Star Wars Legion Unit Review: Rebel Officers

Hey Reader!

Following up on the Tauntaun Riders post, today we're looking at Rebel Officers, and I'm not gonna lie: I'm not writing this post based on how I've used them in the past (like I have the rest of the units I've reviewed so far), but instead as me externally processing why I've delayed buying this set. There are very few things recommending him to me, but there's a few things I've found appealing about him as I've been experimenting more with Echo Base Defenders, and that's what inspired this post. 

We will start with the profile analysis, then examine the units that synergize well with them, and then we'll discuss the tactical uses of the Rebel Officer, as I think he really only has two roles he fills, and making the most of those roles is very important. I've also named this post "Centaur Edition," because Tiberius may have wildly different thoughts from me, and I welcome that, because my thinking on him is purely theoretical and not based on actual usage.

I.  Stats: Budget Leia

From a stats perspective, the Rebel Officer is one of the weakest commanders out there, but he's also the cheapest one available to you. With only 4 Wounds and Courage 2 past a white defense dice, he's very easy to remove, and quite hard to keep alive, even with a card action for Take Cover 1.

Offensively he also struggles: a black and white die at Range 1-2 for his blaster attack is pretty much the weakest commander unit in the game, and while he has Sharpshooter 1 to help him get past cover, he's not likely to do more than 1 hit, so if you are firing at someone behind heavy cover (or soft cover with at least 1 suppression token) you are looking at a high likelihood of doing nothing despite having a Sharpshooter special rule. Which is not great: typically sharpshooter models are used to push enemies out of cover, and this one cannot do that with anything close to a reliable record.

He is a decent support unit, though, which is clearly what he's built to do. With both Take Cover 1 and Inspire 1, he can keep a unit alive for a bit longer thanks to the added Dodge token, and he can remove a suppression token on units near him, keeping them from panicking and/or losing actions.

The issue with this, though, is that he's 1) likely to use the Take Cover 1 on himself, as he could really use the Dodge token himself pretty much every turn, but also 2) he's decently likely to be suppressed if he is not removed entirely, which makes being an effective support unit very hard to do. Either you need to keep doing the support action(s) you're built to do but can't keep up with the troops that you're trying to support, or you move up to support the troops but can't perform your supporting action.

And this is part of the issue with how we're saving points on the Rebel Officer: if Sharpshooter 1 was replaced with, say, Take Cover 2 as an action, he'd be far more slotted into a role (as his offense would be horrible), but he would be far more useful, as he would have clear direction for his actions each round. But now he's kind of a "journeyman of all trades, great at none" sort of officer, when an only slightly more expensive version that improves on everything he does is in the same roster (Leia).

And with his two upgrade slots, you can admittedly make him better at serving in a specific role. If you want him to hand out dodge tokens, you can give him a Portable Scanner, and now he's up to Take Cover 2. You could also go the other way and give him a pair of Electrobinoculars to give him Spotter 1 so that he can hand out Aim tokens, improving your troops offensively. And while you can always give him Prepared Supplies to keep him alive a little bit longer, all of these raise him from his starting cost of 45pts (yay for erratas that reduce the cost!) to 50-53pts, even before factoring in a commander slot upgrade.

So realize that while yes, he can fill several support roles for you, this is not a very cost effective way to get them, especially if you have access to Leia. But I think, when it comes to support roles, you need to actually see him in a different light: he's a cheap way to double the impact of Leia. Leia can only hand out Dodge tokens to units within Range 1 of her, and that means only units near one objective can benefit from her abilities. Taking a Rebel Officer as well as Leia can double that effectiveness (almost) by being in a different place to keep the troops in the fight.

And the same thinking underlies the decisions for command upgrades. In case you don't want to put Strict Orders or Improvised Orders on Leia, you can put it on a Rebel Officer to free up slots on Leia for what you really need/want. But I think a better use of his slot is to go expensive and take Vigilance instead. With Leia helping to keep Dodge tokens on the table for you, what more could you want than throwing a cheap guy behind the lines to keep your Rebel Veterans or Rebel Soldiers with active Dodge tokens on them all the time? What better way to keep Luke or Han in the fight than to keep their defenses up from one turn to the next?

And this underlines what I think the actual role of the Rebel Officer is in your force, as we head into synergies (because he only has two upgrade slots, so you're pretty limited in terms of what you can put on him): he's really a copy-paste whatever you're doing for Leia to maximize its effects in more places, or he's a "fill-the-gaps that Leia couldn't take" character, which is also good.

So naturally, when we talk about synergies, let's look at Leia first.

II.  Synergies: 60pts of Savings

Rebel Officers basically synergize well with everything in the Rebel list, not only because he's built for increasing resilience and longevity, but also because he's cheap. When he's running at or under 60pts fully upgraded, this is a very, very cheap choice for your commander slot, which passes dividends on to everyone else.

So Leia appreciates that, for a portion of her cost, you can get mostly the same things elsewhere on the field. Rebel Veterans and Rebel Soldiers appreciate the maximized defense and reliability, and other rebel troopers won't say no to more action economy and more defense. But one of the less likely units that benefits from having a Rebel Officer providing support is any unit that took a 2-1B Medical Droid. Not only does the Rebel Officer extend the opportunities to use the Treat abilities of the droid (because the unit lasts longer, so you're less likely to be fully wiped out before you activate), but also because the droid comes with the special rule Non-Combatant, which means that he has to be removed as the second-to-last model in the squad before removing the squad leader. This is problematic if you take something like, say, a heavy weapons trooper, as you'll lose your special weapon sooner by taking the medical droid instead of an extra man. 

But with the Rebel Officer handing you extra Dodge tokens each turn and increasing the chance that you get to take 2 actions, the unit is far more likely to keep the specialized trooper in their squad on the field for at least a bit longer, if not the whole game.

But of course there's more than just heroes and infantry sections that appreciate these benefits. Support units really love added resilience and reliability, especially since Laser Cannon Teams and Tauntaun Riders, for example, are still troopers, so they can still benefit from all of the abilities of the Rebel Officer. 

But this underlines the few units that don't synergize well with the officer. Swoop Bike Riders are not troopers: they are Repulsor Vehicles, which means Take Cover doesn't help them. And when factoring the difference in speed and the focus of Swoop Bike Riders on very close combat, it's hard to keep a Rebel Officer near a Swoop Bike squad and still have both of them do their job effectively. So personally I'd take a commander with greater synergies with them to maximize their effectiveness, and that is not the Rebel Officer.

Related to this, vehicles don't benefit much from him, though admittedly the freed up points from him being your commander do help you to field more vehicles without hurting as much on activation count. The bigger issue, though, is that the generic rebel command cards aren't particularly favorable to vehicles (there's one that helps...a little...), so again, since those are the cards he gets access to, I don't think they mesh as well together (as we'll see below).

And from a command card perspective, the cards he gives you access to (the generic Rebel ones) are good, but again, available to every Rebel commander, so we'll walk through them all in turn. Your 1-pip card is Sabotaged Communications, and it's a decent card that can be very disruptive to your opponent. The text of the card is simple: your opponent can only issue 1 order with the card instead of its normal number. And that's awesome if you time it with an opponent's 2-pip or 3-pip card, but if they do a 1-pip, or even a higher pip card that just activates one person (like Maul, most operatives, and actually a lot of people in general from The Shadow Collective), the ability is wasted.

And since it only activates an operative or commander, any of your troops that benefit from being issued orders (Rebel Veterans, for example) are out of the rain unless you take an HQ Uplink on them (which is a 10pt upgrade, regained on a Recover action, so not cheap). So there's a lot of "...hmmm..." to this card - it's not bad, and can be really disruptive, but it is not great.

The second command card is Turning the Tide, and this one is also simple (complete aside: I'm a big fan of uncomplicated command cards, and all of these are uncomplicated, so good job Rebels!): each of your support and heavy units for the turn gains Inspire 2. So you know what I was saying about the Rebel Officer being able to replicate what Leia does? So technically for one turn you can also do this with all (not just the ones activated by your command card) of your support and heavy units, at least in the suppression removal category. This means your Tauntaun Riders, your Swoop Bikes, your Laser Cannon Teams, your Snowspeeders, your Party Buses - every support and heavy unit, not just vehicles - gains Inspire 2, allowing you to remove suppression tokens on units within Range 1-2 of them.

This is useful when you're facing armies that really push out suppression tokens, but I'll be honest: since you want to be taking advantage of 1 suppression token on everyone to improve your cover, how much you'll be able to utilize this on that turn is up for discussion. And you don't get any other benefits to your support or vehicle units: it's just gaining Inspire. But Inspire is a free action, so it's not eating into your actions for the turn, so there's that.

And the third command card is my favorite: Covering Fire. You have to activate 3 Corps Units, so it does restrict what you're activating, but you typically have a lot of those, so in that sense it's fine. Furthermore the benefits are actually really good for what Rebels want to do: when one of your corps units performs a ranged attack (so this doesn't help the Death Bears if you run them), another friendly unit (any unit: vehicle, support unit, commander, operative, special forces, or another corps unit) at Range 1-2 gains a Dodge token.

So you get a lot of Dodge tokens on anything - literally anything you want - as long as your corps units are attacking. And notice that it's not whether or not they hit anything: all they have to do is perform a ranged attack, regardless of the results.

So taking advantage of this command card is SO EASY: all you need to do is have another unit - any unit - within Range 1-2 of your corps units for the turn, and you're in great shape to improve the survivability of those units. Great card, great design, love it.

But the only downside to these command cards for the Rebel Officer is that these are not unique to him: if he was the only way to get access to these cards he'd probably be worth taking just to get access to Covering Fire. But since any Rebel force can take these...it's a good set of command cards, but not necessarily a good argument for taking him.

So with all of this in mind, let's talk a bit about tactics and how to get the most value out of the Rebel Officer.

III.  Tactics: Close Field Support

As we've been hinting at, you want to run Rebel Officers behind other units (to provide at least soft cover) and within Range 1 of your critical units. This is the range for your Take Cover, potentially Spotter, and Inspire covers that range and more, so you're in great shape as long as you can keep him close to the front lines, but behind the front lines.

Second, don't attack with him unless you absolutely have to. You are unlikely to do anything of substance, so unless you're taking a shot at a 1-wound unit holding an objective and you need to clear it and he's the only tool available, there's no real reason to attack with him. Even if he's engaged in melee, it might be better for you to do a Take Cover action and then take a Dodge action than to attack. Sharpshooter 1 on this model is a trap, so don't fall into the trap.

Third, Vigiliancing yourself is a trap: while you can do it, if you're the only unit in range, 1) you shouldn't be the only unit within Range 1-2 of yourself, because of what we talked about above, unless everyone you were with has been removed, in which case...OOF, but also 2) because the whole point of taking this guy with Vigiliance is to maximize the wounds you don't suffer on your team, thus making back the c. 60pts you're paying to take him. So you really want to be keeping the 2 dodge tokens out as much as possible: don't just settle for keeping 1.

Fourth, he would actually be a good choice for one of your reinforcements in Rapid Reinforcements: it would allow you to issue orders reliably to a far-flung part of the board, spread out the benefits from wherever Leia is, and give added defense to units that very likely may be on their own for a while. Unfortunately, the card specifies that your reinforcements can't be a commander or operative, which means he's a no-go for those choices. Which is a bummer, because he fits that role really well.

And there's really no other condition that favors him, nor are there any deployment setups that favor him specifically. 

He could be a decent add for Bombing Run because he allows you to guarantee that you can issue orders to another part of the board, so you can more reliably drop and detonate the bombs. Though his fragility means that if your opponent is able to remove him, your other supporting squads are not likely to succeed in their mission.

Beyond that he doesn't shine in any particular battle plan or strategem: just keep him behind your squads to keep them in the fight and last a bit longer. But if you can get 60ish points worth of value out of him (roughly 12 Dodge tokens, preventing 6 instances of Suppressed, or a combination of both), he's made his points back in arguably better models, and maybe that's worthwhile.

Conclusion

I really want to love this guy - the artwork is for Gideon Argus, who we have talked about on this blog before, and I love that guy. Great support hero, good game design, have run him in a campaign before and would gladly run him again. But I feel like this officer is too close to Leia to really be worth it, because the few points you pay to upgrade to her make her far more useful in every category. 

So if you want to add a Rebel Officer, do it to maximize on those same support elements, spreading the love to more parts of the battlefield. And if that appeals to you, pick him up, paint him up, and run him. I'm still on the fence as to how high he will be on my priority list, but who knows, maybe Tiberius will convince me, :)

Watching the stars,

Centaur

"Tarva and Alambil have met in the halls of high heaven." ~ Glenstorm, Prince Caspian