Anyone make actual cards out of the new battlecards in the scenarios for the Operations, so that you could add them in for choices in regular games?

https://www.makeplayingcards.com/promotional/blank-playing-cards.html

Would be interested in this as well.

23 hours ago, Kanawolf said:

Anyone make actual cards out of the new battlecards in the scenarios for the Operations, so that you could add them in for choices in regular games?

https://www.makeplayingcards.com/promotional/blank-playing-cards.html

I haven’t gone through the operations in detail yet but that’s the way I’m hoping to play. I’m surprised FFG doesn’t print these and package them. I would be interested in a “scenario” pack, for example.

1 hour ago, BigBadAndy said:

I haven’t gone through the operations in detail yet but that’s the way I’m hoping to play. I’m surprised FFG doesn’t print these and package them. I would be interested in a “scenario” pack, for example.

Might be saving them for some future neutral model pack, similar to the objective set.

Ffg is using the feeback from them for a future release im sure. I bet we see varients of some of our favorites. This is a neat idea on doing custom cards until then.

As far as the indivdual card ffg could put them in the store kits to hand out to players.

3 hours ago, The captn said:

As far as the indivdual card ffg could put them in the store kits to hand out to players. 

It’s a good idea, but it’s hard for some folks to get those store kits. I’ve never gotten one for any game - Not that it’s all about me, but I think I’m not unique in that I collect and paint the miniatures with the hope of playing the game but it’s very difficult for me to get to the game store and play. So most of my games are in the basement with family and friends. It would be nice to have other options.

The Surrounded deployment from Blue Metal and Silent Hail really, really should not be played competitively. It would be incredibly meta-warping, and it's just unpleasant to play from a remotely competitive standpoint. You can deal with it if you know you're going to play it and only it, but in a deck? No. Absolutely not.

The other "battle cards" aren't as bad, but in general they're a lot more specialized and require you to prepare for them specifically. Some of them may be adapted and make the leap to the regular game (The condition cards from Take the Hill look more promising), but I really don't reccomended adding them to a deck yet. That's not to say you shouldn't play with them if you want to, but let both players know in advance because they really do warp list building.

24 minutes ago, Squark said:

The Surrounded deployment from Blue Metal and Silent Hail really, really should not be played competitively. It would be incredibly meta-warping,....

... but let both players know in advance because they really do warp list building.

My general attitude is to screw meta thinking as much as possible. Meta disruption is the highest ideal in my mind. It's part of why I very much prefer a theme force over one that makes little sense narratively but ticks all the right game mechanism boxes. I love the idea of having my army not be the ideal one for the situation at hand as that requires me to think adaptively rather than rely on a preset strategy. It's so much more fulfilling to figure out how to handle a battle in the moment. I can't understand why some players want to mitigate that.

Yeah, screw meta. Screw it straight to heck. Warp that sucker into a big useless coil.

25 minutes ago, Albertese said:

My general attitude is to screw meta thinking as much as possible. Meta disruption is the highest ideal in my mind. It's part of why I very much prefer a theme force over one that makes little sense narratively but ticks all the right game mechanism boxes. I love the idea of having my army not be the ideal one for the situation at hand as that requires me to think adaptively rather than rely on a preset strategy. It's so much more fulfilling to figure out how to handle a battle in the moment. I can't understand why some players want to mitigate that.

Yeah, screw meta. Screw it straight to heck. Warp that sucker into a big useless coil.

I understand your perspective, but I think you misunderstood what I meant by meta-warping. The center deployment makes the snowspeeder absolutely useless (Instead of merely ~1.3 speeder bikes for twice the price), and leaves the speeder bike in an awkward position. The tiny deployment zones essentially force the blue player to run two commanders, which is really, really limiting for Imperial players until Imperial and Rebel Specialists hits. The tiny space between the two deployment spaces means Luke runs rampant (And Vader might actually get work done for once if you're struggling with him). Breakthrough and secure the transmissions are broken beyond belief, while recover the supplies, key positions, and sabotage the moisture vaporators become thoroughly unpleasant unless both players agree to not be complete jerks in placing objectives. And terrain arrangement basically has to be tailored to the specific deployment... Which you can't do with the battle cards since terrain has already been set up.

Like I said, if you and your opponent decide to use it for a specific game, that's fine. If I'd thought a bit more about the deployment before I played silent hail mission 3, it might have been tolerable. But it really, really is not compatible with the battle cards.

@Squark I tend to agree with @Albertese about the meta (I’ll digress on this later) but obviously there needs to be some consideration given to ensuring the battle cards are at least fair in the context of tournaments. Having said that, Legion is already a game that has lots of externalities to it - the terrain, the composition of your opponents forces, the existing battle cards. This is one of the things I kind of like about it, but it also makes it a bit of a challenge to say tournaments will ever be “perfectly fair.” We already have some cards in the battle deck that are really specific and can muck up people’s plans. This is almost certain to get worse over time as people have more options to include in their deck. We may ultimately need to have the battle deck for a tournament standardized and published beforehand - if you really want people to be able to prepare for the conditions.

So yeah, I can see it as a consideration but it’s hard for me to see a bright line. And people do have the ability to manipulate the battle cards once they are revealed so it may not be all that bad.

(Regarding the meta - I first realized I hated the meta was when playing the old Star Wars CCG from Decipher. They introduced some very cool narrative style objective cards that would give you serious bonuses for something like completing a trench run or building the second Death Star. Amazingly fun. I went to a tournament and deployed the Second Death Star objective and after about three turns my opponent said “wait, you’re actually trying to build it?” Then (no joke) yelled “hey everyone get a load of this - he’s actually trying to build the Death Star!” I’m not so delicate that it bothered my ego. But the “meta” was to use these objective cards for the one or two bonuses or abilities they gave you but build a deck that was otherwise completely incompatible with the goal and ignore the objective. I already knew people played with a lot of cheesy, unfun decks and I don’t consider myself enslaved to the lore (“hey you can’t have obi wan in a deck with Jedi Luke Skywalker!!!!”). But to me these was just a stark illustration that tournaments are all about taking the awesome fun game mechanics you are given and breaking them all in the least fun way possible. So yeah, disrupting people’s meta is a goal as far as I’m concerned).

Maybe I shouldn't have used the term "meta" since it's kind of a loaded phrase. My point was that many of the new deployments and victory conditions break down outside of the specific situations FFG put them in. Surrounded is the worst offender I've come across, but a lot of them really don't work if they're matched with other random conditions and deployments. They're great starting points for your own scenarios (I'd actually love to see some more talk about custom scenarios for Legion), but the battle deck is relatively symmetrical and neutral towards factions and unit types for a reason.

I agree that for competitive play the Battle Decks should continue to be as neutral as possible (similar sized deployment zones, both players scattered if scattering occurs, etc). Deployments that give a massive benefit to one side can be incredibly difficult and miserable for one player while the other gets an easy win based on the selected Objectives. Yes, the opponent has a chance to remove them, but there are enough oddball deployments to leave a player with no good options. Surrounded with Intercept the transmissions gives one player an objective at the start of the game, and puts them closer to the other two objectives for instance. Now, I am super surprised that Fortified Positions was not included with a couple other cards in the barricades expansion pack, that would have been a perfect fit, and feels very balanced to me. The conditions from Take the Hill seem fine, since they are applied equally. The objectives don't seem to bad either, but the deployments for Take the hill are designed with "Skirmish" Legion in mind, on a 3'x3' with a modified Force Org chart.

For me I’ve always considered the best players to be those who can win with their list in the most difficult of circumstances. So those who can do well with tricky deployment situations get my vote, every time.

27 minutes ago, ellhaynes said:

For me I’ve always considered the best players to be those who can win with their list in the most difficult of circumstances. So those who can do well with tricky deployment situations get my vote, every time.

People choosing to play purposefully unbalanced games are great for experience, help keep the game challenging when an experienced player is facing a less experienced player, and can be quite fun.

If a player is surprised by the unbalanced scenario, then that's a different situation. A beginner being stomped because they are still learning the game and have to try to figure out a challenging deployment while trying to learn the basic rules isn't likely to be fun for them.

1 hour ago, Caimheul1313 said:

A beginner being stomped because they are still learning the game and have to try to figure out a challenging deployment while trying to learn the basic rules isn't likely to be fun for them.

Good point, completely agree.

I still disagree with the initial comment though, that attacker/ defender style missions are bad for the competitive meta. I think they’re good for opening up the meta completely.

Appreciate the original author has now tweaked the comments slightly, and completely understand the thrust. But my feelings are still that anything that breaks up meta is good - tabletop games that avoid stale meta-predictable lists tend to remain the healthiest in the long run. Possibly more important when considering the limited number of factions available to start with.

21 minutes ago, ellhaynes said:

Good point, completely agree.

I still disagree with the initial comment though, that attacker/ defender style missions are bad for the competitive meta. I think they’re good for opening up the meta completely.

Appreciate the original author has now tweaked the comments slightly, and completely understand the thrust. But my feelings are still that anything that breaks up meta is good - tabletop games that avoid stale meta-predictable lists tend to remain the healthiest in the long run. Possibly more important when considering the limited number of factions available to start with.

The concept of an Attacker/defender mission certainly isn't bad, but the battle cards don't do a good job of implementing this. The nature of Legion's mechanics also mean the attacker needs a noticeable advantage, since the defender doesn't have to move which means more opportunities to aim and attack.

12 minutes ago, ellhaynes said:

Good point, completely agree.

I still disagree with the initial comment though, that attacker/ defender style missions are bad for the competitive meta. I think they’re good for opening up the meta completely.

Appreciate the original author has now tweaked the comments slightly, and completely understand the thrust. But my feelings are still that anything that breaks up meta is good - tabletop games that avoid stale meta-predictable lists tend to remain the healthiest in the long run. Possibly more important when considering the limited number of factions available to start with.

Remember that more factions are coming fairly soon, and both sides don't even have units for every slot yet, so "getting stale" is a bit of a ways off imho. Plus, more special rules keep getting introduced.

Attacker/Defender missions can shake things up, but typically involve a combination of deployment zones and objectives to keep things balanced between both sides. With as quickly as models die in Legion, approaching an army in cover is horrible.

The attacker needs something extra in an attacker/defender scenario. From old wargaming experience, an attacker needed about three times the size of the defender (I.e. 3:1 odds) to make things equal for a die roll. I AM NOT suggesting 3:1 odds, but given equal size forces, the entrenched defender should win almost every time.