I've seen a lot of theories thrown around on how to improve our current heavy units. Here are some ideas that could benefit every unit:

1: There is no upper limit to height in Legion.

2: High Ground x: When a unit declares an attack, if it is at height x above the defending unit, the attacking unit gains Sharpshooter x for the duration of the attack.

• If the height difference between attacker and defender is zero or lower, High Ground has no effect.

3: Minimum Unit Height x (MUH x) :Units are considered to be at a minimum of height x when declaring and defending against attacks.

• The T47 and ATST have MUH 2.
• All other units have MUH 0.
• MUH x is cumulative with terrain height.

If you try these out for yourself please post about it! Cheers!

Wow this is a super interesting idea. I hope to play a game later this week and test it out but only one of my buddies has an AT-ST. This is super creative though and I would love to see people play it!

It would make the game too complicated. you couldn’t introduce players so easily if there are rules like that. but it is an interesting idea.?

No offense, I can see you put a lot of thought into this but my eyes glazed over about a quarter of the way through. I think this is too complex for the existing system.

I'd give AT-RT IUH 1.

I actually prefer this type of system because it simplifies assessing line of sight and cover -- assign a piece of terrain a height; height between two units taller than their height provides total cover. Then all interactions are based on a base-to-base line (none of this "true line of sight" silliness). Though I think you have to use slightly different numbers for it to work best.

Nope. Anything that adds more complexity to the game is a bad thing (and this coming from a long time 40K, Warhordes player). The last thing I want is to have to do math to figure out if a unit has sharpshooter or not. This would also add more time to the game, which in turn would adversely affect the perception of potential new players, who are already complaining of it taking too long....

I really don't think this is as complex as some people are making it.

Its easy guys; T47 is height 2, trooper units are height 0 = T47 gains Sharpshooter 2. (2-0=2)

T47 is height 2, trooper units of height 0 are standing on a height 1 building = T47 has Sharpshooter 1. (2-0-1=1)

I think REMOVING sharpshooter from units that are attacking a tall unit doesn't make any sense though. Larger, more visible unit should not mean it gets better defense in my opinion.

I really love this, and would give huge incentive to Snipers to get up high (as they want to anyways) to get a bonus Sharpshooter.

35 minutes ago, armada439 said:

I think REMOVING sharpshooter from units that are attacking a tall unit doesn't make any sense though. Larger, more visible unit should not mean it gets better defense in my opinion.

No, it makes perfect sense. At St's basically never get cover anyways, but this would be about Boba Fett trying to snip a sniper in a tower. It is a known fact that it is much harder to shoot up into a defended position rather than down. If a window sill covers, say, half your height, but you are a few floors up, someone on the ground might be able to barely see your head, and ducking for cover will make you almost impossible to hit, taking away sharpshooter. If a Sniper is in a tower, and the other is on the ground, the one in the tower has a huge advantage. This would make terrain of different heights very interesting.

5 hours ago, Hawkstrike said:

I'd give AT-RT IUH 1.

This would be too huge of a buff to the AT-RT, which I feel is a very well costed and balanced platform, besides the fact that it is only about twice the height of a trooper. It can already shoot over some terrain that infantry can't, which is pretty powerful in my opinion.

Overall, the T47 and to a lesser extent the AT ST need a buff, clearly, and this would be a clean way of doing it that makes sense. Good Work!

29 minutes ago, SirCormac said:

No, it makes perfect sense. At St's basically never get cover anyways, but this would be about Boba Fett trying to snip a sniper in a tower. It is a known fact that it is much harder to shoot up into a defended position rather than down. If a window sill covers, say, half your height, but you are a few floors up, someone on the ground might be able to barely see your head, and ducking for cover will make you almost impossible to hit, taking away sharpshooter. If a Sniper is in a tower, and the other is on the ground, the one in the tower has a huge advantage. This would make terrain of different heights very interesting.

It is a pretty big nerf to units with the sharpshooter keyword. My problem with it is that sharpshooter is primarily on unique figures (leia, boba, veers, etc.) and highly trained units (commandos/scouts)... these are high cost, trained figures that I feel should thematically be able to make those precise and critical shots. And are all units that feel balanced and not needing a nerf...

Matter of opinion as I said. And hey, it IS a houserule: If you're looking to seriously incentivize bringing heavy armor, that'd be the way to do it

1 minute ago, armada439 said:

It is a pretty big nerf to units with the sharpshooter keyword. My problem with it is that sharpshooter is primarily on unique figures (leia, boba, veers, etc.) and highly trained units (commandos/scouts)... these are high cost, trained figures that I feel should thematically be able to make those precise and critical shots. And are all units that feel balanced and not needing a nerf...

Matter of opinion as I said. And hey, it IS a houserule: If you're looking to seriously incentivize bringing heavy armor, that'd be the way to do it

TBH, this is a fair concern, but most terrain I've seen is, at most, only height 1, so wouldn't impact it too much. Really, it would create a new tactical dimension of fighting to high terrain, which is very realistic. And besides, didn't Obi Wan teach us that having the high ground is an auto-win condition?

Or you could just let a unit whose base is higher than its target measure horizontally and a unit whose base is lower than its target has to measure in 3 dimensions...

Thank you to everyone who's responded so far. I removed some lines from the original post (notably the bit about losing sharpshooter) and changed the wording in a few places (minimum UH instead of innate). I definitely agree that it was too complicated in its original state. Hopefully these edits have helped make the post more concise.

I think any house rule that supports strategies to "gain the high ground" is good for the game. I will be either using your rules or modifying it in my games.

The main thing I was thinking was instead of utilizing the sharpshooter keyword (as some units have it already, and the disadvantages of this have already been outlined), it would be a new keyword altogether. If the attacker had high ground, after the defender has rolled and modified all defense dice, the attacker can force 1 or 2 rerolls of the defender's dice (depending on height advantage). The defender could then modify their reroll if applicable (mainly for surges).

If the defender has the high ground, the defender would get defensive rerolls equal to the height advantage in the same way as explained before.

The main thing to iron out is whether the rerolls need to be all at once, or if the height advantage player could reroll a die twice (relevant if he has height advantage 2, and is attacking with only 1 attack die, should he get to reroll the defender's die twice? ... I'd say "yes" for balance, but "no" for rules simplicity.

Thoughts on my wall of text idea?

Any thoughts on increasing the T-47 main weapon to range 4 and upgrading to red defense dice as a simple buff to make it more viable? Think the increased range would make it more dynamic for diversion/flanking and mitigate the almost guaranteed exchange of fire w/ the typically engaged unit. Red def. dice to up the survivability and both together possibly justify the current cost?

If you ever played Xwing 1.0 FFG messing with rules and cards, and adding rules and cards to try to fix things just got horribly messy.

The easiest and most straightforward 'fix' is to just reduce their points costs. You have an easier time fitting them into lists so they will be seen more and their points efficiency rankings go up to given you more bang for your buck.

Simple, effect, and easy to implement

On 10/26/2018 at 9:11 AM, flipperoverlord said:

I think any house rule that supports strategies to "gain the high ground" is good for the game. I will be either using your rules or modifying it in my games.

The main thing I was thinking was instead of utilizing the sharpshooter keyword (as some units have it already, and the disadvantages of this have already been outlined), it would be a new keyword altogether. If the attacker had high ground, after the defender has rolled and modified all defense dice, the attacker can force 1 or 2 rerolls of the defender's dice (depending on height advantage). The defender could then modify their reroll if applicable (mainly for surges).

If the defender has the high ground, the defender would get defensive rerolls equal to the height advantage in the same way as explained before.

The main thing to iron out is whether the rerolls need to be all at once, or if the height advantage player could reroll a die twice (relevant if he has height advantage 2, and is attacking with only 1 attack die, should he get to reroll the defender's die twice? ... I'd say "yes" for balance, but "no" for rules simplicity.

Thoughts on my wall of text idea?

A bit simplistic. High ground is not always a good thing. Reverse slope defence is a good example of this.

Honestly, the idea seems needless if you just look at line of sight from center of base at the top of the miniature. In my experience with the T-47 and AT-ST, it’s quite common that their height lets them see more than half of the units they target, so sharpshooter wouldn’t effect the shot. The target isn’t obscured, so it has no cover.

The T-47’s greatest weakness is the ease and speed with which it’s destroyed. The AT-ST seems fine. Both suffer from the presence of victory conditions they can’t directly achieve, but even those objectives available only to troopers require living troopers to take them, so armored artillery can help reduce opposing forces’ ability to gain those objectives. While your troopers chase objectives, your artillery eliminates enemy troopers.

Both of the heavies are GOOD at the elimination function. Again, the T-47, like the 74-Zs, just dies more quickly than might be ideal.

I've been thinking about how the T-47' could be improved and what do you all think of this as an option?

- Event exclusive cards that have a Rouge Squadron pilot (or Gunners), such as Derek "Hobbie" Klivian, Dak Ralter, or even a T-47 pilot version of Luke!

- Hobbie could drop the arsenal 2 down to 1 and have cover 2 built in, and be negative points.

- Dak maybe a gunner that can shot out both sides and rear for 0 points.

- Luke? Maybe if he crashes replace him with the model version of Luke to then run about slicing **** up (flip the card and stats for this on the back) Just like ESB!

This way there are no rules changes, or need to reprint the current T-47 with changed stats ect, and this rewards players that attend events with something that makes their T-47 better and adds prestige. And with the T-47 Luke you could potentially run all four heroes on the one team!!!

On 10/21/2018 at 8:59 PM, BrickDaniels said:

1: There is no upper limit to height in Legion. 

there already is no height limit in legion. you can have your at-st be height 1 or up to 3 if you can configure him right. just like terrain you can have height 4 terrain.

On 10/22/2018 at 8:07 AM, Darth Lupine said:

Nope. Anything that adds more complexity to the game is a bad thing (and this coming from a long time 40K, Warhordes player). The last thing I want is to have to do math to figure out if a unit has sharpshooter or not. This would also add more time to the game, which in turn would adversely affect the perception of potential new players, who are already complaining of it taking too long....

You aren't distinguishing between Good Complexity and Bad complexity. This is Good Complexity.

This wouldn't take much time either. You just have to define with your opponent the height of each terrain piece before the game. Which is something you should already be doing anyway. Then its easy. If you're shooting from a height 1 terrain piece at a target sitting on the main gaming surface, you have Sharpshooter 1. If you are on a height 2 terrain piece and shooting at someone on a height 1, you also have Sharpshooter 1, but would have Sharpshooter 2 if shooting at something on the main gaming surface.

Easy and simple, and gives actual tactical reason to "have the high ground"

22 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

You aren't distinguishing between Good Complexity and Bad complexity. This is Good Complexity.

This wouldn't take much time either. You just have to define with your opponent the height of each terrain piece before the game. Which is something you should already be doing anyway. Then its easy. If you're shooting from a height 1 terrain piece at a target sitting on the main gaming surface, you have Sharpshooter 1. If you are on a height 2 terrain piece and shooting at someone on a height 1, you also have Sharpshooter 1, but would have Sharpshooter 2 if shooting at something on the main gaming surface.

Easy and simple, and gives actual tactical reason to "have the high ground"

That’s neither easy nor balanced (say goodbye to meaningful cover).

Worse, it’s totally unnecessary, the T-47 is fine if you fly it right.

33 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

You aren't distinguishing between Good Complexity and Bad complexity. This is Good Complexity.

This wouldn't take much time either. You just have to define with your opponent the height of each terrain piece before the game. Which is something you should already be doing anyway. Then its easy. If you're shooting from a height 1 terrain piece at a target sitting on the main gaming surface, you have Sharpshooter 1. If you are on a height 2 terrain piece and shooting at someone on a height 1, you also have Sharpshooter 1, but would have Sharpshooter 2 if shooting at something on the main gaming surface.

Easy and simple, and gives actual tactical reason to "have the high ground"

There is no such thing as good complexcity. ANY complexcity is going to add length to the game, and more interactions that are not necessary. If you want to home brew this in your own games by all means, but I devoutly hope FFG never implements something like this.

5 hours ago, Darth Lupine said:

There is no such thing as good complexcity. ANY complexcity is going to add length to the game, and more interactions that are not necessary. If you want to home brew this in your own games by all means, but I devoutly hope FFG never implements something like this.

You are absolutely incorrect. Good Complexity does exist. As does bad complexity. Good Complexity is where the player is given a large number of meaningful choices. Each choice has pros and cons which encourages critical thinking.

Bad complexity is complexity without adding anything of value. This what you are erroneously thinking all "complexity" falls into.

If you want an example of each,

Good Complexity: Chess vs Checkers. Chess is a far more complex game than Checkers, and it is better for it. It is far more interesting and engaging than Checkers. Not that there is anything wrong with checkers, but it is a inferior game compared to Chess. It is only so engaging before it becomes boring.

Bad Complexity: 3rd Edition DnD. So many convoluted rules and expansions that added layers of complex interactions, but very few of them were actually meaningfully different in mechanical terms.

Streamlining =/= improving the game. The current edition of 40k is streamlined relative to earlier editions, but its worse for it. Removing template mechanics, crippling the psychic phase, and a host of the usual balance issues, have made the game worse than it was in the past.

This change would actually give you a reason to have your dudes climb up into a building to gain some height. Now we can argue over if Sharpshooter X is an appropriate bonus or not, but there is no question this game needs terrain to be more important. Right now you have no incentive to have your guys clamber up a building. The terrain is just there as a negative aspect. There needs to be positive effects from it.

Perhaps instead of Sharpshooter, terrain could give something else. Maybe like this,

Elevated X: When performing a Ranged Attack, a unit with Elevated X may chance the facing of X attack die to a facing with a Hit. When performing a ranged attack, a unit can gain the Elevated X ability if it is on a piece of terrain that is higher relative to the target's position. To calculate the Elevated X value, determine the difference of the two terrain heights the two units are in. EG: A unit on height 2 terrain firing on a unit in height 1 terrain would gain Elevated 1. A unit in height 2 terrain firing on a unit in height 0 terrain(ground level) would gain elevated 2.

Elevated +X: A unit with Elevated +X adds X to its Elevated ability. EG: A Snowspeeder has Elevated +2. It may add 2 to its Elevated X value.

@BadMotivator....I'm not going to quote your whole response. Well tought out and written, kudos sir.

i grew up playing the old Avalon Hill games. You haven't seen complex till you've played Rise and Fall of the Third Reich...lol. Love that game, still have it. Played 40k and fantasy since first edition till 3.5 and 8, respectively. Have played so many mini and board games I've lost count....hehe.

You can go on and on about adding value to the game, and perhaps I'm just a cynical, tired old gamer, but at this point what I want is simple. My primary game is Armada, and I believe I'm fairly good at it. I've seen I don't know how many people quit it because 'it's too complicated and takes too long to play'.

If you want to home brew rules for your own gaming pleasure by all means do so. But I will continue to hope FFG keeps Legion as simple as possible, because I for one am old and cranky, and for seconds it will keep more players playing....at least I believe so. I may be, assuredly, incorrect. We will see.

1 hour ago, BadMotivator said:

You are absolutely incorrect. Good Complexity does exist. As does bad complexity. Good Complexity is where the player is given a large number of meaningful choices. Each choice has pros and cons which encourages critical thinking.

Bad complexity is complexity without adding anything of value. This what you are erroneously thinking all "complexity" falls into.

If you want an example of each,

Good Complexity: Chess vs Checkers. Chess is a far more complex game than Checkers, and it is better for it. It is far more interesting and engaging than Checkers. Not that there is anything wrong with checkers, but it is a inferior game compared to Chess. It is only so engaging before it becomes boring.

Bad Complexity: 3rd Edition DnD. So many convoluted rules and expansions that added layers of complex interactions, but very few of them were actually meaningfully different in mechanical terms.

Streamlining =/= improving the game. The current edition of 40k is streamlined relative to earlier editions, but its worse for it. Removing template mechanics, crippling the psychic phase, and a host of the usual balance issues, have made the game worse than it was in the past.

This change would actually give you a reason to have your dudes climb up into a building to gain some height. Now we can argue over if Sharpshooter X is an appropriate bonus or not, but there is no question this game needs terrain to be more important. Right now you have no incentive to have your guys clamber up a building. The terrain is just there as a negative aspect. There needs to be positive effects from it.

Perhaps instead of Sharpshooter, terrain could give something else. Maybe like this,

Elevated X: When performing a Ranged Attack, a unit with Elevated X may chance the facing of X attack die to a facing with a Hit. When performing a ranged attack, a unit can gain the Elevated X ability if it is on a piece of terrain that is higher relative to the target's position. To calculate the Elevated X value, determine the difference of the two terrain heights the two units are in. EG: A unit on height 2 terrain firing on a unit in height 1 terrain would gain Elevated 1. A unit in height 2 terrain firing on a unit in height 0 terrain(ground level) would gain elevated 2.

Elevated +X: A unit with Elevated +X adds X to its Elevated ability. EG: A Snowspeeder has Elevated +2. It may add 2 to its Elevated X value.

Having to track a stat for every single unit relative to each other is bad.