squad leaders, the rest is just bonus hit points and living shields.
Suppression's the name of the game: A juicy enemy unit in the open isn't the one you should aim at if there is an other unit in range that hasn't been activated yet. A suppressed trooper is less likely to be able to aim and shoot, and thus less likely to kill or suppress you. Always split fire when you can.
Commanders are what lets your troopers stay around when things go sour: Keep them near your troops and they will only be suppressed, not routing.
Having a list with few unit categories is good for order efficiency: An army with one commander, 6 troops and 3 support will almost always order the right units. Know who to give orders to. No need to give orders to corps units: if you have 6 of them in your bag, you're pretty likely to draw them. This way you will always master your orders.
2b) Defining the battlefield
When determining the battlefield, there are a few things to remember.
First is the deployment: As a rebel, you should have more orders. One of the key rules of warfare is that if you have more troops than the opponent, fight on a broad front, and if you have fewer but more elite troops, you should fight in the tightest spot. Think of the movie 300: Few, they held against hordes because they couldn't be outflanked. You are the Persians, the Empire are greeks (with all it implies) and as such, you should fight on a broad front: ALWAYS get rid of the long march because of two reasons: You can't outflank on this map, and the imperials have overall a better range than you do. Worst. Deployment. Ever. For. Rebels. The others are OK, but until we get more commanders and the option to field two (cheap) commanders, try to avoid Disarray which is both a boon and a curse since it'll prevent the empire from having a good concentration of fire but will also make your forces more difficult to keep on the board (of if you get this deployment, have all your troopers in the same deployment zone as your commander).
Then the objectives : Breakthrough isn't really recommended, because while you have more units than the opponent, you will have to push through the opponent with your rather fragile troops, and imperials have access to speeder bikes that can and will just zoom past your troops on the last turn. All other objectives however play by your strength: Plentiful troopers. So all of these are fair game, though watch out for Recover the SUpplies if there's a Vader in the opponent's list: Force Choke is a rightful pain in the butt.
Finally, the conditions : Unless you have AT-RTs with lasers, you should always try to get Limited Visibility when facing imperials of if you have flamer AT-RTs. If facing rebels, it isn't as important (unless they have lasers and you don't). Hostile environment is a pretty harsh one for rebels since imperials generally outrange you and thus you will often have to close in, sometimes spending a turn in the open. But if you are heavy on vehicles, or the opponent heavy on cards with exhaust for his troopers (HH-12 for example), go ham. Clear conditions will generally advantage the imperials slightly. But one you should try to aim for is Rapid Reinforcements: Since you should have more activations than the imperial, keeping one or two troops in reserve will limit your losses and allow you to drop guys safely behind his lines while he will have trouble daring this. If you are the blue player, drop a single unit in reserves. If you are the red player and he dropped one unit, drop two of them. If the outnumbered imperial player dropped two units, do not drop any, because he will have to deploy them and you will be able to shoot at them with your still active units with a bit of luck, as well as overwhelm him.
2c) Terrain
When you look at the battlefield after terrain has been placed and you drew deployment zones, look at the paths of approach and Line of Sight that your troops can use to reach the middle of the battlefield to cover open ground, but also analyse where the opponent is most likely to place his heavy hitters. [WiP]
2d) Deployment
[WiP]
[Next will come during the weekend]
Edited by Deuzerre
