We played our first game of Fantasy Flight Games’ Star Wars Legion and enjoyed it quite a lot. I’ve been painting figures and building terrain since November and finally had enough for a medium-sized game.
The Imperial Forces consisted of a junior officer, four squads of Stormtroopers (two squads with the missile launcher and two with the MG34, er, I mean the DLT-19 blasters). Two pairs of speeder bikes completed the force.
The Rebel Forces also had a generic officer (I really don’t like having heroes in small skirmish games), four squads of troopers, and two of the AT-RT walkers. Both forces were a little under 600 points.
The setting was a desert planet with a small village and some rocky hills and outcrops.
We used the standard rules for defining the scenario, laying out three cards each for Victory Conditions, Deployment, and Environmental Conditions. Then the opposing players took turns eliminating some of the choices until we had what was left. The victory conditions were to hold three objective points at the end of the game, which would last 6 turns. One point was received for each objective held. The deployment left the two forces on opposite corners of the table, and environment was fine.
The table had the village at one end and most of the hills at the other, providing numerous bits of cover and blocking most of the really long lines of sight. Let’s call the village end south and the opposite end north.
Per the rules we took turns deploying units until they were all on the table.
The battlefield. The red spots denote the objective locations.
As you can see, the Rebels concentrated themselves around the village where two of the objectives were.
The Imperials, on the other hand had substantial forces on the north table side farthest away, although both speeder bike units were there and with their high speed they would have no problem closing with the Rebels.
We drew our command cards for the first turn and the Imperial player had the low number of pips, winning the first move. (I didn’t take notes about which cards were played each turn, but the initiative seemed to be pretty evenly split between each side during the game). Legion has an alternating activation system, so it is a series of moves and counter moves. During this turn, the bulk of the forces on both sides had no opportunity to fire due to the obstructing terrain, but there was an immediate exchange of fire in the open area to the north of the village.
The rocket launcher in the Imperial squad put a solid three wounds on one of the Rebel AT-RTs, and in a spate of other good shooting, the rest of the squad and two of the speeder bikes shredded the Rebel trooper squad on that flank killing four out of six. Rebel shooting wasn’t as good, but did manage two hits on one of the speeder bikes.
Note the suppression marker on the speeder bike. This was incorrect as vehicles don’t gain suppression. We quickly figured that out and removed it.
Meanwhile in the south, the Rebels moved into the village and seized two objectives.
While the imperial troops in the area, advanced more cautiously. Both sides put several units on ‘Standby’ a sort of overwatch stance, but the stance goes away at the end of the turn and after Turn 1 neither side made use of it again.
Turn Two saw the fighting at the north end of town intensify. The AR-RT with the Gatling blaster advanced on the Imperial squad with the missile launcher and cut down half of it. But the missile launcher put two more wounds on the already damaged AT-RT, disabling it. But not before it finished off the damaged speeder bike. The rest of the stormtroopers in the squad finished off the badly damaged Rebel squad.
The remaining bike and the other unit of bikes, supported by a Stormtrooper squad advanced boldly up the road leading into the village, where they encountered several squads of Rebel troopers and their commander. A hot firefight ensued with the Rebels getting the worst of it. Two of their squads were badly shot up while the opposing squad only lost two men.
Another Stormtrooper squad appeared from an alley and reduced one Rebel squad to only its leader.
So by the end of the second turn the Rebels’ situation wasn’t looking too good.
But Turn Three saw the tide turn a bit. To the north of the town, one AT-RT picked off another stormtrooper, leaving the squad with just the leader and the missile launcher. The other AT-RT took out two stormtroopers from the squad in the road and when it activated it had sufficient suppression tokens left after rallying that it panicked and had to retreat. The two speeder bikes, being forced to take a mandatory move at the start of their activation (like all speeder vehicles) decided to skim over the rocky ridge and swing around the west side of the village. This was a questionable move since it took them out of the fight for several critical turns.
The stormtrooper missile launcher finished off the damaged AT-RT. Inside the village, things continued to heat up. The single speeder bike from the other unit boldly dashed down the street, but was destroyed by fire from the Rebel Commander and the two damaged squads.
Meanwhile two fresh squads of Rebels and stormtroopers faced off at point blank range like a shoot-out in a Western.
But amazingly, after rolling a lot of dice, only two stormtroopers had gone down. The remaining Imperial squad took some pot-shots at that same squad around the corner of a building, but scored no hits.
Turn Four saw both sides worn down a bit and there wasn’t a great deal of action. The remaining AT-RT to the north finally finished off the Stormtrooper squad which had done so much damage with the missile launcher. Inside the village, the damaged stormtrooper squad took some hits and was forced to retreat in panic. The one undamaged Stormtrooper squad took up a perfect position behind a barricade on the rear of the Rebel squad in the middle of the village but managed to flub all its shots.
The two remaining speeder bikes continued their swing around the village. Their absence in the fighting was starting to be sorely felt.
At the start of Turn Five the game was looking fairly even. Each side had lost two units but the Rebels had two of the three objectives. Could they hold out? But then things swung the other way again. Fire from the two battered stormtrooper squads and their commander managed to finish off the two squads near the rebel commander. By himself, the Rebel officer could only hold one objective, not, two. Meanwhile the remaining Rebel squad vaulted over the barricades and squared off against the other stormtroopers in the south end of town. They hurt each other a bit, but the heavy cover kept the casualties down.
Turn Six saw the battle swing decisively in favor of the Imperials. At the end, each side had one objective point, but the casualties were very much in favor of the Imperials. They had only lost two units, while the Rebels had lost four. Victory for the Emperor!
All in all this was a very fun game. Even though it was our first time playing we managed to handle the rules with only a few problems. The game took about three hours to play and considering the frequent consultation of the rules, that is not bad at all. The system seems to be sound and we look forward to our next match.
