With the clone wars reveal it seemed fairly obvious to me that the CIS is going to be a horde style droid army, and the clones will be elite troopers. It got me thinking about the empire and the rebellion, and I can’t really think of an overall theme for either faction. I suppose the empire has better vehicles, but is that an identity? I figured if I was thinking about this others may be too, so I thought I would share this with all of you and see what your thoughts were.

In my opinion, Empire should be using soldiers attacking no matter if they die, as they got much more soldiers where these came from, so they would attack strong and with merciless tactics, trying to kill even if that means killing your own soldiers. Rebels should try to prevent to die instead, as they are few and they priorize surviving to fight another day, so they should have great defense, mobility and tricks to move quickly, make attack runs and taking objectives last turn.

The empire's strength lies in their defense for how much the units cost. Stormtroopers are 8 points cheaper than Clone troopers, and all they really traded was some attack power on the basic unit. This defense and cost combined with consistent heavy weapon options (DLT is still good, even if max damage is lower than other options) makes for great line infantry that can stay in the fight longer than most options without being to terribly more expensive. They're commanders are also likely all to be either very cheap (Veers, Krennic, + any future commanders) or the most expensive of any current or potential commanders (Vader and Palpatine). Imperial SF options are all great, except the full team scout (which I'm currently under the belief that Imperial players just aren't used to how you need to use trooper units with white defense). Imperial armor is the toughest in the game currently and I don't see that changing with the new factions so they should still have that.

Rebel units are offensively powerful, especially for their cost. Almost all rebel units fall into the glass cannon range, but their SF have the added benefit of being more mobile than all other trooper units. Rebel units more than any other faction really shouldn't be sitting around trading shots with other factions; you'll lose that fight fairly consistently. As such they rely on the terrain of the field more than the empire, if not the new factions as well. Commanders are going to be in the low to mid range point cost (80-160) and all of them bring a very unique game to the table. Rebel armor isn't spectacular, but has the advantage of being quick and cheaper than imperial armor.

The Empire and, to a lesser extent, Rebel factions have the distinction and disadvantage of coming first. They don't have a faction identity, but instead are the bar standard of which each other factions will be compared.

This means the first two factions don't have much identity, and are there to establish how the game plays.

Now, there currently are a few things the Empire does well, they have a number of commanders that hand out aim tokens, so I guess the empire faction identity is about precision. The rebels conversely have a more duplicitous and dodgy bent. Based on tricks and cowering.

At the Adepticon panel Alex actually said something along the lines of Rebels/Empire having less faction identity. They’re the core of the game, and other factions will have more mechanical identity as they’re introduced, to keep things interesting.

That said, they certainly play differently than each other, and that is flavorful as well. It’s just that their basic playstyles might be more... basic.

Empire is not quite to the level of elite infantry of the Republic, but as a faction they have all the best toys, they aren't afraid to hurt themselves a little to win, and their infantry can be quite aggressive with their positive saves. They also love to aim.

Rebels are more economical, they love terrain and variance. They work best hugging cover and taking dodge tokens to supplement their weaker defense, and they can pop out of all kinds of unexpected places to give you the heavy smack down - but god help you if you have to cross open terrain, or you mess up your engagement range. Some days their choice of excessive white dice will wipe out a squad, and some days you'll pour a butt-load of firepower into a single target and come up with nuthin'.

As we move into year two with a slower rollout of Rebel and Imperial units I wouldn’t be surprised to see more of an identity emerge for each army. Now that we will have four choices you can move away from the feeling that each needs a mirror unit per release.

These are really great points! I prefer to play the empire and I sure do enjoy their use of aim. It reminds me of A New Hope when old Ben Kenobi tells a young Luke while looking at a wrecked sandcrawler that only imperial stormtroopers are so precise. I’m just worried that in the future we will have the first order doing what the empire does, but better.

My take:

Imperial - direct and tough

Rebels - tricksy and agile

Droids - numerous and implacable

Clones - elite and synergistic

Scum - the scum is greater than its parts, variety (that must be brought together by a skilled general) 😉

I'm a little surprised that no one has mentioned that the Empire also does suppression better than anyone else, they have far more ways to dull out suppression to their targets. They really are the trying to just pound people into the dirt, and keeping them down.

I sort of suspect that the factions will be:

Imperial - Have a focus on suppression and aiming to have better damage potential, strong armor/heavy units, 2 really strong commanders with mid ranged other options to raise up general troops.

Rebels - Have a focus on being mobile and defensive by dodging, terrain dependent, have strong overall commanders and operatives that synergize well with overall heroes.

Republic - Have a focus on expensive and elite units with strong troop and commander/operative options with strong individual Jedi options and clone commander options that synergize with troops to make them even more effective.

CIS - Have a focus on a horde army, having the most number of activation options that are not great on their own but try to strike down their opponent before they lose too many troops, with a small handful of commanders.

First Order - Have a focus on aggressive troops with a focus of getting up close with their foes to beat them down, and commanders that push them forward into danger to lock down their foes. Think more stuff like Compel, Snowtroopers, and Flametroopers that want to be at range 1 and are most effective there.

Resistance - Have the strongest focus on commander or operative options out of any other faction with their troops solely being there to try and play objectives while the heroes fight the opponent to buy them time.

15 hours ago, Spideyfan629 said:

With the clone wars reveal it seemed fairly obvious to me that the CIS is going to be a horde style droid army, and the clones will be elite troopers. It got me thinking about the empire and the rebellion, and I can’t really think of an overall theme for either faction. I suppose the empire has better vehicles, but is that an identity? I figured if I was thinking about this others may be too, so I thought I would share this with all of you and see what your thoughts were.

The theme is make your list and don't let The Man tell you how your army is "supposed" to be played.

8 hours ago, Animewarsdude said:

Resistance - Have the strongest focus on commander or operative options out of any other faction with their troops solely being there to try and play objectives while the heroes fight the opponent to buy them time. 

Dangit I was okay with no Sequel Factions until I actually thought about playing as Poe.

So Rey and Finn would probably be operatives... Poe, Leia, Holdo commanders? Dang, so much of their faction identity feels like “pilots!” but maybe that’s just thanks to X-Wing. I’d still hope to see a special forces set with Ello and Snap, at least.

12 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

The theme is make your list and don't let The Man tell you how your army is "supposed" to be played.

Instead play to your weaknesses to spite reason? 😳

My hot take:

Empire: Lesser offense, greater range, aim token focused to shore up weak offense, deals out more suppression with high and low courage commanders.

Rebels: Greater offense, weaker defense, dodge token focused to shore up weak defense, removes more suppression, cheaper commanders with mid-low courages.

CIS: Bottom of the barrel on offense and defense for many cheap units.

Republic: Expensive units for greater offense (Rebel) and defense (Imperial).

Edit: If you were to put them on a scale, CIS is 1s for Offense and Defense, Rebels are a 2 Defense, 3 offense; Imperials are 3 defense, 2 Offense; and Republic is 3 offense and defense (with commensurate costs).

17 minutes ago, Derrault said:

Instead play to your weaknesses to spite reason? 😳

My hot take:

I don't think they should write units' stats to force an army into one tactical theme.

7 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

I don't think they should write units' stats to force an army into one tactical theme.

So, by inference, you’re saying every army should have equivalent stats and the only real differences are aesthetics?

I have to disagree, insofar as Rebels and Imperials do have similar tactical opportunities despite having radically different tools to achieve those ends.

(Ie melee and close quarters: Luke, Wookies, Han, Fleet Troopers vs Vader, IRG, Palpatine, Snowtroopers; snipers, sappers; cavalry: 74z, t-47; fire lane support: turrets, mgs; and recce: scouts, commandos, Pathfinders

49 minutes ago, Derrault said:

So, by inference, you’re saying every army should have equivalent stats and the only real differences are aesthetics?

No. But I am saying that when they write stats for something it should be based on the perception of how things within SW work, not on how a they've decided faction within the game called SW: Legion "should" work. So if they decide not to include these aliens, or that this hero should get this surge not that, because "rebels are supposed to rely on speed" or something, that's a bad way to proceed. GW got into that and drove a lot of people out of WFB because they thought they knew better than us which of our favorite units we should or shouldn't keep using.

They'd write some new army book that looked like the themed list of a GW employee. If that person didn't like to use this or that, they were gone, based on a very narrow interpretation of backstory.

4 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

No. But I am saying that when they write stats for something it should not be based on the perception of the characters or movie scenes or something, not how a faction within Legion "should" work. So if they decide not to include these aliens, or that this hero should get this surge not that, because "rebels are supposed to rely on speed" or something, that's a bad way to proceed. GW got into that and drove a lot of people out of WFB because they thought they knew better than us which of our favorite units we should or shouldn't keep using.

They'd write some new army book that was basically the themed list of a GW employee. If that person didn't like to use this or that, they were gone, based on a very narrow interpretation of backstory.

Ah. I think we’re probably good, they seem to just be filling in the gaps; I like the calculate idea from x-wing for droids, so hopefully they’ll be heavy into that.

6 minutes ago, Derrault said:

Ah. I think we’re probably good, they seem to just be filling in the gaps; I like the calculate idea from x-wing for droids, so hopefully they’ll be heavy into that.

Imperial Assault's skirmish mode got into that which makes me nervous. It was almost impossible to play rebels other than as a DnD party. However, skirmish mode appears to have been pretty much concocted as an afterthought to a rebel DnD game. So maybe it was just the way it worked out.

I think that in the long-term we might start seeing them trying to swing the GCW factions into having more unique identities, particularly if we get more factions after the Clone Wars.

I could see Rebels becoming a lot more glass-cannon and 'tricksy'. Due to the Empire's popularity and iconicness, they'd likely stay as the faction against which all others are judged; not as hordey as the Separatists, not as elite as the Republic but tougher than the Rebels. They'd very much be The Mario.

11 hours ago, Arbitrator said:

I think that in the long-term we might start seeing them trying to swing the GCW factions into having more unique identities, particularly if we get more factions after the Clone Wars.

I could see Rebels becoming a lot more glass-cannon and 'tricksy'. Due to the Empire's popularity and iconicness, they'd likely stay as the faction against which all others are judged; not as hordey as the Separatists, not as elite as the Republic but tougher than the Rebels. They'd very much be The Mario.

Can you be more specific with what you mean by tricksy?

The resistance's key ability is to ignore corps restrictions....

because they have no troops.

1 hour ago, qwertyuiop said:

The resistance's key ability is to ignore corps restrictions....

because they have no troops.

Take 3 commander/operatives and a good 400+ bid.