2 hours ago, Qark said:

Something along the lines of "if you have no face up order tokens and your opponent has more tokens in their random stack then you instead of drawing a token from your stack and activating a unit you may instead pass your turn" or "if the total number of your faceup order tokens and order tokens in your random stack is smaller than the total of your opponents total number of faceup order tokens and order tokens in their random stack instead of activating a unit you may pass your turn."

I think it needs to be worded in such a way that whoever would be going last still gets to go last. I just think more list variety would occur is lists with smaller numbers of activations weren't forced to move up into an army that still has 2-4 more activations to go allowing them to focus down your units unopposed.

Ah, okay, was making sure you weren't meaning passing on choosing an objective to eliminate.

The main reason that I see large number of activations is so prevalent seems to have a little less to do with activations, since the larger army has less control over activations (if I put all of my non-corps units tokens face up, then I have complete control over what units I activate, and when they activate), and more to do with that every objective cares about unit leaders. The more unit leaders you have, the easier you can absorb losses and still have leaders to claim objectives/score points.

I'd have to play with that a few times to see if it makes a difference. Delaying activations allows your opponent to build up suppression on your units, even if they aren't killing them. One of the other miniatures game I play frequently is Bolt Action, where all units have an order die, and both players put their dice in a single bag. Dice are then drawn blindly, and the player whose die is drawn activates one of their units until all dice are resolved, and a somewhat similar pinning mechanic. The army with more activations will always have an advantage just by virtue of having more units that can take objectives, and losing a unit either temporarily from suppression or "permanently" from destruction.

Delaying when you move your units just changes when their activation advantage comes into play in my experience from BA. How much cover are you typically playing with? The tables at my FLGS tend to be well covered with terrain, allowing for maneuvering without losing cover. Having played a couple games with little cover (due to setting up the table later/quickly), I could see where in that sort of situation moving first leaves your units exposed.

2 hours ago, Qark said:

I agree but I am much happier with legion than warhammer where an entire army moves and shoots, then the other etc. (disclaimer been ages since I have played warhammer so I don't know if things have changed).

Warhammer STILL has IGYG. Kill Team works quite a bit differently though, only IGYG in the movement phase, then individually alternating shooting/combat.

I think an attrition objective would solve this. Objective where the amounts of points you defeated is counted. Those big ATs are a lot of points if you don't kill them. Mind though 1 objective would not be enough to change, though. If you include it in your deck and are blue player, there's 1/4 chance of actually forcing it to be this objective.

16 hours ago, beefcake4000 said:

I think people are overly negative about trooper spam, competitively speaking its not going to change unless we get a set of objectives that don't favour infantry so much. I do feel like FFG missed an opportunity with the first batch of bonus objectives which really didn't add anything new to the objective set, hopefully they'll do better with the next.

I don't think they are being negative enough, there is an issue to having a small meta and after a time it stops being fun, 9 months into the game and we'll have infantry, infantry and more bloody infantry. 4 Rebels in an Air Car would be an improvement.

27 minutes ago, Amanal said:

I don't think they are being negative enough, there is an issue to having a small meta and after a time it stops being fun, 9 months into the game and we'll have infantry, infantry and more bloody infantry. 4 Rebels in an Air Car would be an improvement.

Have you or the people you play with actually tried out airspeeder(s) or is everyone just assuming it’s not going to work without trying it or giving it several runs/adjustments?

23 minutes ago, Derrault said:

Have you or the people you play with actually tried out airspeeder(s) or is everyone just assuming it’s not going to work without trying it or giving it several runs/adjustments?

I have a comp on this weekend. Double airspeeder is something I am trying to get to work because I love the look of them and how they play. What list do you use them in and how you do fly them?

I've actually run a pretty successful airspeeder list. The double I tried once but it left the ground pretty sparse. However the list I built around one was a pretty decisive, if not major, victory. I can share the list if anyone is interested.

1 hour ago, Derrault said:

Have you or the people you play with actually tried out airspeeder(s) or is everyone just assuming it’s not going to work without trying it or giving it several runs/adjustments?

Many times, it has rarely been a good choice. I want to champion it, but it isn't even coming close to being a worthwhile.

1 hour ago, Qark said:

I have a comp on this weekend. Double airspeeder is something I am trying to get to work because I love the look of them and how they play. What list do you use them in and how you do fly them?

I’m experimenting with different leader compositions, but the gist of it would be double air speeder, with esteemed leader on Leia and corps to soak hits. Coordinated bombardment, a sniper unit, and an AT-RT with laser cannon to soften up any enemy units that might be able to threaten the speeders.

Speeders would seek to activate late in the round and position themselves (with comm jammers) to deny token assignment for the enemy leader’s command card.

The approach I was mulling over was: round 1 bombard squishy infantry units that are within enemy commander’s range, snipe as needed (enemy sniper units might be a priority simply to take them off the board), move T-47s into position to block assignments of the intact units. Round 2 No time for sorrows to get Leia and a trooper unit into close proximity of the T-47s for guardian value; Snipers continue to reduce dice on high priority targets.

@MAT8686 I for one would be very interested.

4 hours ago, Amanal said:

I don't think they are being negative enough, there is an issue to having a small meta and after a time it stops being fun, 9 months into the game and we'll have infantry, infantry and more bloody infantry. 4 Rebels in an Air Car would be an improvement.

I guess I’d be conscious to seperate competitive play from fun play. If fun is the priority the adjust the composition rules to the flavour of your friendship circle. Put hard caps on the number of units with the same name (max 2 storms) or a cap on activations. **** even try playing with pretermined objectives that clearly favour non infantry builds.

The only reason to play by the full ruleset is if you are playing competitively and frankly how fun you find the meta is irrelevant in that context.

The only other suggestion I have is to put it back on the shelf for 6 months and see what happens. I’d guess the droid army will be very vehicle based for example and a new wave of objectives that do more than the last ones would make a huge difference to builds.

15 hours ago, Caimheul1313 said:

As to the meta, I'd imagine that the upcoming introduction of additional factions has the greatest potential of shaking things up more than single unit releases.

I don’t think it’s going to change the basic jist of competitive lists.

Droids will be super spammy and more fragile (similar to rebel troopers), and the clones will basically be better stormtroopers. Most likely.

I think you can definitely assume that the droid army will always have 6x corps and stuff.

Really, as folks have already put out there, what we need most to alter the meta is to add more objective variety. If there’s an incentive to take a heavy, it will be taken. For me, that incentive already exists for my AT-ST (it’s cool, it throws lots of dice, and it can provide a serious lane denial). But, I’m not a competitive player. I don’t expect to do much next week at the game store but learn. Which is fine - I never bought Legion with the intention of making a competitive go at it.

I think it should have been possible to contest objectives by being near them with any unit. Or to require that objectives be carried off the table edge, thus robbing that player of firepower. Or something like that.

But, if you're bored playing all infantry try something else. You can make up whatever rules you want for your campaigns. Instead of 1-2, 3-6, 0-3, 0-3, try a house ruled force organization chart of 0-1, 1-6, 1-3, 1-3.

16 hours ago, Qark said:

Something along the lines of "if you have no face up order tokens and your opponent has more tokens in their random stack then you instead of drawing a token from your stack and activating a unit you may instead pass your turn" or "if the total number of your faceup order tokens and order tokens in your random stack is smaller than the total of your opponents total number of faceup order tokens and order tokens in their random stack instead of activating a unit you may pass your turn."

I think it needs to be worded in such a way that whoever would be going last still gets to go last. I just think more list variety would occur is lists with smaller numbers of activations weren't forced to move up into an army that still has 2-4 more activations to go allowing them to focus down your units unopposed.

I'd like to see it done like Bolt Action.

You still set your orders like you do in the current game and you still pass back and forth, but all non-ordered tokens go into a single bag not separate bags.

Blue player can activate a face up token or pull a random from the big bag, whatever gets pulled gets activated, then it passes to red for the same decision and so on. It mimics the idea of the fog of war in that you don't know what is coming and have to react and creates spaces where armies can seize on advantages because they got initiative (pulling a long strong of one side, or just the right combination for a couple turns in a row.

A match could go Reb-Reb-Reb- Imp-Reb-Imp-Imp-Imp-Imp.........

@Derrault

Leia Organa 90
- Commanding Presence 10

T-47 Airspeeder 175
- Wedge Antilles 5
- HQ Uplink 10
- Mo/Dk Power Harpoon 8

Commando Strike Team 16
- DH-447 Sniper 28
- Emergency Stims 8

Rebel Commandos 60
- Proton Charge Saboteur 26

Rebel Troopers 40
- Extra Trooper 10
- Z-6 Trooper 22

Rebel Troopers 40
- Extra Trooper 10
- Z-6 Trooper 22
- Targeting Scopes 6

Rebel Troopers 40
- Targeting Scopes 6

Fleet Troopers 44
- Extra Fleet 11
- Scatter Gun 23
- Targeting Scopes 6

Fleet Troopers 44
- Extra Fleet 11
- Scatter Gun 23
- Targeting Scopes 6

Total: 800

@ScummyRebel It depends. If the Droid army has Armoured Infantry or some other "shield" effect that is best dealt with through Impact (I'm thinking Droidekas), or is vulnerable to Ion tokens then the Z-6 might not be the best option for Rebel Troopers, which changes the meta slightly. The GAR is more than likely more red dice infantry, but potentially better accuracy/more range 3 dice, leading to more expensive (and effective) Corps units. There is also the slim possibility of "Scum" being added.

I agree that activation/trooper "spam" is likely to continue to be the overarching meta without Objectives that punish such a build, but having new factions with new strengths and weaknesses ahs to possibility of changing the predominant builds.

@Zrob314 I know locally we've used the Legion battlefield condition cards in BA, nothing to stop you from trying out your activation method alteration locally. Sounds interesting.

1 hour ago, Caimheul1313 said:

I know locally we've used the Legion battlefield condition cards in BA, nothing to stop you from trying out your activation method alteration locally. Sounds interesting.

Oh I know I can try it. Right now though I'm mostly playing league/organized so no time to faff about with non-RAW stuff.

I just think in general it would be a positive change to the game.

On 10/11/2018 at 1:27 PM, Indy_com said:

After reading this I'm wondering what would classify as a "Heavy Trooper" unit.

Maybe this?

That's as much of a Trooper as an AT-ST or Airspeeder.

On 10/12/2018 at 8:37 AM, TauntaunScout said:

I think it should have been possible to contest objectives by being near them with any unit. Or to require that objectives be carried off the table edge, thus robbing that player of firepower. Or something like that.

But, if you're bored playing all infantry try something else. You can make up whatever rules you want for your campaigns. Instead of 1-2, 3-6, 0-3, 0-3, try a house ruled force organization chart of 0-1, 1-6, 1-3, 1-3.

Well, only 3 out of 5 objectives require Troopers. The one you're probably referring to is Intercept the Transmissions. I would be perfectly fine changing it from "Trooper unit leaders" to "unit leaders," but there would be a huge crowd of people who don't understand abstraction complaining about how in the lore an Airspeeder never operated a transmission terminal.

I really like the game as it is.

List building choices are a little limited, but that is improving all the time as new releases come out and the game is only 7 months old. I'm looking forward to more armoured units and hopefully troop transports :-).

Meta is a funny thing - when something becomes popular a "new meta" rises that beats it... and so on. The real problem is when something is too good vs everything. Ie with 3 x snipers... meet 3 x ATRT with Rotary (or ATST) who are almost immune to the little buggers, and will kill them pretty quickly. So far I have no issue.

The only thing that would help in my view is a couple of minor point tweeks (speeders a little cheaper, snipers a little more expensive the exhaust weapons a little cheaper...), but no major changes.

On 10/11/2018 at 5:09 PM, Qark said:

Something along the lines of "if you have no face up order tokens and your opponent has more tokens in their random stack then you instead of drawing a token from your stack and activating a unit you may instead pass your turn" or "if the total number of your faceup order tokens and order tokens in your random stack is smaller than the total of your opponents total number of faceup order tokens and order tokens in their random stack instead of activating a unit you may pass your turn."

I think it needs to be worded in such a way that whoever would be going last still gets to go last. I just think more list variety would occur is lists with smaller numbers of activations weren't forced to move up into an army that still has 2-4 more activations to go allowing them to focus down your units unopposed.

This sounds like a great future command card.

I wonder if the Standby action is supposed to help mitigate the problem of going against extra activations? It seems like Standby and recover are criminally underused actions.

29 minutes ago, smickletz said:

This sounds like a great future command card.

I wonder if the Standby action is supposed to help mitigate the problem of going against extra activations? It seems like Standby and recover are criminally underused actions.

That would make sense, setting ambushes if you know an enemy will only see you once they are in range 2.

13 hours ago, smickletz said:

I wonder if the Standby action is supposed to help mitigate the problem of going against extra activations? It seems like Standby and recover are criminally underused actions.

I have previously used standby to allow a full squad of Fleet Troopers to kill Luke after he finished with the couple of surviving members of the squad he charged the previous turn. I've also seen it used against Speeder bikes in order to shoot at them once they move into range from their compulsory move.

There's always a choice, every time you go to a games night or an event and decide to bring a netlist you are part of the problem. Decide to bring something different, practise with it, win some games with it, and change the perception of what's a good list.

So I ran a 2 airspeeder, 1 atrt, 10 activation list in a local comp on the weekend. Ended up 3rd of 11. Won 2 of 3 rounds, both wins were against other rebel players. My one loss was against an 11 activation imperial list where 7 of those activations have an impact weapon (DLT on storms, grenades on snows, and boba just being boba).

Overall I felt alright about my list but with only 4 corps units and all of them in a 4 man set up I didn't have much staying power for objectives.

13 hours ago, DarkTrooperZero said:

There's always a choice, every time you go to a games night or an event and decide to bring a netlist you are part of the problem. Decide to bring something different, practise with it, win some games with it, and change the perception of what's a good list.

Brilliant.

As I play more I am finding terrain is one of those wildcards that changes what units are effective. I played a game recently with tall solid terrain you couldn't shoot through. It created range 3 firing lanes all over the map. In theory Imperials should have the theory crafted advantage of range 4 DLT but not that game. One player brought commandos with bombs. The ability to plant a bomb and hide behind solid cover did incredible damage to the trooper spam. We look at the efficiency of weapons but what if you can't fire for a round or two getting into position because of the terrain?

The heavy costed units are kind of wild cards in the sense that they have big guns and can get into range easily. So did they roll well to hurt a unit and did a defender roll poorly and get a unit deleted? If it does, then it is totally worth it and if it didn't you prolly lost the game. I am not an ATST hater, but I am glad a lot of people are because it makes the T47 much more viable.

I think it is too early to crown generic stormtrooper spam the king. I think at the highest end of competitive it is more consistently good but it doesn't flat out dominate.