Star Wars Legion Unit Review: Leia Organa

Hey Reader!

Long time no see (dang, has it really been 8 YEARS since my last post!?!?)! As our gaming group is getting into Star Wars Legion, I decided to plop down money on a battle force, and aesthetically I've always loved the Battle of Hoth, so I made a gut decision and bought it. I love support characters, so having Leia in the set was a plus. But as I've started playing, I've found myself unable to leave her at home, regardless of points level, and today I wanted to share just a few reasons why.

It's likely that none of these thoughts will be original; you'll find some similar thoughts shared by Crabbok in his video reviewing her, but to guide my discussion, I'm going to start by looking at her stats and abilities, then take a look at her command cards, and then talk through some tactical aspects to maximize her effectiveness.

I.  Stats: Cheap Quality Support Hero

Leia's cost has gone down over time; she started at 90pts and has since been errataed down to 75pts. So she's actually better costed now than she was when she was first released. And what you get is actually really good: she gets 3 black dice in melee (1-2 hits reliably) with surge to crit, so she's surprisingly good at melee for a 75pt hero. 

And with 3 black dice at Range 1-2 with Pierce 1 and Sharpshooter 2, she's actually really good at range too, as that's 1-2 hits that probably result in at least 1 wound against most targets, so if you need to finish off a squad that's hiding behind cover to hold an objective, she's a solid take (and more on that in the next section too).

Defensively Leia is also pretty good: not only does she have the Nimble keyword (which effectively means she can always benefit from a Dodge token when attacked, as long as she has one on her), but she has Take Cover 2 as an action, meaning that she can not only give herself a Dodge token (which triggers Nimble), but she can also aid another Rebel trooper in their resilience for the turn. And sure, rolling a White Dice for defense, even with surging for blocks, means she's only blocking 1/3 of all hits against her, that 6 Wounds means she's likely to survive at least 1 round of heavy shooting. If you keep her behind cover, she'll probably last through 2-3 serious attacks trying to remove her.

But why people actually take Leia from a stats perspective (and why I've never left her at home for any game I've played) is because she's a solid support hero. She has Inspire 2, which means you can reduce the chance that your units are suppressed at the start of their turn, allowing them to not only provide the firepower that Rebel armies need, but also to allow them to aim, dodge, or recover as needed to keep their tools working for you. And with Inspire being a free thing you perform after your Rally step, it's not keeping Leia from handing out Dodge tokens, moving, or performing actions to accomplish the scenario objectives.

So just purely on the stats, I think she offers a lot for only 75pts. Arguably the best support hero for cost in the game, and thus why you tend to see her in a lot of lists. But this is not the only reason to take Leia.

IP Class Deck Review: Reactive Defenses

Good morning gamers,

We’re back with another Imperial Class Deck review and this time, it’s the Reactive Defenses class deck from Heart of the Empire. I’m not sure that any class deck is as underwhelming as the Power of the Dark Side class deck (which was also released in Heart of the Empire), but at first glance, the only thing that really appeals about Reactive Defenses is that you can use those new energy shield tokens and a companion droid who gets a free dodge result . . . nothing that spectacular, really. However, as with most class decks, there’s more than meets the eye about this one and it actually provides several different ways you can play the deck. Let’s see what’s up.  

Reactive Defenses: Droid Options 

To understand what this deck is all about, we need to begin by discussing the ball-droid you get with the deck: 88-Z. Your default class card (Active Surveillance) has you deploy him at the beginning (from one of your green active deployment points) and if 88-Z happens to die later in the mission, you can exhaust Active Surveillance to redeploy him. 88-Z activates as part of any Imperial activation, so after you’ve acted with one unit that’s benefitting from his help, you can move towards another unit. Alternatively, if there’s a unit that could really benefit from being near 88-Z and needs to activate now, you can move 88-Z before that unit performs its activation. What the benefits of 88-Z are depends heavily on how you upgrade him (by default, he can surge to apply 1 Strain to the target of his attack – and that’s it). 

The cards you can buy in the deck broadly speaking fall into two categories: cards that give 88-Z more abilities (usually performed as actions) or cards that benefit units that are near 88-Z. Four of the class deck upgrades allow 88-Z to place an energy shield in an adjacent tile (Shielded), hand out surge power tokens to up to 2 figures within 2 spaces of him (Mechanical Prototype), get you 1 Threat if an enemy hero doesn’t Strain and pass an Insight check (Infrared Scanners), or gives him 3 actions during each activation, and the ability to give himself a free damage power token, or DPT (Overclock). If you were to purchase all four of these upgrades, you’d need to pick and choose what 88-Z is going to do, since he won’t have enough actions to do them all (giving himself the DPT seems the least useful to me) and because moving and attacking are also actions (if you take the DPT, you’re very likely going to be attacking on one of your activations). Each of these upgrades also does something else for your team (exhaust to apply +1 Block, exhaust to give a Droid +1 Damage, +1 movement point for each figure – no exhaust required, and exhaust to ready 88-Z, respectively), so even if 88-Z isn’t going, there’s always some benefit to your upgrades. Your starting upgrade is really the only “bad” upgrade you have, but it gets you 88-Z in the first place and allows you to re-get him if he dies (which is rare without Cleave/Blast, but definitely possible with direct attacks as the campaign goes on and access to anti-dodge tech becomes available). 

IP Class Deck Review: Precision Training

Good morning gamers,

We’re back with another Imperial class deck review and today, we’re back in Return to Hoth to view the Precision Training class deck. This deck has Snowtroopers on the front of it, which I find funny because . . . they’re not that precise. Still, the deck is interesting, though I’m not sure it rises to the caliber of other class decks (as we’ll see in a moment, that doesn’t mean it has nothing to offer). Let’s see what this deck does well. 

Precision Training: The Power of Compounding (and Feeding Threat) 

Like most Imperial class decks, Precision Training only has a few attachment cards – most of its cards are available for the Imperial Player (IP) to use whenever they wish. Most of THOSE cards have an Exhaust requirement (or a deplete requirement on one card), so the deck can provide you with some pretty awesome buffs once per round. There are some exceptions to this: the Sharpshooters and Find the Weakness upgrades apply to all Imperial units and once purchased, they’ll give your units +1 Accuracy and Pierce 1 . . . that’s pretty handy. Since much of your campaign is likely to involve running away from the heroes, the ability to pop a quick hit on them and retreat is excellent – and it’s something this deck enables you to do pretty well. 

Many of their other cards can be Exhausted to do really useful things on offense for a small fee – Versatile Attack allows one figure to add a yellow die and three new surge abilities (Damage 1, Pierce 2, and Weaken) for the low-low cost of 1 Threat, Exacting Strike allows one figure remove a defense die from their target (for the not-as-low cost of 2 Threat), and Single-Minded allows one figure to set a die to any face they want when they would reroll it (and they can ready this card for the low-low cost of 1 Threat). In case you didn’t notice, these cards are pretty threat-hungry. On the non-offensive side of the house, Knowledge of Attack allows an Imperial figure to apply -1 surge to a hero when being attacked (this one doesn’t cost you Threat . . . thank goodness). 

Finally, there are two attachments and one deplete card that are quite useful, but their applicability isn’t going to be army-wide. Strike Force is your starting card and it’s an attachment that gives its bearer a reroll on offense – which is awesome. Assassins is a 3XP attachment that gives its bearer the ability to ignore figures when making attacks (potentially useful) and it can be exhausted to reroll any number of dice they want. This is particularly useful if you also have Single-Minded. Finally, Pinpoint Accuracy is a 1XP card that can be depleted to remove a dodge result – this is best used to make sure a big attack actually makes it past a white die defense roll and like anything else in the game, having an answer for dodge results is really good.