I was wondering if you guys could help me figure out what faction(s) to pick by explaining their playstyles to me I am coming from 40k and before that warmahordes if that can help describe the factions.

If needed the factions i played were cygnar, cryx, trolls, and skorne. As well as blood angels, grey knights, and orks.

Well at this moment the Empire and Rebels are much more expanded with several unit options in each slot (corp, support, spec forces and so on).

Clone wars era is still playing catchup with barely a unit in each faction released as of now.

Short facts:

Empire has expensive units with great long range and accurate firepower and strong defence. However they will have fewer models in general. Alot like space marines and imperial guard of 40k.

Rebels have far worse defence and is a bit more cheaper and tries to survive via dodge and teamwork. It have some pretty mobile assault units and very strong hero characters. Pretty flexible and a bit like orks or eldar kinda.

Clones are like empire expensive and few in numbers. They work more on teamwork and fire support instead of single monster units. Needs to stay togheter and use good positioning. Guess a bit like space marines/Tau I guess.

Droids have very poor ifantry, but very cheap and alot of wounds. Strong support, heavy and commander units and work different with orders and morale due to the droid trait. Mix of tyranid synapse horde ifantry and necrons special rules.

I don’t know anything about 40k, but in general:

Empire - gun line faction. Solid defense means they can typically play the straight up run and gun. Their corps units don’t hit overly hard (except for shores), but the fact they survive more reliably means that they’ll get more shots in. They have some really good armor and SF options as well. Can have combat oriented lead from the front commanders or support driven commanders.

Rebels - hero faction. Their grunts die if they’re hit with a wet paper towel, but they’re cheap enough you can get more of them in an army. Where Rebels shine most is in their named stars: Luke, Leia, Sabine, etc. will carry the day for you if placed correctly. They also shine in that their cavalry unit moves super fast and hits like a ton of bricks. Basically have the cav and the heroes do the combat while your troops farm objectives and try not to die.

Clones: gun line 2.0 - better quality units that can hit way harder than the empire, but premium costs. Requires a lot of team work between units for max effect.

Droids: Horde army. the corps are worse than the rebel corps.... but they’re so cheap you can spam them to no end AND they have more minis per troop unit than anyone. They have solid commanders that can be critical in an engagement, and their support are incredibly terrifying. Droidekas and grievous or Dooku fight the enemy. The corps all take objectives or volley an insane amount of dice. Also, while not yet released their tank appears to be the most terrifying piece of artillery yet to be unleashed... and with corps so cheap you can still max your troopers and bring it along. Also, one element to this game that’s key is activation control (who goes when). Droids if played correctly typically have perfect or near perfect activation control.

As I see it right now

Empire: well rounded faction good mix of corps special forces support and vehicles.

Their corps have a good range from the relatively cheap stormtroopers to the hard hitting but premium shoretroopers, but all are relatively similar in play and very forgiving to new players. Vehicles are of a similar balance make up

Rebels as stated above your named characters are your real strength. The corps are cheaper but need a lot more tactical control and planning then the Empire. There vehicles can be hit or miss but very powerful with a good plan around their abilities.

Republic super elite units that rely on coordination between units. Their corps are specifically designed to share tokens and back each other up with their vehicles being very much support as opposed to direct assult units.

CIS this is faction so far is the closest thing Legion has to the Imperial Guard. Cheap almost worthless basic infantry that drowns the enemy in bodies backuped by some of the hardest hitting elites in the game so far. Anything that isn't a B1 hits like a dam truck and their vehicles and support units are definitely designed to take fire away from your corps while being dangerous enough the enemy can't always afford to ignore them.

What about melee options? Who would you think has the most options for it?

13 minutes ago, gamefreak180 said:

What about melee options? Who would you think has the most options for it?

Currently, probably Rebels. Luke is amazing, Sabine is pretty decent in melee, Wookies are...ok, and Tauntauns are amazing.

I would probably put CIS in second. Both Grievous and Dooku are powerhouses, and the upcoming BX droids will be able to be fielded with Vibroswords which will make them pretty decent in melee. They will also definitely be getting Magnaguard droids at some point which will be melee focused, though we obviously don't know exactly what they will be like yet.

1 hour ago, Lochlan said:

Currently, probably Rebels. Luke is amazing, Sabine is pretty decent in melee, Wookies are...ok, and Tauntauns are amazing.

I would probably put CIS in second. Both Grievous and Dooku are powerhouses, and the upcoming BX droids will be able to be fielded with Vibroswords which will make them pretty decent in melee. They will also definitely be getting Magnaguard droids at some point which will be melee focused, though we obviously don't know exactly what they will be like yet.

Both Lukes are good

It looks like we'll be getting Mandalorians which have a Melee build and upgrade as well.

Imperial Guards are really good at close combat as well. (not to mention both Vaders, bossk and the emperor and the AtSt)

4 hours ago, gamefreak180 said:

What about melee options? Who would you think has the most options for it?

That is actually a really good question. Melee so far isn't as big a deal as 40k at this point in time (could change with future units)

Right now the Empire really only has Vader, the royal guards and Dewbacks for units that either really want to or don't mind melee.

Rebels have Luken Sabine, wookiees, Tauntauns, and suprisingly ATRTs so currently have the strongest Melee.

CIS has two terrifying melee heroes with Grevious and Dooku with the commando droids getting a strong upgrade but haven't been out yet

Republic is probably the weakest melee right now with really only Obi wan and ATRTs at the moment

4 hours ago, Lochlan said:

Currently, probably Rebels. Luke is amazing, Sabine is pretty decent in melee, Wookies are...ok, and Tauntauns are amazing.

Wookiees main problem is they look really scary and attract a lot of fire but unlike tauntauns don't have the speed or HP to soak that enemy love

So here is what i am wondering what about using standby on your melee units and popping smoke grenades to act as reactive cover? Is that something that can be done?

1 minute ago, gamefreak180 said:

So here is what i am wondering what about using standby on your melee units and popping smoke grenades to act as reactive cover? Is that something that can be done?

Standby only allows a move or a shoot. Plus without upgrade cards is limited to a range 2 bubble. Lots of units have range 4 capability and most have range 3 so it’s easy to start shooting standby units from a safe distance.

Standby is really only good in specific niche cases

8 minutes ago, gamefreak180 said:

So here is what i am wondering what about using standby on your melee units and popping smoke grenades to act as reactive cover? Is that something that can be done?

The Republic faction in particular can use standby tokens much more effectively than most other factions, if that's the sort of thing you're aiming for. With the Phase II clones, they can routinely get a standby range of 3, and be given a standby token from a nearby clone unit.

Think of the Republic kinda like Skorne, actually (since you mentioned you played Hordes). Lots of synergy between the units. Lots of heavily armored and powerful troops, but with the ranged abilities of Cygnar rather than melee.

17 minutes ago, Kirjath08 said:

Think of the Republic kinda like Skorne, actually (since you mentioned you played Hordes). Lots of synergy between the units. Lots of heavily armored and powerful troops, but with the ranged abilities of Cygnar rather than melee.

I mainly played storm cygnar with storm blades and storm smiths so I am most familiar with combined arms style/ assault army approach. I was asking about smoke thinking it more like a sw legion version of playing the reclaimer from menoth ( i played all factions pre cyris minus marcs and minions technically)

But that aside has smoke grenades seen use? It seems like a good tool to help protect melee troops.

6 hours ago, Lochlan said:

I would probably put CIS in second. Both Grievous and Dooku are powerhouses, and the upcoming BX droids will be able to be fielded with Vibroswords which will make them pretty decent in melee. They will also definitely be getting Magnaguard droids at some point which will be melee focused, though we obviously don't know exactly what they will be like yet.

Don't forget Asajj and (very probably) Maul

29 minutes ago, Vector Strike said:

Don't forget Asajj and (very probably) Maul

Or savage opress, the infiltrating droids from clone Wars that were cleaner bots, crab bots, since he was a separatist wannabe jedi pong krell, and technically the death watch with the dark saber too and probably vibroswords as well

13 hours ago, gamefreak180 said:

I mainly played storm cygnar with storm blades and storm smiths so I am most familiar with combined arms style/ assault army approach. I was asking about smoke thinking it more like a sw legion version of playing the reclaimer from menoth ( i played all factions pre cyris minus marcs and minions technically)

But that aside has smoke grenades seen use? It seems like a good tool to help protect melee troops.

I used to play Khador, but that was back when they still used metal for their minis, so it's been a while. I miss my obscenely armored warjacks, but hopefully the new CIS AAT will be filling in for that role instead.

That said, I haven't seen smoke grenades taken much at all. I can't say for certain why no one uses that upgrade, but I can guess at a couple reasons:

First, it takes one of your precious unit actions (of which, most units get at most 12 actions over a match), and you usually only get cover 1 out of the action. Alternatively, you could spend that action just moving the unit into terrain, which also provides cover 1 (or 2) and better positioning/flanking. Of those options, moving is usually vastly superior because you also need to secure objectives on the map or you will lose.

EDIT: And before I forget, a unit in melee cannot be attacked at range. So if you use your action to move those melee troops into combat with an enemy unit, they're already protected from being shot at.

Second, units don't always have both actions available to them. If a unit has taken too much suppression from enemy units firing at them, they lose actions (except for droids). So if your unit only has one action available that turn, you don't want to spend it on a cover 1 action, when you could instead either move them out of danger or take a shot at an enemy unit (or something else).

The only particularly good reasons I could think of for taking smoke grenades is on a terrain light map or when a unit can otherwise generate suppression tokens for itself, or has the ability "Low Profile" (so that their cover 1 gets improved to cover 2). Cover is rather easy to get in this game, so most people don't want to spend points on an item when the map itself already does that job.

That said, if you find that you really like smoke grenades, by all means use them. I wouldn't consider it a "trap" option, especially since I have no idea what sort of maps you intend to play on.

How aggressive can droids be? My goal is to have two armies one defensive and reactive the other high mobility aggression. Well i mean fast moving aggression (alpha melee if possible in legion) and if i can do that in the same faction then that is even better but if not id prefer the same era. The aggressive list takes precedence as that is how I play as a whole the defensive one is definitely a when I want to relax kind of list. But can be done much later.

23 minutes ago, gamefreak180 said:

How aggressive can droids be? My goal is to have two armies one defensive and reactive the other high mobility aggression. Well i mean fast moving aggression (alpha melee if possible in legion) and if i can do that in the same faction then that is even better but if not id prefer the same era. The aggressive list takes precedence as that is how I play as a whole the defensive one is definitely a when I want to relax kind of list. But can be done much later.

Just curious, how good is your understanding of the mechanics of Legion? Also, have you watched any battle reports yet?

Vague I've read the rules download and not watched any yet. I've listened to alot of notorious scoundrels though. Im probably doing more theory crafting than i should but i have a bat habit of not getting a faction that doesn't fit me and am trying to avoid that in legion. For bat reps i find it hard to look for the good ones usually then again that may be different for legion as well.

So your first step should be learning how the game works. Viewing faction selection through the lens of 40k won't work as the game systems are so vastly different. Alternating activations is a huge change from alternating turns. This seems to be a solid how to that is quick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyvsMdtHHRk

As for batreps, check these guys out: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Qun7vCxcyDbatJN86lJfA They have by far my favorite reports. Once you know how the game works and have seen it in action, you'll be better suited to making a faction choice.

19 minutes ago, Mokoshkana said:

So your first step should be learning how the game works. Viewing faction selection through the lens of 40k won't work as the game systems are so vastly different. Alternating activations is a huge change from alternating turns. This seems to be a solid how to that is quick: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyvsMdtHHRk

As for batreps, check these guys out: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Qun7vCxcyDbatJN86lJfA They have by far my favorite reports. Once you know how the game works and have seen it in action, you'll be better suited to making a faction choice.

I definitely will hilariously enough ive been using more of a warmachine lens because of the order system and my brain is equating it to the focus mechanic for warjacks. That and i have played alot more warmahordes than 40k. For example my brain sees cis as convergence of cyriss due to induction mechanic that allows one focus to propagate outward. And for those that don't know focus is what allows the robots in the game to function at a higher rate and to do some special abilities because you dont run warjacks without focus

If you are thinking about a mobile aggressive force, and a reactive defensive force, I would look mainly at the GCW era if you don't mind collecting two armys. Rebels can be very mobile, and their best units are aggressive/melee focused. Luke, Sabine, tauntauns, and to a lesser/situational extent Wookies that are out now, and Clan Wren will likely be in a similar vain once released. . And the empire fit the defensive/reactive criteria. Plus they are both from the same era, and come in the same core set. If you want both play styles in one army I would guess droids would be your best bet. They can form a good gun line through sheer numbers from their core units of B1 battle droids. And their leader options are beasts in melee. However, I wouldn't describe Dooku as particularly mobile. The upcoming (but who know when) release of BX commando droids should help with mobile aggressive.

However take what I say about the droids with a grain of salt. I do not play droids, and have only played against them a couple of times. I know empire and rebels better.

Empire- Oppressive long range suppression

Rebels- Mobile plucky and frail

CIS- Dynasty Warriors the faction

Republic- synergy

I know other games have this but are there starting out guides to legion for like first 800 pts from the core box?