I have come to realize that the type of terrain being used has a huge impact for snowspeeders and bike. For example... the job of both units is to swing around the sides and flank dug in troops. However, if your board is made up of lots of linear terrain such as barricades and stone walls the speeders should have a field day in the opponents backfield because those troopers will have no protection and cover from behind.

Now take a board that is utilizing lots of area terrain such as ruined buildings, bases with craters and bases with trees the speeders are almost completely nullified because the troops are always blocking 2 dice for hard cover.

Thoughts??

Just now, chriscook said:

Now take a board that is utilizing lots of area terrain such as ruined buildings, bases with craters and bases with trees the speeders are almost completely nullified because the troops are always blocking 2 dice for hard cover.

Agree with this bar the bold section.

In general, craters in wargaming are light cover for troops+dificult terrain whilst bases+trees count as light cover.

Following those rules a ruined building does give heavy cover to troopers in it, but the crater and "forrest" only give light cover and therefore only block 1 dice.

Change heavy cover to light cover.

Ok, the point is linear terrain compared to area terrain, not the level of cover.

There are clear advantages and disadvantages- another reason for the importance of Blue/red player and choosing side or building a board.

2 hours ago, chriscook said:

Ok, the point is linear terrain compared to area terrain, not the level of cover.

Area terrain will always be the best you can get. Following the normal rules, you will always have the cover unless your opponent is in/touching, which is also true of non-area terrain, but you have no way to be exposed.

There's really nothing to compare here. Speeders shouldn't care about the amount of cover the defender has because they have 6 dice per attack and they get to move fast. They are flankers, not army killers.

I mean, yes. I don’t have any prior tabletop wargaming experience but I would imagine that the type and distribution of terrain has an enormous impact on the utility of different units... So forgetting for a minute the details of cover 1 or cover 2, I think your thesis pretty much HAS to be true.

But isn’t part of the fun and challenge of the game trying to figure out how to build a solid force and then trying to adapt that force to the specific situation you find yourself in?

I’m seeing a lot of complaints (or at least semi-negative observations) on these boards that, to me, amount to saying “my preferred tactics sometimes don’t work in Legion because...”. But I just sort of assumed that would be true.

I don’t pretend to be any sort of expert but Legion has big strategic elements even during the game in terms of understanding activation order, action economy etc. This is way different than something like X-Wing where most of the strategic elements take place in squad building and setup (eg asteroid placement) and then after that it’s pretty much all tactics. It also has a lot more variables in terms of game conditions and objectives. Which is great but is going to (almost inherently) lead to situations where you or your opponent realize you’ve brought a knife to a gunfight. The fun part is “okay, now what do I do with this knife?”

12 hours ago, chriscook said:

Now take a board that is utilizing lots of area terrain such as ruined buildings, bases with craters and bases with trees the speeders are almost completely nullified because the troops are always blocking 2 dice for hard cover.

I feel like this a problem. I'm fine with cover being available, but if nearly every shot has to break through 2 cover, you have too much cover. Terrain should present meaningful choices to players. If you have cover basically all the time, that's not meaningful. This reminds me of 40K 7th edition where cover was so easy to get you were just shocked when something didn't have it and the game was worse for it on many levels. For gunlines, it was basically ignore cover or go home because you couldn't punch enough damage through even on chump units.

Terrain should be IN the game, it should not BE the game.

The whole point of airspeeders is that they fly in behind enemy lines and behind their cover. See also Blast weapons. The game has built in mechanics and units to deal with terrain.

Linear terrain, 'facing' all in one direction, is little or no cover when coming in at 90 degrees. Remember that entry points can be on the long or short edge of the board, so terrain should be at different angles to provide cover from multiple directions.