Star Wars Legion Unit Review: 1.4 FD Laser Cannon Team

Hey Reader!

Following up on our last post on Rebel Veterans, today we're looking at the 1.4 FD Laser Cannon Team, one of four Support choices for the Rebels (as of this writing), and perhaps the most controversial. From what I've seen online, there seems to be a consensus among Legion players about the three support unit choices for Rebels: the AT-RT is suboptimal but if you need some speed and bought the core set it could be worse, the Laser Cannon Team has very limited utility thanks to it being Stationary (more on that in a bit), Swoop Bikes are finicky and tend to die pretty quickly, and the Tauntaun Riders are awesome because they are pretty flexible and offer a decent bit of firepower while still being survivable and relatively cheap. 

And I'm not here to disagree with people who have been playing for years, but I think a lot of people sell the laser cannon short, and I'm here to offer an argument (probably too long) in its defense.

Today we'll be looking at their stats (and what makes them so good), their synergies (as they don't have command cards, but they do have a lot of useful synergies with both other units and specific command cards), and some tactical use for them in your rebel force. I should also note in passing before we begin that the Battle of Hoth is my favorite battle in Star Wars (rivaled only by the battle on and over Scarif Base), and this opinion is likely tainted by nostalgia for one of the best battles is sci-fi movie history. But I still think the math, strategic analysis, and tactical recommendations below are solid, despite the nostalgia, but if you disagree, this might be why I rate it so high.

I.  Stats: A 5 in Offense, a 3 in Defense

From a stats perspective, the 1.4 FD Laser Cannon Team (hereafter "Laser Cannon Team") is the best firepower that the Rebels get in the game. At a reliable 6-7 dice (depending on which generator upgrade you purchase for 3pts, which means you should always take one, because paying 3pts to get 1-2 dice and a special rule cannot be matched by any other unit in the game) with a Range 1-5 and offensive surges, you have to realize upfront that this is more firepower in a single unit that you can get on any Rebel Commander or Operative, and it's more reliable firepower than you'll find on a Core or Special Forces unit once they start taking 1-2 casualties. And with the points reduction from 70pts printed on the card to 65pts, the value for the firepower you get is only going up.

It also has all of the special rules we expect and want, with no extra fluff to detract from what this unit is designed to do. It is Stationary (so wherever you deploy it at the start of the game is where it will stay), but it can Full Pivot, so with a Move action you can get a 360-degree line of fire. The former means that it costs less points than it would otherwise cost, and the latter makes it so that it can't be easily flanked (though it comes with a reasonable tradeoff). 

It also has Sentinel, which means if you give it a Standby token you have the ability to interrupt enemies up to 18" away (Range 1-3), which could be advantageous for dealing with enemies trying to move from cover to cover to avoid being hit by you.

Defensively the Laser Cannon Team has 6 wounds (which is good for the points), Courage 2 (so hard to suppress), and a white defense die, which is not great compared to other armies, but for Rebels this is not only commonplace (every non-Mandalorian/Jedi gets a white dice), and with the ability to surge for blocks, it takes about 9 hits past cover bonuses and Dodge tokens to remove it. So while not great, it's not horrible either, especially for under 75pts.

And while the team can only take two upgrade slots, these are exactly the upgrades we would want. The generator upgrades are both good, though I have a clear preference. The Overcharged Generator gives you 1 additional black dice (so 6 black dice, averaging 3-4 hits) and raises your Impact to Impact 3, while the Barrage Generator (which I basically take every time) gives you 2 additional white dice (so 5 black and 2 white dice, averaging about 4 hits) and gives you Suppressive (so each time you would deal a suppression token to someone, they suffer 2 instead).

Now all of the generator upgrades are only 3 points (which means you should always take one - if they were still 10pts each they'd be kind of meh, but now that they're down to 3 I think they're an auto-include for every unit that can take them), but they also require you to recover to get it back. So it is very common for a Laser Cannon Team to take a Recover action + Attack action each turn, and I highly recommend you do that (unless you use the Courage of the Rebellion command card to give you a free recovery at the start of the turn, in which case by all means change up the plan).

You can also add a comms upgrade, with the most commonly chosen one being the Linked Targeting Array (which I basically always take), as it gives you an Aim token every time you are issued an order. But with the ability to also take things like an HQ Uplink, Long Range Commlink, or any number of other upgrades, this slot is highly useful to a fire support weapon like the Laser Cannon Team.

It's also worth taking a moment to note why you'd ever use the pistol attack. My nephew once asked me why you'd ever use it, and I mentioned that I think there's only two instances where it ever makes sense: 1) If you're suppressed and your target is not in the front arc (as you're Fixed, so you wouldn't be able to use your vastly better attack pool if you had to perform a Move action as your only action), or 2) If you had to choose between a Pivot + Attack or an Aim + Attack, and you wanted the latter. But with clever playing, you won't ever need to use this attack pool (or your Unarmed attack pool, for that matter).

II.  Synergies: Base of Fire

To get the obvious out of the way, Rebel Veterans are the ideal pairing thanks to Coordinate, so the Laser Cannon Team can be issued an order without detracting from the orders you are generating on a given turn. And with this unit being able to absorb a good bit of punishment while dealing decent damage, your opponent might find it more necessary to focus them before they focus your turret, keeping it alive just a bit longer.

But honestly it's a pretty good support to any of the Rebel core or special forces units, because it provides a distraction that your opponent can't really afford to ignore: it sends out so many dice it's hard not to think about it, especially if it's adding 2 suppression tokens to your Core and Special Forces units, as that's typically enough to start reducing actions or causing panic. And when your Core and Special Forces choices are rocking white defense dice, it's always nice when someone decides to shoot at something else, even if that something else is your favorite support unit in the game.

What they DON'T synergize well with are order issuers that only activate themselves (like Din Djarin) and vehicle-heavy armies, as they are likely to take command cards that compete with benefits for your emplacement troopers. But even then there are options that provide good synergies, which is where we turn next.

From a command card perspective, there are four cards that synergize very well with them. In the Echo Base Defenders battle force, Hold At Any Cost has great synergy with them (not surprising, as it's probably the most beloved command card for that battleforce), because it does two things you really like. First, it activates three Core units, which means there are 3 Rebel Veteran squads coordinating with emplacement troopers, handing out those free order tokens (and the associated Aim token, if you take the Linked Targeting Array). So the gifts just keep on giving on this 3-pip card.

Plus, since this gives all Core units an Aim token, not only are you improving all of the offensive capabilities of your core and laser cannon team units, but you are presenting a wide range of threats for the enemy, increasing the chance that your laser cannon teams get to activate this turn. Because when a Rebel Veteran squad has 5-9 dice with an Aim token, it's suddenly looking a lot more dangerous than a 5-7 dice pool with an Aim token for the laser cannon team, especially since the Rebel Veterans can jump on an objective and a Laser Cannon Team cannot do that.

But the second synergy it has is that all emplacement trooper units gain a Standby token, which maximizes the effectiveness of the turret by a lot. The rules for Standby say that "A unit cannot perform an attack action and a standby action in the same activation," but it doesn't say that you can only perform one or the other each round. So it is possible for the turret, if it performs a standby attack before its activation, you can then activate it and perform another attack in the same round.

But the order of operations is very important: if a unit performs an attack action, it loses its standby token. So if you were to issue it an order, and then take your turn with it and use the Attack action (which you basically always want to do on your turn), you wouldn't be able to attack twice. So just keep in mind that your first activation for the round will probably not be a laser cannon team (or a medium blaster trooper, for that matter, who also benefits from this rule) if you want to take advantage of attacking twice.

The rest of our choices are not tied to the battle force. A more niche option you can take is Complete the Mission with Jyn Erso, which allows her to 1) activate 3 troopers (which could be a Rebel Veteran who then coordinates with the Laser Cannon Team), which is always nice, but also 2) when the Laser Cannon Team is issued an order, you can give it 1 suppression token, and it can't be panicked or suppressed during the turn. Then, at the end of its turn, you can remove 1 suppression token.

This is great both because you have Courage 2 (so unlikely to have serious ramifications in future turns), but also because, if the turret is being focused, you don't have to worry about not being able to recover or attack on a given turn because you're suppressed and down to 1 action. Plus, by gaining a suppression token, you can increase your cover level by 1 (to a max of 2), so that's nothing to sneeze at, and Laser Cannon Teams will always take better cover when it's available.

Again, a surprise to be sure, but you might consider taking a laser cannon team with Jyn. Who knew!?!?!

The third option actually comes from Lando, and it's his Ace Up His Sleeve command card. Now to synergize this with the Laser Cannon Team, it does require you to discard the card instead of using it. But since this could be a contingency card, it's really not that bad. This is more of an emergency situation where maybe you couldn't coordinate with a Laser Cannon Team, but you really want it to activate because you need to bring some heavy metal to bear against an enemy.

By discarding this card, assuming the Laser Cannon Team is within 12" (Range 1-2) of Lando, you can issue an order to it and immediately activate it. This is huge, because of the wording: you issue it an order (which triggers the Linked Targeting Array), and then you get to activate it for the turn, so you can guarantee that your "next draw from the order pool" is, in fact, the thing you want. Which is huge if you're running a force with a lot of icons, and not many of them are Support (which is pretty common for Vanilla Rebel armies).

Again, this is pretty niche: it's a contingency plan, just to make sure that you get an activation that you like. But it could be the difference between a flank being rolled or holding, so I mention it here. Plus it's Lando: how often do Lando command cards help support units?!?!?

And the final card we're going to talk about (which we have discussed before) is my favorite card for Luke: My Ally Is the Force. We talked about this with the Rebel Veterans a few weeks ago, but since the card doesn't say, "When a friendly trooper unit is issued an order with this card" (like some Separatist cards say, for example), it means every unit that is issued an order this turn gets a Dodge token. 

So now imagine for a moment: you're a Laser Cannon Team, you're getting your order (so you're getting an Aim token, because you are wise, and took the Linked Targeting Array), but then, for that turn, you're also getting a Dodge token. You are basically home free this turn! If you have any level of cover, plus potentially a suppression token because people don't like you, plus a Dodge token, you're wiping out 3 hits from the first attack against you, which means you're probably going to be okay from whatever it is. That's insane, and dramatically improves the survivability of your laser cannon, not to mention the squads that keep you safe all around you. And once again, since Luke can be taken in the Echo Base Defenders list, you can run this with generic Rebels or EBD as you wish.

So with all of this in mind, let's talk through some of the finer points on how to run this more effectively (I haven't been playing long enough to say "most effectively," so I won't).

III.  Tactics: Board Control and Base of Fire

As much as people may say that the Laser Cannon Team has "limited utility for your force," I contend it actually has no less than seven tactically influential uses for your force, and thus is well worth the points you spend on it.

First and foremost, it's able to throw a lot of dice (with an Aim token) for very, very cheap. This is not nothing: for only 73pts as of this writing (assuming a Laser Cannon Team + Linked Targeting Array + a-generator-upgrade-that-you-like), you can get 6 black dice or 5 black dice and 2 white dice, plus Impact 2-3, plus surge results, plus potentially the Suppressive keyword. And every turn as long as you give an order to a Rebel Veteran squad near them and declare an Attack + Recover action, you can get all of this with an Aim token every. Single. Turn.

Now compare this to literally any other force, and that's incredible value for the cost you pay. Most heroes would love to have a 6-7 die pool with an Aim token every turn, and very few at 100pts or less (let alone 73pts or less) can do that. Sure, they can move, but 1) does that matter if you're near an objective with the laser cannon and helping to achieve victory, and 2) it doesn't diminish from the fact that this is an incredible base of fire to support maneuver units. A very cheap platform that can punch above its weight class, and it's only disadvantage can be overlooked with some good tactical planning? That's useful. And arguably flexible, considering that every deployment setup provides a good place to put down this turret (more on that later).

Second, it can reliably suppress and remove small units. People like to run snipers, officer squads, cheaper core units, and other options to make space for bigger, heavier units. And that's not bad, and I encourage it - especially since I run Laser Cannon Teams. On average, that 30" range (Range 1-5) that the Laser Cannon Team has can hit a lot of units on the board, and with my typical loadout (using the Barrage Generator as the generator upgrade), you're looking at 5 blacks (5/8 chances to hit, including surge and critical) and 2 white dice (3/8 chances to hit, including surge and critical) with a reroll (thanks Aim token!), you're looking at reliably generating 3 hits before the Aim is applied (and roughly 0-1 critical results), and often rising to 4-5 hits after the Aim is applied (with about 1 critical hit), meaning that the opponent is likely rolling at least 1 defense die, assuming they don't have Outmaneuver (which is not commonly available). And even if the unit has heavy cover and a dodge token (which is, again, not that common to have all of that), you're looking at 1-2 defense die rolls, which also means suppression tokens are coming out, even if no wounds go through. On a small 2-man squad? You're going to eat the squad in like 2 turns. Short of crazy rolling on the defense dice.

Third, adding Suppressive or a stronger dice pool with Impact 3 results in a lot of punishment to enemy Core, Specialists, and vehicles (which is most enemies). It's not the best tool for dealing with Jedi thanks to their high Morale, Dodge tokens, red Defense Die, and Deflect abilities (which will cut into your wounds pretty quickly over time), but if you have to take shots at a force user (perhaps because you didn't take Luke, or you didn't trust Luke to win a duel - both of which are true for me), then the Laser Cannon Team is not the worst way to deal with that force user. More on that later.

It's also a fantastic way to synergize the use of units with the Hunter training upgrade, as you can hit a unit with the Laser Cannon Team on Turn 1, deal at least 1 wound (which is pretty reliable), and then you've got Hunter triggered for every allied unit for the rest of the game (assuming your opponent doesn't have a medic or repair bot nearby to remove that wound, though those are not that common thanks to the cost of medics/repair bots).

And this synergizes really well with Rebels, since heroes like Han, Jyn Erso, Cassian Andor, Lando Calrissian, Wicket, every operative other than Luke and R2-D2, Rebel Veterans, Ewok Skirmishers, literally every special forces choice, and your tauntaun riders can take this upgrade. Which is a lot of choices that synergize well with this team, and it's literally every choice from the Echo Base Defenders other than the Medium Blaster Trooper, the T-34 Airspeeder, Luke, and Leia.

So to say that it provides both a base of fire and benefit to your troops is an understatement: it could singlehandedly make a 6pt investment in a training slot useful the entire game if you deal at least 1 wound to a unit on Turn 1 Activation 1 with the Laser Cannon Team.

The Laser Cannon Team is also decently survivable, sporting 6 wounds, a white defense die, and defensive surges, meaning that, on average, you need to deal about 9 hits to this thing past cover (and potential Guardian characters - thanks Chewie!) to remove it. This is not substantially more than Rebel Core units (as most of them can get up to 6 men in the squad with white dice and defensive surges), but what makes the Laser Cannon Team more useful from a resilience standpoint is that the first five wounds to it don't reduce its combat power: it's still kicking 6-7 dice at you every turn until you remove that 6th wound. Whereas a core squad even being reduced to 50% of its combat strength drops by far more than 50% of its effectiveness thanks to how cover works.

And this is also why I mentioned earlier that taking shots at a force user, even if they have Deflect, is not such a bad idea for the Laser Cannon Team, because at least losing 1 wound due to deflected bolts doesn't reduce the dice you roll, which is not necessarily true for other units in your force. So if it comes to it, at least the Laser Cannon Team can tank some of the pain of trying to whittle down a Jedi or Sith before you close in for the kill with a power unit.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the laser cannon team is also good at holding objectives, 1) because, as a unit with Stationary, it slots into that role very well, 2) because it has a big base, so the "area within X" of the objective" is quite a bit smaller once you plop a Laser Cannon Team within range, but also 3) because with 6 wounds, a white defense die, defensive surges, and the common ability to deploy it with some level of cover, it's actually decently survivable.

And if you happen to be playing Fortified Positions, you can guarantee yourself cover from a lot of potential shots for the whole game. Sure, it won't protect you from things in the air, but that's 1) a very small list of vehicles/characters, and 2) if they are devoting themselves to fighting your Laser Cannon Team, maybe that's okay?

You could even choose to devote multiple barricades to the Laser Cannon Team if you really felt like you needed it to be safe, covering it from multiple angles, as there's no innate rule that says that you need to deploy the barricades beyond Range X of each other (though personally I think you'll want those other barricades elsewhere to protect the vast number of white defense die models you have to field in Rebel armies, but that's up to you).

And finally, from a deployment perspective, the Advanced Positions setup is ideal, both because it allows you to deploy pretty close to the enemy (allowing you take advantage of your shooting as early as Turn 1), but also because it allows you to perform a speed-1 move, even though you have Stationary (as it ignores Stationary for this move).

Naturally, which prong you choose to deploy the laser cannon team on depends a bit on the terrain, but I'm almost always inclined to deploy it on the "thrusting prong" along the long board edge instead of along the short board edge, mostly because most scenarios have an objective near the center, and that means you're more likely to be in range with a decent angle of attack if you deploy that way. The speed-1 move also helps to cover over some of the issues of your opponent deploying far away from that prong, as you're able to traverse close to 8-9" (depending on if you turn it) with that speed-1 move.

Another good option, though, is Danger Close, as it allows you to start pretty close to the enemy and off to a flank (don't deploy on the short table edge), allowing you to give fire support across the center of the map without being right in the mix of things. And if enemies start close to you, backing a laser cannon team up with a squad of Rebel Veterans (for Coordinate) and possibly a hero or a squad of tauntauns should keep the laser cannon team safe.

Similar to Advanced Positions, which prong you choose to deploy it on depends heavily on board layout, though once again, I tend to prefer deploying on the longer prong because it's closer to the center, so more likely to be useful in providing a base of fire against the enemy.

Conclusion

So is the Laser Cannon Team the best support option for the Rebels? I don't know - in my experience they live longer than the Tauntauns, but since Rebels are generally strapped for fast options, I tend to think the Tauntaun should be your first pick almost every time. That being said, I think a lot of people sleep on the turret, and I think that's a shame, because it offers quite a bit to you, and I think in terms of feel and theme it's my favorite support unit, even if it's not the most useful tactical piece for me. So go out and buy one (it's also a pretty cheap kit for Legion, btw), and try one out in your force today!

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"I watch the stars, for it is mine to watch, as it is yours, Badger, to remember." ~ Glenstorm, Prince Caspian