Hi community.

so I started playing Legion when it first came out, but it didn't have a lot of FLGS support so it's seen limited action in my gaming history.

I made a new year's resolution to play more Legion this year, though. So I've gotten 3 games in this last week. I'm playing 500 pt skirmish games because we are still refreshing ourselves with the game and some guys don't have huge forces.

The 3 games i played were some iteration of the following with different upgrade cards:

Imperial Officer

3 Units of Stormtroopers with various upgrades

the Tank

1 unit of Scout Team with the sniper rifle

I played against:

-battle droid army with grievous, 4x battle droids, 1x droidekas

-battle droid army with grievous, 4x battle droids, 1x droidekas (different player than the above army)

-clone trooper army with obi-wan, 2x clones, 1x barc speeder

What I noticed was that in each of the 3 games, the force wielding jedi dude (grevious/obi wan) was nearly impossible* to kill and came in and carved my tank into swiss cheese.

Obi-wan was particularly egregious, he seems mobile, highly defensive and highly offensive.

So, if I may inquire of the more experienced players, what is the counterplay to playing against strong melee light-saber characters. And I ask this not from the standpoint of "what's the I win button against jedi"...just what is the counterplay to them?

*I say nearly impossible because I quickly realized trying to kill the light-saber character was not worth it. I rather killed (or tried to kill) all the trooper units to limit their scoring potential. This worked with the battle droid armies (I won) but not the Clone Troopers because Obi-Wan was able to bounce hits for his Clone Trooper units. I seriously have no idea what to do against Clones, but as I indicated I'm a total newbie right now.

Activation timing is key for the whole game, but Jedi characters are especially sensitive to it.

When you are playing a lightsaber wielder you are generally trying to set up a last/first activation for the initial engagement. That is, wait until a bunch of the enemy has activated and then charge into melee with a unit that has gone already. This protects the force user from getting shot at. Once they are in the thick of things they generally want to go first in order to get their precious dodge tokens before they get shot at.

If a force user engages a unit in melee one good counter play tactic is a strategic use of the withdraw action. If you pull out of the engagement and still have a few units left to activate the jedi is left high and dry to get shot at.

Its generally risky for Jedi to go after vehicles because they do not count as engaged while in melee with them. When Obi-wan goes for your tank it will take him at least two rounds to carve through it. Thats two rounds of shooting that your list can pour onto him.

In a 500 point game its difficult to bring enough firepower to bear to kill a Jedi, so really you have already figured out the best counter play, focus on the mission and winning the game.

I think in the skirmish format, with a 3'x3' table, some victory conditions based on the center of the battlefield and 5 turns of gameplay, is almost 100% sure there will be melee.

Bringing a shooting army to an skirmish without any melee unit is risky, imho. For Imperials, units that really don't shine at 800p (Vader, Dewbacks,...) can really do a good work at 500p.

My advice is to counter melee with melee. Trying to kill lightsaber characters with shooting units will usually require a good amount of actions that wil be needed later to move/soften weaker enemy units/control objectives/etc.

Grievous isn't a force user o.O

The conclusion I've come to is that melee is very potent in the 500 point skirmish version of this game. Gun lines, especially imperial range 4 ones, don't have enough room to get their normal work done. Personally I've adapted to this by diving face first into the melee game and currently run Vader, double IRG and double storms. When in doubt guardian helps protect and the best counter to a lightsaber wielder is another lightsaber wielder.

There are basically four approaches to any hard to remove target in Legion. All of them are easier done at 800 points than in Skirmish, but the basics stays the same:

#1 Kill it - simplest and hardest. Kind of means you either have to throw everything you got at the target and get lucky, or get very lucky. As I personally prefer short range units in Skirmish games (Han, Leia, Sabine, Fleets), i tend to stay away from this solution.

#2 Distract it - if a force user (let include Grievous in this for argument's sake) don't have a readied Force Push or Disengage, feed them something not vital. Is it brutal? Yes, but worth it if it protects your goals towards scenario or other, more valuable assets. My favorite approach most of the time, and it allows me to award the "Punchy McPunchface" award to a unit leader who does the most random melee damage to Vader xD A variation on distracting is suppressing the force user - works best against Grievous.

#3 Ignore it/hide - that's my go to solution to ATST/Tank, but it works with force users to some degree as well. Basically you let your opponent run free with his piece and accept the loses. They don't matter if you win on scenario.

#4 BYOLS - bring your own laser swords. They're good in Skirmish.

The limited number of turns makes #1 harder, the smaller number of activation makes #2 harder, and smaller table makes #3 much harder, #4 is quite often a coin toss. Note that solutions 1-3 do not need your own melee units, and that Empire's best melee unit are Stormtroopers.

Also, as you noticed, if you go with solutions #2 or #3, kill the rest of their army to win. If you have trouble with Obi guarding all your hits, seek for units that surge to crit or have Critical keyword

A lot of good advice here. As a fan of the Wookie rush I can attest to the danger Stormtroopers pose in melee if you get bogged down. Keep in mind Precise 1 still works in HTH.

However I theorize your problem with big bads is exacerbated by being stuck playing vanilla battle cards. It is a big disadvantage when faced with the character sets and their various tricks. You should really consider at least stepping up to Veers.

Thanks for all your advice.

The only thing I'd add is that it's pretty hard to stay away when the playing board is only 3' x 3', as Shanturin indicated above.

I'm not sure how Stormtroopers pose a melee threat when Obi-wan (and, presumably, Luke, or Darth or Grievous) can take out 4 of them in a single activation.

I will consider stepping up to Veers. I just like having lots of dudes on the board which is why I tend to go with lower-powered leaders.

I guess I just have to bite the bullet and step up to Vader then.

6 hours ago, Rocmistro said:

I guess I just have to bite the bullet and step up to Vader then.

Imperial Royal Guards are the only generic unit right now with Immune: Pierce. They are a handy, cheaper tool for dealing with lightsabers.