Hey everyone, so I've only picked up Legion this past year and so far its been a lot of fun - however I am having a bit of a problem when it comes to one player in my local store. They like to brag about winning games and I really want to take him down a peg or two. This player relies on their AT-ST a lot and by that I mean he'll engage troop units at melee range and just melee them to death to keep them from activating when things are starting to turn south, and then he'll use Bossk to kill other enemy units.

My ending board state is often Captain Rex, a group of Upgraded Phase 1's, and the Saber Tank. Theirs is normally the AT-ST (which I don't think is even tournament legal because they can't fit the head on the body...) and Bossk. He wins in terms of points because his AT-ST has a crazy amount of upgrades on it and Bossk doesn't want to just die even if I shoot Armor Piercing shells at him for 3 turns.

I'm trying to learn how to be a better player, so any tips you can give me will be appreciated!

What I currently have;

1x Clone Wars Core Box

1x Upgraded Phase 1's

1x Phase 1 Expansion Box

1x ARC Troopers box

1x Saber Tank (The person who I bought it off of was nice enough to give me the upgrade cards to the CIS Tank so I have those too)

1x Clone Captain Rex

Few things to approach here.

First off is that no legion games use remaining points of models to determine who wins (although it is used to break ties) so if you can play the objective better than him you will win, though that's a bit of a complicated solution that comes with experience.

Secondly, how is he engaged with you all game? there would be at least 1-2 turns at the start when you can hammer him with the saber tank. its guns + beam + armour piercing shells gives you critical 1 and impact 5 on a bucket of good dice on 2nd turn and crit 1 impact 2 on turn 1. on average with an aim you should deal 7.5 damage without accounting for stealing tokens from allies, almost crippling it.

Thirdly, get him to build the model. Most vehicles in this game have a hard time hiding for good reason so with it at full height it should be targetable from almost anywhere on the map (although it can also target you in return).

Republic are able to get a good load of activations into their lists and with him investing in 2 high value models you will be able to out activate him, forcing him to use the AT-ST on your terms.

The reply above has a good point on objectives. If anyone is playing AT-ST they won't have as good an objective bid as you will most of the time. The AT-ST will try to thin your units as much as possible so his corps can get in late game and seize objectives. The three major strategies I'd suggest you take are either trying to focus down the AT-ST as soon as possible with impact spam (having the dork actually build the model will help with LOS), seizing the objective (the middle objective if it's intercept) early and then clone castling up and fire supporting the crap out of the AT-ST and whoever gets near, or lastly forcing the AT-ST to choose between two attacking groups while the one it doesn't focus on flanks his corps.

Don't waste your time on bossk unless he's out in the open, if you catch him making a risky play with bossk, punish him as much as you can that turn because the crit lizard is more fragile than he seems. That also said, save your AP rounds for the AT-ST.

On 11/20/2020 at 10:32 PM, Kcdmgirl said:

he'll engage troop units at melee range and just melee them to death to keep them from activating when things are starting to turn south

So he engages them in melee to prevent them from moving away? He can't do that with an AT-ST. Vehicles can't engage anything in melee. They can do melee attacks but can't force troopers or other vehicles to stick to them in melee.

2 hours ago, XKrieg said:

So he engages them in melee to prevent them from moving away? He can't do that with an AT-ST. Vehicles can't engage anything in melee. They can do melee attacks but can't force troopers or other vehicles to stick to them in melee.

That ^^^

Ultimately if you can draw that thing out with them being so willing to charge with it, blast it with a bunch of pierce

I'm guessing with Bossk, a tooled up AT and having to have a commander they have relatively few scoring units, so I would exploit targeting anything they have to score points (meaning they cant win the game) and the AT with anything AP.

Also the above of fully building that would help a ton. Can't hide that thing with its head on

Good luck

3 hours ago, XKrieg said:

So he engages them in melee to prevent them from moving away? He can't do that with an AT-ST. Vehicles can't engage anything in melee. They can do melee attacks but can't force troopers or other vehicles to stick to them in melee.

Okay I didn't actually know that, although I always did think that was insanely unfair/broken all things considered. That's going to change the game a lot. Thanks for letting me know!

21 minutes ago, Haslamm1 said:

I'm guessing with Bossk, a tooled up AT and having to have a commander they have relatively few scoring units, so I would exploit targeting anything they have to score points (meaning they cant win the game) and the AT with anything AP.

He doesn't really, all he really has is Inferno Squad, Iden Versio being his commander (which he normally splits off from Inferno Squad to a different part of the map...) and a bunch of Stormtrooper units. In comparison I have Rex as my Commander, the ARC Troopers, a Strike Team of ARC's, and running in with the regular Phase 1's I have the upgraded units too. I've never had any trouble getting rid of Inferno Squad, the last game we played together he got my ARC Troopers down to just the unit leader, which was Fives, and I was able to kill all of them off in 2 turns. Bossk I've learned is just annoying and idk how you can kill him with the stupid regeneration kicking in at the end of each round so he's only taking like 2 damage each time, if even. Only thing I've been able to do with Bossk is keep him distracted with Echo for 3 turns until he finally melee's Echo to death.

22 hours ago, GearHead12 said:

Secondly, how is he engaged with you all game? there would be at least 1-2 turns at the start when you can hammer him with the saber tank. its guns + beam + armour piercing shells gives you critical 1 and impact 5 on a bucket of good dice on 2nd turn and crit 1 impact 2 on turn 1. on average with an aim you should deal 7.5 damage without accounting for stealing tokens from allies, almost crippling it.

I say engaged all game because I've noticed when things start to go badly for him, he'll have his commander bum-rush mine into engagement and keep them that way until one of them dies. Normally his because Rex has black melee die and Iden has red, but the purpose is just that - take both out in order to have the AT-ST wipe out the other units, or weaken Rex enough to where he can be finished off by Bossk.

You guys are right though, I'll let the other players know about the head on the AT-ST and maybe we can approach this player as a group to get him to finally build the thing. I've put together an AT-ST for a friend before, its not hard, and its fudging the game for the rest of the players.

Saber Tank with armor piercing rockets eats AT-STs for breakfast.

All you gotta do is fire support the Saber Tank and you can kill an AT-ST in 2 turns.

Once you punish him for bringing his AT-ST enough he wont bring it anymore. ever. You gotta teach people in your meta a lesson by abusing fire support.

2 hours ago, Kcdmgirl said:

He doesn't really, all he really has is Inferno Squad, Iden Versio being his commander (which he normally splits off from Inferno Squad to a different part of the map...) and a bunch of Stormtrooper units. In comparison I have Rex as my Commander, the ARC Troopers, a Strike Team of ARC's, and running in with the regular Phase 1's I have the upgraded units too. I've never had any trouble getting rid of Inferno Squad, the last game we played together he got my ARC Troopers down to just the unit leader, which was Fives, and I was able to kill all of them off in 2 turns. Bossk I've learned is just annoying and idk how you can kill him with the stupid regeneration kicking in at the end of each round so he's only taking like 2 damage each time, if even. Only thing I've been able to do with Bossk is keep him distracted with Echo for 3 turns until he finally melee's Echo to death.

Well for starters, he isn't smart by splitting iden from inferno seeing as one of the sole advantages of running inferno vs. imp spec forces is the retinue keyword.

Aside from that, don't chip Bossk. 1 or 2 hits on him while he's sitting pretty in heavy cover are exactly what he wants you to do. Focus fire on him only when he's in the open and you're sure you can kill him in 1-2 turns. He rolls white die so his defence is miserable when focused, especially vs. clone fire support.

2 hours ago, Kcdmgirl said:

I say engaged all game because I've noticed when things start to go badly for him, he'll have his commander bum-rush mine into engagement and keep them that way until one of them dies. Normally his because Rex has black melee die and Iden has red, but the purpose is just that - take both out in order to have the AT-ST wipe out the other units, or weaken Rex enough to where he can be finished off by Bossk.

Save your "Call me Captain" card for this move. When you anticipate he'll rush you (and it seems you have when that is down pretty well), play this card and Rex will turn into one big range 1-2 "**** you" ball (you add three red dice to every attack within range of Rex) and you can make him sorely pay for any close advances. You might consider even waiting until you're engaged in melee to play that card, seeing as Rex can add fire support to melee attacks with this card.

One last command card tip is to use "Take that Clankers!" to either focus down Bossk or the AT-ST since you'll match their range. This could be especially useful on Bossk to punish him when he thinks he's safe to have a free range 4 shot.

Overall this guy sounds like overconfident trash if he's willing to brag about victories and fail to check the rulebook. You got this

1 hour ago, Khobai said:

Once you punish him for bringing his AT-ST enough he wont bring it anymore. ever. You gotta teach people in your meta a lesson by abusing fire support.

Haha love it, but its so true. Have a little practice setting up some good fire support combos, and use it to maximise damage against the AT-ST. Your opponent will have a hard time hiding. Gotta utilise the advantages of republic, chief being token sharing and fire support

58 minutes ago, Stickynote20 said:

Save your "Call me Captain" card for this move. When you anticipate he'll rush you (and it seems you have when that is down pretty well), play this card and Rex will turn into one big range 1-2 "**** you" ball (you add three red dice to every attack within range of Rex) and you can make him sorely pay for any close advances. You might consider even waiting until you're engaged in melee to play that card, seeing as Rex can add fire support to melee attacks with this card.

One last command card tip is to use "Take that Clankers!" to either focus down Bossk or the AT-ST since you'll match their range. This could be especially useful on Bossk to punish him when he thinks he's safe to have a free range 4 shot.

That is one thing I need to do, I need to get better/more effective at using the command cards. The 'Call Me Captain' card I could see being good for those rush points, towards the end of the game, and using 'Standing Orders' to abuse Fire Support. The only thing is with 'Call Me Captain' is that its a friendly unit nearby- he doesn't tend to melee/engage with other units unless its my Commander versus his (Rex vs Iden) or its the AT-ST which I now know can't be engaged with.

1 hour ago, Khobai said:

Once you punish him for bringing his AT-ST enough he wont bring it anymore. ever. You gotta teach people in your meta a lesson by abusing fire support.

Lol, he might not even be able to use it. He keeps saying FFG gave him a faulty part for the AT-ST but he hasn't made the effort to send it back or reach out to customer support for a replacement. But I see your point, I need to start using Fire Support more and use my Saber Tank to hit him where it hurts. I do have the token sharing down for the most part, heck there were stretches of time where I think Rex or the ARC's never ran out of tokens... Plus I picked up 2 boxes of Phase 2's as well recently.

On 12/3/2020 at 5:30 PM, Stickynote20 said:

Save your "Call me Captain" card for this move. When you anticipate he'll rush you (and it seems you have when that is down pretty well), play this card and Rex will turn into one big range 1-2 "**** you" ball (you add three red dice to every attack within range of Rex) and you can make him sorely pay for any close advances. You might consider even waiting until you're engaged in melee to play that card, seeing as Rex can add fire support to melee attacks with this card.

Their opponent is already rushing into melee with Rex. That's the counter to Call Me Captain. He can't Fire Support if he's engaged.

On 12/3/2020 at 7:03 PM, Kcdmgirl said:

and using 'Standing Orders' to abuse Fire Support.

What exactly do you mean by this? Standing Orders is basically the worst card for Fire Support, since it only issues an order (face-up token) to a single unit.

19 hours ago, arnoldrew said:

Their opponent is already rushing into melee with Rex. That's the counter to Call Me Captain. He can't Fire Support if he's engaged.

What exactly do you mean by this? Standing Orders is basically the worst card for Fire Support, since it only issues an order (face-up token) to a single unit.

with standing orders you can still give an order to Fives, who can give an order to another unit, giving you 2 platforms to fire support off of. it is the main reason why people think he is OP

Assuming that the Republic has access to it, 2 point of ion damage per turn will do the trick. You don't have to destroy the AT-ST, just slow it down while you focus on the other things that are causing you headaches, like Bossk.

17 minutes ago, CorellianCowboy said:

Assuming that the Republic has access to it, 2 point of ion damage per turn will do the trick. You don't have to destroy the AT-ST, just slow it down while you focus on the other things that are causing you headaches, like Bossk.

Their only options are the BARC sidecar and Ion Grenades, both of which are probably a bit suboptimal.

On 12/6/2020 at 10:10 AM, arnoldrew said:

Their opponent is already rushing into melee with Rex. That's the counter to Call Me Captain. He can't Fire Support if he's engaged.

I was thinking you'd play it as a preemptive strike to create an area of denial for approaching. You do have a point though, there is a chance they could have dial advantage and shut Rex down.

3 minutes ago, Stickynote20 said:

I was thinking you'd play it as a preemptive strike to create an area of denial for approaching. You do have a point though, there is a chance they could have dial advantage and shut Rex down.

That's the rough thing about having Range 2 weapons in Legion: If they're in range of your guns, it's easy for them to just run into base contact with you. It's the hardest part about playing Han that I've found, and the reason why I often put a Jetpack on Rex.

han shouldve gotten the versatile keyword on his blaster

So my wondeful boyfriend recently got me another Box of ARC Troopers, I don't think I'll run 2 groups but the cards are certainly useful. As a new player, I'd love to hear what anybody else has for tips playing Republic.

Arc strike teams are a popular choice for GAR players, squeezing another set in probably isnt a bad idea