1 hour ago, Chucknuckle said:

Legion is doing OK at the moment, like I said, but I'm cautious about the future. We're already seeing things like Boba Fett's ability to start messing with the dice pool, and I think we'll see more of it as time goes on. But X Wing and Armada, the other FFG games I play regularly, have many, many different upgrade cards that all apply different effects that change the end result. If we're using D6's , it can be as simple as "I need threes to hit, but you're in hard cover at long range, so I need sixes" but for Armada or X Wing for instance, you can add dice, but they have to be blanks. Then you can remove dice of a certain colour, to reroll dice of another colour. Then you can apply a special effect to these particular dice with these symbols, then your opponent can cancel or force a re-roll of these dice but only in a particular timing window, then you can cancel some dice to add a specific result, then you can apply a second critical result... and so on and so forth, when the end result is always some version of "I do X amount of damage to your ship". Precisely because FFG have locked themselves into binary hit-or-miss dice that can't be graduated with simple number modifiers like other games, they rely on interlocking and multilayered special rules to allow players to modify the dice results. I mean I get it, it's a feature not a bug, for a lot of people it's a selling point, but I personally don't find it quicker, simpler or easier than using D6 with modifiers. I find it exactly the opposite, even with the cards on the table in front of me.

Lol why do you want pay ffg Games then? Seems odd to hate how the dice work in their games.

Because Star Wars. And hate is a strong term, I just think a D6 based system is better.

On 6/11/2018 at 11:25 PM, TauntaunScout said:

Do core set armies have any resale value? They disinterest me as a painter.

Because no one has answered this yet, just wanted to clarify the question.

- do core set armies disinterest you as a painter?

- does resale value disinterest you as a painter?

- how does any answer to the above weigh value to you as a painter?

Its really confusing the way this is worded especially when it follows a question about the games mechanics.

Also it seems like a loaded trap question as no matter how someone answers that, it is going to be followed by a rebuke of some kind.

"They" is a plural pronoun and so could only refer to the plural noun "core set armies."

The OP is clearly stating that he's not interested in painting the troops in the Legion core set and wants to know if he'd be able to get some money back for them if he buys the core set for the dice and tools.

Also, as much as I enjoy Legion and want others to enjoy it, I'm going to weigh in as one of the few saying you will probably not enjoy the game. While your overarching strategy is certainly important, I think properly using the abilities on units and the upgrades you gave them is a vital part to success. In your original post, it sounds like that is something you dislike, and I feel it's a pretty central part of gameplay.

the short answer is yes buy into it...the long answer...……….same as the short

21 hours ago, Rumar said:

These are not the droids you are looking for.

Interlocking fields of fire and terrain are immaterial for space wizards who can deflect shots with a blade made of light. Get a nice historical miniatures game. They have as much MG34 troopers as Star Wars Legion.

Or y'know. Interlocking fields of fire might be how you shoot a space wizard in the back while they're deflecting a different laser bolt. I don't know what MG34 troopers are. I just get tired of interlocking special effects like "no THIS unit being in 6 inches grants that unit a re-roll of their defense dice, THAT unit being within 6 inches grants them +1 to their defense rolls" it all gets to be a bit much. I guess I like my wargames to allow for intuitive intelligent decision making. Charging uphill should be a bad idea, ugnaughts with recycled droids shouldn't be vastly superior to trained soldiers etc. etc.

If I went and got a "nice" historical game other than the ones I already own, it still wouldn't support tauntauns and rancors!

s.
If 40k had a stat card with WS BS S etc for each unit, laminated and sitting on the table, would it suddenly become streamlined? There's never been anything preventing that, GW usually provides blank army rosters but for some reason no one uses them, in 40k people seem to WANT to flip through books with each action for some strange reason. In my experience, 40k has gotten really convoluted since the 90' It's becoming simpler in theory but harder in practice. All those italicized universal special rules are a ton to try and keep track of when deciding who to shoot at, or whatever.

Frostgrave or Kings of War works well in that way. The stats are pretty much the stats, you don't forget that unit X gets to re-roll 1's because they bought card Y.

In D6 Star Wars, you filled out a record sheet for each unit, not unlike a D&D character sheet, and there were no special rules really. If someone had Blaster 3 and carried a Heavy Blaster Pistol, you always knew exactly how dangerous they were in ranged combat. But subtracting variable if consistent amounts from their "to hit" rolls due to range or cover, keeping track of who was wounded, etc. was too hard for some people. Granted, there were ways to break the game: it was pretty much pointless to improve any stats until after the Blaster skills of everyone in your army had been maxed out as much as was legal. Wookies were oddly broken by virtue of a high base STR and Move. And so on. But even in demo games, newbies could make smart decisions in the game by hiding behind trees instead of standing in the open or whatever. In Imperial Assault, Age of Sigmar, and 40k nowadays, solving little puzzles created by unit special effects too-often replaces that, and can sometimes turn it from an artistically inclined tactical simulation into violence-flavored Sudoku. I think the turn-based nature of some games encourages this. Can units simultaneously kill each other in this game? That usually cuts down on that kind of thing.

As to resale value of core units: I thought that would be obvious. I don't want to paint stormtroopers etc. I want to sell them and buy other SW:L units that I DO get excited to paint. I don't play with unpainted minis and I don't have time to paint things that don't excite me. But, every big boxed game is different on the secondary market, and eBay listings can be, shall we say, optimistically priced. Thanks for the input, I will check out the free core rules.

So my answer is no. Don't buy it. Not until you've seen it played in person. You seem to have a lot of requirements and preferences. That's totally fine. I think it's a relatively simple game, but it just came out. Only time will tell if it stays that way. I loved 40k 25 years ago, but now it is totally impenetrable unless it's your full time job. So wait and see. You can always paint something else in the meantime, or get a box of what you like and paint that while you see what develops.

If you like painting and terrain building and star wars, this is the game for you. However the advise about making sure people are actually playing this game is gold. Make sure the painting isn't the only thing you can do with this game.

Legion has less going on special rules wise then IA or modern x-wing.

They are currently very conservative with the number of special rules they allow core units to have.

The combos are all pretty obvious. Here is an example.

Rebel troopers are “nimble” so if the spend a dodge token when attacked they get a new dodge token.

Leia can use her “take cover 2” special action to give two units a dodge token.

therefor it’s best to use Leia early in a round to give rebel troopers dodge tokens.

Like any wargame with terrain and LOS there are all sorts of nuances to how the table and figures interact, that’s about the hardest part of the game to grock and about the weakest clarity in the rules.

If you want to give the game a shot using your old minitures the maneuver tool and dice are available separate. The only thing you would need to proxy from the core set would be the order cards and the objective/scenario decks. But you may be able to buy those off of someone splitting core sets.

Yes to resale of imperials if you do it quickly as the restock of storm troopers are taking awhile

I always wait till a game has been out awhile before I try it so I can get advice like this besides "ZOMG did you see this at Gencon?!". Here's my plan.

Step 1, get someone to commit to swapping the contents of a core set so someone else in the group will definitely play.

Step 2, rake a bunch of old stuff out of the basement to trade in for store credit so if I hate the game, at least it helped me clean the basement.

Step 4, ???

Step 5, PROFIT!

I've been going through massive D6 projects lately so I've really got Star Wars minis on the brain. Now or never I guess. Seems like the beginnings of Hoth factions are out for both armies so that's good. I'm hesitant to commit to collecting two armies right now cause who knows what cool stuff is in the pipeline.

Personally I went rebels because I already have lots of imperial guys from imperial assault.

oh and fair warning. Legion models are larger then IA or wotc they are a heroic 1-48th scale

Yeah I know it's one of the biggest black marks against the game. You know 28mm used to be called "heroic 25mm"?

Then those got so big they started calling them 28mm.

Then it went to "heroic 28". Then they got bigger and people called them 32mm. Then I start hearing about "heroic 32mm". Luke from IA measured 35mm at the eyes, and he wasn't even standing up straight. Now these ones are even bigger. Where will it end? In the old days scale creep happened within and between lines because of lack of communication in a cottage industry, trouble converting master sculpts to molds correctly, etc. Nowadays they do it on purpose.

The other big black mark, honestly, is the command structure. It seems like it would poorly replicate the atmosphere of Star Wars and it's few on-screen land battles. Routing everything through a few command nodes seems more ancient or Napoleonic in feel. I guess I'll find out.

Hence my plan. Only get a core set if I get a committed opponent to get their own core box, and I don't pay cash for my box.

Well, the scale jump for from IA to Legion wasn't just because they think bigger is better, it was a conscious choice to make the figures visually incompatible to encourage players who had large IA collections to buy new figures for Legion.

2 hours ago, Chucknuckle said:

Well, the scale jump for from IA to Legion wasn't just because they think bigger is better, it was a conscious choice to make the figures visually incompatible to encourage players who had large IA collections to buy new figures for Legion.

Yup. Some dirty pool IMO. Not as bad as some of the stuff GW regularly pulls, but, still. It's not about buying, its the effort one puts into painting. There are other, nicer, ways they could have encouraged people to buy new models, and not contributed to the lamentable upward creep that's been going on industry-wide.

On 6/13/2018 at 10:51 PM, TauntaunScout said:

I don't know what MG34 troopers are.

George Lucas gave his Stormtroopers and Rebels WWII kit, sometimes slightly camouflaged like Han Solo's Mauser, because it was cheap to rent. So the DLT is the German MG 34. But what makes Legion a bit unwieldy are the cards. It is fiddly to memorize and keep track of those special rules and which troop has the impact grenades. They could have done it with stats, but they sell way more stuff, if you have to buy minis you don't want for cards you want. They did it with X-Wing and X-Wing just collapsed under the weight of cards, upgrades and errata to those cards. Now there is X-Wing 2.0, so a new round of cards. Legion has a while to get there, but the direction is visible.

On 6/15/2018 at 8:38 AM, TauntaunScout said:

The other big black mark, honestly, is the command structure. It seems like it would poorly replicate the atmosphere of Star Wars and it's few on-screen land battles.

Personally, I don't see how the use of command cards (presuming that's what you mean by "command structure") can replicate or fail to demonstrate any atmosphere. They just don't do that much, descriptively.

They primarily serve to choose intentionally when some units will activate during a round, which is all an abstraction during the game anyway. During any kind of real life battle, all of the units represented on the board would be doing something at all times, just like in all tabletop games. So that part makes Legion feel unique in its gameplay, but really can't be said to have any thematic effect.

The other thing that some command cards do is have a special effect based on the commander playing them, and those are directly designed to emulate scenes from the movies - Vader having a terrorizing effect on enemy troops, Luke springing forward in a berserk moment, Veers ordering AT-AT's to fire.