Legion is a fantastic game with interesting and fun units to play. I don't think balance issues with the game should detract from that first fact. Unfortunately, the more competitive play becomes the more some units disappear from play and some become near ubiquitous. As we look at the results of LVO and Invader League Season 5, we can see that long-range units and Sniper Upgrades in particular bring potent fire power to tables that leaves most range 2 or less non-commander/operative units and upgrades at home. The reality is that cover, while good, has become binary. If you're opponent is letting you get frequent shots not mitigated by heavy cover, you are likely going to win. Combat maneuvering comes down to managing LOS and heavy cover as a default necessity for trading shots. Close range units need to be able to move and attack effectively to really see much play. Taun Tauns are a great example of a unit that can close and attack to great effect. They still require careful play and positioning with LOS blocking terrain before they make their rush into enemy lines. For Legion's less used CQC units and upgrades to see play, they need some way to gain the close and attack benefit their successful brethren have. Smoke Grenades, and Smoke Tokens in general, have the potential to give more units a place in the game if they are reworked.
Smoke Grendes struggle from not being too expensive in points so much as costing too much in action efficiency for impact. Right now, the cost of an action to use a smoke grenade removes a precious opportunity to close and attack by reducing the action efficiency of units already hard pressed by needing to move, aim/dodge, and attack. Not only do Grenades cost an activation, but R2's card takes up a precious command slot to deploy a Smoke Token, a steep price to pay for a cover increase. There are of course, several possible ways to change up Smoke that remove one or more of these obstacles. One of the easiest ways is to update the rules for Smoke Tokens, making them better without card errata. Perhaps Smoke could provide a non-reducible cover bonus, simultaneously buffing Smoke and weakening Sniper upgrades. Smoke Tokens could reduce attacking dice pools instead of interacting with cover at all. Smoke Tokens could even reduce the ability to draw LOS beyond range 2. Giving Smoke a rework can bring one of the few mechanics in the game that act like terrain into active competitive play. With a rework, players don't have to worry about playing on a board too sparsely populated for their chosen units to function. Rather, they can pay points and upgrade slots to proactively ensure a shot whre good play allows them to weather the blistering fire of long-range units in the game.

I think it should act like how smoke works in the real world.

It shouldn't provide cover, because you can shoot through smoke. It should provide concealment, so it should mess with LOS mechanics and/or accuracy (lower dice pool).

While I'd be perfectly happy to see changes to smoke to help the short range units out, those also suffer from design flaws.

Fleets (and to a lesser extent snowies) suffer from being courage one more than anything else. A single suppression makes them a non issue for that round. The officer helps a ton, but the unit gets expensive for how swingy they are.

Wookies can survive better than fleets, but the SF slot has a lot of competition and their damage output vs cost leaves a lot to be desired. Their counterpart in IRG suffers similar issues, but also pack guardian for extra utility, are more durable, and the heavy makes them good for fighting against glow sticks.

Scouts in the full unit have it worse than Fleets. They have the courage now, but now cost even more and are competition for the SF slot. Also if you wanted a short range SF unit you'd just use IRG anyway.

B2s are how you do range 2 Corp right. The main complaint against them is that they take a B1 squad away and don't have coordinate.

I agree with you, I often forget that smoke tokens even exist 😋 . Preventing los with some kind of range requirment seems like a good way to fix them.

On 8/1/2020 at 3:18 PM, thepopemobile100 said:

While I'd be perfectly happy to see changes to smoke to help the short range units out, those also suffer from design flaws.

Fleets (and to a lesser extent snowies) suffer from being courage one more than anything else. A single suppression makes them a non issue for that round. The officer helps a ton, but the unit gets expensive for how swingy they are.

Wookies can survive better than fleets, but the SF slot has a lot of competition and their damage output vs cost leaves a lot to be desired. Their counterpart in IRG suffers similar issues, but also pack guardian for extra utility, are more durable, and the heavy makes them good for fighting against glow sticks.

Scouts in the full unit have it worse than Fleets. They have the courage now, but now cost even more and are competition for the SF slot. Also if you wanted a short range SF unit you'd just use IRG anyway.

B2s are how you do range 2 Corp right. The main complaint against them is that they take a B1 squad away and don't have coordinate.

I agree that more recent short-range units have less challenges design wise. However, I don't know that a massive rework of each unit is realistically in the cards. Smoke if changed could be a way of giving those units a tool to close on their enemies. From tournament results, the SF slot isn't that competitive given the prevalence of Sniper upgrades, and that is a feature of how good long range versus short range is in the game currently. If we give the hard-hitting short-range units a means of impacting the game as much as the long-range units and I think the SF slot becomes very competitive where players have to really choose what to bring to support their main army, long-range steady damage, or short-range burst damage/area control (sabs, etc.).

It would have been great if it had blocked line of sight. Nothing like smoking up the enemy in Flames of War and Team Yankee.

For starters, smoke should work as "if shooting to or from the smoke token radius, or throught it ", and not just the first part. That would allow to deploy the smoke in anticipation of later move the unit and still be covered by smoke.

Secondly, it should increase covert by one. That it simply provides light cover (meaning if you already had light cover, you are SoL), is bull.

Third, it costs way too many points for what it does right now. There's an upgrade in X-wing that is SO TERRIBLE (jamming laser iirc), they had to reduce it to ZERO points, and still there's a lot of people who don't take it because of how useless it is. IMO smoke grenades are pretty much into that territory right now.

And lastly, if further improvement is required, I would make it so that shooting into or throught the smoke reduces your range by 1.

I think they should also last for multiple rounds or not expire at all.

I agree with the shooting through it, with the introduction of the silhouette tool i think they should add in a rule for adding a silhouette to the smoke token this would make them far more popular.

I like the idea of a shot through smoke reducing range by 1 though, sounds like that would actually be far more useful than what it is currently

If you draw line of sight to a unit through smoke, shouldn’t be able to use sharpshooter or aim tokens, or apply the benefit of the critical key word

10 hours ago, Qwar said:

Secondly, it should increase covert by one. That it simply provides light cover (meaning if you already had light cover, you are SoL), is bull.

They did this all ready in the last update to the RRG. They improve cover by 1 now.

I would make smoke grenades a free action instead of just an action, wouldnt make smoke any better but it would at least nake smoke grenades more usable. Now if they were to do that they would probably also make smoke grenades exhaust (possibly even have the cycle keyword). I think the whole reason smoke grenades are an action is because they didnt want players spamming it every round guaranteeing themselves cover, so if it went to a free action u would want to make it exhaust as well

12 hours ago, Qwar said:

And lastly, if further improvement is required, I would make it so that shooting into or throught the smoke reduces your range by 1.

I had this thought as well, but I would make it so that "shooting into or through smoke" you reduce your weapons range by 1 to a minimum of 2. (or rather, when determining range and line of sight I suppose.)

Keep in mind, we don't want to get to the opposite place with Smoke tokens, where they are so good that everyone spams the battlefield with them.

Making them a free action would probably do this.

38 minutes ago, Thraug said:

Keep in mind, we don't want to get to the opposite place with Smoke tokens, where they are so good that everyone spams the battlefield with them.

Making them a free action would probably do this.

while I don't necessarily disagree with you the reality is in their current state they are unplayable, consuming an action is just too much.

perhaps they can be deployed as a free action but the unit cant shoot this turn (and also the grenades cant be a free action if you have already shot this turn)

Maybe they get changed to a single use item with the new "X" Symbol errata'ed to them.

I would also like to see some rules for smoke in that it reduces the range of the attacking unit by 1 from their max range if shooting at a unit in cover of a smoke grenade, so sniper teams would have to be range 4 to shoot etc.

This is all especially true as the smoke grenades are more points than any other grenade, and currently the only other grenade that sees any sort of play is the Frag grenades on the occasional snowtrooper squad.

I always liked how smoke grenades worked in Necromunda, you throw one down and it creates a cylinder of space that obscures any LOS traced through it with a 50% chance of it being removed at the end of each turn. I think something like this could make them quite useful. Give them the [X] discard rule and deny any LOS traced through the radius. This could potentially buff low ranged units like Fleets that could throw a smoke down to advance under the cover of before engaging at a more advantageous range.

I like the idea of rolling a red die to see if the smoke clears or not

Separating cover and concealment mechanics would be a good improvement to the game rules.

22 hours ago, Hawkstrike said:

Separating cover and concealment mechanics would be a good improvement to the game rules.

I think doing so opens up a lot of options for future abilities and upgrades beyond making Smoke viable now.