So the other night I was teaching some friends Legion, and decided to create a 4-player 'variant' of the game. In this variant, each player had 1 commander (Luke, Leia, Vader, Veers), and 400 points of troops. I wanted an easy learning game, so I chose key positions, clear conditions, and battle lines, but the last one with a twist. I cut out the middle range 2 band of the battle lines, and forced each player to deploy within their section. This meant that I was sort of creating 2 400 point games, but it was exciting as you really cared what happened to your ally, and sometimes there was cross over, as I deliberately put one of the objectives in the middle of the board. Each player was given a full hand of 7 command cards.

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do command cards, but this is what I am planning on for my next games:

1. Initiative is won low to high, as normal (this may mean one faction 'double moves', don't know about this yet)

2. If there are ties within a faction, those players decide who goes.

3. If there is a tie across faction, then you roll the die as normal, and the winner chooses 1 of their sides to go first. Then the loser choses 1 of their sides to go second. Then the winner would chose his remaining force (if any) and then the loser would chose his remaining force (if any).

It's still a work in progress, to say the least, and any suggestions are welcome, but it was a ton of fun, and I want to try it again! Just wanted to share a different way to play Legion!

Yes, I've always thought Legion has the potential for a good multiplayer variant. Another way to handle command cards is for teams to add their pips together, and the team with the fewest total pips gets the initiative. Among team members, go in ascending order of pips. This way, teams still alternate taking turns (no double turns) and every card's pips still matter. For example:

Alice Brad
* **** = 5 total pips

Charlie Dan
** ** = 4 total pips

Blue team has fewer total pips, so they get initiative. Charlie and Dan are tied, so they roll a die, and Charlie wins. Play order goes Charlie > Alice > Dan > Brad.

9 hours ago, Contrapulator said:

Yes, I've always thought Legion has the potential for a good multiplayer variant. Another way to handle command cards is for teams to add their pips together, and the team with the fewest total pips gets the initiative. Among team members, go in ascending order of pips. This way, teams still alternate taking turns (no double turns) and every card's pips still matter. For example:

Alice Brad
* **** = 5 total pips

Charlie Dan
** ** = 4 total pips

Blue team has fewer total pips, so they get initiative. Charlie and Dan are tied, so they roll a die, and Charlie wins. Play order goes Charlie > Alice > Dan > Brad.

This is basically how I was doing my first game, but didn't have a good way to resolve ties, but I think you just gave it to me. Will try this next time.

Makes Disarray a nice starting setup.

10 hours ago, SirCormac said:

I'm still trying to figure out the best way to do command cards, but this is what I am planning on for my next games:

This sounds cool!

Did you consider letting the players round robin and interleave based on pips, with normal die offs between ties?

That might result in one side or another taking double turns, or may just have everybody play in turn. The 1775 series of games do 4 players like that and it's pretty exciting.

What Contrapulator said above, but teams choose who goes first per side. Team A has lower initiative, so they choose a player to go first, then Team B chooses a player, then team A's other player, then last Team B player.

On 5/26/2018 at 9:49 AM, CaptainRocket said:

This sounds cool!

Did you consider letting the players round robin and interleave based on pips, with normal die offs between ties?

That might result in one side or another taking double turns, or may just have everybody play in turn. The 1775 series of games do 4 players like that and it's pretty exciting.

That's definitely the most straightforward option. I like that it maintains the balance of some cards being faster than others, which I think is a critical part of the command phase. It just comes down to whether you want to enforce alternating turns between the teams or have more of a free-for-all.

22 hours ago, Contrapulator said:

It just comes down to whether you want to enforce alternating turns between the teams or have more of a free-for-all.

Yeah, it's not intuitive that a 'free for all' activation with teams can be fun, but I've seen it work well in other games so I wanted to make sure folks were considering it...